Shepherd_Tallon

When Days Gone released a vocal internet crowd mocked it for not getting the same high rating at launch as other first party titles.

When the sequel was shot down before Sony even heard about it another vocal internet crowd said it was unforgiveable and Sony were the worst thing since tapeworms.

When the remaster with the upgrade path costing a tenner and the extra arcade mode was announced more vocal internet folk said it was a waste of resources/should have been Bloodborne.

The internet in a nutshell ☝️
Feels like we're all just out in the wilderness screaming at the clouds sometimes.
(I have the flu. When I'm sick I'm cynical. Future me is healthy and has faith in humanity.)

Personally I've had an itch to play this game again for about a year. Looking forward to the new mode.

I picked;

• Tides of Annihilation
• Saros
• Days Gone

But also;

• Onimusha: Way of the Sword
• Onimusha 2
• Shinobi
• Hell is Us
• Minds Eye

Tried Nightreign during that first window but couldn't get in. I'll give it another go tonight and tomorrow morning.

Other than that it's the usual Helldivers on PS5 for me, and probably Stardew Valley on Steam Deck.

Alundra and Vagrant Story on Premium are all I'm waiting for. They've added everything else I wanted.

• Hell is Us has my attention.
• I’m always happy to see Onimusha.
• A new game from Housemarque? Wasn’t expecting that.
• Classic Armoured Core games being added.
• Tides of Annihilation looks great.
• A proper look at Lost Soul Aside.
• Shinobi and Sonic Racing look great.
• Days Gone upgrade with an arcade mode for 10 euro.
• Mindseye looks interesting.

Not spectacular, but lots of nice things in there all the same.

I saw the times for UK/IRE yesterday and more or less gave up on it.
Maybe Sunday morning I might get in for an hour or so to take a look.

Excellent news. I'll be having that.
This is what I was waiting for before putting this on my wishlist.

@Titntin I'll tell you what, the last 5 hours or so felt a lot like a classic Bioware game. I started from the point of no return after work tonight and just finished up now at close to 2am. Couldn't put it down once the final sequence began.
That ending did things to me that no game has done since Mass Effect 2.

I finished with one trophy missing for the plat too. Just nabbed that now before bed.

Glad I went back to it.

@pyrrhic_victory I would say wait and see for yourself before you commit. It has a lot of charm, but I personally would put it in the same ballpark as the FromSoftware games.
It has a lot more narrative though.

@pyrrhic_victory I was waiting for the PS5 release too (and I'll probably still get it on PS5 tbh), but figured I'd try it in Early Access.

It's good! I don't want to talk it up too much for fear of over hyping it, but I've enjoyed the first few hours of it. It's giving me the same vibes I had the first time I played Demon's Souls back on the PS3 in a way that few souls likes have been able to.

It's not as difficult though. Not yet at least.

The animations and settings are gorgeous to look at too, and the voice acting in the early cutscenes was unexpectedly good.

Didn't notice it tbh except for when I tried to launch Crunchyroll. Maybe I would have played 40 minutes of Helldivers at some point, but I had;

• No Rest for the Wicked and Stardew Valley on Steam Deck
• CyubeVR on PS5
• Excellent rugby to watch

@Medic_alert It was definitely a classic. One for the top 5 all time endings to a 6 Nations game.

@Marquez Agreed. Maybe on another weekend I'd have been a little more frustrated, but I've had a weekend of rugby to keep me ticking over.

@UnlimitedSevens I think they fixed that with a firmware update about 3-4 years ago. Shouldn't be a problem, unless your PS4 has been offline since then of course.

I feel like I barely noticed this outage because of the games I play. Crunchyroll wouldn't launch on PS5 for me actually, but it worked fine on my TV app.

Also, it's a 6 Nations weekend. Did anyone watch that England Vs France game yday?
Holy moly, talk about blowing the tournament wide open. I was screaming for England for most of the second half. Epic stuff.

Still down for me. I just woke up though and I'm pretty happy about sleeping through the worst of a whiskey hangover.
Nothing beats strategic sleeping.
GFYS, whiskey!!! 😎

I'm going to give No Rest for the Wicked a go on Steam Deck and CyubeVR on PS5.
Also Helldivers whenever PSN comes back.

And it's probably time to finish Veilguard too.

At least we have something to talk about though.
Anyone want some tea?
Or whiskey?
Gonna watch Blazing Saddles and have some tea I think. And whiskey.

@PuppetMaster Agreed. I'd love to see Outbreak 1 and 2 remastered. They were excellent games in their day.

@Titntin "I'll let a dragon ravage that city for a while as I have to help my friend with her overbearing mum - not an ideal situation"
Yes exactly this.

I agree with what you're saying though. I found myself focusing on the side stuff a lot, and for about 85 hours I was happy to do it.
And the thing is, those little side plots to go have dinner with your friend's mother etc were legit interesting and endearing. Your friend is going through serious emotional turmoil and needs a shoulder. That's the kind of thing that pulls you into a story.

For me though there was a moment where I was just back from walking the "pup" and straight away I was asked, "Hey you wanna go walk the pup," and for some reason that moment broke me.

Still, talking about it makes me want to go back and finish it.
Maybe a much younger me would have just put it down for a few days and played something else, but an older me only has time for so much.

@Titntin I loved it for about 90 hours, and I do have an itch to go back and finish it eventually, but for me it was that I found the pacing and dialogue jarring sometimes.

My main issue is that I keep comparing it to Mass Effect and how well those games did with the Normandy what Veilguard is trying to do with the Lighthouse. But it's trying too hard or something. I can't quite put my finger on it.

"We need to kill those dragons!"
"Let's talk about coffee. Want some coffee?"
"I need to talk to you about an ancient dwarven secret!!!"
"We should throw stones in the harbour more often."
It made me feel like a kid at a birthday party who had eaten too much cake.

That said, it has one of my favourite sequences in a DA game so far. I don't want to derp it here though because spoilers.
Two or three of the characters are among my favourites too.

Bodes well for the next Mass Effect...

Also, Wilson maybe missed the news on games like Astro Bot or Black Myth.
I love Dragon Age generally, but I bounced off of Veilguard 90 hours in, and it wasn't due to the lack of live service. I've never gotten that far into a game before and found myself unable to keep going with it.
Maybe I'll finish it eventually, but not while I have other games to play.

@wildcat_kickz 😂Nice

@wildcat_kickz For science??? 🤔🤔🤔

👉🌍

I'm going to give Cyube VR a go on PSVR2. I'd never heard of it before yesterday but it looks amazing.
I also just got myself a 1TB Oled Steam Deck, so I'll probably put some time into the likes of Monomyth to scratch that King's Field itch.

Edit: And of course, Helldivers.

@Titntin 😂😂

I guess they want to bring them back, but without the 30th anniversary references and iconography attached?

I've bounced off of Veilguard after 90+ hours. I might go back and finish it another time, but for now I've started Armoured Core VI.
Also, Helldivers II.

@Lukeded Yeah it's fascinating to observe the differences. Sony are doing good work increasing sales there, but I can't see PC ever being supplanted in China.

@JohntheRaptor The last info on this was that it will have difficulty options and enemies won't respawn on death. It's more of an action adventure game than an ARPG. Visuals and level design are similar to soulslikes, but other than that it will have little in common with them other than a lovely dark fantasy setting.

@Th3solution We were having this conversation in work too.
They've definitely placed an emphasis on third party single player games this gen. They've made it very easy and attractive for the devs to put those games on PS5 at least.
This gen reminds me of the PS1 days in a lot of ways - I bought a PS1 for Resident Evil and Final Fantasy. I only became a fan of first party studios in the PS2/PS3 era.

@Orishibu Technically it wasn't. They're choosing to release it on PS5 and PC only for now.
They've not said why they're not releasing on XBOX, but there's no exclusivity deal with Sony.

@Enuo 4.30am here. Couldn't sleep so I opened YouTube and saw that trailer.
Now I definitely can't sleep.
That combat is insane.

@StrickenBiged I think that's a good point. They've had two massive learning moments in 2024:

• What to do (Helldivers)
• What to not do (Concord)

@get2sammyb With the exception of Helldivers II, I think the only way they're going to find huge success they crave in live service in the short-term is with investments.
Bungie need time to get over themselves and nothing else seems to be working out from a first party perspective.

I was happy to see what PlayStation came up with out of all of this though. I figured if anyone is going to make an online game that's going to hold my attention it would be PlayStation.
And tbf, Helldivers II is one of my favourite games in years so in that regard I'm happy - 200+ hours in and I'm not bored 🤷
I also still think that online Horizon game Guerilla are still working on, if it's anything like Monster Hunter, it could be great. That universe would lend itself so well to that kind of game.

Part of me wonders though, if the Helldivers II success had come before this dash for 12 live service titles, would they have felt the need to make as big a push in that direction?

If there's going to be a remaster I'd rather see Survivor or Outbreak. RE 6 was my least favourite game in the entire franchise.

@species No that was someone who hasn't worked there for a few years.
McAllister is the Community Manager. He's a pretty chill dude.

@themightyant I was going to say the same, but now is the time for reaction, opinion pieces and speculation.
The weighted analysis will come later.

That said, in a month of guessing I'd never have picked Live Action God of War as a game that was in development.

Hopefully after all of this the focus turns to growing the likes of Helldivers and GT7. (Unless someone has a legit good idea for a live service that we don't know about yet of course.)

I'd be intrigued at least.
I played through the Tides of Time dozens of times back in the day. Used to love those games. I remember thinking the water graphics were amazing...

Finally making significant progress in Veilguard. I'm really enjoying it now.
I'll get back to Alan Wake II when I'm done with this.
And I've also gotten myself Armoured Core VI... There's no time.

Once I realised it was a feature and how much space it was taking up I switched it to just record the platinum trophies.

Freedom Wars. I couldn't give af about it. How dare Sony licence it to Bandai Namco and force me to buy it. I was going to use that money for food...

I'm convinced that there's a large number of hyper online (or as someone here recently said, "terminally online") people in the world atm who are so burned out by media and social media consumption that they don't know what they want anymore.
Nothing makes them happy, and they react to everything like it's a personal attack.

@dardel tbh when it's finally finished I'll probably pick up the inevitable boxset too.
I have the Deluxe versions and you're right, the artwork on the page is absolutely fantastic.

I'd bet all of my socks, like, all of them, that they buy another 5 - 10 percent in Kadokawa in 2026 - 2027. And just keep doing it that way until they're a majority share holder and they can start divesting the parts of it they don't want.
Kadokawa is the anime platinum mine.

@get2sammyb Definitely. They've gotten more money out of me this gen than ever before.

Unless that's sarcasm, in which case... they've still gotten more money out of me this gen than ever before.

I'll be interested to see the price.
If they get the rights to stuff like Berserk I might give it a go. Save me from digging out those big Berserk Deluxe volumes whenever I want to read them.

@Apollo2212 "Oh my cat just did a thing, sorry," is my go to response 😌

@Rich33 Yeah agreed, I think someone dropped the ball in a big way with the drives. They could be making a nice little sum off of them atm if they had planned it properly.
Someone definitely had a red face when that particular penny dropped.

"a special place in hell" 😂😂
This is why you always mute yourself in a boring meeting.
I didn't so much lol as snort when I read that.

Damn you, @get2sammyb!!!

@Matroska Did Sony state that they overestimated demand for the PS5 Pro?
The last I remember hearing was back in November when it was selling as well as the PS4 Pro, but the scalpers were gutted and losing money because there was a healthy supply in most stores.