@Denni5m What a narrow view! It’s embarrassing really, to think things are better because they are newer. Imagine thinking that with music, or movies, or books! It’s no wonder so many players can be lead by the nose by the industry into the shallowest waters of the hobby by pretty graphics and trends.
*. *. *
I’m glad the hobby has grown to accommodate nearly everybody, but good lord, how many philistines must we suffer? Perfect consumers, poor excuses for gamers.
“... since using the Rewind feature to complete 11 stages in less than an hour snags easy Platinum Trophies on both PS4 and PS5”.
It’s funny you mention Gaiares... I rented that game when it came out and used an invincibility cheat code to “beat the game”. I got to see all the stages, but I felt I cheated myself and never used cheat codes again (save NBA Jam big head mode and the like).
I guess a “rewind” is better — at least your playing it, but I feel like playing for trophies without mastering the game completely misses the point!
It’s no wonder the genre remains niche since the death of arcades. The games (shmups, fighters, etc.) don’t teach players how to play them. Shame, as this game seems to have the tools, but at the very least the platinum trophy should have been behind a 1CC clear w/o save states and rewind.
@Perturbator Same here, but I can decide that again if I get a code. And honestly sometimes I like to restart games where you have to make decisions on a character creator before you even start playing.
@kyleforrester87 Uh, it's not in HD... it's up-rendered by the emulator... like putting your PS2 disc in a PS3... because it is THE ACTUAL PS2 disc version with cut content and added trophies.
@kyleforrester87 Why are they worried about a PS2 game that's been out for decades affecting the sales of a game who's sole selling point is it is a better version of that game? It's makes literally no sense.
The only example of this happening I can think of is Epic's Bulletstorm, and they caught a lot of heat for the move, and — unless the game features the original game in emulation as complete (or more) than the digital version that was available — Rockstar's delisting makes even less sense.
Assassin’s Creed II was the best game I ever played... ...for the first four hours. I played it like it was stealth Dark Souls, and it felt so rich and real and alive. Over time the illusions fade and I see how all the systems swallow each other, and it was just an above average sandbox with a cool setting and and a lot of digging for the tiny bits of gold.
I played Origins and turned it off in about an hour. I don’t even know why they call it Assassin’s Creed anymore. I’m still waiting for a game that delivers on the promises of the pitch for the original XBox 360 game.
@darkswabber Welcome to the dark side. Just don’t try to share your enthusiasm here, it gets nasty in the streets of PushSquare. Check out sister site PureXbox. You can even talk positively about Sony and Nintendo games without people having meltdowns.
@kyleforrester87 It’s a shame in the sense of game preservation — why even bother delisting a PS2 game? — and doubly so for delisting an already compromised version.
@PossibLeigh I don’t think we should conflate accessibility with approachability — it’s one thing to not be able to read and another to not be able to turn pages — but I totally agree there is some version of what you are saying that is a better solution than a scripted, mandatory tutorial. How hard would it be to implement a dynamic tutorial? Why not “press L to move” after a certain amount of time with no input? How long will you let a player struggle to figure it out before you tell them? The current standard is zero seconds, but I think 15-30 seconds would dramatically increase how good a tutorial feels to both new and experienced players.
@TeapotBuddha Totally disagree. Too many people are getting stuck in Dark Souls not knowing how to move the character because the game doesn’t tell you the use the Left Stick. It’s really bad for our hobby and this industry that a game like Hades wins Game of the Year awards and when all these folks who want to get into gaming spend money only to be staring at a static screen with no idea how to make the character move and absolutely no way of figuring it out with wading into the esoteric, posting on toxic forums with hardcore gamers screaming at them to “git gud”...
alright I can’t keep a straight face anymore.
I do think there is a kind of problem that this article seems to miss in it’s painfully undercooked experiment, and that’s the lack of instruction manuals, and the history and evolution of gaming literacy.
We have an incorrect sense now that “literate” gamers just sprouted from the ground. Fact is, these games came with instruction manuals that were allowed to be “assumed knowledge” when designing a game... to the point that many games used it as a “piracy” measure — that you could not progress without some code or information in the manual. The idea that anyone could pick up Zelda or Metroid without a manual and figure out is not only unrealistic, it’s just not what was happening.
As the manual phased out and the in-game tutorial game to prominence, it brought other issues. It is a very difficult nut to crack, and few games do it well, and maybe none perfectly. From my perspective, they are patronizing, ruin the pace, and more often than not teach you to play the game incorrectly - it’s like teaching syntax without grammar.
I think the problem lies in that space, between developers failure to bring teaching tools that work better outside of a game context in-game, and player expectations on how the game teaches players... this article being the most egregious (and idiotic) example of a desire for coddling. Even the fact that this person in the article was given a controller and not told how to play beggars belief, and to blame the game? It’s almost like it’s born from a desire to not interact with people, but with devices, and lay the burden of communication is the most generic sense on them.
@get2sammyb Right stick camera control has got to be the number one obstacle for new gamers. Being a gamer for 30+ years, I wouldn’t have bothered to learn until the camera control was essentially made ubiquitous in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. Nintendo recognized this with the Wii, but they and third party developers failed to build a bridge from those games to modern ones, though you could argue that from today’s perspective, I think Galaxy to Odyssey is a comfortable ramp.
All it takes is a game that doesn’t let me invert my Y-Axis and I am fumbling and stumbling like a green newbie.
@Starkei They all share the same basic premise but they are self-contained clean slates a la Final Fantasy, save SMTIV: Apocalypse or the Persona 2 games.
I think fans connect them together like Zelda, but it’s fan-fiction. (I think)
I absolutely agree with the points being brought up, but I don’t think it’s a problem or even something to “lament”.
There is a vocabulary in video games and yes it can be a barrier, but not every game’s job is to teach game literacy. Games should be allowed, like film, like literature, to demand a level of literacy from the audience.
“Press ‘L’ to move” in Sekiro is a joke. I wouldn’t plunk down War and Peace in front of a five-year-old and blame Tolstoy for it being impenetrable.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is way too high. It’s a fine game but it’s way too flawed and carried by nostalgia to be great. Way too short a narrative to be so padded, little reason to engage with its best feature (the combat), the old story beats were well done, but almost everything added was insipid fan fiction, the “quests” were terrible, etc.
I had fun playing it, but there were a hundred ways I wished it was better, as opposed to titles like VI and Tactics which were sublime experiences.
Come at me, I’ll be hiding in a sewer. Not that one, the other one.
Great news! GG Strive is already a favorite of mine, but the waiting (and waiting) and lobby kick followed by more waiting (and waiting) turned me off. Most of my play sessions are daily 15-30 minutes, buffeted by hour+ training sessions once or twice a week. The short ones go, the long ones follow and it’s been since Jack-O’s release that I’ve played.
@Integrity Maybe a better way to put it is that you're using objectivity in the context of science — that is what that means in the domain and I agree with you... in that context.
The problem is that there is also a rhetorical context, and now even a "pop" context of "subjectivity" and it's a dirty trick to leverage the meaning of it in one domain in the context from another.
We know we are never going to reach a universal truth in the realm of language and meaning, but that misses that point of the exercise.
@Integrity That's okay. It's your opinion on what objectivity means, and I have my opinion on what objectivity means.
My greater point is not the definitions of subjective and objective, but how people (like I just did for effect) are flipping the coin whenever it's convenient for them.
A review is a qualitative statement on the objective quality of the experience of a game through the lens of an observer. If it's "just an opinion" then it's not a review. It's commentary.
@Integrity We’re not disagreeing, but even still, you’re also doing the “retreats” from objective to subjective when it’s convenient. At the end of the day, a review is an objective, qualitative statement, how ever impossible that is to do.
@johncalmc It’s not about you not liking Alan Wake, it’s about your assumptions about why everyone else would agree with you, your justification of that position, and why that makes it a bad (“not bad” but let be real) game.
Why is this a better review? Chris Kohler takes Alan Wake on it’s own merits and judges on how it executed on it’s vision, or fails too. Without playing the game, I understand what Alan Wake is trying to accomplish and where Chris’ critiques might be very astute or very particular. I can compare it with a good review and have a good idea if it’s for me or not.
In comparison, your review reads like “not as good as The Last of Us, the best third-person narrative game.”
We can all play the game of giving and objective opinion (a review score) and then retreating to subjective space (your opinion) where you think we’re not supposed to be able to criticized because feelings.
Another problem is, these are not even opinions, these are assumptions:
“But PlayStation owners used to best-in-class third person narrative adventures...”
“ Worse, with the combat so monotonous, you'll end up dreading battles...”
“ ...you'll probably have a better time than we did...“
Who’s we? Did you play Alan Wake with a mouse in your pocket?
I think it’s a bad review for many reasons, and you disliking Alan Wake is not one of them. I’d just take the ‘L’ here and reflect on it if you want to become a better writer/reviewer. Bad reviews erode trust in the site, and in games journalism and criticism in general.
“Washed Ashore”, “Can’t Stick The Landing”, “Jett Set Radi-no”...
This game seems like one that doesn’t lend itself well to the review process and deadlines. I’ll keep an eye out for a good price. I’ll suffer a lot of flaws to not play the same cookie cutter games, polished as they may be.
Anybody actually playing this? It’s not perfect, but it’s hardly a 5/10 at all. Gorgeous art, quality music, interesting combat and systems... granted I’m only a handful of hours in but I’m enjoying it a lot. Nice pacing. Fast loading. Japanese VO. Decent side-scrolling exploration in the vein of Vanillaware, Indivisible, and Valkyrie Profile is not quite on that caliber.
Those with Gamepass I would highly recommend downloading. I’m really surprised how much I’m enjoying it.
@meltendo. It’s WAY better than the RPG factory games. Much closer to Octopath Traveler, in that it has flaws but also charms that, if they click, can carry the game past them. I wouldn’t spend $30 to find out, but if you have a PC it’s a good game to try on Gamepass for a dollar. (Cris Tales and Scarlet Nexus there now too).
@naruball You can have fun poking a dead body with a stick! You can have fun with an F2P game. Fact is, the Hitman 2 servers are shut down, and they shoveled the dead game onto their paid service. It is insulting, fun or not.
@KayOL77 I understand what you’re saying ... especially regarding the “Great Reset” angle of no ownership and cheap services as an issue — and that’s really why I add the caveat “for now” — but I don’t see the connection to the current state of gaming.
Firstly, “owning” games has become semantics since digital. Physical copies are just “keys” for digital software, with a courtesy copy of a 1.0 version. You own what you can sell, and the industry has been trying to subvert used game sales forever. The effort to make physical, content complete 1.0 games obsolete is industry-wide and is baked into the cake. Gamepass doesn’t really affect it, aside from a public willingness or acceptance to get the savings for the deal. The fact that a digital copy costs the same as a physical copy is utterly ridiculous, and we all know it.
Second, and more importantly, game rentals have always been a part of gaming (in most countries) and never warranted the “new world order” overtones. How is Gamepass different in effect? Low commitment from players, but now game makers get a cut.
Tagging in @UnlimitedSevens as this dovetails into my reply to them:
I owned nothing and was happy for most of my childhood, renting games every weekend, and when I bought games, I bought RPGs only because playtime was the paramount metric of value. The increasing investment costs to players have in turn made every full-price release turn into an RPG-lite to pad playtimes. The full price business model has affected design choices, especially in the risk-averse AAA space. That’s really where I mean the term “liberate”, even if it’s being done by accident.
I like a good walled garden too.. I went from Android to Apple because I’m happy to pay for better respect of privacy and data. I also have zero love for corporations, and think they are legal golems humanity created and the worst mistake it’s ever made, and begrudgingly accept that we choose lesser evils every day to participate in society. I’m only defending Microsoft in the context of the analogy that @KayOL77 brought in that I think was misused or inappropriate, where Sony being bought by the companies actually doing the nefarious stuff like amazon, Google, etc., somehow don’t represent a New World Order but Microsoft does for reasons I still suspect are fanboyism.
@KayOL77 The New World Order is here bud... “_____ as a Service” is the name of the game for all the companies you mentioned. It would behoove none of them to buy Sony. They all profit inside Sony’s ecosystem, and as far as IP goes, the only one valuable enough for those companies you mentioned to even bother with is “Playstation”, which becomes worth about as much as “Atari” is now without Sony driving it.
Do you really think Microsoft is “evil”, or is that just fanboy talk? I’ve always gone back and forth over the years as they ebb and flow with power, but current Microsoft is pretty benign compared to previous incarnations... they are straight angels compared to the companies you mentioned, at the very least as far as privacy and “data dignity” are concerned, and XBox today to me looks like more like a liberating force for creatives and the “hoi polloi” with their disruptive model rather than a “New World Order” like GaaS and the expensive walled gardens like Sony and Nintendo.
I haven’t played Returnal, but I love arcade games so Housemarque will always be a developer I support whatever they make.
As a fan of Japanese games however, I weep for Playstation’s first-party lineup, and think their Golden Age of development is behind us, not ahead. Team Asobi aside, there’s not too much for me to get excited about.
@MakersMark I don’t understand... if anything, “let them eat cake” is the current Sony policy for curating Playstation Plus games, while the “rabble” is asking for bread.
@uptownsoul There are polls too, and “nothing for me” is not a complaint about the quality of games being offered.
Just take the ‘L’. I understand you’re not a fan of the negativity and maybe you think these last few months are not that bad, but you’re absolutely wrong that people are talking about Control, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and even Greedfall and Virtua Fighter 5 like they are about games like WWE Battlegrounds and Hunters Arena: Legends or the straight-up insults like Hitman 2 (servers down) and Mortal Kombat X (already free on Playstation Plus Collection).
I wish there was a demo... something about it looks like it could be fun to play, but also I’m one of those adults who doesn’t care for Pixar movies and Kena has a vibe of a game that’s leaning on that aesthetic.
A great line I heard was “the best PS2 game on PS5”. Now enjoyed those era’s 3D action-adventure games like Tak, Ty, Sphinx, BG&E, etc., but not for the asking price without a demo.
I’ve always been fascinated by this game but I could never get the timing right for my time/money budget, and never got a clear answer on how much it hurts to miss out on the active multiplayer.
Now is still not the time for me, but I hope the new release grants another opportunity in the future.
Interesting. I thought the SNES version was called Dracula XX? Rondo is the better game, but I really enjoyed the SNES version and would love to see it on a collection as well.
@mrtennis1990 I dunno... combat looks straight out of Dark Souls 1, and the setting is closer to Nioh’s medieval horror rather than Sekiro’s more mystical vibe.
I hope they do a good job with this. As long as the controls are mappable unlike the Virtual Console entries (what heathen jumps with A/Circle?), I’m in. Remaster the amazing soundtracks and get some decent full screen options and I’ll pay a high price!
I don’t understand the value of the “Millenial/Gen Z” insert into the fantasy world — what is it bringing to the story and world besides a weird tone of voice? I didn’t liked the trope in the 80s and 90s, but I guess everything old is new again and this younger generation can decide for itself.
Personally, I’m praying for another language track because everything else without the quippy main character looks pretty cool!
@dudeAmarillo That’s a good guess! Unfortunately it just tells us there’s a lot of dialogue and.m nothing about the size and scope.
I’d be interested to see where people land — I know a lot of people preferred Mile’s tighter, more focused experience, but there’s pressure to do more when you call it ‘2’. I hope they find a good balance.
Listen I’m sure it is, but what the hell does this guy know? Was he in the planning meeting? Did they go over their project milestones with him? Why give twitter oxygen?
@jdv95 If it was functionally a streaming device for Playstation Now and PS5 streaming, I don’t think it would be that expensive. A Switch can do that. A phone could do that.
I think I can wait. I’ve been getting a lot more return for the investment on PC in this limbo-gen so if I’m going to upgrade anything at this point, may as well be that.
Maybe the PS show will change my mind, but as of right now I can hold my breath for Returnal to come to PC. A full-on TEAMAsobi game is the only other exclusive I can imagine going through any grief over, unless David Jaffe’s hyping something really special.
Comments 357
Re: Mini Review: Gleylancer (PS5) - Solid 1992 Mega Drive Shmup Shines Again
@Denni5m What a narrow view! It’s embarrassing really, to think things are better because they are newer. Imagine thinking that with music, or movies, or books! It’s no wonder so many players can be lead by the nose by the industry into the shallowest waters of the hobby by pretty graphics and trends.
*. *. *
I’m glad the hobby has grown to accommodate nearly everybody, but good lord, how many philistines must we suffer? Perfect consumers, poor excuses for gamers.
Re: Mini Review: Gleylancer (PS5) - Solid 1992 Mega Drive Shmup Shines Again
“... since using the Rewind feature to complete 11 stages in less than an hour snags easy Platinum Trophies on both PS4 and PS5”.
It’s funny you mention Gaiares... I rented that game when it came out and used an invincibility cheat code to “beat the game”. I got to see all the stages, but I felt I cheated myself and never used cheat codes again (save NBA Jam big head mode and the like).
I guess a “rewind” is better — at least your playing it, but I feel like playing for trophies without mastering the game completely misses the point!
It’s no wonder the genre remains niche since the death of arcades. The games (shmups, fighters, etc.) don’t teach players how to play them. Shame, as this game seems to have the tools, but at the very least the platinum trophy should have been behind a 1CC clear w/o save states and rewind.
Re: Elden Ring Closed Beta Test Announced, Register Now to Play in November
@Perturbator Same here, but I can decide that again if I get a code. And honestly sometimes I like to restart games where you have to make decisions on a character creator before you even start playing.
Re: Elden Ring Delayed Just Over a Month to February 2022
Take your time! I know I’ll be consumed by it so a bit more time to prepare the better:)
Re: GTA Trilogy Now Removed from PS Store Ahead of PS5, PS4 Remasters
@kyleforrester87 Uh, it's not in HD... it's up-rendered by the emulator... like putting your PS2 disc in a PS3... because it is THE ACTUAL PS2 disc version with cut content and added trophies.
Re: GTA Trilogy Now Removed from PS Store Ahead of PS5, PS4 Remasters
@kyleforrester87 Why are they worried about a PS2 game that's been out for decades affecting the sales of a game who's sole selling point is it is a better version of that game? It's makes literally no sense.
The only example of this happening I can think of is Epic's Bulletstorm, and they caught a lot of heat for the move, and — unless the game features the original game in emulation as complete (or more) than the digital version that was available — Rockstar's delisting makes even less sense.
Re: Poll: Vote for the Best Assassin's Creed Game on PlayStation
Assassin’s Creed II was the best game I ever played... ...for the first four hours. I played it like it was stealth Dark Souls, and it felt so rich and real and alive. Over time the illusions fade and I see how all the systems swallow each other, and it was just an above average sandbox with a cool setting and and a lot of digging for the tiny bits of gold.
I played Origins and turned it off in about an hour. I don’t even know why they call it Assassin’s Creed anymore. I’m still waiting for a game that delivers on the promises of the pitch for the original XBox 360 game.
Re: GTA Trilogy Now Removed from PS Store Ahead of PS5, PS4 Remasters
@kyleforrester87 Why do you think they the delisted PS2 games? It’s not obvious to me...
Re: Talking Point: What PS Plus Games for November 2021 Do You Want?
@Balosi are you being sarcastic? Check out every bad PS+ month article this year and read what happens when people bring up Gamepass.
Re: Talking Point: What PS Plus Games for November 2021 Do You Want?
@darkswabber Welcome to the dark side. Just don’t try to share your enthusiasm here, it gets nasty in the streets of PushSquare. Check out sister site PureXbox. You can even talk positively about Sony and Nintendo games without people having meltdowns.
Re: GTA Trilogy Now Removed from PS Store Ahead of PS5, PS4 Remasters
@kyleforrester87 It’s a shame in the sense of game preservation — why even bother delisting a PS2 game? — and doubly so for delisting an already compromised version.
Re: Soapbox: Some Games Assume You Know How to Play Them, and It's Kinda Weird
@PossibLeigh I don’t think we should conflate accessibility with approachability — it’s one thing to not be able to read and another to not be able to turn pages — but I totally agree there is some version of what you are saying that is a better solution than a scripted, mandatory tutorial. How hard would it be to implement a dynamic tutorial? Why not “press L to move” after a certain amount of time with no input? How long will you let a player struggle to figure it out before you tell them? The current standard is zero seconds, but I think 15-30 seconds would dramatically increase how good a tutorial feels to both new and experienced players.
Re: Soapbox: Some Games Assume You Know How to Play Them, and It's Kinda Weird
@TeapotBuddha Totally disagree. Too many people are getting stuck in Dark Souls not knowing how to move the character because the game doesn’t tell you the use the Left Stick. It’s really bad for our hobby and this industry that a game like Hades wins Game of the Year awards and when all these folks who want to get into gaming spend money only to be staring at a static screen with no idea how to make the character move and absolutely no way of figuring it out with wading into the esoteric, posting on toxic forums with hardcore gamers screaming at them to “git gud”...
alright I can’t keep a straight face anymore.
I do think there is a kind of problem that this article seems to miss in it’s painfully undercooked experiment, and that’s the lack of instruction manuals, and the history and evolution of gaming literacy.
We have an incorrect sense now that “literate” gamers just sprouted from the ground. Fact is, these games came with instruction manuals that were allowed to be “assumed knowledge” when designing a game... to the point that many games used it as a “piracy” measure — that you could not progress without some code or information in the manual. The idea that anyone could pick up Zelda or Metroid without a manual and figure out is not only unrealistic, it’s just not what was happening.
As the manual phased out and the in-game tutorial game to prominence, it brought other issues. It is a very difficult nut to crack, and few games do it well, and maybe none perfectly. From my perspective, they are patronizing, ruin the pace, and more often than not teach you to play the game incorrectly - it’s like teaching syntax without grammar.
I think the problem lies in that space, between developers failure to bring teaching tools that work better outside of a game context in-game, and player expectations on how the game teaches players... this article being the most egregious (and idiotic) example of a desire for coddling. Even the fact that this person in the article was given a controller and not told how to play beggars belief, and to blame the game? It’s almost like it’s born from a desire to not interact with people, but with devices, and lay the burden of communication is the most generic sense on them.
@get2sammyb Right stick camera control has got to be the number one obstacle for new gamers. Being a gamer for 30+ years, I wouldn’t have bothered to learn until the camera control was essentially made ubiquitous in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. Nintendo recognized this with the Wii, but they and third party developers failed to build a bridge from those games to modern ones, though you could argue that from today’s perspective, I think Galaxy to Odyssey is a comfortable ramp.
All it takes is a game that doesn’t let me invert my Y-Axis and I am fumbling and stumbling like a green newbie.
Re: Shin Megami Tensei Offshoot Monark Dated for February 2022
@Starkei They all share the same basic premise but they are self-contained clean slates a la Final Fantasy, save SMTIV: Apocalypse or the Persona 2 games.
I think fans connect them together like Zelda, but it’s fan-fiction. (I think)
Re: Soapbox: Some Games Assume You Know How to Play Them, and It's Kinda Weird
I absolutely agree with the points being brought up, but I don’t think it’s a problem or even something to “lament”.
There is a vocabulary in video games and yes it can be a barrier, but not every game’s job is to teach game literacy. Games should be allowed, like film, like literature, to demand a level of literacy from the audience.
“Press ‘L’ to move” in Sekiro is a joke. I wouldn’t plunk down War and Peace in front of a five-year-old and blame Tolstoy for it being impenetrable.
Re: Best Final Fantasy Games
Final Fantasy VII Remake is way too high. It’s a fine game but it’s way too flawed and carried by nostalgia to be great. Way too short a narrative to be so padded, little reason to engage with its best feature (the combat), the old story beats were well done, but almost everything added was insipid fan fiction, the “quests” were terrible, etc.
I had fun playing it, but there were a hundred ways I wished it was better, as opposed to titles like VI and Tactics which were sublime experiences.
Come at me, I’ll be hiding in a sewer. Not that one, the other one.
Re: Guilty Gear Strive's Next Update Finally Reduces Server Connection Time, Makes Big Gameplay Changes
Great news! GG Strive is already a favorite of mine, but the waiting (and waiting) and lobby kick followed by more waiting (and waiting) turned me off. Most of my play sessions are daily 15-30 minutes, buffeted by hour+ training sessions once or twice a week. The short ones go, the long ones follow and it’s been since Jack-O’s release that I’ve played.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@Integrity Yes, we can agree and I think we just became best friends.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@Integrity Maybe a better way to put it is that you're using objectivity in the context of science — that is what that means in the domain and I agree with you... in that context.
The problem is that there is also a rhetorical context, and now even a "pop" context of "subjectivity" and it's a dirty trick to leverage the meaning of it in one domain in the context from another.
We know we are never going to reach a universal truth in the realm of language and meaning, but that misses that point of the exercise.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@Integrity That's okay. It's your opinion on what objectivity means, and I have my opinion on what objectivity means.
My greater point is not the definitions of subjective and objective, but how people (like I just did for effect) are flipping the coin whenever it's convenient for them.
A review is a qualitative statement on the objective quality of the experience of a game through the lens of an observer. If it's "just an opinion" then it's not a review. It's commentary.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@KippDynamite Objective statement: bread is good. 8/10 Subjective: I like bread. Objectivity has nothing to do with consensus or even being right.
We are always making objective claims about our subjectivity.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@Integrity We’re not disagreeing, but even still, you’re also doing the “retreats” from objective to subjective when it’s convenient. At the end of the day, a review is an objective, qualitative statement, how ever impossible that is to do.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@KippDynamite A review score is an objective review of art.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@johncalmc It’s not about you not liking Alan Wake, it’s about your assumptions about why everyone else would agree with you, your justification of that position, and why that makes it a bad (“not bad” but let be real) game.
Here is a 6/10 review written 11 years ago:
https://www.wired.com/2010/05/review-alan-wake/
Why is this a better review? Chris Kohler takes Alan Wake on it’s own merits and judges on how it executed on it’s vision, or fails too. Without playing the game, I understand what Alan Wake is trying to accomplish and where Chris’ critiques might be very astute or very particular. I can compare it with a good review and have a good idea if it’s for me or not.
In comparison, your review reads like “not as good as The Last of Us, the best third-person narrative game.”
We can all play the game of giving and objective opinion (a review score) and then retreating to subjective space (your opinion) where you think we’re not supposed to be able to criticized because feelings.
Another problem is, these are not even opinions, these are assumptions:
“But PlayStation owners used to best-in-class third person narrative adventures...”
“ Worse, with the combat so monotonous, you'll end up dreading battles...”
“ ...you'll probably have a better time than we did...“
Who’s we? Did you play Alan Wake with a mouse in your pocket?
I think it’s a bad review for many reasons, and you disliking Alan Wake is not one of them. I’d just take the ‘L’ here and reflect on it if you want to become a better writer/reviewer. Bad reviews erode trust in the site, and in games journalism and criticism in general.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
@darkswabber PushSquare’s sister site PureXbox gave it a 9/10.
Re: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5) - Compelling Thriller Derailed by Tedious, Repetitive Combat
“ PlayStation owners used to best-in-class third person narrative adventures...”
Way to play for the cheap seats lol
Re: Jett: The Far Shore (PS5) - Atmospheric Sci-Fi Adventure Ultimately Falls Flat
“REVIEW Astria Ascending (PS5) - Beautiful 2D RPG Falls Flat“
Couldn’t think of a tag line?
“Washed Ashore”, “Can’t Stick The Landing”, “Jett Set Radi-no”...
This game seems like one that doesn’t lend itself well to the review process and deadlines. I’ll keep an eye out for a good price. I’ll suffer a lot of flaws to not play the same cookie cutter games, polished as they may be.
Re: Poll: Are You Happy With Your PS Plus Games for October 2021?
@UltimateOtaku91 Or, you’re paying for three games a month and getting free cloud saves and multiplayer.
Really none of it is free, and people have a right to complain.
Re: Astria Ascending (PS5) - Beautiful 2D RPG Falls Flat
Anybody actually playing this? It’s not perfect, but it’s hardly a 5/10 at all. Gorgeous art, quality music, interesting combat and systems... granted I’m only a handful of hours in but I’m enjoying it a lot. Nice pacing. Fast loading. Japanese VO. Decent side-scrolling exploration in the vein of Vanillaware, Indivisible, and Valkyrie Profile is not quite on that caliber.
Those with Gamepass I would highly recommend downloading. I’m really surprised how much I’m enjoying it.
@meltendo. It’s WAY better than the RPG factory games. Much closer to Octopath Traveler, in that it has flaws but also charms that, if they click, can carry the game past them. I wouldn’t spend $30 to find out, but if you have a PC it’s a good game to try on Gamepass for a dollar. (Cris Tales and Scarlet Nexus there now too).
Re: PS Plus PS5, PS4 Games for October 2021 Announced
@naruball You can have fun poking a dead body with a stick! You can have fun with an F2P game. Fact is, the Hitman 2 servers are shut down, and they shoveled the dead game onto their paid service. It is insulting, fun or not.
Re: Reaction: Sony Has Quietly But Confidently Grown Its First-Party Lineup
@KayOL77 I understand what you’re saying ... especially regarding the “Great Reset” angle of no ownership and cheap services as an issue — and that’s really why I add the caveat “for now” — but I don’t see the connection to the current state of gaming.
Firstly, “owning” games has become semantics since digital. Physical copies are just “keys” for digital software, with a courtesy copy of a 1.0 version. You own what you can sell, and the industry has been trying to subvert used game sales forever. The effort to make physical, content complete 1.0 games obsolete is industry-wide and is baked into the cake. Gamepass doesn’t really affect it, aside from a public willingness or acceptance to get the savings for the deal. The fact that a digital copy costs the same as a physical copy is utterly ridiculous, and we all know it.
Second, and more importantly, game rentals have always been a part of gaming (in most countries) and never warranted the “new world order” overtones. How is Gamepass different in effect? Low commitment from players, but now game makers get a cut.
Tagging in @UnlimitedSevens as this dovetails into my reply to them:
I owned nothing and was happy for most of my childhood, renting games every weekend, and when I bought games, I bought RPGs only because playtime was the paramount metric of value. The increasing investment costs to players have in turn made every full-price release turn into an RPG-lite to pad playtimes. The full price business model has affected design choices, especially in the risk-averse AAA space. That’s really where I mean the term “liberate”, even if it’s being done by accident.
I like a good walled garden too.. I went from Android to Apple because I’m happy to pay for better respect of privacy and data. I also have zero love for corporations, and think they are legal golems humanity created and the worst mistake it’s ever made, and begrudgingly accept that we choose lesser evils every day to participate in society. I’m only defending Microsoft in the context of the analogy that @KayOL77 brought in that I think was misused or inappropriate, where Sony being bought by the companies actually doing the nefarious stuff like amazon, Google, etc., somehow don’t represent a New World Order but Microsoft does for reasons I still suspect are fanboyism.
Re: Reaction: Sony Has Quietly But Confidently Grown Its First-Party Lineup
@KayOL77 The New World Order is here bud... “_____ as a Service” is the name of the game for all the companies you mentioned. It would behoove none of them to buy Sony. They all profit inside Sony’s ecosystem, and as far as IP goes, the only one valuable enough for those companies you mentioned to even bother with is “Playstation”, which becomes worth about as much as “Atari” is now without Sony driving it.
Do you really think Microsoft is “evil”, or is that just fanboy talk? I’ve always gone back and forth over the years as they ebb and flow with power, but current Microsoft is pretty benign compared to previous incarnations... they are straight angels compared to the companies you mentioned, at the very least as far as privacy and “data dignity” are concerned, and XBox today to me looks like more like a liberating force for creatives and the “hoi polloi” with their disruptive model rather than a “New World Order” like GaaS and the expensive walled gardens like Sony and Nintendo.
Re: Reaction: Sony Has Quietly But Confidently Grown Its First-Party Lineup
I haven’t played Returnal, but I love arcade games so Housemarque will always be a developer I support whatever they make.
As a fan of Japanese games however, I weep for Playstation’s first-party lineup, and think their Golden Age of development is behind us, not ahead. Team Asobi aside, there’s not too much for me to get excited about.
Re: PS Plus October 2021 PS5, PS4 Games Announced
@MakersMark I don’t understand... if anything, “let them eat cake” is the current Sony policy for curating Playstation Plus games, while the “rabble” is asking for bread.
Re: PS Plus October 2021 PS5, PS4 Games Announced
@uptownsoul There are polls too, and “nothing for me” is not a complaint about the quality of games being offered.
Just take the ‘L’. I understand you’re not a fan of the negativity and maybe you think these last few months are not that bad, but you’re absolutely wrong that people are talking about Control, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and even Greedfall and Virtua Fighter 5 like they are about games like WWE Battlegrounds and Hunters Arena: Legends or the straight-up insults like Hitman 2 (servers down) and Mortal Kombat X (already free on Playstation Plus Collection).
Re: PS Plus October 2021 PS5, PS4 Games Announced
@uptownsoul You’re talking out the wrong end, friend. Good games, good feedback.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/01/ps_plus_free_january_2021_ps5_ps4_games_announced
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/01/ps_plus_free_ps5_ps4_games_announced_for_february_2021
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/02/poll_are_you_happy_with_your_ps_plus_games_for_march_2021
Re: PS Plus October 2021 PS5, PS4 Games Announced
@uptownsoul I think it’s pretty dependent on the games... there have been great lineups and people praised them.
PS+ has become a bad bargain bin.
Re: Poll: Did You Buy Kena: Bridge of Spirits?
I wish there was a demo... something about it looks like it could be fun to play, but also I’m one of those adults who doesn’t care for Pixar movies and Kena has a vibe of a game that’s leaning on that aesthetic.
A great line I heard was “the best PS2 game on PS5”. Now enjoyed those era’s 3D action-adventure games like Tak, Ty, Sphinx, BG&E, etc., but not for the asking price without a demo.
Re: Disney Classic Games Collection Completes the Compilation with SNES Aladdin
Awesome news! As great as the SEGA/Virgin game looks and sounds, Capcom’s Aladdin has the superior gameplay.
Re: Death Stranding Director's Cut (PS5) - Kojima's Walking Simulator Is Best on PS5
I’ve always been fascinated by this game but I could never get the timing right for my time/money budget, and never got a clear answer on how much it hurts to miss out on the active multiplayer.
Now is still not the time for me, but I hope the new release grants another opportunity in the future.
Re: Castlevania Advance Collection Gets Key Art, Games Detailed
Interesting. I thought the SNES version was called Dracula XX? Rondo is the better game, but I really enjoyed the SNES version and would love to see it on a collection as well.
Re: First Class Trouble Is Among Us for Society's Elite
@nessisonett [rimshot]
This looks pretty cool. I always found the aesthetic of Among Us a major turnoff, plus playing hide and seek with children is creepy at my age.
Re: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Is a Newly Revealed Action RPG with Serious Souls Vibes
@mrtennis1990 I dunno... combat looks straight out of Dark Souls 1, and the setting is closer to Nioh’s medieval horror rather than Sekiro’s more mystical vibe.
I know I’m splitting hairs here.
Re: Konami Whipping Up Castlevania Advance Collection for PS4
I hope they do a good job with this. As long as the controls are mappable unlike the Virtual Console entries (what heathen jumps with A/Circle?), I’m in. Remaster the amazing soundtracks and get some decent full screen options and I’ll pay a high price!
Re: Uncharted's Amy Hennig, Gary Whitta Are Writing PS5's Forspoken
I don’t understand the value of the “Millenial/Gen Z” insert into the fantasy world — what is it bringing to the story and world besides a weird tone of voice? I didn’t liked the trope in the 80s and 90s, but I guess everything old is new again and this younger generation can decide for itself.
Personally, I’m praying for another language track because everything else without the quippy main character looks pretty cool!
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Is Massive, According to Venom Voice Actor
@fR_eeBritney I hope so too, unless they announce Director’s Cuts instead of price drops when all us holdouts are ready to buy haha
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Is Massive, According to Venom Voice Actor
@dudeAmarillo That’s a good guess! Unfortunately it just tells us there’s a lot of dialogue and.m nothing about the size and scope.
I’d be interested to see where people land — I know a lot of people preferred Mile’s tighter, more focused experience, but there’s pressure to do more when you call it ‘2’. I hope they find a good balance.
Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Is Massive, According to Venom Voice Actor
Listen I’m sure it is, but what the hell does this guy know? Was he in the planning meeting? Did they go over their project milestones with him? Why give twitter oxygen?
Re: Random: These Fake PlayStation Showcase Leaks Are Hilarious
@jdv95 If it was functionally a streaming device for Playstation Now and PS5 streaming, I don’t think it would be that expensive. A Switch can do that. A phone could do that.
Of course I don’t believe this rumor at all.
Re: Gulp! PS5 Stock Shortages Could Last Until 2023
I think I can wait. I’ve been getting a lot more return for the investment on PC in this limbo-gen so if I’m going to upgrade anything at this point, may as well be that.
Maybe the PS show will change my mind, but as of right now I can hold my breath for Returnal to come to PC. A full-on TEAMAsobi game is the only other exclusive I can imagine going through any grief over, unless David Jaffe’s hyping something really special.