StrickenBiged

So it's some kind of musou rogue-like/lite? Looks fun to me.

Jumping in tonight with my buddy, looking forward to it!

That F.I.S.T. game with the rabbit looks interesting, might look into that further.
I recommend Pentiment from this sale. Go into it expecting a period drama murder mystery. If you like historical fiction you'll have a good time with the setting and characters. I loved it.

Sandfall don't really have a choice here. If you don't protect your IP, you loose it, and "Claire Obscur" probably now has quite a lot of goodwill associated with it as a mark. If they don't protect it then any Tom, Dick or Harry could start calling things "Claire Obscur" in an effort to capitalise on their goodwill and potentially con customers who are expecting an association with Sandfall's work.
Sounds like the parties here are sorting things out amicably enough for the time being though. An unfortunate coincidence that two creative projects were in the works at the same time, it's not like anyone tried to rip anyone else off.

I absolutely echo @playstation1955 's recommendation of Absolum, I picked it up in this sale and have been having a blast with it since the weekend. I usually dislike beat-'em-ups (haven't played one properly since Scott Pilgrim in 2010 if memory serves) but this has proved to be right up my street and has that 'just one more run' effect that keeps you up late.

Dynamic pricing dependent on issues like supply and demand, fine, that's the market.
Dynamic pricing because of personal data you think you know about me is qualitatively different.

If they put in a PvE only mode I’ll jump in. I enjoyed the challenge of the bots during the server test. But other players are way too good for me and I’m not into that sort of thing, especially where hours of loot grinding can be wiped out because someone thinks it’s funny to camp the exit.

I started Absolum last night, and I’m hooked.

People drop four figures on top of the line phones with more regular cadence than console lifecycles. Given how much gamers value their consoles, whereas phones seem to be more commoditised, I think a four-figure price for consoles would do better than many seem to expect.

With PC/Steam capabilities, it only makes sense to make it an expensive, niche product. A loss leader to get people into the XBox store wouldn't make sense if purchases could be made via Steam.
Unless Steam will offer some sort of kickback for purchases made on Steam and then played on XBox... similar to how the platform holders pass money to one another for microtransactions on GAAS, e.g. for the players who prefer to purchase via one single platform, but then use those in-game items on another/several platforms... who knows.

Let's hope that the Offline Edition proves worth the dev investment and serves as an example to others.

Giving me strong PixelJunk Shooter vibes, and I loved PixelJunk Shooter. £12 is a nice price, and looks like it will play well on Portal while the Mrs hogs the telly.

Someone was working on a Cassie Drake led game at some point - there was that clip of her in a cave in a PlayStation 5 ad a few years back. (Well, never confirmed to be her, but go watch it and tell me that it isn’t her and it isn’t Uncharted.)

The picture did reinforce my view that GoW should, if anything, be adapted to a cartoon or anime. But I remain open minded, let's see what they come up with.

Tried it. It’s fine. I wish it was an MP mode for a single player game, or at least had PvE only lobbies, because it looks and plays great, but other players were too sweaty and wouldn’t leave me and my buddies alone. Looks great, but is in dire need of some UI overhaul. For instance, hey I’ve found a gun, great, oh, I now need to stand here for 3 minutes just to figure out if it’s better than what I’m carrying. Some sort of quickly readable power level would have been appreciated.

What is this now... "*6*th time's the charm"?
I mean, good luck to them, my uni days were filled with long afternoons passing the plastic guitar back and forth with my buddies when we should have been studying, but I thought we had enough examples of this genre failing by now.

@KillerIsD34D Ironically, the mobile game that isn't coming to PS5 looks a lot more like what I'd have wanted from a Horizon multiplayer game.

This just isn't Horizon. Aside from the artistic decision to make it look very Saturday-morning-cartoon, you've got characters double jumping 15 feet into the air and using what looks like magic in combat... Maybe there'll be some sci-fi, Horizon compatible explanation for what they've shown off so far, but off the back of the announcement trailer it's a million miles away from what I pictured (and was excited for) when a Monster-Hunter-by-way-of-Horizon was rumoured.
Very odd decision to run a beta while Marathon is testing its servers.

Releasing on 4/20, Lillymo know what they're doing...

Looks fun, and perfect for Portal. I hope the checkpointing is somewhat forgiving because I suck at these.

@Blauwe_Chimay they think alike, but simple minds seldom differ, and I don’t know which I’ve got… 😬

And there I was with my fingers crossed for Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. Bummer.

This just seems incredibly short-sighted to me. Bluepoint were incredible at what they did. There are quality games languishing on the PS3 that could and should be ported across to modern hardware so that they can live beyond the cell processor.

Maybe there's something we don't know - Bluepoint were bored of making remakes and remasters and were floundering in pre-production with no good ideas to pitch, perhaps.

Very surprising and sad news.

This studio made some really weird decisions which, together, tell a story of group-think and being insulated from real feedback.

I had a good time with High on Life, and was looking forward to the sequel. A shame about the performance issues, I will wait until they are fixed or it's on a decent sale as it is.

I didn't vote in the poll. I have no idea when PS6 should release, other than whenever PlayStation think that they've got a compelling offer to make customers.
My two cents:
I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I'll probably be able to afford new hardware whenever it releases, and will welcome whatever improvements it offers to my existing PS library of games. I'll likely buy a PS6 as close to release come what may.
That being said, I can see the upside in a next console generation being delayed. Devs could potentially benefit from some time spent catching up with current technology and learning some optimisation good-habits in this period, shoring themselves up well for when the RAM bottleneck has passed.

An absolute banger.

Maybe it's my own fault for thinking about it, but I had a pretty clear idea in my head as to what a Monster-Hunter-style game, via Horizon, would look like, and this wasn't it.

First, the art style... Horizon, to me at least, is partly synonymous with a grounded look. The machines in the mainline games are cool because you can see all the moving parts, and how the armour plates move over one another is simulated and realistic. Watching the footage of this game, the metal plating stretches and bends cartoonishly, the machines no longer look grounded. It's far less impressive IMO.

Second, and maybe this is my own fault, but I'm not excited by any of the preset heroes. The hammer guy and bow wielder are OK as a melee and ranged option go, but the rest? The one with the staff is using what looks like magic spells? Is that part of Horizon now? And the characters that appear to attack with their bare hands... have you ever tried to punch metal objects? They seem to be breaking one of the cardinal rules of good sci fi: after establishing your fictional elements, everything else should remain realistic.

The obvious template, it seemed to me, was to allow players to create their own characters and then choose from a range of weapons with different profiles, a la Monster Hunter, for each hunt. I'd rather be able to choose whether I wanted to go on a hunt with one of the bows, or a Blastsling, Tripcaster, Ropecaster, Spike Thrower, Boltblaster, etc - each would give you a decently clear role in any team and has its strengths and weaknesses. You could create a whole host of melee weapons that handle differently too.

I dislike the art style. It just looks too babyish. Not that I don't play things with a childish aesthetic, but this is a bit much even for me.
I'll probably give the beta a go, because I like Horizon and I'm still interested given they said that it can be played single player with bots, because my schedule these days doesn't really allow for multiplayer sessions with my mates, and I'm less interested in playing with randos.
I think its a bit funny how the mobile game that's not coming to PS5 looks more Horizon than this game, which looks like a mobile game but isn't going to mobile.
I'm not against SIE going for live service titles - if they hit then they can hopefully fund the things I am more interested in - but after this reveal I do wish that they'd had Guerrilla working on on finishing off Aloy's story instead and passed this off to a sub-team or something.

Also low-key disappointed that you will play from a selection of heroes rather than creating your own character, but I suppose it's easier to make and sell skins that way.

The art style is a massive turn off for me. I like the realism of Horizon, this seems very Fortnite. I can only assume that there's too much of a resource overhead in that level of realism to manage with a multiplayer title. I was previously very interested in whatever the rumoured Monster Hunter style take on Horizon was going to be, much less so now that I've seen it.

Not surprising to me. Tsushima was awesome, so I'm not surprised that the series would have an audience eagerly awaiting the next instalment. And Yotei was great too, everything you could want in a sequel gameplay-wise.
My only gripe with Yotei was that the story did exactly what I expected it to at every turn, whereas I found Jin's struggle between his ineffective but strict moral code and an effective but dishonourable path much more compelling.

Hey now, a game where you try to be a Joe Rogan -type podcaster and conduct the interviews by actually asking questions into a mic, and the interviewees are drawn from PlayStation's stables, and LLMs and a voice renderer are used so those characters respond coherently and in-character to what you just said (or not), could be kinda fun.

It'll never happen because people will try to make Sackboy say something heinous that they can clip and put online, but I'd give that game a go!

Ideally, MS would look at the popularity of Fallout right now, and tell Bethesda that Obsidian will be making Fallout 5, thanks very much, while they focus on ES6.

Nice. Excited for Ultros, which was on my wishlist, and might have a dabble in Subnautica and Ace Combat.

@SuperSilverback I know how you feel. I ended up putting it down after a while. For me, it was that all the secrets are shown on the map. While I appreciate that they're more-findable that way, it led to me neurotically interrupting the action every 20s to check for those question-mark icons and to ensure that I was zeroing in on them when nearby. I appreciate that it's my own 100% mentality that's getting in my own way, and that secrets are part of DOOM's DNA, but I kinda wish that the experience didn't have them at all so that I could just plough relentlessly through the objectives, because ripping and tearing feels fantastic.

@Czar_Khastik You need to get in touch with this guy: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/01/random-someone-made-their-very-own-portable-ps4-handheld-console

I think it's bizarre that this is their full launch; one game mode with a handful of heroes. The reception would have been totally different if they'd billed this as an early-access open beta.

I watched the gameplay discussion from the developer's 25 minute or so deep dive yesterday. Far from being a new breed of shooter, it seems like it's a single mode from something that would have released 10 years ago with 3 or 4 game modes. I get Battleborn vibes, just without the mobs you can push around.

I watched half of their video that the devs posted at release, and concluded it's basically Battleborn's Incursion mode.

I have to imagine that Ubisoft are somewhat rational and looked at the development cost of this game, which has been quite protracted, then looked at their modelling for how it might sell - the weak performance of PoP: The Lost Crown probably convinced them that the franchise isn't so hot right now, despite its quality in and of itself - and concluded that they'd get more in tax write-offs for scrapping the entire thing than they would by selling it.
Similar situation to Concord, basically, just without the step of trying to release the thing.
That's not to say Ubi won't try again in the future (one hopes as a PoP fan) but starting over and being stricter with budget and scope from the outset.

I'm definitely interested, as I enjoyed the Fable games back in the day. But I'm going to wait on reviews (as ever). It looks like they've built something quite resource-hungry, and I want to see what performance is like on a PS5 Pro before I decide whether to pick this up.

good luck to them, they’ll need it from the sounds of things. Maybe the terminally online aren’t the target audience and they’re banking on a media storm at launch filtering through to the less-engaged gamers that make up more of the market.

At the end of the day, these tools are out there and available to use. Some teams will make slop, and probably find a market. Some teams care more and will reject any GenAI outputs that don't meet their standards, and do it the old fashioned way, or iterate on the output as a first draft until it does. And some will decide not to use these tools at all.
As ever, the customer's almighty dollar will speak louder than any one commentator, institution or business.

The more balls in my pit the happier I am. Yes please.

@nomither6 I played this demo, Entropy Effect X.

Maybe I'm not familiar enough with Blazblue but I checked this out for a few runs last night and I bounced off it hard. I'd have appreciated more tutorial on the various combos available and the game's systems, it felt a bit like it was throwing me in at the deep end.

Gentlemen, this is akin to the destruction of the library of Alexandria. Gaming have just lost its Dead Sea Scrolls. RIP.

Not for me, but well done them. A smashing success. And, having introduced so many people to the extraction sub-genre, it may bode well for Marathon's prospects too.

Bioware isn't what it used to be, too many key people have retired or gone elsewhere. While I always hope to be pleasantly surprised, I have zero expectations that we'll ever see the like of Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, Dragon Age Origins, or the Mass Effect Trilogy, from Bioware again.

My 3 year old is laughing her butt off just moving Mickey around the environment with one stick and making him jump and spin. All she wants to do is play "the Mickey game" now. Seeing the way it's lit her up is definitely worth the price of a year of PS+, so I'm delighted I've found her a gateway into gaming.