StrickenBiged

Bethesda lost me with Fallout 4. I disliked its quest design and writing so much that I have an extreme skepticism of any Bethesda Games output at this point. The reception Starfield earned has done nothing to suggest that I’m missing out.

Been on my wishlist for a while, so thanks for highlighting that it had such a deep discount on at the moment.

Bad month for me as the only thing I’d be interested in, 9 Sols, I already own. Can’t win them all, but it’s a shame that neither of the others will find a place on my backlog.

Boo for me this month. No interest in footy or Wuchang, and I’ve got 9 Sols. Can’t win them all.

Anyone else miss being called a "customer" rather than a "consumer"?

@dark_knightmare2 Try having kids. XD
They somehow compress time. 2022 - before kids - was a blink ago. 2013 was yesterday on that scale.

@dark_knightmare2 I played it at release but 13 years ago is recent in my book. I'm more interested in bringing up to date some of the things I enjoyed (or missed) as a kid.

I enjoyed AC:BF, but I can't see myself picking it up again for a replay, even Resynched. It's still too recent.

Wasn’t this the premise of a web-based sitcom I watched like 15 years ago or so? I recall something about being a janitor on something like the Death Star.

Anyway, they can have my money, love PW.

Another extraction shooter? Have they heard of the concept of spreading your bets? All these games will be competing with one another.

I love their meme game replying to those tweets. Very much looking forward to Crawlers once I'm satisfied with Hades 2 (only 3 runs in, and GODS IT'S GOOD). And then the Warhammer Survivors later in the year. Carry on Poncle, carry on.

Anyone know whether Discord access is cut off if you refuse? That’s all I use for voice chat. Could care less about messages, all I get is spam.

Nice, H:ZD Remastered has been on my wishlist for a while, so that'll save me £10.

The gameplay is fantastic in the S-M games, so of course I'm looking forward to S-M3. I hope (1) that they don't go on extended flashbacks to before you've got all your powers again, those missions were a drag; and (2) as others have said, improve the writing, the interactions between PP, MJ and Harry in particular were very stilted in S-M2, and MM needs an arch that isn't "I doubt myself" again, he's done that twice now.

Nintendo's external counsel dream about games like this. They're going to have a good year.

Grinding out daily challenges in Rayman Legends as I make another push to eke out that platinum.
Playing the Returnal Ascension expansion to prepare for Saros.
Cleaning Adventure Time locations in PowerWash Simulator 2 while listening to audiobooks to unwind.

Just checked out a few reviews, looks good, redeemed. From the reviews it sounds like the DLC is pretty essential, especially the one that lets you make servant zombies to automate your tasks in the late game.

Day 1 for me. Praise the Emperor.

There’s no way the game has made its money back off the launch alone. But it might be folly for Sony to do anything drastic and kill the game entirely; gamers would notice and be even more skeptical of buying into any of Sony’s other live service projects. The game is good (reportedly) so I think they’ll just scale back support behind the scenes, and do other things to try and give the game a long tail. A PvE only mode would go a long way to encouraging new sales, I think.

Funny, I was just pining for more PWS2 earlier today. Where's my wallet...

@Fiendish-Beaver PlayStation Studios have historically set embargo dates for reviews several days in advance of release.

I dunno what they're doing over on the Green Team, but the trophies already have different animations depending on the level when they pop (or, at least the Plat has a special one). We can already hide games, as the article points out. The ability to highlight ones you're particularly proud of? Meh... If you're into that sort of thing. I'm big into the trophy system myself, but I don't find that particularly exciting. If every platinum came with a unique avatar or something else I could use on my account, that'd be cool, but I seriously doubt anyone I am linked with on PSN is ever going to go through my list.

I finally got the plat in Returnal just last night. Running past enemies to look for rooms that I was missing was probably not the way it's intended to be played, I hope there are no more RNG collectibles in Saros.
Looking forward to jumping into the Tower of Sisyphus expansion tonight to get the 100%.
So ready for Saros now.

The longer and longer I wait to play this game, the more vindicated I feel. Thanks for beta-testing it y'all.

But seriously, CDPR's post-launch support for their games is truly standout in the industry. Kudos to them.

I thought I had played that game about digging a hole, but it turns out I fell for one of the dupes and played a different game about digging a hole. Dammit, they got me.

Returnal for me too. Knocking the cobwebs off to get ready for Saros.

@get2sammyb In fact, I think that is confirmed. There was reporting in like 2018 or so that TLoU2 was going to have a multiplayer mode, and I recall it was closer to release, maybe a year out, that they confirmed the multiplayer had been canned for the time being.

You’ll pay a heck of a lot more on subscriptions to stream over the span of a generation, so I’d still get a console, I think.

I’ll gladly give Darksiders 1 a replay. Hopefully it does something with the PS5 hardware in the end.

I’ve got zero interest. Bethesda lost me with Fallout 4, which was so badly written, tedious, and removed all the RP from RPG. Their games are basically exploration games with a thin veneer of character customisation on top at this point.
Play Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon instead, if you liked how Bethesda games used to be.

It’s going to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future too. I was reading today that there’s lots of helium stuck in the Middle East thanks to Iran’s blockade. Helium is used in the manufacture of computer chips, so acute supply-side pressure will drive the price of RAM, etc, even higher still. Yaaaay.

Christ almighty, £90 across the board!

Sounds like this game really is marmite, and will appeal (or not) depending on what someone is looking for.
As a dad-of-2 who can only really game for a couple of hours once the kids have gone to bed (if I can stay awake long enough) this is not for me.

I know a small person who's going to love that Bluey game. Hades 2 for me.

I think part of the problem is over-specialisation of roles, and staffing bloat. I've worked in large and small companies. In the large company, nothing could happen without a 5 person task force/committee, several meetings, endless reports, just to decide whether we should change something stupid like a single clause in the Ts&Cs or the format of our letterhead. In the smaller company, things are much more nimble, and people are trusted to get things done. A reformat of the letterhead or tweak to our standard documents is entrusted to one person to research and then get done, with a quick sign off by a manager later.
By analogy to game-dev, if the director says he wants the NPC in the background of a scene to be tying his shoelaces as the player walks past, then suddenly the art guys need to get involved (the shoes better look good, the director wants it to be a focal point), the animators need to create a bespoke animation, legal gets involved to make sure the shoes don't infringe on anyone's IP rights, the lighting guys need to make sure the player can see the shoes properly, the programmers need to make sure that special animation and assets load properly and don't eat up too much compute overhead... and all around their other tasks. You're talking a month or two of lead-time and 10-20 people on this shoelace-tying idea.

It's too niche.
Make a PvE only mode and I'll pick up Marathon. I tried out the server slam, and got frustrated at how other players ruined the experience (for me anyway). My team enjoyed fighting the bots, but otherwise it was just too sweaty.
Small point, but Alinea does not "guesstimate", they "estimate". Guesstimates are based on gut feelings, estimates are based on data and modelling, and Alinea employs the latter. (Not defending Alinea here - for those that get weird about analytics firms - just the dictionary definitions of these words.)

Teaching the general public how to cook probably wouldn’t be a good look.

The first one was a guilty pleasure. Seems I need to catch up!

Good call. Even if this leaves Sony out of pocket (IDK) it's a good thing to do from a PR perspective.

As the farmer in the old Chinese proverb used to say "we will see".

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.