StrickenBiged

This game's dangerously moreish. I was playing on Saturday night, in my head I thought it was maybe midnight, but I hadn't looked at my watch in a while. It was, in fact, 2:30am. Yikes.

Powerwash Simulator 2 baybee!

I’ve been looking forward to that one.

Nah, too expensive for what it is.

If you’re into this sort of game, grab Ball X Pit which came out this week. It’s cracking, and will scratch your PvZ itch very nicely.

Commendable, at least, that they haven't embargoed reviews until the day of release, like so often happens when the publisher knows its got something underbaked to sell.

It's kinda weird that an XBox studio is re-releasing, on PlayStation, a game made by a PlayStation studio. Funny how things work out.

That new-manual, freshly printed smell to this day knocks me back to my childhood, sitting on the bus riding home from town, excitedly opening up a game I've just bought from EB with my summer-job money, and reading the manual cover to cover. Tempted to pick this up as GoY is worth it.

Cracking month for me, all 3 will not just get added to the library, but actually downloaded in readiness to play.

I don't know what everyone's complaining about. That little trailer has cheered me up no end. XD

XBox've basically put themselves in a situation where the least profitable place for people to play their games is on their own platform (using Game Pass) so it's no surprise to me that they might be questioning whether they even want to bother researching and developing a physical device when they could just bung everything on the cloud.

it needs matching white sticks, in my opinion, like the Astrobot one had.

I know this one has got a lot of flack, but I don't dislike it (aside from the sticks) personally. I dig the minimalism and how it hasn't got some garish "God of War 20th Anniversary" logo on it., which they could have easily done.

I'll take just a straight port, thanks. No need to go to great expense.

My 2 year old is obsessed with this film. I'm just glad we've moved on from all things Frozen.

@LiamCroft Is there a transmog system for the armour perks this time around? One of my few complaints about Tsushima was preferring one armour set cosmetically, but another for it's gameplay perks.

Just be grateful it's not crypto, I guess.

Ah, now we know why it ended up on PS+ Essential a few months back.
I've never played JSR (I was a Nintendo kid back in the day) but I really enjoyed Bomb Rush. I will probably pick this one up!

I don't think it will be the biggest launch in videogame history, personally.

I think it will be the biggest launch in entertainment history.

I'm still waiting for reviews before I buy, though.

I'm more concerned about PW-B in the writer's room. I have yet to see anything that she's written that I've enjoyed, I seriously don't understand the hype around her.
But the proof of the eating will be in the pudding, so let's see.

That's AAAA game dev for you. It's given us Skull & Bones and a cancelled Perfect Dark. Off to a great start.

"honour and expand upon what has made this franchise great in the first place"

I don't even know if the people making CoD know what that is.

"honour and expand upon what has made this franchise lots of money in the first place"

Fixed it.

@Bramble Thanks. And I agree with you, PS+ essential has been killing it lately. If I'm bored of my current games I can usually find something to play in my backlog of PS+ games. I love that they're in a special tab in my PS5 so that I can review that library easily.

Y'know, just last night I was thinking I wanted to jump into a 3D platformer...
Is the first Psychonaughts recommended/required playing before jumping into the sequel?

10 years has gone by already! Damn, that flew by.

After Herman Hulst's comments last week about failing sooner and more cheaply, I think it's a coin toss whether this ever sees the light of day now.

Mirage is definitely worth the £13.50. I enjoyed it very much as a return to the more limited AC experiences.

Prince of Persia: Lost Crown is well worth £12 too - had a blast with that one.

Might pick up Brothers and Tiny Tina Assault for the backlog.

Nice selection, IMO. I like it when Essential throws me a curveball and gives me games that I wouldn't normally buy; it expands my tastes.

@Czar_Khastik You can go read their annual accounts over on Companies House. It looks like their continued support of the game is giving it a very long tail in terms of game sales. The latest accounts are for 2023 and show Hello Games made over £28m in revenue and over £18m in profit.

So, when you ask how it's profitable, while we cannot see the minutiae, in the words of Sean Murray from the Director's Report in its latest filed accounts: "Hello Games has continued to focus on the game No Man's Sky and has continued to release new content through new updates, still at no extra cost to the players. These have been popular and continue to engage our customers as the universe they explore grows."

I guess somebody's buy-out vested recently...

£20 is a steal for the amount of enjoyment I get out of Powerwash. Day 1 baybee!

I can answer why at least one copy of Metaphor hasn't sold: I haven't bought it yet because I don't want to have to buy the "Golden" or "Royal" version at full price a little while later once they've added what should be DLC content to the game.
AFAI am concerned, Atlus only has itself to blame for the weird way it adds post-release content to its games. Unless I'm totally off base, that would put some people off who think to themselves "I'll wait for the full version to come out later".

Probably the only release of 2025 that I am going to get Day 1. (Maybe Go Yotei too.)

The demo was quite fun, but it wasn't quite as flow-ey as its aesthetics implied. Will wait for reviews on this, personally. Soundtrack does sound like it'll be a banger... now I want to listen to some Static-X or Spineshank...

No interest from me. Nothing I've read or seen of Starfield makes me think I'd enjoy it.

@get2sammyb Thanks mate!

I'm a console pleb, not part of the PC master race. Just citing these specs in a vacuum gives me nothing. How do these specs compare to the PS5 or PS5 Pro? Giving them some context would be helpful.

I don't particularly care, but, I think Sony would be foolish to put its tentpole titles on XBox.
Firstly, the example of Final Fantasy 16 shows that even relatively recent, well reviewed games do not sell on that platform; Game Pass has trained that audience (generally) not to buy games, but to wait for them to come to the subscription.
Second, I think exclusives are a long term strategic investment in your own platform. People know, for instance, that the only place to play Nintendo games is on a Nintendo console.
Thirdly, there is no need to do it. XBox has all-but confirmed it's next console/device will run Steam, where select PlayStation games can be purchased, and more are coming. Why let XBox, your more direct competitor, take that platform fee instead?

Wishlisted, but at £18 on PS5 I won't be pre-ordering. That seems a little steep for what was (in 2010, when I bought it) £1.79 on iOS. Or when I bought it again on Vita for £8.99 in 2014. I'll wait for a sale on PS5.

@Bramble It really pays off to be a focused gamer, AND only buying a game the moment you decide you want to play it.

1000% this. I made that choice a while back and I've saved so much money compared to when I'd get lulled in by the digital sales and buy a load of stuff I'd never actually get to.

PS+ Essential has been great this year so far. I've played a tonne more of them than I did in 2024, that's for sure.

@gaston I was thinking more how players might react to being in that cutscene from Abby's point of view, not any technical issues.

I feel like the casting for this is going to be impossible, and that they should maybe just make it animated. Let's see.

The first PvZ is a great game, but I'll wait to see what justifies the price tag. If it's just an up-rezzed version of the game I've already played on my iPhone and Vita, then I'll wait for a sale.

@gaston That cinematic between Abby and Owen on the boat would be... interesting... in VR.

Just seeing how they iterated on the base-game of GoT with the Ishi Island expansion gives me a huge amount of faith in the team. I can totally believe what SP are saying here.

Never heard of it, but it looks like something I'd check out if it came to the PS+ monthly games. Can't see myself getting to it otherwise.

What're these Leader/Shooter/Vertical/Assault roles in team selection, and how come the same character can fill different slots?
Intriguing...

@Ellie-Moo That, and you save a tonne of cash too. I finally bought Cyberpunk in the Amazon sale last week or the week before, for under £30 for the complete edition.

I completed a few campaigns earlier this month to get the points I needed for a £5 voucher, so will end up with 47 points left in digital purgatory.

Fingers crossed PlayStation replace this system with something, as I did use it and got around £30 in vouchers across its lifetime. I've definitely made PSN purchases where I would have otherwise gone physical because of the reward scheme. But that's probably not typical if they've decided Stars doesn't make sense to maintain.

Nice, I'm increasingly happy that I've waited this long before giving Cyberpunk 2077 a go.

It's a shame that PS never really figured out what they wanted to do with PS Stars (at least, that's how it felt) but I'm grateful that I managed to get ~£30 in PSN credit during its time. It should have been integrated into the PS5 and PS4 operating systems to give it half a chance. Here's hoping that PS replace it with another iteration on a loyalty scheme - in my case, being close to the requisite number of points to redeem for PSN credit pushed me to make digital purchases over physical ones on at least a couple of occasions, though I suspect that that might not have been typical if they've decided maintaining PS Stars wasn't good business.

@graymamba Yes it does. Looks to be a fairly easily achievable trophy list overall, mainly story and side-quest based trophies with one or two that may be missable. Nothing difficulty-based.