Tchunga

@__jamiie That's because its not an 8/10. It's a 6/10 at best

@dark_knightmare2 You might want to look up a definition of the word "factual". Black Myth Wukong has level design in the same way that Final Fantasy 13 has level design. In that it's not very good and basically non existant

Atlas rule of thumb: We can spoil the game, but you can't

I don't know if I've ever played a game before with this much of a discrepancy between how it looks and how it actually is to play.

Black Myth LOOKS like an FF16 or a GoW Ragnarok but it plays like a middleware game from 10 to 15 years ago. The amount of invisible walls in this game is something I'd expect from a middleware PS3 or 360 game. Not a massive AAA game from current year. That combined with the spotty performance and the lack of any real level design, this game just does not stack up in a way its high production value would otherwise suggest

I think the problem with Dark Souls 2 is just that it isn't a very good sequel. It didn't expand or innovate on any of the elements that made Demon's Souls or Dark Souls so great. It's almost as if Dark Souls 2 started development as a completely seperate IP and then they decided to slap the "Dark Souls" label on it last minute to cash in on the originals success

It's kind of odd to draw a comparison between Wilds and World's marketing campaigns when World was revealed just 6 months prior to its actual launch. World was officially revealed for the first time at E3 2017 and then launched in January of 2018. Conversely Wilds was revealed all the way back in December of last year, which is already 8 months ago. The marketing between these two games could not be farther off

I don't know how the answer to this question could be anything but yes. Even if souls-likes are your literal favorite genre, there is an objective truth that there is a clear overabundance of them at the great cost of other genres and true original ideas

@Oxy Alright so let me get this straight, when you complain about the quest design in BOTW, that's valid criticism. But when I complain about the quest design in Elden Ring well then it's just "silly things". Lol. Well you know what I didn't see your point before but since you've pointed this out I think I'm starting to come around now.

But in all seriousness though I couldn't care less what the critics or the internet thinks, they can think whatever they want but at the end of the day I'm going to come to my own conclusions about the media I consume and I think more people should probably do the same. I've been playing Fromsoftware and Souls games ever since Demon's Souls and I say the souls formula doesn't work in an open world. Here's why:

Difficulty and level scaling: In their previous titles, Fromsoftware used to very carefully and meticulously balance the difficulty of each zone based on what they thought the players skill and level would be. This was much easier to achieve because of the linearity of their older games. But going open world and opening up so many options to the player had a detrimental effect on the balancing of the game. As a result you can wind up in some areas too early and get absolutely steamrolled, or conversely, you can steamroll the competition yourself which obviously isn't any fun either. This is a problem that didn't exist in the other Souls games and its due to their more tighter, and more linear structure.

Upgrades and progression: This one's kind of tied to the balancing but it's also kind of its own can of worms as well. In the Souls games as I'm sure you are aware there is a very linear upgrade system. Where, for example, you can have a Longsword +1 and need X amount of titanite shards (or smithing stones) to upgrade it. But then if you have a Longsword +4 you'll need X amount of LARGE Titanite Shards. You need a very specific upgrade material to upgrade your weapon. This was a fine and good system that worked in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne because those games were fairly linear games, and they could guide you to where those upgrade materials were. But in Elden Ring (again with it being open world) the game can't guide you to where the materials you need are. So you can end up wandering around for 10 or 20 hours with a +6 weapon because you didn't happen to wander into an area that drops the materials you need to get the blasted thing to +7.

NPCs and quest design: I've already touched on this one briefly but I'll elaborate more on why it's bad and doesn't work. The way that NPCs and quests work in Elden Ring is very similar to how they worked Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. Where you'd talk to them in one spot and they'd pop up somewhere else down the line. But there's the thing though, it was always DOWN THE LINE. As in they would literally show up in a spot you hadn't been to yet and that you'd have to eventually pass through anyway. This is not at all the case in Elden Ring. You can talk to an NPC in one area and then they can teleport back to an area you were 30 hours ago. Its incredibly unintuitive and expects way too much from the player. Especially when the rewards for your efforts often aren't even all that worth it. Having NPCs that warp around a map works just fine in a smaller and more linear game but in a vast open world its like mixing together oil and water. It just doesn't work.

@DennisReynolds I mean, the lore and the story can be literally whatever Fromsoftware wants it to be. If you don't believe me then listen to the big M himself. In an IGN interview with Miyazaki, he stated the following when asked about the existence of NPC towns in Elden Ring:

“Creating a more open game is a big challenge for us. If we were to add towns on top of that, it would become a bit too much, so we decided to create an open-world-style game focused on what we are best at.”

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/21/elden-ring-is-an-evolution-of-dark-souls-says-creator-a-e3-2019

So I think from this quote it's pretty clear that its not a lore reason that there aren't people in the world of Elden Ring, It's a development issue. Had Miyazaki and his team been up to the task, you can bet there would have been both lore and story reasons for the existence of towns. And I provided a link to said article if you care to read it for yourself, which I encourage you do.

@Oxy And you probably used a guide to complete most (if not all) of the quests in Elden Ring. At least BOTW gives the player an actual way of tracking their progress and which NPCs are associated with which quests. Elden Ring is a complete mess in that regard. Just yet another example of why the souls formula doesn't work in an open world.

I'm being defensive for Zelda and yet you're doing the exact same thing and getting defensive over Elden Ring. This is a public comment section, people are going to respond to eachother. Let's not call the kettle black

@DennisReynolds The word "Town" is just something used to describe a settlement with NPCs in it, typically used in RPGS. I think you're taking the word a little too literally.

And I'm sorry but I just don't buy that there can't be any NPC towns because of the state of the world lol. If you had played BOTW then you'd know that the world in that game is also in a state of a calamity and they still somehow managed to have some surviving settlements. That's not a good excuse

@Mythologue A city that has nothing but enemies isn't an NPC settlement. That's just a dungeon

@Oxy At least Breath of the Wild has proper NPC settlements. I dont know how you make an open world RPG without any towns but somehow Elden Ring managed. Great "variety"

I'm going to go ahead and go against the grain here and say that "more of the same" is a very fair, and valid criticism. Particularly so in this instance, and especially when considering the amount of time it even took for SOTE to actually come out. 2 years is an incredible amount of time to wait for a DLC. You have to remember that back in the day that Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, AND Dark Souls 3 all released in the span of just 3 years. And from the same developer no less. So for a simple DLC expansion (even if it is a rather large one) to take almost as much development time as 3 seperate games and to not really shake up the formula in any meaningful way, is a bit of a letdown to say the least. Even if at the end of the day it is good in its own right. And besides, an 8/10 isnt even a bad score. Not everything has to be a "10/10"

I wouldn't go as far as to say you're misrepresenting Miyazaki, Adam, but I don't like the framing of your article either. Miyazaki says "We obviously understand, but we don't make or plan anything with that as a prerequisite. If anything, we try to cater to the player who is completely blind and wants to go through organically." He clearly states that he'd prefer it if players DIDN'T use a guide and that if they do use one then he considers that a failure on his part. So while he might not mind if we use guides, if he had it his way, then we wouldn't use them at all. As he prefers people to play his games as blind and as organically as possible.

Played Stories back on the 3DS and it was an absolute graphical marvel on the limited hardware that unfortunately couldnt handle it that well. Averaging somewhere between 30fps and 15fps. I can only imagine how much of a glow up it will get on PS5 or even a PS4 with a significantly higher resolution and an actual stable framerate. Both this game and Stories 2 are absolute excellent Pokemon-likes that shouldn't be slept on if you're at all a fan of the genre or just a fan of Monster Hunter in general

Music to my ears honestly. As someone whose favorite game of all time is probably the original Dark Souls (and Bloodborne being in my top 10) I am so thoroughly sick of souls games and soulslikes. Last year, For the life of me, I couldn't understand the hype around Lies of P and I think it has less to do with the game's overall quality and more so to do with the fact that this genre has become so oversaturated.

When a game comes out and has strict manual checkpoints, respawning enemies, corpse running, and combat that relies on either precise dodge rolling or strict parry timings it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I don't understand how people continuously stay excited every time another one of these types of games comes out but I'm just over them. The less "souls" Phantom Blade Zero is, the better I say

These games have such a fantastic art style (much better than modern Final Fantasy imo) and its part of the reason I got into the series in the first place. I'm currently playing through Seiken Densetsu 3 right now and its crazy just how much of an improvement it is over the OG Secret of Mana

@nomither6 Third party games have been horrendous on Nintendo home consoles for the last 3 generations lmao. If thats your angle then its not a very good one. The last time Nintendo was on par with its competitors in terms of power was with the Gamecube. Are you gonna tell me the Wii and the Wii U aren't consoles as well?

@nomither6 Yes, and when its connected to a TV its functionally no different from a console. Which is why I said that it's both. If it couldn't be removed from the dock then it would just be a console, but if it couldn't be docked then it would be a normal handheld. But its a combination of the two, its really not that difficult to understand

@nomither6 Technically it's both. Hence the name "Switch"

I just got to the desert section and I'm bored out of my mind. The game was definitely more fun when it was trying to be more linear

Wow, there is quite a bit of cope going on in the comments here. I guess it just goes to show you that no matter how much evidence you put infront of someone they will still choose to believe whatever it is they wish to believe.

"Its only not selling well because its a PS5 exclusive!"

Or

"Well it IS a sequel, so of course its not going to sell as well. Sequels never sell as much as the original!"

Well whatever the reason is, it sounds like the game just isnt living up to sales expectations then, does it? You can sit there and try to justify it whichever way you want to but at the end of the day it doesnt change the reality of the situation. For whatever the reason is, FF7 Rebirth is a soft commercial failure. That doesnt mean you can't still like the game, that doesnt mean it cant still be your game of the year, but stop burrying your heads in the sand and pretending like this game isnt selling softly, because it most certainly is. And most importantly stop attacking people for just pointing it out, we arent the reasons why your favorite video game sold poorly.

Project Awakening is vaporware. Its time to give up

@neillaw Well agree to disagree then I guess. I know its a fairly unpopular opinion to have, but every ones gotta have at least one of those, right?

I'm not particularly a fan of Dragon's Dogma (I thought the first game was incredibly overrated) but even I've got to say the drama around the microtransactions is strange. Just last year Resident Evil 4 had day one MTX, before that Monster Hunter Rise had day one MTX, and before that DMC5 had them as well. Practically all Capcom games have day one MTX yet for some reason no one seemed to care until now. If you hate MTX then hate them across the board, this selective outrage is just dumb

If this wasn't Capcom's first $70 game I wouldn't mind not having a consistent 60fps mode as much but the fact that it is just irks me. This is like Nintendo charging $70 for Tears of the Kingdom but obviously not quite as egregious. Either way I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come, Monster Hunter Wilds absolutely needs a 60fps option regardless of how much they end up charging for it

@rjejr Yeah sorry, but I'm not really interested in whether or not you consider the Switch to be a console, your opinion on that matter is completely irrelevant. Even Nintendo themselves consider the Switch to be a hybrid console. But what is relevant though is that the Switch (despite however you wish to classify it) is a massive commercial and financial success. It has outsold pretty much every Nintendo console be it handheld or otherwise. With of course the exception of the Nintendo DS. Which, when all is said and done, It might even outsell that as well. Meanwhile the PS5 is selling about on par with the PS4 and is nothing to scoff at and Xbox is well, Xbox. They don't really reveal sales figures and that isnt really a good sign but the fact they don't just bounce out of the console market entirely means it must be somewhat of a success, even if only a minor one. But at the end of the day if you wish to view the console market as "dying" then I guess its your prerogative to do so. Just dont expect me or many others to hop on board

@rjejr Yup, consoles are forsure dying because one of the 3 major console manufacturers was 4 million off their projected sales target 🙄 If anything nuance is dying

@tameshiyaku If you want to go down that road then the same could be said about either Persona 3 Reload or Granblue Fantasy Relink. We probably wouldn't have either those games today if not for many western RPGs, most notably Ultima. Which is considered to be the very first ever RPG and is directly responsible for influencing the first Dragon Quest. And we all know how impactful the DQ series was on the JRPG genre so really if you think about it we have a western developer to thank for creating our favorite Japanese games. My point being that it's silly to either put all of the credit on Japan, or all of the blame on the west, both regions contribute to the industry in their own ways. Try to have a more nuanced perspective, yeah?

@tameshiyaku I mean, a western game literally just won game of the year last year. And it wasn't a military shooter nor did it have any microtransactions. Clearly you have a Japanese preference and thats fine but maybe dont let it numb you to reality too much either

So spidey takes both Pushsquares staff and readers GOTY huh. Not a terrible choice to be honest, it wouldn't be my personal pick but there are certainly worse games to choose for game of the year. Spider-man 2 while incredibly safe is also a very high quality, and well made game that ticks all the right boxes. I think anyone with any sense of gaming literacy can see that

This is probably a hot take but I don't think 2023 was anything exceptional. There was a high volume of above average games for sure, but of those games very few were truly mind blowing, or innovative in any meaningful way. A lot of these games were either sequels or remakes or remakes of sequels, or in the case of Zelda: a large expansion that's being sold as a $70 sequel.

Now when you compare 2023 to 2022 I think that's where you get a lot of the "best year in gaming" takes from. Just because 2022 was such an abnormally bad year in video games, one of the worst probably ever. So by comparison a slightly above average year like 2023 looks like an absolute godsend

By all metrics BG3 is about as close to an "objectively" good game as one can possibly get (if such a thing even exists). But with that being said no one should really be surprised that this isn't number 1. Turn based tactical CRPGs are an incredibly niche genre, and the fact that BG3 has even garnered as much mainstream popularity as it has is quite rare. Put simply, the net for this type of game can only get so wide, where as the one for open world action games seemingly has no limits to its broad mainstream appeal.

Although I was a little surprised that BG3 won the "player's vote" award at TGA simply because I figured there were far more normies out there that would either vote for Zelda or Spider-man. But maybe that was the exception, and not the rule. Either way, I'm not surprised in the least by this placement

Happy for the people that enjoyed it but this was personally my biggest disappointment of the year. Practically nothing that I enjoyed about Alan Wake 1 was retained here in Alan Wake 2. Which in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes there's "new fun" to be had in radical departures. But what new
AW2 did bring to the table was sloppy and unfocused. In Pushsquare's own write up they say "Alan Wake 2 knows exactly what it wants to be" but I couldn't disagree more. AW2 can't decide if it wants to be a survival horror game, an interactive puzzle game, a walking simulator, a narrative focused story game, ect. On one hand I appreciate AW2's readiness to frequently reinvent itself but in practice it means I can never get into a rhythym with it. There's no sense of stickiness or cohesion. And what makes this matter worse is that I don't think it even does anyone of those different playstyles particularly well. The puzzles are often obtuse and frustrating, the combat is stiff and awkward, the walking sections would be okay but the map is completely horrendous making navigation a tiresome chore. The only real redeeming qualities left with the game are the story and the atmosphere both of which are incredibly excellent. Which is even worse in a way because had they simply been bad as well I could have just wrote the game off entirely but instead I'm left with a game that I deeply want to enjoy, but simply cannot

@Stevemalkpus I also prefer Jedi Survivor over Spider-man 2. I don't know why this isn't a more common opinion

@ErrantRob That's interesting because LOTF was the one I was actually the most interested in lol. The whole switching between the normal realm and the umbral realm is pretty unique and not something that's been done in a souls-like before. (Although it's certainly been done in plenty of non souls-like games like Metroid Prime 2 and ALTTP) Where as Lies of P is just more Bloodborne and Wo Long is like a cross between Nioh and Sekiro

Maybe this game deserves to be in the top 10 but from what I played of the demo I wasn't too impressed. I think I'm also just kind of burnt out on souls-likes in general. I had every intention of playing both Wo Long and the new Lords of the Fallen this year but I just never got around to it. I think this genre has become a little overdone at this point. I'd honestly like to see what some of these devs could do if they actually tried making something else

Eh this placement seems kind of low. Jedi Survivor is the ideal sequel if you ask me. Cal actually starts off with all of his abilities that he unlocked from the previous game, and only aquires new ones from there. It also didn't reuse the same map from the previous one (like Spider-man or Zelda) it introduced new weapons or in this case new lightsaber stances, it expanded on the combat, puzzles and platforming in new and interesting ways.

TLDR: it improved upon the aspects needing improving without reinventing itself, which is exactly what a good sequel should do. The only real blight on this game was the performance at launch which is unfortunate because I feel like it caused many to simply write it off

@Mephisto2869 The new games ARE gory. Have you seen those wulver kill animations? Absolutely brutal

I love David Jaffe but yeah I gotta disagree with him on this one. Kratos was an obnoxious, one note character in the original trilogy. He was mad and wanted to murder everyone and everything. That was it. If anything I played those games in SPITE of Kratos. Where as now in the norse games he's one of my favorite parts of them. But whether you like the new Kratos or not you should probably treat Jaffe with some respect! Afterall Kratos wouldn't exist at all if not for him. It's okay to disagree!

I've seen some complaints about the roguelike nature of this DLC but if you're one of those people you should probably still give it a try anyways. It's extremely light on the roguelike elements and the runs tend to be on the shorter side, so even if you do die it's not like you lose a ton of progress. And on top of that there's a surprising amount of story content here as well, way more than you'd think. If you thought the base game didn't have enough "gameplay" then this DLC is for you. And if you're like me and you're along for the story, there's more of that as well. Honestly I see no reason why Valhalla shouldn't please both camps

Personally I didn't enjoy the game at all but if it flops it won't be because of me. As I bought the thing day one. Remedy's a weird studio their games aren't always my cup of tea but that doesn't mean I want them as a studio to fail. Hopefully control 2 performs better

I'm a little surprised that MH Wilds is so low, that was very easily my number 1. I guess there's just not that many Monster Hunter enjoyers here

Well as someone who really enjoys TGA at the same time I wouldn't put too much stock into it. While it's certainly fun to discuss why a game did or didn't win it ultimately doesn't really matter. I mean if a mediocre walking sim like Alan Wake 2 can walk away with 3 awards then it's clearly not worth taking all that seriously

Little Nightmares 3. I know it's not being developed by Tarsier this time, which is a little disappointing to say the least, but Supermassive is a legitimate developer and what they've shown so far looks incredible. FF7 part 2, Black Myth, and DD2 will likely be great as well

Monster Hunter Wilds easy

Glad BG3 won, I don't even like it THAT much but it clearly deserved it regardless and BG3 winning also means that Alan Walk 2 didn't win. Which is a huge win in my book

>no wirebugs
>mhworld artstyle
>no gimmicky bullcrap

Let's. Freaking. Go.

It was only a short teaser trailer but so far everything is pointing in the right direction. Hopefully this is a return to the slow, methodical gameplay that the series is known for. And a step away from the more actiony Rise/Generations style of gameplay. While I enjoyed those games for what they were, they're not why I love this series. I need a MH World 2 and this seems to be exactly what the doctor ordered