Th3solution

Bought two games physically just yesterday. I don’t have time to play them yet but I had to grab them when I found them at a good price because, yeah, it’s getting harder to find physical copies of a lot of games.

Some combination of the following:
Resident Evil 4 Remake - on the big screen, dialed in and fully immersed
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core Reunion - streaming on the Portal in bed for some quick play sessions
Balatro - on the Portal while watching NFL playoffs and NBA games

Depending if I finish one of the first two, I might start my next big project, perhaps Baldur’s Gate 3, Witcher 3, Forbidden West, or starting the Mafia series. Have to see how the wind blows. I’m not counting out jumping straight to FF7 Rebirth even though I usually don’t like to play similar games or series sequels back-to-back. But I’m just so curious about Rebirth.

I might be more interested if I didn’t have a half dozen AC games already in the backlog, and if Ghost of Yotei wasn’t coming out soon also. As it stands, even if this gets high marks, I’m apt to prioritize Yotei instead. In the unlikely event that Yotei reviews horribly, I’ll get my AC historical fiction fix by playing Odyssey or Valhalla since I already have those.

It looks okay. I’ve been away from the AC franchise for a while and have several to choose from when I’m ready to go back to it. This one will go into the pile and can wait for later.

So… it’s an interesting metric — “most downloaded” as opposed to “best selling”. So it implies that these games weren’t necessarily purchased in 2024. So people could be just re-downloading their GTA 5 or It Takes Two games from prior years. I’m guessing some people delete the old NBA or Madden game and then redownload it when the next season starts or when they have friends over, as opposed to leaving it on their console.

A better metric is the PC concurrent players numbers, because just because a game is downloaded doesn’t mean that it’s being played. I can definitely attest to that. I had No Man’s Sky on my hard drive for years and never launched it. 😂

Also… Phasmophobia isn’t something I remember charting at all. It’s a surprising one to be on this. Again, I think maybe it’s also more downloaded repeatedly because it’s a co-op game and gets redownloaded more than once for friend play sessions and deleted in between.

@Dr_Rock Yes, I would like a real overhaul of the trophy organization and display. Search function would be a good start. I’d like to go further and ask for a way to customize the display of trophies. Even something as rudimentary as what PlayStation Stars does with their little cabinet display. If we could choose some of our platinums to display in a default cabinet that would be fun.

But I’d like to be able to organize them by genre, or franchise, or by percentage complete or just to be able to search would be nice.

Many of us who’ve been in the PS community since the launch of trophies have hundreds of games in the trophy list and thousands of trophies. It seems a missed opportunity to be able to celebrate our trinkets better and also easily reference them. Especially with so many remakes where we may have the same game played in 2010 and again in 2024, with two trophy lists. Could we display them together? Could we have all the Final Fantasy games together (or at least all the FF7’s 😅), or all the Mass Effects or all the Uncharteds, or Metal Gears, etc.

I do like the ability to just scroll through in a chronological history of my gaming, but sometimes I want to see or display something specific.

We’ve given Sony a lot of heat lately for the complete mismanagement of PlayStation Studios and the live service debacle, so I think it only fair to give them props for the foresight to invest in the 3rd party promotional support that has brought some really popular single player games this generation. This is looking like it will join Stellar Blade, Black Myth, Rise of the Ronin, Final Fantasy Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, Silent Hill 2, and Helldivers 2, (and forthcoming Death Stranding 2), as really quality output from 2nd and 3rd party studios for console exclusive PS5 games.

Perhaps Sony knew all along that they didn’t need a lot of single player games from their first party so that’s why they felt comfortable experimenting with their own studios stepping away from making traditional SP games. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’ve become accustomed to using the sub service catalogue as a backup, and still purchasing games that are high priority. Of the 16-18 games I play per year, 8-10 of them end up being PS+ games. So the service is still worth the investment, yet I also buy games.

I don’t know where it stands now, but at one point RE6 was the best selling game in the franchise, if I’m not mistaken

I was somewhat interested in Arise, but not interested enough to play it this past year that I’ve had the opportunity. 😅

I believe Scarlet Nexus was also given out on Essential, so many of us will still have access to that.

@twitchtvpat Technically, anything with DLC is a form of live service. However, when they announced the 12 service games in development it’s becoming clear that they meant ‘12 multiplayer online centric’ types of games a la Fortnite and Warzone. I had hoped that it included GT7 and MLB The Show, but I fear they weren’t including those in the 12.

I’d have to agree with the sentiment that it’s not necessarily about Sony wanting to expand and invest into the online and GaaS space, rather it’s an issue of how much capital and resources they used all at once. And the lack of appropriate messaging and communication. In an alternate timeline, Sony could have been more open and connected about this whole initiative and it might have saved them some time and money, rather than cancelling multiple projects far along into development. I know it’s a tough balance to strike, but this was obviously not the right approach.

I’ve said before, I would envision maybe 25-30% resource allocation toward live service. Maybe up to 50%. But it’s becoming apparent that like 75% of the studios were or are doing live service projects.

@nomither6 I agree with you (about choosing the right IP’s for live service / multiplayer), but to give credit where due, one would have thought Twisted Metal was the right IP. That one should have been a shoe-in. And I think Horizon is a decent IP to do something in. I think the issue there is they seemed to have tried to milk the Horizon setting too much too fast — Sequel, VR, Lego, MMO, TV show, and traditional MP online game. It’s too much.

@Keyblade-Dan welp, my comment didn’t age very well, did it? 😂

“What is a man [or a company], but a miserable pile of secrets?”

Kratos to Sony:
“Don’t be sorry, be better.”

@PorkChopExpress That’s my thought — 3rd party is strong, as is second party / console exclusives. We have plenty to play. I won’t lie and say I’m not really, really disappointed and even upset at the failure of Sony’s management to see what we all knew all along with live service, but the PlayStation brand and console gaming have some windfalls with new and emerging studio relationships, China Hero Project and other initiatives in India, Africa, etc to fill the void, hopefully.

Although I’d love to hear news about what BluePoint, Bend Studios, Santa Monica, and Media Molecule are doing, as well as updates on DS2, GoY, Wolverine, Intergalactic, the next Horizon, Fairgames, Marathon, … but I really don’t expect much.

I do think we get Yotei and DS2 info soon-ish. Kojima admitted to suffering some crunch currently so maybe they were prepping a presentation for this.

I remember when there was a narrative early days that said that GamePass actually increased game sales. I knew that didn’t sound right but there were many people spouting some kind of data about GamePass subscribers actually buying more games than non-subscribers. There were quotes from developers about how happy they were to have their games on GP so more people could play them and it would increase exposure and market their game, etc. Of course those quotes came from some small indie or AA studio and that data about subscribers and game purchases was statistically confounded with spurious variables.

And so here we are, with a complete backpedal and now the industry doesn’t want subscriptions.

It sounds silly at first, but so have many other uses of AI and computed assistance until we now gradually have accepted them as essential parts of life.

I’m not sure what it says about humanity’s future, but anything rote we are gradually turning over to machines. On the one hand it suggests that it trims down human input to be saved for only the most critical of decisions and creation, on the other hand it threatens to make us all lazier and dependent.

Poor girl gonna have so many chronic back problems.

@themightyant Yeah, those are my thoughts as well. Although, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they did try a few new things and tried to get some new IP going around that time - Watch Dogs, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Skull & Bones, XDefiant, etc. But a lot of these attempts felt like reskins of their own franchises or imitations of other developers’ games. In the case of S & B it seems like the project was just hugely mismanaged and missed the window when it could have done better.

I think Outlaws has enough potential, as it seems like a lot of people have enjoyed it. I wouldn’t mind trying it but there’s just too many games now; it’s not 2014 and a studio can’t churn out the same basic game every year (well… except for FIFA, NBA2K, Madden, and Yakuza 😂) or else it will be buried by all the other similar releases, live service lifestyle games, and copious new releases coming from emerging markets. I don’t think Ubisoft has adjusted quickly enough.

As a Star Wars fan, I was considering buying Outlaws, but when major gameplay issues were being brought up as needing to be patched, I figured I have plenty of other games to play and so chose to spend time elsewhere until the game is in its best and final form (and cheaper). 😄

Outlaws got some unfortunate press, just like AC Shadows. Not to mention Ubisoft has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately.

But if we just focus on the games, it’s like Ubisoft is cursed lately. Skull & Bones, Avatar, Outlaws, AC Mirage… all these were supposed to be huge. Underperformance or just flat-out cancellation like The Division: Heartland or vaporware like Beyond Good & Evil 2. Their best received game was PoP: The Lost Crown and reports are that barely anyone bought that.

For a smaller developer their middling sales would be considered acceptable, but their budgets are very large (and some would say bloated and too large) so these games need to sell much better to keep profitability. Big publishers release a bomb every now and then, but Ubisoft has had quite a string of underperforming games. They are victims of their own success. The best “Ubisoft formula” games are now not made by Ubisoft. Other developers have taken the formula and made it better (Sony being chief among them).

Whenever Ubi has tried to innovate to do something new, fans are upset. Whenever they have tried to stay the same, fans are apathetic. 😅

I posted this elsewhere, but I just discovered that although I disabled auto-captures for trophies, when I play PS Portal through cloud streaming it still takes trophy pics. It’s just they don’t get loaded onto the PS5, they only show up on the PS mobile app. Weird, but I guess it makes sense because the Portal is now an independent console untethered from the PS5 when you’re cloud streaming.

Vicarious embarrassment for these loony fans. Imagine being that invested in fictional characters and games.

No interest in Halo.
Fable on the other hand… might be worth checking out. Also Gears.

A couple of remakes — I’m still running through FF7 Crisis Core and then have now started up Resident Evil 4.

Both have been quite good so far. I never played the original Crisis Core so I have no reference of comparison, but RE4 Remake is so much better than the original, so far. I’m just in Chapter 2 though.

I don’t really have much interest in most of Xbox Studio games, but Hellblade is one I’ll probably get.

Aren’t they going to run out of games to port pretty quickly?

I know this is over the space of 9 years and three games, but 75 million sounds like an awful lot. I’m skeptical that it’s 75 million separate individual players. I wonder how they calculated that.

The best I could find was the entire series (including all those early Gen games, Absolution, Blood Money, etc) sold over 16 million copies at the time Hitman 2 came out. Of course Hitman 3 was a huge success, but still… And I know people have played the game without buying it through services like PS+, but it still doesn’t seem to add up. Especially considering that if you’re saying 75 million separate people, then one fan who played all three entries of the World of Assassination separately, or played the game several times would count as 1 person.

Maybe the number is right. I mean I’m one who played a little of Hitman 1, so maybe I’m included 😄

It’s one of the first settings I changed when I got my PS5.

I always forget about this game. I’m not a fan of the open world crime drama genre (aka GTA clones) but Sleeping Dogs gets consistent praise enough to make me curious. I’ll add it to my wishlist to keep it in mind.

I haven’t played Rivals (and don’t really plan to) but the game definitely sparked a buzz in the community. The Marvel license surely helped push it up to the forefront.

Disney are probably the real winners here. Their Marvel output in the non-gaming space has been shaky for several years. Maybe this will usher in some decent movies and TV shows. 😅

@LifeGirl I agree with you. Pre-planned DLC with these roadmaps have always been a turn-off for me. Same with season passes and such. It’s all been a baby step toward live service games, which I also just don’t really like the model of. But we’re clearly in the minority because obviously the masses gobble this add-on content up, otherwise companies wouldn’t keep doing it.

If the conceived DLC is meaty enough, I much prefer the ‘expandalone’ approach where they just release a smaller interstitial spin-off game that can be enjoyed independently. Ubisoft used to do that (AC: Freedom Cry, Rogue, and Liberation), but I guess it must not have been as profitable. Although I would argue those failed because they just over saturated the franchise at the time. Now with all these games getting boatloads of DLC they run the risk of doing it again. Superfluous expansions are more effectively disguised when labeled as DLC, I guess.

@MrPeanutbutterz I’ve yet to play Nex Machina. Always meant to try it but have never got around to it.

One of these days maybe I’ll try the current version of Returnal. I never went back to play the DLC either. Many months had passed since I completed the game by the time the DLC was added and I knew all my finely tuned skills I’d accumulated were certainly rusty by then.

All I know is that I was stuck at the first boss for like 12 hours of gameplay time and after the game was patched I was seeing people complete the whole game in that time frame. The third biome was absolute murder originally. That trek to the boss… oh man, the stuff of nightmares. 😅 But like you say, such an awesome gaming experience and very satisfying. One of my proudest gaming moments to have beaten the game.

@Gazray Did you play the game close to release or did you play it after it was patched a few times? I was asking just because I agree with you in the context of when I played it at release. I absolutely loved the game and count it as one of my favorite PS5 games, probably top 5 at least. But it was tough as nails and I can understand some people just not having the patience to get through some of the tougher sections. However, I believe when they patched in the co-op mode, the game difficulty was decreased substantially. Not just that playing it co-op made the game easier, but also that even playing it solo was much, much easier post-patch.

Honestly, I wouldn’t trade my experience because the high difficulty is all part of the fond memories I have of beating it. But unfortunately, making the game easier did probably make it more mainstream.

I’d be curious to see if most of the fans of the game were people who played it in the original state.

As a Life is Strange fan, I’m ashamed to say I haven’t bought it yet or supported it because it’s priced a little high, imo. I’m willing and able to drop $50 on a 12 hour game, but with a bursting backlog I am prone to wait for a sale on this game. The prior entries have also always dropped onto PS+ eventually, so this is a case where unfortunately the services probably cannibalize some of the sales. I bought LiS2 and LiS:TC and then the games dropped onto PS+ Extra before I had time to get around to playing them. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me three times and I need to have my credit card taken away. 😜

Of course if the game would have released to glowing reviews, then the FOMO could have pushed me to buy, but when the reviews and impressions came out middling, I decided to wait.

Also, the episodic release situation when part of the game is released (at least for the preorder people) and then the rest comes out later is an awful tactic, imo. Unless the opening hours are absolute gold, I think that strategy can only hurt you.

This is fascinating information, but makes perfect sense. The GP service has essentially disabled game sales on their own platform, but the advertising aspects of getting attention to your game does create hype for other ecosystems. We should expect Xbox studio games to continue to come to PS5 so PlayStation gamers can subsidize those projects.

It does beg the question: does this data affect Sony’s strategy for their own first and second party output? Perhaps some projects would get a boost in sales on PC if they were included on PS+? (In an alternate timeline maybe Concord releases on PS+ Extra and gets a sales bump with people buying it on PC) Or moreover, since they have opened the door to releasing on Switch, would Lego Horizons have sold better on Switch if it would have been included on PS+ Extra? The Switch is fertile ground for PlayStation games, but would it be worth the reduction in sales on your own console? Probably not.

I’ve yet to play HFW but really enjoyed HZD. One of my favorite things about the game was the IP — this retro-future world that they built. Aloy is a great protagonist, and the lore and setting are really unique. We have so many games and game series that recycle the same settings (military shooters, Greek or Norse mythology, feudal Japan, Sci-Fi space, Medieval Europe, classic Tolkien fantasy, Star Wars, etc, etc) and so I honestly felt that Horizon brought something new to the table. The Native American vibe with futuristic robot dinosaurs and beasts… pretty cool in my opinion. There wasn’t anything like it before, from a setting standpoint. I think it would be fertile ground for a TV or movie adaptation.

It’s amazing to me that the market can sustain so many of these, which at least from the outside looking in, are so similar. Between Wuthering Waves, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, Tower of Fantasy… and whatever other gachas I’ve forgotten, there seems to be an insatiable hunger for this style of game out there.

To each their own, of course, and if the people want it then so be it. Maybe one day I’ll try one. I guess it’s no different than all the live service shooters that popped up for a while, each new one hoping to capture newcomers who are either tired of the one they’ve been playing the last year, or people like me who are uninitiated in the genre and need a jumping in point. I think I’ll pass though. I simply don’t have the free time.

@PushDiagonal Yeah, I have done a little of that. I have a couple groups, one of which is “Games On Deck” to be played soon. It helps to trim a library of 400+ down to just 15-20 which are my focus for now. Unfortunately it means that sometimes one of them will fall through the cracks and I forget it’s in my library until I think about it. Like Days Gone, or Rollerdrome, or the Mafia games… 😅 I keep wanting to try these but they haven’t made the cut yet to be in my high priority grouping. But Mafia 3 would be an example of a game that I had no interest in way back when it was given away on PS+, but now they’ve also given us Mafia 1 and Mafia 2 and there’s a fourth game coming out soon and so I actually would like to go back and play all of them. So I’m glad I claimed them all along the way.

But yeah, organizing the library is not very elegant and it would be good if Sony had a way to organize our digital library better. Sometimes I forget if I even have a game and can’t remember if it was a PS+ game in the past and so I either have to scroll through dozens of games trying to find it, or just search from the whole store and see if the indicator shows I already own it or if it prompts me to buy it. It’s not impossible, but it is mildly annoying. 😄

I used to be picky about which of the PS+ games I claimed and added to my library but then I had a couple times when I later regretted not adding something. You never know when your preferences might change or someone else in your household may want to try a game, so now I just automatically add all the PS+ essential games to my library. Future me might want to try it years from now. 🤷🏻‍♂️

The only downside is that my digital library is enormous and full of things I will never play, but I can’t predict which of the games might randomly scratch an itch down the road.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I was a big fan of Patapon back in the day, so Ratatan looks interesting to me. Also Mixtape have me curious because of the musical art involved. As a LorR fan I have to say I’m curious for Tales of the Shire, even though Animal Crossing isn’t my bag.
Others like Stone Madness, Wanderstop (I really enjoyed Stanley Parable), Reanimal (I enjoyed Little Nightmares) are all worth keeping an eye on.

Thank you Stephen and Push Square! This is a really nice article to highlight some of these games to keep an eye out for. Nicely done.

Sony first party has quite a streak going with the Push Square audience. 7 years and counting. At this rate Ghost of Yotei is a shoe-in for 2025.

@colonelkilgore I might just try Suicide Squad since you’ve been enjoying it lately.

Stanley Parable is great. I own it already but for anyone who hasn’t tried it, it’s quite unique

I’m hoping that they can expand the streaming feature, by eventually adding all of the PS+ catalog, as well as all games in our digital library that are purchased as well. I know that we are still a far distance from having every single purchase be streamable, as even PS5 doesn’t do all games, but if you tell me that anything I buy in the digital store can be cloud streamed to my Portal, then I will have to fully covert to an all digital library. As for now, I prefer to buy my big games on physical disc but having the ability to stream to the Portal would change my spending habits considerably.

How’s that for a motivation, Sony? Get it working!

I already loved my Portal, but with cloud streaming now, it’s even better. I definitely play more than I would otherwise. Like @naruball I’ve used it mainly for low input games like Balatro and narrative choice games such as Dark Pictures anthology. But I’m branching out and playing FF7 Crisis Core and I think I might try something like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Witcher 3 next. I do agree that some games just need a big screen and a proper DualSense, even as good as the Portal is.

Wishing you all a happy holiday! And thanks Push Square for all you do!

@Rich33 You never know, my friend. 😄🍻

@Rich33 Lol, my response for a parent asking me hypothetically what’s a summary of the content for Balatro would be:
No voiced dialogue, no profanity, no violence, no combat or death, no scary or gruesome imagery, no sexual content. The game is exclusive images of playing cards and chips, numbers and text explaining the game, loosely based on poker where the playing cards are standard 52 card deck and a variety of jokers and enhancement card decks, one of which are Tarot cards which give a variety of abilities to make your hand better. Players try to use strategy to maximize scoring to get high scores with their hands as they build their decks with more enhancing power-up card combinations. Familiarity with poker is not a prerequisite. Being able to calculate, add and multiply in your head is definitely a plus though.
🤷🏻‍♂️
Or you can get little Timmy a game where he can virtually cut other people into pieces with a chainsaw or steal cars and get lap dances at the strip club with every third word of dialogue being a profanity. Same age rating. 😂

@Rich33 Great discussion. I’m completely in agreement on the frequent predatory nature of MTX. In fact, I think I’m much more radical on it than most people because I even consider a lot of DLC, battle passes, and season passes as underhanded. In general, I avoid DLC. It is a microtransaction also. Now some DLC is clearly extra and “worth” paying for later, but some absolutely feels like it’s carved out of the game to be sold separately to get the complete experience. Preplanned DLC or expansions are usually a red flag for me. They are all ways to make a $70 game into a $100 or $120 game.

But that’s just my own little consumer quirks and I try to vote with (or without) my wallet as I see fit. As far as MTX affecting an age rating, that’s where things get more murky. The ratings are designed to protect minors, and if a Pokémon game had a very clear option of buying a downloadable character or power or whatever then I think that’s probably not harming anyone’s childhood. Probably. But when they deceive and hide it behind all the smoke and mirrors as you described there, it definitely needs to be called out in some way.

And I agree on the content rating inconsistency. According to PEGI, Balatro is as inappropriate for a 10 year old to play as GTA5, Dead Space, or Leisure Suit Larry. I think a lot of M-rated games are fine for a younger population, and T-rated games sometimes have questionable content for a 13 year old. The best way is for the parent to experience it themselves to judge, or have a trusted friend like you to consult.

@Rich33 I hear you. I tend to agree with you although I haven’t thought long and hard about it (games with MTX needing a mature rating, that is). I definitely agree on the ‘common sense approach’ needed for this and other games. I didn’t intend my reply to you there to be a counter point or a dispute, rather just responding with info about this game and its lack of MTX. I now see you are more referring to FIFA, Fortnite, Genshin, etc needing to be 18+, independent of what’s going on in Balatro.

I guess what PEGI is implying though is that they don’t care so much about MTX, rather they care about the content of the game and how it can affect young minds. That sounds good on paper, but it doesn’t pass the common sense implementation test, imho. The implication of gameplay “transferring into real life” is a slippery slope indeed, and one that has been debated since the inception of video games. But to your point, MTX are a relatively new threat which plagues modern gaming and has a relatively unharnessed effect on young (and old) people. I’d probably say it’s more nuanced than to do a blanket 18+ on every MTX game, but there definitely needs to be some kind of consistency with how they can be used and implemented.