TheFourthFocus

The PlayStation5.pro page is not using https so I doubt it's anything official from Sony.
My guess is that someone just made an html clone of the page at www.playstation.com/country-selector/, albeit from a 2017 © version. 😉

Well they're we have it, as a direct consequence of this the PlayStation Voice community has now been closed permanently.
Thanks to everyone involved in spreading this mindless leak with disregard for NDAs,
Nice one guys! 🤨

That's one bitter article, I feel sorry for your lack of joy. Just sayin' 😜

Also, the "generic Eclipse Cultist" is Helis, Y’know, their leader and one of the main protagonists....I guess not, ha.

The linked video is no longer available but I've just watched a load of recent ones on youtube and, while they've clearly added a lot of ancillary sounds, I am still very underwhelmed by the actual engine notes. I'm still hearing that dull old digitised drone that has been around since the original.
Don't get me wrong, I love Gran Turismo, but they don't seem to get it. The cars are too muted and the engine just does not sound mechanical. Compare it to some stuff from Assetto Corsa and sadly they are worlds apart
Lambourghini Huracan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjyJZwSHa74
Ferrari FXX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHDCSBc6Hs8

Can't wait to get my hands on this. I love photo modes, just as I love photography in general, and have spent a lot of time taking shots in games such as The Order:1886, Uncharted and even No Man's Sky (despite it not having a photo mode then) so I will undoubtedly get a lot from this mode in Horizon.

A completely fresh start, in whatever form, is the only way I will be interested in Destiny again. I abandoned the game on the back of their horrible DLC approach and I'm still amazed that they are able to get away with locking people out of the game unless they buy every expensive add-on, but that's by-the-by.

A new beginning would be welcome but I'd also like to see a different approach from Bungie and Activision will a lot more respect for their customers.

Killzone Shadow Fall please. It remains one of the best looking PS4 shooters I think and I would gladly revisit it.

I completely understand their reasoning but, popular or not, streaming simply doesn't match the quality of optical discs so when it comes to the fidelity of the experience, it was a mistake to leave out the 4k Blu-Ray drive.

The other matter is that most 4k TVs will already include the same streaming services so the PS4 Pro offers nothing new to those owners on that front.

It feels like every other Battlefield and the map is absolutely woeful.
My biggest disappointment has to be that it really has no feeling of WWI whatsoever (which makes the title on this article a little strange) and is much more of an aesthetic change over the same old BF multiplayer game.

I don't quite get the comparisons made in the article.
Revenue: $4.8b - $4.6b = $200m
Profit: $819m - $303m = $516m

So a bigger difference in the latter, not sure how that verifies Nintendo as an efficient earner, rather it is the reverse is it not?

@get2sammyb I liked Dead Nation but almost put myself off it when completing the hardcore more, so much so that I was initially a little disinterested in Alienation...after all its just Dead Nation with aliens right?
Then I saw there was a loot system, looked more into the game and decided I was going to buy it. All I can say is that was a great decision and this is easily set apart from Dead Nation. Alienation requires a lot more thought and doesn't merely rely on overloading you with massive hoards; it's more multifaceted and I haven't even got to understand some things yet, like the hero levels, invasions, UFO and Ark keys....more fun to come.
I'd say it is definitely better as a co-op game but, given that you can have 10 separate characters saved, I will be covering a lot of ground in both solo and co-op modes.

Finally, remember how incredible the support was for Resogun, well Housemarque have already said that they'll be following up with plenty of additional content for Alienation in the same way and that's great news for its longevity.

@Feena @Bazza78
I thought it looked as though you would collect multiple little guardians to put on his bed side, implying that there would be regular dream sections.
Either way, the combat is quite poor yes. It's lost all the tactical elements of true FF games and failed to capture any meaningful action that feels like you're in control.
Something like God of War executes action based battles perfectly and really feels like you are influencing your success with the way you fight, FFXV fails miserably on that front.

Perhaps most worrying is that this is meant to be the "finished battle system".

Ignoring things like the nauseating camera, awful audio effects and very clunky character movement which could be put down to it being pre-release code, I find myself very disappointed and once again it just doesn't feel like a FF game.

I've just spent nearly an hour running around a very strange dreamscape with an inflatable mallet, collecting crystals like Sonic with rings, stepping on seemingly pointless pads to change the weather (or become a truck!?!) while getting gradually irate at the BigEaredFoxicorn (that's what I named mine) every time it squeaked loudly and sent a text to my in-game phone. It's all a bit abstract and surreal but even with seamless transition into battles, which do try to be fluid, there's an awkwardness that already makes the game feel dated.

Mostly, it seems like the game doesn't really know what it's supposed to be and I think FF has lost its identity in the pursuit of modernisation.

I found it to be a decent, perhaps even good, cover shooter but the loot enemies and missions are so unfeasibly dull and devoid of variety that there's just nothing that would make me want to keep playing.
As a Loot based RPG, I think it suffers from its ties to realism.

I can't wait for this game, it looks and sounds better with everything I hear about it.

Now if only the indie-bashing, price point moaners would all clear off and blow their £50 on yet another identical iteration of FIFA, the adults can get on and enjoy this one.

I relied on the boredom I discovered in the beta to make my decision to pass on this one.
I think the game will suffer from it's own realism and lack of creativity; the loot is utterly dull and the enemies would struggle to be less imaginative. As for an engaging plot, well it's just shoot the guys with red markers, just because, isn't it?

Thank God this isn't an indie game or everyone would demand it for free because of these delays...

@xMEADx a ridiculous comment, how is quantifying this for one game any different to all the other games that sell for the same price.
I could equally say 20 tanks of fuel and you would have enough cash to buy a second hand car....

@themcnoisy
By bigger risk I really mean that a small team investing all of their time and money is a big risk for them if the game doesn't do well. Imagine putting everything into a game only for it to be a massive flop and make no money, a small team would personally have lost on that but developers working on a salary for a large studio and publisher would merely move onto their next contract while the companies employing them take any financial hit.

Space exploration games are not yet prevalent on consoles really so perhaps there's an element of niche filling there but the real ambition is in creating something on such a scale in the way they have. Everything they're doing may have been done before but I think No Man's Sky is taking legitimate steps forwards and I hope it pays off.

Also, regarding your other points about game quality and feeling robbed. I would feel robbed if I paid full price for the shallow likes of Battlefront or Titanfall; or the dreadful quality of Aliens Colonial Marines, Assassins Creed Unity or Duke Nukem and yet nobody questioned their price point at launch.
You don't know for sure that any game is going to justify it's price but that decision should be made entirely based on the game itself and what it offers, not the amount of people and financial backing involved in making it.

My only real comment is that I'm tired of people and their dismissive use of the term indie, as though not being tied to a big money publisher somehow makes the time and effort developers put into a game less worth while.
Before the likes of EA and Ubisoft became money making giants with annual output schedules, computer games came from developers who made them because they wanted to. The whole industry exists because of people like "indies" and there are a lot of spoilt little twits who would do well to think about that.

No Man's Sky is one of the most ambitious games I've ever seen and it's a much bigger risk for a small team to make something like this than it is for someone being bankrolled by a massive publisher, why shouldn't it be the same price as any other full release?!

The absence of folders remains baffling but I was also very much hoping for the half-baked Communities to get some more features to make them more useful.

Of be interested to know what differences there are between this version and the currently cheaper mobile version, I'm assuming there is more content in the Definitive Edition?

So is that 6.4m people who found it to be nothing more than a competent 3rd person shooter in a dismal, near-empty world filled only with complete uninspiring loot and unimaginative enemies who attack you for no real reason, making you reciprocate with similar lack of motive.

I played the beta and feel like I've already seen everything it has to offer apart from the same items with bigger numbers.

Some people are reading what they want to in reviews for this; surely it is expected that games from the same series should contain similar traits? I agree that the same underlying game with a cosmetic refresh doesn't warrant much interest, although that doesn't stop everyone buying FIFA it seems, but this game looks much more than that.

Such a dramatic change of setting should he credited given that it essentially removes guns from a first person shooter, pretty bold.
I've not spent much time on a Far Cry game other than Blood Dragon and, perhaps for similar reasons to that edition, I find Primal to be much more interesting than the usual fodder and am quite likely to try it at the right price.

Pretty arduous to watch at times but at least they're saving me some money on cup tickets these days
LvG surely has to retire in the summer and then it will be interesting; do they go for a short-term fix in Mourinho and his baggage, or decide to trust in Giggs?

Thanks for an interesting article. In truth, I knew very little about The Division until hearing the recent hype about the beta and still don't have much anticipation for it.
I'm tired of seeing army men semi-crouching from crumbling cover to decaying crate with a scattergun spread of HUD icons all over the screen. At a glance, this looks like Battlefield in 3rd person and that carries almost no appeal for me.
The Loot system would be the only real interest, I especially like the idea of having to extract it safely, but as you say, how interesting can knee pads really get.

Still on the fence, if that.

@get2sammyb those are not quite the same specific and otherwise rarely seen phrases though are they
I don't think anyone used the words "rumbled" or "touchy", haha, all I said was it was interesting...like that reaction

Interesting to see the specific phrase "leaderboard-regulated challenges" in both reviews I have read on this
Disappointing to see a widely negative response from people, I really liked playing the PS2 original and can't stand the frantic trend that multiplayer vs games have to follow these days.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the PS3 and Vita offerings may end soon; they're not shown on the PS4 store anymore, are completely unmentioned in the emails and merely acknowledged on the blog. Phasing them out for sure.

It's cool, I was just being a little obtuse but in a light-hearted way

I haven't seen much in the way of Vita deals either; I thought there would have been some mega cheap clearances but it looks like it has been pretty much abandoned by retail now.

When you say "Every PS4, PS3, and PlayStation Vita Sale", do you just mean PS4

Looks exactly the same to me and still one of the worst DS4s around

SWOS remains my all-time favourite game and I've been wishing for a modern version ever since. This is never going to be Sensi' World but at least it will be a breath of fresh air against the turgidity of FIFA and PES.

This really has to be my first foray into Kickstarter, if I don’t back this, I won’t ever back anything.

A very heavily weighted poll result and yet people keep buying expensive DLC and micro-transaction content.
Keep giving them the money they want and the problem will only get worse.

The best way to find verified accounts is to search for one, such as Shu Yoshida or Mark Cerny, and then use their friends list, which tends to contain several other verified users, to add more.

@BAMozzy The original article on Kotaku is much more of an interesting read, albeit too lengthy.
http://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731

My honest interpretation is that the reviewed their "existing assets" and decided that they had to spread content thinly to eek out enough DLC launches, which we know they are contractually obligated to. The story, or rather lack of it, is a consequence of this asset economy; as things are held back from the main narrative, it naturally suffers and Bungie appear to lack the skill to cover that up.

@get2sammyb yeah hopefully there will be more variety to the co-op mode too because the same premise in a different map still won't be interesting for very long.

I guess my main concern is that this is going to be very much a competitive multiplayer focused game which is not what I would want from Star Wars Battlefront.... or indeed from any game I'd actually buy anymore.

Good article Sam, this almost precisely echoes what I had been thinking about the game both prior to release and since playing the beta.

The presentation is superb, you can't really hope for more authenticity, but I had always been worried just what sort of longevity there would be. I'm pretty much burned out on regular competitive multiplayer games and was struggling to see where there would be enough depth to keep me interested, the beta does nothing to alleviate that reservation.

The set pieces are the headline makers but I don't see much beyond what has been done in KZ3's Operations with a Star Wars theme. There's definitely no long term interest in the outcome.

The co-op mode would be much more interesting to me but I would want co-op epic Star Wars battles, not just a little cliff-top skirmish against a few drabs of anonymous Storm Troopers. The best part of old Battlefront games was the large scale 1 or 2 player battles against the AI.

I would rather challenge myself against a difficult game than grind out points on yet another repetitive loop of PvP and the beta doesn't do anything to suggest that Battlefront can offer much but the latter unfortunately.

@get2sammyb they're just copying more of Warframe

@Constable_What is not in lieu of paid DLC though is it? It's in addition to wildly overpriced DLC with two more to follow.
All round horrible business practice on this game and that's what is keeping me away since TTK arrived.

Least representative trailer ever

@DrJoeystein not in the UK, it is £40, which equates to over $60, just for TTK. I wish the internet would pick up on this more when they're considering it to be expensive at just $40

@themcnoisy because people like to have choice and input. It's amazing that there will still be people who find reason to complain; probably the same that would complain that they didn't want the games that were chosen for them if there was no vote.

@banacheck no you can't, it is £75 (or £40 for just TTK assuming you already own the previous 3 parts)

@tenderbeefcake same here, that's definitely a factor and helps you immediately relate to Joel and what he must be feeling.

It's no good telling me there's new missions and new weapons, I want to know specifically how many.
For the ridiculous, and regionally inconsistent, price point, I would expect at least as much content as there was on the original disc. I'd also put more emphasis on the gear than on missions; hunting for the gear is what keeps you playing, missions quickly merge into the grind regardless of how good they are first time around.

It has since been bettered by The Last of Us, that would be the intro I would attribute as the best I've ever seen from any game, television show or movie.

I've never engaged with the Fallout series and I remain relatively un-stirred by this unfortunately. Possibly because of the same incredibly flat, drab looking textures and diabolical sprite animation.
I'm sure a lot of people will love this game but for me it's about time Bethesda put some effort into how their games look and feel....a sense of realism adds so much more to the immersion.

I actually liked Trash Panic but it was hard as nails.
I only ever got 1 trophy for it and, because they're all in Japanese, I never did know what all the others were for.