It is a really good game but it is also crying out for a more traditional arcade mode (think Mario kart cups) alongside its rogue lite single player mode.

I think leaning into recognised Star Wars lore and characters and giving players the option to play as well known characters with the ability to unlock skins and even racers would be of huge benefit to the game and would help it sell more and retain more.

I get that they want to make it ultra serious and I appreciate the inventivity of the single player it currently has. But a mode where the different racers have set stats and you have a sequence of traditional race ladders (like cups) to conquer can’t be difficult to implement and would really make the game feel much more complete in the long run.

It won’t happen because they’ll see this as contraindicative to their creative vision. But there’s my two cents regardless

I am putting wild hours into Planet Zoo 2

I’m so excited. Hard to see anything else being my GOTY. What people don’t realise about a game that apparently poses as a management sim, is that it’s mostly a building and design game with the most insane level of depth to its creativity. Good to see this get recognised for its brilliance in a way the first one wasn’t here …

@Balaam_ The only one?! Around here it’s a near constant chorus …

If I’m honest - what it’s crying out for is actually the addition of a more conventional ‘grand prix’ style single player in addition to its current stuff.

Play as different characters with set stats. Unlock more etc.

I don’t really see why it doesn’t have this in addition to the rogue lite campaign. And honestly - if they want the game to have a good dlc lifespan, surely they need to implement this and think about bringing some recognised characters to it?

I played in early access and yes I was surprised as how brutal it was early on. I toughed that out and it seemed to get much easier after that. Whether that was a balance thing where the opening sections are tough or I’m feeling the hotfix I couldn’t say!

I made the mistake of buying a second weapon form instead of a combo finisher and that really screwed me early on!

I wonder if now the game is rather on the easy side, especially if you played it in its original state and let it harden you up!

Told you it would get an 8. Won’t stop PlayStation exclusives which are paint by numbers re-skins of the same game we played last time getting higher though

@GirlVersusGame I think subversively the game kinda does make the comment more broadly that a lot of what we have constructed as ‘normal’ in society (going to offices and complying with office protocol) is actually extremely, insanely weird when you take a step back from it and look at it without the formative conditioning we get in our lives which tells us it’s not really messed up and really bizarre!

@TheArt It will get an 8. Control got 8’s typically despite so obviously being worthy of higher. Ooh look a studio who actually don’t make paint-by-numbers games. Can’t give that more than an 8. The studio just don’t fail - they make games with wonderful playability for your casual observer which always double up as subversive social commentary if you’ve got the appetite for that. Far safer giving the high marks to a studio who make the same game every time, right?

I cannot seem to get into anything right now. I tried to like crimson desert but ultimately it’s a waste of £40. Even with all the updates is so fiddly and leaves you in the dark about so many things and I just think it’s not user friendly enough to warrant enduring.

I’m waiting for Control, that Star Wars racing game and planet zoo 2 tbh. I’ll probably just play Overwatch even though I only love it because I hate it so much

Yes cos I’ll play the wwe game. I like unlocking the old skool legends and seeing what people have created and messing around with replicas of superstars from the 90s for a while.

Thing is though - that’s not enough to justify buying the game so I’m pleased I get to mess around with it a bit without the price tag

Planet Zoo is possibly the most amazing piece of gaming ever and from the outside people don’t realise just how deep a creation tool it actually is.

Frankly I’m interested in anything these people create

I’ve played it over the last week. (In amongst being addicted to my love/hate relationship with Overwatch all over again)

It’s a very solid game. Parts of it make you break out in a cheesy smile for all the right ‘Bond movie’ reasons.

It does feel a little cut and paste in terms of: here’s a watered down level from a Hitman game for you to negotiate. Ok you’ve fulfilled that: now have an action sequence from a totally different genre.

However: because both are done very well, it doesn’t really matter and it’s really enjoyable to play through.

For me, once will be enough. Not the kind of game I need to play through again. I rarely hunt platinums and only do so if i really want to spend more time in the game world. I also can’t help but yearn to return to Hitman during the Hitman-lite sections, as I have done multiple times without ever really committing to Hitman in the ultra serious way that game requires to really get the most out of its (wonderfully thought-out) sandbox missions.

I think the worry is more about sanitisation. We see it everywhere to exponential levels now compared to then. Look at what became of the Saints Row reboot. A game which thrives on an era during which you could be edgy and funny and risky because everyone wasn’t a total flannel about everything became washed out and generic and ‘disinfected’ - given the Detol treatment. The same was also true of Dragon Age. People hate DA2 but it has to be said the comedy in the dialogue was on another planet compared to the wet, soppy drivel which came out of the character’s mouths in the latest iteration.

@HonestHick nightmare to fold money these days since they made bank notes all plastic. Not like the solid cash folds in the pocket of old yknow

@Inkdude0 Yawn

Is no one going to say they won’t take part in the test unless it’s on a physical disc…?

The only important question here is: will they be releasing their games on physical discs?

Let’s get that sorted and the regulars can spam the thread with the usual commentary and parity will be restored.

Of those 6.7% physical sales, roughly 5.9% were to PushSquare regulars, most of whom post on virtually every single thread about an upcoming game that they won’t be buying it unless there’s a physical release.

Don’t worry though. Once there are no physical discs to buy, they’ll have even more time on their hands to invest in this hobby. And I thought their dedication to it was already maxed out…

Oh and the dialogue writing was literally great. The sarcasm Hawk could come out with. Compare that to literally anything in the two games since which all seems to have been sanitised to the point of total sterilisation for a generation of complete flannels who find the slightest thing ‘offensive’. How Rockstar are getting around that problem with a new GTA in this era of wet blanket nonsense, I have no idea!

I literally loved DA 2 and never understood the hate it gets. Ok - they decided not to go open world. Boo hoo. The characters and the narrative of it were great and I loved the gameplay loop. Played it several times to see different outcomes of things.

Outlaws actually is cool for a while. It feels very very Star Wars and very nostalgic. It can’t sustain itself on that alone and ultimately it’s repetitive and devoid of gameplay inspiration in the long run. But I’m happy I spent a bit of time with it. Never came even close to finishing it…

@Allahver_Fist Did you read that from your employer’s staff handbook? It’s like listening to the token ‘I’m loyal to the Empire’ character you always get in an episode from a Star Wars spin off.

Your advice is rather wasted on me; I’m self employed.

Put the actual issue of the memorial itself aside and just LISTEN to the comments here which instantly default to metronomic disapproval for gasp company employees spending ten minutes away from their desks.

How COULD these people do that? What caused this? How do they sleep at night? Did their microchips malfunction? Are they not able to mathematically calculate their minute by minute productivity as they slave for someone else’s dream?

I never knew we had so many indoctrinated, institutionalised corporate minions reading the site but I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s literally embarrassing!

Someone recently assimilated by the Borg would have greater capacity for independence of thought! George Orwell didn’t go far enough in his prophecies.

‘A crowd flowed over London bridge. So many. I had not thought death had undone so many.

Gods alive - what planet am I living on?

@DuncanDisorderly Could it also be that the words are very similar?!?

@DuncanDisorderly Are you sure it wasn’t just a joke. It’s mildly amusing tbh. Does everything HAVE to be loaded with some sort of offence someone somewhere is waiting to take from it?

@Balaam_ …sigh

I’m not convinced it suffers any more than it would launching in September.

There’s a certain crew who have probably lived off GTA online and a few other multiplayer games for over a decade who are only buying GTA but generally don’t buy other games anyway.

Then there’s everyone else who is going to be highly selective over which major titles they pick up between September and Christmas. For a lot of those people GTA will be one and they might get a couple of others. All games are affected by GTA releasing this year. The competition is then with the other games to be one of the other games people might buy. Pick your poison: release closer to GTA, or release within nanoseconds of seven other big games…

No doubt bucking the trend, I have to vote for Planet Zoo 2. I did not expect to get into the first one as I did. I got it just to have something totally different to play for a bit and expected to mess around for a few weeks like I had with the Jurassic world games they make.

Then I watched a few YouTube videos. Then I was like you can do WHAT. Then I realised how insanely deep the design tools are. And that was me GONE.

Thousands of hours later, having become really good at a graphic design/construction game in a way I’d never even contemplated … I just know that once that releases I probably won’t care about anything else for a long time!

This looks so cool and I’m not into Indy games with bad graphics

@DennisReynolds You should try it some time

Shocking subtitle. I laughed

I got into the first one big time, having not expected to.

The depth of the design tools is actually mind blowing once you watch a few YouTube videos and start playing around.

The big concern is over the limitations the game will face running on Ps5. It’s designed for PC gaming and the first one put major restrictions on the scale of what you could do to allow it to run on console.

I am more in support of built in difficulty tiers. I’ve never really liked this ‘adapt the entire game any way you want’ thing. I want to feel like I’m playing a game that was designed a certain way. Old skool inertia maybe

Never in any way sure what people actually do (realistically) want from this

I honestly never really understood it. It’s a decent game. It has its own unique aesthetic. I actually found the rhythm aspect to the combat quite irritating.

I love how we now talk about the ‘base’ ps5 like some kind of bygone relic

It died for me when they changed it to 5v5. The game has incredible structure and some semblance of order before that. A game where you didn’t have to be a hardline fps player to get into it.

They wanted it to succeed as an esport to they tried to pivot to fps/dps chaos. Tanks weren’t really tanks. Supports weren’t really supports.

Are they going back to the once great 6v6 team game? Seems doubtful

Just take my money now frankly. Some real nonsense gets remade - this is the kind of nostalgic revival I want!

If you are in doubt, give planet zoo a chance. You’d be amazed at just how insanely deep the creation tools are when you leave preset pieces behind and start going free from - it’s sometimes mind blowing!

Give planet zoo a try! I picked it up thinking it would be nice to mess around with something different, for totally addicted to mastering the (ludicrously deep) design tools and here I am still playing it thousands of hours later!

Anyone who claims this month isn’t a good month (and experience tells me there will be plenty of them) needs taking to the vet for a check up

We get a totally new game from Remedy. I love Remedy more than any other dev. How can I not vote ‘very happy’?!?

Of their three major IPs, JWE is the odd one out and hasn’t so far had anything like the depth of design engine you get in the Planet games. It looks to me like they are porting some of those features in and that will probably get a lot of people interested

Not sure I understand all the complaining about the 007 game: it looked great!

To me a lot of the stuff just looked samey in a sort of ‘this is the fever dream of someone drugged to the eyeball’ kinda way. The 007 trailer put me on tangibly firmer ground again and looked ‘reliable’ and shiny.

If I’m honest, even the Silent Hill game looked disappointingly over-stylised for my tastes. Doesn’t scary need a little bit more realism than that…?

I spent significant tracts of my viewing time wondering how so many of these developers fund such excessive drug habits while living in fear of losing their jobs…

@Jrs1 I can feel something inside myself just WANTING more of those ‘one and done’, linear, fun games. The kind you buy and think: ‘yes. Great. I can just f-ing play this without worrying about it being a huge investment to do battle with a vast open world and seventeen gameplay systems’.

Basically - I’m quite old now

Something that isn’t another big action adventure - we are crying out for this kind of variety in the gaming landscape tbh

I don’t expect it to be anything ground breaking but to me it looks kinda fun if I’m honest. Maybe I’m just in the market for relatively simple, linear-ish shooting games like we used to get a lot of, and a bit tired of investing in a huge big adventure game every time I pick up something new.

A lot of peoples’ bars are clearly very, very high these days if this is really looking THAT bad…

To all those surprised by a 7/10, this site did just undercut pretty much every review ever of Forza Horizon 5 by giving that an 8. Reviewers are acting a bit like Craig Revel-Horwood on Strictly Come Bloody Dancing recently. (Incidentally I can’t stand that show but my family never miss an episode)