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@riceNpea it's ironic that you're clearly referring to those that who don't know better would call "the woke crowd" when it's literally the opposite side that has been exposed multiple time as taking offense and stirring up controversies on behalf of actual Japanese people.

@RBRTMNZ you definitely need to branch out and play Bayonetta or DMC then, because GOW's combat system is mid at best.
The camera is completely at odds with the type of combat it wants to be, relying on stupid red arrows to tell you when hits are coming, instead of, you know, letting you see the action. Kratos Is magically magnet pulled to enemies, which is a cardinal sin of any good character action game, as the player must be the one dictating the rhythm of combat.
The controls suck, but I know I'm in a minority there; "a few mid puzzles" are actually an incredible annoyance thwt shouldn't even be in the game to begin with. What's the point of having a puzzle for pacing, if you're just gonna give me the answer? It ruins the pace instead of improving it, because it just amounts to literal busywork.
The gear system is completely redundant and tacked on, included only because you can't have a AAA game these days without one.

@RBRTMNZ ah yes, great game design that.
Since we aren't capable of designing interesting puzzles, let's put some arbitrary roadblock from time to time which requires no brainpower whatsoever.
It isn't even the only major issue this game has and it got perfect scores everywhere nonetheless 🤢

@dskatter @IntrepidWombat of course I didn't, everything about it looked mid from the get go and reviewers I trust, plus watching part of the story, only confirmed that.
The characters are dreadful, the themes ape Nier Automata without understanding them, and so on.
As I said in the review, if it weren't a heavily publicised PS exclusive, nobody would score it as high as they did.

So that explains why one of the best games of all time is doing a crossover with its poor man's carbon copy

Why are you putting Concord and The Finals in the same sentence?
One didn't reach 1k concurrent players and was shut down after 12 days, the other one is going strong and is on the verge of Season 4 which will surely boost its numbers.

@PegasusActual93 his was obviously a joke, but hey, Ubisoft did it with Far Cry Primal lol

This is a game I never thought I'd play for several reasons, but I recently picked it up on a whim with low expectations and I've been having a great time. Wrapped up the main story, I'm currently tackling the first DLC.

I mean, it's a Star Wars Ubisoft game...do you expect any more than mediocrity?

@Quintumply I couldn't help but chuckle like an idiot at that subheader 😂👏🏼

@Blaze215 no, he's perfectly right.
The game is wildly underperforming because of several factors such as price, generic looks, trite gameplay etc, not because of some made up culture war only Americans care about.
And if you think only one factor was decisive in the downfall of this game, I'm sorry but the world is a very complex system where nothing can be attributed to one single variable in most cases, and certainly not one as vague and meaningless as "wokeness".

@Shokwave2 if you know expressing your thoughts would get you banned, maybe it's time to re-evaluate them.
But then again, you're praising X which is literally and factually proven to be the most biased and partisan social media platform, especially since Musk took over. The statistics are all there for everyone to see.

I love how people with zero media literacy spread this narrative that this game is selling "because it's not woke", it's literally a non sequitur lol
And I love it because they're the ones lamenting politics being put everywhere, when it's them seeing politics everywhere, where "politics" to them equals anything they don't agree with.
Everything is political, but I guess you have to be open minded and not numbed by capitalist realism to understand that.

Enter The Dungeon still remains the GOAT in my eyes.
I played Hades for 5 hours or so and found it incredibly basic for how much it's praised.
Also I prefer actual rogue likes to roguelites, where your skill and knowledge and not some arbitrary stat determine how far you can go.

Edit: oh and the shout outs to Dicey Dungeons and Prey Mooncrash are absolutely spot on! The latter is my 3rd favourite DLC ever, only behind Outer Wilds' EOTE and BS2's Minerva's Den.

Finally someone who recognizes Borderlands for the shallow, painfully unfunny series it is.
And no, not even the gameplay is good.
There's literally nothing good about shooting mindlessly at goons just to get a better weapon every 2 minutes.

'Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said this “may indeed be the mass market breakout hit this console gen really needs”'
How American levels of out of touch must you be to make a statement like that?
He does know that a whole world that doesn't give a damn about college football exists out of the US, right?

@djlard I'm not a fan of the model either, but it's a bit unfair to judge them all as if they were the same, cause they aren't.
I can tell you because, and I repeat, for as much as I despise the F2P model, The Finals has been one of the most fun games I've played in a long time, and it's by far the most generous in its pricing and free giveaways out of all the F2P games I know. It's the only F2P game I've ever spent money on (and probably will) because it's just such a good, refreshing and unique game made with a lot of care.
Would've I preferred to outright buy it for 60€? Of course. But alas, these are the times we live in, and pretty much every multiplayer game that's not already a household name is basically forced into the F2P model.

Hate the gacha model and don't find anything at all attractive about these games, so hard pass for me.

What a sad list.
The remainder of the year looks barren, except for Zelda, Metaphor, Plucky Squire and Dragon Quest.
FFS, a Ubisoft Star Wars open world game is second on the list? Isn't everyone tired of those two things ad nauseam?

I guess all the commenters up in arms about them caring about little details have never heard the word "world building".
Me, I don't care either way, as CP lore is so far removed from actual reality that I don't think it "needs" to represent a specific culture. But then again, I haven't played the TTRPG so I don't know how its lore factors into it all.

@BrettAwesome whoa, thanks for the psychoanalysis, that'll save me some money.
You have the pretense of psychoanalysing me out of nothing, but ok, I'm the arrogant one lol
Some people never cease to amaze me.

@BrettAwesome I'm really sorry that you didn't understand a single point I made, but hey, that's life.
And again, you're being rude for no reason.
I'm not really sure what your problem is, but have a good day/night nonetheless.

@BrettAwesome wow what a rebuttal! You truly are on another level of ignorance and arrogance.
If you're not even gonna read people's replies, why do you even engage in conversation? To breathe from your mouth?

@BrettAwesome again, learn the difference between an opinion and a value judgement. You probably don't even know what passive aggressive means if you think I was the one exhibiting that behaviour (read your first reply and tell me with a straight face that isn't textbook passive aggression).
Anyway, talking to you was a huge waste of time, since you still think I "berate you for not sharing your opinion".
If you think trying to explain the difference between an opinion and a value judgement is berating you, I'm sorry but you're acting the victim without any reason.
Replies like yours would have me in stitches if they didn't imply such a little understanding of media literacy and how taste works in general, and not gonna lie, I find it incredibly sad.

@Westernwolf4 and my point is that, other than being different games, the traversal itself works differently and I don't think it's fair to say one is superior to the other since they rely on different movements.

@Westernwolf4 nah, you just can't really compare the two.
One is an over the top shooter with a focus on bonkers weapons set in a cartoon world, the other is a "mature"/"realistic" take on a superhero.
The only common thread is fluid traversal, but even that works differently between the two games.
So no, Spiderman isn't a better version of SO, and personally, going by my taste I'll take a fresh, bold new IP rather than the latest generic superhero game.

@BrettAwesome you know why people like you get on my nerves?
Because I explained very clearly my point of view but you use uncalled for strawmen and passive aggressive comments with incredible arrogance, while your reading comprehension languishes in a corner, the poor thing.
What part of 'There's plenty games I enjoy but wouldn't call "good"' is hard for you to grasp exactly?
I'm not surprised your media literacy is so limited, if you can't even comprehend such a simple sentence.

@BrettAwesome the day you learn the difference between enjoying a game and thinking it is good, call me and maybe we can have an adult conversation.
There's plenty games I enjoy but wouldn't call "good", and GTA is the gold standard of that.

Just COD trying to be Fortnite by filling up the kitchen sink and ending up being even more of a black hole of nonsense devoid of any personality (just like Fortnite).

@BrettAwesome no It isn't. GTA games have always been incredibly overrated, and it was fine when they were new and innovative 3 gens ago, not now.
The gameplay is trite and repetitive, the controls are abysmally clunky, the story is complete nonsense, the characters are terribly written, the so-called satire people bring up is non-existent, the collectibles are a huge downgrade...should I go on?

Simply disgusting.
And they saying they wouldn't lock gameplay behind paywalls was already a half truth at best, since we all know GTA Online is P2W, plain and simple.
The fact that they added such a basic quality of life feature 10 years later is already appalling from a design standpoint, but putting it behind a paywall really is taking the p*ss.
Remind me again how this game is good?

@UltimateOtaku91 "I don't play games for a challenge, I like no aggro whilst I play games and with the amount of games I play per year i don't want to spend hours and hours replaying bosses and areas."

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but there's also nothing wrong with recognizing that these games simply aren't for you, so why should they cater to you?
I'm not a From Soft fan either (I enjoyed the games I played but I'm not super into them), but I can recognize that those games are made with a clear artistic vision in mind, which I admire but unfortunately tends to be outside of my personal taste.

What a nonsense article.
Since when is game length a determining factor in pricing it?
It's a full on remake (and not a single game sliced up into three, more costly parts, which you don't seem to have an issue with), what did you expect?

@get2sammyb Not gonna lie, that title made me chuckle quite a lot 😂
PS is always on top of the title and sub header game ahahahhah

Don't you even dare speak of The Finals in the same article as this game.
The Finals has literally zero to do with this game, and hero shooters in general; hell, its build customisation is off the charts and absolutely central to the game.
Not to mention it is infinitely more unique and innovative, and has a personality of its own to boot, instead of riffing on already popular IP's.

Blergh, I despise everything about Borderlands (aside from the cel shading) so I couldn't be more disappointed.
I'm not expecting BioShock 4 to be especially good either for a smattering of reasons, but at least I'm curious as a huge fan of the Rapture duology (Infinite and especially Burial At Sea can burn in a dumpster fire, where they belong).

Still crying that you haven't reviewed The Finals, and that mention there at the end doesn't help 😭

This is such old news I'm not even sure it counts as such.

@ThomasHL can't disagree more.
I've always been a single player guy (I only started dabbling in online multiplayer here and there in the last couple of years), but after trying out the beta I was hooked, and The Finals is basically the only game I've played since it launched.
And let me tell you, in this six months I've only scratched the surface of the complexity behind it.
The sheer amount of possible combinations of classes, specializations and gadgets, coupled with the destructibility of the environments, make it deeply strategic on a moment to moment basis.
Sure, it's probably way more chaotic and less predictable than other games without the same distractibility, but it doesn't make it any less deep or strategic.
But hey, if you don't like it that's perfectly fine, no game is for everyone

@get2sammyb what @NEStalgia said, and it has the audacity of aping one of the greatest games ever from pretty much every point of view, down to hiring one of the same composers.
Can we not just agree that it's a good game with great combat but zero personality of its own?
If so, does it really warrant the scores?

@naruball still none of the two reasons you gave me are about the game itself, but about this freaking charade of a "culture war" going on around it.

Eh, if it was multiplatform it would certainly be seen as the poor man's Nier Automata it is, as opposed to the second coming many treat it as.

Always loved punk, emo and post-hardcore.
Always loathed Kingdom Hearts.

I have a huge backlog at the moment but I adored 7 so I'll certainly play this too in the future!