commentlife

The art direction on this game was the least of its worries

More whale hunting from Sony, thoroughly disappointed with their priorities this generation.

I hate mid-gen upgrades. It takes away that parity of experiences that I like about consoles that doesn’t exist on PC. It’s also just another excuse for devs to never optimize for consoles.

I bet he’s a real joy to work with.

This is actually fascinating, great article

This game’s got some heavy lifting to do

This is historic, can’t wait to read a good post-mortem on what happened here. Sony really fumbled with this one.

@Enigk that’s a great analogy

The only way you peel enough people off of an existing title in this space is by innovating in some way, and I’m not sure the AAA’s know how to do that anymore, frankly. Releasing clones isn’t going to cut it.

Give us 3-4 you cowards

One of the best games of the last decade, easy. I love everything about this game’s story too. Solo dev, originally built in friggin’ JavaScript (since ported to unity, I believe), his background before this was casino games and it totally shows. 10/10 for me but I’ll accept a 9, great review.

Not only was the trend chasing a terrible idea, but the game is just kind of bad. Sure, there’s a lot of internet haters and disappointed Sony fans who never wanted this type of content from them, but that doesn’t account for numbers THIS low. A poor product in a sea of really competent ones does, though. Especially when the rest of the lot tend to be free to play. I’m worried they’re going to double down to try to rescue it, pump resources into it, make it f2p, to try to justify the costs sunk. It’s either that or it gets turned off in a couple months.

I think some games probably deserve a higher price point, but my problem is with the precedent it sets. So while GTA6 might have an argument for a price increase where it took a decade to make and offers a certain amount of value, it will also raise the price of whatever yearly shlock EA or CoD spits out.

It’s a great month, even having played Cult of the Lamb at launch.

It is an absolute gem of a game with a surprising amount of depth and that trailer is absolutely amazing.

It’s a good one

The people that are going to play a game like this are already playing a game like this.

Predatory business model

They’ve said there’s more frame rate improvements to come, I can wait.

Last I played I had just started a NG+ to get a weapon I missed for the platinum and I’m not 100% sure I am feeling the grind to beat Mohg again just to access the new content. I’m on the fence about it.

The story of ZA/UM post-Disco is a cruelly ironic tale

It’s a good one. Got real into it over the pandemic with a few buds on PC and it’s a lot of fun.

I actually really enjoyed this game, dropped 300 hours into it.

Misleading at best, false advertisement at worst. It’s not just simply about 8k and the lack thereof. Putting things like 8k and 120fps on the box made a lot of people believe 4k@60 was essentially a guaranteed benchmark for this gen.

SoR4 is incredible, glad to be able to put this on my PS5

Yup. I see the industry as a whole shifting away from more and more and more detailed graphics, it’s unsustainable and is a big driver of the type of toxic consolidation we have been seeing from larger game studios.

I hate this timeline. AAA gaming has become cancerous to the industry at large.

Patch this thing up and then let’s talk

Skul is a seriously great game, 93% positive on Steam with 40k+ reviews

Only reason it’s even needed is because publishers don’t want developers to optimize their games anymore, cost cutting their production budgets and passing the buck to the hardware to make up for it

This game is great when it works, but the bugs have been killing it for me lately. I’ve crashed out of 3 of my last 4 missions, two of which had super samples in hand, my load out resets every time I close the game, the major orders continue to get affected by bugs, there’s longstanding issues with matchmaking. I really wish they could get a handle on the technical issues.

“future updates” this one’s staying broken for a while :/

That’s unfortunate but very much forewarned

Oh heck ya, Rollerdrome!

@Mephisto2869 that’s unfortunately not how it works, every company regardless of size is beholden to a system that measures anything short of consistently rising shareholder profits as a complete failure. There’s a ton of factors here, COVID had a much larger impact on industry and markets than expected, the rising costs and extended development times of the average AAA video game, the consolidation of gaming revenue in the hands of a few large titles/companies (Fortnite, COD, etc), it’s a list a mile long. It affects every company. I’m not trying to justify any of this, I think it’s awful what’s happening, but it’s a systemic problem, not a Microsoft problem. Capitalism is coming in HOT right now.

@Flaming_Kaiser yes, layoffs are happening throughout the tech industry. Those cuts represented around 5% of their global workforce. Google recently cut 12,000 and Amazon recently cut 27,000. The cuts MS made to their gaming division, while a seemingly large number, still only represents about 8% of that division. Recent layoffs at other companies were much more severe, with some companies laying off over 50% of their workforce.

People acting like Microsoft the only company to ever layoff a developer. There was news reports as early as December about Sony pressuring its 1st party studios to make massive cuts, including talks of layoffs, in the face of increasing development costs. This is an industry wide issue, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Not a single game company is above this.

@BusyOlf yeah that boss fight is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever attempted, the wave attacks in the first phase are just pure luck. I’ve been making some attempts lately at lvl 98 ball lightening sorc, pretty well optimized, and it still feels like none of that even matters. I’m passing the DPS checks but the one hit kill mechanics are just busted. I am chasing the platinum as well but it’s not very fun.

The campaign is great, season 2 made some huge adjustments, but yeah.. the albatross is the itemization once you hit tier 4, which isn’t getting overhauled until season 4. I’m assuming this will be D4’s equivalent of D3’s Loot 2.0 update, which brought that game back to life. D3 had an equally rough time post-launch, I remember it well.

Man, some of these comments. Some of you don’t realize how big a part you play in incidents like these because of the language you use. Sure, you’re not “that guy”, but you certainly pave the way.

“Offerman added jokingly” is crucial context intentionally left out from the original article, I think. He clearly wasn’t being serious.

I can see the series x/s being the last Xbox hardware and this an inevitable result

Naw, Sony’s too busy milking the goodwill they gained during the PS4 era. They’d rather sell 50$ plastic panels, overpriced “premium” controllers, a half arsed controller with a screen on it and an unsupported VR headset to people who would buy anything with a Sony logo on it than do anything halfway interesting. The hardware equivalent of a GaaS skin shop.

Shows you how small the vocal minority really is. I have 100% confidence this is the last gen with a physical option.

Cautiously optimistic. Season 2 has been a huge glow up for the game, and shows the devs are at least trying to turn the ship around.

2023 has been a tough year for tech jobs. I just dodged some layoffs at my own company, thank frig.

Season 2 brought me back and it actually feels pretty fun so far! Before this, every time I played felt like I was just playing to justify my purchase.

More like IQ FINALLY amirite? Our prayers have been answered.

AAA gaming in such a sorry state right now, I can count on one hand the big developers who maintain their quality alongside of their successes.

Wow, would love to have been a fly on the wall for that decision. Goes to show the risks involved in this space, you’re either making money hand over fist, or you’re losing more than you put in.