To the PS5? Not by any reasonable estimation - at this point in the console's life cycle, most people who want one will already have one, and it either will or won't be their preferred platform.
To PlayStation's future consoles? Possibly. For now, there's really not enough information to decide on, but the draw of being able to play from one's Steam library will very much depend on how much someone has invested in theirs - for my part, I have a large catalogue of older games from when I had a gaming rig and high-end laptop years ago, but haven't spent a penny on Steam in the years since, so there's really nothing to tempt me. The target audience seems definitely more 'PC players who already preferred Big Picture mode on the sofa, Steamdeck, etc' than anything else -and to make much of a break beyond that, price would be the defining factor.
"Nope, don't care" has always seemed to be the standard response from any UK government to petitions. If it's not an issue that results in mass media coverage and/or a national scandal, they have no interest in listening.
They're coming out that quickly? I assumed that they'd gone for an actual episodic release for the sake or spreading things out and finishing things off, as they'd done in their time as Telltale, not... just splitting up a very clearly completed game over the course of a month, purely so they can call it episodic to evoke the comparison.
If I had interest remaining in it, I'd be happy with that news even without any particular graphics or performance upgrades; the biggest point of torture for me in it not being PS5-native was it needing to double down on storage space every time it needed to download a patch.
Needing to clear out up to 90GB of my storage in order for the game to install even the smallest hotfix got old very, very quickly; PS4 back-compat is very much not live-service compatible on PS5, and it's honestly a bit of a shambles that it took them this long to address that.
I genuinely loved Remake, and was excited for the second, but outside of the combat Rebirth lowered my expectations for the final part into the gutter. It became clear pretty quickly, and excruciatingly so in the final chapters, that they set up the 'what you know, but not quite' premise of Remake with NO clear plan of how to continue it.
@Fakeplastictree I don't usually get motion sick with games, but this is one that made me feel a little nauseous from time to time. I feel like a lot of it came from weather and lighting effects - the heavy bloom in fog, the very sudden and intense colouration from sunset, etc. And god forbid Atsu drinking some sake without my stomach churning. Given the suite of accessibility options for other things, hopefully at some point they add options to tone down those effects, the fact that the game would sometimes make me feel sick in pursuit of its artistic vision is one of the things I personally mark it down for.
It's fun, pretty, and very cinematic. But having finally finished my Lethal run to 100% an hour ago and wrapping up the plat, it's a great game that nonetheless carries a few flaws - largely little frustrations where that cinematic aim has clashed with the feel of the gameplay, and for the most part inherited directly from GoT.
@captainsandman Part of the issue with it is that it seems many of the performance problems are coming from a memory leak. If you play for shorter sessions, you really won't notice many FPS drops unless there's a lot going on and/or you're playing in co-op. If you play for more than a few hours in one sitting, though, things start to degrade pretty quickly from that point with Performance mode eventually dropping from a fairly steady 60 to 30 FPS or lower.
@SodaPop6548 Eh, one of my friends is putting off playing it because the low FOV sets off her motion sickness. It may seem like a silly focal point from your perspective (and, honestly, I wouldn't have thought about that either) but it can be a legitimate make or break issue for some.
Hmm, in Genshin and the many clone-ish gachas that it spawned, the last 10 levels were always much less impactful an investment than an optimised weapon/relic set (or whaling a character to C6) so I can only really see this as making the final tiers of the rotating challenge battles marginally easier for those with more money than sense, but still
I don't personally see a brand revived after 20 years by people with no connection whatsoever to the origin beyond the rights and unwanted IPs that they bought as an 'it's back' scenario, but whatever.
We'll see quite quickly if the new "Acclaim" actually have anything to offer, or if they're banking almost purely on nostalgia (bought dirt-cheap).
@johncalmc I wouldn't necessarily say it was poorer for Keither's casting, his voice acting in the role was pretty good.
...Though it certainly would've been nice if he'd had more than what felt like a few minutes of voice acting across the entire length of the game. Compared to every other iteration - and even forwards to Sam Stranding - Venom may as well have been a silent protagonist for how little he actually spoke.
Sounds like unfounded speculation on his part, but frankly I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was penned for cancellation at this point. The writing was on the wall in many ways the moment Raymond jumped ship; the reports were that she left in the wake of/response to negative feedback from playtesting... but as the founder of the studio and the project, the fact that she would respond like that rather than stick around and try to address and improve on the criticism was a huge red flag. It would appear that she had very little investment and/or faith in the game and its prospects, which is never a good sign from the person who had spearheaded it in the first place.
At last, a button (presumably) to quick-retry that boss' second phase without burning through the first - maybe I can go back and try it with a non-OHKO build and actually have a chance to learn the parry timings now. xD
I wish they'd stop messing with the weapons every update, personally. Pull up what's underperforming once in a blue moon, sure, but the see-saw of buffs and debuffs is getting excessive. It reminds me of the fiasco with Helldivers 2 a few months after release - it's a PvE game, not a competitive one, it doesn't need such heavy-handed balancing. Hell, it doesn't need to be 'balanced' at all; every game before World had weapons that came out as the firm meta, but most people still just played the weapons that they liked.
Just let people have fun with your game instead of trying to convince them to use less of this attack or mode and more of that one, etc.
As I've said before, I'm all for it - I stick to PS for a mix of the console aesthetics, interface, mutual friends on the platform and attachment to my trophy list and back catalogue.
Hell, the only reason I moved to PS4 after the 360 was that I didn't like where XBox went with the first two... well, that and having had to replace said 360 several times due to RRoD, if there's one way to make sure that noone ever buys your products again it's releasing one with a major flaw that can brick it on a whim.
I'm not going to up and change console just because there are fewer permanent exclusives; if Sony want to expand into the other console markets as they've been doing with PC, even if on their end it's just for the pursuit of more profit, I'm down for it. As long as they have a sustainable business plan for it that isn't going to damage the company in the long run, for us as gamers it's a win-win. I can't see Nintendo ever fully jumping on the ship, I expect they'll stick to the occasional mobile spinoff or such, but more games exchanged between Sony and MS isn't a bad thing.
Our daily reminder that, as much as execs like Spencer would like to tell us that they're in the business for the people, these businesses will only ever truly care about one thing - keeping shareholders happy with ever-increasing profit and dividends, whatever the human cost, and marching onwards to their inevitable, eventual collapse from seeking infinite growth in a finite market.
Look, I enjoy Sony's narrative single player output - and am firmly of the "ditch the live service push and stick to what you're good at" camp - but I can still chuckle at those memes. They're not 'bad takes', they're JOKES. If you genuinely find them 'irritating' (though let's be real, you don't, you're just trying to play up drama for kicks/clicks) you need to touch grass.
Yes - though I certainly hope that Lethal Mode is in the game at launch this time. It's a great example of a risk/reward difficulty, and I wish more games would play around with settings that buff both the player and their enemies rather than simply turning the opposition into hard-hitting health sponges. I picked it up halfway through the game after coming back to it a year or so after launch and it was such a fun way to play.
8.5/10, for me. The gameplay is what keeps me hooked, I like the courier-sim side of it, building infrastructure and the improved combat mechanics... but holy hell, the story and writing is a pile of hot garbage, though I went in expecting that and at least the cutscenes look great and are well delivered by the cast.
Between the movement changes and frontloading of vehicles and formerly mid/late-game options from before it also loses a lot of the challenge in navigating terrain - I lived on ladders and anchors in DS1, here I can count the number I've used combined on one hand - but I won't dock it points there.
Like some others I assumed they'd shut it down a looong time ago given that they killed off post-launch updates so quickly. It's a shame, honestly, that they left it in that state. Beyond the story, extremely barebones endgame, and the false-promised features from the infamous "gameplay" reveal, the game could be really fun when the combat and traversal were allowed to shine.
In an ideal world, it would have been developed properly from the outset, but if they'd actually gone ahead with their promised revamp and put the time and resources into fixing it ala NMS and Cyberpunk, it had the same potential to actually turn into something good. But instead, it's just ended up as one of the countless mass of 'nah, cut and run' games... and hey, at least EA didn't end support for it early and then rerelease it on a new platform in its unfinished, never-to-be-finished state, looking at you Wild Hearts.
You can certainly see the logic - as a runaway success that's already made orders of magnitude more for Sony/Arrowhead than they ever could have expected before launch, there's not a lot of risk in throwing it at the wall next to Gamepass and seeing if it sticks. If there's a game that they can sell well on Xbox, this is it... but if they can't, it can rest as a fairly safe test of the water.
And I'm all for Sony porting more games over there as Microsoft port more over here - exclusivity is overrated, whatever the platform. Both sides are still going to keep their headliners to themselves, or at least for with timed exclusivity, but sharing the rest and letting people access more games without needing to think about buying a second or third console... yeah. Positive.
At last, we approach the bottom of that long, slippery slope from goofy 'hey, you want bacon on your gun? go for it' weapon skins. I don't think any of us would have predicted the end result being... this, though. I haven't touched a CoD in years as it hit my personal tackiness threshold looong ago, but man, the thought of having to play with or against people in a Beavis or Butthead skin in a what was once a fairly straight-laced shooter is just... oof.
I can still quiet safely say that, despite the Welcome Hub reminding me each time I boot up that I can download it as part of PS+... I just have no impulse to. The charm of control for me was both the exploration of the Oldest House - the atmosphere and that dark satire in all the notes, letters and videos scattered around - and in the light power fantasy of the gameplay; having pseudo-superpowers but not being super enough that enemies weren't a threat. Alan Wake 2 had... serviceable gunplay at best, but really went hard on the atmosphere and character.
Firebreak doesn't really seem to tick any of those boxes, or really play to any of Remedy's strengths, it doesn't promise anything that I can really immerse myself in, so... nah.
From my memories at university of everyone on the Games Arts track complaining if they got stuck on Tree Modelling/Texturing Duty for a group project... yeah, no, I get it. It's long been the realm of 'oh please god not this' shortcuts and plugins, so of all the uses of AI in game development, this is one that is a very logical fit. Especially if your trees are simple background fillers rather than a core part of a scene.
What baffles me is how some of them are ending up front of house on the deals banner. When I glanced at the storefront last week (passing through to buy Wizard of Legend 2 and Star Trucker) I saw no less than 3 or 4 'Hentai <insert genre>' games on the front page . It should be embarrassing enough that such minimal effort slop is in the back somewhere, or when it floods the New Releases page (along with preorders which don't belong there either) why on earth are they letting it show up front and center?
Translation; there isn't any. Concord was DoA, but with everything going on with Marathon and Fairgames, lord alive, they're dying long before arrival.
Honestly, beyond the hit-or-miss writing of the main story, it would've been nice if a number of the sidestory threads actually had a conclusion instead of implying that they're building up to something over the course of the game and then just... fizzling out. Playing through it again at the moment, I had to laugh a bit at several bits of post quest dialogue of "we'll get to the bottom of this" or "you'll know when the time is right", and remembering very clearly from that first 100% run that those points were NEVER resolved (even if the actual answer for them was quite predictable).
Pitchford alone is my main reason for having decided years ago to never buy another Gearbox-developed game unless it's HEAVILY discounted. The guy is just a total, unapologetic *****.
@UltimateOtaku91 Plenty of them do depend on player impact, but... well, ultimately they can't really push the story in too many interesting directions if the players always win. This one was probably the most veeery clearly telegraphed one yet - there was no way to take back the planets as they fell, the enemy fleet effectively acted as a 'hp bar' that blocked defensive progress and was barely dented in the first day or two, so it was a pretty clear case of 'here are the new enemy types and some time to get used to them while we play out the opening act'.
I do have the occasional gripes with the Major Orders they set out that are achievable but only barely, to the point that if the community at large doesn't focus on the right planets from the very beginning they quickly become impossible, but these ones... these I'm fine with.
I am happy to help, then; it certainly doesn't appeal to me. I loved the PS2 Metal Gear Solids, but for the solid gameplay of his 'independent' work, I just can't stand the suffocating, self-indulgent, egotist theatre of the presentation.
Sounds like the execs have completely lost the plot. Their problem lately, as with so many other publishers, is that they're spending so much on their flashy AAA titles that they need chart-topping sales (and then some) to turn a profit. Or, rather, enough profit and dividends to satisfy their shareholders. They'll be quick to find that trying to mill those games out faster and make them even bigger and flashier isn't going to fix that issue, at all.
I'm pretty excited to jump back in and try out the weapon modification system, I was really hoping they were teasing something like that when the last Warbond's splash art showed the included weapons without their attachments. Having the Superstore just have everything available at all times same as the Warbonds is a welcome change too, no more pressure to farm Super Credits to buy everything up when they launch a new item set. Sounds good all round, with the new enemies as a cherry on top.
I shamelessly finished my one-shot kill build for the ultimate boss before patching, I got so fed up of fighting his first phase for a few minutes before getting wiped by attacks that I just wasn't seeing enough to learn the parry timing... so I gave in. Still, she could hit with it for over 100 million, so even reducing the damage by 40% and fixing the sword that unintentionally doubled it... it should in theory still be able to hit for over 30 million with even a slightly-optimised engame build, so it can still kill almost anything in one hit. Just not that git.
9, albeit from a 'nothing is a 10, there's always room for improvement' standpoint. Currently sweeping through the optional endgame areas and bosses one at a time before finishing up the story, and the experience at large has been phenomenal - they've done a great job of taking inspiration from other games on the gameplay front (a bit of FF10 and 9 mixed with Sekiro-esque rhythm parrying) while making it their own, and storytelling that has a raw emotional weight to it - both from the writing, and the solid casting and voice direction - even when a story beat itself is predictable. It blows a lot of recent heavyweight AAA games out of the water, and for a project by a relatively small team and a 4-ish year dev cycle... that's incredibly impressive.
Damn, that many in one fell swoop? I guess EA has been feeling salty at other publishers snatching away its 'Industry's Worst' crown in recent years and wants to get back in on the action.
I was reading the post on the Star Wars official site earlier going on about the famous Hondo this, legendary Hondo that, and as someone who was really into the old Star Wars ("Legends") fiction but rarely found any appeal in Clone Wars or the sometimes-good-but-often-awful Disneyverse canon that followed, it just kept leaving me asking... who?
I own Outlaws - and enjoyed it and Wild Card despite their flaws - but this expansion is clearly not going to be as much up my alley
Not for me, I enjoy single player extraction games (Zero Sievert and Witchfire on console when) but I loathe the idea of playing them with other people even more than run-of-the-mill competitive multiplayer. As to its success... eh, hard to say, the Bungie name and slim competition in the genre should serve it well on console, but it may be a harder sell on PC with some well-established IPs there, and with that slim character/map count to open with their longevity is going to depend very heavily on how well the inter-run experience is designed and on post-launch support.
It still baffles me that they went for a leaderboard reward instead of just giving out pendants for C/B/A ranks, honestly. Monster Hunter has always had some issues on the online side of the occasional idiots ruining the experience with a save editor, why they didn't anticipate this going completely tits-up is beyond me.
And now the majority of people who 'earn' the reward, if not all of them, are people who would've just edited it in to their inventory anyway.
Hopefully, Capcom either ban the offending accounts as they've said they will and issue a complete reset of the leaderboards, remove the top 10k requirement, or in the best of worlds do both.
Eh, unless/until they release a native PS5 version, I can't see myself ever returning to 76. The game demanding nearly 100GB of free space whenever it needs to download even a small patch, that fun little wrinkle of PS4 versions, is just profoundly irritating for a live product.
(I'm personally quite curious about the weapons both having sights/scopes, but appearing without them in the splash art - fingers crossed hoping that this means we might have weapon (module) customisation rolled out in the near future)
Slightly longer answer, the early game is definitely substantially easier in every regard, from monster damage to crafting requirements, but the meat of the game in high rank - where they expect people to really get into things - is right as it should be. The (currently) highest-threat version of monsters are certainly no pushover, with the highest-threat Tempered versions often requiring you to really lock in as one major mistake can cart you.
Comments 159
Re: Talking Point: Does PS5 Have a Sequel Problem?
Much like high-budget movies, the entire AAA games industry has a severe sequel problem, not just Sony.
Re: Poll: Does the Steam Machine Pose a Threat to PS5?
To the PS5? Not by any reasonable estimation - at this point in the console's life cycle, most people who want one will already have one, and it either will or won't be their preferred platform.
To PlayStation's future consoles? Possibly. For now, there's really not enough information to decide on, but the draw of being able to play from one's Steam library will very much depend on how much someone has invested in theirs - for my part, I have a large catalogue of older games from when I had a gaming rig and high-end laptop years ago, but haven't spent a penny on Steam in the years since, so there's really nothing to tempt me. The target audience seems definitely more 'PC players who already preferred Big Picture mode on the sofa, Steamdeck, etc' than anything else -and to make much of a break beyond that, price would be the defining factor.
Re: The UK Government Shoots Down 'Stop Killing Games' Campaign in Official Debate
"Nope, don't care" has always seemed to be the standard response from any UK government to petitions. If it's not an issue that results in mass media coverage and/or a national scandal, they have no interest in listening.
Re: Square Enix Wants 70% of Its QA and Debugging Work Done by Gen AI
"Hello human, here is an anatomically accurate image of your kind with six fingers, seven toes and a third lip."
Yes, this is technology that we should entrust QA to.
Re: Dispatch Episode 3 and 4 Out Now on PS5
They're coming out that quickly? I assumed that they'd gone for an actual episodic release for the sake or spreading things out and finishing things off, as they'd done in their time as Telltale, not... just splitting up a very clearly completed game over the course of a month, purely so they can call it episodic to evoke the comparison.
Re: Fallout 76 Finally Gets a Native PS5 Version Next Year
If I had interest remaining in it, I'd be happy with that news even without any particular graphics or performance upgrades; the biggest point of torture for me in it not being PS5-native was it needing to double down on storage space every time it needed to download a patch.
Needing to clear out up to 90GB of my storage in order for the game to install even the smallest hotfix got old very, very quickly; PS4 back-compat is very much not live-service compatible on PS5, and it's honestly a bit of a shambles that it took them this long to address that.
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 'Will Be Loved by Everyone', Says Director
Eh.
I genuinely loved Remake, and was excited for the second, but outside of the combat Rebirth lowered my expectations for the final part into the gutter. It became clear pretty quickly, and excruciatingly so in the final chapters, that they set up the 'what you know, but not quite' premise of Remake with NO clear plan of how to continue it.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Ghost of Yotei?
@Fakeplastictree I don't usually get motion sick with games, but this is one that made me feel a little nauseous from time to time. I feel like a lot of it came from weather and lighting effects - the heavy bloom in fog, the very sudden and intense colouration from sunset, etc. And god forbid Atsu drinking some sake without my stomach churning. Given the suite of accessibility options for other things, hopefully at some point they add options to tone down those effects, the fact that the game would sometimes make me feel sick in pursuit of its artistic vision is one of the things I personally mark it down for.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Ghost of Yotei?
8.5
It's fun, pretty, and very cinematic. But having finally finished my Lethal run to 100% an hour ago and wrapping up the plat, it's a great game that nonetheless carries a few flaws - largely little frustrations where that cinematic aim has clashed with the feel of the gameplay, and for the most part inherited directly from GoT.
Re: Borderlands 4 (PS5) - A Chaotic Return That Shoots Straight, Even if Its Performance Stutters
@captainsandman Part of the issue with it is that it seems many of the performance problems are coming from a memory leak. If you play for shorter sessions, you really won't notice many FPS drops unless there's a lot going on and/or you're playing in co-op. If you play for more than a few hours in one sitting, though, things start to degrade pretty quickly from that point with Performance mode eventually dropping from a fairly steady 60 to 30 FPS or lower.
(Base PS5 here, for reference.)
Re: Borderlands 4 Dev 'Exploring' FOV Sliders on PS5 Following Player Feedback
@SodaPop6548 Eh, one of my friends is putting off playing it because the low FOV sets off her motion sickness. It may seem like a silly focal point from your perspective (and, honestly, I wouldn't have thought about that either) but it can be a legitimate make or break issue for some.
Re: Controversial Genshin Impact Update Allows Whales to Break the Level Cap, Here Are the Redemption Codes
Hmm, in Genshin and the many clone-ish gachas that it spawned, the last 10 levels were always much less impactful an investment than an optimised weapon/relic set (or whaling a character to C6) so I can only really see this as making the final tiers of the rotating challenge battles marginally easier for those with more money than sense, but still
Oof, not a great look.
Re: Rumour: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Publisher Plans to Back Down from Crap DLC Decision
Paradox, walk back on DLC? Only if the sun refuses to rise in the morning.
Re: Remember Acclaim? Well, It's Back in More Than Just Pog Form
I don't personally see a brand revived after 20 years by people with no connection whatsoever to the origin beyond the rights and unwanted IPs that they bought as an 'it's back' scenario, but whatever.
We'll see quite quickly if the new "Acclaim" actually have anything to offer, or if they're banking almost purely on nostalgia (bought dirt-cheap).
Re: American and Euro Truck Simulator PS5 Leak Confirms Series Is Finally Speeding to PlayStation
Fantastic news. Star Trucker scratched the itch to an extent, but also left me thinking anew 'man, I just want console Truck Sim'.
Re: Konami 'Forgiven' for Dropping Metal Gear Solid Voice Lead in Fifth Game
@johncalmc I wouldn't necessarily say it was poorer for Keither's casting, his voice acting in the role was pretty good.
...Though it certainly would've been nice if he'd had more than what felt like a few minutes of voice acting across the entire length of the game. Compared to every other iteration - and even forwards to Sam Stranding - Venom may as well have been a silent protagonist for how little he actually spoke.
Re: Don't Believe the Speculation About PS5's Fairgames Getting Cancelled
Sounds like unfounded speculation on his part, but frankly I wouldn't at all be surprised if it was penned for cancellation at this point. The writing was on the wall in many ways the moment Raymond jumped ship; the reports were that she left in the wake of/response to negative feedback from playtesting... but as the founder of the studio and the project, the fact that she would respond like that rather than stick around and try to address and improve on the criticism was a huge red flag. It would appear that she had very little investment and/or faith in the game and its prospects, which is never a good sign from the person who had spearheaded it in the first place.
Re: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Patch 1.4.0 Brings Battle Retry, Better UI, Teases 'More to Come'
At last, a button (presumably) to quick-retry that boss' second phase without burning through the first - maybe I can go back and try it with a non-OHKO build and actually have a chance to learn the parry timings now. xD
Re: Monster Hunter Wilds Endgame Expansion and Weapon Balance Update Pushed Forward
I wish they'd stop messing with the weapons every update, personally. Pull up what's underperforming once in a blue moon, sure, but the see-saw of buffs and debuffs is getting excessive. It reminds me of the fiasco with Helldivers 2 a few months after release - it's a PvE game, not a competitive one, it doesn't need such heavy-handed balancing. Hell, it doesn't need to be 'balanced' at all; every game before World had weapons that came out as the firm meta, but most people still just played the weapons that they liked.
Just let people have fun with your game instead of trying to convince them to use less of this attack or mode and more of that one, etc.
Re: PS5 Fans Getting 'Really Carried Away' with Job Listing Which Implied More Exclusives Could Be Ported to Xbox, Switch
As I've said before, I'm all for it - I stick to PS for a mix of the console aesthetics, interface, mutual friends on the platform and attachment to my trophy list and back catalogue.
Hell, the only reason I moved to PS4 after the 360 was that I didn't like where XBox went with the first two... well, that and having had to replace said 360 several times due to RRoD, if there's one way to make sure that noone ever buys your products again it's releasing one with a major flaw that can brick it on a whim.
I'm not going to up and change console just because there are fewer permanent exclusives; if Sony want to expand into the other console markets as they've been doing with PC, even if on their end it's just for the pursuit of more profit, I'm down for it. As long as they have a sustainable business plan for it that isn't going to damage the company in the long run, for us as gamers it's a win-win. I can't see Nintendo ever fully jumping on the ship, I expect they'll stick to the occasional mobile spinoff or such, but more games exchanged between Sony and MS isn't a bad thing.
Re: 'By Every Objective Measure, We're Thriving': Microsoft CEO Expresses Gratitude to All Those Laid Off
Oof.
Our daily reminder that, as much as execs like Spencer would like to tell us that they're in the business for the people, these businesses will only ever truly care about one thing - keeping shareholders happy with ever-increasing profit and dividends, whatever the human cost, and marching onwards to their inevitable, eventual collapse from seeking infinite growth in a finite market.
Re: Official Ghost of Yotei Popcorn Bucket Triggers Tedious Takes on PS5 Exclusives
Look, I enjoy Sony's narrative single player output - and am firmly of the "ditch the live service push and stick to what you're good at" camp - but I can still chuckle at those memes. They're not 'bad takes', they're JOKES. If you genuinely find them 'irritating' (though let's be real, you don't, you're just trying to play up drama for kicks/clicks) you need to touch grass.
Re: Poll: Are You Sold on Ghost of Yotei?
Yes - though I certainly hope that Lethal Mode is in the game at launch this time. It's a great example of a risk/reward difficulty, and I wish more games would play around with settings that buff both the player and their enemies rather than simply turning the opposition into hard-hitting health sponges. I picked it up halfway through the game after coming back to it a year or so after launch and it was such a fun way to play.
Re: More Red Dead Redemption 2 PS5 Port Speculation Emerges
Push "mistakes aren't meant to be learnt from" Square
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Death Stranding 2?
8.5/10, for me. The gameplay is what keeps me hooked, I like the courier-sim side of it, building infrastructure and the improved combat mechanics... but holy hell, the story and writing is a pile of hot garbage, though I went in expecting that and at least the cutscenes look great and are well delivered by the cast.
Between the movement changes and frontloading of vehicles and formerly mid/late-game options from before it also loses a lot of the challenge in navigating terrain - I lived on ladders and anchors in DS1, here I can count the number I've used combined on one hand - but I won't dock it points there.
Re: BioWare Flop ANTHEM Dies January 2026, Servers to Be Turned Off
Like some others I assumed they'd shut it down a looong time ago given that they killed off post-launch updates so quickly. It's a shame, honestly, that they left it in that state. Beyond the story, extremely barebones endgame, and the false-promised features from the infamous "gameplay" reveal, the game could be really fun when the combat and traversal were allowed to shine.
In an ideal world, it would have been developed properly from the outset, but if they'd actually gone ahead with their promised revamp and put the time and resources into fixing it ala NMS and Cyberpunk, it had the same potential to actually turn into something good. But instead, it's just ended up as one of the countless mass of 'nah, cut and run' games... and hey, at least EA didn't end support for it early and then rerelease it on a new platform in its unfinished, never-to-be-finished state, looking at you Wild Hearts.
Re: Reaction: Helldivers 2 on Xbox Signals Another Unexpected But Not Overly Surprising Shift in Strategy from Sony
You can certainly see the logic - as a runaway success that's already made orders of magnitude more for Sony/Arrowhead than they ever could have expected before launch, there's not a lot of risk in throwing it at the wall next to Gamepass and seeing if it sticks. If there's a game that they can sell well on Xbox, this is it... but if they can't, it can rest as a fairly safe test of the water.
And I'm all for Sony porting more games over there as Microsoft port more over here - exclusivity is overrated, whatever the platform. Both sides are still going to keep their headliners to themselves, or at least for with timed exclusivity, but sharing the rest and letting people access more games without needing to think about buying a second or third console... yeah. Positive.
Re: What the Hell Has Happened to Call of Duty?
At last, we approach the bottom of that long, slippery slope from goofy 'hey, you want bacon on your gun? go for it' weapon skins. I don't think any of us would have predicted the end result being... this, though. I haven't touched a CoD in years as it hit my personal tackiness threshold looong ago, but man, the thought of having to play with or against people in a Beavis or Butthead skin in a what was once a fairly straight-laced shooter is just... oof.
Re: Remedy 'Super-Motivated' to Improve FBC: Firebreak As It Passes 1 Million Players
I can still quiet safely say that, despite the Welcome Hub reminding me each time I boot up that I can download it as part of PS+... I just have no impulse to. The charm of control for me was both the exploration of the Oldest House - the atmosphere and that dark satire in all the notes, letters and videos scattered around - and in the light power fantasy of the gameplay; having pseudo-superpowers but not being super enough that enemies weren't a threat. Alan Wake 2 had... serviceable gunplay at best, but really went hard on the atmosphere and character.
Firebreak doesn't really seem to tick any of those boxes, or really play to any of Remedy's strengths, it doesn't promise anything that I can really immerse myself in, so... nah.
Re: Hot Shots Golf Fans Fume at Use of Generative AI in PS5 Revival
From my memories at university of everyone on the Games Arts track complaining if they got stuck on Tree Modelling/Texturing Duty for a group project... yeah, no, I get it. It's long been the realm of 'oh please god not this' shortcuts and plugins, so of all the uses of AI in game development, this is one that is a very logical fit. Especially if your trees are simple background fillers rather than a core part of a scene.
Re: PS5's AI Slop Shovelware Has Hit a New Low
What baffles me is how some of them are ending up front of house on the deals banner. When I glanced at the storefront last week (passing through to buy Wizard of Legend 2 and Star Trucker) I saw no less than 3 or 4 'Hentai <insert genre>' games on the front page . It should be embarrassing enough that such minimal effort slop is in the back somewhere, or when it floods the New Releases page (along with preorders which don't belong there either) why on earth are they letting it show up front and center?
Re: Bungie Delays Marathon Indefinitely, No New PS5, PC Release Date Given
"More time to reflect player passion."
Translation; there isn't any. Concord was DoA, but with everything going on with Marathon and Fairgames, lord alive, they're dying long before arrival.
Re: 'The Story Is Weak': Stellar Blade Dev Acknowledges PS5, PC Fave's Biggest Flaw
Honestly, beyond the hit-or-miss writing of the main story, it would've been nice if a number of the sidestory threads actually had a conclusion instead of implying that they're building up to something over the course of the game and then just... fizzling out. Playing through it again at the moment, I had to laugh a bit at several bits of post quest dialogue of "we'll get to the bottom of this" or "you'll know when the time is right", and remembering very clearly from that first 100% run that those points were NEVER resolved (even if the actual answer for them was quite predictable).
Re: Borderlands 4 Boss Writes Grovelling Apology for Implying 'Real Fans' Will Pay $80 for PS5 Game
Pitchford alone is my main reason for having decided years ago to never buy another Gearbox-developed game unless it's HEAVILY discounted. The guy is just a total, unapologetic *****.
Re: Helldivers 2 Fights Back on the Streets of Super Earth in Major PS5, PC Update
@UltimateOtaku91 Plenty of them do depend on player impact, but... well, ultimately they can't really push the story in too many interesting directions if the players always win. This one was probably the most veeery clearly telegraphed one yet - there was no way to take back the planets as they fell, the enemy fleet effectively acted as a 'hp bar' that blocked defensive progress and was barely dented in the first day or two, so it was a pretty clear case of 'here are the new enemy types and some time to get used to them while we play out the opening act'.
I do have the occasional gripes with the Major Orders they set out that are achievable but only barely, to the point that if the community at large doesn't focus on the right planets from the very beginning they quickly become impossible, but these ones... these I'm fine with.
Re: Internal Death Stranding 2 Reviews Are Tracking Much Higher Than the First Game, But Kojima Isn't Pleased
I am happy to help, then; it certainly doesn't appeal to me. I loved the PS2 Metal Gear Solids, but for the solid gameplay of his 'independent' work, I just can't stand the suffocating, self-indulgent, egotist theatre of the presentation.
Re: Square Enix Demands Bigger Games, Faster Development as Sales Continue to Slump
Sounds like the execs have completely lost the plot. Their problem lately, as with so many other publishers, is that they're spending so much on their flashy AAA titles that they need chart-topping sales (and then some) to turn a profit. Or, rather, enough profit and dividends to satisfy their shareholders. They'll be quick to find that trying to mill those games out faster and make them even bigger and flashier isn't going to fix that issue, at all.
Re: Helldivers 2 Continues to Be Sony's Most Successful Live Service by a Mile
I'm pretty excited to jump back in and try out the weapon modification system, I was really hoping they were teasing something like that when the last Warbond's splash art showed the included weapons without their attachments. Having the Superstore just have everything available at all times same as the Warbonds is a welcome change too, no more pressure to farm Super Credits to buy everything up when they launch a new item set. Sounds good all round, with the new enemies as a cherry on top.
Re: Expedition 33 Update Now Available on PS5, Nerfs Maelle's Broken Attack and More
I shamelessly finished my one-shot kill build for the ultimate boss before patching, I got so fed up of fighting his first phase for a few minutes before getting wiped by attacks that I just wasn't seeing enough to learn the parry timing... so I gave in. Still, she could hit with it for over 100 million, so even reducing the damage by 40% and fixing the sword that unintentionally doubled it... it should in theory still be able to hit for over 30 million with even a slightly-optimised engame build, so it can still kill almost anything in one hit. Just not that git.
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Clair Obscur: Expedition 33?
9, albeit from a 'nothing is a 10, there's always room for improvement' standpoint. Currently sweeping through the optional endgame areas and bosses one at a time before finishing up the story, and the experience at large has been phenomenal - they've done a great job of taking inspiration from other games on the gameplay front (a bit of FF10 and 9 mixed with Sekiro-esque rhythm parrying) while making it their own, and storytelling that has a raw emotional weight to it - both from the writing, and the solid casting and voice direction - even when a story beat itself is predictable. It blows a lot of recent heavyweight AAA games out of the water, and for a project by a relatively small team and a 4-ish year dev cycle... that's incredibly impressive.
Re: GTA 6 Delayed to 2026, Out on 26th May 2026
Thank goodness, with that we can expect a brief reprieve of "Everything we know about GTA6" filler articles. For a few months, if nothing more, right?
...Right?
Re: As Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Passes 2 Million Players, Ubisoft Teases More to Come
Disbands the dev team despite critical success. Rubs a sales milestone in their faces months later. Reaaaal classy.
Re: EA Confirms Heavy Layoffs, Titanfall Game Cancelled
Damn, that many in one fell swoop? I guess EA has been feeling salty at other publishers snatching away its 'Industry's Worst' crown in recent years and wants to get back in on the action.
Re: Team Up with Hondo in Star Wars Outlaws: A Pirate's Fortune DLC, Arriving Next Month
I was reading the post on the Star Wars official site earlier going on about the famous Hondo this, legendary Hondo that, and as someone who was really into the old Star Wars ("Legends") fiction but rarely found any appeal in Clone Wars or the sometimes-good-but-often-awful Disneyverse canon that followed, it just kept leaving me asking... who?
I own Outlaws - and enjoyed it and Wild Card despite their flaws - but this expansion is clearly not going to be as much up my alley
Re: Poll: Are You Planning to Buy Bungie's Marathon?
Not for me, I enjoy single player extraction games (Zero Sievert and Witchfire on console when) but I loathe the idea of playing them with other people even more than run-of-the-mill competitive multiplayer. As to its success... eh, hard to say, the Bungie name and slim competition in the genre should serve it well on console, but it may be a harder sell on PC with some well-established IPs there, and with that slim character/map count to open with their longevity is going to depend very heavily on how well the inter-run experience is designed and on post-launch support.
Re: PS5 Pro Version of Assassin's Creed Shadows Rivals Ultra High-End PCs, Says Ubisoft
"rivals ultra-high-end PC gaming"
"40fps Balanced Mode"
Look, I vastly prefer playing on a console to building and maintaining an expensive gaming rig, but that is some laughably innacurate PR bullcrap.
Re: Monster Hunter Wilds' Limited Time Quests Are Being Completely Ruined By Cheaters
It still baffles me that they went for a leaderboard reward instead of just giving out pendants for C/B/A ranks, honestly. Monster Hunter has always had some issues on the online side of the occasional idiots ruining the experience with a save editor, why they didn't anticipate this going completely tits-up is beyond me.
And now the majority of people who 'earn' the reward, if not all of them, are people who would've just edited it in to their inventory anyway.
Hopefully, Capcom either ban the offending accounts as they've said they will and issue a complete reset of the leaderboards, remove the top 10k requirement, or in the best of worlds do both.
Re: Embrace the Ghoul Within with Fallout 76's Latest Update on PS4
Eh, unless/until they release a native PS5 version, I can't see myself ever returning to 76. The game demanding nearly 100GB of free space whenever it needs to download even a small patch, that fun little wrinkle of PS4 versions, is just profoundly irritating for a live product.
Re: Helldivers 2 Delivers Borderline Justice in Upcoming Warbond, New Update Available Now on PS5
People comparing it to The Mandalorian.
Me, seeing it tickle my Fettish.
(I'm personally quite curious about the weapons both having sights/scopes, but appearing without them in the splash art - fingers crossed hoping that this means we might have weapon (module) customisation rolled out in the near future)
Re: Poll: So, Is Monster Hunter Wilds 'Too Easy'?
Simple answer, no.
Slightly longer answer, the early game is definitely substantially easier in every regard, from monster damage to crafting requirements, but the meat of the game in high rank - where they expect people to really get into things - is right as it should be. The (currently) highest-threat version of monsters are certainly no pushover, with the highest-threat Tempered versions often requiring you to really lock in as one major mistake can cart you.