cuttlefishjones

Will the updates actually make this a good game?

One that doesn't feel like it was developed in early 2000's, left on a shelf for 25 years before being dusted off, given some fancy graphics, and launched as new? No? Then I'll just live with the buyers remorse I have for the PC version. This game is not even mid.

Now we know first hand how the human race reacted when they encountered their first steam engine. Maybe we can all chuck our shoes in there to see if it chokes the machine?

The how is more important than the why as always.

Bought it on Steam. It's a waste of time, I get nothing but constant crashes and what I have seen in between those is not much better than the original.

Just nicer graphics with absolutely every single one of UE5s worst issues dialled to the max. Stutter, shader issues, crashes, you name it.

After the u-bend blockage that was Avowed I was hoping that Obsidian would have improved a bit. But no, they're still stuck in the '00s for game design

Refund requested.

The only problem with running a poll on a gaming centred forum is that the Tik Tok people won't be here. They're too busy developing psychological issues from the constant stream of cognitive dissonance they subject themselves to on a daily basis.

I think the results here may be a little biased!

I still have my OG Xbox wired up so that I can play Halo in its original form. Definately will be picking this up on my Pro.

They should bring back Home . I'm all up for the Ready Player One unified world for all games now. Why not have a single avatar that you use in every game, instead of creating new ones each time.

I wonder when MS will start loading their games with adverts for GP; trying to tempt players from other platforms to sell their soul to them?

They should give you the same options you got with the ME remake; an option to pick either the enhanced or original mode.

@Propaperpusher - Yeah but MS and Xbox are on the way out now so that should be fixed soon....

Wonder what performance hit the power save mode has?

The T-Rex demo and the Manta Ray. Those were the days

After that steaming dump they took, called Avowed, I think I will wait until the none main stream press reviews come in before I risk this one. I loved the original Outerworlds, it was a blast to play and very amusing.

I wonder how many people they'll have to fire to make the numbers look good next quarter?

I stuck a Nannino PS5 Pro Cooling Fan on mine and that really does seem to help. It's a bit noisy though, but I did a mutlti hour session on the first decendant and DS2 the other day and didn't have any problems. Could have baked a potato with the heat coming from the fans though!!

He's gone into like a classical sculpture, with a tinge of renaissance artist, mixed with a lesson in basic anatomy and a basic overview of the heterogeneity of the human form.

Not bad for a game dev from Korea . Though it's a shame that exhibiting an iota of education gets dumped on by the contextually challenged amongst us.

In dog we trust.

@Max_the_German - apart from they could up the ray tracing to way beyond what it currently supports all the while having a higher resolution and PSSR support. That would have a very obvious, positive, impact on the visual quality without too much impact on performance.

I do use it on a fairly regular basis, but on my PC - the choice and quality of game is just better on that platform.

Though I did like HZD:CotM and Arizona Sunshine they can't compete with products like Half Life Alyx.

Looks like there may be a danger of tencent gaining ownership of Shiftup. They already own ~30%. Sony should get in there first.

If MS succeed with Games Pass then it will be the death of the games industry. You'll end up with some cheap ass AI slop with every release on your expensive subscription because that's all the few studio left will be able to afford.

I think the only way for the industry to co-exist with devaluation services like GP is, as the guy says, for games to only appear on there a year or two after they have launched.

@Ooccoo_Jr - It's 12% of the 1000+ people who responded which is 120+ people. Still 120+ more sales than the launch price point deserves.

Xbox aren't bothered.

They, and their parent company, were never about games anyway. It's all about forcing the market into using their ecosystem so that they have control and all the money flows their way.

It going to be tough on the outer worlds, which would have been a day one purchase for me, but this is just too expensive to justify.

Looks good, but then Avowed looked good as well but when it arrived it was definitely weak sauce. Hopefully because they were focusing on this. But it's still not worth £70, maybe something like Calir Obscur is worth that but not this.

None of the gameplays is new either, it's all been done to death in other games before, from Ratchet and Clank weapons to Warframe Octavia death by music.

But I guess it's in M$'s interest in, putting people off buying it, if that drives Gamepass subscriptions.

They say this is just a tech demo, to show what they are building the world with. But even so, this running at 60fps with RT, though how much RT was going on in the world? Maybe shadows?, on a base PS5 is pretty impressive. Draw distance, seamless LOD, it's like voodoo

What I really hope is that they craft a world that feels as alive and present as the Witcher 3 does. Even if it means dialing the eye candy back a notch or two. An open world that is just static, like a few recent games, is just pointless, it has to live and breath around you to make the magic happen.

It played very much like Hellblade - graphics were incredible at that time, especially on the PS4. But it was over reliant on QTEs for the most part, broken up by cover based shooting sections.

The story was good though, emotive, the voice acting and writing made it compelling from that viewpoint. And some of the set pieces were really good. Still remember the first encounter with the werewolf to this day.

Overall it was a good starting point for a trilogy, further games could have expanded the gameplay signiifcantly; were they given the time to develop them. As I recall this took too long to get market anyway as the devs were a little over ambitious.

Also the enviroment into which it launched was a little acidic at the time, the PS4 was absolutely destroying the Xbox, after their brief period at the top with the 360, and mainstream reviewers always seemed to be harsher on PS4 games than their Xbox counterparts.

@MrPeanutbutterz - I think you answered your own question there, the clues in the 'tit'illation...

But other than that, and the super unrealistic clothing choices for high octane combat situations, the game itself is fantastic, great combat, good exploration, fantastic boss battles.

If you ignore the obvious points, concentrate on the cleavage of enemies in twain, Behave in a firm but(t) fair way with NPCs, and explore every crack, and crevice, you can on the map I'm sure you'd have a great time!

I always thought there was more to the policy of MS buying up game studios, other than to try and starve the competition, and now; with all the talk about game prices rising to $80+ I can see another angle they will be using to monopolise the gaming market.

By owning the most studios and by forcing game prices upwards they can force a migration of people to GamePass - and starve the competition that way. After all it's in their best interest to price gamers out of the free market into their walled garden so they can raise subscription fees as they see fit and ensure no-one ever owns more than a license again. Once people are in they are trapped, no GP - no games. Tough luck.

In this way it is a real shame that the FTC lost this case, MS must be sighing with relief. After all they really need the numbers to make GP an actual workable proposition in the long run. Once they have the lions share they can start dictating prices to developers and publishers and make sure they cut any competition out.

The core gameplay loop was always its weakest point, the combat was not very inspired and there was no real depth to the way you could combine signs with combat that didn't just become formulaic.

But where it always exceled, and still does for me, is in the depth; and craft, displayed by its world building. The emotion and complexity of even the simplest of quests, rising to the grand spectacle of the larger story quest (the bloody baron was inspired). And on top of that the sense of solidness; of being in the world, how alive it felt. Whether standing in the bustling streets of Oxenfurt or Novigrad or just sat on Roach atop a grassy hill watching the sunset; there have been so very few games that have ever matched that sense of being.

I think it is one of the modern gaming masterpieces that shoud be held as a gold standard to world design and it should be celebrated as such.

I already have a PS5 Pro (and my OG PS5 which I am selling) and a Portal. So I am satisfied with my setup

Playing this again after all the years have passed makes me look at games like Avowed and wonder how did we regress so much with games and their designs.

It also make me think that reviews should do more comparisons between new games and those that came before them but I guess that won't happen as it'll just make new games look bad all the time...

Pre-ordered even though I own the PS4 version on disc. Played a bit today and there are some noticable differences in visuals and overall framerate etc. But beyond that its identical to the original, though the new horde mode looks like fun. Having seen what a re-mastered game looks like with Oblivion (I bought that on PC) it does feel like they cheaped out here.

Really wish they'd put the effort into a sequel rather than this. It was the most refreshing take on the zombie genre I'd played for quite a while. Maybe their next game should be a zombie cross over with Ghost of Yotei - The Thousand Petal'd Corpse or something...

Whispers in moonlight,
Petals drift on silent graves,
Swords clash, undead fight

Imagine how big games would be without the Kraken compression block in the console!

But this growth in the size of games is the reason I put an extra 4TB WD Black in my PS5 Pro when I upgraded.

I'm having a load of fun with this, a weird cross between a quatermass movie and a john wyndham novel (maybe a touch of nicholas fisk in there too) - just digging the 'triffids'. Also love the amount of easter eggs they've hidden away in it (always check behind the waterfalls!). It was a bit bewildering and slow to get going, with a peculiar use of regional accents in the mix adding to the confusion, but once you find your stride it really is quite entertaining. And nice to see a British studio deliver a polished product in a British setting, makes a nice change!

Got it on the PC and completed the game loop a couple of times. It's just not much fun to be honest, Skyrim, Fallout they were fun rpgs. Starfailed is just not in the same league. It was no big loss it didn't arrive on PS when it launched, and we're not missing anything if get delayed now.

@SMJ - I caught your dummy. You can have it back now.

But nice to know you admit to being wrong, even if you do so by making yourself out to be an uncultured child.

@SMJ - You don't actually know who Gas Powered Games were do you? I'd suggest doing a bit of research before leaping to the defence of something you obviously know nothing about.

Besides I stand by my opinion. I've been gaming since I got my first VCS2600 (which I still have). These are all things I have lived through, not just looked up on Wikipedia or asked an AI about. But I'd start there if I were you. It might help.

@SMJ - you mean publishing games? Like the old gas powered games? They didn't own any studios back then.

It's only since they've decided to buy studios that they've managed to turn their output into corporate dross and it'll only get worse as the weight of their corporate structure buries any creativity that the teams may have.

I've completed a couple of loops on the PC version. It's definitely nothing to get excited about, at best it's OK and that's being generous. If it was system seller then I feel sorry for the players who must be so starved of decent games they flocked to this.

Being bought by Microsoft is like a dell knell for developers. So far every studio they've bought have failed to produce anything better than they did before they were bought. They all seem to have gone backwards for the most part, Bethesda and Starfailed which was, or is, just OK at best and not as good as Skyrim, Obsidian and Avowed, that's OK but nowhere near as good as the Outer Worlds. It's just a reinterpretation of Greedfall with shiny graphics.
They just don't get gaming and never will.

@EfYI lol. Sparsity is a way of reducing the volume of data that you feed into the AI model. In this case areas of the image that have lots of similar data e.g. all black section. shouldn't need processing the same way that areas with a higher density of information do and so can be left out of the data sent to the model. It can be reconstructed via cheaper methods. Which is why I was puzzled as to why sparsity is not considered useful for this.

I don't quite get why sparsity is not useful for this kind of upscaling? Surely there are areas of uniformity that can be culled prior to processing? Does anyone know of any good white papers that cover this?

You can only hope that Valve get SteamOS released in a platform agnostic version way before MS get into the market. Otherwise that'lll be another one dragged down by the sheer weight of corporate sludge.

Never played a monster hunter game before so I thought I'd give this one a go. Now I just need to get my Phd in understanding how to play it It's like 'get thingy a, add it b, press x, o, x, x, x, now tap R2 with a radish and close your eyes. Using a harmonica calculate the square root of minus one, subtract that from an apple.' OK. Done that, what does it do?... Gets you to the next menu item.

I jumped onboard when they launched and I haven't looked back. I use it more than I directly use my Pro now. The only gripe I have is that it should have come with an OLED screen even if that impacted the running time.

I think a perfect example of a good AA game that I have played recently is Eternal Strands. That game was just the right length for its price. And it was a bucket load of fun as well.

I'll buy it again for full price. Only in the, probably, vain hope that if enough people do that they'll start work on a sequel!!

Cool. Needed some new wallpaper.

If Xbox release any new hardware then it will be for the handheld segment that has become so active since Valve released the Steamdeck. I bet they will be desperate to take over this market before Valve get any more traction with SteamOS, because if they do then MS will get locked out of the market the same way they were with Mobile. And to do that they have to ditch Windows as we know it and make a gaming friendly OS that is suitable for low power devices.

And if Valve go platform agnostic before MS can move then they will have eaten the Xbox lunch, and if Steam were ever to offer a subscription tier that allowed access to free games in some form then Gamepass would also be on the ropes.

Maybe this is the panacea to the ever spiralling costs for game development. Just like AI frame generation and reconstructon are the future of rendering?

The 1.5 million figure for veilguard isn't the number of slaes though, it's the number of player engagements. If it was sales they would have said so explicitly. Basically they've counted anyone who started the game via any means. It doesn't take into account refunds etc. I'm betting the actual number of copies in the hands of players that actually paid for it are well south of that number.
Besides Anthem was a glorious success compared to this; 2 million copies sold in its first week. This is now 3 big fails for Bioware and it all rests on ME5 being a product that doesn't crap all over its heritage.