johncalmc

I played this for a bit and quite liked it but this always felt really stingy to me in terms of unlocking characters. Way too much currency required only to unlock a rubbish one. Kinda got bored of it.

See, everyone thinks Naughty Dog is the woke studio, but really they just didn't have time to give her hair.

Should be illegal to port a game without trophies in 2025.

I was never excited for this because I don't care about fighting games, but it's not surprising. Going four-on-four really dictates that there should be a huge roster to avoid repetition, and even I'm bored of each look at it showing off the same few people. It also seems unwise to try and cater to casuals and hardcore in a genre like this. Maybe they'll manage it, but it seems regardless of what they do they'll fail at appeasing one or both groups.

Still, wait and see I guess. Maybe they'll announce another character at some point.

I think this looks really cool. I don't really play racing games but they've absolutely nailed the vibe. Might be tempted to give it a go!

It'll probably do okay because the Bungie name still means something to people for some reason. I don't have particularly high hopes for it but who knows? Maybe they'll land the plane.

I don't play games like this so it's of no consequence to me really.

I was really surprised by how much I liked Stellar Blade. I actually listen to the soundtrack all the time. Great music, great vibes, love the aesthetic. Gotta play it in Korean though. The english voice acting does it no favours.

I can picture the meeting at Crystal Dynamics HQ now.

"How do we evolve Lara Croft? How do we take this iconic character and bring her to 2026, make her the sort of character that really resonates with what the culture is feeling today?"

"Pre-order bonus swimsuit?"

I find this game tough to go back to after Baldur's Gate 3 but it's still an excellent RPG. Baldur's Gate 3 just has more of what I want - talking to companions, cut-scenes, better character creator etc. I'm probably due another playthrough though. Why not?

I propose drawing a robot with an elephant's trunk for an arm and we'll name him Trunk Man.

Didn't they announce the other stars wars old republic thing like five years ago and we've never seen it since?

I thought this looked pretty bad, honestly. But I wouldn't play it even if it was good so I'm really not the audience for this.

Unless you just came out of a twenty year coma I don't know how anyone could be truly excited by this. There's basically nothing that a free to play multiplayer shooter could do to excite me at this point. You shoot, get fleeced for cosmetics, we get it. Oh but there's horses? Who cares? The genre is the gaming equivalent of junk mail at this point.

It was alright. Seemed lighter on slop than previous years but no banger announcements and the final reveal was a massive dud. Clair Obscur cleaned up and righfully so. Pretty unsurprising overall.

I'm expecting Expedition 33 to win GOTY and this is one of the rare occasions when I don't want a surprise or an upset. It should win. If Donkey Kong or something ends up winning then Geoff Keighley is getting a lump of coal for Christmas.

Anyway, I don't know why but I'm feeling mildly optimistic about this game awards, like it might not actually be terrible. I'm gonna watch it I think. So we'll see if I regret that decision.

The Xbox magic touch.

Hopefully Xbox buys Assassin's Creed next. Let's finish that one off.

I got 3100 hours played and over 450 of them were Infinity Nikki.

I was much more into weird stats. I love the one that tells you which controller you favour. Mine is the blue one.

@Thrillho

It's not exactly this but basically this.

@Stepan I cannot recommend attempting to platinum all of the Yakuza games.

It's weird that I'd never played a Yakuza game until a few years ago. My girlfriend had talked about wanting to play the games since it looked like something she'd like and so I bought her Yakuza 0 since everyone said it was a great place to start. She started it, but stopped playing because it felt wrong starting with a prequel.

It was Judgment she ended up playing first, loved it, and then I played it. Then I bought her Kiwami and it was game over. Bought them all, played them all, platinumed them all - back to back.

Now we have a photo of Kiryu and Majima in our living room where most people would have a photo of family members.

When I got the platinum in this game it took me like eight hours to do the finale puzzle - the randomised one. It melted my brain. My girlfriend kept coming in every now and again to see me sitting on the edge of my seat, beads of sweat on my brow, intense concentration followed by utter dejection on my face.

Eventually I got it, cheered like I'd scored the winning goal in the world cup final, and all was right in the world.

One day later I received a message on PSN asking for help on the puzzle, so I spent however long it takes to write a detailed message using the PS4 controller explaining how I approached the puzzle and what to watch out for. I instantly got a reply back saying that no, they meant would I do it for them if they gave me their log in details, and they'd pay me $5 for it.

Pretty sure that was the day I set my PSN to offline and blocked my trophies.

Good to hear. Attempting to court a Western audience for the Yakuza series would likely be suicidal, or even if it were somehow a success it would rob the series of one of its defining character traits and would likely alienate their longtime fans.

All I need is Kiryu punching people in the face somewhere in Japan and I'll keep buying these things.

I only want two things, neither of which they're going to give us.

1. Third person mode.
2. I want to be able to wear those kick ass pink leggings/boots combo thing that the Mox lady bouncer wears when you go to the club for the first time.

Also more haircuts while I'm here.

I just don't know how hard it is to not do this. Like, I get the temptation to AI something when it's something hard. You're a small studio and you can't hire voice talent or whatever. Don't like it but I understand why you might opt to cut a corner with your back against a wall. This is a stupid advent calendar and you're sitting on decades of game making. Surely you could just throw some concept art in and it would take like four minutes.

Oh it's Diablo. That's a shame.

Final Fantasy X isn't even the best Final Fantasy X game.

I like the sequels. It would just be nice to see more new games too.

The sequels generally have been great. For me, Ghost of Yotei and Horizon Forbidden West are much better than the original games. God of War is about the same. Spider-Man I didn't like as much because I thought the story/villain in the first one was great and in the second... not so much.

But yeah, when they actually release games they're bangers generally. I could just do with more.

This kinda sucks if you haven't played 0. The new scenes pretty much objectively make the game worse.

Listen, I don't want to be crass, but what the hell is going on with the lady on the left? If you look at her proportions, then surely her right boob is like twice the size of her left one. So was this art just hastily thrown together with the mandate that they simply must get both of her boobs into the picture regardless of basic physiology, or when the game comes out is this lady going to be wildly asymmetrical? These are the questions that we need answering.

I've got them all digitally I think. Definitely Kiwami and Kiwami 2. To be honest I was expecting to buy all three again so this is pretty good.

Look, the only thing I care about here is the PS5 versions having their own trophy lists. And of course, wondering whether - since 0 Director's Cut is technically a new game - whether the trophy list will be different to the original Yakuza 0.

Either way I'll be getting three new Yakuza platinums, but I do hope the Yakuza 0 one is more like a new Yakuza trophy list and less like the original. Having flashbacks to playing Mahjong for eight hours straight.

I know it's well worn ground at this point, but that dude getting on stage like the big cheese and badmouthing samey, tedious FPS games before announcing a battle royale that immediately imploded will never not be funny.

Depends how you judge it. If for some reason you judge it based on first party exclusives then it's a trainwreck. Personally, I judge it based on "what can I play on it" and in that regard it's a 10. So many great games. So many great PS4 games. Some PS1 and PS2 games. Ports, remasters. I could never own another console and not run out of things to play. It's delightful. Looks hideous, but I'll let that slide.

I'm not sure anybody thought this was going to be good.

Desperately need the stats on how many of those purchases were for filth mods.

I'm still playing Infinity Nikki. I like it a lot. Got the platinum and everything. Looking forward to this.

Oh good. I really liked Stellar Blade. It was one of those games that seemed to land right in the sweet spot of my interests - mainly loads of cosmetic options, a banging soundtrack, and hitting things with a sword real good.

Those kids need their parents to buy them a Yakuza game for Christmas.

Thanks to this I have discovered that I have played Infinity Nikki 431 times.

Horizon is probably my favourite PlayStation first party series, honestly. I think the story is great, I like Aloy and her mates, the world is fun, it plays fun. I'm into it.

I get why some people aren't. It's very much just a polished checky box Ubisoft game but with actual good gameplay. And if you're not into open world pish then okay.

It does attract an abnormal number of weirdos desperate to pull it to bits at any opportunity though. It's like I get it, you don't like it, Aloy has small hairs on her face so the game is woke or whatever, but just don't play it. Doesn't seem hard.

Anyway, those sales figures are why Horizon is pushed by PlayStation. It's much more fun to imagine some sort of Hermen Hulst led cabal pulling the strings behind the scenes to shove the series down our throats as the kids love to say, but the reality is, it sells so they're selling it.

I don't need much encouragement to redownload Dragon's Dogma 2 and play it again. A few new haircuts and fancy outfits would probably do it. Full expansion preferable.

That's annoying. I just played it.

$69 billion dollars :'D

Call of Duty finally feeling that Xbox magic.

Largely predictable lists. Also I think it's been pretty obvious since it came out that Expedition 33 is going to clean up. It hit in a way few games do. Even ones with higer metacritics or more sales. It's a game people talk about. You can imagine fanfictions and cosplay. It's got the sauce.

The problem with trying to do this in anything other than animation is that Nintendo has never made a realistic looking Zelda game and so seeing this now is super jarring. It doesn't look like any iteration of the franchise. It's weird.

Fallout and The Last of Us work - in part - because they look like the games just with real people. This looks like when you see a cosplayer doing a photoshoot in a field with plastic swords.

I played the first hour of it. It's alright. Really janky but in a kinda charming way.

All that money. One of the biggest games in the world. And they can't at least have someone cast their eye over non-art to make sure the idiot A.I. didn't accidentally give someone six fingers? Prime the EMP. Just end it.

Firmly in the don't care either way camp. I'm not going to play mobile games. These aren't going to change that. And while I was actually interested in the Horizon MMO previously, even if it comes to PS5 I'm way less interested now knowing it's a mobile game. I'm just not the audience for this.

Yesterday they announce a PlayStation franchise's new game isn't coming to PlayStation.

Today they announce it's riddled with AI.

Tomorrow... they announce it's in the Epstein files?

One episode a week. What is this? 1993?

Let me watch them all in a weekend in my pjs with loads of snacks as God intended.