johncalmc

Man they're really Deathlooping this one

This sucks because a) it means he's not making a game himself, and b) "guiding the long term vision of the series" implies all we're getting from Santa Monica is God of War. Truly disappointing.

I thought this looked like a bit of a dud. It doesn't help that I wanted Santa Monica to do something - anything - else, but even taking the fact that I was disappointed by the leak, I felt more disappointed actually seeing it. It just looks like a slightly faster God of War with more hair.

I just want something new. Like the first time we saw Horizon. A new idea. New characters. A new story to sink our teeth into. I'm sure this will be fine but it didn't move the needle for me at all.

And I know I'm not alone in this one - what the hell is going on with the talking sword and cube? It's like they've wandered in from another game. Cringed more than once. Dreadful stuff, and actually derailed an already quite boring trailer for me.

Also, loved how they said "20 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay" for the God of War trailer, then showed bits of gameplay constantly interrupted by cutscenes.

Okay. Until Dawn 2 was probably the highlight. I don't think I've ever noped out of a game as hard as I did during the God of War trailer when the comedy talking sword and cube turned up. The rest of it was mainly new trailers for things we already know about. One of the duller State of Plays for me.

I still haven't played this. I love Civ but the swapping Civs thing sounded weird, so I've just been playing Civ VI whenever I get the urge. I guess lots of people were doing that.

This is a weird game in that the shooting isn't very good, the driving isn't very good, the story isn't very good, the villains aren't very good, the hand-to-hand combat isn't very good, and the stealth is just a really watered down version of Hitman, and yet you throw it all together and it rules.

They need to study this game in a lab. Is it just the Bond of it all? The charm? That you can't help rooting for it because it's got a plucky attitude? I don't know how they did it, but I can't think of a single better example of more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts in gaming than this. Can't wait for them to make another one.

My one prediction is the same as it always is - it'll be fine and everyone will still be mad about it.

They should make a Call of Duty where you play as an Activision employee trying to fight your way out of Activision HQ so you can go work at a studio that lets you work on anything other than Call of Duty.

Gotta do something about that lad's haircut. Not having it.

If you're Kojima, all you have to do is keep making games with characters named things like Elbowman because his tragic backstory is that he's made entirely out of elbows or whatever, do that for the next ten to fifteen, and you go down in history as one of the greatest of all time.

It's so easy. It's harder to mess that up. And yet here we are doing the AI thing, stepping on rakes.

This is one of those big disconnect months in that I can see that this is pound for pound probably a good month, but for me personally it's a terrible month as the thought of playing a multiplayer game makes me sick in my mouth.

I didn't buy Saros at launch despite how much I loved Returnal because I was half-way through another game. Unfortunately, since then, all I've heard about Saros has kinda put me off it. I'll still play it. But I don't have that urge to play it that I had when it was announced. I'm not one of those git gud people, but Returnal landed with me specifically because of how punishing it was and how hard I had to try to beat it. If Saros is as easy as I've heard, I just don't know if it's going to have the same impact for me.

I can't believe Metal Gear Solid 4 is being let out. Brilliant. I played all four MGS games back to back last year and booting up the PS3 to play 4 was a grim experience indeed. Will be happy to never do that again, and one step closer to the PS3 being put in the garage.

The whole game is excessive and tedious, why should the trophy list be any different.

The wildest part of this is that they're not already working on Destiny 3. Or another Destiny-alike. I thought Marathon was a side thing and they would be making... something. What a colossal waste of money and a nonsensical acquisition. It always was, but now it seems even worse. $3.6 billion for an extraction shooter nobody seems to care about. Astonishing.

I said this basically in a comment on the other thread about Break In, so I of course agree with this 100%. The problem we have now is that everyone hates live service, regardless of quality, regardless of how innovative something looks. Even things that look cool get obliterated online. Things that look decidedly meh like Fairgames is reported to be - they don't have a prayer.

I think companies - and by extension, people putting on shows like the Game Awards, need to understand that there is a massive disconnect in gaming. The games companies want to sell are the big live service games that make big live service money, but the games the hardcore audience wants to see are Persona 6, Final Fantasy 17, a new Resident Evil, etc.

Poor Highguard never had a chance because the people watching the Game Awards are not the people who would be playing a game like that. You're advertising McDonalds at vegan food festival.

Sony would be better off advertising games like Fairgames in other places. On TV or something, on YouTube ads, trying to catch a casual audience. Leave the State of Play to the games the people watching State of Play want to see.

Maybe they think they can get away with it because that's what Sony charges for upgrades on their own games so the userbase has been trained to accept it?

It's just going to be Fairgames again isn't it? Probably wise to rename it since everyone hated Fairgames four seconds after it was announced and everyone still hates it. I'm not sure I would put it in the State of Play even with a new name though. At this point it's probably best to announce a live service game via smoke signals or something. The more visible it is, the more furious the reaction.

Any studio making a live service shooter right now should just stop and put all of that money on a hand of blackjack at a casino. They'd have a better chance of making money.

I'll play it, but I'm not really excited about the Lord of the Rings one. I just want the next Kingdom Come. Hopefully, the LOTR game is just like Kingdom Come and you have to get washed or everyone at the Prancing Pony tells you you stink etc.

I think the problem with Plus is that it just keeps getting more expensive with nothing given in return. The service isn't getting better. It's not like there's a thing you can point to and say, "Oh this is why." In some cases a lot of people would probably argue it's getting worse, and things like the premium tier look especially ropey given the quality and cadence of the classic titles.

It's the same as everything though. Remember that thing? Well it's worse now and it costs more.

Bit weird innit? Like, what does it matter? If you want to buy an Xbox buy an Xbox. What does it matter if the games are also on PlayStation?

I get that not having exclusives hurts the brand but the brand has been in the toilet for years. At this point blind loyalty is the only thing keeping most people around, so just keep at it.

It's probably a good thing that this happened to someone internet famous. Not for him, obviously. That sucks for him. But for the larger gaming community. Sony is more likely to do something about this if he's talking about it on a podcast or a stream or whatever and making it more common knowledge. If it happened to little Timmy from Ohio nobody cares, but when there's a fella with an audience talking about it it might force action.

I care only from the perspective of any resources spent porting games to PC could be deployed elsewhere. Other than that I don't care about this. Not even nearly. I don't play PC games and I don't care if PlayStation games go there or not.

I'd probably play them again but I wouldn't say I would really excited or anything. I liked the first one more than the second one but they're both good. They're also products of their time, and the good/evil system is kinda pointless and badly implemented. I don't know. Of the IP PlayStation could revisit, I'd rank this one pretty low honestly.

I don't know how anyone is surprised by this. The biggest, most played games have been dross for years.

It was always wise for Sony to pursue a live service game or two. They just did it in the worst way, completely messed it up, and crippled their own first party output in the process. You could have thrown darts at ideas and accidentally done a better job with it than they did. Or, you know, let someone who knows what they're doing make decisions.

Live service PaRappa the Rapper incoming.

More information is good. I don't care what other people are playing really, and the games I play are unlikely to ever make a dent in this list but it's still fun to see.

It depends how you define positive, really. I generally think that we live in a great age for gaming if you consider how many great games we get and the frequency of them. We're spoiled.

PlayStation has released very little this generation and there's still not enough time to play all the great games on the PS5. I remember the PS2 days and playing the same game for months on end waiting for the next big release. Now we have to skip games to play the ones we want to play more. It's a feast.

The problem is that if you look at the industry from any other angle it's an absolute train wreck.

Mortal Kombat already solved the problem of fighting game single player modes two generations ago. Why are we not just ripping off what they did? I get that the focus is the multiplayer, but it would probably be better to just do no story, or even just have a generic, old school, arcade mode with a thirty second ending for whichever character you use when you beat the boss. Either of those would probably generate less scoffing than this.

The changes made to the story in season two are really poor but I'll still be interested to see how they wrap the whole thing up.

I'm not bothered who publishes it as long as it comes out. I was really surprised by the first Stellar Blade. Played it over Christmas and ended up beating it three times and getting the platinum. Loved it.

I've played all of these games and they're a real mixed bag. I liked the one with the soliders. Quite liked the werewolf one. The ship one was bad. Really all over the place. I'll still play this one since I like these types of games even when they're duds.

I love Rayman Legends and I love remakes and I cannot even pretend to be excited about this. It's fine as it is. Make a new Rayman. What is a remake possibly going to achieve?

"AI Artist".

Sure. I'm gonna order a pizza tonight and claim I'm a pizza chef.

Get in the sea.

Yes, it's the best game in the series. I like that they toned down how much shooting there is, it's got a better story than the other games, there's pirate treasure... the only thing I will say is that it lacks that huge moment - 2 has the train and 3 has the plane and the ship. 4 doesn't have a truly spectacular moment like those, but lots of slightly less spectacular moments.

I'm biased here because this is exactly my type of game and I loved their last game too with the guitar fella. Whatever it was called. Anyway, yeah, this is my kinda thing. I guess if it's not you can just not play it or you can be a massive baby about it online. Seems like it's an easy choice but then packets of peanuts have warnings that they contain nuts on them so that's where we're at I guess.

That's nearly three Spider-Men.

I'm not sure this remake project needs any more story adding to the existing Final Fantasy VII story. They should release a DLC to remove some of it, if anything.

I cringe every time I hear anybody speaking English in a Yakuza game. Every video I've ever seen of the English dubs make it look like bad anime, and it totally transforms the tone of the game. It makes sense to feature both languages here though.

Hopefully they've got actors that can speak both languages this time, instead of what they did in Infinite Wealth where they just had white characters speaking with obvious Japanese accents when speaking English, or in some cases, just having two voice actors for when the characters switched languages.

Surely there's no more pointless remake than a visual novel remake. Visual novel technology hasn't seen any huge improvements since the first time this was released. We're still reading and looking at pictures.

Still, I don't know why I'm complaining because I'm blatantly going to buy this. I love this game. Maybe I'll play 0 at some point which I still haven't for reasons unknown.

I keep telling my partner that I am convinced that at some point RGG will make a Yakuza 0-2 mainly because I think the name sounds really silly but also because it means they can throw in another young Kiryu and Majima story set in the big gap between 0 and 1. And of course 0 is so popular.

But we also talk about going backwards a lot and how interesting that would be. So personally, I'm thrilled that this is Yakuza -1. My only gripe is that they haven't called it Yakuza -1 because that name is even more ridiculous than Yakuza 0-2.

I'm not sure people look for what to think. I think people look for people to tell them what they already think. And this isn't a new thing. Long before YouTube and Twitch basically ruined games coverage forever people did this. Comments sections on reviews were full of people mad about review scores for games they hadn't played. They just wanted to hear that the game they wanted to be good was good.

People still do that on reviews but also with personalities. Many people will seek out YouTubers that think the same as them to reinforce and validate their own opinions. Annoyed that Xbox is in the toilet and PlayStation is king? Subscribe to the YouTuber that tells you that next year will be Xbox's year and PlayStation is gonna be toast. Annoyed that you don't want to have sex with the main character of the new blockbuster? Follow the YouTuber that moans about woke developers ruining gaming.

People just need to come to terms with reality. Like what you like. Don't care what other people think. It doesn't matter that the game you were looking forward to got a 6 on IGN. It doesn't matter if you think the latest 10/10 masterpiece is boring. Make your own mind up and stop looking for validation in online personalities.

I've still not played Starfield but I will. I too love me a Bethesda RPG. Had a blast with Oblivion when the remaster came out recently. Played many of them, and multiple times, got the platinums, etc. etc.

The big thing for me is that while Bethesda were undoubtedly the kings of this kind of game at one point, they've been overtaken, and lapped, and at this point a new Bethesda game looks fifteen years old. I'm currently playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and it's incredible how much better it looks, how much more engaging the narrative is, and how much it fills that Bethesda shaped void in my gaming life. It's a similar meal but with way more nutritional value.

There's other examples too. Cyberpunk does it but with a far more engaging world and storylines and top-tier direction, The Witcher does it with side-quests that are better than any Bethesda central storyline, I even look at games like Tainted Grail and think it looks more interesting than modern Bethesda output.

The only thing their games have going for them these days as far as I'm concerned is how cosy they feel. It's comfortable playing Skyrim or Oblivion or Fallout. It's like slipping into a warm bath for me. Maybe that's enough.

The character designs in this game are deeply upsetting.

I wouldn't say this is particularly outrageous unless it's a game set in modern day Oxford or something. If the armour looks like it belongs in the world the game is set then I don't care. I even quite like the first black one. The others less so. Really depends on the tone of the game and whether it aesthetically makes sense - is it common for people to dress like this in this world or is it just me looking like I'm going to the met gala but my uber dropped me off at a renaissance fair by accident?

I don't know. If there's normal armour options too then I don't care about this. The statements from the company are cringe though.

I care about games. Not brands, or shareholders, or my team winning. So I buy the console(s) with the games I want to play. Straightforward stuff.

It's a fantastic game.

I am also excited for this video game.