katamariUK

I'm hoping they fix the store as it's broken in yet another way now.
In certain sections, if you scroll down to a game and select it, then back out, it will reset your browsing back to the top of the list. It does it for me in the 'New Games For You' section, but probably more as I gave up trying.
For the sales that have 1000s of 'games' listed, this makes browsing and clicking on any games incredibly annoying as you have to re-scroll back down the list to the point you were originally at. Useless company that runs the store and Sony should really get someone else to maintain it.

@Robocod Same for me last night. 90% of the games in the November sale show as regular prices and is totally useless to browse. Not checked today yet. The Playstation Indies sale seems to be fine though.
My Wishlist still doesn't show all items after being broken for many, many months too. As usual, the store is barely fit for purpose.
Edit- I'm in UK.

I enjoyed what I played of Motorfest, but just fell off for some reason. It isn't bad by any measure, just very 'beige' I guess. But all of the NPCs have verbal diarrhoea and literally never shut up on the radio chatter. They will talk utter cringe nonsense for an entire race making concentration tough.
I also have Forza Horizon now, so I choose to go back to that instead as there's always something to do. From what I remember, The Crew Motorfest was a bit difficult to find new events on the map, more so than Forza Horizon.

Now a friend and I managed to figure out how to turn off crossplay and still be able to play together in a squad (both on PS5), we're enjoying it. Really awkward that it forces crossplay by default even if you're on the same system. It was awful in lobbies full of PC players who can seemingly see through walls.

@Dominator2885 I finished Stellar Blade and can't quite remember the upgrade methods, but with Wukong you are unlocking skills rather than stats. You don't lose anything on death either so the stress is much less.
I enjoyed both games very much, but Wukong is my favourite to play and look at. I wasn't a big fan of the empty desert in Stellar Blade but everything else was good.

I finished this earlier in the year and never had any issues with performance on PS5 Pro, but I have VRR on so maybe that helped?
It's an absolutely stunning game all the way to the very last battle and you truly feel like you're getting stronger throughout, despite it not having the traditional Soulslike stat upgrades. The level of polish and detail is astonishing with only a few issues here and there. A couple of optional bosses were a pain but the exploration and rewards were all worth the effort.

Please bring Castlevania back next! I always thought that Dark Souls felt like a natural progression for Castlevania with similar themes, albeit slower and more strategic.
I'd love to see remasters of the two Lords of Shadows games and include the 2D Metroidvania spin-off for good measure. With them already porting the GBA and DS games, maybe I get lucky and the next ones are the 360/PS3 titles.

Nice to see but as with the Xbox store, it will be full of bad spelling, grammar and nonsense before long. And it needs to be on the console store or most will never see the reviews. Also, still no basic info like screenshots or videos on the web store? Still pretty useless.

It amazes me that both the console and web stores are barely fit for purpose when they are the only digital storefront for Playstation. No DLC category (the amount of content I never knew about for games I may go back to is insane), no New Games category anywhere, many new games never appear in the filter by Newest Release Date or it displays a load of Just Announced titles, it crashes regularly, Wishlist has been utterly broken for months, etc. It's slightly better than it used to be on PS5 years ago, but far from perfect.

I'd love to see a site do an article about these issues to find out why Sony seemingly don't care about their store. Alternatively, Sony needs to source a different company to build their storefronts as the current one is incompetent.

Same question as above here. I own the original on disc and hope there's a significant discount for an upgrade to this version. Otherwise I'll skip for now.
Impossible Lair was really good though, apart from the impossible Impossible Lair!

Would be nice for Sony to live stream one of these for PSPlus subscribers through the dashboard somehow. Sure, it wouldn't have the same experience on screen, but it would get viewers for sure. It can be expensive/tough to get to any of the venues no matter where in the world you live.

Nintendo has been doing the 'The big-bad has kidnapped/stolen somebody/something important' since the 8-bit days and nobody complains about those wafer thin plots as it's not important if the game is good.
All games, movies and tv shows can have a similar theme but it's how they tell it that matters.

I've tried to finish Tsushima multiple times on PS4 and again on PS5 but always gave up as I found all the missions to play out the same. Not sure how I would make them better to be honest, but they all felt too similar to me with little variety. I loved the exploration and atmosphere in the world, though. Oddly, I finished and loved AC: Shadows, but still couldn't tell you why I found the missions more interesting.
Maybe I'll get this eventually just to mess with the photo mode!

A very good month, but as I own and have completed all 3, there's nothing for me sadly.

@Balosi You can get Powerdrift on the 3DS in a '3D' classics collection, I believe. No idea how it runs but I imagine it would be fine.

Watch out! Nintendo will say they invented farming next and patent it (just kidding!)

I've been playing for about 30 hours on PS5 Pro and apart from the fps dropping slightly after about 3 hours of play (reloading the game does indeed fix this likely memory leak), I've had minimal problems and had a lot of fun with it. I've only taken down the first story boss so I'm roughly 30% through the game, but it's never felt like a slog. I bounced off Borderlands 3 completely and found I spent more time managing my inventory in the awful UI than playing the game. While BL4 UI does have the slow cursor, you can also use the d-pad to snap to menus faster which helps a lot. The inventory is much smoother too, with your character being able to carry crazy amounts of loot before needing to sell it all.
All the missions are fun, especially the side missions which feel like fully fledged missions and not simple throwaway tasks. Main missions remind me of the Strikes from the Destiny games, which is a good thing.
In fact, the gunplay feels really good, reminding me a lot of Destiny 2 too. It's not quite as tight, but it's very close. It's only a number, but for me it's a definite 8 or 9. Very much recommended.

EDIT- I have VRR enabled and on a Sony TV which may be smoothing out some issues people have reported.

@get2sammyb There's always a bunch of Bloodborne/ Souls t-shirts and hoodies merch at the Tokyo Game Show, usually on a stall run by a company called Torch Torch. Sadly probably not a remake.
I got a load of t-shirts a couple of years ago when I went. Some really, really great designs you can also buy online.

@Dimey I agree totally, so many old characters they could lean into. I was also hoping Crossworlds would have portals into other Sega worlds rather than just those from Sonic. They just don't do anything for me and seem quite generic even though I've been playing Sonic since it first launched on the Megadrive.
I guess if they had gone that way, it would have made the game more like a Sonic & All Stars 2 (no complaints here). But these cameos are taking it in that direction anyway, so it feels like a last minute change of direction.

@SeaDaVie Yeah, it's almost perfect. The outer cardboard box is a little scuffed at the corners, but otherwise everything is fine. I don't think I ever got further than disc 2 so it's mostly unused even.

Out Run: Coast 2 Coast Remaster please!

Oooh, nice! I wasn't aware they were doing the second game. I loved Zwei back in the day and still have a copy of it and Panzer Dragoon RPG.
The first remake was only okay and has aged more than the sequel. Hopefully it's not too far from release and not a stupid price just because of the heritage.

@Darude84 I think the devs said the demo was only available for 2 weeks so it's probably gone now. Odd choice as I am sure myself and many others are buying it due to playing the demo.

I really enjoyed the demo to this even though I usually find demos uninteresting for some reason. It has some great audio and atmosphere. So much so that when it ended I wanted to carry on playing so pre-ordered it. I'm really looking forward to playing this weekend.

I tried this at launch and the lack of 60fps gave me a headache. No idea why, but 30fps affects my old eyes more than it ever did before so it's 60fps at least or nothing for me.
Have they added invert Y axis on the camera yet as that was the other thing making it borderline unplayable for me?

I still can't believe there is still no DLC/Add-ons category on the PS5 store nearly 5 years after launch! Unless you have a game installed, you do not see any new or existing dlc for it unless you manually search the store.
I don't keep games installed forever, so how this is considered a good feature is beyond me.

I agree with almost all of this review and would mark it a little higher due to the game being an absolute joy to play. The diverse biomes really lift it above the first game's already varied worlds.

I have never got lost at all using the map, however. The map key is easy to follow and you always know which icon points to the next objective.

My biggest problem with the game, however, is the constant chatter from the player character. Every single encounter, your character will quip at the start and the end of it to signify when there is danger and when it is clear once more. When you are fighting mobs, this isn't such an issue, but when it's a series of single enemies, it gets very old, very fast.
You can sneak up on an unsuspecting enemy and shoot them in the back for an insta-kill. Even though they are dead, your character will say 'Here we go!', then about 5 seconds later 'Whew! I'm glad that's over!', every. single. time! It randomizes it somewhat, but it is really annoying and desperately needs toning down.
Otherwise, great game just needs some small tweaks to remove the headaches.

Probably means this will be a PSPlus game for December. I got the Plat on PS4 but not sure I want to go through it again on PS5, even though it wasn't too bad.

Microids? I think I remember a friend having a bad case of those once. Couldn't sit down for a week.

On topic- Nice this is a free upgrade. I never bothered trying the version on PSPlus due to reports of all the bugs and I was never a fan of the PS1 originals back in the day. Maybe will try this new shiny version though.

Doesn't work for me. It usually will let me know if a game has launched that I wishlisted before it came out. But I never get informed of any of my wishlist games that are currently discounted.
The store is still pretty useless on PS5, even the newly added New Releases section misses off new games regularly. I have to use PSPrices each day just in case games get released that the PS5 store forgets to show.
And there is still no DLC section at all! I saw a banner for DLC once in the past year which took me to them, but never again. Madness that they can get the store so wrong for so long.

I think there is somebody out there who has had a vision of an apocalyptic future where the only currency is disc copies of GTA5 and they are stocking up now in preparation.

I Platinumed it in 19 hours, but there is no option for between 15 and 20 hours.

It looks like a great piece of DLC, but apparently you cannot use it online so it makes it kind of pointless, especially as the game is marketed as an ESports kind of thing.

Phase 3 of the Nemesis boss fight can still break after this patch so you cannot cause any damage. I've had this issue since day one.
I now had audio glitches on the final boss fight with some awful loud crackle replacing all of the audio. And I've had various random interaction problems even though I use the default suit. Not as serious as before as moving to other interactions can usually fix the initial problem.

I'm really looking forward to playing it tonight after work, but very concerned that many trophies don't seem to work at the moment. I heard some of these are difficult to re-obtain too and can require starting a new save file.
@get2sammyb did you guys notice any trophy issues on your playthroughs?

It still amazes me that Sony are not acknowledging how broken all of their digital storefronts are and fixing them. The web store is universally regarded as worse than before, the PS5 store has no DLC or Demos sections and many new releases don't even show up in the filters list and the PS4 store is slow and has crashed repeatedly for years and still does to this day.
I may be wrong, but you rarely, if ever, hear the same about people disliking the Xbox, Steam or Switch Estores unless it's about discoverability.
I think it's past time for Sony to give the stores to another company to manage and maintain as the current one is clearly not up to it.

Game Base (I really hate that name) now defaults to Parties, even if you have none and you have to tab right every time to find your Friends. Can this be changed anywhere as there are already so many button presses to get to things in the PS5 UI, adding more is getting tiresome?
Clicking on your Downloads used to take you to the download list but now requires you to move down to the bottom to select All Downloads.
Minor irritations, but still has some way to go.

Sorry to bring this up again, but how about a Soapbox article covering how bad the PS5 store is? It's been months now and still is barely fit for purpose. So much stuff is hidden and will get missed unless you know what you are looking for.

• Missing games when listing PS5 or PS4 games- For example, the Nioh Collection doesn't show in the entire PS5 games list. You have to manually search for it! This is a big problem as there are many more games not showing up when it comes to PS4 titles, too. You have to manually search for them if you wish to buy them. I only knew some recent indies had launched after booting up my PS4 to check the store or saw them listed on PSPrices.
• The awkwardness of getting an upgrade from a PS4 version to PS5. It really shouldn't be this hidden and work 'most of the time'.
• Discoverability in the store is awful now. If you thought it was bad on the PS4, then this is on a whole new level. Unless you are a pre-order for DeathLoop, of course. That one has been prominent since launch day!
• Only 2 featured sales are displayed. If there are 3 Sales (as was the case a week or two ago) then you will not see one of these. Additionally, the Deal of the Week is never shown. Thankfully we even have a Sales tab now, but it's still not good enough.
• No demos tab. If you wanted to try the Guilty Gear Strive or Outriders demos, you need to find the full game to find the demo.
• The filters do not work. I have it set to show 'New to Old' but it will frequently put new games amongst releases from months ago. This is obviously worse with PS4 games where the titles go back years.

Didn't Codemasters get the rights to the official WRC licence starting from this year? Another racing licence to be filled with micro transactions and pointless DLC.

I've quite enjoyed it so far and come top a bit also, so I must be getting the hang of it. But I agree with the criticisms in the review.
Had this been 70 Pounds, which it will still be in a couple of months, I would be stunned at the lack of content. No promises of future content drops cannot disguise the fact that it is not a full price release in any way. It should remain free on Plus to preserve some kind of player base, unless they sell it at the same price as Fall Guys, Rocket League (at launch), etc go for. For now it is clear it was built as a F2P game and treats its players as such.

@themightyant Very true and I can see why some prefer it without. But I don't understand then why there isn't the option to have these things on or off per each user's preference.
Personally, I used to like seeing what trophies a Friend had just earned and I may go for (and to see how they were progressing in a game so I could avoid talking spoilers with them). And I used to like sharing/seeing screenshots and videos in the feed. There is now little incentive to capture anything as you can only share externally.

Although this is a minor issue, there are so many problems and missing features from the PS5 UI that make it feel rushed and unfinished. Compared to the PS4 UI (even at the launch), the PS5 dashboard feels anti-social and barely functional with no What's New feed, no Friends List or Message tab (everything is hidden inside 'Game Base', whatever that means), missing Trophy percentage progress...
@LiamCroft please could you also mention something about the PS5 store missing off games when filtering by New Releases? The PS5 Store is pretty bad as we all know, with no Demos, DLC or (until recently) Deals sections. This issue of missing games has been happening since launch and is very frustrating to have to always check the PS4 store (or even PSPrices) to see what games are released.

I posted this in the 'The Pedestrian' review-
"Is this out for PS5? It doesn't show up on the PS5 store if you filter all PS5 games by 'New-Old' or 'Recently Released' (as with many new releases). I can manually search and find the PS4 version, but the PS5 version still says 'Coming Soon'.
The PS5 store is an utter mess with games not showing up in the PS5 or PS4 lists at random! Gods Will Fall is another new release that doesn't show up, but it does on the PS4 store. I shouldn't have to manually search for games I know are released as how would I find any unknown releases? There is no Blog to inform us anymore!"

Is this out for PS5? It doesn't show up on the PS5 store if you filter all PS5 games by 'New-Old' or 'Recently Released' (as with many new releases). I can manually search and find the PS4 version, but the PS5 version still says 'Coming Soon'.
The PS5 store is an utter mess with games not showing up in the PS5 or PS4 lists at random! Gods Will Fall is another new release that doesn't show up, but it does on the PS4 store. I shouldn't have to manually search for games I know are released as how would I find any unknown releases? There is no Blog to inform us anymore!

So the single player Challenge modes can only be purchased with Destruction Points that have to bought with real money? Did I understand that correctly? He said those points can also be earned later this year through daily challenges, but not at launch.

That's pretty awesome. I Platinumed the regular Control and didn't want to buy the 'shady' version again just to play the PS5 upgrade.
Destruction All Stars hopefully will be fun and populated as it is on Plus.
Concrete Genie I also Platinumed and enjoyed every minute of it apart from having to restart the whole game from the beginning due to a game breaking bug that caused me to always respawn to insta-death water in some sewers.

I wonder if this sale will show up on the terrible PS5 store? No sale, no DLC, no demos, many missing PS4 games in new releases...
The whole PS5 store and UI needs a serious overhaul to make it useful.

Looks nice and kinda like Hades, so will probably pick it up.
Still hoping Hades will surprise us though, and pop up on PS4/PS5 soon. I would much rather play it on console for the Trophies rather than Steam and have no interest in my Switch.

@Shigurui Ooh, nice! I didn't know that. I may have to play through Infinite once again now I can get the trophies. Thanks!

@HUMPERDOO A Plague Tale is wonderful and a very underrated gem. I never had any issues with the controls at all. It's not by the same team as Vampyr (only same publisher) so you have nothing to worry about.

Would be nice if those of us with the PS5 Gold Edition could actually get our included rewards at some point. The code only gives the Season Pass but all the other items don't appear for anyone on PS5. Seems to affect a lot of players.

Hopefully the update also fixes the constant framerate problems in all visual modes. I've stopped playing it as it is all over the place even when in non-busy areas. Not game breaking, but very distracting and unimpressive.