somnambulance

I really can’t tell what I think of this one. It looks like E33 and FF16 got together to play Stellar Blade and Wukong.

Love Vampire Survivors, hate deck builders… but I love Vampire Survivors.

Highlight of the Xbox showcase for me, personally.

If only Fortnite actually played like this trailer looks…

@JB_Whiting Definitely makes me interested to see where it goes. It’s such an odd game, so nuanced and unique. I’m really glad Capcom isn’t afraid of making risks to entertain their audience.

I should really go back to this one. Felt the story was… there… so I struggled to play it for the usual, y’know, narrative experience, but it sure was fun to get lost in and battle for the sake of gameplay. A strange game, this one. One of the most memorable games I’ve played this generation.

Does that mean PSVR2 is $300 USD? That’s no deal. It’s already less than that at my local Walmart and that’s not a Black Friday sale…

You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Yotei ends up Pushsquare’s GotY though…

@DennisReynolds I don’t quite know what it is that drives me nuts about E33. There’s something though. I’m not the biggest God of War fan either, and I’d say that GoW Ragnarok is about as good as E33, but Ragnarok doesn’t elicit the same type of “did I play the same game?” type of feeling E33 does. It’s strange to me. I sort of feel like I want to understand what others see in the game and it distances me further too.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Final Fantasy fan and a lot of the discourse early on with the game was contrasting it to that series when I prefer the direction FF has gone over the last couple years? Maybe that hit a nerve or something? I’m pulling out straws, I suppose.

For what it’s worth though, I can say that I can really understand what you’re talking about with Skyfall. I wouldn’t say it’s awful, but, to be frank, I’ve sort of lost interest in the Bond IP during the Craig era, despite being a big fan of the franchise in my youth. Outside the fantastic Casino Royale, honestly, the Craig era films one after the other all felt sort of bland to me and “phoned in” definitely feels like the accurate term. They don’t exactly feel like Bond to me, despite feeling like high budget espionage action films.

@DennisReynolds I just don’t get it, and I think that’s what bugs me about the game, coupled with the overzealous praise the game has gotten. I played the game, thought it was maybe a 7/10, and felt that there were clear areas where the game just wasn’t a classic to me.

Another poster above mentioned the level design being borderline irritating, which I certainly agree with. Happy Console Gamer put up a final thoughts video this weekend and mentioned how exploration didn’t feel rewarding in the game as well. It felt like there should’ve been incentive to search in the nooks and crannies of the levels, but there wasn’t. I also agreed with HCG’s wife saying she had a love/hate relationship with the combat.

And as for the story, I thought it was fine, but certainly predictable and I didn’t grow attached to any of the characters. In fact, after that one thing happened, I was sort of hoping for a one-by-one thing, but obviously that didn’t happen.

I will say the music and art were incredible. I just feel like, man, did other people play the same game, you know? It doesn’t help that most of my friends have agreed with me that the game’s a 7/10. I’ve never, in flesh and blood, met someone that really liked this one, which feels weird. To compare with other games that dominated the landscape recently, BG3 and Elden Ring felt like games that literally everyone I knew played and loved.

I’ll say this as someone who played BG3 and couldn’t enjoy it because it was just a buggy mess for me. I know I had the fluke experience. That said, I totally understand why the game is a GotY tier game because I experienced the game tangentially through others. I didn’t enjoy KCD2, but I’d say that’s a GotY tier game for its depth, scope, and commitment to immersion. For E33, it was just good and that’s it. In fact, if not for the zeitgeist around it, I’d probably feel less critical than I do. But because of that zeitgeist, I feel more compelled to “get it,” when perhaps I should accept that I just don’t and maybe revisit it in ten years or something.

E33 is going to go down in history as the most overrated game of all time, I’m sorry to say. I liked the game, but the amount of praise the game received has just been way too much. There’s been plenty of other games that deserve credit this year and I just anticipate E33 will brush all that under the rug.

@Darude84 @The_Wailing_Doom Honestly, this should’ve been a political topic a decade ago. Lawmakers made the mistake of ignoring automation before AI became an impactful thing and now we’re seeing really significant effects of that ignorance. There has been no preparation for the society we will enter and it’s too late to go back. Hopefully lawmakers can figure out something before it gets too late for people to have a truly negative reaction towards changing times.

Hopefully it’s worth watching. Next year’s release schedule looks pretty dire at the moment for me. There’s less than five games with release dates for anything 2026 I’m interested in right now.

I don’t really care either which way. Sony’s not making this for me and I’d respect it more if Sony were showing me that they’re actually making these games to be able to create more cinematic experiences, but there’s no evidence for that beyond what the suits will tell you.

It wasn’t the worst game. I could see the hobbyists making the game better than it was when it was playable.

@KingPev I prefer the remake. Lol

@Oram77 Rebirth is arguably Game of the Generation for me so far. It was a travesty it basically got NOTHING. That said, I also loved Astro Bot. Last year was sort of weak altogether, but it had those two and Balatro

I’m going to be playing move furniture back into my living room and my daughter’s room after finishing painting and installing floors. I threw my sofa away, so when I do hook my consoles back up… I have nowhere to sit. I will be playing “search for a new sofa” after that. I’d like to say I’ll be settling down to play Yotei, but I don’t quite know if I’ll have time. All I can guarantee is that, in the absence of having my console games to play while I move stuff, Balatro on my phone will say hi.

@Fishmasterflex96 They also gave Resident Evil Village GotY over Ratchet and Clank and Returnal. It’s not really a bias. Pushsquare is unique. All of the contributors have their own voice. While I know some of them loved BG3, for instance, others didn’t click with it, and the site was pretty honest about that. I think that’s great that they don’t just give GotY to whoever is trendiest game on the block, even when they get flack about it. Expedition 33 may yet still win here, but I wouldn’t say it’s a certainty. It seems we’re about to get some really diverse staff lists soon.

If it’s priced right, I think I might buy into the Steam Machine. I say this as someone that hasn’t been a PC gamer since the Sims 2 came out. Say what you will, but I’ve always liked to support all the platforms, and Xbox’s cascade into third party publisher has been negative for PlayStation in being competitive. It’s been a couple years that Xbox has struggled, but the more might PlayStation has had, arguably the more complacent they’ve been. I’ve been on PlayStation consoles for decades now and there’s only one first party game that I’m looking forward to. It just feels off in the console space right now and there needs to be a shake-up.

@Oram77 I sort of hope literally anything else wins GotY at this point. If CO: E33 wins, which I suspect it will, it will be the most overrated game I’ve ever seen win in my 3+ decades of gaming! 😵‍💫

I think the competition will be more interesting for the Pushsquare staff since it sort of feels like there’s potentially a more diverse opinion on the game with staff. We’ve seen things like Spider Man 2 beating Baldur’s Gate 3. Anything is possible on Pushsquare!

I’ll be shocked if Clair Obscur isn’t literally everywhere on the list. Can’t wait for 2026, so the GotY discussion can go to other games. Never been so burned out over discussion on a single game in a year.

Sounds like a solid pick to me

The comments section here is going to be so positive.

It’s sort of tone deaf to say something like this. Unless the team is hoping for an “all press is good press” approach.

@Splash_Woman Needs to be longer than that. Kojima needs to top himself. I’ll never forget the day I was late for work because I beat Metal Gear Solid 4. I genuinely thought waking up 2 hours early would be enough to complete the last chunk of the game. I was wrong.

Sounds like Konami listened to the fans here. While I’ve still not gotten around to F, a lot of my friends played it, gave reviews all over the place, but literally said that most of the issues noted in this update were problems with the game

I’ll bet a lot of holiday season parents don’t know Fortnite is free, just that their kids like it.

Hopefully we see some from the Guerilla Horizon game soon enough. I wasn’t a huge fan of HFW for the story (mostly because of the twist after twist after twist approach they used towards the end) or quest structure, but the series has gameplay down and it’s such a unique world that I’d like to play more. A more open, multiplayer format might honestly be a preferable way for the series to move forward for me.

Looks interesting, but it would be a huge miss to not have this one on PS5. Much like Ratchet and Clank, I’d try it, even if it isn’t exactly the direction I’d like Sony to be taking. I think it’s becoming obvious that Sony’s with Xbox in the fight against TikTok rather than in a fight for console supremacy.

Looks better than Wolverine to me (and better than yesterday’s State of Play too)!

I’m hoping Intergalactic is solid. I know Sony’s had some solid games this generation, but things haven’t felt… on? I don’t know. There’s been something off about this generation. Hopefully that smooths out soon. Right now, there’s nothing first party that interests me at all outside Intergalactic. And not much third party either.

The show was well produced, but I can’t say I’ll be buying a single game that was featured. Pokopia got a release date today for Switch 2 and that was bigger news to me than the entire showcase combined. The Katamari dlc might have been the highlight for me? I might actually get Octopath too. Was intimidated by the reports that it’d be 100+ hours, but 2026 is looking like a year that could permit a game like that as things currently stand.

At this point, I sort of expect State of Plays to be sort of fluff nowadays. It sort of feels like Sony is playing second fiddle to Nintendo and even Geoff Keighley with what they have to announce. It baffles me as to why they did this showcase since I’m expecting this one will generate negative press.

As I play the game more, I think I like Atsu more as a character, but think Jin has a more nuanced internal conflict.

Given that it didn’t have a release date yet and we’re halfway through November, I, for one, am shocked and didn’t see a delay coming.

It’s a good game. It’s good to hear that a good game is selling well. So often we hear about disappointing sales from other good games, so honestly it’s refreshing to see this. GoY won’t be my GotY this year, but it’s one of those games where, if it influences what will be the mainstream open world games of the future, I’m totally fine with that. Personally, I like it better than Spider Man 2, Ragnarok, and Forbidden West, as far as this generation of sequels is concerned.

This is the only time Activision has been publicly honest in admitting that each new CoD game is basically next in a series of chunky DLCs

I work in a relevant industry and would gladly sign up to have staff beta test

If anything, it’s overrated.

If this and Pragmata get release dates…

Wasn’t there also supposed to be a demo for this one two years ago too though? Did Phantom Blade Executioners ever even come out?

I’m hoping for something with a January release perhaps, so I can get myself a birthday present? Can that be the Pragmata release date? Please?

I’d honestly be happy to have one surprise game that lights me up too, but I’m not expecting it. Anyone expecting FF7 Part 3 is probably going to be disappointed. Is it just me or does it feel like the release slate is weirdly blank for most of next year still?

@Medic_alert Exactly. It felt like it was designed for something to happen after the campaign, but then it didn’t. All that we’ve found out after the fact or during development of Infinite (such as the fact that Monster was allegedly making multiplayer dlc skins for multiplayer) sort of goes to show that it doesn’t seem 343 had a proper vision for Infinite. It doesn’t help that, even after the delay, forge and co-op weren’t included. I mean, those are key features of the Halo experience! I still like Infinite, but it does feel like it deserved more from either 343 and/or Microsoft to have made it a fully complete experience. I mean, it felt like a proof of concept to a concept that never came to fruition. Sorry if I’m being confusing. Infinite elicits confusion lol

@Medic_alert See, I really enjoyed it too, and felt like it was doing something unique in potentially being a live service single player game in some respects. The ending especially felt like 343 was going to add new content to the game following its release. When I found out that there was never any DLC planned for Infinite, my opinion sort of changed a little bit on the experience. It made me feel like it was actually incomplete and sort of incoherent in parts because that’s what it was, not because 343 intended on fleshing it out. The gameplay and open world was loads of fun though…

Maybe I’ll finally go back to Yotei or start with Arc Raiders? The Kirby demo is this weekend too, so I’ll try to do that. I haven’t played much of anything this week, so I’d like to play something.

Tsushima’s a better story with more nuance and probably deeper themes. I mean, Jin is his own main antagonist, depending on how you look at things. It’s a really interesting conflict, honestly, whereas Yotei’s a bit more on the nose.

Gameplay wise, though, Yotei takes the cake. It’s a lot more varied than the first game and still just as fluid.

That said though, I still think Tsushima’s also superior in world building and quest structure. Yotei is perhaps too loose with those concepts, even if the art direction’s improved… and the soundtrack in Yotei is fantastic. That said though, Yotei doesn’t have the uniqueness Tsushima had when it launched either.

All in all, I would say Tsushima’s the clear winner overall.

I’ve only played the tutorial, so I can’t really say what I’d rate it yet, but that tutorial felt really special, honestly. I have been itching to go back and play it, but I’ve not played much of anything since Halloween due to this other game called Life that I’m dealing with.

@Porco I’m a retro-head too. Probably why, even to this day, I mostly prefer 2D platformers as my genre of choice. I like other genres a lot, but I come back to those and metroidvanias probably more than anything else, and then the cinematic action adventures as the next genre. I was in high school during the PS2 era too, so that may be why I have more nostalgia for the generation immediately before and immediately after.

And yes, I played a lot of jrpgs, but my playtime with those genres peaked maybe 20 years ago, so my nostalgia for that genre is definitely more geared to SNES and PS1. To put my taste in a nutshell, I’m the guy that’s thankful Final Fantasy has gone all Devil May Cry with combat. I get where people could have a different opinion for sure.

Part of my opinion does come from a gaming session I had at my parents’ house earlier in the year as well though too. My parents have my old PS2. We hooked it up and just went and played some of the old games for fun, and I think my wife, my kids, and my siblings and I sort of felt like the games were a little uneven nowadays. We didn’t boot MGS2 or FFX, of course. Those ones hold up. PS2 era games have a charm, but they feel best in remembrance than in practice for me. But it’s the same for original Xbox, Dreamcast, and GameCube for me. That era is just an era that feels awkward to me now.

I hope we see other games from Insomniac in the future. I get that lots of people love Marvel, but I don’t. I love Ratchet and Clank instead. It’s one of those formative Sony franchises for me.

I want Insomniac to make the games they want to make, of course, but I dunno, I miss being excited for their games. The Marvel stuff just isn’t for me.

@Porco Y’see, I feel PS3 landed that experimental in the right ways vibe far better. I was a frequent renter in the PS2 era and owned 50-ish games on the console. I could definitely make a top 100 games list for PS2 and it wouldn’t include everything I’ve played. It’s not that I haven’t scratched the surface, it’s more that I’m less nostalgic on the era, I think. Most of the games aged like milk a little bit. The textures and visuals tend to be muddy and the gameplay wasn’t yet at a place where developers had figured out what makes the most sense. This is just my feelings though and I totally get how someone else may feel different. It’s not that it’s a bad console, just that it wasn’t a hit machine for me. It’s definitely the console I’d played the most bad to ok tier titles on.

Personally, I feel the PS4 era was Sony’s best, but I’m also firmly in the “I prefer Sony’s cinematic third person games” demographic.

PS4 > PS3 > PS1 = PS2 > PS5 for me. I’d say overall PS5 has had more games id call essential than PS2, but the overall output is worse.

Once Upon a Katamari for me. Clearly Yotei will win this one, and I like that one too, but I just love me some Katamari. I’ve yet to finish Yotei, but I’m like halfway through it.

I’ll also say that I’ve not played Arc Raiders enough to have an opinion of it, so who knows? That one might usurp it down the line… or not? I don’t have an opinion outside of the fact that the tutorial felt nice to play.

Fantastic game, this one. It feels like a true sequel to We Heart Katamari.