springer17

Looks cool, I liked it from the last trailer and even more interested now I know it's a budget title.

My copy's arriving today, excited to give this one a go and see what Game Freak can do outside the Pokémon license. Hopefully this does well enough that they'll work on other projects more often.

I loved their Spider Man games, but I was always left thinking "This needs more butts". Glad to see that'll be remedied here.

Yeah, even just playing this for the last hour or so it feels so much nicer than the first game. I wasn't going to bother with this before, but now it's a must play.

On one hand that's not surprising, given that the figures show that ardent physical collectors are in the minority.

On the other hand, of coure they would say that, they're not going to admit that announcing the removal of disc manufacture has had a major impact on their business if they're still intending on continuing down that route.

Downloading to give this a go, didn't get on with the first one but I do love me a good soulslike.

@AhmadSumadi What did you expect the sequel to Mortal Shell to be? A cozy life sim?

@IllusiveMan This too. I could be banned from playing football with my mates because of bad sportsmanship, but it's not as if all my footballs no longer work.

@wildcat_kickz Oh I agree with that much, it shouldn't be a platform-led. It would have to be more of a change in thinking from a publisher standpoint than anything forced on them, otherwise it could cause games to be sold at a loss.

Although in the same thought, the concept of a per-unit cost is largely irrelevant with the unlimited nature of digital downloads. A game could (in theory) eventually turn a profit regardless of price because there's no limit to the number of times it can be sold like there is with physical media. But that's a different conversation outside of whatever Sony should or shouldn't do in an all-digital future.

@wildcat_kickz I'm suggesting price reductions to be in line with physical sales. If a retailer has an item on sale and it doesn't sell well, the price will go down to make it a more attractive purchase for consumers. The fact that I have to keep an eye on sales in order to buy a 10 year old game at a reduced price is absurd, and if that's going to be our only way to buy games in the future, it needs to be more consumer friendly.

Gradual price reductions over time should be standard, so you know you're not going to be paying full price for a game if you've waited 5 years to play it, not just waiting until it goes on sale and hoping it's lower than last time.

Nintendo has a decent system with Virtual Game Cards, so you can 'lend' your digital games to friends, or easily transfer them to people in your family group. I use that to allow my daughter to have a decent game collection on her Switch while I have mine on my Switch 2. Not as good as a full-fledged resale system but better than the nothing we have now.

@Flurpsel It boots fine, it just has a tendency to crash after a little while, more than almost any other PS5 game I've played. Maybe it'll smooth out further on like @GirlVersusGame said, we shall see.

For some reason this keeps crashing whenever I try and play it, maybe this update will give it a bit more stability as I love it when it's working.

I've never played a Fable game so this has me intrigued. A new GoW is a definite day 1 for me, so it'll just come down to whether this catches my eye enough before release to see if it gets the same treatment.

KCD just isn't for me (after trying a few times to get into it) but knowing the quality from what everyone else says I'm excited to see what else War Horse release that I might gel with better.

I loved Budokai Tenkaichi 2 & 3 growing up but for some reason I just don't get on with Sparking Zero. Which is a shame, because I'd love to sink some serious time into it.

I'll be trying to find the time to finish Harold Halibut before then, it's the only one on this list I want to play (as I've got Unicorn Overlord on Switch, and I agree it is fantastic).

And I'm one of them. Not put a massive amount of time into it yet but I'm enjoying it so far. I've never really connected with Bethesda game design, but this one's different enough to keep me coming back (at the moment).

I'm a large, bald man with a beard, I'll do it. Ignore my physique, I can put the 'dad(bod)' in 'dad and boy'.

Fair enough to her, she's done a job and she's proud of it. Whether you like it or not is up to you, but she shouldn't be the target of any anger or frustration unless she did an objectively bad job. And at the moment none of us know that. I for one am looking forward to seeing more, I haven't played a GoW game I've not thoroughly enjoyed so I'll likely enjoy it.

The gane never grabbed me in the demo, but I'll give it another go to see if it sticks this time. Or if it just causes me to go and play Tsushima again...

I've been cautiously optimistic about this game for a long time, and everything I've seen so far is doing a lot of work on removing that caution. I'll obviously wait for reviews/release gameplay, but I'll likely have picked this up before Xmas.

But damn, I really want to know who Dawn Walker is, and what's the deal with her blood?

Yay, they're sticking with the staggered release...

Otherwise, not a bad month. I'll try Rise of the Ronin and Citizen Sleeper 2 as I've already played the others I'd be interested in (Avatar's decent for anyone with a passing interest in the franchise). And for the first time I'm actually excited about the Premium games, both titles I've wanted to play but never got round to.

This does have the benefit of buying a physical game and gaining the advantages of the digital version (no need to swap discs, streaming, etc.) but won't this be completely moot if they want people to upgrade to their new console and it doesn't support discs (as is heavily rumoured). Yes, you could still access your previously owned games if you owned a Series, but you couldn't buy new ones to digitise unless you kept that around for that purpose.

Not much this weekend as I'm travelling down to London, might squeeze in some Diablo IV on Sunday night once I'm back. Or carry on with my 5th (full) playthrough of Elden Ring.

"Do more with less!" The classic corporate motto...

And they've probably netted themselves a few more buyers by doing so. I enjoyed the first game but this takes it a bit too far into the survival horror area for me.

This screams "We need a success, let's try and replicate 2010". Don't get me wrong, I hope it comes together, we don't need to see another studio go under. But it's not as if recent Obsidian games are at the same level (and I actually enjoyed Outer Worlds and Avowed).

While I'm not intending on moving to PC gaming (mainly because having a console is convenient and getting a PC that is decently powerful would still cost as much) I'm not getting a PS6 at that price. I'll stay with my PS5 and whatever games still release for it, and continue to gather Switch 2 games as appropriate.

Suddenly finding themselves without major financial backing with the industry the way it is currently is not a position I imagine they wanted to find themselves in, but hopefully they can stick it out and get more releases ready to last.

I'll give it a go then, I never got on with Returnal but wanted to give Saros a try anyway. But yeah, holding what are essentially demos behind a premium (quite literally in this case) subscription is a scummy move. All games should have demos free to access.

I had the email saying "You have Playstation Stars expiring, don't forget to spend them" email the other day, but I have LITERALLY NOTHING I CAN USE THEM ON BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH! So what was the point in the email?

@lazymike Knights of the Pounds (in the UK anyway) and perhaps Bahamut does-not-cost-ZERO-Dollars?

If they were just to retread the same ground it would quickly become boring. I look forward to what they create next, and if it's not my kind of thing, it'll be someone else's, and that's ok.

Double the price AND no disc drive to play my old games? Sign me up!

@Bunchesopuppies Hey, they charged for some themes on the PS4 so never say never.

My PS5's now so stable some horses have moved in!

Intriguing enough for me to wishlist, hopefully it merges the different gameplay styles well.

I still maintain that this is to allow them to skew the release schedule to make it more appealing to new subscribers. Going from "New games added every month" to "New games added each week" could do a lot of mental heavy lifting in making the service seem more appealing.

Outside Xbox have actually reoriented this in a way that I think makes more sense in a recent video: the $100 version is the version they're actually selling to people, with the $80 version is for people who can't afford the $100 version (or won't spend that much on a single game) so they can still get the sale and people will still buy the game.

As @Dogbreath pointed out, a lot of people had assumed it would be a $100 game and will buy it at that price no matter what. The cheaper version is just for those who don't want to pay as much but still play at launch.

This has been tentatively sat on my wishlist since it was announced, but it's looking more and more like it'll be worth a buy come August.

@Topov81 If I had an answer for that, I'd be in business. My only thought is that they can squeeze as much profit out if every purchase if they don't produce any discs, while still having a presence on store shelves (for all that's worth). That and removing the option for players to buy second hand so they're not missing out on any sales income if everyone has to buy new.

If I was more cynical I'd suggest they were trying to sneakily charge people more...weird...

@Nem If they made a new F Zero I would be very interested.

Although to be fair I'd be interested in any new F Zero.

Performances can elevate an entire work...so let me dig up this person and puppet their corpse for entertainment.

Answering the question "Is that even physical?"
No
It's digital with extra steps.

It helps that CDPR had built up a lot of goodwill with earlier releases and their general attitude to gaming and their audience, but the damage that CP2077 did to their standing in my eyes is still in memory. As such I won't be rushing to play Witcher 4 at launch without a full understanding of what state it'll launch in. A stance I take with the majority of developers, the only exception being Larian.

I'm very glad my views on genAI align well with my much preferred developer in this argument.

@McBurn Yep, as a parent myself I don't see this as needed, but if they keep outlawing all the stuff I don't allow my kids to do, I'll be able to go completely hands off.

I've only just got back into it after a good few months, nowhere near the end so I guess I've got a little more to look forward to when I get there.