theheadofabroom

I feel like maybe they do understand the Streisand Effect, and see the opportunity to get a tonne of marketing for the cost of a DMCA takedown notice

It's probably one of the best linear stories in games, and the Russos wouldn't be doing what they do if that wasn't what they value most.

It's not what gets me most excited, but you know, horses for courses and all that?

Double tapping the home button was a new one to me, and I'd forgotten I could change the capture buttons. Other than that the only one I didn't know is one I'll never use (changing your online status)

Meanwhile I have a clip so I can mount my phone to my "spare" Dualsense controller. Works great including all the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback

I'll probably return to do this at some point, but I've got many other games I want to play more right now

I'm leaving it a few days in the hopes that some of the jank mentioned in reviews gets fixed, but I do kinda want to dive in already

I've been playing Empire of Sin via Plus Extra. It feels like it's so close to being a good game but it's missing something I can't quite put my finger on. It's odd because I love turn based tactics, and I love the 20s mob theme.

I'll likely start Red Dead Redemption 2 next

@Ogbert this exactly. Not to mention how environmentally irresponsible NFTs and proof-of-work cryptocurrency is, when for most things all you need is a simple database (sure that centralises it, but for games you need the developer to make stuff part of the game anyway).

@Mikey856 Man, these anti piracy ads are getting really mean.

https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg

@Constable_What @Tecinthebrain

A year can also be any period of 12 months, Develop: Brighton run theirs in the summer, rather than the winter, and consider the games released during the preceding 12 months.

Edit: just saw that themightyant already made this point, but somehow not all the comments had loaded.

I am only subscribed to Extra, rather than Premium, because almost everything that appeals to me is on Extra. There's maybe 2 games on Premium currently that I want to play more than anything in my existing backlog, so either when I'm done with my backlog, or more likely a couple of months before I'm due to renew, I'll upgrade to Premium, play those, and then let me sub lapse and resub back at Extra, which is astonishingly good value for money.

@The_Moose An opinion piece in an American publication by a Conservative commentator? You're going to have to try harder.

It's widely acknowledged that they're Social Democracies and I have multiple friends who live in Denmark, Sweden, Norway who either moved there, or returned there after spending years in the UK, specifically because of Socialist welfare policies and more representative democratic systems.

I'm glad they still said the thing

@nessisonett do you think it's worth pointing out to @GreatAuk how much better Nordic countries are doing under Democratic Socialism versus our Conservative and Unionist Party's austerity policies that have resulted in one of the largest tax burdens in the world, rampant inequality which UN special rapporteurs have described as human rights violations, and the most corruption the UK has ever seen?

@The_Pixel_King that's almost exactly my list, except instead of TLOU remake I went for Midnight Suns

I can imagine it would be great if I had Crash-based nostalgia, but as it is I'm just waiting to see what'll be added to Extra

@jcvandan it's certainly a title where I'll wait for a deep sale or an appearance on Extra. If I was that interested in playing it [enough to pay those prices] I'd have done so on Steam years ago.

Personally I'm really hoping that there will be hybrid games where, for instance in a third person Open World I can play the majority on a flat screen, but if I get into a car I can put on my headset and have a vr driving experience (because I have yet to pay an Open World game in which I can reliably do a three point turn, reverse around a corner, bay park or parallel park without hitting things or mounting the curb, despite doing these things on a regular basis. Driving fast should feel dangerous, etc etc etc)

@Vacuumator He plays Silens in the Horizon games, was Hatch in Quantum Break, as well as being famous for shows such as The Wire, etc

@munstre I think the main reason it's hanging around in the top 10 is that a large part of its market want to play it on PS5, maybe don't realise they'd get a free upgrade when they can find a console, and this means that instead of selling most of its units in the launch window, it's a much slower drip than most franchises get to see. Similar to how Miles Morales was right up to the announcement the it would be free with Plus Extra.

Obviously none of us can know for certain, but given how few bundled units there are out there in any given month, and the success of the first game, it seems like a much more likely scenario.

I'd like them to add some single player games, something that's not already available or something that's due to expire soon from the higher tiers (like Red Dead).

Knowing Sony's current way of doing things though, it'll probably be Horizon Zero Dawn, an obsolete Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter game, and something full of microtransactions, i.e worse than nothing.

I have to admit the only games I feel like I'm missing out on here are from the ResE series

@nessisonett Hash-tag not all gamers? 🤣

It would be even better if the cheater wasn't aware they were being penalised, for instance they do low/no damage, but on their end it looks like they're getting kills, still have weapons, etc. Meanwhile everyone else sees them armed with NERF guns, running straight past other players or breaking off engagements where they've barely tickled their opponent. I'd guess it would mean more comedy value for legit players, and the cheaters are more likely to stay on so their exploits can be analyzed.

I kinda wish it had a different visual style. This doesn't look to have the "soul" the Portal games did, and I can see the visual nods just leading to a constant low level feeling of disappointment.

That said, if it eventually supports psvr2 I could see it setting itself apart in a way that makes up for it.

For me, whether I buy this depends on how the extra buttons appear on PC - I'm fairly happy with the Dualsense on PS5, but it doesn't quite replace my Steam Controller on PC. The Steam Controller feels kinda cheap and nasty in comparison, but the rear paddles and the fact the left stick is a trackpad (as is the right "dpad") make it 100% better for PC games. If the Dualsense Pro (or whatever they call it) exposes the back buttons directly, rather than just duplicating other input, then I'll forego the easy-to-reach left trackpad (because mouse aiming is superior for FPS, and it works better on the desktop/in RTS type interfaces too) for the premium construction and the fact it'll likely still see support of years to come. Using it with the PS5 too would be a bonus.

10, would have been nice to see what the next category was called

@Victor_Meldrew I'd guess because cover doesn't feel very heroic, and a lot of the enemy attacks would likely shred straight through it anyway?

Nothing will ever beat

Lies!

She dies!

Basically what @get2sammyb said. It's not what I was expecting/hoping for, but it looks awesome.

@thefourfoldroot: the guys in the video seemed to think no microtransactions, but I'm not sure how much they actually know/what they're basing that off - they didn't say whether they'd asked the devs or whether it's just that the current build (which was still buggy) didn't include them.

Can't wait to see some reviews of this. I want to believe it's going to be something really special.

@KundaliniRising333 all the leaks I've seen report that it'll release early September on PS5 but not PC until later.

@Milktastrophe I think the difference with GoW is that not only has it been in Now for ages, not only is it part of the Collection for PS5, bit it's also one of the titles that was always going to be part of Extra. So on top of being frequently under £5, it has already been part of two giveaways, and was already scheduled to be (or in some regions already) given away a third time.

The fact that it's in the Collection means it's irrelevant for PS5 owners, which means that you can ignore 20 million people with a higher than average attatch rate for PS+ subscriptions, of which there are <50 million globally, so that's likely 30-40% of subscribers who already own it through that. Now is likely responsible for another 5-10%, especially when that translates into Premium or Deluxe with the switchover. That leaves you with 50-65% of Plus subscribers who haven't been given it through one of those channels, or 25-30 million subscribers on PS4. A load of those will have bought the game long ago, and a load of them will have been planning to upgrade to Extra or Premium. Out of those who remain, how many of them do you expect have any interest in playing the game?

I'd guess maybe 10% of subscribers will be receiving a copy of GoW that they don't already have access to and are interested in eventually playing. To those 10% it's worth £5, which means that to the average plus subscriber it's worth £0.50.

I won't complain about months where games I don't like, but which others are looking forward to, are given away, because I can recognise that on average it's valuable to the subscriber base, and eventually these things shake out, I'll get mine some other month. This however devalues their other offerings and provides very little value on average. As usual I'm not going to say "it's a crap selection", but I'm certainly "not very happy" and "not looking forward to any of them".

Getting the house onto the market, so when I find time I'll be relaxing with some Planet Coaster, it's a lovely bit of stress relief that doesn't really ask much from you.

@KundaliniRising333 Sony's only comment about day 1 releases on PS Plus was about first party games, which makes sense to me. As much as I'd love to be able to pay my sub and never have to buy anything else, it's not a good business model for Sony. Striking a deal for third party games to appear on day 1 is a very different proposition and one that has precedent.

I think a lot has been made of day 1 releases on the sub without people appreciating the distinction, especially with an indie game versus one which takes a team of many hundreds around the globe the best part of a decade to put together.

Can't wait to jump beck into the Forbidden West, I'd already done everything and needed an excuse

@Bismarck I can see the headset itself perhaps being a loss leader, try and keep the price down near that of the main console.

@Elodin yup it looked like the classic Doom-style sprite animation, with some deliberately-left-there outline aliasing

@NEStalgia as long as they don't change the actor and models for Kratos?

@Hypoman eh, the collection makes sense as a lure for people buying a PS5, because there aren't really enough current gen only games to entice people right now. It's a value-add for your £450 or whatever it costs in your region.

Of course the inverse of that is also true: if the best games are given away for free to Essential tier customers, what's the value of Extra? And what's the value of Premium beyond streaming (which was why Now never did very well)?

My plan is still up upgrade the rest of my subscription to Extra until it runs out at the start of December, possibly even upgrade again to Premium for November, but if the games routinely come to Essential, that's where I'll end up when my subscription lapses. Previously I'd been assuming I'll end up on Extra for most of the year, upgrading to Premium for a month or two at the end of each sub.

It's only disappointing because it's the flagship game this month, leaving anyone who has access via any other avenue without anything of value from this month's Essential tier offering.

@Max_the_German of an article doesn't interest you, you can always just not open it?

Honesty IDGAF, I'm just waiting for Extra tier to release, there's at least 5 or 6 games there that have been on my wishlist for a while, along with a few I own already.

@feral1975 except that you can't stream the PS5 games?

@guntam sure, it's just that generally you do it during development of the game, when you're going to have to do a lot of testing anyway. In these cases though you've got a game that's in a known good state (any existing bugs are part of the retro experience of playing that game, and are probably part of a known strategy), and an emulator which one would assume is tested against the actual hardware, so there's no likely much testing required for each individual game. As soon as you add trophy support you're either changing the game's code, or changing how the emulator interacts with that game, so you go from needing to do a cursory "kick the tires", if that, to needing to test everything.

It's not that it can't be done, but that it's expensive.

Places I worked then coding trophies in was fairly easy, and 9 times out of 10 they worked right out of the box. The problem is that if you code it, you have to test it, and that means essentially paying teams of testers to spend the time to achieve the platinum for your game in every possible way to make sure things work, so less than a person-hour's effort of writing code results in hundreds of person-hours of effort in testing, and then if bugs are found, hundreds more hours of re-testing.

I have to admit that I'm holding off buying anything right now in anticipation of the new tiers.

@Barryburton97 nah, the actual render resolution had been increased, upscaling is where you take an image at a lower resolution and apply filters to make it look better at a higher resolution

@Perturbator @Elodin I think I'll have to try out pressure points, so far I've been trying to combine Miracle+, Alpha/Beta/Omega, and lots of draw/scrying to loop through my deck ASAP. It works great through Act 2, but the damage doesn't scale and elites and bosses have too much health in act 3. Wrath builds seem to be too much of a glass cannon to be reliable, and mantra takes too long or too big a deck to build.

It's certainly a fun character to try and strategise around, but I might switch back to Defect to go through the Ascention levels - takes some thought and planning but you can build some ridiculously overpowered engines with that character.