themightyant

@IOI just wondering why it matters if a game is PS4 or PS5 exclusive or not? Also why have you included games on PS4 from studios that weren’t first party at the time (second party) but not done the same for PS5.

I’m sure PS4 would still have more but it would be as lop-sided as your lists suggest.

@Flaming_Kaiser @carlos82 As long as we're having fun playing whatever we're playing none of it really matters that much. But it can feel a bit oppressive at times.

I hear ya brother! And if it's anything like mine it's only getting longer.

(I also don't help myself, just bought a PSVR (1!) and am catching up on older games on that. I probably shouldn't have started Skyrim again too... this time in VR. lol)

As I say every year their grading criteria is a bit weird. e.g. Microsoft gets a higher average than the publisher above them (80 v 78), has more "great" 90+ games (1 v 0), publishes more games (21 v 6) but for some reason is behind them. That doesn't seem right.

Nintendo also get boosted due to Switch 2 ports of 90+ games like Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, that many wouldn't consider ranking as highly as new games.

Whereas Sony understandably gets dragged down for Lost Soul Aside (62) and Midnight Murder Club (68) which don't fully offset DS2 (89) or Yotei (86).

But at the end of the day it's just a bit of fun. Personally i'd weight the highest scoring games a little more so that if, for example you released two or three 90+ ranked games in a year it might not get dragged down by the ones in the 60s that few people are playing. Not all games should count equally.

@Max_the_German I've heard similar things both from friends and online. Two friends specifically said it's between this and Lies of P as their favourite non-From Souls game and talk about it often.

I have only heard really good things since their 2.0 update ironed out a lot of the issues that dragged the game down.

Word to the wise: Gaming chairs are a false economy and you spend most of that money on branding and garish designs that often aren't very good ergonomically.

My advice: Find an ex-office supplier and buy a like-new second hand chair that is actually good. I bought a Herman Miller Aeron over a decade ago for much less than this (they retail at £1000+) and it will likely last another 10-20 years, one of the best decisions I made long term both for my wallet and my spine!

This game was an absolute mess... and I kinda loved it.

TBH I haven't played a 3D Sonic game in decades and just had a lot of fun with it for all it's glaring faults. But I never would have even tried it without PS+.

No one is likely all that surprised about Dark Outlaw Games specifically, but to see yet another Sony studio closed in quick succession is disappointing.

@urbical That's a VERY short sighted way of thinking about it. Those streamers bring a lot of players to the game and indirectly fund the game and employees.

I feel bad for him, and everyone else affected, on a personal level. But given time he should be able to see it's not a personal decision.

@KonstantTrouble Games journalists average Crimson Desert at an 8/10... where's the conspiracy?

I think this poll could have been about most games and gotten similar results on this site.

Hopefully most of the game is included in the main game this time, there's literally more content in the DLC than in the main game, which is about 5-6 hours, whereas DLC is around 9 according to HLTB.

Excellent that it runs faster than PSSR1 means we can just turn the toggle on and not worry about worse frame rates.

Looking forward to giving it a go... after a lot of patches.

Looks like it could be fun, but will come down to how well it controls and if it can keep level design and gameplay interesting. Will keep an eye on it.

I can understand wanting to phase out PSN as an acronym specifically but signing into PlayStation and PlayStation status does not have the same meaning as signing into the PlayStation Network or PlayStation Network status. One is local and can be fine, one is online and might be down for a while host of reasons.

The original RE2 is my favourite. 2 Remake was really good for the first playthrough but massively dropped the ball after that.

RE4 on Wii with the pointer remote is probably my next favourite. Really added to the tension. Through I’ll be attempting RE7 in PSVR soon. (I’m a little behind)

Maybe I'm just a mad man but I loved that Returnal didn't coddle you.

I loved this to... but only to a point, and I think they got the balance wrong for me, as did many others based on the comments about the game. But we all like different things, there isn't an objective right or wrong to it, only subjective ones.

As for being a madman... you did name yourself after one of the most notoriously sharp difficulty spikes in Bloodborne @cainhurst94.

I rest my case m'lord

@cainhurst94 The calibrators would bring you up to a reasonable weapon level if you skipped and there would be one measly health pack / resin but that was about it.

Whereas If you spent time scouring the earlier floors you could be at 2-3x health, with 2-4+ extra "lives" (either through "Astronaut" items, artefacts or the bring you back to life machine). You could have artefacts that boosted things like your dodge, increased health on kills, give you a shield when you pick up resin, give you a higher likelihood of having weapons with better perks and other perks etc. Effectively you could be many, many times stronger and have a MUCH better chance of success. That was cool... but it took far too long, up to an hour or so in my experience.

Or you could just skip the floors and be comparatively weak. If you're more akin to a gaming god with cat like reflexes perhaps that was enough to succeed, like the people who go straight to the final boss in BotW, but for many of us it wasn't and in order to succeed we had to grind again, and again. People complained about 1 minute run backs in Silksong, or spending a few minutes blood vial collecting in Bloodborne, yet this was nearer an hour of busywork. It was painful.

Ultimately we all like different things. And to be clear, I REALLY liked Returnal, I loved MOST things about it, I just thought the death system was FAR too overly punishing and that really dragged it down. I also see many people just quit. They can do better, and I hope they do, because the rest is impeccable.

I LOVED this game and actually thought the “blame it all on the captain” trophy was great. Masterpiece.

@Oram77 perhaps. But to many of us that sucks. If they want more sales, and it seems they do, then they have to make it less soul destroying when you die. Other Rogue-likes like Hades don’t try to break you each time you die, instead they will you to try again. That’s what it got wrong imo.

Hmmm. Never got around to Lost Records. Got very middling reviews for the first part and I'm not sure I ever even saw reviews for the second part. Did anyone REALLY enjoy it?

(edit: I see a few above did, can I fit it in? hmmm.)

@Scottyy I did persevere and it was worth it in the end, but this was a large enough stumbling block for many.

I'm not 100% convinced just being able to get back to where you died quickly will help if you are too weak to not die again and have to spend ages levelling up. It's a bit like how you can go straight to the final dungeon and boss in Breath of Wild, but only the most unnaturally gifted / dedicated players can actually beat the boss when so under levelled.

I hope whatever changes they have made it doesn't take an hour or longer to get back to where we were... often only to die again. This let the game down a little too much for me.

@Ragnarok7326 It's nothing like smoothing on modern tvs. It's the opposite, it's adding additional frames in between to make the picture appear more clear and fluid in motion, not blurring between them. But you need a high base frame rate (at least 60fps) to start with else controls feel sluggish.

Seems like a match made in heaven. Just don't fly too close of the illusion breaks.

@nessisonett Just wait, costs come down. I bought a PSVR1 off ebay recently for £70 including camera. move controllers etc. after realising I had 30+ PSVR games in my library through PS+ etc. Skyrim VR was £4 from CEX. Happy days. Astro Bot soon.

I didn’t find Returnal THAT hard, but what it was was overly punishing. Sending you back after over an hour for failure was BRUTAL and left me wanting to quit. I didn’t and I loved the game generally, but that was in spite of this, they can do better to make it less soul destroying when you die.

It's also noted that, unlike Returnal, you will be able to instantly go back to biomes you've already reached.

This does sound better, however in Returnal you could quite quickly get back to where you were… but you might not be strong enough to take on what you died to. The problem was, at least how I played, you had to spend a lot of time clearing out floors to get stronger each run in order to succeed. This took too long. Hopefully THAT aspect is better. The last few words didn’t fill me with optimism. Will wait for reviews.

@rjejr they didn’t release in 3 consecutive years, there were 2 years between 7 and 8. And as @LowDefAl said this ignores the fact there was a 3 year gap between 6 and 7 during which these were all in development.

But I agree it would be great to find ways to hasten development… neural rendering like DLSS5 perhaps? Oh never mind 🤣

It's not broken, but it is clearly coming in hot, will be waiting for patches.

@MasterChiefWiggum there’s already video of it running on series s and it seems pretty stable just lower resolution, as you would expect. There isn’t some Cyberpunk like grand conspiracy here, people making mountains out of molehills to farm engagement.

Doesn’t really look that “rough” to me considering the density of the open world and draw distance, but it is perhaps at the lower end of resolution and I did see some tearing.

Frankly if this is "rough" I wish more games looked rough!

@Almost_Ghostly @Almost_Ghostly to be clear they do it for SEO, PureXbox does the same, and has said the same reason. It gets them more clicks. But I agree it’s annoying there have been several times I’ve had to check if a game is only coming to Xbox or PS5 due to their titles.

@SJR thanks. There seems to be a lot of misinformation. I found several sites saying there wasn’t an upgrade path and another that said

“Existing owners of Shenmue 3 on PC and PlayStation 4 will get free upgrades to the game’s new/enhanced versions.”

Yours is from the publisher so I hope it’s up to date and correct. Hopefully the upgrade path is reasonable @dskatter

@SJR I’d love to be wrong. Please say I am wrong. @get2sammyb said there was no upgrade path above and while I couldn’t find an official response several forums said the same. Can you send me a link?

UPDATE: this may be wrong

@dskatter No upgrade path. That really sucks, ESPECIALLY for Kickstarter backers. I would have thought at the very least they could do that for them.

Most games would add this as post release patches and not try and resell us the entire game. I won’t support that.

This is true… BUT context is key, the share price has returned to where it was a couple of months ago before hype took it up. I suspect it will bounce back a bit once sales are announced.

I wonder if this is simply to make it a wider thing so that they can keep showing growth. Basically change what is being measured.

EDIT: Though on reflection I think PSN is also a bit meaningless.

Always massively respect you sticking to your principles in this. Look forward to reading your review of the PlayStation version specifically in due course.

There’s no rush for me. Games like this always benefit from patches. Reviews now confirm this. I’ll add it to the wish list and come back when it’s been patched.

@cainhurst94 yes. But we’ve known this for years, just look at AAA sales splits when they’re revealed it’s mostly on console. PC players spend a lot but typically on different games and in sales not Day 1 AAA. Though there are exceptions.

Clearly it's not a bad game at all, but there's no denying this was shaping up to be the next big thing, so expectations were certainly high.

I think from that context you'd still have to say it's a disappointment.

@get2sammyb It’s scoring almost exactly in line with massive hits like Hogwarts Legacy, Stellar Blade, Black Myth Wukong or Genshin Impact etc. so I don’t see why a 82 on Opencritic is either disappointing or prevents it being “the next big thing”.

Were you REALLY expecting this to be a 90+ universally praised game? Challenging Elden Ring or Tears of the Kingdom.

Honestly one of the weirdest takes I’ve seen in while here.

Around 8 / 10 is exactly where I thought it would land. And that’s bad now?? Weird take

While it is true PC is growing faster than consoles this is most in Asia, primarily China, where they buy different games. The vast majority of AAA games still sell most on console. You only have to look at the console sales splits when they give them.

Looks fantastic. Looking forward to it.

Been pretty tuned out of Marvel for a while but that trailer bought a smile to my face. Hopefully it's awesome.

@Neither_scene The simple answer is engagement. As Sammy said it's one of the biggest stories in gaming right now. Even if I don't really like the gleeful dogpile approach to how the message is being shared either.

@AhmadSumadi I think there's certainly SOME shots where the game does look better, sharper, more detail. But that also comes with a lot of cons. In the image above the woman now looks 10-20 years older. It's similar with the boy from Hogwart's Legacy that now looks like he's in his 30s not at school and looks less painterly. That IS an artistic change. Though this will be in the control of the creatives.

That said, while I don't particularly like MOST of what i've seen of DLSS 5, I do think there is a massive over reaction too. But that's the way of the world right now, in order to feel heard people shout loudly.

@themaladroit More than happy to try and help a fellow gamer! I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for the heads up on Possessors. I’ll have a look, I love metroidvania, and some of my favourite games reviewed quite mid, that’s the problem with aggregate sites like Metacritic they punish divisive games that some may love but others won’t. Sometimes a 6 or 7/10 is a personal 9/10. good luck.

@Boomers-r-us Not sure a demo will do much good, the opening hours are slow and not very representative of the full game imo. I think it will be received similarly to on Xbox/PC, some will love it, some won't, except two differences

• People will go in with better expectations, at launch it was more disappointing.
• The game has been patched and has a lot of QoL features added in 2 years, it's a better game now.

@themaladroit the trouble with Starfield is it is highly divisive. That makes it difficult to recommend.

That doesn’t mean you won’t love it, many did, but also many didn’t. Critic scores range from 4/10 to 10/10 that’s by far the widest range for a BGS game. FYI Metacritic was still 83 but critics seemed to rate it higher than fans, it’s just at a 57% positive on Steam.

Personally I put over 100+ hours into it and there were highs were I was thinking it was a 9/10 and lows where it was a 5 or a 6. Where you sit in that range will depend on what you like about their games. I.e.

If you like the world building, the RPG systems, the quests you will probably really enjoy Starfield, some of its strongest moments are here. But if you enjoyed exploring the worlds in Elder Scrolls or Fallout this is a real weakness in Starfield and you will likely be disappointed.

Hope that makes sense. Generally I’d cautiously recommend it, I still think for all its faults there’s little like it.