themightyant

On the surface that’s absolutely disgraceful and baffling. Bluepoint are were literally the best in the business at remakes.

I do wonder what the internal politics of this decision is and if we will ever find out. E.g. Bluepoint wanted to make their own games, gamers seemingly wanted them to make remakes. That’s a mismatch.

Commiserations to all involved and I hope they find work soon.

@Scottyy Sounds like Remedy games aren't for you. Plenty of other devs.

Gravity Rush & Inception seem like big ones.

@RedRiot193 @rjejr @UltimateOtaku91 Agreed. Hated this mechanic in XC2. I even ended up grinding for dozens of hours at the end and still never got all the characters. Super-frustrating.

I later found out there was a way, I think through the DLC, to increase your odds to make it far more probable, but I think it was still just RNG, so there was a chance you'd come up empty handed. But don't quote me on it, my memory is a bit fuzzy as I've tried to block out the trauma

I don't blame them at all. RPG fans have recently been one of the most critical sub-groups in gaming expecting everything to have the depth of Skyrim, Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 3. Better to not pigeonhole it as an RPG.

On PlayStation globally Physical media is still around 1 in 4 game sales - that despite many games only being digital, many consoles being all digital and those having 0% physical games. 1 in 4 is still a huge chunk all things considered.

@lazarus11 I suspect they’d already learned how to use the engine with Until Dawn (it takes some time to get to grips with a new engine) so it makes sense to use the same one again.

@lazarus11 Supermassive also used Decima for Until Dawn: Rush of Blood too

Love to hear about techy things like this. And it's rare for anyone from the studio other than Kojima to be pushed into the spotlight, nice to hear from someone else on the team.

@Scottyy It does look better in motion than in stills, I watched the first part of a full 4K walkthrough to see if I was being harsh. The pixel art is nice, but it just feels FLAT and doesn't stand out. Compare that to the art in many of the games mentioned above which is stunning and/or memorable.

I've not played it yet, but I was expecting more graphically. The leaks didn't help here as we started imagining something it wasn't.

And the Metroidvania space has been massively elevated in the last decade with games like Hollow Knight & Silksong, Ori x2, Animal Well, PoP Lost Crown, Ender Lillies & Magnolia, Blasphemous 1 & 2, Axiom Verge, etc. etc. there are dozens of better examples in the genre.

I'm sure I'll play it eventually, I like both GoW and Metroidvanias, but feel no rush.

Oh no!

Anyways...

Absolutely not. If you change it then it’s not God of War 1-3 anymore. Don’t mess with it too much, but it does need some modernisation as it feels quite clunky to play in places and parts of it are outdated.

Fingers crossed for Time Crisis!

Shame about Cris Tales, I was hoping to get to that, but won't have time. Also shame about TMNT as I boot it up from time for time for a quick run. Great game. Will wishlist it and wait for a decent sale.

@Bamila Elden Ring is just coded poorly, FromSoft have never cared too much about stable performance. It's more of a dev issue than a PS5 issue. E.g. One modder fixed Bloodborne on PlayStation devkits.

Though as Digital Foundry said PS5 Pro is the best way to play now on console as it's mostly 60fps but crucially holds above the VRR line at almost all times, whereas previously they said the only way to get a mostly stable framerate was to play the PS4 version on PS5.

@Cambrius But it IS a hugely inferior experience on PS4. Often a shaky 30fps and super long load times. Those are the two massive jumps this gen. Other things like better resolutions, graphical presets etc. all round it out to make a large enough difference imo. I tried playing my PS4 over Christmas (it's at my dad's house) and ended up playing via cloud on PS Portal instead because the framerate and load times were such a shock.

The PS5 still has it's share of creaky 30fps games even now.

@Cambrius How many games are actually 30fps on PS5?

I did a google and only came up with around 7 games as of last summer and can't remember any since. Yet there are over 7000 PS5 games on the PSN store.

I challenge you to dig out your crusty old PS4 and spend one full week with creaky 30fps games and glacial loading times.

THIS! I tried to play PS4 over Xmas and it was painful. Ended up cloud streaming on Portal instead.

Really enjoyed this article and I MOSTLY feel the same @get2sammyB. However I think you are missing a few important factors on why it could reasonably be delayed a little.

1) Dev cycles are so much longer most devs aren't getting the most out of the hardware yet.

2) PS5 is a balanced console, we are playing at 60fps and have super fast load times (the two massive jumps this gen) I don't think there's a massive gap to fill somewhere else in hardware.

3) Mid gen upgrades. PS5 Pro has meant we don't need a new console as quickly.

Though personally i'd be happy with 2028, but not any later.

@Frmknst Poor take. No one is suggesting 64+ GB RAM. But 32GB of decent RAM used to be below £90 now it's £350+.

Yes you can buy some slower DDR3 RAM and even some slower DDR4 RAM can be had for less, but faster DDR4 and DDR5 RAM has gone up 3-5x in the last 6 months. 32GB now costs more than most CPUs and prices are still rising. People are annoyed because it's just added around £250+ to any PC build.

They never quite figured out how to monetise it post launch, which live services need in order to keep funding ongoing development costs.

While it probably won't be as fun without a lightgun I will definitely be giving this a go for nostalgia's sake.

I still have a G.Con 45 gun somewhere here. Might dig it out for the lulls.

I do understand that having multiple versions of games on the store can be confusing, some users will likely buy the old one by accident, but there’s better ways to solve this. They should still be available.

@Flaming_Kaiser of course they did. They would have done the maths, weighed up if it would work for them, and said no. That’s all considering something is, doing the due diligence.

@OrbiterNightfall I think you’re confused, I certainly didn’t found this website, I’m just a punter like you. But I agree it’s engagement farming, said as much above.

@Northern_munkey Don't you remember the 1984 horror film C.H.U.D.? (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller). Should be y/our era. No?

The term has evolved to typically refer to the sort of far-right, reactionary individuals that rage over everything online. Often grossly overreacting, making mountains out of molehills. I suspect taking out the sex minigames would make them claim very loudly that the game was ruined, along with a lot of co-ordinated review bombing and dog piling, as that's their usual M.O.

What's to tone down? If I recall the camera pans away and some pottery smashes, or a statue splutters, there's FAR worse in other games. Thought it was always a bit teen cringe, i'd still keep it.

Would I be bothered if they cut it? No, it adds little to the overall experience. But i'm sure the chuds would be enraged.

Was expecting much bigger after the headline. 72GB ain't all that.

@ilyn Yes. I said the same to someone yesterday. The difficulty spikes don't quite fit with the (mostly) cutesy nature of the game, though there is also a darker narrative thread. But they were also problematic as they came out of nowhere, when usually hard games will train you up FIRST, whereas Kena just suddenly threw you in the deep end having been on a float before. It's bad game design.

Additionally some of the bosses moves were just unfair - like tracking you in mid air after you rolled away. In well balanced hard games you know that it was YOU that failed and YOU can do better next time, but in Kena there were some moves that just felt like the AI was cheating. Hence I raged more in this game than any Souls tbh and winning was often accompanied with more of a sense of relief than satisfaction. Again I don't think they got that balance quite right.

Hopefully they can take onboard the fair criticism for the sequel.

@Oram77 @datamonkey They have to want to be bought first!

"Considering" doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. They will have also "considered" going multi-platform or putting games on PS+ day 1.

Successful businesses consider all avenues and weight them up, doesn't mean it will happen, doesn't mean it won't.

@Slayer25c It's pretty simple. Engagement. The last Jaffe post had more comments than any post from last weeks SoP. Negativity sells sadly.

@graymamba He was pretty vague, but he said he had an editor he was happy with. It's one of his viewers I think.

@graymamba I agree he is 'occasionally' entertaining, but you have to sift through a lot of BS to find it. I've said this directly to him on his channel before, but never has a channel needed a decent editor more. I'd subscribe instantly to a "Jaffe condensed" channel that cut out 95% of the useless waffle his main channel has and got to brass tacks. And i'm not talking about his clickbaity hot-take sound bytes.

Difficulty spikes aside I really loved the first Kena and am thrilled there's a sequel coming. The attention to detail in the world and interaction with the Rot (cute spirits) elevated it above your normal fare. It's an under-appreciated gem imo.

Agreed. Wonderful show. Great tempo, they already had me at Kena, Castlevania and Project Windless as new announcements. I would have been ecstatic with that. But there were so many other games shown a great mix of new games, meaningful updates / dates for ones we already know about and a handful of remasters. Keep it up Sony.

@Flaming_Kaiser Whether it's useful is subjective. For me if it can mean not buying a gaming PC and instead getting much of the convenience of console in a PC/Console hybrid in front of the TV while also playing Xbox, Steam, Epic, GoG, Amazon, etc. games all on one box at higher settings than other consoles then I would be interested. Yet I agree it might be quite niche at a high price.

But we really have to see what they are offering before making any firm decisions, maybe it will be great, maybe it won't. At the moment we're just guessing, it's easy to be negative.

@Flaming_Kaiser we will have to wait and see what they announce. But if, as heavily hinted and rumoured, NeXtBox plays games from all the PC stores AND is backwards compatible with previous Xbox games AND has Game Pass AND Play Anywhere all with the convenience of a console then that will be compelling to many gamers. But of course I don’t think it will be quite as smooth sailing as that.

Additionally they have said it will be a high end device, if it ends up being considerably more powerful than PS6 (as the leaks see to suggest) then those multi platform console players that like graphics might make it their primary device. Of course this is likely to come as a high cost, which will price many out.

All in all we will have to wait and see what Xbox are offering.

Technically, yes – but we think this is really stretching the definition of things to make a pretty meaningless point.

I’d argue that all that matters is that games are available on your platform, so if NeXtBox does in fact play PC versions of PlayStation games that’s more than a technicality, the games ARE there.

Looking from a wider perspective I think people get far too caught up in who makes what games, especially from platform holders as they’re used to score points in petty console wars. But what we should be concerned with is whether we can play the games on our hardware, who made it isn’t very important.

@dv_xedge I’m happy it exists, and I’m sure I’ll play to eventually, was just pointing out that PSN almost always grades games high, especially first few days, and that looking at other sources the reviews are lower than 4.75 / 95%.

I suspect that will come down on PSN over time, but still remain higher than elsewhere, and critic scores will probably aggregate in the 7-8s.

@dv_xedge PSN scores are usually between 3.5 and 5. It’s rare to see lower unless it’s utter trash or being review bombed. 4.75 is still high, but the people who were likely to buy it day 1 are more likely to be GoW fans, which is in its favour, I’d expect that to come down over time.

On Metacritic it’s only got 3 critic scores so far that are averaging 75, and the user scores are currently 7.4 (although this was 8.0 yesterday). I’m waiting for more reviews as frankly I have better metroidvanias to play first.

Unlocking additional characters is NOT the same as unlocking co-op. They advertised it as 2 players that should be available for, the start or refund players.

@DennisReynolds Agree with your general post, except he's definitely not right-wing, unless your definition of right wing is loudly pro-LGBT, pro workers, etc. FYI he has a trans child that he's talked about a lot. @Glorfindel was right to question this.

I'd say he's centre-left. Not that any of that matters. If he makes good points he makes good points regardless of his political stance. Sadly I don't think he does make good points often. Mostly a blowhard hack nowadays.

@johncalmc I agree about the art style, at least in still shots, it looks very flat. But there is no problem with story in a Metroidvania, see Hollow Knight, PoP Lost Crown, Ori etc.

It's only £24.99 which seems reasonable to me, and is getting good reviews on PSN store 4.8/5 from 3.5k ratings and 8.0 from 111 user reviews on the harsher Metacritic.

Comparing to Silksong's price makes almost EVERY game look poor by comparison. They knew they would sell millions and it was mostly made by 3 devs + a composer. I can't think of ANY game that matches it for quality vs cost except perhaps F2P but then you get ***** monetisation.

The trouble with Jaffe is there is about 5% interesting insight and 95% yapping about whatever he feels like, often baked out of his head and just ranting. I feel dimmer most times I watch his channel, especially when his fans call in.

Yet there is some genuinely interesting content on his channel, like the Michael Mumbaeur chat (ex-head of Sony Visual Arts Service Group) but it's like finding a needle in a haystack. As a general rule if Jaffe says something like this I usually disagree.

@Divergent95 Celebrate the closing of that chapter and enjoy starting the next chapter of your life. Great game choice.

@Duck_Farmer FF4 was a HUGE leap in terms of characters and story telling, enjoy. Are you playing them all?

Finally joined the Yakuza bandwagon with Yakuza 0. In fact I played Yakuza 1 & 2 on PS2 back in the day but never since so it’s a fresh start. My overarching memory of those PS2 games was how dynamic the combat felt in the early 2000s, grabbing a guy and smashing his head into a wall, or picking up a sign and beating them down with it… it felt like you could do anything.

Jump forward 20 years and even though Yakuza 0 uses the newer engine the combat feels a lot more clunky that I remember, quite limited in a lot of ways, it gets tired quite fast, and I don’t love that aspect as much as I expected. But thankfully there isn’t actually that much combat so far, the game is far more of an interactive movie (with a LOT of mini-games) than I remember with long cutscenes followed by a few minutes of gameplay then another lengthy cutscene.

Thankfully the story is good, the characters, writing are voice work are excellent, and the sense of place in Kamorocho is brilliant. I am still a little disappointed however, I thought I’d love it more based on memory and reputation. But I’m only on Chapter 8 of X, will see how I feel by the end.

It really was excellent and well paced. If there was a game I wasn’t interested in, of which there were very few, never had to wait long for another. So many great looking games.

How about NO! But it's easy to skip this FOMO tax.

That said it's not the worst implementation i've seen. It's not like it' delays it past a weekend only 2 midweek days, and at 'only' £10 including skins the price isn't outrageous. But I still don't like it and won’t pay for “early access”.

Going to wait for full reviews, but I really don't like the art style at all, seems VERY flat in those screen caps... perhaps it's better in motion as you suggest. But I already have 5+ metroidvanias on my backlog I have to get to, this one will have to wait unless it's getting ridiculous scores.