Such a brilliant game. Some of the cleverest storytelling i've experienced through game play alone.

@ScalenePowers Deck / Cards for me!

@AhmadSumadi @CielloArc Just watched it tonight, not sure I would agree it isn’t a Resident Evil movie at all. While it’s true there’s no Claire, Leon or STARS it has nods to RE at every turn, whether that’s weapons upgrades to rifling through drawers for ammo, green herb and a LOT more. But I agree with your friend 8/10.

Gotta respect that they don't want pre-orders as they want you to judge on the actual quality of the game at release. Kudos.

£39.99 is also less than I thought, but sadly my next few months are already full. Perhaps i'll find time in 2027, but if it's good I may buy it at launch to support anyway.

@Bot_Bot_69 We've all been there. Almost about to win, then something goes wrong, we lose all rhythm, die. Defeat grabbed from the jaws of victory! It can be soul crushing.

You are 100% right that often taking a break helps. Often when you come back you win in the first few tries. Mental reset. (plus I think we keep playing in our heads. lol)

@species To be fair Sekiro is an aquired taste so probably not the best example - though I do think the combat is peak - but I could have said anything even more watered down like God of War, Spider-man, Bloodborne, Genshin etc they all make W3's combat look and feel very basic.

Yet if you go back to Sekiro my advice is 3 fold:

1. Be agressive - Keep hitting characters to increase and eventually break their poise. That doesn't mean mindless button mashing, but it does mean to generally keep attacking agressively, get in their face, but also be ready to stop after each attack too.

2. Do this until they deflect. The enemies will generally block your attacks, in which case keep attacking, but the moment they deflect (different sound and visual effect) it's your turn to start blocking, or better yet try and deflect. This may be after 1 or 2 hits, it may be after 3-5. There's a real rhythm to combat that you learn by facing each enemy. But getting in their face is usually better than being passive.

3. Be prepared to ignore rule 1 & 2 as several enemies are different and switch it up. The combat is just so varied.

P.S. Most enemies are weak to one or more tools. Try them all against enemies you are struggling against.

@species @Bot_Bot_69 I found the combat slow, clunky and repetitive. Now slow can be good - see Dark Souls - but it got very boring very fast in Witcher 3. Perhaps as you both say it was better on higher difficulties, though I think I played it on the second highest difficulty, so perhaps not, maybe it's just subjective, we all like different things.

But combat in other 3D games like Sekiro really shows how poor it is. Or hell even something like Genshin Impact's combat there is a lot more going on, it feels a lot more fluid and doesn't get repetitive so quickly.

I honestly think if the rest of the game wasn't so good people would complain about it a LOT more. I'll be interested to see where they go with Witcher 4 because it's a notable weakness in the game.

Very sad, but also not surprising I don't think they have had a hit since Hyper Light Drifter a decade ago.

Solar Ash wasn't it, nor was Possessor(s) and Hyper Light Breaker was cancelled after early access. If you go a decade without making a well reviewed game you are likely to struggle.

Still wish all the staff the best.

Combat was ALWAYS bad. Someone has to speak the truth.
Thankfully the rest of the game more than made up for it.

The art, music and vibe I immediately knew was Ni No Kuni so i was surprised to see it was a game called Bloomwalker, but then I also saw the Level 5 and Ni No Kuni logos. Happy days.

Not reading the review as going to see it tomorrow and want to go in blind. But the headline makes me more excited… not that it was a high bar.

UPDATE: I’ve now watched the movie and read the review, both are excellent. 8/10 really enjoyed it.

@LemanRusk I apprecaite the snark... but why wouldn't Japanese players also be interested in Wolverine or GTA, that's like saying why should Genshin Impact, or Resident Evil be at The Game Awards in LA.

@ShogunRok How long did it take you to finish, and what did that entail. Sidequests and stuff or mostly just main line?

Typically I agree with you... But Control 1 was a huge exception for me, Ray Tracing in the Oldest House was wonderful and it entirely changed how some rooms appeared. e.g. the room with a phone over the chasm just had black windows in the base version but with RT it was a whole lot creepier and atmospheric.

Gotta prioritise Silent Hill 2. But gotta finish Sekiro first, just beat Genishiro

@SJR Me too and I want to give it another go. But at some point perhaps a game just isn't for us. Too much teenage school angst and 100+ hour JRPGs just don't float my boat like they used to. But maybe we'll find the right moment and it will click.

I've not played it, but reading common threads between several reviews there seems to be some things they can fix easily (e.g. a toggle for all the handholding) and some things that are going to be hard to fix (e.g. repetitive combat, pacing etc.).

But I am looking forward to playing it in due course.

I didn't play my PS5, but only by accident as I was away on holiday.

There is a huge difference between what we hear online (Sony is doomed) and reality.

Diablo almost certainly, Starcraft possibly.

Though frankly even Xbox themselves can't clearly state what their exclusive policies are so what chance do we have. The plan is the plan until it's not the plan and all that.

Asking for money for a mod and profiting off their IP almost always gets you shut down like this. Nothing to see here.

@GamingGod Sadly that is the reality. People always say they want something different, but when presented with it, it's rarely the thing they will actually buy. Between a rock and a hard place... which is ironically where you often find Moss.

Very sad news. I was really hoping for a Moss Book 3 and, obviously, for these talented devs to keep working together. Hopefully they all find work soon.

Pretty much what I was speculating: missed milestones, over budget and lack of belief in the project making bank. All seem like sensible reasons to shut it down imo.

But I’m glad the game is still being made elsewhere.
It will likely come to PS6 regardless if exclusivity was an issue.

@naruball exactly this. Days gone didn’t sell well at launch, several of the devs said this, but it did end up selling good numbers later both on sale and for the remaster and PC versions. But by then the decision was already made.

@Kalime78 It's partly self contained, but does end on a bit of a cliffhanger if you 100% it with an expectation of more to come. It kinda felt like one of those TV series that ends expecting that to be the end, but also hedges it's bets with with unanswered questions.

@Kalime78 it also doesn’t help when the creative director, who was fired, has blamed the games poor initial performance on everything from woke reviewers; to fans themselves not buying a game they love at launch (how are you meant to know you love it until AFTER you’ve played it!); rather than taking any responsibility himself.

After all that the conspiracy theories are always going to wild.

Ultimately it’s a shame because Days Gone deserved a sequel, while there were bad parts to the game there was a solid foundation to build on and improve. But initial sales were weak, decisions were made, the rest is history.

@Dr_ENT See my other posts, we’ve already discussed Days Gone and there were a lot of other reasons a sequel wasn’t green-lit. While it eventually sold well it didn’t sell well at launch, the creative director told us this on Jaffe’s podcast. Additionally the game was massively over time and budget and released in rough shape. Plus there was some bad will between him and Sony by the end.

I am not saying Sony don’t care about review scores at all, they do, but they are far less important to them than sales, profit and loss, etc.

@DennisReynolds Days Gone eventually sold quite well but total sales numbers don't tell the whole story. It ideally needs to sell well day 1 at full price, not later in sales, they aren't the same, especially when the game was reportedly so expensive to make. It's a shame but by the time the long tail sales caught up the decision was already made.

@ShadowRJ Is that actually true? I believe it's just a rumour

It's just as likely they didn't make Days Gone 2 because of one or more of the following:

A) The creative lead was an ass, as he proved afterwards
B) They were way over budget for what they delivered
C) Day 1 sales were poor. Yes it eventually sold more units once on sale, remastered & on PC. But that was too late, decision was made.

Sony will care about sales, profit and loss. If it sells 5+ million and makes a healthy profit they will be happy. Review scores are only good for Sony when they are winning awards.

So it's as good as Days Gone Remastered, sounds fine to me.

To be honest this always looked like it would be at the lower end of the Sony scale, though I expected a few percentage points higher.

I'll get to it eventually, but it was never a day 1 for me.

I've tried this game a couple of times and couldn't' make it stick. Maybe third times the charm, but will be waiting for a sale, or subscription service.

@somnambulance What has Physint being cancelled got to do with subscribing to PS+? Surely there's either games you want to play, and you like the service, or there isn't. I don't get it. 🤷‍♂️

@Leinad7 I don't think anyone with their head screwed on thinks PS6 will outsell PS5 or PS4, not at the price of technology right now - plus for many PS4 or 5 is enough. But that's a LONG way from saying it's going to flop.

As to whether PS5 will beat PS4 sales I think it largely depends whether PS6 releases next year or not.

After the silicon shortage PS5 was 5.7 million units behind PS4 as of Q3 2022; but over the next year with stock finally available it had almost entirely closed that gap and was just 0.9 million behind by Q4 2023. It basically remained on track with PS4 for the next 2 years staying around 1-2 million units behind. It's only been the last 2 quarters where it has fallen further behind with hardware price hikes, not price decreases as usually happens.

But with GTA6, Wolverine, God of War Laufey, Intergalactic - as well as many large third party games and other games we don't yet know about - I think there is still a chance to close that gap a little, even at inflated prices. And if PS6 doesn't release in 2027 and PS5 is sold as their main console for another year then it will likely outsell PS4.

I think that's pretty smart. Publishers really need to explore the range of price points and this feels more what the market will bear. Hopefully it pans out for them.

@Lysterao No, not really. I am not claiming to have any additional information. But Sony did, and they cancelled it, big difference.

I find all the comments from people that know virtually nothing about the game hilarious. Sony saw it, possibly even got to play a concept, and decided not to keep funding that vision. I’d have more faith in that than some concept you know nothing about.

Regardless it seems like a PR coup for Xbox right now, but only time will tell how the project ends up. Sometimes games come together late in development, it may still be great, but it’s clearly not great right now, else Sony wouldn’t drop it.

@SuperSilverback @somnambulance Agreed, there's some excellent games to be found here.

Some really strong games in there, perhaps not headline grabbing ones but just really solid games with good gameplay.

PS5 is currently at 95.3 million units sold as of last quarter, that's just 4.9 million behind PS4 launch aligned. When you put everything in context PS5 has had going against it v PS4 - e.g. lack of stock for first 2+ years; several hardware price increases not decreases; competent console competition (PS4 launched v Wii U and Xbox One); etc. - then it's frankly miraculous that it's only just trailing behind PS4. GTA6, and all the other releases, might even wipe off some of that deficit... if Sony can stock up at the right price.

Yet I agree PS6 will likely sell worse than PS5 and PS4 if prices are to be believed, much like current pricing that isn't really in Sony's hands, it's an issue the whole industry is having to deal with. But calling it a flop before it's already launched is a joke.

Maybe... it's finally time to play this.

(I did actually buy it as part of my VR spending spree)

@LowDefAl Well said. Cerny was an excellent choice bringing together the worlds of game development, system development, project management and more, few have such a wide set of skills. Add to that fluency in Japanese amongst many other talents - he really is a polymath - and he was always an inspired choice. I am glad he approached Shuhei Yoshida about taking on the role of PS4 Architect and that Shu pushed for him with Masa Chatani who was head of Technology at Sony at that time. The rest is history.

@HonestHick Some of the reason PS4 and PS5 have been such successes is they have been easy to develop for and arrived with features developers actually wanted and could easily use. That's due to Cerny taking a different approach to what was done in the past.

As well as hardware he has pushed Sony to improve their software tools, specifically their SDK and APIs. Several developers have mentioned that a part of the reason the PS5 is performing on par with XSX - a more powerful system on paper - is because it's easier to extract the full performance of the system due to it's low level API's and SDK. He's a genius imo.

@Slayer25c I believe @CielloArc is suggesting PS6 will be a flop because he may not be interested in it and due to potential high pricing which might slow sales. But I think he will be eating his words in a few years as it flys off shelves... or more likely some goal post shifting to what exactly is a 'flop' in the current economic climate.

Hardly surprising with a 7-8 year development cycle. Looking forward to seeing what he has cooked up with this and the handheld.

@Orpheus79V That I can understand, I am just surprised they are giving the information to Valve so early - as Valve are a company which has had MANY leaks over the years.

Crazy that the leaks have also seemingly announced games like (spoilers ahead) a new Avengers game and a Twin Peaks game

@get2sammyb @LiamCroft Not doubting the legitimacy of the leak, just feels odd that they have access to this data so early when the games aren't even dated and could be over a year away.

Honestly I am surprised that they have trophy/achievement lists that early. Sometimes seems amiss. Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 6 don't even have release dates as far as i'm aware and not even release in 2027.

Why choose, it will be both!

@Northern_munkey You're probably going to love it then. Enjoy mate.