wildcat_kickz

People in the comments "hoping" that Highguard would fail and now hoping that Marathon and Hunters Gathering will fail are so lame. It makes me sick how rampant schadenfreude is right now. How miserable and bitter do you have to be in your own life that you wish it on other people, too?

I also don't think Highguard's failure has anything to do with it being live-service or free-to-play. It just didn't have an appealing aesthetic, content was light, and the gameplay felt pretty boring (at least to me). The fact that Highguard failed is not surprising, but I certainly didn't hope for it. Wildlight succeeding would have taken absolutely nothing away from anyone else.

That art style looks absolutely nothing like a FromSoftware game. Don't fool yourselves.

@ButterySmooth30FPS The collective consciousness of Push Square also believes there are only two game scores: 1 and 10 😂

@Areus Realistically, we've had 6 Uncharted games. Tiny mobile games are not part of anyone's zeitgeist, but I take your point.

The point I'm trying to make is 10 years is a long time, so people are obviously hungry for a new one. The same can't be said for Horizon and God of War, where we've been saturated with releases, consistently. You can't miss something if it never goes away.

Franchise fatigue is real, but it doesn't really have anything to do with how many entries a franchise has. It's how frequently we have those releases.

Still don't understand why Bluepoint wasn't tasked with remaking Uncharted 1.

@Areus We've had/will have had 5 Horizon games in 10 years in 2027. Meanwhile, we haven't had an Uncharted game since the year the first Horizon game came out. Pretty big difference in saturation.

I mean, the first shot of Kratos is him hunched over in a not-at-all imposing manner. Very weird way to show off Kratos for the first time.

That's not a value judgement on the show itself, but you'd be lying if you said it wasn't a weird choice.

@Skippermonkey Bethesda isn't calling it 2.0. People who want to gin up the audience are calling it that because it will create a false promise that won't be lived up to and be the kindling for yet another hate campaign against the game.

Best game ever made. I don't care what this is, but I'm gonna be there.

The menus and UI in general aren't good at all, but the gameplay is fun. After playing a little last night, I'm honestly not sold on it, but will play more this weekend. I've been very excited for a new Bungie shooter and my experience so far has dampened that excitement a little, but I don't want to jump to conclusions yet. Much remains to be seen!

Sometimes, being so faithful to the source material can be a detriment. I don't think this looks bad, but I do also worry about this feeling like a live action X-Men where everyone is wearing skintight spandex.

@Voltan I think that makes sense, haha. I'm a bit of a dummy when it comes to this kind of stuff, but definitely appreciate the explanation!

@GDoggyJr Interesting. So PSSR2 could improve games that use the older PSSR without the games themselves being patched? Or would devs need to patch the games to actually take full advantage? I guess I'm a little confused on how PSSR actually integrates with games. From what I understand, the devs need to integrate the tech into the game itself, rather than having the upscaler used as a post-processing trick simply layered on top.

@LiamCroft I'm a little confused. The way that DF is talking about RE, it sounds like PSSR2 is already being used, but Sony's press release says that PSSR2 will be rolled out "in the coming weeks." How can a game be taking advantage of PSSR2 if our consoles haven't been patched yet?

Still waiting for that Batman Beyond game we all want.

@Northern_munkey I imagine for driving and racing enthusiasts, VR is a godsend!

I understand that the VR market isn't large enough to justify AAA stand-alone releases, but I wonder if PSVR2 would have had more success if more regular AAA games came out with VR modes, much like Resident Evil and GT7.

@naruball We live in a world where hyperbole is treated as gospel. A truly sad state of affairs.

I tried one for a few days and was really impressed with the tech. If it ever drops to $199 or less, I might pick it up, but for something with such a limited library, it's hard to justify such a high price tag.

Can't wait to see more of this. As is typical with AC, the setting for this game sounds excellent.

I wonder if ESO will have all expansions included.

@Frmknst So, you've gotten tired of trashing every game and now have moved on to insulting gamers? Super cool, dude. We all really appreciate it.

@4fold That would be great for us, but Sony would never do that. That would actively discourage sales, where this system incentivizes sales by saying, "Look how much cheaper it is than usual!"

Very glad that Frogwares got untangled from these folks. Waiting with bated breath for the next Sinking City 2 update.

Yeah, this is a great choice. From what I've seen of him, he can strike a really great balance between smarmy and intimidating. Perfect for Baldur.

Would love an update/release date for the Mound.

Origins and Black Flag are the best in the series, so sounds good to me.

Already have this on Mac. Riven is one of the best games of all time. If you like Blue Prince or the Witness, don't sleep on it!

@themightyant Don't get me wrong, I'd love more single player games, but I'm actually in favor of Sony exploring live-service. I'm talking more about the industry's reluctance to commit to a live-service game that doesn't explode right out of the gate. I don't really include Concord in this, since that was such a colossal failure, but for stuff like 2XKO, Highguard, etc., it seems like these studios/publishers staff up expecting the game to be the next Destiny only to be caught flat-footed when the audience isn't there immediately. The studios are then forced to go through extreme RIW and the game is put on life support. From the outside, it looks like no one is willing to take the losses for a little bit to establish a foothold and see what can happen if they really commit for a while. Lest we forget, it actually took a little while for Fortnite, Warframe, and Minecraft to catch on.

I'm worried that if Marathon doesn't blow up immediately, massive layoffs will happen at Bungie, too, as if no one even thought about the possibility of needing to cultivate an audience. I'm additionally worried that gamers are being trained to be more and more skeptical of these games because the plug is being pulled almost immediately, so why bother investing time in the games at all?

@themightyant Do you think that Sony (and the industry at large) has lost the plot with regard to the long game? I feel like no one is willing to put their shoulder into a project anymore and at the first sign of trouble, they bail out. You see this with every RIW as soon as a live-service game launches that doesn't set the world on fire. This "all-or-nothing" approach is really stifling creativity, in my opinion.

We obviously don't have the inside scoop on PlayStation's P&L, but it seems like they're not willing to have any loss-leader studios anymore. Bluepoint may not have added a ton of net profit, if any, but they certainly added prestige to the ecosystem, which is harder to quantify.

I doubt he'd even want to do it, but they should bring Shu back and get rid of Hulst or at the very least demote him. Shu shepherded some the best titles in PlayStation history and clearly has a Knack (🫢) for identifying great projects. The longer Hulst has been in his position, the more I'm convinced he's completely out of touch.

Maybe they should have pitched Hermen Hulst a Horizon Zero Dawn remake. That probably would have saved them.

@Boxmonkey GreenPoint remakes Dark Souls...

I try to be as even-keeled as possible, but this actually makes me really f**king mad. How could PlayStation mismanage their teams so thoroughly? BluePoint could have had so many slam dunk remakes in the pipeline! The Demon's Souls and Shadows of the Colossus remakes are some of the best games that Sony has released in the last decade. There seriously needs to be a shakeup at the top of PlayStation. Someone really doesn't know what the f**k they're doing.

I'll certainly fall down the YouTube rabbit hole when laying in bed, but that's it, for the most part. If I'm sitting on my couch and I realize that I've spent more than 5 minutes staring at my phone, I try to just put it down, face down.

The real thing that just hasn't aged well is their character AI routines and animations. I really hope that they've taken extensive notes from Cyberpunk 2077 and Rockstar games. The way that NPCs act, particularly in dialog with their bespoke animations, really cement you in the world.

Sony has a good model at the moment: same unit, but with an optional disc drive slot. That way, they can sell the two SKUs, but streamline their manufacturing process. I see no reason to suspect they'd do something different next go around.

@OldGamer999 I don't know why you're so worked up about this game. It's such a small side-project that no one will weigh it against the larger titles. I don't think GoW Ascension is remembered all that fondly and no one cares.

@ButterySmooth30FPS Who said 7/10 was bad? Do you mean for this game in particular or just in general?

Edit: If you're referring to a specific user in the comments, then I think I get it... 😂

I feel for the developers, as they put several years into this, but I didn't like this game at all.

It's a sad situation, but I don't think that every single game released is owed success - you earn it.

I hope the in-the-trench devs have an opportunity to stay in the industry, but I think the creative leads, particularly the character design lead, should really reevaluate what they think gamers want.

@Rich33 I think image quality (in terms of resolution) is perfectly good now and devs would be foolish to target anything above 4K, since almost no one has TVs or monitors that could support anything higher (and I doubt anyone will for the foreseeable future). Higher frame rates would be nice, but I don't really see much of a need for anything higher than 120FPS. As I said in an earlier comment, the general consumer seems to favor resolution over frame rates, anyway.

I'll kind of just reiterate what I was saying before: I think the "next gen" features won't be super noticeable at first blush, but could be quite substantial. I'm talking about complex behaviors and more reactive/smart AI within games. This is mostly CPU-bound stuff, rather than GPU.

I'm not sure if you've played ARC Raiders, but the behavior of the ARC in that game is really impressive, leveraging machine learning in interesting ways. This is a real step up from the typical cannon-fodder behavior you see in most other games.

If they take that principle and expand it to NPCs, humanoid enemies, flora and fauna, etc., that could be really, really immersive and groundbreaking.

@LogicStrikesAgain Yeah, I think we're on the same page. What I'm saying is we haven't seen those games yet, so there's no justification for newer hardware. Once those start getting announced, excitement for the next generation will increase.

@LogicStrikesAgain I'd argue that the generational leap won't come from resolution or framerate, but in world and character detail. This is stuff like foliage/NPC density, animation complexity, path tracing, LOD improvements, etc. This is actually some stuff that I think AI could help with, if used responsibly. Stuff like the micromovements that people make in real life than an animator couldn't realistically animate, but AI could help fill in the gaps for. These are things that are incredibly subtle and wouldn't jump out as missing, but when stacked together could build a bridge over the uncanny valley.

@get2sammyb Actually, something else comes to mind about this phenomenon. While I don't think there is this type of demographic info for your users on Push Square, I'd wager that the crowd, including myself, who posts here regularly are aging up. I'm on the low end of "middle-aged," but I know there are plenty of people older than me here as well. As time appears to move quicker as you get older, console cycles feel shorter and shorter. The pandemic also threw the sense of time out of whack. It feels like I blinked and the year changed from 2020 to 2026. While objectively false, this console cycle feels like the shortest one, so people are less eager to move on.

But, I think the biggest thing that is lacking is there are zero games that have been announced that look like they necessitate a generational leap. The consoles, in and of themselves, are completely meaningless. What people want are games to justify the hardware.

If games start being announced and shown that clearly demonstrate a need to upgrade, excitement will increase, but without those, everything is hypothetical and uninteresting.

@get2sammyb I think lots of people are broadly satisfied with how games look on PS5. They could definitely run better, but as other data have shown, the general consumer prioritizes looks over performance. On top of that, I think a lot of people still have sticker shock over the jump in price from PS4 to PS5. I'd wager people aren't chomping at the bit to drop a cool $1000.

@PuppetMaster I get where you're coming from and I'm not going to defend Jaffe's temper tantrums. I agree that it comes off as completely immature and he should be better about that/than that. I don't; however, agree with the grifter description. What exactly is he swindling?

I think he definitely enjoys ginning people up, but I never got the impression that he outright lies. I always got the sense that he has a massive case of ADHD and really struggles to concisely articulate a thought. In his solo videos, it really is him completely unhinged. But if you listen to him on Sacred Symbols, he usually has someone else reigning him in/focusing him and you can get a better sense of the thought process behind his opinions. I don't think I agree with him on a lot of those takes, but they aren't as crazy as it may appear at first blush.

Again, I'm not here trying to defend immature behavior, but I do think that Jaffe gets a much worse rap then he deserves. He has a good heart. He just really needs to learn when to shut up.

Yeah, Jaffe does himself no favors when he goes off on these tirades, but people here act like running your mouth is equivalent to being the worst human alive.

And to the people saying "why give this man oxygen," well, despite the fact that Jaffe hasn't made a game in years, he's the creator of God of War, so when he has an opinion on a new God of War game, it's news.

There's a ton of misinformation going around about Jaffe and his work. On another article, people were calling him far-right, which is far-opposite of his political views. If you're so catastrophically wrong about that, maybe you're wrong about some other things?

Again, Jaffe runs his mouth and clearly has a chip on his shoulder about God of War. I would, too, if I literally created it.

I don't watch his channel and only really listen to him when he's on Sacred Symbols. He has zero filter and makes a sport out of stepping on rakes, but to act like he's the scourge of humanity is wildly hyperbolic. Save your outrage for something more useful.

@DennisReynolds Interesting. I guess I've never seen what you're describing. I don't really watch his own content, but love when he appears on a podcast I listen to. He's super crass, but I never got the impression he was mean spirited. For what it's worth, I did hear him apologize for the Metroid thing.

@DennisReynolds Genuinely curious what Jaffe did that offended you enough to call him a grifter. Aside from him being a bit of a loud mouth, I don't really understand what everyone's problem with him is.

@get2sammyb I don't think you're off with the spirit of the quote, but I would argue that Jaffe is misquoted a little bit. I think that first quote should end "...Who the f*ck wants to play...this is God of War." Might seem like semantics, but I think it does have a slightly different flavor. Just food for thought.

@DennisReynolds Jaffe is uber progressive. Not sure where you heard he was right wing. He just doesn't have a mouth filter. I actually like his abrasiveness quite a bit - he's pure chaos, which makes him really entertaining to watch/listen to. Doesn't mean I have to agree with everything he says, though.