Topic: Playstation 4 Backloggery and most wanted!

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN Yeah, this game is massive, but, impressively, it hasn't felt bloated (at least not yet) and it feels lovingly and painstakingly created instead of just "generated", if you know what I mean.
That's why I really liked hearing the same sentiments from the team behind SW: Outlaws in the video PushSquare published the other day: They didn't want to expand the game beyond meaningful content with lots of generic busywork just to pad out the playtime. It remains to be seen if they pulled it off, but I'm hopeful

@FuriousMachine I had intended to comment on your post a couple days ago, but am just now getting around to it —

I’m with you on Star Wars Outlaws, although I’ll probably not get it on release and instead will likely wait for a sale. But if reviews are glowing it may move up the priority list. The videos have looked great to me and it seems like it has potential to be really great, especially for fans of the original movie trilogy.

On the other hand, the Nobody Wants to Die video didn’t really sell the game for me. In fact, I found it rather boring, but it can be hard to judge sometimes.

And Dragon Age: Veilguard falls somewhere in between — probably something I’ll get to later down the road when I have more of the backlog cleared. I’ve got quite a few other “fantasy world third-person swords, bows, magic, and dragons” narrative RPGs to get to.

Besides Outlaws, the only other possible new release purchase is maybe Astro Bot. It’s one of those “vote with my wallet” situations, just to encourage the diversity for Sony first party (same reason I bought games like Dreams, Rift Apart, Returnal, and Concrete Genie at release for full price). I assume the God of Wars and Last of Us’es will have plenty of revenue support.

But you can see how my support didn’t have much effect, especially for Dreams and Concrete Genie. At least I can confidently respond that I’ve done my part when the naysayers do their complaining about “all Sony ever makes is gritty narrative third person action adventure games.” 😅

…Although, even those criticisms have mostly abated lately, probably because first party hasn’t released much of anything in a while. The last couple years has been, what — Spidey 2, GoW:R, Helldivers 2, MLB, GT7, along with the ND remasters/remakes. And the only imminent announced games are Astro, Concord, Fairgames, Wolverine, Marathon, Lego HZD, and Until Dawn. That’s reasonably diverse. So perhaps the ‘Sony is too one-note’ arguments are finally dying down.

@Th3solution Yeah, with Astrobot in there, I feel there is quite a bit of variety in the first party lineup going forward And, absolutely, GoW and TLoU will probably always have a fairly large built-in audience both for pre-orders and day one. I feel that both SW Outlaws and Veilguard most likely will have a solid audience day one as well, but if they turn out to be the type of SW and BioWare game I've been hungry for such a long time now, I dare not take the chance that they may be perceived as flops knowing that I didn't put my hard-earned in to signal my approval. Probably won't move the needle, but as you point out, I'll feel a bit better about it

Veilguard is probably also the one who will be on the backlog pile the longest, as I've yet to play through Inquisition (though not for lack of trying; have two unsuccessful attempts behind me) as well as plenty of other large RPGs to tackle

@FuriousMachine Ditto on not ever making it all the way to the end of Inquisition. Seems there are a lot of us out there.

I had forgotten about Lego Horizon which is also a first party property that is targeting a younger, wider audience. So with Astro Bot and the new Lego game, coupled with several first party FPS games and online PvP shooters… methinks Sony may have over-responded to the complaints about them having too many third person narrative action games. Now their tentpole genre has almost no announced games. Wolverine is all, unless I’m mistaken. Unless you count Death Stranding 2, which is second party of course. We assume there’s a Ghost of Tsushima sequel and another Last of Us coming, but I mean, we know about several shooters, service games, and now these platformer/family friendly titles… but little else.

@Th3solution Lego horizon will slowly rebuild the franchise’s reputation.

@Yousef- It will be very interesting to see. The Switch audience is enormous, and so I wonder if this game will outsell all the other first party games. I have no idea how well these Lego games usually sell, but they keep making them so they must do well enough! 😅

I don’t think the Horizon reputation is all that tarnished, is it? Forbidden West was well-received overall, although I think it fell short of expectations commercially. (I still need to play HFW…) The main complaints I’ve heard about the Horizon franchise is that they seem to be driving it into the ground with too many projects — the Lego game, the rumored MMO, the TV show, the third sequel game, and then the remake of the original game (although I think we might know now that the remake of HZD is actually maybe this Lego game…? Not sure if that’s confirmed). I think there was just too many Horizon projects in development too soon. These franchises need a little room to breathe!

But to your point, the expansion into a Lego
and Switch audience will certainly inject new life into the series

@Th3solution

(Sorry to deflate you but my comment was a Lego building pun)

@Yousef- 🤣 Ah, well played!

@Th3solution fortunately I was going to give a serious reply anyways (and also to justify my shenanigans) right after my cocoa (very serious drink)

It does feel as if Sony could be leaning a bit too hard into the other direction. Frankly I don’t mind since it’s not even the IPs I want brought back to begin with but that’s a topic for another time.

A part of me still advocates for more BluePoint stuff. It doesn’t feel like Sony is using that studio to its maximum potential.

Switch has around double the sales of ps5. Well, probably anyways. New Horizons and Pokémon Sword having 40 million players actually legitimately sent me. I think Lego horizon will do fine. More than fine, even.

@Yousef- “A part of me still advocates for more BluePoint stuff. It doesn’t feel like Sony is using that studio to its maximum potential.”

Totally agree. I known BluePoint are extremely talented and maybe ‘deserve’ to be given full creativity to do their own IP, but man, they are so good at remakes so I wonder if their special skill set will be wasted on a new IP. We’ll have to see, but there is a lot of potential where they could bring back these old games into the current gen like they did with MGS, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon’s Souls, etc.

Sony released a graphic recently (as contained in this PS article: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/05/dont-worry-sonys-most... ) which shows BluePoint siloed under the category of “Partner Studios” with Nixxes and Valkyrie, which is really confusing if they are supposedly making their own game of a new IP.

@Th3solution I should add that I feel Sony lost in touch with the original reason behind the acquisition and did the bare minimum for its original purpose. It was initially meant for remasters. If you’re feeling things inFamous collection amongst other things were sorely missing from previous gen, this is why. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the studio slowly becoming more creatively assertive…. In theory, the entire goal behind outsourcing these remaster was to take the load off Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Japan Studio so they won’t need to develop the remasters in-house and can easily focus on their projects (at the time) like UC4, GoT and Last Guardian.

This must not be interpreted as a criticism against the existence of their remakes at all as I do not believe their existence was entirely within the choice of BluePoint, but rather Sony themself getting a weird about game preservation and re-releases. Remakes have nothing inherently wrong with them but they can risk harming the original artistic integrity of the games they’re remaking, a fact that’s not really helped by the fact a good chunk of these games not only live and die by their artistic vision, but also hold up tremendously well and only truly require a bump in resolution and minor QoL additions at most.

I’m not pessimistic about BluePoint developing original projects but it shows really strange management on Sony part by essentially removing their sole studio to outsource remasters of its original purpose and leaving themselves with essentially these “draught” periods that can be easily filled by legacy remasters. Everything in the industry has a place and purpose.

I'm pretty sure people pleading for genre diversity from Sony were also primarily thinking of higher-quality single-player products, not online shooters and live service games out the wazoo. So far, only Astro-Bot feels like the sort of AAA single-player exclusive that's gonna hit similar levels of quality as their blockbuster action-adventurey stuff.

@Yousef- Yes, you bring up some good points. If BluePoint had been working on a Remake or Remaster then we’d probably have it by now, or at least soon. It’s fun to imagine that a BluePoint Remake could be coming out right now during the first party quiet period.

I’ve heard that ND took on The Last of Us Remake for a similar reason that they did the PS4 Remaster, that being to get their team familiar and tuned into developing for the new generation tech. I have no idea if that’s true on why the have done their own remaster/remakes. But yes, otherwise it is frustrating that they spend their time doing that instead of outsourcing it, when they could have been working on their new game.

@Th3solution you’re right. And yeah there was some controversy at the start around who was actually working on the TLOU Part 1 remake first. The little birdie said that it was a niche team, but ND was like “sorry bud, this is ours now” and the team got yeeted. But that’s only what the little birdie told me, you are at your discretion in choosing to believe that.

On a slightly unrelated note, and I hate going off topic, but how do you feel about buying a game physically? Is it reasonable to try and obtain something physically over there wherever you are and have it cheap as well? Here in Kuwait, it is so easy that I always take it for granted if other countries or states struggle at it. (And no, I’m not asking that for a potential reason potentially related to my potentially soon potential guide, why would you think that? I will however leave this completely unrelated that has nothing to do any ongoing discourse past, present or future, oh how I hate my slippery fingers!)

@Yousef- Sly… 😅
Yes, physical media is available here in the States. I buy many of my new games physical. I do have a hefty digital library for when it’s cheaper that way and for my PS+ fare, but otherwise I prefer a disc if I can get one. I like have the resell value of a disc.

I often use pre-owned markets which we have here to buy physical copies on the cheap, and can often find good deals if I look hard enough. Unfortunately the physical media availability is shrinking through and sometimes it takes some sleuthing through a couple different stores to find what I want.

@Th3solution ahhh, fascinating!!
The grey market functions pretty similarly here. Know where to sniff, and you’ll smell a good deal.

And unshocklingly, musous are extremely popular here. Niche markets are quite loyal.

It’s also not as random as you think. While you wouldn’t be wrong to assume West Asia lives in entirely different universe, especially being predominantly Arab, remember, word travels around and there’s links everywhere. The link between eastern media and their arrival here in west Asia is, our unsung hero, Indonesia! All my love and respect goes to the country of Indonesia! You have no idea how valuable it is to be close to a culture that his its foot on both doors. In this instance, they’re in touch with both our world and the world of China, so you can imagine how word of mouth can travel!

As a matter of fact, I’m playing an English patch of Warriors Orochi 3 PSP on my phone and, you guessed it, the patch is made by an Indonesian team.

The most popular instant ramen brand here is “indomie”, think for two seconds what the “indo” stands for… THATS RIGHT, it stands for “go buy dynasty warriors 8 right now”.

Err, sorry for the typo, I meant to type the country’s name. Darn slippery fingers’

@Yousef- Although it relates to my backlog and my (possible) future purchase plans, I’m going to shift over to the recommendation thread to follow up on that comment, because I did have another musou update.

@Th3solution I shall look forward to your comment with great anticipation.

Just checked some reviews for Nobody Wants To Die and it seems to be well received and delivers what it says on the tin, so to speak. Xbox Era's review was glowing, claiming it was one of the best narrative adventures he's ever played, so that, along with a couple of other solid 8-9/10 reviews sold me and the game is indeed now purchased. It is also highly likely that it will be the next game I play after finishing The Witcher 3, as it is a short game (around 5 hours) and will probably serve as a nice palate cleanser.

Here's hoping my two other "hopefuls", Star Wars: Outlaws and Dragon Age: The Veilguard also delivers on their promise and becomes my next two purchases

I keep changing my mind and disregarding the advice I have received, rather selfishly in favor of my own whims and caprices, with regard to what game I want to play next. But I think I will play Another Crab's Treasure next after RE2 REmake atm, whilst still keeping RE4 & Alan Wake II firmly in my mind in addition to the underwater Soulslike.