Topic: Elden Ring Hype Thread

@Mega-Gazz
To walk the dog I’ll probably use rest mode.
DS games are also saved and exit with no problem especially SSD gets you back in the game fast. For that matter it’s very useful to save/exit and straight go back to continue if you missed a lizard and want it to respawn so that’s to say it’s quickly done.

The latest trailer is awesome.
I think it’s full of spoilers though so Only watch if you don’t mind.
It’s so beautiful OMG. Best trailer ever.

Welp, looks like the hype was real

@Voltan even with it being one of my most anticipated games ever, I’m surprised just how much acclaim it’s receiving.

@Jimmer-jammer Yeah, I expected high praise but not this

Or because they are legitimately great videogames.

QFT

Hype, can't wait! Had a quick view of the metacritic summaries and quite a few mentions of more accessible in the same paragraph as brutally difficult. Guess I'll just have to go die in a ditch somewhere and findout myself!

@velio84 150 hours! That’s gonna cause me a major reshuffle… I ain’t complaining though.

@Col_McCafferty There’s an element of both. The games are clearly high quality in certain aspects and so will obviously review well. But there definitely is a little bit of circular hype, in that the games’ devoted fanbase feed into the reviews which then grows the devoted fanbase. I can’t really think of an equivalent series.

I mean, presumably the people who rave about Naughty Dog games tend to like their style of game design as well, lol.

I'm not a Souls fan, but like I said on NL, games that score this high are excellent, almost universally. At least in terms of what they're trying to do.

Of course, a game reviewing well doesn't mean people are obliged to like it. I hated The Last of Us, disliked Bloodborne, and wasn't particularly wowed by the new Spider-Man movie. But they were all clearly good examples of what they were trying to be.

I like the game's director and producer said the game is 30-40h long and now everybody who played it is like "well that was a lie"

Soulsborne games always get great reviews because they're reviewed by people that like those games.

I'd say that's a good thing as long as the review acknowledges the game is not for everyone and states why.
It's the same with fighting games - I wouldn't want a review from someone who doesn't have a very good understanding of the genre as it's really easy to miss things that make or break a game like that - and you gotta be into them to have that.

@Ralizah The Last of Us is a good example. I didn’t really like it but I could see why people did. Objectivity is almost impossible when it comes to reviews which is why you seek out multiple sources.

I’d also like to add how sorry I feel for the journalists who’ve been assigned Elden Ring. Being given code a week ago of a game which is both difficult and incredibly long is just plain unfair on them. You have to get your review out in time and having to attempt to rush such a game and also write about it is too much to ask of anyone. So I do worry that their experience of this game will be ruined as they would have savoured it slowly like the rest of us on release. It went gold a while back, review code should have been sent out long enough ago for them to be able to fairly, accurately and humanely review it.

@nessisonett I am sympathetic but also it’s the nature of the job, everyone’s under the cosh from time to time - should have seen my mobile going nuts this past week because of all these storms 😂 Not always a good idea to pursue a career that’s also your hobby, but if you can come to terms with some of the worse aspects I’m sure the perks are great. It’s nice that there hasn’t been a need to get a score on the Push Square review so Liam can take his time.

Well measuring all games on the same absolute 0-10 scale is impossible to do accurately. For example trying to give journey and elden ring and CoD scores that are self-consistent and resonate with everyone doesn’t compute.

But if you have more granular factual scores (eg resolution, fps, art style, length, story, innovation etc ) as 0-10 scores each, then you can get users to apply their own weightings to each of those and give people a weighted score that is meaningful to THEM.

To be fair, if I was a critic I’d just plagiarise other peoples reviews, change a few words around, stick an appropriate score on the end so as not to raise too many eyebrows and go back to bed.

@kyleforrester87 60/70/80 hours of game time to play in one week depending on your skill level is a non-starter. And then to write a review and go through the editing process. It’s one thing to be swamped at work, it’s another to be given an impossible workload that follows you home at night. You basically couldn’t sleep if you were trying to get a full review out.

@nessisonett i do know people who work weeks like that to be fair, actually thinking about it I used to do about 70 hours a week every week for over 6 months, probably another 10 hours travelling on top! That’s not a complaint, I enjoyed it overall. But the upshot is, there is either time to do it properly or not and I agree if a game like Elden Ring needs 100+ hours and there’s only a week to get a review out, something’s gotta give and it’s either a multi-person effort, the quality goes down or it’s delivered late.

If you love your job you’ll never work a day in your life, and beware of destination addiction - my 2 bits of life advice to myself