AdamNovice

It's a very meaty demo, wasn't expecting it to be as long as it was.
Graphics: Characters and enemies look great and well detailed. Environments are decent, nothing amazing but hardly bad either.
Combat: It's a weird mix of Sekiro's parrying with Star Wars Jedi's special abilities. Some have said about input delay but I wonder if that's improved through upgraded skills.
Boss fights: easily the best parts of the demo, I found it easier to read their attacks as well as making use of my beta abilities.
My only real criticism would be that I wish the UI stood out a bit more visually. I didn't check in the settings but I hope you can make the UI bigger too.
Also having to pick up resources is a bit of an odd choice, hopefully there's an upgrade later that does it automatically.

Photo mode = the real hard mode.

I respect that they wanted to encourage emergent gameplay but every time I see someone get randomly jumped on by a giant monster I just know I would find it annoying very quickly.

Not surprising there going big on it. MHW is the biggest Capcom game ever.

After the movies I'm hungry for a Dune game and with Spice Wars not yet on PS5, Awakening hopefully scratches the itch.

@LifeGirl It certainly seems easier to just hate all live service games then having an open mind.

Not fussed on the level design but if the gameplay is fun and the business model doesn't take the p*** then I'll give it a go.

@Northern_munkey I shudder to think what Helldiver difficulty is like... presumably you land and immediately get nuked.

me and my nephew were on level 4 difficulty on a bot world and we barely escaped with our lives.

@darthvirgin Arrowhead earned the right to earn that kind of marketing.

A Marvel, Overwatch style game could be pretty good and there aren't that many hero shooters out there...despite popular belief there's only really Team Fortress 2, OW and Valorant.

I greatly respect FFXIV as a game but I know I can never play it. It's too big of a game for me to give it the time.

If PC players want to play a newly released action RPG that's well optimized, is fully featured and not a single MTX in sight...then I recommend Horizon Forbidden West.

I'm glad people are starting to point fingers at Geoff Keighley. He's one of the biggest spokesman in the industry but rarely if ever talks up about the layoffs, he allows himself to be too tied up in sponsors and publishers that shows like The Game Awards become 90% trailer reel then the actual show that's supposed to celebrate the actual developers.

Are people even playing the game properly at that point? Like who cares if it adds a few frames...just play it.
There's too many people who judge a game on its resolution or frame rate that it's reducing the art form into just arbitrary numbers.
Some of the greatest games of all time have technical problems but most don't care cos the games were great.

@Pat_trick We don't know the digital sales yet plus games like FF will have a long tail.

I've bought it but won't be playing it yet. Rebirth, Helldivers and Fortnite stuff to do.
But I got it anyway because I believe in voting with your wallet. And with it been one of the few Xbox games I was envious of as well as wanting MS to go completely multiplatform...this was a no brainer.

I hoped it would sell 5 million over it's life time at best...but never this many this soon.

@AlexPorto It's been happening with Sony's recent exclusives too.
Horizon Forbidden West = "is boring and Aloy is ugly"
God of War Ragnarok = "too many reused assets and ending is rushed"
Spider-Man 2 = "Game's too short, OMG MJ's face". It's really bizarre, it would make sense if it was xbots saying it but a lot of the time it isn't.

@Zenos People thought Remake's ending was bad as well because they either A) didn't like change or B) just didn't understand what Square is trying to do. So I'm not surprised if people will find Rebirth's ending to be divisive because it's almost impossible for Square to keep everybody happy.

About 25 hours in and nearly finished Costa Del Sol and honestly I can't think of anything seriously wrong with the game. The plot so far has been very faithful while enhancing events that it needed too.
Side quests aren't long plus offer greater rewards then Remake did. Exploration is worth doing due to the varied environments.
Combat has been improved a lot especially in aerial combat.
If people aren't buying it then I don't know what Square Enix could have done...these games wouldn't run on Switch and the Xbox community barely buy JRPGS to make the extra cost of porting it day one for it to be worth it.

@Gamestation Of course Sony had a hand in Helldivers 2's success, where do you think the money comes from to fund, produce and market it? A magic wishing tree?

It's a very strange one cos on paper they seemed like a really good studio for Sony to partner with (largely made up of Treyarch veterans) but something was obviously not coming together. But has some of the above comments mentioned, Sony have hired a fair few of that studio's talent including Jason Blundell so they obviously they saw something that was worth doing that.

I have a lot of time and respect for Shawn Layden but let's not forget here that it was under his watch that Sony's budgets started ballooning and while he did push for more AA level games, the wider PlayStation community just wasn't interested.

All those years when his company blurred out the F in WWF or straight up trying to rewrite history against wrestlers who were either A) involved in a ongoing scandal B) in legal disputes with them or C) straight up committed serious crimes.
It's quite funny to see it happen to him.

In a week when the big debate has been about huge budgets on AAA games I don't think it's wise to be scolding a game for the odd low texture. The publishers need to restructure but consumer's expectations need to change too.
Besides if the whole game had high resolution textures the game would be 350GB.

@DennisReynolds I wonder if that's a Japanese thing rather then a western culture one

@Ainu20 Because it keeps interest in the IP going. Guerrilla every week highlight fan art and photo mode pictures on top of doing live streams and podcasts. You only need to look at the Horizon community to see how engaged they are and why they are saddened to see the community managers go.

@Golem25 Of course they do, community managers are there to keep the community engaged.

Loved Ben Starr on PS Access's Christmas maze last year. He was such a top sport for doing it.

PSVR2 is a great piece of kit. Though reviews (including here) overblew the screen quality and not setting expectations with regards to the very small sweet spot.
In terms of games, there's been a surprisingly good amount of quality but of course the lack of 1st party titles is concerning and with the news of PC support I'm wondering if it's just going to put off developers from porting games over.

@PegasusActual93 It's because it's by Team Ninja and people just automatically think Nioh.
It was the same with FromSoftware when people saw Sekiro or Armoured Core and looking for Souls like comparisons.

I know they weren't directly involved in it but I'd love for the more recent Killer Instinct to come to PS5.

This has a lot going for it considering the people involved in it like the Cannon brothers who are fighting game royalty at this point.
I suspect it'll be F2P too considering most Riot games are.
As long as it has most of the Arcane cast in then I'll be happy.

While I'm sure it's welcome news for PC players. It doesn't do anything for us PS5 players who had hoped to be getting more 1st party games by now as well as new ways to use the headset within the PS5.

I read that headline in Jeremy Clarkson's voice

At a time when most people wanted full transparency on Xbox exclusives going forward, MS instead were as clear as fog while also giving everyone a glorified shareholders meeting where they still insist on having every finger in every pie but wont fully commit to any of them.

After last night I don't think Sony will be too worried.

Satya Nadella said not too long ago that he hates the idea of exclusives. Hopefully he takes things out of silly old Phil's hands.

@Sakai Well if Phil Spencer and Co were for once had just been bloody transparent then maybe most of us wouldn't have these questions.

@awp69 Not up to him now. Xbox tonight have set the expectation that any Xbox game could go multiplatform.

"Big man, pig man
Ha, ha, charade you are
You well heeled big wheel
Ha, ha, charade you are
And when your hand is on your heart
You're nearly a good laugh
Almost a joker
With your head down in the pig bin
Saying 'Keep on digging'
Pig stain on your fat chin
What do you hope to find
Down in the pig mine?
You're nearly a laugh
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry"

When are "journalists" going to grow a backbone and call out the crap he speaks.

@Stickleman Except it isn't sustainable isn't it. Other bigger subscription services are struggling and are having to raise prices or adding commercials into it because the growth of the investment isn't there.

That headline sums Xbox up entirely. And people wonder why any Xbox "exclusive" gets port begged.

If I was an Xbox fan I'd be furious at the lack of transparency. Phil Spencer couldn't even be bothered to name the 4 games despite it being public knowledge already.
Also 34m GP subs is a pitiful return on the amount of money that they have put into it.

Imagine this was PlayStation saying this, everyone on these comments would be rightly furious.

@NathanKang You mean the games that make a lot of money?

The problem with day and date releases is needing more resources to develop for multiple systems.

@Hundred_Hand_Slap So did I, was a perfect pallet cleanser after the intensity of the Bret, Austin.

@TheCollector316 Stone Cold is my favourite. The WM13 match with Bret is still my favourite match, just an absolute masterclass in storytelling.

So far the business model is pretty fair. Only level 5 and I'm only 110 super credits away from being able to get the premium war bond once I'm done with the current one.

Also if you watch a Twitch stream with drops enabled for an hour you can get a free armour set.

@Professor_Niggle I discovered this tonight lol

Had some decent fun with it. None of the live service aspects are remotely tempting but there's a solid game here. And since Splatoon isn't on PS5 it's a good alternative.
The music is good too though some tunes weirdly remind me of Dennis Nordon's It'll be alright on the night. God that shows my age.