AgentMantis

@RagnarLothbrok it's a license to print money if you land a hit. Genshin's top banner generated $46 million in 3 weeks, it's estimated to have made $6.3 billion over 4 years. Executives who have no real clue to what gamers want see those figures and need to change their underwear.

The base game had zero issues, I'm not really sure how you could improve on it meaningfully. I'm really disliking the current tone that the base ps5 is trash and the pro magically fixes everything.

Overall the voice acting is pretty bad, it was the same story with Dragon's Dogma 2.

Paimon's voice has been toned down significantly since the early days. The English voice cast is top tier with Itto being my personal highlight. I fully support the strike, threatening to automate the creative processes behind games will only end in tears for us gamers.

Bloomberg did a deep dive in the summer on the massive problem with peados on Roblox. Some truly awful stuff was unearthed and here we are again. Zero accountability and zero solutions.

Gotta drive those share prices lower for the takeover. Next week it'll be work place harassment and toxic culture.

@thefourfoldroot1 is it a legitimate complaint though? "This character isn't sexy enough for me. I like my women reduced to a single defining aspect that's catered specifically towards my demographic."

Saber is about as mid as it gets, 90% of their output is ps+/Gamepass fodder

The graphics were fantastic and arguably only part of the game that needed no extra work, everything else was crushingly dull. Easily my biggest PS disappointment.

@JokerBoy322 it's nothing to do with Sony, this is squarely on the Devs who released a terribly optimised game and can't bail themselves out without brute forcing a solution

Ubisoft titles are discounted faster and heavier than any other publisher. I fully expect to be able to pick it up on black Friday for less than £30.

This is nothing to do with satisfying gamers, this is all about share price, they can't afford the bad publicity at the moment. If the share price was riding high you could guarantee they'd be willing to serve up a dog's dinner

I'm glad they moved on from Jin, his story was told and I'd hate to see it watered down by forcing character motivation for the sequel. LaD:IW is one of my favourite games of this gen but they had to bend and retcon some of the stuff from the first game to make it work. Besides, I'll sew myself to the carpet if we don't see Jin appear as some kind of spirit guide when the protagonist reaches rock bottom at the end of act 2.

The Plucky Squire, I'm on chapter 9 and hope to finish it over the weekend. I had high hopes but it's kinda of meh, it's nowhere near as inventive or fun as the trailers made out. Its incredibly linear and every puzzle solution well signposted. The only times I've been stuck is when stuff fails to load into the level.

RGG: Gori Majima...
Me: sold.
RGG: but you haven't heard the pitch
Me: Did I stutter?

The new DA was the main feature of last month's EDGE mag and the devs talk about how janky and how many corners they cut during Inquisition's development for various reasons, there was very little faith in it from BW or EA. Personally it was ok at the time, but way too much filler and weak plotting. When the Witcher 3 came out it blew it out of the water, DAI looked absolutely archaic in comparison.

I have zero faith this will turn out well

As time passes I'm more and more convinced that a large part on why no sequel was green-lit was Sony had just had enough of this idiot.

It's not met their sales expectations either, even after they downgraded them following it's luke warm critical reception. I think I know what the lead title in Black Friday sales is going to be this year.

Playstation owners want single player games. It's that simple. Until Sony start delivering on that front, every single live service game arrives with a target on it regardless of its quality. Titles like Concord and Fairgames might of found a much warmer reception if we weren't all starving for what brought us to the playstation in the first place. The rumoured state of play later this month is starting to feel like make or break. Sony needs to lay their cards on the table, they've bungled the entire PS5 generation and need to start giving reasons to stick around.

At this point the number or articles telling me it's flopped exceeds the entire player base. Everyone knows it failed, we don't need hourly reminders.

Trash month. My backlog is full thankfully.

@Arkham24601 because they did when the games went into production, now when they're ready the market is saturated and no one is going to jump from a title they've sunk hundreds of hours into already

I'm still angry about THPS.

I'm not too fussed, as soon as I'm sucked in I can't tell the difference.

Automatically noping you out is always much more preferable than just assuming they can sign you up for whatever. Stars was poorly conceived and poorly implemented. They should just go back to the drawing board with the whole scheme.

Side stepping all the negativity around the game itself, 8 years is just too long and it's not the only game to take that long. An entire career in AAA game development results in 5 games, lessons learned between releases take an entire console generation to be implemented. As much as AI is maligned I really can't see how the AAA continues without it.

The non stop quest for growth, there's a term for that, cancer.

@WizzNL statistically in this case Chinese users would be an outlier and excluded from data sets as it would skew them! As China represents a small percentage of the Steam's user base, its equivalent to the very vocal minority. Outside of China, and within the average user base, the game has had a good but nowhere near phenomenal reception. Using skewed figures paints a warped picture of the reality.

It looks so very dated, both gameplay wise and graphically. This is a series that prints money, has a budget that most games would be lucky to see a tenth of, and it looks like a mid-gen PS4 game.

Crossover media always feels like homework

Looks good? The graphics were ass and it looked packed to the gills with generic MMO filler content.

Mechanically it's much closer to a souls-like than it is to the rebooted GoW but it's much more forgiving than a typical souls-like. Most reviews seem to call it a boss rush with very little to do outside of running towards the next big encounter, that's more my concern.

Solid month, Wild hearts looks interesting

2 and first Tales are decent enough the rest just isn't worth bothering with. 3 was one of the most painfully misjudged games I've ever played.

This is going to get murdered by BG3 comparisons.

With a reported running length of 15 hours I'm holding fire until reviews drop

Baldurs gate 3. Picked it up in the sale.

Game's journalism continues to dwindle towards an IGN monopoly.

Launching a MP title into the currently overcrowded market would have been madness. Things have progressed significantly since their last attempt and you really need to be built from the ground up as a MP studio to even stand a chance. ND should have farmed it off to a MP specialist studio if it was that important to them.

@dark_knightmare2 is everything ok at home? 5 straight replies defending a mediocre at best game seems is coming across as a cry for help tbh

They've given it away on every platform, that's probably a "sale".

Souls-like has been well and truly beaten to death at this point. Creative bankruptcy.

They've run out of time and money trying to get this one over the line. I think this one is going to be a much narrower, more linear DA experience as a result.

I got the Shadow of Colossus one

It looks like it might be worth a shot. I made the mistake of looking at the YouTube comments though, eesh, looks like this one has really stirred up the basement dwellers.

@lacerz Ga-cha-pon, Japanese onomatopoeic word of a capsule dropping from a toy vending machine. Basically you insert premium currency and get a random character. The odds are fixed though you do get a pity system where once you've spent enough you get a guaranteed top-tier drop. Some are super predatory, some less so. MiHoYo games tend to fall on the more innocuous side of things.

I'm really enjoying it. The combat and characters are a lot of fun, while the grind is a lot more streamlined.

You lost me at youtuber loremaster

@Batesy125s Hoyo tend to make their money through fomo and waifu baiting. Premium characters flatten the skill gap needed but almost all content tends to be beatable with free characters. The gacha system is easily one of the most generous ones out there as well, premium currency is easy to come by and the pity system guarantees characters eventually. It's worth checking out, ignore all the hate from people who have never played any of their games.