Andee

When running on a PS5 Pro, the PS5 game unlocks access to two more graphical modes: Fidelity Pro and Performance Pro. The former targets 30 frames-per-second and includes three new ray tracing methods: RT Ambient Occlusion, RT Reflections and Interiors, and RT Key Light Shadows. You can toggle intensity settings to dictate how effective the three features are

Hang on, I thought the whole point of PS5 Pro was to eliminate the whole "this or that" choice, and have a balanced, optimised overall performance that incorporate the best of both worlds? And now they're introducing three more sub-choices as well as the main two?

Maybe one day I'll give this a whirl, but there's so much I already need to play — Forbidden West being one of them!

Anyone "furious" that their insanely high-end AAA lavish, several-years-in-production New York City superhero simulator doesn't have more content cranked out for it in under a year really needs to acknowledge the definition of a First World Problem.

Yeah, ditto.

I've never quite understood the trophy deal-breaker, but not making it available for individual purchase is absurd. Don't they want my money?

Ah, no way! PLAY was the first PS mag I ever read (before that I was a Mean Machines kid) — I had no idea about the whole cancellation/revival/replacement with OPM; by that point I'd pretty much stopped reading mags on the reg altogether

They must be having a mass cull over at Future Publishing; Total Film just announced that their current issue will be the last

Yeah, TLR was a great return to form from the first game — Chronicles I remember not minding at the time, but even then it did feel a bit like a cheap cash in.

AoD I'm extremely curious to see how they're going to handle this remaster. I believe the first three games were built using the original code, so they're really going to have to do something special to tweak it just enough to make it bearable. I never even finished the original because of a progression-halting bug whilst playing as Dudebro McSoulpatch.

Spiders are cool, they keep the house bug ecosystem in check.

@colonelkilgore The "S" stands for Shinobi

Yeah as loose as the Shinobi lore is, it's pretty much an open canvas for any kind of movie plot, but I think what would definitely get me to go on day one would be if they roped in Yuzo Koshiro to do the soundtrack.

While this does look decent, I've been put off almost every other Persona-style game by all the various DLC/GOTY update versions and remasters for previous games (most of which are spread across different versions, so there's never a single definitive version) that I can't in good conscience invest 100 hours into something only for them to announce some extra episode later on that requires re-buying/re-playing the whole thing again.

I wish Aloy was more verbose. I never had a clue what to do or what I'd just done or what I was currently doing in those games.

Yeah, CEX have it for £22 right now

@SolarSailor I love Ashly Burch's work (especially in Life is Strange), but I found her performance as Aloy a bit overly earnest

Indeed — there needs to be a more granular breakdown of games that actually have both physical and digital versions — I'd bet at least 75% of the PS4/5's library was digital only.

I'd be interested to know how much, of the 25% physical purchases, are second hand (if indeed they're being counted at all)? I pick up physical when I can, but I almost never buy them on launch, or first hand. Or are they getting their data on the amount of people running games from a disc rather than a digital install?

I understand and appreciate the onboarding for new devs process — but I think charging full price for a game that's less than a decade old, and runs on the same hardware, is a bit silly. Logic would dictate that people would vote with their wallets, so I guess it's really on them at the end of the day; I'm sure people aren't "hate buying" a £60 game

@johncalmc I have a question. How do you get past the goat?

Just kidding — super looking forward to playing this again! And really hope they remaster the rest of them.

While I've no inherent problem with the idea of a HZD remakester, it's simply not a game I really have much interest in revisiting, having sunk 50+ hours and 100%ed all the side quests, there are so many more games still on my list I'd rather devote my time to

I literally just restarted DAI last night (after stalling for the best part of a decade after barely touching it) — figured I'd try and get back up to speed before the fourth one comes out. So far it's pretty decent!

@get2sammyb you could just play Fortnite — they have a tie-in for seemingly every IP under the sun

It wouldn't surprise me if the original concept designs were along these lines. Before months of committee-led tweaking whittled them down to the barest bone, weak-lemon drink iterations that eventually got used.

O my cup runneth over...

Not on your nelly!

If they'd chucked in the disc drive, and made it fully back-compat with the entire legacy of PS consoles, I might have been interested...

I'd be interested to know how much storage space all of these games combined would take up. I'd imagine it can't be much more than streaming a couple of hours or so of video from a single game would be, in terms of sensible use of bandwidth.

Yeah I'll definitely play it — don't think I really wanna drop sixty notes on it, but I'll definitely get round to it once my 3-6 month backlog makes room for it

I'm a bit iffy about putting a number on things, but I will say that I went from absolutely enamoured to mildly indifferent once I'd maxed out my main character's stats.

@Henchdog Two hundred dollarydoos?

It being unplayable won't matter; I imagine the kind of collectors who'd pay a lot of money for this don't unseal their games anyway.

@Quintumply Came here to ask exactly this — thanks

@DonJorginho when I saw the article that's what I thought this was. Oh well...

Concord was never for me to begin with, but it is equal parts fascinating and saddening to observe the unmitigated failure from afar. For as much as people online mitch and bone about big AAA games like GTA and TLoU, they still sell like absolute gangbusters — here, seems everyone voted with their wallet.

This is why I never buy games on launch, it makes sense to wait for the lion's share of bugs to be ironed out first. That "getting in early" creates even more issues is actually pretty sad.

there is a general fatigue surrounding live service shooters

That's certainly the vibe I get; as soon as the trailer switched to gameplay in the trailer it just became white noise to me.

Aptly, from the moment Rain appeared onscreen I couldn't shake the uncanny resemblance she had to Ellie.

@get2sammyb yeah, good one Sammy. Been keen to read an actual review of Concord and it's more or less what I expected. And while online, competitive MP GaaS games are wholly not my cup of tea, hopefully it'll go down well with the people it's designed for.

Nope, not for me I'm afraid. I'm not into playing online, multiplayer, or competitively. Live service infrastructure is always a bit off-putting as well.

Considering how alarmingly broken Quidditch is in the source material, I'd be intrigued to see how well it holds up in an actual videogame.

Eek! That is wallet-worringly 'spenny. But yeah, to echo a lot of sentiment here, I just realised/reminded myself the other week that I can store PS5 games on my 4TB external Hard drive if I need to make space. So no need to even delete/redownload the bigger games (which would indeed be a faff), plus I rarely play more than one or two big/AAA PS5 games at a time anyway!

I finally got around to playing the utterly sublime Sayonara Wild Hearts the other week — this looks like it might have a similar vibe, gameplay-wise

@__jamiie Yeah, what is it with developers starting with the second game with their modern remakes and HD remasters? Metal Gear HD collection, Resident Evil 2-4, and now Silent Hill 2...

Wading through crowds of overdressed influencers at London’s Leicester Square

That sounds like absolute misery.

I'll probably end up seeing this as I have a cinema pass, but really my interest in the Borderlands franchise petered out by the end of the second game.

What about my uncle? Did you give him a chance? DID YOU?

It took a while to click, but I had an absolute blast playing QB — made it all the way to the final opponent but never really took the time to try and beat them, as I was already close to the end of the main game, and well into the triple-digits, hours-wise — just wanted to see the end of it, by that point

Looks sumptuous

Let's have a look at what you could've won

@pushL7 to also quote Mr Burns, "No, I'd still prefer not."

@ShogunRok Thanks, I was curious about this as well — the 32-bit era still had a fair amount of sprites on 3D backgrounds, which did look fine on a 14-inch CRT, but blown up you can REALLY see the pixels, especially when they're sharing screen real estate with super high-res (albeit low-poly) 3D models.

Really looking forward to playing these — I missed the first one on DS and it was going for silly money second hand, so kudos for Capcom for making the whole core series available to play in one place.

Absolutely — I'm just about to wrap up Sea of Stars, just barely hitting the 30 hour mark, and while I did notice that it was too was very linear (minor spoiler: you only get proper fast travel right near the end), I greatly enjoyed the directness and brevity, especially having just come off a 124-hour playthrough of FFVII Rebirth — A game that, while I did enjoy it for the most part, I will happily never revisit ever again.

FFXIII, which I wasn't overly bothered by the linear way the game was designed, what mainly put me off was the story and characters - to my they just weren't up to par with previous FF games I was accustomed to playing.

I don't wanna be a negative Nelly, but I really did try multiple Fromsoft games (both versions of Demons Souls, DS2 and Bloodborne) and they just didn't do anything for me — progress always felt glacial and combat felt repetitive and lacked a satisfying impact; it's like I was cutting through jelly.