Andee

Graphically, Grandia is in an awkward place, a product of that strange time when games would use character sprites in a 3D game world.

Which seems to have received a renaissance of sorts with the whole HD-2D aesthetic. Personally I don't really see the appeal, and Grandia 1 (albeit a game I have fond memories of) was always my go-to comparison for the style.

@twitchtvpat Yeah I should definitely give at least the demo a go — it's just that that was like the third JRPG I've dropped in the past year, and I'm trying to be a bit more discerning with them. Apparently Second Story is brimming with QoL improvements that First Departure lacks

Personally I'm fine with my "base" PS5, but if the Pro keeps the frame/pixel-counters happy, then great.

I've got Second Story R sitting on my shelf, still sealed, waiting to be played. I made the mistake of playing First Departure R first, which was a heartbreakingly underwhelming experience, and never did finish, and has now made me question whether or not I even want to play Second Story now.

@NEStalgia Heh, "caRPG" still makes me smile — and yeah, if I wanted "Crrraaazy money" there's a whole separate game I can play for that...

@NEStalgia Thanks — yeah I've zero interest in "collecting" or trophies, but I always enjoyed the RPG-style upgrading of old bangers that they had in the first game.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I haven't played a GT game since the very first one, and was interested in jumping back in for 7, but reading about the MTs just put me off completely. Outside of post-game stuff, can the game be realistically enjoyed without them?

I don't want tat, just let me give you money for a standard disc edition, how is that so unappealing?

@JohntheRaptor I was gonna say the exact same thing — and I really enjoy FFVII Remake for what it is, but I felt that MGS was already narratively perfect as it was — please don't make it an overly-padded out meta commentary on the notion of storytelling or something. I think the recent Resident Evil remakes strike the right balance of updating the original without departing too drastically to what made the original so appealing

@Olskeezy yeah, same — I borrowed P5R on PS4, and with these rereleases I was pretty interested in getting into the series,, but with so many non-definitive versions floating around it's completely killed my enthusiasm.

Gonna snag it on the weekend

Maybe there are potholes in some of Vice City's more rundown area's road crossings — hence Mister Q's helpful advice to not even trip.

"This sky are sick."

@ShogunRok the Hobbit analogy is bang on — I tried giving those a fair rewatch a year or so ago and I could make it through the second one, it was worse than I remember.

As for FVIIR, the bloat and padding was definitely a nitpick I had with the first game, so I'm glad you highlighted it here.

I picked up a cheap eBay copy of SFV last year just so I could get up to speed with the story and characters in time for SF6, plus to see what all the hubbub was about... Yeah I needn't have bothered

@Gaia093 I had that spoiled to me by Homer Simpson, in the episode that spoils it to a queue of moviegoers (I didn't see Star Wars til quite late!)

But yeah, something this big and formative, you'd think that NYT would at least use a bit of caution, especially considering that the Remake trilogy isn't up to that point yet. Hell I still speak vaguely around The Sixth Sense just in case people haven't seen it yet.

@DrVenture69 yeah, same — I don't play online/MP anyway, but even if I did - unless there was a dearth of other players to engage with, the amount of people playing something is neither here nor there

Was the 2013 reboot trilogy really that badly received? I didn't find the story in the second and the third game that engaging, but I found the gameplay in all three immense fun — much more puzzle-oriented than the Uncharted games.

I still love the original Tomb Raider, rigid tank controls and all — been itching for a modern remaster for ages! Glad they seem to have done them justice

@Darylb88 Yeah I don't have an XBox either, so if it's a choice between Switch and PS5, I'll generally gauge it on how the Switch version of a game holds up — like I say, big AAA games like Resident Evil 7/8 it's not even a question!

@DylanT @Americansamurai1 I din't do f***in' sh*t!

@Darylb88 Yeah, I love my Switch, but I've no real interest in playing big AAA games on it (I use it mainly for first party Nintendo games and smaller indies) — if I'm playing on my TV and need a console with crazy horsepower i'll usually nab the PS5 version of the game.

I mean, it's one less console taking up space, but I've no interest in a Gamepass-style subscription.

I'm genuinely curious — why isn't New Game+ a day one feature?

To echo a few who already beat me to it — if they could pleeeease re-release the Monkey Island series (or at the very least, the first two) on modern consoles, that would make my week.

Never really understood the appeal of trophies myself, but reading the comments here I'm clearly in the minority!

@Steel76 I feel like the PS3 was the last generation where Sony were still trying weird experimental games — remember oddities like Super Rub a Dub and Trash Panic? You don't really see stuff like that from them anymore.

If they can pull their finger out and stop cranking out remakes and remasters, I'd go for one more round of fungal fun with Ellie and her merry band of mischief makers.

I'm curious to see what Nintendo bring us with the successor to the Switch, but if the technology then gets to at a point where we can realistically get a dockable device that has the power of whatever the PS6 ends up being, that would be pretty special.

I was interested in getting it, but annoyingly it's still not quite a definitive version that contains all the content of previous iterations — otherwise I'd have nabbed it in a heartbeat.

Stellar Blade looks pretty great — I must confess I hadn't heard about that game before last night; at first I thought it was a new Nier game.

Be interested to see how this plays — I imagine the pixel perfect precision required to play a game like Celeste goes right out the window when you migrate it to N64-era 3D

@kcarnes9051 It's like when they adapted The Hobbit into three films — utterly greedy and unnecessarily drawn out - like butter scraped over too much bread.

@DanteDevilHunter or possibly a Rick Flag.

@NinjaNicky Yeah, same here — I very rarely buy PS5 games digitally, and most indie titles I usually get on Switch, as long as they run okay.

@Martijn87 I suspect they're going to incorporate elements from Advent Children in the Remake trilogy, hence why they're re-releasing it.

@Enuo careful you don't shilly-shally.

I'll likely pick up the PS5 upgrade if I do a replay of both games, probably in the lead up to a Part 3.

There's a discernible difference in the texture of Ellie's clothing fabric texture — you really have slow it down and zoom in, but at its highest resolution, it looks ever so slightly more space-suity than in the original.

We saw the whole story of Bill and Frank over a beautifully succinct hour-long episode — the last thing I want to see is it painfully dragged out over seven seasons of contrived misery that undercuts what was originally a perfect standalone televisual sidequest.

@BeerMonster while that is true, I certainly ain't complaining — I don't think I even buy games full priced anymore; sales are a great time to wishlist stuff and then grab the ones you actually want to play when they inevitably roll around again.

@SoulChimera I believe the PC version will have mog support.

@ralphdibny Yeah, same — not once have I looked at an ad and thought it looked remotely decent; they're all the same garish, AI-image-looking Candy Crush knockoff junk

I feel bad for the dev team that obviously put a lot of effort into it, but I feel that the game was pretty much doomed ever since they went hard in on the game's live-service aspects for 15 minutes during a State of Play

@SgtTruth Grand Theft Accio.

@Brutal Yeah, it's not like TR1-3 told a cohesive, three-part story or anything, and The Last Revelation went down extremely well. Chronicles I could take or leave; even the original developers have stated that that game was little more than a paycheck.

@BeautifulCreatures Yeah but even walking sims, which may sound dull on paper, given the right atmosphere and direction they can be very absorbing and entertaining in their own way — I tend not to discriminate with genre, as long as they're done well. And yeah, I never finished MGSV — I was pretty much checked out with the series after finishing the Ground Zeroes demo; MGS4 was an absolute slog.

@BeautifulCreatures Is Death Stranding decent? I'll be honest, my interest in Kojima's brand of barminess dissipated with each new MGS entry, but I've heard that it's quite a sublime gaming experience.

@Porco I think many being dropped into TR for the first time today would probably have trouble; but the Croft Manor tutorial does a great job in laying out everything required to get through the whole game.

I don't think they're bad controls inherently; they function almost exactly like Flashback, but In a 3D environment. In hindsight I can't think of another game that had quite the same controls, even at the time.

@doctommaso yeah, TLR was a really good "back to basics" entry that felt more akin to the original, but with much more finesse. Hopefully they do a volume 2 or DLC at some point.