Constable_What

@ItsATM That's great you didn't notice anything. I did. It shouldn't be too odd a take, it seems a pretty common one to me, but I don't know what circles you run in.

Completely disagree that it looks and runs fantastic, and I'll leave it at that.

EA is really trying to shove BF2042 down everyone's throat huh?

Not interested in that at all.

Already have Code Vein, and not interested in Minecraft. Bit of a miss for me.

Please, please please. I cannot get through this game on Switch. It really hurts my eyes a lot.

@djlard It's not every second game. Certainly not game breaking bugs, but maybe we have a different definition of what game breaking is. What was the last game you played that had a game breaking bug?

If you had any game breaking bug before the age of the internet it would just stay broken. QA teams work well into a game's life cycle finding and reporting issues, and then it's up to the studio leadership to make the call on whether it's a priority fix for the engineering team, and then it's up to engineering to put in a fix, and then it's up to QA again to test that fix, and that takes a while to do. In crunch maybe a few hours to a day, but usually a few days of rigorous testing.

Obviously, games shouldn't release broken, but the common sentiment that it's most games that release that way is just factually incorrect, and is only perpetuated by folks that don't remember older times in gaming, weren't alive back then, or are jumping on a bandwagon.

And that's why there will never be a fine for unfinished games across the board, because your point is just demonstrably false. A few games have been absolutely broken on launch, like Cyberpunk, the GTA Remastered Trilogy, and Chrono Cross Remastered (that finally got fixed) most recently. But that's a couple years ago I have to go back to find only a handful of games out of the dozens that have been released in playable non-broken state.

No one knows how QA teams work... No wonder video game companies treat their customers like idiots. Oh well, I guess.

@djlard If there wasn't a QA team the games you play would much much buggier. The bugs you're able to see, have already been reported by QA, but weren't a priority to be fixed by the engineering team. And it's nowhere near the lowest in history...

The video game crash era had way more issues, that couldn't be resolved post launch, and Nintendo would put their seal on anything LJN did, and they put some of the buggiest games known to man. Don't even get me started on Wii shovelware.

In before someone says publisher QA testers aren't considered "disposable" by bug publishers (publishers in general)... At least there's 60 days of severance which is good considering these testers were probably contract if they worked through a 3rd party, and you don't really gave benefits at all if you're not working as a full time employee.

Managers being told nothing is par for the course too. Most of them worked their way up the company as testers themselves, and the corporate leaders don't usually tell them anything to keep things from "leaking".

Sounds like they want to expand studio QA or even hire a different testers that work closer with the publisher.

Very sad to hear, but QA experience is great experience. You can find work fairly quickly with that.

My GF is 5'11" and I'm 6 foot, so of course I tower over her similar to Aloy in PSVR2.

@themightyant They could do a good Superman game the same way they did a great Batman game. Take Superman out of his element. Having a small part of it take place in Metropolis where he is fighting someone like Doomsday or Brainiac, and then after that maybe Lex Luthor tricks him into the Phantom Zone where he'd be trapped with all the super powered bad guys he's imprisoned, and then he is trying to survive or break free from it. That at least adds a lot of tension, and puts Superman into an uncertain vulnerable place many people haven't seen him before.

@darthvirgin Metal Gear: Survive also got an 8/10. I know because that's the last review I ever read on here. Lmao

Aside from the game very pretty, there wasn't a whole lot for me to really latch on to and motivate me to continue playing the first game.

Got bored, and dropped it on Switch after a few hours, so I'm not really at all interested in the sequel.

@dark_knightmare2 Even the English VA isn't bad once P3 stops being a punkass for no reason. I think the turning point for acting and dialogue is when the glove notices that P3 is frustrated, and asks why he's taking it out on him, and then they have the first kinda heartfelt dialogue of the whole game. It really mellows out, stops being as cringe, and becomes engaging after a while too.

Like I really enjoy them debating conspiracies, the logic, and the ideology behind what's going on on the island. I like the idea that they both know they're being used, but they accept it, in the glove's case, or are fine with it, in P3's case.

P3 isn't strictly a meat head, he's reasonably intelligent and can have a coherent and interesting conversation sometimes, which is surprising. Coz yeah, he's a massive goofball, but it's obvious he is paying attention and observing what's going on, and able to discuss it with the glove.

I also don't really have too much issue with the pacing. It's really fast and a lot of varied content comes at you all at once, but I enjoy the balancing act of it all. It's a bizarre game. It's kind of a mess, but it's a hot mess, and it's really fun.

I wasn't all that hyped for it either. I've been burned so many times, that I have learned to not do that in most cases. Game reminds me of something like Singularity, which is a solid game, and Metro Exodus which had a similar "open world" structure.

And yes, the ol' Baba Yaga is awesome. She is very interesting.

I am really enjoying it so far. The writing and voice acting starts off really jarring and goofy, but that gets a lot better. Combat is very fun and intense once you get the hang of it, and the graphics are gorgeous.

I can see myself finishing it.

I'm actually very happy to read that Amy Hennig only has "story concept" credits. The stort writing and dialogue is very VERY goofy; like someone or a team where attempting to emulate her style, but obviously lacked the chops to truly encapsulate it.

I wonder what exactly happened during the process of creating Forspoken, and the mess it ended up being. That will be a more interesting story than what I have seen in Forspoken.

@KidBoruto I envy you. Glad Target had your back.

@JB_Whiting I cut my teeth on character action games, so I consider myself pretty good, so I started off on Hard.

That was a mistake, and you can't change the difficulty, and by the time I was having issues I was already halfway through the game.

That. Final. Stretch. Was AWFUL. I think I know exactly what you mean. You had to fight a big LMG guy really early, and you had to do it perfectly, then navigate tight corridors with shield dudes, then fight the white samurai near the explosive barrel, then fight ANOTHER damn white samurai paired with a brown samurai, then drop down to the street fight another white and brown samurai, continue up stairs to the dudes shooting at you, only for ANOTHER white and brown samurai to spawn behind you, and then you get a checkpoint before fighting two Spider Tanks.

What mouthful. What a cluster****. If you died during any of that, tough luck, back to that LMG dude you go.

So....bad....it was punishment for buying this trash in my case. And the game wants you to beat the game on every difficulty for the full story. No thanks. Keep it. I don't know, don't wanna, don't get it, don't care, don't wanna care!

@ATaco Most conversations are!

@ATaco If you've convinced yourself then there's no logic, reason, or any actual evidence I can provide to change your mind!

@DarkestHour You are more right than you know. Unless you've actually worked in the industry and are just playing coy. lol

QA doesn't give feedback on things that they think suck, or annoyances, as I've said above. If you bring it up to your leadership, they'll go "Yeah that sucks. Anyway!", and if you try to put it in Jira (The industry standard for tracking and archiving bugs) it will be a NAB, and you will probably get in trouble after a few of those.

Kinda throwing QA under the bus huh?...

Classic. 👍

Although I really doubt people in creative teams ever look in Jira, or are even whitelisted to access it, so if they didn't know anything about QA that wouldn't surprise me.

@JustPlainLoco That isn't the job that QA testers are hired for. There's a massive misconception about what role QA has. I suggest reading up on something like ISTQB certification to get a good idea if you don't want to take my word for it, but QA's role is to find and report bugs so that engineers can fix them.

If you've ever found a bug in a game. QA has found it, reported it, and then it wasn't fixed due to other issues, or the fix didn't work.

@LiamCroft QA testers are not really allowed to give feedback about game mechanics, how they function, if they're fun, or if it's annoying. QA testers actually don't really interact with the engineers or members of the dev team if they're not studio central testing.

You find bugs. You put them in Jira. If you put in,

In Ragnarok, the user will observe that the puzzle hint system occurs too much...

or something like that. You're getting hit with a big fat NAB (Not a bug). Because it's not really a bug.

Big publishers don't rely on Quality Assurance for feedback regarding mechanics. They hire advisors or focus testers for that. That's the standard for American QA, so yes that is how it works.

@ATaco It's because of me. I'm the dude that spends billions on Genshin.

Or maybe, there are some who don't spend any money, and some who spend a lot of money, and some that are in between?

Nah that makes too much sense, so it doesn't make sense.

@djlard I've heard of Strategy RPGs before. Like Xcom, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics. It's a pretty common abbreviation.

@Grimwood It exists specifically to irritated you, and only you.

@burning_as_souls It has 4 difficulties, Neko-chan (easy mode you have to put in a cheat code in for or die a bunch of times), normal, hard, and Japanese Hard.

In order to get the whole story you need to beat the game on all difficulties. Hard mode. Is. TERRIBLE. The checkpoints make the game so frustrating and agonizing, the camera works against you way too much, the gunplay is about as responsive as using a laptop track pad to aim, and the melee combat (while sometimes satisfying) is very simplistic (you basically have 3 combos the whole game).

If you really just want the story, just watch cutscenes on YouTube. It's an incomprehensible mess of a story, and the game took me less than 4 hours to beat.

I don't know how people are spending 12 hours. There's a 5 minigames including the shooting range, but they're really pointless, as you don't really get anything from them and they can be tedious.

If all you're interested in is the story. Don't buy this game at all. It sucks.

Beat this game on hard just now. This game sucks. It just sucks so bad.

Game is mess, but I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Combat feels really weird until you it clicks, but the game does a VERY poor job of helping you to make that connection with the combat.

A 5 seems deserved tbh, but I needed a small break from Hogwarts and Star Rail, so I picked this up. Not hard up for cash atm.

Really not a big fan at all of JK Rowling's work. A lot of it I think is really stupid, and less interesting than the magic in things like Dungeons and Dragons. I've seen all the films with my wife; she loves Harry Potter, and I love her and as such take interest in her interests. That being said, I was pretty excited for this game and it delivered. It's just a great game. It's a shame it's being used as a battleground for the next culture war. I think that's very stupid.

Looking forward to playing more and more of this when I'm not completely engrossed by Honkai Star Rail (Got into the beta, and it might be better than Genshin tbh). Happy gaming everyone.

@cragis0001 I can see how in the future this all could come back to bite them, but they don't have much choice. CoD is massive for the Playstation platform, losing access or even potentially losing access down the road would be a disaster for current Sony.

I'd go as far as to say that CoD remaining on Playstation indefinitely, is a bigger concern than whatever future acquisitions they could make and end up being opposed. The damage that this will cause Sony will be apparent after it happens, and now it's up to Sony to prove that these damage will happen, leaving very little room for doubt, and that this deal will also affect their consumers negatively...which...that proposition is much harder to prove, especially with MSFT and ABK offering a compromise for the franchise, however paltry that might seem. They will need to negotiate, and there's a good chance CoD will stay on PS indefinitely.

It's obvious that Sony doesn't want the deal to go through, and as far as attempting to sabatoging the deal goes well...we haven't heard much in the way of compromise or negotiation from Sony. Just Microsoft. From a business perspective, I could see how the one sided communication and negotiation can be perceived as bad faith.

I personally, think Sony is saving most of it's cards for when they absolutely must play them at the table. Which is smart. They're taking a very defensive position to try and block this deal, and they want it blocked and dead. Full stop. They're playing this to the best of their ability.

Microsoft and Activision are both playing this smart too. The aggressive approach to force Sony to the table while dominating the press cycle is smart. The reactions to the CoD being on Playstation issue, and the willingness to offer support for this game (which is Sony's core argument for why this deal should not go through) is the BEST tactic on the board for them.

The outcome I foresee, is this deal goes through, but with a caveat that CoD remains accessible on Playstation platforms indefinitely. It is Sony's main contention with this deal, and to be honest, the focus on this franchise may have backed them into a corner at the negotiation table. If I were in MSFT's and ABK's position I'd be very firm on this 10 year plan with CoD until negotiations are in full swing, and then give Sony continued access to have that franchise on their platform, and with parity for every other platform as well, such as Steam and Nintendo.

Sony is in a tough spot here. They aren't really going to come out on top, but they can limit the damage to their platform by ensuring CoD remains there. I think the next move for Sony might be to argue that CoD on Gamepass might impact their business, but they have an uphill battle in convincing government bodies that GamePass is anticonsumer.

@Godot25 There are very stiff penalties for MS that they'd pay to Activision if the deal doesn't go through for any reason. Totalling in the billions.

Microsoft is in too deep to abandon this deal, and MS and ABK are VERY confident this deal will happen.

If it doesn't, I doubt MS will attempt another deal very soon after the failure occurs.

I can't help but wonder if these superhero IPs have a stigma attached to them because of all the mediocre and cynical Gaas games that have come out using it.

Regardless, Midnight Sun is a great game. They really should have marketed it better as a single player tactical RPG though. Marketing really failed this release.

@thefourfoldroot1 The "social" aspect is that you just talk to the different characters, and they start clubs, have stories, work better in the team, stuff like that. It's similar to how Fire Emblem does its "Support" mechanic, how Persona does its "Social Link" mechanic, or even similar to Mass Effect's "Loyalty".

It is not an online thing.

@middyone I don't know what game you played, but that's straight up cap.

There's tons of grind, there's even missions in the game that you create called "Jobs" that are just meant to make the grind for weapons and armor easier.

Quit lying...bruh... it's fine if you like it. A lot of people do, but some people are getting tired of it. It's like Assassin's Creed I guess

@FinalDingo Same! I have over 100 hours and the platinum for this game. I was waiting for more 4 v 1 stuff, maybe even a PvE announcement, but not a BR...

@Perturbator It has had crossplay since launch. That's the sad thing.

There's not enough players for this game as is, and they're adding a BR mode?... Takes me 15 mins to find 4 other players sometimes... I just don't understand this decision. Hopefully PS Plus bolsters the numbers for this game, it really needs it; it deserving it is another conversation all together.

This is a scam. These devs have been showing this game off on PC for years and have been using a lot of the same in-engine footage to try and drum up hype for this game.

@Khayl You didn't change it either, which is a chad move.

A gigachad move, I'll even say.

@jrt87 It got patched a few hours ago in the US, and now the graphics look pretty great. It's really a shame it launched in that state when a fix was so close at hand. Regardless, it's now an amazing experience all around.

@Octane It might have been one of those bits of dialogue where you had to press triangle over a character. I don't remember anyone talking about Bill in Part 2.

@Impossibilium Based Skill Deck VS Cringe Skill Tree.

That's how I read it. Lol

@Perturbator Wait they made Haze?

Nice! Time for me and everyone else to use Dead Island man as their PS5 avatar!

My wife and I had just finished season 1 of White Lotus, so we were really happy to see Murray Bartlett playing Frank. It was a such a tragic episode, and we loved it.

And considering in the games, we see Bill in Part 1, and then he's not even mentioned in Part 2, I'm glad he got a send off in the show. I'm also really happy Frank got a lot of characterization as well.

Very different from the games, but considering how rigidly the show has been sticking to them I'm happy to see it. And while you can't please everyone; I think this shows that the show can create emotional moments without taking them from the game.
So far there's been a flashback each episode, and they're always really interesting to see. I hope it continues. Looking forward to Sunday.

I ****ING knew it! I knew it. The game looks really really bad at times.

Maybe I notice it more because of my career, but oh boy were the muddy textures and jagged edges on the enviroment and models very noticeable. Looked like YouTube compression.

Hmmm...Aside from just playing a worse version of Monster Hunter (my opinion, I don't really enjoy just destroying robots in games as a general rule, and human enemies are...I mean that's easily the worst part in Horizon) I am not a fan at all of those character models. Fortnite has a little more appeal, but these look like rip-offs of Disney Infinity characters to me.

I'll be playing Dead Space, Fire Emblem Engage, and as always Genshin Impact.

I'll also be posting cringe in Hoyolab in a desperate attempt to get into the Honkai Star Rail CBT...

Have a great weekend everyone!

@KaijuKaiser I don't blame you. I don't think it's acceptable either, I mean come on...especially for Dead Space Remake, a $70 game.

I did. I'm enjoying it, but I'm really disappointed with the visuals.

It looks BAD sometimes. I wish I knew how to post screenshots, but the graphics look really dated, muddy, and jagged even with performance mode off.

Remakes shouldn't have subpar graphics.