Who will ensure reviewers didn’t get whisked off for a luxury tour around Disney, as per those writing gushing previews of the upcoming Star Wars game?
Who will determine what is classified “review bombing”. Corporate stooges, fan boys and access media?
Obviously “review boosting” per the Star Wars ethics-vacuums will never be questioned.
Why do we need reviews there? I’ve already got them from ACG, Skill Up et al on YouTube.
Xbox store has some star ratings I’m sure, but I’ve never looked into them or given them any credence. I rarely look at Steam scores. I don’t know who these people are or who is paying them.
One is a cheap emotional trick, the other is a story justification to enable the player to play as the secondary character, who until that point has been an npc.
To suggest they are somehow the same, is like drawing similarities between a pork sausage and a car.
The dog guilt trip is not remotely comparable to Joel getting injured!!! What the heck lol!
Two entirely different concepts!
The bits where Joel was injured were rubbish though…..as that basically turned that part of the game into TLoU 2….
The star of the show, the wonderful surrogate father daughter relationship is removed, and it turns into mediocre average third person adventure number 2376.
Then ND said “hey, let’s create an entire game like that”.
Facepalm.
Glad to know that Angry Joe apparently hasn’t got a clue.
How many subs have you got?
Honestly some people did hate the game irrationally I’d agree, but I think the extremest supporters of the title are equally as toxic and blinded by their fanaticism.
That’s Sony marketing twaddle that shill access journalists repeat.
With those trash Fresnel lenses you are getting a smearing mess as light bleeds and flares everywhere. That the panels can do true blacks is irrelevant, because that ain’t what you see once it’s been through the trash tier lenses.
Plus the awful grain.
The only thing the OLED delivers in that headset are some highlights with impressive brightness (car headlights in GT7) albeit again suffering from utter garbage fresnel smearing.
Lens choice in that headset was the dumbest move Sony has ever made.
@UncleByron that’s a classic cherry picking disingenuous argument.
Angry Joe and Critical Drinker went into great depth explaining exactly what was wrong with it, and slammed down the receipts and citations to back it all up.
Those are the vids with the big views and like counts, and they are very well respected critics who know their stuff and presented a balanced case. I quite independently formed the same views as them, and for the record, I decide what I like, ND don’t tell me what I should like “if only you knew how writing worked”.
TLoU 2 inherited the excellent environments and average third person gameplay from its predecessor, but the writing and structure was absolutely terrible.
In particular the loss of a key relationship which was a significant part of what elevated the first game above average third person action games.
That bait and switch caused a lot of the anger. Clearly ND couldn’t warn people in advance, and many bought the game only too discover a couple of hours in that they’d been sold a dud in terms of what they expected/wanted.
Hopefully the TV show will save the moment until the END of the series. Then everyone can decide if they want to watch season 3 or not.
TV shows generally don’t require £60 up front unseen. But if someone subbed to a channel specifically for that show, and something happens at the end of episode 1, they’d be as annoyed as the gamers were.
As others have said, the PSVR2 headset has one advantage over say a Quest 3, and that is the eye tracking foveated rendering.
Being able to use the power of your PC more efficiently has obvious benefits. It's essentially like paying hundreds of pounds more for a better GPU. PSVR2 could give you that boost for free.
Without that, what are you left with?
An annoying wired system when Quest 3 is wireless (or just has one simple USB C cable if you wish to play for longer than a couple of hours and need it charging).
Dire image quality due to the last-gen fresnel lenses, which despite the OLED panels, create worse dark and bright scenes than on a Quest 3, due to all the light smearing flares and the mura grain.
Plus those same dated lenses cause a narrow sweet spot, meaning you have to precisely fit the headset, and hammer that strap up real tight, because if it shifts just a fraction when moving your head around, it's like squirting glue in your eyes.
That tightness adds to VR fatigue, where as Quest 3 can just be lobbed on your head any old how, and barely tightened, allowing for hours of use with no fatigue.
One can play fast and loose with accuracy, but there is always a line, where if you cross it, the players suspension breaks down.
Clearly you wouldn’t have light sabres or machine guns in the game and then say “yo but it’s not meant to accurate bruh” when players suspension fails and they can’t immerse themselves anymore.
When you have blatantly out of place, and obvious contemporary political insertions shoe horned in, I’m not surprised a significant number of players suffer a breakdown in suspension.
Firstly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution in it's production.
Secondly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution with the production of it's packaging.
Thirdly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution with its transportation.
and then Fourth.....
And then....
And then....
And then....
AND THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your disc often contains barely anything, or requires massive patching, so as soon as you shove it in the PS5, you download a patch that is barely smaller than the entire digital game!
I.e. you use the data centres too!
DOOOHHHH!!!!
You are double-dipping on the carbon and pollution!
When I read this story, I imagine it is 1960 and I open the newspaper to see "Ford has no plans to abandon production of carts for horses".
Been 100% digital for donkey's years. For the best part of the last 30 years I've been a PC gamer, and have been full-digital on that platform for over 20 years - longer than some of you have been alive.
This whole thing is a clown show.
People buy a useless plastic disc that has been shipped over the world with all the resulting environmental damage.
They stick it in their console, where it does sweet FA as they pretty much download the entire game anyway.
Then they have to keep swapping out these useless plastic discs every time they change games.
Sounds like something Mr Bean or Frank Spencer would come up with.
@PuppetMaster and another one who doesn't read the comments before posting.
I was responding to all those (not going to tag dozens) who were expressing positive views about the current situation and revelling in it. Laughing etc.
Both MS and Sony are anti-consumer companies, who given half a chance will exploit a dominant market position to rip off the consumer and engage in harmful practises.
It just so happens that Sony is the one in that position and therefore in danger of behaving in that manner, as they have in the past.
Clearly MS would do the same in that position - it's simply that they aren't in that position. Something those replying to me and crying "waaaaaa, boo hoo, but what about MS, they are big meanies too" don't seem to have grasped...
I mean I say "clearly" as I'd have thought that would be obvious. But alas this being a gaming forum, simple concepts have to be explained in minute detail else people struggle to understand the nuance.
Word to the wise from a PC gamer who has experienced a similar situation with NVIDIA: this won't end well for any of you.
Not seeing anything massively wrong with it to be honest. Legit more chance of me playing that than going back to Starfield for example. You can see DNA from the Division and Far Cry in there.
"Looks better than Starfield" is a low bar though.
Had this been pre-Disney that would be a buy, maybe at the point of the first discounts e.g. 30% off a few months after launch.
As it stands, my interest in the franchise is stone dead. So probably never.
Main character is extremely annoying I have to say. Speaks like the characters in Marvel movies. AC games have had better protagonists. Total charisma vacuum.
Ironically though as someone who owns all the AC games, I'd rank this above AC Shadows in my "might play on a cold day in hell" list.
Whilst there can be little sympathy for a firm who screwed it up themselves, a ratio of 10:1 is very bad news for consumers.
Sony are a pretty sinister company and will screw their customers and generally engage in anti-consumer practises when they feel they are in a position of power and can get away with it.
One only has to look at their hubris and arrogance going into the PS3 generation. A good drubbing by the 360 resulted in a more humble Sony when the PS4 launched.
The next generation won't be pretty. Even worse, with no one to give them a drubbing when they step out of line, it's hard to see where the correction comes from.
I guess there is some competition from PC and Switch, but they aren't really the same markets, and in the case of PC, not available/affordable to everyone. I'm glad I have a decent one as an insurance policy against what is coming.
Those other classes might be decent if you know the meta spec that works.
Where as e.g. even when levelling up I started a Sorcerer and put my points in perfectly logical talents, yet it was a glass peashooter.
It would go down like a sack of excrement, and do barely any damage.
I then gave up and used a levelling spec guide, and suddenly became an easy mode wrecking ball. But I didn't like that spec or play style, so I was like "meh, done with this".
I’d like to highlight that this received a very positive response from audiences.
Currently 90% average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
I point that out, because when utter dross shows like Rings of Power and The Acolyte are hammered by audiences, a lot of strawman ad hominem arguments are used by odious unethical “journalists” and social media commenters to dismiss the views of fans and smear them.
If those arguments had a shred of truth, Fallout would have been hammered too.
@DennisReynolds people not agreeing with your point, is not the same as people missing your point.
I got your point, but I think that your point is wrong.
I took the time to explain to you why I thought you were wrong.
The second half of my post covered "fast and loose with history", and why people are still criticising Ubisoft and not giving them a pass, where as they'd have no issue giving Young Guns a pass.
@DennisReynolds do you think Vikings thought they were the bad guys when they were raiding and pillaging villages?
Let's be honest, in any conflict no one believes they are on the side of the baddies. As is explored in the famous "Hans, are we the baddies?" comedy sketch.
The game portrays it from the Viking's perspective, and Ubisoft treated you like an adult and expected you to draw your own conclusions.
I felt uncomfortable and bad whilst participating in those raids.
Didn't you? Or did you want Ubisoft to tell you to feel bad?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Ubisoft are historians or anything. They use a lot of artistic licence in their portrayals of history.
Everyone will have a tolerance for that.
I like the films Young Guns (1 & 2) and The Untouchables. They are clearly not remotely accurate and extremely loosely based on real events.
Those liberties are taken to create a fun story. Other properties instead bludgeon you with what are obvious contemporary political messaging, and that is where some people feel it crosses a line.
For me, an inaccurate flag, chinese buildings and other errors that people have pointed out, are just petty and don't really cause me to lose my suspension of disbelief.
That's just me though. A Japanese gamer might find such errors more obvious.
I do kind of sympathise with Ubisoft a bit. But only a tiny bit.
They played stupid games and won stupid prizes.
Bored of the arguments about their character choices etc and can’t even be bothered to muster an opinion one way or another on that anymore.
I can only say when you start making obvious decisions stemming from your political ideology, you must expect that you will annoy half the customer base who will push back. They will start going over everything with a fine tooth comb to get you.
I think things are getting petty, as yeah it’s a dumb mistake but come on, it’s no real harm. However if you push an ideology that deems such oversights to be a serious harm, you better get your ducks in a row first.
Not interested in inter-personal “relations” and therefore not interested in nudity in my RPG’s.
No more than I’d want a romance option with a rival driver in a racing game!
I want an adventure exploring a vast land, compelling and intriguing plot around an existential threat to the region or world, a bit of politics, and of course good old fashioned RPG staple classes, spells and enemies.
The other stuff…..well I get that from my girlfriend, and I have to argue and fight to have my gaming time allowance, and not have to go to hers for Netflix and Chill.
Last thing I want is to have that in my game, when I could have just done it for real and avoided the grief.
Fair enough if others want it. I found it annoyingly intrusive in other BioWare games and BG3, so I’d be out if I’m going to have loads of characters propositioning me.
When it comes to perpetual games where one is expected to make it their “main” game that they play for thousands of hours, I want to play as a custom character of my design.
As per Division or Destiny. Or any MMO for that matter.
I don’t want to play or invest time in the same character as a million other players. I want it to be my character and exclusive to me.
For that reason I’ve never been into Hero shooters, or games like this, Red Fall or Gotham Knights.
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare I think “nailed” is relative. You can say the same about TLoU too.
By the standards of TV series being written in 2023/2024, let alone by the standards of video game adaptions, they have nailed it.
It’s a low bar of course….
I think Fallout did offer something a bit different from the games, but with some moments of familiarity.
Else if it were just a direct word for word adaption etc, there would be little point. In the same way I feel no desire to listen to an audio book that is just an identical adaption of a movie. I’d rather experience the original otherwise.
Not a series I wanted to see as I felt it would be awful and a cringe fest.
Granted I had reservations about Fallout and didn’t want that to happen as I thought it would be awful.
Happy to be wrong on that occasion.
However Fallout the game did at least have great writing to act as a starting point.
Whereas the writing in Horizon was mostly awful, with the game being loved due to the world and gameplay. Don’t think it would end well if a TV series was made.
If you have a £1200 TV it’s perfectly playable now.
Personally I use the RT mode with a 120hz VRR TV and it is no different to playing FF16 in my view, where I was perfectly happy with that games 30fps mode, which was clearly how it had been designed to be played, versus the tacked on “fake” 60fps mode.
If you don’t have the expensive TV, then IMO it’s still garbage tier and should be avoided unless they fully patch it, instead of relying on you to spend cash to compensate for their failure.
@naruball Yup the likes of you and I just don't touch it with a barge pole. But the DLC is only accessible to hardcore players.
E.g. Elden Ring sold more, but you have to progress a long way through that main game, and defeat a very tricky boss, in order to access the DLC. So a dummy like me who bought the game thinking it "looked like Witcher, should be fun" wouldn't even be in the market for the DLC.
People are trying to say those players who found the expansion too hard are "idiots" and "stupid", but those players have proven their mastery already.
Not buying "the narrative" on this one as those are pretty gifted players.
Those players were already professional cheese monkeys, as I'd bet my house that 99% of players who got that far in the base game, had cheesed it out by reading forums and guides.
So I don't buy they are just too stupid or too lazy to read. Something is fundamentally up with the DLC such that it fails with the onboarding at a fundamental level.
Even asmongold practically rage quit initially. He's surely in the top 1% of players. It's his job to play games, and he has beaten the hardest bosses in the hardest games out there, and is incredibly smart.
Giving a game you don’t like a low score is not “review bombing”.
If large numbers of players didn’t get the necessary information from tutorials, then what is the most likely cause?
a, Thousands of players who were capable of progressing significantly far in Elden Ring are “stupid”?
b, the developers produced a garbage-tier tutorial and it is they who are stupid?
My philosophy is that if everyone around me appears to have a problem, it’s likely not them but me.
Souls games do have garbage-tier tutorials. Show me a player who claims they haven’t had to consult an external guide or forum to complete the game, and I will show you a liar.
@NEStalgia always been a problem with multiplayer progression based games.
It can have the opposite effect to the one you describe. What I call the “gravity” effect that prevents objects (players) escaping its orbit.
It’s the reason why so many WoW competitors were unsuccessful, despite arguably being better games. Players wouldn’t leave WoW, despite acknowledging the alternative was superior.
If you want to be the King, you want to be the King of England and not the King of a festering dung heap.
If you are going to invest energy by grinding to increasing your status in a virtual community, you want to do it in the biggest and most likely to last (such that your efforts aren’t wasted if it dwindles and dies).
People therefore go where the majority are.
In some sub genres that leads to the locust effect that you are seeing with this type of game. In other sub genres it leads to the gravity effect.
No really feeling anything amongst that bunch, but have a massive back catalogue I can work through. More interested in games that are already out like Dragons Dogma 2, that might get patched and be worth buying.
From that list, it’s depressing that AC is the most likely purchase, but I need to finish all the other AC games that I’m 40 hours into but haven’t completed yet.
I really want Dragon Age to be good, but I know it will suck. Mind you I said that about Hogwarts and yet it became my game of the year.
Refused to buy due to bad performance. Still haven’t bought Elden Ring for the same reason, so I’m someone who sticks to their guns rather than whine on forums but still buy it.
Will see what Digital Foundry say. Even 120hz combined with VRR to get it working at lower frame rates won’t help when it chugs to 20fps.
Adding a PS3 graphics mode rather than achieving gains through optimisation won’t cut it for me either.
If the game looked future gen, I could half tolerate the bad frame rate as I did with GTA5/TLoU 1 on PS3 that clearly looked as though it was punching well above the PS3’s weight.
I look at DD2 and it in no way looks like it should be chugging as much as it is. It don’t look anywhere near good enough to get a pass.
Given the massive amount of coverage, I’d assumed it did 3M.
Doesn’t make any difference to me. If the developer turned a profit then good on them.
Just thought I’d point out that we do get vocal minority distortions with hype and media coverage, where in reality the wider market isn’t that fussed.
Whereas a much criticised Ubisoft Star Wars or AC game will still do significantly higher numbers.
The numbers are inversely linked to the forum sentiment, aside from the odd game like Suicide Squad.
Even the much maligned (and deservedly so) Gotham Knights did far bigger numbers.
I went full-digital getting on for a decade ago. So hardly surprising.
A bit sad, but that's progress.
I remember the days in the mid/late 80's when almost every shop stocked games.
The local Kiosk cornershop, Boots the chemist had a big section, as did WH Smith the stationery store (describing what they sell for non-UK readers).
Plus your music and video stores, and often multiple dedicated games shops in the same town centre.
Coming back home on the bus, opening the box/cassette case and reading/sniffing the lengthy manuals! Couldn't beat the smell of a fresh game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Batesy125s Absolutely mate. I'm still thinking about it now, and the characters I met.
Cracking game and I love The Chinese Room's products.
Alas I was a little concerned when I finished Friday night, and I was getting achievements that <2% of gamers had unlocked in some cases.
They seemed to be achievements that anyone would get just through playing, as I was not trying to get anything and just played normally.
I played via Gamepass though so there is going to be a very high percentage who just install it to try it out, without actually having an interest, and then bounce off it at 5 minutes in.
I'm late middle aged and have much better things to do with my time. I don't mind spending time on games, but I have to feel as though I'm making adequate progress through an enjoyable story in each session, to justify the time.
Not a problem though, I just don't buy hard games or games that run shoddily. They don't get my money.
Elden Ring fits into both of those categories. No skin off my nose, and the developer can churn a profit from the people who have an abundance of spare time that they don't attach a high value to, and who don't mind bad frame rates.
All power to them. From Soft, and those gamers, have a good relationship going. and I will keep my nose out of it.
Comments 197
Re: Sony Appears to Be Dabbling with Written User Reviews on the PS Store
Minefield.
Who will ensure reviewers didn’t get whisked off for a luxury tour around Disney, as per those writing gushing previews of the upcoming Star Wars game?
Who will determine what is classified “review bombing”. Corporate stooges, fan boys and access media?
Obviously “review boosting” per the Star Wars ethics-vacuums will never be questioned.
Why do we need reviews there? I’ve already got them from ACG, Skill Up et al on YouTube.
Xbox store has some star ratings I’m sure, but I’ve never looked into them or given them any credence. I rarely look at Steam scores. I don’t know who these people are or who is paying them.
Driver 3 anyone.
Re: Half-Life: Alyx Conveniently Discounted Ahead of PSVR2's PC Adapter Launch
Alyx gets the hype, but there are plenty of other cheap excellent titles on PC. Lone Echo should be dirt cheap.
Not sure how many current PS5 gamers are that big on HL anyway? Does the franchise have much pull?
Orange Box was terrible on consoles and it’s only boomers like me who played games like HL 1 & 2 back twenty to twenty five years ago on a decent PC.
Half the people reading this weren’t born when I installed HL1 on my PC so I wonder how many gamers care about it?
Re: The Last of Us Season 2 TV Teaser Trailer Revealed
@UncleByron how are they different?
One is a cheap emotional trick, the other is a story justification to enable the player to play as the secondary character, who until that point has been an npc.
To suggest they are somehow the same, is like drawing similarities between a pork sausage and a car.
C’mon man.
Re: The Last of Us Season 2 TV Teaser Trailer Revealed
@UncleByron dude seriously…..
The dog guilt trip is not remotely comparable to Joel getting injured!!! What the heck lol!
Two entirely different concepts!
The bits where Joel was injured were rubbish though…..as that basically turned that part of the game into TLoU 2….
The star of the show, the wonderful surrogate father daughter relationship is removed, and it turns into mediocre average third person adventure number 2376.
Then ND said “hey, let’s create an entire game like that”.
Facepalm.
Glad to know that Angry Joe apparently hasn’t got a clue.
How many subs have you got?
Honestly some people did hate the game irrationally I’d agree, but I think the extremest supporters of the title are equally as toxic and blinded by their fanaticism.
Re: PSVR2 App for PC Now Live on Steam
@NEStalgia PSVR 2 does not have true blacks.
That’s Sony marketing twaddle that shill access journalists repeat.
With those trash Fresnel lenses you are getting a smearing mess as light bleeds and flares everywhere. That the panels can do true blacks is irrelevant, because that ain’t what you see once it’s been through the trash tier lenses.
Plus the awful grain.
The only thing the OLED delivers in that headset are some highlights with impressive brightness (car headlights in GT7) albeit again suffering from utter garbage fresnel smearing.
Lens choice in that headset was the dumbest move Sony has ever made.
Re: The Last of Us Season 2 TV Teaser Trailer Revealed
@UncleByron that’s a classic cherry picking disingenuous argument.
Angry Joe and Critical Drinker went into great depth explaining exactly what was wrong with it, and slammed down the receipts and citations to back it all up.
Those are the vids with the big views and like counts, and they are very well respected critics who know their stuff and presented a balanced case. I quite independently formed the same views as them, and for the record, I decide what I like, ND don’t tell me what I should like “if only you knew how writing worked”.
TLoU 2 inherited the excellent environments and average third person gameplay from its predecessor, but the writing and structure was absolutely terrible.
In particular the loss of a key relationship which was a significant part of what elevated the first game above average third person action games.
That bait and switch caused a lot of the anger. Clearly ND couldn’t warn people in advance, and many bought the game only too discover a couple of hours in that they’d been sold a dud in terms of what they expected/wanted.
Hopefully the TV show will save the moment until the END of the series. Then everyone can decide if they want to watch season 3 or not.
TV shows generally don’t require £60 up front unseen. But if someone subbed to a channel specifically for that show, and something happens at the end of episode 1, they’d be as annoyed as the gamers were.
Re: Preview: Star Wars Outlaws Thrives in Its Rewarding Open World
Doesn’t look as bad as some are making out.
My view has not changed though.
Would have been a “buy” pre-Disney, but the franchise is dead to me now, so the licence works against it.
If they had used another IP or something original, I’d have been more likely to buy it.
Re: Astro Bot Continues Its Quest for PS5 Game of the Year with Sublime Gameplay Demo
As an older game and someone with similar titles in the genre on Switch, this ain’t for me.
But for the PS5-only younger gamer this fills a big gap in the library and looks to hit the spot nicely.
Re: Poll: Are You Sick of Soulslike Games?
Don't like them. My time is too valuable to be wasted.
Didn't vote as it's not for me to say there are too many. That's up to whether the number of buyers can support the current market.
There are a lot of them, but if they are making money then there aren't "too many".
As soon as I see a game I like the look of and discover it is "souls-like" though, my wallet seals shut.
Re: PSVR2 App for PC Now Live on Steam
As others have said, the PSVR2 headset has one advantage over say a Quest 3, and that is the eye tracking foveated rendering.
Being able to use the power of your PC more efficiently has obvious benefits. It's essentially like paying hundreds of pounds more for a better GPU. PSVR2 could give you that boost for free.
Without that, what are you left with?
An annoying wired system when Quest 3 is wireless (or just has one simple USB C cable if you wish to play for longer than a couple of hours and need it charging).
Dire image quality due to the last-gen fresnel lenses, which despite the OLED panels, create worse dark and bright scenes than on a Quest 3, due to all the light smearing flares and the mura grain.
Plus those same dated lenses cause a narrow sweet spot, meaning you have to precisely fit the headset, and hammer that strap up real tight, because if it shifts just a fraction when moving your head around, it's like squirting glue in your eyes.
That tightness adds to VR fatigue, where as Quest 3 can just be lobbed on your head any old how, and barely tightened, allowing for hours of use with no fatigue.
Re: Ubisoft Responds to Assassin's Creed Shadows Criticism, Apologises to Japanese Players
**Suspension of disbelief.**
That’s key.
One can play fast and loose with accuracy, but there is always a line, where if you cross it, the players suspension breaks down.
Clearly you wouldn’t have light sabres or machine guns in the game and then say “yo but it’s not meant to accurate bruh” when players suspension fails and they can’t immerse themselves anymore.
When you have blatantly out of place, and obvious contemporary political insertions shoe horned in, I’m not surprised a significant number of players suffer a breakdown in suspension.
Re: Capcom Says It Won't Give Up on Physical Games, Despite Utter Domination of Digital Sales
@LowDefAl oh deary deary me........
Think McFly, think.
Firstly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution in it's production.
Secondly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution with the production of it's packaging.
Thirdly your disc causes massive amounts of pollution with its transportation.
and then Fourth.....
And then....
And then....
And then....
AND THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your disc often contains barely anything, or requires massive patching, so as soon as you shove it in the PS5, you download a patch that is barely smaller than the entire digital game!
I.e. you use the data centres too!
DOOOHHHH!!!!
You are double-dipping on the carbon and pollution!
Re: Capcom Says It Won't Give Up on Physical Games, Despite Utter Domination of Digital Sales
When I read this story, I imagine it is 1960 and I open the newspaper to see "Ford has no plans to abandon production of carts for horses".
Been 100% digital for donkey's years. For the best part of the last 30 years I've been a PC gamer, and have been full-digital on that platform for over 20 years - longer than some of you have been alive.
This whole thing is a clown show.
People buy a useless plastic disc that has been shipped over the world with all the resulting environmental damage.
They stick it in their console, where it does sweet FA as they pretty much download the entire game anyway.
Then they have to keep swapping out these useless plastic discs every time they change games.
Sounds like something Mr Bean or Frank Spencer would come up with.
Re: EA Sports WRC Reveals Season Expansion, DLC, More in 2024 Roadmap
Does it still stutter like a 1982 Lada with its timing out?
Re: 'PlayStation's Blessed with Marketing Budgets We're Not Able to Enjoy,' Xbox Bigwig Bemoans
@PuppetMaster and another one who doesn't read the comments before posting.
I was responding to all those (not going to tag dozens) who were expressing positive views about the current situation and revelling in it. Laughing etc.
Both MS and Sony are anti-consumer companies, who given half a chance will exploit a dominant market position to rip off the consumer and engage in harmful practises.
It just so happens that Sony is the one in that position and therefore in danger of behaving in that manner, as they have in the past.
Clearly MS would do the same in that position - it's simply that they aren't in that position. Something those replying to me and crying "waaaaaa, boo hoo, but what about MS, they are big meanies too" don't seem to have grasped...
I mean I say "clearly" as I'd have thought that would be obvious. But alas this being a gaming forum, simple concepts have to be explained in minute detail else people struggle to understand the nuance.
Word to the wise from a PC gamer who has experienced a similar situation with NVIDIA: this won't end well for any of you.
Re: 'Unpolished' Star Wars Outlaws Gameplay Gets Blasted, But Ubisoft Insists on August Release Date
Just went away to watch it before commenting.
Not seeing anything massively wrong with it to be honest. Legit more chance of me playing that than going back to Starfield for example. You can see DNA from the Division and Far Cry in there.
"Looks better than Starfield" is a low bar though.
Had this been pre-Disney that would be a buy, maybe at the point of the first discounts e.g. 30% off a few months after launch.
As it stands, my interest in the franchise is stone dead. So probably never.
Main character is extremely annoying I have to say. Speaks like the characters in Marvel movies. AC games have had better protagonists. Total charisma vacuum.
Ironically though as someone who owns all the AC games, I'd rank this above AC Shadows in my "might play on a cold day in hell" list.
Re: 'PlayStation's Blessed with Marketing Budgets We're Not Able to Enjoy,' Xbox Bigwig Bemoans
@PuppetMaster and another one.
Can you copy and paste where I said that MS weren't anti-consumer?
Re: 'PlayStation's Blessed with Marketing Budgets We're Not Able to Enjoy,' Xbox Bigwig Bemoans
@Flaming_Kaiser Someone argued that MS were the good guys?
Certainly wasn't me.
Re: 'PlayStation's Blessed with Marketing Budgets We're Not Able to Enjoy,' Xbox Bigwig Bemoans
Whilst there can be little sympathy for a firm who screwed it up themselves, a ratio of 10:1 is very bad news for consumers.
Sony are a pretty sinister company and will screw their customers and generally engage in anti-consumer practises when they feel they are in a position of power and can get away with it.
One only has to look at their hubris and arrogance going into the PS3 generation. A good drubbing by the 360 resulted in a more humble Sony when the PS4 launched.
The next generation won't be pretty. Even worse, with no one to give them a drubbing when they step out of line, it's hard to see where the correction comes from.
I guess there is some competition from PC and Switch, but they aren't really the same markets, and in the case of PC, not available/affordable to everyone. I'm glad I have a decent one as an insurance policy against what is coming.
Re: Walk on the Wild Side with Diablo 4's Spiritborn Class in October
@pharos_haven well yeah that's another problem.
Those other classes might be decent if you know the meta spec that works.
Where as e.g. even when levelling up I started a Sorcerer and put my points in perfectly logical talents, yet it was a glass peashooter.
It would go down like a sack of excrement, and do barely any damage.
I then gave up and used a levelling spec guide, and suddenly became an easy mode wrecking ball. But I didn't like that spec or play style, so I was like "meh, done with this".
Re: Walk on the Wild Side with Diablo 4's Spiritborn Class in October
I started playing D4 at launch and couldn’t find a class I liked. I wanted a classic Crusader/Paladin type character.
Zero interest in this nonsense jungle character. Not the type of thing I look for in an RPG and not what I wanted in this patch.
Re: Doubt Cast Over PS5 Pro Actually Releasing This Year
Desperately want one, but I’d rather they go with Nintendo’s supposed Switch 2 philosophy of making enough of them to meet demand before launching.
If that means next year then fine. Better than the stress of another preorder bun fight.
Re: Amazon's Excellent Fallout TV Adaptation Up for 16 Emmy Awards
I’d like to highlight that this received a very positive response from audiences.
Currently 90% average audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
I point that out, because when utter dross shows like Rings of Power and The Acolyte are hammered by audiences, a lot of strawman ad hominem arguments are used by odious unethical “journalists” and social media commenters to dismiss the views of fans and smear them.
If those arguments had a shred of truth, Fallout would have been hammered too.
Re: Re-Enactment Group Not Satisfied with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows Flag Apology
@DennisReynolds people not agreeing with your point, is not the same as people missing your point.
I got your point, but I think that your point is wrong.
I took the time to explain to you why I thought you were wrong.
The second half of my post covered "fast and loose with history", and why people are still criticising Ubisoft and not giving them a pass, where as they'd have no issue giving Young Guns a pass.
There is nuance to this.
Re: Re-Enactment Group Not Satisfied with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows Flag Apology
@DennisReynolds do you think Vikings thought they were the bad guys when they were raiding and pillaging villages?
Let's be honest, in any conflict no one believes they are on the side of the baddies. As is explored in the famous "Hans, are we the baddies?" comedy sketch.
The game portrays it from the Viking's perspective, and Ubisoft treated you like an adult and expected you to draw your own conclusions.
I felt uncomfortable and bad whilst participating in those raids.
Didn't you? Or did you want Ubisoft to tell you to feel bad?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Ubisoft are historians or anything. They use a lot of artistic licence in their portrayals of history.
Everyone will have a tolerance for that.
I like the films Young Guns (1 & 2) and The Untouchables. They are clearly not remotely accurate and extremely loosely based on real events.
Those liberties are taken to create a fun story. Other properties instead bludgeon you with what are obvious contemporary political messaging, and that is where some people feel it crosses a line.
For me, an inaccurate flag, chinese buildings and other errors that people have pointed out, are just petty and don't really cause me to lose my suspension of disbelief.
That's just me though. A Japanese gamer might find such errors more obvious.
Re: Re-Enactment Group Not Satisfied with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows Flag Apology
@DennisReynolds did they down play the Vikings? Are you sure?
You literally storm into innocent settlements where peasants who work the fields are just trying to get by.
You kill defenders, burn all the buildings and steal their stuff.
What are you looking for here? Are you/gamers not able to form your own judgment?
Or do Ubisoft have to get He-Man to appear, break the fourth wall, and give He-Man’s Message about how looting and pillaging are bad?
Because we wouldn’t figure that out unless he’d told us?
Re: Re-Enactment Group Not Satisfied with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows Flag Apology
I do kind of sympathise with Ubisoft a bit. But only a tiny bit.
They played stupid games and won stupid prizes.
Bored of the arguments about their character choices etc and can’t even be bothered to muster an opinion one way or another on that anymore.
I can only say when you start making obvious decisions stemming from your political ideology, you must expect that you will annoy half the customer base who will push back. They will start going over everything with a fine tooth comb to get you.
I think things are getting petty, as yeah it’s a dumb mistake but come on, it’s no real harm. However if you push an ideology that deems such oversights to be a serious harm, you better get your ducks in a row first.
Re: Preview: Ignore The Haters, Concord Is a Good PS5 Shooter We Can't Wait to Play More Of
A hater's view is as valid as a fan's.
Pretty disappointed with the extremely immature comments on this board.
Claiming that anyone that hates the game "hasn't actually played it", is as immature as claiming that anyone who likes it is a "paid shill".
I have no time for anyone pushing such arguments.
I like to hear well cited arguments, where specific examples of good/bad aspects are used to explain an opinion.
Personally I enjoyed Overwatch for a few weeks after launch, but in 2024 a hero shooter would have to be something special to have me buy in.
I came here looking, but didn't find any arguments to support that.
Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Extra, Premium Games for July 2024?
As I always say, it’s time and not money that is my problem.
If I felt a game was worth dedicating the time to, I’d buy it very early in its life and not be waiting on the off chance it came to a sub service.
If it doesn’t warrant full price, it will never warrant my more valuable time.
If I haven’t bought it by the time it’s on a sub service, I will never want to dedicate the time to it.
That’s why I’m a fan of the MS day one system for certain titles.
Bottom line - none of these titles are worth downloading for me.
Re: Nudity Confirmed for Dragon Age: The Veilguard: 'This is a Mature RPG'
Not interested in inter-personal “relations” and therefore not interested in nudity in my RPG’s.
No more than I’d want a romance option with a rival driver in a racing game!
I want an adventure exploring a vast land, compelling and intriguing plot around an existential threat to the region or world, a bit of politics, and of course good old fashioned RPG staple classes, spells and enemies.
The other stuff…..well I get that from my girlfriend, and I have to argue and fight to have my gaming time allowance, and not have to go to hers for Netflix and Chill.
Last thing I want is to have that in my game, when I could have just done it for real and avoided the grief.
Fair enough if others want it. I found it annoyingly intrusive in other BioWare games and BG3, so I’d be out if I’m going to have loads of characters propositioning me.
Re: Suicide Squad Season 2 Frozen Days From Launch, Defrosting 25th July
When it comes to perpetual games where one is expected to make it their “main” game that they play for thousands of hours, I want to play as a custom character of my design.
As per Division or Destiny. Or any MMO for that matter.
I don’t want to play or invest time in the same character as a million other players. I want it to be my character and exclusive to me.
For that reason I’ve never been into Hero shooters, or games like this, Red Fall or Gotham Knights.
Re: BioShock Developer 'Ramping Up' for Next Entry in Series
For me personally, Bioshock is done.
It was fantastic so let’s leave it untainted where it is. Don’t do a Star Wars and trash the memory of the good stuff by releasing catastrophic dross.
Ok ok maybe that’s unfair and maybe they will release a masterpiece and I will eat humble pie. But what are odds?
In my opinion Levine was key to those titles, so my focus is all on Judas which looks excellent.
Re: Netflix's Horizon Zero Dawn TV Show Reportedly on Ice
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare I think “nailed” is relative. You can say the same about TLoU too.
By the standards of TV series being written in 2023/2024, let alone by the standards of video game adaptions, they have nailed it.
It’s a low bar of course….
I think Fallout did offer something a bit different from the games, but with some moments of familiarity.
Else if it were just a direct word for word adaption etc, there would be little point. In the same way I feel no desire to listen to an audio book that is just an identical adaption of a movie. I’d rather experience the original otherwise.
Re: Netflix's Horizon Zero Dawn TV Show Reportedly on Ice
Not a series I wanted to see as I felt it would be awful and a cringe fest.
Granted I had reservations about Fallout and didn’t want that to happen as I thought it would be awful.
Happy to be wrong on that occasion.
However Fallout the game did at least have great writing to act as a starting point.
Whereas the writing in Horizon was mostly awful, with the game being loved due to the world and gameplay. Don’t think it would end well if a TV series was made.
Re: Dragon's Dogma 2 Patch Clearly Improves PS5 Performance, But It's Still Far from Perfect
If you have a £1200 TV it’s perfectly playable now.
Personally I use the RT mode with a 120hz VRR TV and it is no different to playing FF16 in my view, where I was perfectly happy with that games 30fps mode, which was clearly how it had been designed to be played, versus the tacked on “fake” 60fps mode.
If you don’t have the expensive TV, then IMO it’s still garbage tier and should be avoided unless they fully patch it, instead of relying on you to spend cash to compensate for their failure.
Re: Stylish Racer #DRIVE Rally Continues to Look Great in Latest Gameplay Trailer
Bah another game that gets me excited and then I see “early access” and lose interest.
Anyhow, personally I view this type of game as a “Switch game” or more likely a Switch 2 game.
Not something I’d play on my PC or PS5. I only tend to play those big GT/Forza type experiences on my home systems.
Re: Feature: Push Square Readers' 20 Most Anticipated PS5 Games for the Second Half of 2024
I bet that Astrobots sales do not reflect this poll.
AC will outsell it by a country mile even if you just take PS5 sales so it’s fair.
Re: Golden Order Restored as Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree Recovers from Review Bombing
@naruball Yup the likes of you and I just don't touch it with a barge pole. But the DLC is only accessible to hardcore players.
E.g. Elden Ring sold more, but you have to progress a long way through that main game, and defeat a very tricky boss, in order to access the DLC. So a dummy like me who bought the game thinking it "looked like Witcher, should be fun" wouldn't even be in the market for the DLC.
People are trying to say those players who found the expansion too hard are "idiots" and "stupid", but those players have proven their mastery already.
Not buying "the narrative" on this one as those are pretty gifted players.
Those players were already professional cheese monkeys, as I'd bet my house that 99% of players who got that far in the base game, had cheesed it out by reading forums and guides.
So I don't buy they are just too stupid or too lazy to read. Something is fundamentally up with the DLC such that it fails with the onboarding at a fundamental level.
Even asmongold practically rage quit initially. He's surely in the top 1% of players. It's his job to play games, and he has beaten the hardest bosses in the hardest games out there, and is incredibly smart.
Re: Golden Order Restored as Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree Recovers from Review Bombing
Giving a game you don’t like a low score is not “review bombing”.
If large numbers of players didn’t get the necessary information from tutorials, then what is the most likely cause?
a, Thousands of players who were capable of progressing significantly far in Elden Ring are “stupid”?
b, the developers produced a garbage-tier tutorial and it is they who are stupid?
My philosophy is that if everyone around me appears to have a problem, it’s likely not them but me.
Souls games do have garbage-tier tutorials. Show me a player who claims they haven’t had to consult an external guide or forum to complete the game, and I will show you a liar.
Re: The Obligatory Helldivers 2 Isn't As Popular As It Was Headlines Have Started to Emerge
@NEStalgia always been a problem with multiplayer progression based games.
It can have the opposite effect to the one you describe. What I call the “gravity” effect that prevents objects (players) escaping its orbit.
It’s the reason why so many WoW competitors were unsuccessful, despite arguably being better games. Players wouldn’t leave WoW, despite acknowledging the alternative was superior.
If you want to be the King, you want to be the King of England and not the King of a festering dung heap.
If you are going to invest energy by grinding to increasing your status in a virtual community, you want to do it in the biggest and most likely to last (such that your efforts aren’t wasted if it dwindles and dies).
People therefore go where the majority are.
In some sub genres that leads to the locust effect that you are seeing with this type of game. In other sub genres it leads to the gravity effect.
Re: Days Gone Team Apologises for 'False Hope' of PS5 Sequel After Misleading Headlines, Comments
That was one of my favourite games of the last generation, and my favourite Sony title.
It’s an absolute travesty that we aren’t getting a sequel, given all the absolute dross out there.
Different publisher, but imagine what the money spent on Suicide Squad could have done if handed to Bend.
The industry is a mess.
Re: Talking Point: What's Your Most Anticipated PS5 Game for the Second Half of 2024?
No really feeling anything amongst that bunch, but have a massive back catalogue I can work through. More interested in games that are already out like Dragons Dogma 2, that might get patched and be worth buying.
From that list, it’s depressing that AC is the most likely purchase, but I need to finish all the other AC games that I’m 40 hours into but haven’t completed yet.
I really want Dragon Age to be good, but I know it will suck. Mind you I said that about Hogwarts and yet it became my game of the year.
Re: Huge Dragon's Dogma 2 PS5 Update Adds Frame Rate Settings, 120FPS Is an Option
@JohntheRaptor 20fps was fun on my Amiga in 1993. It ain’t anymore.
Re: Huge Dragon's Dogma 2 PS5 Update Adds Frame Rate Settings, 120FPS Is an Option
Refused to buy due to bad performance. Still haven’t bought Elden Ring for the same reason, so I’m someone who sticks to their guns rather than whine on forums but still buy it.
Will see what Digital Foundry say. Even 120hz combined with VRR to get it working at lower frame rates won’t help when it chugs to 20fps.
Adding a PS3 graphics mode rather than achieving gains through optimisation won’t cut it for me either.
If the game looked future gen, I could half tolerate the bad frame rate as I did with GTA5/TLoU 1 on PS3 that clearly looked as though it was punching well above the PS3’s weight.
I look at DD2 and it in no way looks like it should be chugging as much as it is. It don’t look anywhere near good enough to get a pass.
Re: PS5 Fan Favourite Stellar Blade Sold Over 1 Million Copies, Dev Estimates
@Melinoe not talking about cost or profitability.
I’m strictly comparing how hype/hate from the media and fans on forums/comments, often has no relation to sales figures.
Re: War Thunder Dev Apologises After Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster Imagery Surfaces
@GrimWillows correct. Plus it wasn’t an explosion anyway 🙂
Aerodynamic breakup after the tank failed and the rapid expansion of gas caused the orbiter to yaw and pitch off axis into the air flow.
——————
Seriously as I said yesterday - who even noticed without being told, and who was seriously offended?
I doubt even surviving family members play this game, and wouldn’t have noticed unless some outrage baiting “journalist” told them.
Re: PS5 Fan Favourite Stellar Blade Sold Over 1 Million Copies, Dev Estimates
Given the massive amount of coverage, I’d assumed it did 3M.
Doesn’t make any difference to me. If the developer turned a profit then good on them.
Just thought I’d point out that we do get vocal minority distortions with hype and media coverage, where in reality the wider market isn’t that fussed.
Whereas a much criticised Ubisoft Star Wars or AC game will still do significantly higher numbers.
The numbers are inversely linked to the forum sentiment, aside from the odd game like Suicide Squad.
Even the much maligned (and deservedly so) Gotham Knights did far bigger numbers.
Re: UK Video Game Retailer GAME Will Reportedly Stop Stocking Video Games
I went full-digital getting on for a decade ago. So hardly surprising.
A bit sad, but that's progress.
I remember the days in the mid/late 80's when almost every shop stocked games.
The local Kiosk cornershop, Boots the chemist had a big section, as did WH Smith the stationery store (describing what they sell for non-UK readers).
Plus your music and video stores, and often multiple dedicated games shops in the same town centre.
Coming back home on the bus, opening the box/cassette case and reading/sniffing the lengthy manuals! Couldn't beat the smell of a fresh game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Re: UK Sales Charts: Still Wakes the Deep and Elden Ring Share a Top 10
@Batesy125s Absolutely mate. I'm still thinking about it now, and the characters I met.
Cracking game and I love The Chinese Room's products.
Alas I was a little concerned when I finished Friday night, and I was getting achievements that <2% of gamers had unlocked in some cases.
They seemed to be achievements that anyone would get just through playing, as I was not trying to get anything and just played normally.
I played via Gamepass though so there is going to be a very high percentage who just install it to try it out, without actually having an interest, and then bounce off it at 5 minutes in.
Expect PS5 had a far higher completion rate.
Re: Poll: Can a Game's Brutal Difficulty Put You Off Playing It?
I'm late middle aged and have much better things to do with my time. I don't mind spending time on games, but I have to feel as though I'm making adequate progress through an enjoyable story in each session, to justify the time.
Not a problem though, I just don't buy hard games or games that run shoddily. They don't get my money.
Elden Ring fits into both of those categories. No skin off my nose, and the developer can churn a profit from the people who have an abundance of spare time that they don't attach a high value to, and who don't mind bad frame rates.
All power to them. From Soft, and those gamers, have a good relationship going. and I will keep my nose out of it.