DeepSpace5D

@Loftimus Just curious, why did you put “as shocked” in quotation marks? Have Housemarque said this themselves? I have read the articles that they found out about the price the same time as the general public, but I don’t remember reading that they were shocked about it in any way.

Took me over 100 hours to platinum Returnal. Safe to say I got my money’s worth and then some. I just hope more content is made for this phenomenal game so I can dive back in.

Can’t wait to see where Housemarque go from here as Returnal was a huge leap forward compared to anything they’d done in the past.

I’ve got two xenoglyph ciphers left in biome six of Returnal for the platinum.

After that I plan on doing a playthrough of Uncharted 4.

Happy gaming everyone.

@Vivisapprentice That’s true they do like to spread it around, but a possible 4 FF titles along with Forspoken seems a bit excessive.

Just acquire Square Enix already Sony, geez.

They’ve reached the 5’th biome!

I did one run with the new patch so far and the deceased scouts are a nice addition! Be ready for a very difficult enemy to spawn if you try to avenge their death, but its nice to have an extra way to earn ether and other supplies. One of the dead scouts rose up and attacked me as well which was a fun battle.

Also, in that one run since the new patch one of the final two xenoglyph ciphers spawned for me in the Crimson Wastes! Not sure if thats a coincidence but hopefully not. I’m very close to the platinum but the rng for these ciphers has not been on my side. Hopefully the new patch has made them more likely to appear somehow.

Easily my game of the year. Hopefully I can finish it up before Ratchet & Clank.

New content in the works for Returnal is very exciting news!

@Futureshark The 25 games Hermen Hulst was referring to are games that are in development currently. Considering TLoU 3 was confirmed pretty recently to not be in development yet, I’m guessing it’s not included in these 25 titles.

@nessisonett It depends, I’ve actually paid more to watch independent films before, especially when theater availability is limited due to lack of widespread release. Some of those boutique theaters that get the obscure movies larger theaters don’t get will charge accordingly for the experience.

I’m not sure it’s fair to say budget doesn’t factor into Sony’s pricing strategy. It’s probably not the singular deciding factor, but it likely plays a part along with other things to factor such as amount of content, production values, innovation, technical achievement. A Playstation Studios production usually comes with a level of quality that is higher than the industry standard.

The games with the largest budgets are usually always priced at the maximum base price for a new game. Last console generation that was $60, this gen it appears to be $70. If Rockstar games next game that is not crossgen is only $60, then I will gladly say no other game deserves to be more than $60.

@nessisonett So then should games all cost the same because that is the way things are for other forms of entertainment?

Wouldn’t that have made Hades a $60 game if it were trying to go by the most common universal price of a new game regardless of budget? Since it costs the exact same to watch an independent film at a theater vs a big budget film.

I just got full trophies for Fallout 4 before starting Returnal. My goodness was that game a slog. Same old buggy engine felt straight like it was ripped from Elder Scrolls complete with lockpicking and unintentionally hilarious NPC moments.

For a game that’s been out so long and had, I presume, numerous patches by now, I still had the game crash on me at least 5 times while playing. Additionally, there were multiple times where my character just got stuck in the world, hung up on something in the corner of a room, and nothing would release him, forcing a revert to a previous save. I had trouble with a couple missions not showing up after triggering events for them, forcing a reload. I had enemies fall through the ground making me unable to kill them when the current mission required me to clear out a house full of enemies, forcing a reload.

Then they release Fallout 76 after that to even further criticism and terrible bugs/glitches.

Point being my interest has soured greatly for Bethesda games based on their most recent output. Their games are extremely lacking in polish and I hope they can straighten it out for their future releases.

I will say that their games nail it when it comes to atmosphere. They are top notch with that, and also the amount of dialog in their games is seriously impressive.

@nessisonett But unlike those examples, Returnal is a game of high quality.

Also, despite having many episodes, I sure hope R Kelly’s Trapped In the Closet didn’t cost that much to make. The production values are not of high quality, to put it kindly.

@Fuzzymonkeyfunk Hey congrats on the platinum! A respectable one indeed. I have the surveys for biomes 4 and 5 complete, still working on 1-3 and 6. I’m anticipating it to take some time but hopefully the Rng isn’t too harsh on me.

I’m happy that at least with biome 5 out of the way I can skip it and go directly from 4-to-6 via the shortcut for future runs!

Will be working towards the Returnal platinum if I get some play time this weekend. I need to complete most of the biome surveys still.

Happy gaming everyone.

@ItsATM I’d have to agree Ixion is the most challenging overall. Ophion isn’t too bad, but sure is astonishing to look at.

Believe it or not I haven’t died yet during a boss fight, I guess because I wont even attempt one unless my integrity is high and I have a strong weapon. I have though died numerous times throughout the biomes leading up to one. The gold doors in particular can be real tough if you’re not prepared before entering.

Cheers man, been fun discussing the game with you.

@AgentGuapo Nope! I’m aware of it though. Currently replaying the areas hunting down the sunface fragments after beating Act II.

@djape You got this! I avoided pretty much all parasites and malignant stuff, farmed alot of obolites and that was the run that got me to the end.

Keep releasing games on the level of Returnal and the trend is likely to continue. I just beat it for the first time last night and can’t stop thinking about it.

@ItsATM I just beat the 6’th biome! I was in awe the whole time underwater. Playing with headphones and the dualsense, this game is truly something special. That final boss, all I can say is wow.

It truly felt like exploring some ancient alien world. Now I have to replay and find the sunface fragments in each biome. It’s going to be really hard to top this as my game of the year.

@ItsATM Oh I see. I haven’t got there yet. Just picked up the game 2 days ago and I just finished Act 1 and beat the third boss, which was one of the most insane boss battles I’ve experienced in a long time.

I had to force myself to put the controller down and get some rest. What a game.

9/10 only because my very first run crashed and I was starting off strong. This is after the latest patch. Also, the first biome is a bit too dark in my opinion.

Other than that, I’m hooked. This is the tightest feeling action game I’ve played in a long time. Each room with enemies feels like its own little arena that you maneuver with deadly precision. The way the story is done with audio logs, decipher glyphs, and the first-person house segments are quite well done, and I want to find out what’s really going on with Selene.

Incredible game. Like a 3D alien version of The Binding of Isaac. The sense of speed in the game is exhilarating.

RE8 is a game I will wait for a sale for. Hope the rest of you like it though, it’s scoring well!

What’s hilarious is they played through the game and never found out that the quick-swap weapon button was R1? Their is literally a designated button for what they are complaining about.

Looks incredible, was there any doubt the way Insomniac have been on such a roll lately?

Can’t wait for the State of Play in a few days to show more of it!

@RBMango Good news about the framerate for you?

Day one purchase here. Returnal looks amazing, I love anything to do with aliens and sci-fi, big fan of Housemarque, and I personally love challenging roguelikes/lites and fast-paced action in general. This game is right up my alley.

Plus I’m itching for new-gen only content designed specifically for the PS5 instead of all this cross-gen stuff.

@nessisonett Ya native 4k is a waste of resources with such good reconstruction techniques now. I’d rather devs put the extra resources into things like wild particle effects, which it looks like Housemarque have done here.

I don’t normally like to bash Xbox but that is just sad considering how early it was taken down from the PS store and never returned, but was left on Xbox to continue to sell digitally.

@Adge It’s actually a roguelite with persistent elements after death.

I knew Housemarque had it in them to deliver. They have always made very fun games to play, they just needed the bigger backing and a chance to breakthrough.

After leaving Naughty Dog to go work on Avengers he was probably like, “Oh no, what have I done?!”.

@KayOL77 Pretty sure I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said I thought they had some type of plan to preserve these legacy games in the future if they were closing the store.

Mark Cerny has recently filed some patents that had to do with backwards compatibility so I was thinking they would see a return in the future somehow through BC or PSNow or something along those lines. But just walking it back now looks like they had no plan to preserve legacy games and were just making a clearly hasty decision.

Excellent news. However to be fair, I’m going to say the exact same thing I did when Microsoft attempted to double the price of Live only to reverse it after heavy criticism: this comes off as Sony not knowing what the heck they are doing.

I thought they had some kind of plan in place to preserve these legacy games in the future, but turns out it was just a hastily boneheaded decision after all. Glad it’s reversed.

“Sins of the Mother- Complete all house sequences”

Looks like there’s going to be multiple instances of those first-person house segments.

Does look like a straightforward trophy list. Shouldn’t be too hard to complete, maybe a bit grindy.

Only a couple weeks to go!

@Tharsman I don’t know much about company acquisitions, but say for example Square leadership deems an offer by company A as healthier for Square in the longterm despite being slightly lower in overall cash than an offer by company B.

Square might be able to convince shareholders that the offer from company A makes more sense for the longterm growth of the company.

But it all just feels like alot of what if scenarios and speculation with no real details about anything.

@Tharsman

It still seems like quite the stretch to come to the conclusion that Square would not have a say in the matter and just go to the highest bidder. That Purexbox article doesn’t really state anything I saw that would lead to that conclusion, and the CTFN report on that page only says two bankers claim there is Merger & Acquisition interest in Square.

We’re not even sure yet what branch of Square would be available or if it would be the whole company. Or if Square even wants to sell for that matter.

@Tharsman Which rumor are you referring to? The article linked here is in Japanese.

Don’t assume that Square Enix would just go to the highest bidder irregardless of who that is as if they have no say in the matter. It would have to make sense for them as well.

Surely there could have been a less convoluted way of rolling this out?

I haven’t used the dustcatchers yet but I do plan on removing the shells soon just to see how to do it, and then vacuuming the dustcatchers.

There’s rumblings by insiders now claiming that Returnal is in fact very, very good. Hype levels are increasing and I have a feeling Housemarque are going to knock it out of the park critically with this one. It looks phenomenal.

I agree with you Sammy, I still think Playstation has the most diverse portfolio on the horizon with their slated titles. Just because TLoU is getting a remake does not indicate any creative deficiencies or a willingness to only make blockbusters.

Sony is the one releasing a new IP soon and have released multiple new IP already to start the generation. You look at their past efforts like Dreams and upcoming stuff like Returnal and approving Sony Bend for another new IP after Days Gone and it’s really hard to make that argument with any sincerity.

Furthermore, everyone up in arms about TLoU remake doesn’t even have any insight on what percentage of the dev team is working on that versus other projects. Sony has talked in the past of expanding existing studios to make multiple titles simultaneously, so acting like the full Naughty Dog staff is just working on this now is silly. We can say with pretty good confidence that Factions multiplayer will be out before that, and I bet other stuff is being worked on as well.

I personally think it was a scumbag move by Schreier to leak the remake especially in light of the leak that happened to TLoU2 before it was released. This guy acts like he cares about the well being of studios when he puts out articles regarding crunch time, but has absolutely zero regard for the consequences of a leak that has the public criticizing a game that devs are currently trying to work on and the pressure they must be facing hearing all this outcry while trying to develop it.

Cannot wait for one of my favorite franchises to make its return.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is also being touted as the first game that really leverages that PS5 SSD with the level transitions, so I can’t wait to see what Insomniac have created this time.

There’s alot of momentum with the studio having released two Spiderman games since and I expect them to build off that and make a really high-level Ratchet & Clank entry. Day one!

@JJ2 I’m not saying Jason isn’t getting information from actual members at Bend. But he certainly adds his own spices and embellishments that are his own opinions and conclusions to make a story sound much more dramatic than it should.

He lives for these moments where people think he broke some big story of a scandal.

He gets the opinions of a few members of a studio that has hundreds of individuals and acts like it’s how the majority of the studio feels.

@get2sammyb Have you guys seen the Jeff Ross interview, director of Days Gone, by David Jaffe today? Basically debunks alot of Schreier’s points and shows him for the hit piece writer he typically is.

A couple of the significant quotes:

About Days Gone 2: "Never say never to anything, it's just ...maybe not right now."

Jeff also said the whole Bend/Naughty Dog thing was a positive option to give some teams something to do in the early days of development when there is less to do.

Jeff was asked if they feared Bend was becoming a support studio of Naughty Dog.
He said: "that's completely false".

Jeff: "Sony is quite hands off and still takes risks. they still trust developers tremendously. that's something i miss while working with sony"

Herman Hulst is "a great leader, a master at what he does." according to Jeff.

All credit goes to Elios83 on Neogaf for this summary.

It’s not even a question for me. One of my favorite games of all time and I would love to see how great TLoU can look utilizing the capabilities of the PS5. I trust Naughty Dog to deliver a jaw-dropping remake of this classic.

What’s going on guys I’m attempting by far my most difficult platinum ever: Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition on PS4. Wish I never got a trophy in it way back when, but it is what it is and no sense crying over spilt milk now. Let’s see if I can be one of the 0.14% on PSNProfiles who has this nasty platinum.

Happy gaming everyone.

I think the reality paints a different picture than a vocal minority online. The Xbox series consoles are actually selling at a slightly lower pace than last gens Xbox One.

Meanwhile the PS5 has already taken a significant lead and is on track to sell 14.8 million consoles by the end of the fiscal year according to Sony.

Playstations total annual revenue of $25 billion is more than Nintendo’s and Xbox’s combined; they are the gaming juggernaut that needs competition to step up. It’s good that Xbox is trying hard with Gamepass as it will only serve to make Playstation compete harder as well to retain its player base.

We’re 6 months into the generation and Xbox has yet to release any meaningful exclusive game while the PS5 has already had Miles Morales and Demon’s Souls with Returnal and Ratchet & Clank around the corner. Can anyone tell me the exact date that Xbox gets a significant first-party exclusive for their new console?

Bummer there won’t be a sequel to Days Gone but I don’t see it as all doom and gloom like some people on here. A new IP from Sony Bend sounds great as well.