Hyena_socks

I’ve only recently discovered Netflix had games last year, but they have ‘exclusives’ too?
Not surprised publishers would want to branch out to consoles or, like, anything else

So a beloved character has a shocking death and people are shocked, but this is bad because people don’t like to be shocked. I’m shocked.

Honestly the story looks like the best part of the game, if it hadn’t been a live service game, but something more akin to the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ game I reckon this would have rocked.

With proper stakes, a story can really soar, and looks like this game has that.

Good, I’m glad that policy is there. You don’t want kids skilled at a game being brainwashed into thinking they’d be good at real life warfare. By all means recruit for an army, but targeting an impressionable young crowd is messed up.

Sounds a pretty absurd decision they’ll soon backpedal on, claiming they really care and listen to fans.

Stupid to do something that’ll be very clearly unpopular when the game has otherwise been extraordinarily popular.

• Huge Company: does something that makes it difficult for majority of customers to not spend more money
• People: IT WASNT THE COMPANIES FAULT

I’m glad Sony is refunding it, the fault does lie squarely with them if it wasn’t made clear. Also, people, please stop taking the side of the corps over the people, it’s like you’ve never played any Deus Ex game or watched RoboCop.

@Korgon well said dude.

Fandoms do and will always exist, and it really shouldn’t matter how fans engage creatively with their area of interest (as long as it’s legal).

But some fans can take it too far and turn nasty, but that’s the issue, not fanfic/fan art shipping fandoms.

Most of the time though, don’t Google R34 and you’re safe.

This is getting a bit painful. It seems at best it’ll be a bit of a laugh with mates, when bought on sale. It’s already out-competed with fun co-op games to play with friends, it doesn’t look to have enough meat for single player. I just hope it doesn’t rank Rocksteady, an otherwise excellent studio.

Really interesting article, I hadn’t heard of them but I’ll check out these games when I free up some space, the new game looks stunning!

@XinGViruS As far as I know there are no game breaking bugs, and the only issues I had in Act 3 were funny graphical issues I think have now been resolved.

I’d say it’s a great time to dive in, I put in about 150 hours, and I know who folks who have doubled that and are ready to dive back in

Final Fantasy XVI - I’m returning after finishing BG3.

But I also downloaded: Plague Tale: Requiem, Evil West, Nobody Saves the World, I need to finish Goodbye Volcano High, I’ve got Sea of Stars sitting there, and bought & downloaded Mount & Blade 2 yesterday.

So…uh…’everything’

I’ve never agreed so much with Dennis Reynolds before, truly, he might just be embodying the Golden God he always strived for.

Having a female, and a Latinx, female protagonist was always going to have those classic insecure gamers go mad. That was probably part of Rock*’s plan, and I’m sure there’ll be jokes about it in the game, and about sexism and racism.

GTA has been ‘woke’ in every game, it makes fun of everyone but includes ample satire on society as a whole being broken and terrible in many ways, always with a strongly left slant.

It feels like anyone getting upset over it hasn’t really thought about the games / they’re using it as an excuse to decry what doesn’t fit their nice, white, straight world view.

@Gremio108 and don’t even get me started on their pigeons

I hope this will be used in support of projects. Because a studio eek owned for its artistic and story-driven games would suffer heavily if AI was used for anything else.

This is a CON and OUTRAGE. Clearly game of the year was King Kong: Rise of Kong, but PS hasn’t even reviewed it! It’s being CANCELLED for showing Gorillas being Gorillas. This is just Big Spandex bankrolling everything again. Typical.

Happy new year, and thank you to the team for excellent coverage throughout - before I found the site I’d been generally out of touch with game news, it’s great to be back in touch with the hobby

I completely forgot about ‘A Space for the Unbound’, I need to check that out!

@ShogunRok I always suspected this website was just me and hundreds of accounts belonging to another single person. Now I have proof.

No FFXVI is a bit surprising - the soundtrack is stunning, diverse and manages to harken back to the FF of old whilst sounding modern.

I loved BG3, one of my all time fave games of the last few years, but I have to say the OST wasn’t particularly memorable, no music outside of a certain fight with a devil, really stood out, like it did throughout FFXVI.

Excellent list, some interesting choices and games I’ll definitely check out.
‘Goodbye Volcano High’ was superb, flew under a lot of folks radar but was a worthy ‘Life is Strange’-alike otherwise sorely lacking this year.

Looking forward to Plague Tale 2 & Evil West a lot, but perfectly happy to try the other game too. They’ll both make a nice change after BG3

@Skratm I thought the same, like white male characters are the most common protagonists. Ah gamers, determined to never let the stereotype die.

As for FFXVI - It’s the best mainline entry since 10, easily. Truly fantastic story and characters, and Clive is possibly one of the best protagonists of all the games.

Oh hell yeah, first all round good month in, like, a year.

This is why Panda’s are going extinct, too many incel bears armed with explosive fish these days

I think the others were more deserving, but honourable mention to the criminal ally overlooked ‘Goodbye Volcano High’ - sure, it looks like my childhood on Deviant Art, but it has a wonderful cast of characters, soundtrack and real heart to it that sticks with you.

BG3 has some spectacular resolutions to arcs, but FFXVI won me over this year. The pacing is absurd (one minute I’m hurtling through space, the next I’m collecting sand). But the characters, the scale, the emotion was absolutely on point enough times to keep me gripped. And you end up appreciating the quieter moments after a while, too.

My PS5 is at home as I visit family, so it’s all laptop based - luckily I have the sublimely charming ‘Small Saga’ to finish, and halfway through ‘The Life & Suffering of Sir Brante’ - fantastic writing on both!

You had me “[ridiculous game name]” - but looks and sounds like it’ll be great!

Assuming it’s not 60 hours spent collecting sand, that sounds epic! It feels like Final Fantasy is really capturing its early magic with the original 7 remake, and then FFXVI. It’s wonderful to see.

@Nepp67 who doesn’t fancy a cuppa on the regular?

[please see above two comments for mine and many others genuine reactions]

It was genuinely gutting, I have so many fond memories of the games and it’s an excellent series to reboot.

You’d have to deter me away from a survey, I’ve got a weird compulsion to complete them. Probably why I have almost daily sales calls that go straight to voicemail.

Sad news for the studio and those who worked on it, but personally very happy to hear it.

There's only so much innovation a live-service game is going to generate, and as soon as those servers go you’re screwed.

Naughty Dog make truly memorable single player experiences, and I can’t wait to see more

@Splat and they’re not even totally white! The horror! I as a grown man cannot abide such wokeness, it’s a gateway drug to communism.

Also looks fun, sure it’ll be fun when it drops, but it’s over a year away so not going to let the hype get to me.

What, you mean no schlocky action shoot-em-up with Torgel and his team of b*tches?! Golden opportunity missed. But also probably generally a good idea.

@Elodin I’ll look into that, thanks for the recommendation!

Reading through their website, interesting lore and world building, and love how they’re introducing it. They’ve got me hooked! Hoping we’ll get some weird cross between Mass Effect, Animal Farm and a bit of Space Redwall for good measure.

I got torn away from the base game by a string of new releases, so this’ll be a good excuse to hop back to it and complete the base game along with the DLC, after BG3 of course. And Goodbye Volcano High. And Sea of Stars. And…

If Skyrim was a person, it would be an 82 year old rockstar, half-dead but every year rolled out to wheeze through their greatest hits, before they’re hooked back up to a ventilator for the following 364 days.

I ca t believe 66% of BG3 players are liars or cowards. I’d love to see if people have petted Scratch more than the owlbear cub.

This looks stunning!

That JRPG is looking extremely JRPG, as a fan of them this looks fun if not revolutionary. I’ll pick it up in a sale further down the line unless I read otherwise in reviews!

Three pretty chill, fun games I imagine - I’m satisfied, been interested in Sable since it launched. I’m not going to rush to download right away, but they’ll make for a fun lazy afternoon sometime.

Others have said it, but starting the hype train years before release is what sabotaged Cyberpunk 2077, they really need to learn. Confirming The Witcher 4 is being made is enough for now.

@Fiendish-Beaver you can! But I havent as I want the scripted characters, over Mr Bones’ meat puppets

“No one saw it coming. All eyes were on the politicians, the countries, the fracturing of relations. But no one was watching the tea brands. First it was novelty controllers. Then it was novelty drones. Then came the novelty missiles. War came and mankind divided over their favourite cuppa, none would survive.”

It’s clearly not written by an AI, an AI woukd write more sensical dialogue than “hello man with shotgun, why am I lurking around in the woods at night? I make jam sometime. Farewell forever”

Exciting! As long as it’s not a totally broken port, I’d love to jump back into this. It still has a load of novel mechanics, and the gameplay mix should still be great fun.

They’re a very talented bunch, this is awful. I’m sure they’ll go on to better things, but right before Christmas is a ***** fine to have that hanging over you. I was really excited for the TS reboot too, fantastic series

Hands down one of the best stories of any game I’ve had the pleasure to experience, and I grew up on RPG’s of the late 90s/early 00’s. Still breaks my heart thinking about it. Still go back to it to hurt myself all over again. Before the Storm is just a beautiful, simple story of friendship and early love.