KilloWertz

Alice: Madness Returns

Started it earlier in the week thanks to a recommendation on here and have been loving it so far.

I'll echo what others are saying... F**k you, Falcom. I bought the original release day 1 since these games tend to go out of print within a few months or so here in the US. I'm not buying it again no matter how much I love the series.

@Thumper That's a little different though. That's something that a lot of publishers have done this generation, so while I get why it would've been nice to have an upgrade path, it's not surprising either.

This is literally just a blatant cash grab. Some would argue the PS5 versions of some of these games were that too, but they were improved versions, even if most of it was minimal. There is 0 reason to release Proud Nordics. Such an ironic name in a sense too...

I know it didn't live up to expectations sales wise, but realizing they made a mistake shouldn't keep them from porting it to the PS5. I'd still gladly play it even though there's obviously mixed feelings about it amongst players.

Fallout 3

Still going pretty good. I think I am in the middle of the endgame, so I should be finishing it soon.

It's about time they announced a new game after all of the remasters and remakes.

Given how big of a fan I am of Mass Effect and games like that, and how big of a Naughty Dog fan I used to be, I'm definitely looking forward to this.

I would hand them my money right now if I could. The Witcher 4 with Ciri has the lead is exactly what I wanted.

I'd be shocked if Geralt didn't make a cameo of some sort in it. Makes sense to keep that under wraps for a good long while.

Fallout 3

Still going and still enjoying it. I'm not sure how far along I am, but I'm glad to be making solid progress and rectifying a mistake of the past when I never came close to finishing this.

I had completely forgotten about this. Hopefully it turns out to be as good as it looks in the trailer. As long as the gameplay is pretty fluid, this could be what I hoped Sifu would before learning that one was brutally difficult.

@Westernwolf4 Thanks. I am so far. There's been some frustrating parts, potentially a product of it's time to an extent, but overall it's been a pleasure going back in time. I tried playing it back in the day, but stopped after a few hours for some reason despite loving Oblivion.

Fallout 3

Still enjoying it a week later.

I'm glad I never bought Aliens: Dark Descent. I'm definitely happy for that one. I'll pass on the other two since I don't do any sort of online gaming anymore.

I may claim It Takes Two just because of how good it's supposed to be, but I doubt I'll ever play it. Like somebody else said, it's a real shame they never came up with a way to play it alone (with a bot as the 2nd player).

Fallout 3

I never came close to finishing this back in the day, so after watching the TV show earlier this year, I decided to pick up a PS3 copy and put it in my backlog.

Decided to start it up a few days ago and I've been enjoying it so far. I look forward to getting to play more at some point this week.

Fine update, but I already beat the game a while ago. I enjoyed it the way it was, although I do look forward to returning to it when the DLC drops and experiencing it with some of the changes.

@HallowMoonshadow No big deal. I understand. I'll try to remember to let you know whenever I do finally open it and start playing.

He wasn't on the list of people we thought of, but it seems like it will be a solid choice.

@Wario_Waha It's whatever, but like somebody else said, using the fact that it released against two of the biggest games of the last 10 years as ammunition so to speak is a poor choice. Just because Sony was dumb enough to release Zero Dawn and Forbidden West against those two games doesn't mean it's not a big enough IP. It became popular in spite of their release choices.

@Wario_Waha Just because you didn't like the games doesn't mean the Horizon series doesn't belong in the top IPs. There are plenty of people that think otherwise. I know not everybody will like it, but at the same time your opinion isn't fact.

A real shame that this isn't better. Like others have said, it's like Sammy previewed a different game. Being a big fan of Horizon, I will likely play this at some point since they got the voice cast, but I may end up returning my copy when it arrives from PlayStation (I can't cancel it).

@riceNpea Now THAT would be a game changer.

Nice to see. I'm really looking forward to playing this given how big of a fan I am of the Horizon series. I haven't played many Lego games, but this should be fun.

Fun trailer too. I almost wish it was a bit longer to be honest.

@HallowMoonshadow Some day I will finally play Baldur's Gate III. I've had my Deluxe Edition physical copy for months that I still haven't even opened yet.

I know the game is a huge undertaking, so the timing of starting it has to be right of course. Maybe late this year or early next year once there's not much in the way of new releases for a little while.

Dead Space Remake

I haven't gotten to play as much as I would like to lately, but after starting this a couple of weeks ago as my one horror game for October, I'm enjoying it. There are parts that are incredibly frustrating, but at least that doesn't dominate the game and the really good parts still get to shine. I just started Chapter 8 today.

@Mr_B021 https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/11/ps5-pro-unboxings-now-online-same-box-basically

The title and such of this article is a joke, right? It has to be a joke...

@B0udoir It's not that the PS5 can't run it. I'm sure if the developer put some effort into it, they could get Rebirth to run at an acceptable resolution at 60 FPS. That's the issue I have. Not with the console. There's no way a big budget AAA game should be running at a resolution so low that it's actually blurry on Performance mode.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We shouldn't have to buy a PS5 Pro in order to playing Rebirth at even an acceptable resolution at 60 FPS. There are plenty of games that do just that on the base PS5. I'm not saying that this doesn't look great or that it shouldn't look better on the Pro. Of course it would, but it also shouldn't be in the condition it is on the base PS5 either in regards to Performance mode.

I already have seen their vision for the game. It was released back in 2021. This is just talk to try to get people to buy the Pro.

Glad to see that the campaign is finally a really good one again. I'll get it when it's on a good sale. I know CoD games don't go on sale as often as other games, but they do, and I'll get it then as the campaign is all I would play.

@DennisReynolds Of course it is. You know exactly what I meant. You are just choosing to argue about it for the sake of arguing about it.

Two different kinds of games, so I'm not expecting Rebirth to look quite as good as Doom Eternal at that frame rate, but it still should look a lot better than it does. There's no excuse and there's no way to defend how poorly the game still looks in Performance mode in comparison to Graphics mode or whatever it is.

It's all good, and you are right that it had plenty of issues at launch. They fixed them all though, something that Square Enix has never done with either Final Fantasy XVI or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Instead a person has to buy a PS5 Pro if they want to play Rebirth at 60 FPS and even an acceptable resolution, something that should be considered unacceptable. Sure, Rebirth should look better on the Pro than the base PS5, but they are just going to use the Pro to fix things rather than take the time to at least get the regular PS5 version to even a decent resolution so it at least has clarity in Performance mode. Probably just through pure brute force.

I'm happy with this month. I never did end up buying Ghostwire: Tokyo even though it's been cheap for a while now, and Hot Wheels 2 seems pretty solid. I may never play the latter, but I'll take another good game and go from there. I have no interest in Death Note because I don't play anything online anymore.

@DennisReynolds Where do I mention a specific game? Nowhere in my comment. But since you brought up Horizon, it's more than just pretty visuals. It also runs at a very good 60 FPS and looks a lot better than most games that try to run 60 FPS. Yes, 1st party games are generally better than 3rd party titles, but I don't think I've ever seen such a wide gap between 1st party titles and some 3rd party titles in my whole life since I've started gaming. The fact that the 1st party titles have somehow managed to dwarf even a lot of major high budget AAA 3rd party titles also shows a major problem currently, and also proof that the PS5 has easily enough power to run games at good frame rates that also look good. A 1st party game is still a game on the hardware no matter who made it.

You also just proved the point that it's on the developers and their engines. They shouldn't be using RE Engine for open world games if it clearly can't handle them. "Well, the CPUs are small." Sure, but once again, other developers have found ways to work with what they have and the results have been just fine. Not games that have to sacrifice so much resolution to run at 60 FPS that they can even look like I'm playing a game on the Switch clarity wise (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth being the prime example).

There's nothing you can say that can excuse the industry trying to justify making a gamer spend $700 in order to play something like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at an even acceptable resolution at 60 FPS when other developers have already done it. I'm sorry, there's too many examples of games that have been optimized properly. I don't need Rebirth to look even better than it did in Resolution mode. I just need it optimized properly so it looks even just fine at 60 FPS, and it's far from it. If somebody thought it was fine in Performance mode, that's ok, but that doesn't change how blurry it looked because the resolution is so low.

@DennisReynolds Sorry, I can't respect your take at all. It's not that the base PS5 can't keep up. There are plenty of games that run great and look beautiful, but then we have games on the other end that are horribly optimized. If some developers can do it, it's not the hardware.

I'm long past tired of the take that the blame isn't largely on the developers and/or their horrible game engines. We should not have to buy a $700 mid-gen upgrade in order to play games the way they should already be.

This is a beta of a game that is 4 months from release, so I do think it's a bit premature to chalk this one up as another poorly optimized mess, but it won't be because of the hardware if it ends up on that list. It'll be clear that the RE Engine can't handle current gen open world games properly.

It's a shame for the studio since if Concord was a single player focused game rather than live service BS, it might've had a chance to at least be a quality game. It's not that Concord was such a bad game from a gameplay perspective.

I think having them resurrect Killzone, since Guerrilla is done with the series, rather than do a live service shooter could've went really well, but now we'll never know obviously.

I had it pre-ordered and my copy is already shipped, so I'm either going to just stick with it and hope it hits better with me or just send it back and wait.

According to another review or two, it seems like they botched the Max and Chloe dynamic in however they worked it into the story, which is quite a shame.

Dead Space Remake

After finally finishing Star Wars Outlaws, which I enjoyed, yesterday I was able to squeeze in starting one horror game this month. So far I'm highly enjoying it. I never played the original, so I'm going in completely blind.

@Flaming_Kaiser We can definitely agree there. While I enjoyed Outlaws for the most part from beginning to end, it was released earlier than it should've been. Not quite sure what the rush was either. It'll probably keep there from being a sequel, which is a bit of a shame.

@IamJT Exactly, and that's a pretty fair opinion

When it was initially announced, my expectations were higher than what we were given, but at the end of the day I still enjoyed playing it all the way through. That's what matters in the end for the most part.

@IamJT Yeah, after finishing it tonight, I think it's safely a 7/10. That's not a bad thing at all. A lot of the negativity here stems from people who haven't even played it.

@Khayl Actually, it can be a lie when it is literally false. Or whatever you want to call it. Also, no, the person's quote is not how a lot of people are feeling about the game. There have been plenty of people here that actually enjoyed the game. Obviously not everybody, but the vast majority of the negativity here has been from people who haven't even played the game. As for people outside of here, that is not even close to what the majority have said. With a lot of people playing it in Performance mode, there's been far more criticism of the game's graphics and issues people have with the stealth gameplay.

@Vladspartan Why do I automatically have to be a Ubisoft fanboy just because I'm defending the game against a quote I think is ridiculous?

@Voltan That's strange, unless I'm remembering wrong. Or things are different in the US than where you live. Oh well. Moving on.

I honestly didn't notice it this morning when I was playing it after the patch, but it had to have been there, so I guess I'm not as sensitive to it as some are.

Not quite sure the "damning indictment" quote needed to be included in the article @Khayl, especially when it's a flat out lie. It's actually an entertaining game, and it's gotten more than enough negativity thrown at it without having to include that in an article for no reason. Yes, including this in today's patch is obviously bad, but that's not the game's fault.

@djlard I didn't know you exclusively used rest mode. I rarely use it, so I didn't know that.

@djlard @Voltan Didn't you two have the Explore page before they changed it to the Welcome hub? If so, it doesn't add a single button press to play a game as you would automatically start there every boot up. Unless I'm remembering something wrong, I don't get the complaint.

I love Horizon, so if they focus on that, fine. I also don't blame them for wanting to do different things after working on that series for nearly 10 years. It's funny how people are feeling the need to crap on the Horizon series just because they don't want to do Killzone anymore.

Sony could just have a different developer do a new Killzone. It shouldn't be that hard for Sony or fans to think of, but the likelihood of that happening with today's Sony is very slim since they love to leave IPs that fans want to return remain dormant.

Great to see that it's shaping up to be a really good game. I've only ever played one Lego game before, so between getting to play another one finally and being a huge Horizon fan, I'm really looking forward to play this one. Just pre-ordered it.

I don't really like it when they recast a character when the actor dies, but unfortunately like people have said he's almost too important to the plot just to have the character die in between games. That would've been an option though, and then just have Beta take over his work, but I also get not wanting to throw away the character.

My first pick would seriously be LeVar Burton. If not him, then the Keith David pick would obviously work.

My feelings about this haven't changed. I'm still a huge Horizon fan that won't be paying for the Remastered version anytime soon. I've already played Zero Dawn twice and it's still a really good version of the game. Yes, a decent amount of work went into this, but not everybody has changed their opinion.

I don't really think $50 for a AA title is unreasonable. That's still a $20 drop from AAA titles.

As for this, I would like to get it at some point. I know some consider it's PS3 era roots to be a negative, but I actually find it to be a positive since that era is still maybe the best ever for gaming. I'd rather go back and play something like that than some of the modern games.

Given that the 7/10 from here is an outlier amongst other reviews, I'll likely be waiting on this though. I have a lot of other things to play right now, and maybe they'll iron out some of the performance issues other places mentioned.

Just because this game may not sell well doesn't mean the developer will be dead after 1 game. The budget for this game would be a fraction of the budget something like Concord had.

Not a bad idea to release a demo. I've been sold on it ever since it was announced, so I won't be playing the demo since I already have it pre-ordered.

Finally playing Ys VIII when the PS5 version released a couple of years ago made any entry to the series that gets released on PS5 an instant purchase.

Still one of my all-time favorites. It, along with the rest of the series, is also why I'm primarily a PlayStation gamer. Special times back then.

It's too bad PlayStation was too busy remastering and remaking games that are less than 10 years old. Remastering the first 3 games to at least put them on the level of 4 and Lost Legacy would've been great, and even updating the gameplay a bit to the more modern level of them too. So I guess in the end remaking. I'd happily pay for that and play the collection all over again.