Marquez

It's going to be a busy weekend with Helldivers 2 filling the gaps between starting my FF VII Rebirth playthrough and my continued obsession with Baldur's Gate III

Have a great gaming weekend everyone.

I'm all in on this. The combat and class customisation looks fantastic.

I’d take a four man jeep over mechs right now. All that running away from bile titans on the higher level missions…!

GaaS done well, I’ll be jumping back in!

@TwoDents This is typically because the lower down an org you go, the more duplication of roles exist and therefore the opportunity is there to make cuts and still have someone pick up the tasks. You don't simply go after the highest salaries first...

@TrickyDicky99 Approaching the comments with your usual half empty glass and a dose of sarcasm I see. Never change.

@SystemAddict It's ruined the experience short term for me and it's absolutely in their interest to fix it - preferably by implementing a variable refresh rate on the Portal, if possible.

And if Sony bothered to fix the known Hz streaming mismatch between PS5 (60) and Portal (59.94) that causes regular stuttering I would use mine a lot more…

SkillUp’s Skull & Bones review perfectly captures all the reasons why people are taking the step back to Black Flag, worth a watch.

This is a fantastic article - more of these games industry deep cuts please!

Helldivers 2 as much as possible this weekend. Played some level 7 missions (Suicidal difficulty) last night with mates and they are so intense!

Nostalgia intensifies, at least for older gamers like me. I remember going over to my mate Tim's house after school so he could show off Attack of the Mutant Camels on his Commodore 64. Looking forward to this!

I'll get in before most of the haters to state something pretty obvious. He worked at Sony for decades, rose up through the ranks and ended up at the top. To do that you have to have a positive influence and achieve meaningful results along the way.

It will be interesting to see who is next and how they approach the role as PlayStation faces the profitability headwind laid out in other articles recently.

Metacritic Outlier Alert

Seriously though, my time spent in the closed beta was more than enough; interesting to note from this and other reviews that endgame perhaps has more to offer than most will ever see due to the perseverance required to get there…

In these recent years of rapidly rising inflation, when the key controllable cost in most businesses is the people, below inflation salary increases are more common than ever as a means of cost control. That doesn't make them right necessarily, but they are an unfortunate reality right now.

Back to Baldur's Gate Act 3, the gift that keeps on giving. Though all the people I play Destiny with appear to have bought Helldivers II so now there's that temptation...

@Nem You mean you didn’t explain it… at least not at first! Based on previous evidence the live service push is being made alongside more traditional first party development, Naughty Dog bei by a good example. So I still doubt the impact tbh.

@Nem Share fluctuations are driven by measurable results - and there are no measurable results for their 'dumb live service push' yet. So erm... no, it's not that.

I don't see day and date in this for all Sony titles - as per previous statements I can see live service day and date and shorter windows (no doubt restricted by required dev time) for PC ports of the main first party titles - maybe within a year of release, every title.

Pretty sure the Venn diagram of the 'that looks like a man' crowd on this thread and the 'I'm glad the Stellar Blade devs haven't gone all woke because I love big butts in ma gamez' commenters is basically one circle.

An excellent set of additions imo.

@Czar_Khastik You forgot to include the remasters and remakes.

@Porco The key difference is that Germany as a nation has fronted up to and openly discussed the crimes of that regime, and actively educated on the past. Japan, with regards to their actions against Korea are… less than apologetic.

I'd like Microsoft to do well and give Sony a run for their money, competition is important. I'd also like to play their more unique recent titles - Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush - on my PS5 or Switch as I don't own an Xbox or PC. So Win-Win for me basically. Not too fussed about their tentpole titles, there are similar experiences on PS5 anyway.

I am overloaded with act 3 quests in Baldurs Gate 3 so I’m going to spend the weekend rolling the character for my tactician playthrough and settling back into the familiarity of act 1, for a break!

Open hand monk or some kind of multiclass gloomstalker, that’s the question.

Think I'll finally fire up A Plague Tale: Requiem as there's only a couple of days left to get the 50 Stars points for it, and then I'll immediately jump back to the delightful Sea Of Stars

The tone deaf prioritisation of the Eververse store continues. It's announcements like this, in the run-up to the delayed Final Shape, that have me hovering over the 'cancel' button of my preorder - even though that would mean me not playing the conclusion to the winding saga I've enjoyed since the original Destiny beta nearly a decade ago...

@TheArt It's the game that keeps on giving - I'm currently watching my son play, who has the platinum and is now on a 'no armor/fist weapons only' playthrough!

I had enough fun playing solo in the closed beta that I'll give the open beta a try and the co-op when I do. Didn't blow me away, but there was definitely fun to be had.

And for all the people dunking on the game before it's even out there are people working hard on this, who may or may not have a job post-launch given the current state of the industry - so how about being nice? Maybe I'm asking too much of the internet...

Even though these are redundancies in the gaming space these are not driven by the success or otherwise of product, as has been the case with other recent announcements - these are purely driven by the merger and the general nature of mergers. The redundancies will primarily be in central functions - senior management, finance, marketing, legal and so on - because of the unnecessary duplication of roles in the new population.

The bit that saddens me more is the confirmation that those let go will be compensated according to 'severance benefits informed by local employment laws' - this typically means the lowest the company letting them go can get away with, by region. At least the 500+ people to be let go by Riot Games are receiving an enhanced package - minimum six months's salary, job search support, ability to retain stock options and even use of a laptop to get them back on their feet... never great losing a job but there are right and wrong ways to help people transition to what's next, which this does not sound like - at all.

There's a great preview video from SkillUp that already had me intrigued, adding this video to the mix makes it an automatic preorder.

'We seem to be experiencing a new era of bleak realism in management sims'... I mean, that's just reflective of us entering a new era of bleak realism as a race and a planet unfortunately. Sorry to be the buzzkill.

Looking solely at his body of work and the impact of ND's narrative driven games on both Playstation's success and the wider video game landscape, this is absolutely deserved. As with a lot of creatives it's hard to separate the work from any controversial personal beliefs the person may hold, as per @nessisonett 's comments - that's a much wider topic for debate.

If AC Valhalla hadn’t had fast travel the platinum would have taken me 400 hours instead of 120 so…

@DonkeyFantasy Yeah my son got the plat and said exactly the same thing - I'm at the point where, if I beat Fire Giant, it gets more linear and focussed through to the end.

Gives me incentive to finish the main game, I got to the Fire Giant and then some other games grabbed my attention. Loved what I played though.

The plan last weekend was Jusant and Cocoon, but I booted up Sea Of Stars instead and I'm loving it - so more of that this weekend. It's also a perfect Portal game which means I'll get more opportunity to play it.

@Terra_Custodes Thanks, good words and I’ll pass them on.

I have a 16yo son looking at Uni game dev courses for when he leaves school and I can't help but worry I'm letting him head down a path of uncertain employment. Hopefully by the time he hits the market in five years' time the industry has worked out how to fix some of this; but it's obviously hard with the ramp up resource/release product/ramp down cycle that is part and parcel of game dev, particularly in the AAA space.

I fell off the game pretty hard after maybe a dozen hours, I do feel like I should give it a second chance but I found the open world areas disappointing - especially compared to the fantastic spaces within Hogwarts itself.

SkillUp put a video up of closed beta impressions after they dropped the NDA and I’m now definitely more interested than I was. But it’s clear that, however this game turns out, there are a lot of minds already made up unfortunately.

Pretty sure Nissan got there first with the Type R logo. Or possibly the Alphabet Guy with, you know, ‘R’.

Going for an indie weekend, continuing my enjoyable playthrough of Othercide, alongside Jusant and Cocoon.

Just had the best part of 1,000 missing points drop in, so that’s nice.

@Nepp67 Me too but then, this isn't Zelda

hides from the fanboys

Putting bizarre racial stereotyping of noses in this thread aside for one moment... while it's important to ensure an increase in minority representation in all workplaces, it's not critical to the success of an actor in a role when their job is literally pretending to be someone else. Particularly here when it's more a case of backstory.

In general the casting has really worked for me so far, both current and future, it's going to be a long wait to see her performance though...

I have a dock and four controllers (with a current stick drift % of 12.5%!) and this, if true, would stop the endless rotation. Typically I get no more than five to six hours out of any controller, though specific game features definitely have an impact - haptics etc., as others have pointed out. With the PS5 constantly in use at weekends - me, my son and daughter all play - fingers crossed this is real.

@rusty82 I picked them both up off recommendations, so let's see which I enjoy most!

Bought Cocoon in the recent sale, after all the recommendations I'm looking forward to it.

I don't know why this is so controversial, when PGA Tour Golf made my own personal top three...