@naruball But her point was about diet not working out. You need a lot of protein to build muscle, around 1.5-2g per kg of body weight (lean body weight). So an 80kg man might need 160g a day which is WAY more than most people get. There's 7g in a large egg so you'd need to eat 22 eggs a day which would not be fun. Then you need to actually use your muscles and put them into a state where they'll initially weaken then build themselves up (hypertrophy). Genetics come into it a bit, like for example which one you'd end up getting out of a 4 pack, 6 pack or even 8 pack is completely genetic - but getting any of them all requires the right diet, low body fat and abs exercises.
It seems like it'd be pretty hard to get such a high protein diet in a post-apocalyptic setting, though to be fair her group might have some kind of farm facilities with chickens - can't remember if anything that that is shown.
@nookie_egg I see where you're coming from. It is a shame the PS5 hasn't had more non-PS4 exclusives or even multiplats that are only current gen. But saying the games that are also on PS4 don't offer a reason for people to buy a PS5 is like saying there's no incentive to buy a new CPU and GPU for a PC because you could play the same games at 1080p, medium settings and 30fps on your old PC.
For another example, I think if most SNES games were also on the NES, but in 8-bit graphics with about 5 colours on screen and worse sound, people would've still really wanted a SNES. People still bought Mario All-Stars, after all.
FFXVI should really help. Also just more current gen only games. While there's a huge difference between playing a PS4 game on a PS4 vs PS5, it's such a bad image that the current gen is just last gen plus better textures, higher res (sometimes) and 30 frames per second more. Some heavy hitters like Uncharted 5 or, dare I say it, Bloodborne 2 (or another exclusive game from Fromsoft) would go a long way, too
@Balosi Yeah, well it's the same with all AI. In an FPS every enemy could headshot you from 3 miles away within a millionth of a second of seeing you. In Gran Turismo the AI could take the optimal route to the millimetre and accelerate and brake to the exactly optimal magnitude and at the right time to the millisecond.
There's also the thing that it's easier to allow the AI to be OP, or even cheat, than it is to make it actually intelligent. In games like StarCraft or Civilization, they get way more resources each turn/second than they could possibly be getting. In Civ 5 once had an enemy Civ on the ropes; they had one city left and I had it surrounded by tanks and infantry, and had destroyed all their farms and other tile improvements. I was bombing the city too. Yet my spy inside the city told me that the city was doing great, loads of incoming money and food, and everyone was very happy in there.
@yohn777 I've always found that saying silly because you're meant to judge a literal book by its cover - that's the point of it. LotR will have certain covers that, say, Clockwork Orange wouldn't have. Anyway, the fact I'm asking what the character is actually like means I'm looking for input, not just assuming the character is as annoying as he looks. Anyway, the look of a character is important - how would you feel if Dante looked like James Corden? Or if Nathan Drake looked like Snape. It wouldn't really work, would it?
One thing that puts me off is that the protag looks like a massive tw*t. Is he actually a likable character or is he as annoying as he looks? He looks like he should be a jock in a bad slasher movie.
The original was pretty bad but was an early version of motion capture in videogames (in a sense; it was rotoscoped) so it stood out back then. I was going to say I'm getting Shenmue 3 vibes from this - a sequel to a notable game that's released way later than you'd expect that then turns out to be bad - and then I realised the protag is dressed exactly the same as Ryo.
Damn it, just bought Rise and then realised for £3.50 more I could've got the deluxe edition. Just a heads up if anyone else is considering getting it.
@Athrum that's not that bad, fortunately. About, what, £7 more than it is now? Well, unless you look at it as a percentage and then you paid about 50% more. 😬
This is like not having High or Ultra settings in the graphics config of the PC version because they don't want to leave behind people with old graphics cards. That's all this would be - a few tiers higher on a bunch of graphics settings sliders.
@Kevw2006 This anti-expert thing is such a backwards, Daily Mail mentality. It's like saying you'd rather get medical advice from a 5 year old than a doctor. The reason everyone, not just those most in the know, thought they'd be okay with the acquisition is because they themselves said they'd “reached the provisional conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK.” How else would anyone interpret that?
@Rangers420 Well the game itself would be equally accessible without all trophies being enabled. Trophies, unlike the game itself, shouldn't be easily accessible. That's the point of them - to be a challenge. Like everyone should be able to play football but that's not the same as everyone being able to win the World Cup.
@PegasusActual93 Yeah most older games were at least as short, like Sonic was about an hour long and would cost £100 or like $130 adjusting for inflation. The Order was twice the length of Super Mario World, Resident Evil 1 (more or less) and the vast majority of games SNES and prior that weren't RPGs. Yet people talk about those days as a golden age and how games should be more like they were then. Then a game that's both longer and cheaper than those games comes along and gets savaged.
@somnambulance Demos often have that effect. One of the reasons demos died out was that, as I read in Edge at the time, it actually seemed to lower sales. They couldn't be sure, but apparently consistently games would fall below sales projections when they had a demo but would meet or exceed them when there wasn't a demo.
A big part of buying a game is the building anticipation and excitement - but the demo is giving you a sample of what you crave and reducing that build-up. It's kind of like ruining your appetite by having a snack. That's even without taking into account the demo potentially being off-putting due to not being that great.
@Korgon To be fair, there's single player things you do that guarantee these unlocks. Play through these modes and you'll get Mike and Sulley from Monsters Inc, you'll get Meg and Hercules, etc. The catch is you then need "shards" to level them up, these shards being specific to them. That's a gacha thing but you do also get events that give them out each day.
Long story short, without any gacha crap, I've got most characters already. There's also regulated modes where every character is just set to the same standard as if you were playing MK. So you and friends can just play with whoever you like in a balanced way.
@KaijuKaiser But in the previous three games there were class choices, and in the second one control over character growth, stats and weapon skills. In the third you could change your classes at will and try out different party builds. This takes the series backwards. And then in the fifth game you had class changing too, which also let you inherit skills across classes.
This is the only game in the series with no character customisation at all. In fact, the only other JRPGs I can think of with no character customisation or party selection are DQ and DQII (both from early in the previous gen to what FFIV was in). They did at least rectify this in the DS remake where there's finally something to do in the game other than walk through linear areas with a preset party to trigger the next cutscene (seriously, IV is basically XIII but with no character customisation).
I think the core gameplay is actually better than MK - blasphemous, I know - but all the peripheral stuff like shards and daily events and different currencies just pollute it. Imagine if in FFVII you couldn't progress because you were too low level. You don't get exp from fights. No, you need to wait 24 real hours and do "Cloud's First-Class Challenge," where you have 2 attempts to win a Chocotoken which, when you have 25, can be used to level him up once.
Anyway, as for your point about the art style. I know what you mean but I think it's just their way of unifying it. Imagine photo realistic Johnny Depp setting fire to Sulley while an actually 2D Mulan, PaRappa the Rapper style, glides past.
No mention of the fact that there's no character customisation at all? You can't choose the classes, you can't choose how they level, there's no materia or GF type thing, no Sphere Grid or License Board equivalent... Add to the fact that for almost all the game you can't even choose your party members and IV always felt really underwhelming and overrated to me.
@ILikeStake If it was a western RPG they'd all either look like potatoes or would be walking into a tree while talking about mudcrabs. There's a distinct Japanese look to it, things like their take on western style armour, elaborate very well groomed hair, kind of realistic but still stylised faces (RE, DMC and MGS do this too).
No one would have any trouble knowing which of the below is a WRPG or a JRPG.
@middyone You completely missed the analogy. The poster said "art style > realism" but realism is an art style. So, because brown hair is a hair colour, it's the same as saying "hair colour > brown hair". Or anything else that fits the format, like "food > pizza" or "videogames > Mario". i.e. it's a nonsensical thing to say.
@Nepp67 If it's a legit phobia, even just the idea in your imagination gets to you; you get sweaty palms, a raised heartrate etc. If just the idea can create physical symptoms, seeing a convincing representation in front of you is obviously even worse.
I have that. It took me ages to build up to going in the sea even in AC Odyssey and I still always felt really unsettled. In Tchia it was pretty bad too but they make it artificially bright under the sea, like this mode does. Even then, that thing where you're in fairly shallow water and then the floor just steeply declines into a dark abyss all of a sudden really freaked me out. WoW does that too and I'd always try to stay far away from the drop.
It's odd how people target subscriptions so quickly when trying to save money. They're ridiculous value for money, usually. Me and my dad went to watch John Wick 4 the other day - £22. Now that's more than two months of Netflix and almost 3 months of Prime Video. My friend took his kid and some of his friends to watch the Mario movie and it cost £100. That's more then a year of Prime at £95 a year - and if you watched a movie each day on Prime, even with 9 other people, it'd be 26p per film. Do the same at the cinema and it'd cost over £40,000.
I mean, even silly things like if you bought a Tesco meal deal each day, no one would think that was an extravagant lifestyle but that's almost £1500 a year. In the fact of that, £95 for Amazon Prime seems practically free. Even if you ludicrously stacked up 14 subs, it'd be cheaper than daily Tesco sandwiches.
@thefourfoldroot1 I always find that a bit of a weird argument since apparently the average person in the UK watches TV for about 22 hours a week (and that's what they admit to). That means the average Brit could complete FF1 in less than a week if they stopped watching strangers buy antiques on the telly for a bit. On a related note, Brits also spend over 90% of their time indoors. 1-in-3 Brits spend at least 10 hours a week cleaning their house. I'd like to thank Google for filling my brain with such useless data.
@Rob_230 It's a weird coincidence but the public domain thing is after 100 years in America but then it's also Disney's 100th anniversary this year. So even if it wasn't for the copyright thing, I think they'd still be doing this kind of stuff.
@Ooccoo_Jr As with Dreamlight Valley, it will be F2P at launch but before then they're doing early access. You pay one of three tiers, get in-game currency, characters, various exclusive things, as well as the early access itself, of course.
I got it yesterday and enjoyed it, but I'll say two things. One, it is absolutely infested with various different currencies with often obscure or confusing ways to earn it - and often time-gated. Two, I'm not the best at racing games of any type, but I'd say the early game of Speedstorm is way harder than 50cc in MK, probably 100cc too. Combine that with a levelling system (paid for with one type of currency) AND a gacha-style upgradeable rarity system for each racer, and it feels way too much like you're playing something like Fate Grand Order rather than MK.
Surprisingly difficult race in a kid's kart racer? It's okay, just buy (or grind) 300 racing flag tokens and 45 trumpets (oh sorry, only 6 can be earned a day) and then turn Mickey into a Level 70 Legendary tier version of himself and try again. Ugh. They really need to rein that kind of thing in or this'll die faster than Bambi's mom.
Every Xbox has done badly yet people always somehow seem surprised when it does again. The first Xbox is one of the worst selling consoles you've heard of, lost MS billions and only sold a single digit number of millions outside the US (and not much more in the US). Their biggest success to date is to be outsold by the worst-selling PlayStation despite launching a year earlier and at a cheaper price. Wow, that is really quite an achievement. Truly, and for such a small company too!
Consistently the lowest sales of each gen apart from the Wii U - but then Nintendo made up for that with the Switch. I've never even seen an Xbox One or Series X/S (oh yeah, Xbox has great naming conventions too) in real life. Every gaming adult I know has a PS4 or PS5, their kids have a Switch, and this is supposedly the country outside of America where competition is closest between Xbox and PS.
Imagine how well it would've done if it hadn't been, so far, mainly a machine for playing PS4 games at 60fps. A PS4 Pro Pro, basically. Really looking forward to what comes next as we actually start the next gen.
I don't know. It still has that plasticy look, and that look as if clumps of coloured resin have been arranged nicely in a diorama, that games have commonly had since the 360. Actually disagree with the above poster that it's realistic - it looks very artificial and gamey. (Also, realism is an art style; it's like saying "hair colour > brown hair all day". And not to mention, both GTA5 and TLoU are using realism as an art style but still look very distinct from each other with a much stronger visual identity than, say, PSO2 and Star Ocean 4 or 5, which are certainly not going for realism yet both look very similar despite being totally different series.)
@rjejr It even got up to 4 discs with FFIX. I think now, though, they can compress it on disc, like RARs, and decompress during installation.
@Amin1998 it means higher quality textures and more voice acting, if anything. The size of the game (geographically speaking) and the size of the game in terms of storage aren't really connected. Daggerfall (The Elder Scrolls 2) is 190mb yet the game world is the size of the UK, hundreds or thousands of times bigger than almost any other game. And most of that 190mb is probably the music and small number of very low res movies.
@johncalmc I don't think it even had the opposite effect, it's just that the vast majority of people weren't even aware of some internet nutters calling for a boycott. If you went up to someone about to buy a copy of HL in Tesco and said "you're buying that even though JK Rowling said she there should be single sex spaces still!?!?" they'd look very worried and then quickly walk away.
Weirdly enough I was daydreaming yesterday that they'd announce the follow up to KCD. I didn't play it but a few years ago I watched a let's play in VR while drunk and it was a fun experience.
On reflection, it's not a great game - far too cookie cutter open world rather than something made for HP specifically, plus pretty shallow combat that feels like Fisher Price MMO combat; but at least in terms of the detail, the atmosphere, the general audio-visual experience, it's a magical journey. Next time I'd like to play as a Hogwarts student, though, rather than a homeless, violent fiend that never sleeps, rarely attends lessons, and mainly migrates around a field on a broom looking for homes to break into.
>“confident, compassionate, and fierce” At this point in pop culture writing, it'd be weird to read that a female character isn't these things (and only these things). It's become the off-the-shelf character and they don't tend to add much more on. That could also describe Aloy, so it'd be nice if the writer herself could describe her own character in a way that differentiates her from the already existing confident, compassionate and fierce character we're familiar with.
It's kind of like bios that say "I like movies and music and hanging out with friends".
I mean... It's plastic moulded by a machine in a factory in China. You're not missing much. The original scalpers are the publishers trying to upsell mass produced pieces of tat as if they're individual works of art.
@Allfather how to say you don't know what an RPG is without saying it. One of the fundamental things that makes a game an RPG is the focus on stats and strategy over raw skill. Even 15, which not many people would defend the combat in, didn't let itself go into full blown action mode - for example, to dodge you merely held down a button and you'd automatically dodge yet it'd drain your mana. That's not how dodging would work in, say, SF or DMC.
All of the games you just listed are light on fighting game type skills and heavy on stats, understanding and manipulation of those stats, and strategy with how your party is set up and how they work together. Seriously, go and read an advanced class guide for FFXIV and see how complicated it is. In this game everyone will have the exact same Clive and there'll be no depth to how you use him. Just dodge and counterattack infinitely.
XVI is as much an RPG from what they've shown as DMC. It shifts the focus onto twitch gaming and totally away from any class systems, party management, stat customisation and so on. It feels more like a fantasy Streets of Rage where you walk down corridors and beat up people by mashing buttons.
@jamescrowx Yeah but there's finite tasks to do and so only so many times you can buy the stuff on the last page. Not sure if you can do it enough times to get all the moons back - though I paid a bit more to have 6 tasks on the go at once so maybe that's why.
Comments 3,356
Re: The Apocalypse Awaits Your Bank Balance if You Pod Out $2,000 for This The Last of Us 2 Statue
@naruball But her point was about diet not working out. You need a lot of protein to build muscle, around 1.5-2g per kg of body weight (lean body weight). So an 80kg man might need 160g a day which is WAY more than most people get. There's 7g in a large egg so you'd need to eat 22 eggs a day which would not be fun. Then you need to actually use your muscles and put them into a state where they'll initially weaken then build themselves up (hypertrophy). Genetics come into it a bit, like for example which one you'd end up getting out of a 4 pack, 6 pack or even 8 pack is completely genetic - but getting any of them all requires the right diet, low body fat and abs exercises.
It seems like it'd be pretty hard to get such a high protein diet in a post-apocalyptic setting, though to be fair her group might have some kind of farm facilities with chickens - can't remember if anything that that is shown.
Re: Mini Review: Revita (PS5) - The Ultimate Roguelite Experience
Thanks for saying roguelite instead of roguelike. Strange how many gamers don't actually know what roguelike means.
Re: 38.4 Million PS5 Systems Sold as Sony Records Its Best Q4 Results
@nookie_egg I see where you're coming from. It is a shame the PS5 hasn't had more non-PS4 exclusives or even multiplats that are only current gen. But saying the games that are also on PS4 don't offer a reason for people to buy a PS5 is like saying there's no incentive to buy a new CPU and GPU for a PC because you could play the same games at 1080p, medium settings and 30fps on your old PC.
For another example, I think if most SNES games were also on the NES, but in 8-bit graphics with about 5 colours on screen and worse sound, people would've still really wanted a SNES. People still bought Mario All-Stars, after all.
Re: Sony Estimates Record-Breaking 25 Million PS5 Shipments in the Coming Year
FFXVI should really help. Also just more current gen only games. While there's a huge difference between playing a PS4 game on a PS4 vs PS5, it's such a bad image that the current gen is just last gen plus better textures, higher res (sometimes) and 30 frames per second more. Some heavy hitters like Uncharted 5 or, dare I say it, Bloodborne 2 (or another exclusive game from Fromsoft) would go a long way, too
Re: Elden Ring's FromSoftware Wants to Release New and Exciting Games More Frequently
Please, no Elden Ring gacha on phones. It'd be cool if they returned to King's Field, though.
Re: Even Fighting Game Legends Can't Beat Street Fighter 6's Hardest Difficulty
@Balosi Yeah, well it's the same with all AI. In an FPS every enemy could headshot you from 3 miles away within a millionth of a second of seeing you. In Gran Turismo the AI could take the optimal route to the millimetre and accelerate and brake to the exactly optimal magnitude and at the right time to the millisecond.
There's also the thing that it's easier to allow the AI to be OP, or even cheat, than it is to make it actually intelligent. In games like StarCraft or Civilization, they get way more resources each turn/second than they could possibly be getting. In Civ 5 once had an enemy Civ on the ropes; they had one city left and I had it surrounded by tanks and infantry, and had destroyed all their farms and other tile improvements. I was bombing the city too. Yet my spy inside the city told me that the city was doing great, loads of incoming money and food, and everyone was very happy in there.
Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (PS5) - Fantastic Sequel Is Bigger and Better in Every Way
@yohn777 I've always found that saying silly because you're meant to judge a literal book by its cover - that's the point of it. LotR will have certain covers that, say, Clockwork Orange wouldn't have. Anyway, the fact I'm asking what the character is actually like means I'm looking for input, not just assuming the character is as annoying as he looks. Anyway, the look of a character is important - how would you feel if Dante looked like James Corden? Or if Nathan Drake looked like Snape. It wouldn't really work, would it?
Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (PS5) - Fantastic Sequel Is Bigger and Better in Every Way
One thing that puts me off is that the protag looks like a massive tw*t. Is he actually a likable character or is he as annoying as he looks? He looks like he should be a jock in a bad slasher movie.
Re: Gritty Action RPG Achilles: Legends Untold Shield Bashes PS5, PS4 Later This Year
@ShogunRok I thought that might not be true so I googled "videogames with Achilles in" and... this article was the first result. That is quite weird.
Re: Flashback 2 Will Fade to Black in November 2023 on PS5, PS4
The original was pretty bad but was an early version of motion capture in videogames (in a sense; it was rotoscoped) so it stood out back then. I was going to say I'm getting Shenmue 3 vibes from this - a sequel to a notable game that's released way later than you'd expect that then turns out to be bad - and then I realised the protag is dressed exactly the same as Ryo.
Re: PS Store's Massive May Savings and Golden Week Sales Discount Over 2,400 PS5, PS4 Games
Damn it, just bought Rise and then realised for £3.50 more I could've got the deluxe edition. Just a heads up if anyone else is considering getting it.
Re: PS Store's Massive May Savings and Golden Week Sales Discount Over 2,400 PS5, PS4 Games
@Athrum that's not that bad, fortunately. About, what, £7 more than it is now? Well, unless you look at it as a percentage and then you paid about 50% more. 😬
Re: Honkai: Star Rail PS5, PS4 Details Will Be Revealed Soon
Hopefully a different kind of "under development" than the Switch version of Genshin Impact...
Re: PS Store's Massive May Savings and Golden Week Sales Discount Over 2,400 PS5, PS4 Games
@Athrum For how much?
Re: PS Store's Massive May Savings and Golden Week Sales Discount Over 2,400 PS5, PS4 Games
WWE 2K23 is £44.99 with 70% off? Anyway, looks like it's time to get MH Rise.
Edit: Just noticed the "up to" part of the header. Still, £45 is such a bad sale price I thought you'd put the full price in by mistake.
Re: Hope Fades for The Division 2 PS5 as Ubisoft Vows to Leave No PS4 Player Behind
This is like not having High or Ultra settings in the graphics config of the PC version because they don't want to leave behind people with old graphics cards. That's all this would be - a few tiers higher on a bunch of graphics settings sliders.
Re: Microsoft Dealt Major Blow as UK Blocks Activision Buyout
@Kevw2006 This anti-expert thing is such a backwards, Daily Mail mentality. It's like saying you'd rather get medical advice from a 5 year old than a doctor. The reason everyone, not just those most in the know, thought they'd be okay with the acquisition is because they themselves said they'd “reached the provisional conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK.” How else would anyone interpret that?
Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Accessibility Options, Slow Mode Detailed
@Rangers420 Well the game itself would be equally accessible without all trophies being enabled. Trophies, unlike the game itself, shouldn't be easily accessible. That's the point of them - to be a challenge. Like everyone should be able to play football but that's not the same as everyone being able to win the World Cup.
Re: Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores' Seyka Shares the Story Behind Her Alter-Ego's High Ponytail
@Fishnpeas Yeah, it is true that a lot of modern gaming "journalism" is basically a Twitter post or an advert, like so many Nintendo Life articles (from the front page at the moment):
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/04/pikachu-squishmallows-are-now-available-on-amazon-us
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/04/official-nintendo-switch-sd-card-line-expands-with-1tb-zelda-card-and-cute-yoshi-design
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/04/zelda-amiibo-are-getting-restocked-on-may-12th-pre-order-now-us
Re: The Order 1886's Dev Ripped Apart by Facebook Owner After Acquisition
@PegasusActual93 Yeah most older games were at least as short, like Sonic was about an hour long and would cost £100 or like $130 adjusting for inflation. The Order was twice the length of Super Mario World, Resident Evil 1 (more or less) and the vast majority of games SNES and prior that weren't RPGs. Yet people talk about those days as a golden age and how games should be more like they were then. Then a game that's both longer and cheaper than those games comes along and gets savaged.
Re: The Order 1886's Dev Ripped Apart by Facebook Owner After Acquisition
Sad but inevitable.
@Khayl As someone said above, The Order isn't an FPS.
Re: Random: PlayStation's Massive Marketing Campaign Even Extends to ATM Machines
@B_Lindz Sitting proudly alongside Personal Identification Number Numbers and the somewhat rarer Role-playing Game Games.
Re: Play Street Fighter 6's Free Demo on PS5, PS4 Right Now
@somnambulance Demos often have that effect. One of the reasons demos died out was that, as I read in Edge at the time, it actually seemed to lower sales. They couldn't be sure, but apparently consistently games would fall below sales projections when they had a demo but would meet or exceed them when there wasn't a demo.
A big part of buying a game is the building anticipation and excitement - but the demo is giving you a sample of what you crave and reducing that build-up. It's kind of like ruining your appetite by having a snack. That's even without taking into account the demo potentially being off-putting due to not being that great.
Re: Everyone's Talking About the End of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores on PS5
Well one of the good things about Aloy being a lesbian is that at least one half of the couple can be attractive now.
Re: Disney Speedstorm (PS5) - A New Direction for Racers That Will Raise Some Eyebrows
@Korgon To be fair, there's single player things you do that guarantee these unlocks. Play through these modes and you'll get Mike and Sulley from Monsters Inc, you'll get Meg and Hercules, etc. The catch is you then need "shards" to level them up, these shards being specific to them. That's a gacha thing but you do also get events that give them out each day.
Long story short, without any gacha crap, I've got most characters already. There's also regulated modes where every character is just set to the same standard as if you were playing MK. So you and friends can just play with whoever you like in a balanced way.
Re: Disney Speedstorm (PS5) - A New Direction for Racers That Will Raise Some Eyebrows
@Bentleyma When it officially releases, it's free to play. It's only paid for the early access.
Re: Mini Review: Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster (PS4) - The Gripping RPG that Rocked Square's Series
@KaijuKaiser But in the previous three games there were class choices, and in the second one control over character growth, stats and weapon skills. In the third you could change your classes at will and try out different party builds. This takes the series backwards. And then in the fifth game you had class changing too, which also let you inherit skills across classes.
This is the only game in the series with no character customisation at all. In fact, the only other JRPGs I can think of with no character customisation or party selection are DQ and DQII (both from early in the previous gen to what FFIV was in). They did at least rectify this in the DS remake where there's finally something to do in the game other than walk through linear areas with a preset party to trigger the next cutscene (seriously, IV is basically XIII but with no character customisation).
Re: Disney Speedstorm (PS5) - A New Direction for Racers That Will Raise Some Eyebrows
I think the core gameplay is actually better than MK - blasphemous, I know - but all the peripheral stuff like shards and daily events and different currencies just pollute it. Imagine if in FFVII you couldn't progress because you were too low level. You don't get exp from fights. No, you need to wait 24 real hours and do "Cloud's First-Class Challenge," where you have 2 attempts to win a Chocotoken which, when you have 25, can be used to level him up once.
Anyway, as for your point about the art style. I know what you mean but I think it's just their way of unifying it. Imagine photo realistic Johnny Depp setting fire to Sulley while an actually 2D Mulan, PaRappa the Rapper style, glides past.
Re: Mini Review: Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster (PS4) - The Gripping RPG that Rocked Square's Series
No mention of the fact that there's no character customisation at all? You can't choose the classes, you can't choose how they level, there's no materia or GF type thing, no Sphere Grid or License Board equivalent... Add to the fact that for almost all the game you can't even choose your party members and IV always felt really underwhelming and overrated to me.
Re: Final Fantasy 16's Mind-Blowing PS5 Visuals Have Improved Drastically Since the Game Was Announced
@ILikeStake If it was a western RPG they'd all either look like potatoes or would be walking into a tree while talking about mudcrabs. There's a distinct Japanese look to it, things like their take on western style armour, elaborate very well groomed hair, kind of realistic but still stylised faces (RE, DMC and MGS do this too).
No one would have any trouble knowing which of the below is a WRPG or a JRPG.
Re: Gallery: Is Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores the Best Looking Game Ever?
@middyone You completely missed the analogy. The poster said "art style > realism" but realism is an art style. So, because brown hair is a hair colour, it's the same as saying "hair colour > brown hair". Or anything else that fits the format, like "food > pizza" or "videogames > Mario". i.e. it's a nonsensical thing to say.
Re: Horizon Forbidden West Adds Thalassophobia Mode, Making Its Deep Waters Less Foreboding
@Nepp67 If it's a legit phobia, even just the idea in your imagination gets to you; you get sweaty palms, a raised heartrate etc. If just the idea can create physical symptoms, seeing a convincing representation in front of you is obviously even worse.
Re: Horizon Forbidden West Adds Thalassophobia Mode, Making Its Deep Waters Less Foreboding
I have that. It took me ages to build up to going in the sea even in AC Odyssey and I still always felt really unsettled. In Tchia it was pretty bad too but they make it artificially bright under the sea, like this mode does. Even then, that thing where you're in fairly shallow water and then the floor just steeply declines into a dark abyss all of a sudden really freaked me out. WoW does that too and I'd always try to stay far away from the drop.
Re: Consumer Spending Growth on Subscriptions Like PS Plus Is Slowing
It's odd how people target subscriptions so quickly when trying to save money. They're ridiculous value for money, usually. Me and my dad went to watch John Wick 4 the other day - £22. Now that's more than two months of Netflix and almost 3 months of Prime Video. My friend took his kid and some of his friends to watch the Mario movie and it cost £100. That's more then a year of Prime at £95 a year - and if you watched a movie each day on Prime, even with 9 other people, it'd be 26p per film. Do the same at the cinema and it'd cost over £40,000.
I mean, even silly things like if you bought a Tesco meal deal each day, no one would think that was an extravagant lifestyle but that's almost £1500 a year. In the fact of that, £95 for Amazon Prime seems practically free. Even if you ludicrously stacked up 14 subs, it'd be cheaper than daily Tesco sandwiches.
Re: Mini Review: Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster (PS4) - The Best Version of a Flawed Final Fantasy
Best world map music, though (when the acoustic guitar chorus kicks in 👌)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=onM81DpgSgs
Re: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster's New Exp, Money Boosts Don't Disable Trophies
@thefourfoldroot1 I always find that a bit of a weird argument since apparently the average person in the UK watches TV for about 22 hours a week (and that's what they admit to). That means the average Brit could complete FF1 in less than a week if they stopped watching strangers buy antiques on the telly for a bit. On a related note, Brits also spend over 90% of their time indoors. 1-in-3 Brits spend at least 10 hours a week cleaning their house. I'd like to thank Google for filling my brain with such useless data.
Re: Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse Is Boosting into Disney Speedstorm on PS5, PS4
@Rob_230 It's a weird coincidence but the public domain thing is after 100 years in America but then it's also Disney's 100th anniversary this year. So even if it wasn't for the copyright thing, I think they'd still be doing this kind of stuff.
@Ooccoo_Jr As with Dreamlight Valley, it will be F2P at launch but before then they're doing early access. You pay one of three tiers, get in-game currency, characters, various exclusive things, as well as the early access itself, of course.
Re: Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse Is Boosting into Disney Speedstorm on PS5, PS4
I got it yesterday and enjoyed it, but I'll say two things. One, it is absolutely infested with various different currencies with often obscure or confusing ways to earn it - and often time-gated. Two, I'm not the best at racing games of any type, but I'd say the early game of Speedstorm is way harder than 50cc in MK, probably 100cc too. Combine that with a levelling system (paid for with one type of currency) AND a gacha-style upgradeable rarity system for each racer, and it feels way too much like you're playing something like Fate Grand Order rather than MK.
Surprisingly difficult race in a kid's kart racer? It's okay, just buy (or grind) 300 racing flag tokens and 45 trumpets (oh sorry, only 6 can be earned a day) and then turn Mickey into a Level 70 Legendary tier version of himself and try again. Ugh. They really need to rein that kind of thing in or this'll die faster than Bambi's mom.
Re: PS5 Sales Increase An Outrageous 369% in Key European Countries
Every Xbox has done badly yet people always somehow seem surprised when it does again. The first Xbox is one of the worst selling consoles you've heard of, lost MS billions and only sold a single digit number of millions outside the US (and not much more in the US). Their biggest success to date is to be outsold by the worst-selling PlayStation despite launching a year earlier and at a cheaper price. Wow, that is really quite an achievement. Truly, and for such a small company too!
Consistently the lowest sales of each gen apart from the Wii U - but then Nintendo made up for that with the Switch. I've never even seen an Xbox One or Series X/S (oh yeah, Xbox has great naming conventions too) in real life. Every gaming adult I know has a PS4 or PS5, their kids have a Switch, and this is supposedly the country outside of America where competition is closest between Xbox and PS.
Re: March 2023 Circana: PS5 Sales Now Trending Ahead of PS4 in USA
Imagine how well it would've done if it hadn't been, so far, mainly a machine for playing PS4 games at 60fps. A PS4 Pro Pro, basically. Really looking forward to what comes next as we actually start the next gen.
Re: Gallery: Is Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores the Best Looking Game Ever?
I don't know. It still has that plasticy look, and that look as if clumps of coloured resin have been arranged nicely in a diorama, that games have commonly had since the 360. Actually disagree with the above poster that it's realistic - it looks very artificial and gamey. (Also, realism is an art style; it's like saying "hair colour > brown hair all day". And not to mention, both GTA5 and TLoU are using realism as an art style but still look very distinct from each other with a much stronger visual identity than, say, PSO2 and Star Ocean 4 or 5, which are certainly not going for realism yet both look very similar despite being totally different series.)
Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's PS5 File Size Is Ridiculous
@rjejr It even got up to 4 discs with FFIX. I think now, though, they can compress it on disc, like RARs, and decompress during installation.
@Amin1998 it means higher quality textures and more voice acting, if anything. The size of the game (geographically speaking) and the size of the game in terms of storage aren't really connected. Daggerfall (The Elder Scrolls 2) is 190mb yet the game world is the size of the UK, hundreds or thousands of times bigger than almost any other game. And most of that 190mb is probably the music and small number of very low res movies.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy, PS5's Spellbinding Harry Potter Spin-Off, Massively Exceeded Sales Expectations
@johncalmc I don't think it even had the opposite effect, it's just that the vast majority of people weren't even aware of some internet nutters calling for a boycott. If you went up to someone about to buy a copy of HL in Tesco and said "you're buying that even though JK Rowling said she there should be single sex spaces still!?!?" they'd look very worried and then quickly walk away.
Re: Kingdom Come: Deliverance Dev Warhorse Studios Mustering Creative Host for New Project
Weirdly enough I was daydreaming yesterday that they'd announce the follow up to KCD. I didn't play it but a few years ago I watched a let's play in VR while drunk and it was a fun experience.
Re: Hogwarts Legacy, PS5's Spellbinding Harry Potter Spin-Off, Massively Exceeded Sales Expectations
On reflection, it's not a great game - far too cookie cutter open world rather than something made for HP specifically, plus pretty shallow combat that feels like Fisher Price MMO combat; but at least in terms of the detail, the atmosphere, the general audio-visual experience, it's a magical journey. Next time I'd like to play as a Hogwarts student, though, rather than a homeless, violent fiend that never sleeps, rarely attends lessons, and mainly migrates around a field on a broom looking for homes to break into.
Re: Meet the Actress Behind Aloy's New Ally in Horizon Forbidden West's PS5 DLC
>“confident, compassionate, and fierce”
At this point in pop culture writing, it'd be weird to read that a female character isn't these things (and only these things). It's become the off-the-shelf character and they don't tend to add much more on. That could also describe Aloy, so it'd be nice if the writer herself could describe her own character in a way that differentiates her from the already existing confident, compassionate and fierce character we're familiar with.
It's kind of like bios that say "I like movies and music and hanging out with friends".
Re: Final Fantasy 16's PS5 Collector's Edition Is Being Scalped to High Heaven
I mean... It's plastic moulded by a machine in a factory in China. You're not missing much. The original scalpers are the publishers trying to upsell mass produced pieces of tat as if they're individual works of art.
Re: Poll: How Was Final Fantasy 16's State of Play Showcase?
@Allfather how to say you don't know what an RPG is without saying it. One of the fundamental things that makes a game an RPG is the focus on stats and strategy over raw skill. Even 15, which not many people would defend the combat in, didn't let itself go into full blown action mode - for example, to dodge you merely held down a button and you'd automatically dodge yet it'd drain your mana. That's not how dodging would work in, say, SF or DMC.
All of the games you just listed are light on fighting game type skills and heavy on stats, understanding and manipulation of those stats, and strategy with how your party is set up and how they work together. Seriously, go and read an advanced class guide for FFXIV and see how complicated it is. In this game everyone will have the exact same Clive and there'll be no depth to how you use him. Just dodge and counterattack infinitely.
XVI is as much an RPG from what they've shown as DMC. It shifts the focus onto twitch gaming and totally away from any class systems, party management, stat customisation and so on. It feels more like a fantasy Streets of Rage where you walk down corridors and beat up people by mashing buttons.
Re: 16 Games Hit PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week
Pretty sure Wolfenstein 2 is on sale at the moment which seems pretty cheeky since it'll be free to subscribers in a bit.
Re: Diablo 4's Seasonal Battle Passes Will Take 'Roughly 80 Hours' to Work Through
@jamescrowx Yeah but there's finite tasks to do and so only so many times you can buy the stuff on the last page. Not sure if you can do it enough times to get all the moons back - though I paid a bit more to have 6 tasks on the go at once so maybe that's why.