Matroska

@Deoxyr1bose Out if interest, how far are you through Granblue? Because it's just a 10 hour story, quite a weak one, then it's just endless grinding for the sake of it. A kind of MH lite. I say that as someone who bought it after eagerly anticipating it. I doubt think it'll keep you away from Rebirth, basically.

Mixed feelings. If it's a bit of the start then it feels pointless as well have to do it again on a few weeks. I was hoping for something more complete - as in, chapter 1 complete with an import - but this sounds like little sample followed by a little sample. But then it's a bit much to expect the whole first chapter.

Either way, I'm downloading now 😆. To be honest I'd be happy to just walk around Kalm. It looked amazing in the trailers. Or let me play the card game. We all know The Witcher 3 wouldn't have been half the game it was without Gwent.

@BansheeNorn It apparently gives you a Moogle related accessory according to data on the server.

@rjejr You mean Yuffie DLC, not Tifa. 😉

I want to be sensible and say I'll wait for the actual release but I know I won't. As soon as this is up, I'll be downloading it and checking the download progress every 20 seconds and getting frustrated it hasn't made much progress.

@Voltan Yeah it had over 100,000 (and Suicide Squad's aforementioned 13,000 puts that in perspective). About half the players were Chinese - if it sells in Japan it'll be on PS4/5.

I just want the demo, to be honest. I'll just set a reminder on my phone for midnight and see if they do the cool thing of releasing it right after the SoP.

Not sure when the other games came out, but to be fair to Granblue Fantasy Relink, it had been out for 2 days when this chart was made. And there was a huge incentive to get it digitally since you got early access.

I mean, actually just in general, this chart seems pretty pointless now that 90% of games sold in the UK are digital (though they include mobile """"games"""" which is gonna throw it off, but still.)

The Xbox is becoming an Exbox? Pining for the fjords?

I love it but I can't seem to consistently do diagonals. That completely ruins your ability to play certain characters. I'm sure I didn't have this problem with previous Tekkens on previous Playstations. I have a Hori Fighting Commander controller which I tried after the Dualsense and that was even worse. I tested it and it seems that you have to be really precisely diagonal - a bit off, while still being blatantly diagonal, and that game reads it as, say, left or down. It'd be nice if they let you adjust that - the threshold between, say, left, down-left, and down.

To be honest, I hated hard mode in Remake. The combat already felt like a slog, like all the enemies were made out of concrete and the Buster Sword was made out of bread. To make that even worse, then to severely limit your healing, all while traipsing down the same crushingly repetive and dull metal corridors and dusty alleyways you'd just been funneled through for about 60 hours... Well, I was ready for Meteor to crash down from above and put me out of my misery. I enjoyed the first playthrough, with some parts being exceptions, but that was down to the atmosphere, characters, the dreamlike thing of seeing the game in modern graphics, and so on.

So yeah, I won't be bothering with these trophies. I just hope the game doesn't have that damage sponge kind of combat as much as Remake did. Everything about Rebirth looks amazing beyond belief but that's the one thing that could let it down for me.

@Godot25 I wouldn't say some of those are system sellers. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold 2.7 million in 5 years which is really quite weak. Yakuza 8 just sold a million in a week and is seen as a niche, cult series. FFXVI was seen as disappointing by many, including shareholders, and it sold 3 million in a week. Back to XC2, we can therefore say that over 98% of Switch owners didn't buy it. Pikmin 4 sold slightly less than XC2, albeit in a shorter time - but its sales have totally fallen off now so it's not going up much more. The last Animal Crossing sold loads but that was a COVID irregularity. The whole thing at the time was how it helped people deal with lockdown, the BBC had articles about it, even. It sold at least 10 times more than many other games in the series.

The real strong sellers for them seem to be Pokémon and Mario Kart, not even the Mario platformers so much. Mario Kart 8 has sold over 30 million more copies than Mario Odyssey, staggeringly.

@Cloud39472 It really damaged them. It does seem they're really lucky they have Rebirth so far along its dev cycle since that can pick up the slack for them now. It's also interesting that it's basically the opposite of XVI in many ways so hopefully when it does better than XVI (which it surely has to) it'll indicate the sort of content and tone people want from the series.

DD2 and FFVII Rebirth are two of my most anticipated games ever. Can't wait. And we have the spiritual successor to Suikoden coming out this year too, made by members of the original team.

@homelesscretin I'd say it's a reference to the original Dungeons & Dragons player book.

This game has looked great for a while but it's a shame it's releasing in the same month as FFVII Rebirth, albeit at the opposite end of the month.

@Amusei All console versions will be censored because it's a porn game. It's very story-focused but the original is a hentai visual novel. Outside of the explicit sex scenes, there's nothing to censor and I can't see why any console version will be different from each other, but only the PC version (which already has several parts out) will be uncensored.

@GreatKwyjibo Well it is actually shocking to see critics review a terrible AAA game as if it's actually terrible, to be fair.

@LifeGirl That's because your memory is just cherry-picking. Games were even more relentlessly similar in the 80s and much of the 90s, with endless clones of various arcade hits flooding everything. And about ten trillion generic platformers and side-scrolling shooters. And because games were more basic both in gameplay and graphics, and rarely had any story, they couldn't distinguish themselves from each other.

>"They had yet to invent the microtransaction(s)"
Well, in fact the original microtransactions were credits in the arcades. Entire games were based around them. It's why lives exist in games and why the games were so difficult - you paid for lives with money. Imagine now if you and your friend played 40 games of Street Fighter 6 (maybe that'd take between 1 to 2 hours) and it cost you £20 each. Well in the good old days, that's how it was. Also imagine most games costing between £80 to £120 in modern money and taking 30 minutes to 3 hours to complete.

tl;dr it was honestly pretty awful back then when you get away from stuff like Mario and LttP, MGS and FF, etc.

@IREWolfman Europe and the EU aren't the same thing. The UK isn't suddenly part of a different continent, you know. 😆

@kcarnes9051 That word has been around for less than two decades and is incredibly unpopular amongst the people it allegedly refers to. Read the reception part of its Wikipedia article, and people from all walks of life, male and female, dislike it to an overwhelming degree.

"It's been speculated that the development team didn't want to direct resources to recreating all of the different weapon animations for the female lead"
Lots of games use the same animations for all or many characters. Male and female Shepard shared animations and I'd bet all other human-like models did as well. Granted, it is more of a western thing, JRPGs do tend to have unique animations for different characters. If anything, I could see it more of a balance thing since different weapon types types exploit different weaknesses, right?

@SovietTaters Not applying this to this game in particular but sometimes the biggest failures are the very delayed games, like Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever. And some of the best games are frankly rushed out, like Majora's Mask. Some things are just bad, some things are just good. It's like if there's a rancid fart in an airtight jar - whenever you release it, it's gonna stink.

I love LotR but the games always feel pretty cheap (even the ones that have large budgets like Shadow or Mordor), and like cash-ins that are just using the brand to sell a game that wouldn't have any attention otherwise. I think partly because the books are so revered (including by me) and went so long without any crass commercialisation and licensing deals attached, so it feels kind of like if the next Happy Meal toys were based on Hamlet or The Merchant of Venice.

I have no idea if it's part of this particular sale but I'm right on the edge of getting the Legendary Edition of Midnight Suns for £35.

@dschons Yeah I have no interest in Spider-Man 2 but this is something I'm actually looking forward to playing, though probably not at launch unless it's quite cheap.

I might be wrong but I don't think this came out in Europe, so to Brits like me and Robert, it probably seems much more obscure than it really is, thus leading to his "underrated" comment - even though it's the game in the series most often rated as the best. You'd be hard pressed to find someone in the UK who's heard of it; like if you were chatting with some guy in the pub about games, this is not a series you could remotely rely on him knowing. Even with other gamers. That said, I've been massively into JRPGs for over 20 years now so I also did a double-take when I saw the word "underrated". It's more that, as he said, it's not really part of the conversation apart from with really hardcore fans of the genre.

Similar to how the first FF we got was VII, the first DQ was VIII, and possibly the first Tales of was Symphonia, and I don't think I've ever met anyone IRL who's played any of the games from before those ones.

As Uncle Ben once said, "with game puddles comes great responsibility". I'm glad they got it right this time.

@Wheatly That's generally true of cereal. It's legally classified as junk food in the UK. It's processed crap with marketing falsely implying it's healthy.

https://lisaslaw.co.uk/is-breakfast-cereal-junk-food-yes-according-to-the-high-court/

Just have to point out, in terms of the title pun, it's pronounced "Moo-gen" not "mew-jen". 😄 Anyone else remember that old heavily customisable fighting game called Mugen? You could change literally everything, adding your own characters so you could have James Bond vs Vegeta or whatever you wanted.

The Xbox avatars aside, this seems just like that mode they had in Virtua Fighter. It's pretty addictive, so that's a good thing.

@Mauzuri Another great example. TotK is objectively a mod for BotW. That is all Nintendo did, open up BotW in the creation suite and change things around, add some more assets, add different cutscenes and text dialogue. There are mods of Skyrim that change it more than TotK is different from BotW.

Imagine if Forbidden West used the same areas and assets, same UI, same SFX even, as Zero Dawn. If Guerilla had literally just modded their own game. They'd get torn to shreds. Nintendo do it and everyone just kneels and praises them. And I don't even like Horizon so this isn't fanboyism - in fact Zelda is one of my favourite series.

@ironcrow86 In general Nintendo sites are known to overrate Nintendo franchises. It's known as the Nintendo bonus, that they typically get 2 points more than they should. Certain flaws are completely overlooked, while other things that are nothing special are spoken about as genius masterstrokes.

BotW is great, one of my favourite games, but NL have it a 10 while ignoring countless flaws - if you're interested, watch Joseph Anderson's critique of BotW on YouTube. Incredibly well made and intelligently argued, yet also incredibly long 😅. Then read the NL review and it reads like an official Nintendo press release rather than critical writing.

I don't think it actually is, but some of these protests are so misguided that it's as if they're falseflags - like if oil companies wanted to turn people against environmentalism, they'd hire fake protesters to do things like that. This is how misjudged this is. I mean what's the supposed ideal outcome of this particular protest? That the Mishima Zaibatsu goes green?

Sounds like a miss for me. The original made me feel like I was playing a forgotten open world game on the 360 from 2008, just with shinier graphics. I know that won't be a typical opinion on here. If this is barely different then that's disappointing, if unsurprising. Anyway, I appreciate that you guys don't just give it a 10 automatically because it's a first party game, unlike a certain sister site of yours... 😉

@NoCode23 Why are you assuming they're basing in on the 70s film instead of the original 1934 book the film was adapting? Not that it suppose it matter as the end is presumably the same. It is a weird situation for them to be in, adapting it into a game; you have this conundrum of being faithful to the story but having the game be easier because many players know who's guilty, or making it better as a game but basically ignoring the story you're meant to adapt.

@ironcrow86 To be honest, nobody calls the genre Souslborne apart from, apparently, Sammy. Soulsborne normally refers to the Fromsoft games specifically, whereas people typically call the genre Soulslikes.

Sounds cool but the artstyle looks like it's from an advert. You know, one of those vaguely hipsterish ads that, for some reason, always have this clean, popping sound effect as the narrator explains something?

E.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qaTB_u1THVs

Not sure if you posted about this on here, but I just found out a Sand Land film came out a couple of months ago.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt25048890
I'll be checking that out whenever it comes on on home media. But yeah this game looks genuinely interesting and characterful. It seemed to come out of nowhere too - but given the recent film, it seems like might be going for a revival of the series.

@Anke Yep, same here. When I played the Yuffie DLC for FFVII Remake, I repeatedly died to two dog enemies about 15 minutes into the DLC. I saw various streamers having the same problem too.

@Octane Yeah. pretty sure Cyberpunk 2077 and FFVII Remake did. People keep pointing out things like this or Rebirth being on two discs as if it's a new thing. Any game larger than, IIRC, 100gb would have to be on two discs.

@Mysterio It means that it's not actually officially cancelled but it might as well be. "De facto" cancelled, basically. Or you could say as good as cancelled.

This is more like SE of America. In Japan, and in the folklore it's based on, it's always been like Cat Shii, or something like that. I say Kate Sith myself, but that's just out of habit. I also still say Aeris.

@LifeGirl Yeah it's Aerisu in Japanese. Sephiroth is Sefirosu or something similar.

@Rhaoulos Well this is the odd thing about this debate. In Japan it's ケット シー or Ketto Shii which is similar to how it's actually said. Though when I first played FFVII I called him Moola Bob for some weird reason. 😂

It always feels like only two days has passed since the last one of these articles. Anyway, I've been playing that Harvest Moon type game called something something Olive Town. Theatrhythm, which is addictive but kind of off-puttingly stressful sometimes (some of those boss songs on Ultimate are legit the hardest thing I've ever seen in a game). Had a dabble in Cyberpunk and tried to have another playthrough of Remake but as much as I love the characters, music, story, atmosphere etc, the fact so much of the game is effectively just a series of big dungeons - and boring, sloggy dungeons - makes it pretty much unrelayable for me.

@Rjak To be fair, these games are more like massive JRPGs with loads of characters and beautiful worlds that have gacha mechanics to get a lot, but not all, of the characters. For the most part, Genshin Impact is like a huge, more varied and more story-focused BotW with a party and much better combat. The gacha is this side thing that you only bother with if you like a certain character or want to do the challenging non-story optional challenges.

Then there's stuff that just gacha with basic combat and not much to it but checking in every day to maximise your free premium currency. With the kind gameplay that no one would bother with outside of a gacha.

Then there's in between stuff like Ever Crisis which is a more traditional remake of FFVII, a remake of Crisis Core in the style of FFVII, and the First Soldier story in the same style. Fans would want to play that anyway, but it's still more basic in terms of exploration (i.e. very little) compared to if they were proper, non-gacha remakes. And again, the gacha stuff is mainly for tackling the non-story stuff.

@EchoRange They've already started setting that up in the Remake DLC. I guess you haven't played it so I don't want to be too specific but Deepground are present in the story.

Remake already links in to Advent Children. The climax of the game is you fighting the three antagonists - their description says they're from a future that might not happen if you change things, something like that. And that they're fighting you to stop you basically "unmaking" that future, and thus them. One fights with a sword, one with guns, one with fists - same as the trio from AC. They then "summon" Bahamut. Then you have to fight Sephiroth in an incredibly AC sequence.

It's pretty confusing why exactly Cloud and the others going on their journey, exactly as they did in the original, would somehow change the original timeline events. Same as this fan idea that the Whispers are trying to keep the original timeline intact - yet they repeatedly try to kill Cloud and the others, which would certainly have the exact opposite effect. A lot of explaining to do in Rebirth!

The only thing I hope they've changed is the weight-based inventory management being such a neverending chore. The original is amazing and still holds up - somehow it still feels fresh and like nothing quite like it has come along since - but having to keep moving items around or drop them takes away from it. And food rotting - that's always a pain.

@Deadlyblack Or Triple Triad reborn, surely?

I can't wait. It looks like it could be one of my favourite games ever. Remake was great but held back by that Uncharted or God of War thing where you just move from corridor to corridor for most of the game, always trapping you in the current area (although there were some free roam parts). Also nice to see FF be an actual RPG again. I hope the (presumably) guaranteed success of this course corrects them with the series moving forwards and helps fix that $2 billion loss.

It feels like such a different game, almost like a sequel, that I keep getting this FFVII Remake feeling of playing a new game but with a familiar story.

I just finished Crisis Core but still have things to do for the plat. Man, it was a lot better than I expected. Nibelheim onwards is very good, except Genesis stuff, but it's the finale in particular where you think it's all cinematics after beating the final boss but then you end up playing as Zack again as you fight legions of Shinra infantry, knowing you're doomed. How they use the roulette wheel gameplay element as part of the story and emotional arc in that scene... Very moving and very Kojima-esque (like the UI changing when you fight Ocelot in MGS4).

Anyway, I'm also playing MK1 and started a new playthrough in Cyberpunk 2077.