Comments 3,410

Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Gets Over 30 Minutes of Open Area PS5 Gameplay

Matroska

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.

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 495

Matroska

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.

Re: Final Fantasy 7's Coolest Companions Won't Be Playable in PS5's Rebirth

Matroska

Oh no, Cid's take-off has been aborted again.

But seriously, I don't mind this. The characters in the remake trilogy are like fighting game characters with a lot of complexity - then add in the fact it's an RPG and they all have their own customisations and so on. I like the idea of them focusing on a few characters per game, and really getting them right and letting them shine against certain bosses. Also, if this ends at the end of Disc 1, like they've implied, you'd not have much plot time with Vincent or Cid anyway (same as Red XIII in the last game).

In the original the party were all effectively the same character but with slightly different stars and their own limit breaks (which were functionally just damage multipliers for the most part) whereas here they're much more distinct and unique.

Re: Apple Insinuates iPhone 15 Pro Will Be a Better Games Console Than PS5, PS4

Matroska

@UltimateOtaku91 To be fair most phones now are way more powerful than the Switch. I'm playing Ever Crisis on my phone at a way higher resolution and framerate than it'd be on Switch. Phones, even mid-range ones like mine, are roughly at least PS4 Pro level now. Though obviously usually with awful touchscreen controls.

This is Tifa's model in EC, it's surprising how much like Remake it can be running on a phone.
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Re: PSN Is Apparently Causing Baldur's Gate 3 Crashes on PS5

Matroska

Well PSN was playing up for me recently. I couldn't access my trophies, I just had a little icon of a trophy with a cross next to it. And every screenshot I took failed to upload. Could be linked somehow. Maybe BG3 is sending data about player activity to Larian - lots of games have stuff like this - but if PSN is down, it can cause crashes because of weird implementation?

Re: Xbox Poised to Borrow from PS5's DualSense Controller

Matroska

@carlos82 Nintendo's HD rumble is just regular controller vibration with tiny, cheap motors. It's not haptic feedback. Nor are the Xbox's triggers. Sony didn't invent haptic feedback but they did or before MS or Nintendo - same as Atari did analogue WAY before Nintendo but you can maybe give them credit for bringing it back before Sony and Sega - albeit terribly implemented with a single, tall stick, hexagonal gate and no way to use the dpad at the same time; all things ignored by the standard going forwards. If remember correctly, the Steam controller had haptic first out of all major platforms but still didn't invent it.

Re: Poll: Are You Happy with Your PS Plus Extra, Premium for September 2023?

Matroska

A lot of excellent games... That I already own. Oh well, I still gave it a good rating anyway since quality is quality.

@Cashews You're not in a minority, it's always been a niche series and post-3 has widely been regarded as bad, with the more recent one turning it around but not exactly setting the world on fire. I really like the series, even have some fond memories of 4 and 5, but SO fans are quite rare. There's a special Japanese kind of jank that you have to have a taste for to enjoy 4 onward, even 3 onwards really, compared to how good the first two are - especially 2.

Re: Square Enix Reveals Where Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Will End

Matroska

@thefourfoldroot1 "I need to defeat Pride and Joy Prototype, so I can get the accessory to make the hard playthrough a bit easier I think, then will finish up a couple of spare tasks to get the plat."

You can only fight it in Chapter 17 of Hard Mode which is right at the end. Can you pick any chapter in Hard Mode from the beginning of the playthrough? If not, you can't really get that item to make your playthrough easier - making it another case of the best rewards being at the end of games seeming a bit pointless.

Re: Square Enix Reveals Where Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Will End

Matroska

Well that's the end of Disc 1 and they've said that the whole thing will be a trilogy, so the next game has to cover Disc 2 and 3. My personal guess before was that they'd get to Meteor being summoned in this game, which is about 30% through Disc 2. Then again, Disc 3 is incredibly short so it's not as much to cover in the third part as it might sound.

Re: Final Fantasy 7 Remake PS5, PS4 Save Data Gets You Bonus Rebirth Items

Matroska

@Mintie It varies depending on what exactly we're talking about, but things like levels are just an abstraction anyway. The enemies they're fighting in the second part are stronger so you could have everyone start at level 50 and have the enemies be level 50, or you could have them start at level 1 and the enemies start there too. It doesn't really matter, it's the same relative strength.

Then things like items are somewhat abstract, though obviously not on the same level as, well, levels. Like, are we really meant to think that Cloud is constantly carrying around 8 swords or whatever, and that they're all invisible until he wants to use them? And hundreds of pieces of armour and accessories? And thousand of potions, phoenix downs, etc?

Trying to take "gamey" things and explain them usually just backfires. Like Shepard dying at the start of ME2 to justify why they're level 1 again - and yet that doesn't justify why remaking them exactly as they were before they died de-levelled them, or why other characters in your party are de-levelled, or why you don't relearn many of the same skills but entirely new ones in a different kind of levelling up system.

Re: Acclaimed Social Deduction RPG Gnosia Is Coming to PS5, PS4

Matroska

Yeah, it basically generates random scenarios as if it's a sandbox kind of experience but as you play through them in what's a board game and VN style, you get distinct story events. Certain story events can only be got in certain types of scenarios. You loop through time, Groundhog Day style, mixing up the scenario to unlock more of the story that way.

The true ending and how you get to it is one of the most meta and impressively imaginative things I've seen in a game.

Re: Mortal Kombat 1's PS5 Trophies Won't Take Long to Finish Them

Matroska

@zhoont At least you could have the AI control your character so you could watch a film or whatever while grinding. Were there even trophies attached to the Towers of Time? I remember the Klassic Towers had a trophy for completing what was basically a five fight arcade mode with 10 different characters, but that's fine.

It's always the online ones that are the platinum ruiners. I'm not going to win X online games or play King of the Hill online, etc. Hopefully nothing like that in MK1.

Re: This 13-Year-Old Game Dev Is Making a PS5 Exclusive

Matroska

@GymratAmarillo That generation happened a while ago. This kid was 3 when the PS4 came out. If someone was, say, 10 when the PS1 came out, they be 39 now. It seemed like a huge amount of time back then but the time between the NES and PS1 was only 11 years. So weird to think that the PS1 came out only 3 years after games like LttP and SMW. It came out before Chrono Trigger, strangely.

Re: Megan Fox Lends Her Likeness to Nitara in Mortal Kombat 1 on PS5

Matroska

You mention Ronda Rousey as being an example of them having someone from Hollywood in a Mortal Kombat game instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger? They also had Stallone, and less famous but the actor that played Robocop and the actor that played Shang Tsung in the original MK movie (all face captures only, not voice acting apart from Shang Tsung).

Re: Upcoming PS5, PS4 Games for September and October 2023

Matroska

@Cashews Well MK1 is a huge release. The last one sold over 15 million units, was the fourth best selling PS4 game of the year and the fifth best selling of the year on any platform. BG3 is undoubtedly massive too, I'm a huge fan of the first two myself, but millions of people have already been playing it for years in early access on PC and even more for the last month or so. That does kind of take some wind out of its sales as a big hitter from a purely PS5 perspective. Not sure why it's not on the list, though.

Re: Saints Row May Be Free on PS Plus Soon, But Its Developer Is No More

Matroska

@lindos What if it's buy 2 get 1 free? Or a free bar in a hotel? It's really down to the seller what you're paying for and what's a bonus, like free sauce or bread in a restaurant.

If you buy an apple tree, and get the apples off it for years, at what point do the apples become free? After the cost of all those apples was covered by the initial cost of the tree? Or are the apples always costing you money infinitely? I mean, with PS+ you've paid some money, sure, but not enough to cover 36 games a year plus other things. Even if it was 100% unambiguously free, you're still paying to play it because of the electricity cost of the PS5, TV and speakers.

Re: PS5 Is Now Trending Ahead of PS4 Life-to-Date Sales in US, Despite All the Stock Setbacks

Matroska

@Northern_munkey I agree overall but the N64 sold poorly, less than the NES and SNES, and it was outsold by the PS1 by more than 3 to 1 (it had a bit over 30 million lifetime sales and two thirds of that was in America alone, so its total sales across the planet outside of America was a mere 10 million-ish). The Dreamcast did even worse, not even managing to sell 10 million units worldwide in its whole lifespan.

You then say the Xbox launched to stupid amounts of units selling. Well that only sold 24 million worldwide, and only 8 million of those were outside America. So yeah, each of the aforementioned consoles sold very poorly by modern standards, especially certain ones outside of America. But I overall agree because the PS1 and 2 were insane successes, especially the latter. It was really just down to them, though, until the Wii and Switch.

Re: Project Mugen Is the Next PS5 Gacha Gunning for Genshin Impact's Crown

Matroska

@CutchuSlow Yeah, if Genshin Impact was a normal offline game it would genuinely be one of my favourite games of all time. Instead I played it for a couple of weeks at launch and that was that. All the stuff that's meant to keep you playing daily, and the FOMO that's meant to get you hooked on spending money or doing dailies to get special currencies, just has the opposite effect and completely puts me off.

Re: PS5's Meteoric Rise Underlined by Staggering German Sales Graph

Matroska

@PixelDragon They were outsold by Sony and Nintendo in the 360 generation too - despite having at least a year head start, too. It's always been an illusion that they were doing well at any point. The first one lost MS billions and is one of the worst selling consoles ever. Their greatest success is being outsold by Sony's worst selling console - with a year head start! And I say all this as someone who had an original Xbox and a 360.

Re: PS Stars May Finally Be Integrated into PS5 Soon

Matroska

@SillyBoyJudas It means both here, especially as a verb - if you scheme it's usually implied to be a bad thing. But as a noun it's neutral and changes by context. Like "there's a new government scheme to encourage recycling" vs "he has a scheme to trick people into giving him their bank details". It's the same in the US, apparently - like it says in this American definition, you'd still say "colour scheme" (well, "color") and I'm guessing that doesn't sound like there are evil colours plotting something. And the first definition says it's especially a crafty thing, not always.

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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Orders Skyrocket on PS5 Following PC Launch

Matroska

I played the early access a while ago and updated to the full version yesterday but I've been playing Nier Automata instead. I know when I start BG3, that's it for a long time. I might as well have been abducted by aliens. It's nice to see an actual proper RPG do so well. The originals were received really well, and in some ways BG2 is like the FFVII of PC gaming, but they didn't shift loads of copies. They came out when 3D had been all the rage for a while so more casual members of the master race ignored them.

Re: Battle Royale Naraka: Bladepoint's Obligatory NieR Crossover Content Is Coming to PS5

Matroska

I love Nier and Drakengard - I'm playing Automata this very moment - but it seems like an odd crossover since Yoko's works are very experimental, single-player, atmospheric, emotional journeys... And the other game is a F2P online game. It's like trying to shift more PlayStations by giving away free Master Chief figures with each one (though bad example as you know they'd end up on eBay for £100s.) Okay, a free animal skull with each pack of vegan burgers? Something like that.

Re: EA Sports FC 24 PS5, PS4 Puts the Commentary Team in the Game

Matroska

They all look like mocapped corpses to me. There's always that weird plastic/dead look that goes into uncanny valley territory because they've motion captured it. They have awful 3D artists (no skilled devs want to work on FIFA, like that open letter from an ex-FIFA dev's wife said) but they have the money to have a mocap suite, I guess.

Re: Here's Your First Real Look at the Return of Fatal Fury

Matroska

@Vega37 "The CCP already influences content made by American and European companies simply by being a massive source of consumers devs have to edit content for just so they can release it in their market"
Sure but non-American devs have been doing that for years to get games released in America. Costume edits, character age changes, dialogue changes, edited character backstory, changing religious symbols, even things like 'Holy' in older FFs being renamed to 'Pearl'.

I guarantee you that almost every game you've played that was Japanese has been changed for a US market in some way, even if it's just pointlessly changing the age of a character like Penelo in FFXII. And typically those changes are carried into the European version, which is even worse.

Re: PS Plus Essential Games for August 2023 Announced

Matroska

@KilloWertz I do the same - it's really a "just in case" thing. I never play spots games but a few years ago I went through a weird phase of playing FIFA and UFC3. Only kept it up for a few weeks. Then also there's a chance someone will be around and want to play one of the games. I don't tend to play platformers, especially more kiddy ones, but my nephew really liked that Sackboy game.

Re: Exoprimal (PS5) - One of the Most Promising Online Co-Op Shooters in Eons

Matroska

@KaijuKaiser It makes no sense to compare a game review score to educational grades - especially one in a single country. In the UK, 70% at GCSE level would be an A - and the questions would be different and of a different standard to US high schools, so you can't even compare one curriculum to another. Either way, that's grading children on information retention, not marking them on their graphics, gameplay and storyline. They're totally different things; it's like equating getting a Michelin star for your restaurant to getting a review score of 0 to 3.3 out of 10 because it's in the lower third of the possible range of Michelin stars.

Re: Resident Evil 4 Remake Sales Reach Five Million Milestone

Matroska

On the topic of FFXVI sales vs RE4R sale: RE4 has more of a struggle since it's a remake of a game that's been released on every platform going for twenty years. It'd be more relevant to compare FFVII Remake to RE4 Remake. If a brand new Final Fantasy, the first in seven years, has to be compared to a remake of a game from twenty years ago to look good, there's a problem.

I mean, for example, RE Village sold more and faster than 4 Remake despite 4 being regarded as the best one by many. Incidentally, FFVII Remake sold 3.5 million in 2 days compared to 3 million in a week for XVI - and Remake sold worse than the original as remakes almost always do. RE4R actually sold better in the initial period than the original but not by that much considering the original was on a console with about 15 million units sold.

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 484

Matroska

@Darude84 For me it's the other way around. I'm playing for the story but the combat is really repetitive and bland for me. I think because it's an action game with upgradeable skills rather than an RPG with, say, different builds or a proper skill tree with things you're building up to, it feels pretty flat to me. There's a boss fight later in the game where it just won't end. I was pretty tired when it started and genuinely my eyes kept closing during the fight. My friend was watching me on Twitch and I had to assure him that the fights aren't normally so dull. It was definitely a low point yet it was presented as some epic, titanic clash.

Re: Sony Wants More PS5 Exclusives from South Korea

Matroska

@trev666 That makes no sense. You'd rather them permanently block all of a studio's games from being multiplatform than temporarily block one game? If, say, Nintendo hadn't bought Monolith, we'd have Xenoblade Chronicles on other platforms now. They've paid to keep all games exclusive forever - how is that better than one game being exclusive for a bit?

And do you find things like Fire Emblem, Kirby, Pokemon or Smash Bros being exclusive "abhorrent"? None of those games are made by Nintendo or a studio Nintendo own.