MrPeanutbutterz

@GreatAuk Some people still stigmatize games in a way that films and music haven't been for decades. Film and music are mainstream to the point that people have consumed them without even trying. Almost everyone will have a favourite film/actor song/musician. Not so with games.

Like I once worked with an older woman who thought all videogames were murder simulators because she saw Mortal Kombat and all people who play them must be psychopaths. That's where my take comes from.

@RamboMike No, with that logic I wouldn't want to watch porn movies, which I don't.

@LifeGirl People complaining about what is effectively "Sex Toy: The Game" and how it grossly objectifies women are the same as people who complain they can't objectify a female character because it doesn't conform to their idea of attractive are the same? Really?

If anything they're the polar opposites.

Ignoring the beta entirely, given how bad Dragon's Dogma 2 is (and still is), this is one to watch at most.

@Monstermash40 Sony's last big first party launch was Astro Bot, and it also cleaned up at the recent awards.

This is little more than marketing.

@breakneck The loud minority would be the people buying it. There's things are designed and expected to sell to only a fraction of the playerbase to begin with.

@Korgon Okay dude that is indeed a very good point and I did misunderstand what you originally said.

And mentioning AKI makes a similar point also - with the SF6 DLC, we all had a rough idea of how Akuma would play, but had to sit and wait to see what AKI was like.

I might actually main AKI next. Been torn between her and Dhalsim (I've Blanka in Master and I think a bit of what got me over the line there is people not knowing how to deal with him. Been really enjoying only using the Shotos a bit exclusively to learn their matchups a bit better).

@DennisReynolds I've been playing fighting games since SF2 in the arcades circa 1991 and the first guest characters I can remember were Heihachi/Link/Spawn in Soul Calibur 2 over a decade later (maybe I'm mistaken but that's the first time I remember a crossover), so not quite "forever".

It also makes a rather neat point that I've been making - Link made sense thematically to SC2, Heihachi got a pass because he's from Namco's other fighting game, Spawn made absolutely no sense at all.

Guest characters not being canon is here nor there - ones that don't fit (like Negan) lessen the fiction of the parent game's universe.

@twitchy_emu92 How do you reckon there was more people years ago? GameCube and Xbox sold less than 50 million between them, so combined with PS2 sales that's approx. 200 million home consoles. Combine PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch and that's a lot more than 200 million.

@Korgon I don't play fighting games for the story either (I've my main character in Master rank in Street Fighter 6, and several sub characters in Diamond with about 520 hours played overall), but dropping random characters from completely unrelated franchises into the game undermines the fiction of that game.

Final Fight characters make perfect sense as that game originally started life as a sequel to Street Fighter (as Street Fighter '89) and is clearly in the same universe, shares a visual language. Terry and Mai make sense too for similar reasons - Fatal Fury was created by the same guy who created the original Street Fighter as his a spiritual sequel after he moved to SNK, and the characters have that same visual language, fit the tone of the game, etc. Now if you dropped say Scorpion from MK into SF, with his impaling people and burning their skin off, that absolutely does not fit the tone of the SF universe.

I'm not sure how random characters from other franchises force the developers to be more imaginative. Clive is a dude with a sword. Negan is a dude with a baseball bat. Plenty of fighting game characters and their movesets are way more original than them - AKI isn't exactly your typical fighting game character. Neither is Hakan. Neither is the uh, ballerina who does judo (Manon). I mean, have you played Guilty Gear at all? Bedman? Faust? Zappa? Bridget? Dizzy? They are all far more original than dudes with generic melee weapons.

@DennisReynolds Yes, a FF character is too much. It breaks the fiction of the Tekken universe by dumping a completely unrelated character in it for no reason other than a marketing agreement between two companies.

I'm clearly incorrect about who WB owns, but my real point there is the same as above - throwing all these seemingly random and completely unrelated characters into MK dilutes the fiction of that universe.

@Korgon Nah, I'm glad that SF6's two guests are grounded choices. Stuff like a FF character in T8 (and flippin' Negan in T7) pulls me right out of the fiction.

MK1 feels like an advertising platform for WB TV/film characters at this stage.

@Brawl4002 If it plays anything like the first game, then I've played tech demos with more engaging gameplay.

It's a 5 to 6 hour walking simulator. I'd say that's a big part of the reason why its sales were cooked.

Dabbled with FIST before on the Xbox, it's a good game so that for sure.

Might give Sonic a go.

Would bought WRC Generations ages ago, great game if you're into rallying.

@djlard The tens of millions of adults buying games for their kids?

Plenty of people won't dig into why a game is rated 18 and sure as heck won't let Little Jimmy buy it because of that rating.

Lol, it's like a 7/10 boss rush game that struggled to run properly.

@RudeHero Ah yes, the classic bait and switch followed by an ad hominem attack because you don't actually have a response to what I put to you.

I mean, I don't need to seeth, plenty of other people in this thread have successfully dunked on you numerous times already.

@RudeHero Yeah not like my first console was a NES with the SMB/Duck Hunt pack in or anything. Not like Galaxy 2 is close to being my favourite game ever (its just about pipped to that post by WipEout 2097), it's not like I saved up Nintendo Points just to nab the double disc Mario Galaxy Orchestra soundtrack for Galaxy 1, it's not like I bought a 3DS for 3D Land, Wii U for 3D World, or a Switch for Odyssey, or that I've 100% Super Mario World on the three save slots.

I'll admit that I've never played Sunshine properly, but that's mainly due to the fact I was up to my eyes in university at the time, and I only had the spare money for one console (and I'm not even sure why I had that because I sure as heck didn't have the free time for it). In fact, the only mainline Mario game (2D or 3D) I've yet to play is Wonder, as I'm waiting to buy a Switch 2 instead of a new Switch at their overinflated-for-2024 prices.

So do you have any actual comebacks to my argument that what the video demonstrates is mostly generic character animation, and not a ripoff? Or are you just gonna throw out petulant soundbites like "yOu nEvR PlaYED mArIo" because you don't actually have an argument here?

Yeah, thought as much.

@-Sigma- Oh please no. Trophy unlock requirements often bias how people are playing instead of persuing the in-game objectives and the result is it dicks everyone else over.

@RudeHero Yeah Mario is the only character to ever shiver in the snow, or sink in quicksand.

Funny how Crash Bandicoot is a very different game to Mario. Funny how you missed that. Funny how you also missed that they said "yes, we were inspired by Mario". Funny how Mario doesn't have a VR game that is considered the pinnacle of the medium, yet Astro Bot does.

Try again.

@Gremio108 Played both of those, loved both of those (as well as most of Team Ninja's games over the years) and yeah, was surprised at how much I didn't enjoy Ronin.

@RudeHero Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of my favourite games ever made. Implying that Astro Bot is some cheap knock off is next-level Nintendo fanboy copium.

And the video you linked is hot garbage - platform characters have been doing those animations since the year dot. The one with Mario drowning followed by Astro Bot not drowning has to be satire...

@Max_the_German Yeah the average appearance is deliberate - Joel's an everyman who is relatable. Could be any number of us in his shoes.

My point is it's a deliberate knock off of Joel because the target audience recognises him with no effort. People will no doubt have a look at this garbage because they recognise the character. It's not any deeper than that.

@Max_the_German Occam's razor.

@HonestHick Yip 100%. As a non-Marvel fan I enjoyed the Spiderman games to a degree because they were mechanically fun at least. But I was also left with the aftertaste of "Insomniac are far more creative than this completely done-to-death franchise, pity this gameplay isn't bound to one of their far more imaginative worlds than flippin' Spider-Man/Manhattan. Ugh.

Just please don't open this one with a 20 minute cutscene that you can't skip, ta.

@rjejr I'm finding it hard to believe that anyone clocked Astro Bot blind in 12 hours.

@Gremio108 Played a chunk of Ronin myself and you're not wrong.

As someone who's been playing Souls since Demon's Souls, this sounds awful.

@Dalamar "Written by Neil Druckmann' didn't do The Last of Us any harm though, did it?

And games are first and foremost an interactive medium. If I want Tolstoy-level writing I'll go to the bookstore. If I want a cohesive and enjoyable story that is ultimately used as framing for gameplay, I'll go to the videogame store.

@OldGamer999 You having poor impulse control and not waiting for reviews is on you, fella, no one else.

@TheTraditional I own a few thousand (music CDs). Some are over 30 years old. All of one of them has disc rot.

By the time they're all physically decayed I think I'll long since be physically decayed myself.

@elvisfan1 It's cheaper for you. Which is fine and all, but your experience isn't everyone's. My preferred local retailer nearly always has games €5 cheaper at launch, but sometimes as much as €15 (Tekken 8 was €80 from the PSN Store, €65 from them physically). And if you preorder a new release game for delivery from their website, it'll land in your letterbox at least a day before release.

And there's also the fact that you can resell discs too. Bought Dragon Age The Veilguard for €45 physically on Black Friday (which in itself is already cheaper than its cheapest digital price), didn't like it, resold it five days later for €43. Total "loss" for me was €2, instead of the €€50-something it was going for digitally.

I also don't like having stacks of games lying around collecting dust, that's why I resell them and get a hefty chunk of change back. I can well afford them all digitally day one if I wanted, but what's the point in effectively setting fire to that money when I can resell the discs when I'm finished/bored of them?

And I'm not some luddite that doesn't see the benefit of digital. I have hundreds of games digitally. I just also see the benefit of physical and will lament when they disappear for good (get ready to be ridden raw when that happens, BTW).

@Swoleguy Microsoft and Sony operate very different strategies with their sub model. And Microsoft is increasingly desperate for users.

@BamBamBaklava89 Yet you still haven't provided a reason... so enlighten us, how are they so "tone deaf it's insane"?

@ironcrow86 Yeah sorry bud, I'm not perpetually online or following gaming news. So tell me - how did you arrive at that conclusion?

Since when was Sony Pictures "PlayStation's parent"?

@HonestHick Hear hear. Just a pity that one of their best gaming studios is bogged down with this nerd bait until the 2030s.

@ironcrow86 And you arrived at that conclusion how, exactly?

@BamBamBaklava89 How so? Because they haven't given you the keys to the entire kingdom for your very modest monthly fee?

Ugh, that style of fighting game is a snoozefest to watch. Doubt it'll play much better either.

@SystemAddict Yeah that's an interesting way to say "I have no idea how to balance a fighting game and conflate quantity with quality".

Have they patched in a not-poop framerate on the base console yet?

@SystemAddict That's a ridiculous take. Retooling every single character into the new graphics (they don't just c+v sprites and models from one game to the next) and gameplay engines (Steet Fighter 1 plays completely differently to SF2, SF2 is different to SF3, SF3 is different to SF3, SF3 is different to SF5, SF5 is different to SF5, not to metion even if they all had identical gameplay mechanics, most of the characters get extensive reworks from game to game) would be an utterly absurd amount of work. Even in games of old with ridiculous rosters, they weren't balanced. Fighting games live and die by being balanced.

It would also be a balancing nightmare, but seeing as you're cool with WWF having 300 "characters" (hint - as @DennisReyolds already said, they're basically different models with a tiny handful of moves vs. highly unique characters with potentially over a hundred moves that all have to be balanced correctly) I don't think you understand how fighting games are balanced.

Like SF6 was actually learnable at launch because it had only 18 characters. It'll take hundreds of hours to master one of them, and hundreds more to learn all the match ups.

If you want an ubalanced mess of a game that has every character under the sun, then MUGEN is up your street.

@BIG3 Yep, Tekken 8 is a swing and a miss for me.

SF6? Yeah I've got over 500 hours on it. Actually just logging out of a late night session now lol.