MrPeanutbutterz

9/10. A few niggles stop it being 10/10.

Astro just doesn't have the same nuance and control as Mario does in the Galaxy games. There's a distinct lack of enemies. It's a celebration of PlayStation, sure, but it also feels like a giant advert at times. And some of those adverts are for abandoned franchises - yes, I am a Wipeout fanboy and yes again, I am salty about how they've treated the franchise.

Most egregious is the regular levels are brain-dead easy to the point where they're (at times) unengaging. Even the challenge levels aren't particularly challenging.

But it is brimming with creativity, joy, wonderful visuals and audio. I sincerely hope Sony wake up to the fact that we need more games like this.

@SlipperyFish Yeah my main racers are usually GT, a rally sim, twitchy arcade racer like Wipeout or Burnout, and some form of Mario Kart. Though one of my all-time favourites is NFS Most Wanted 2012 - not necessarily an unpopular game, but one I seem to hold in higher regard than most.

I actually bought a Series X just for FH4 and 5, boy was that a letdown. Hands you hyper cars after an hour and you can drive them through stone country walls at 400km/h... yawn. The Series X did afford me the chance to revist Sonic And Sega All-stars Racing Transformed at 60FPS, so there was that at least.

@SlipperyFish Yeah I agree it's better than Forza Horizon in that regard at least (FH for my money is one of the most overrated franchises to exist in gaming).

@lacerz Yeah trophies are still present on my profile.

Wanted to like this game but the handling is eh.

Yeah had one hard crash as I was messing around with fluid in one of the levels.

@DennisReynolds I grew up dirt poor in the 1980s, and everyone had a 50Hz TV then (I live in a PAL region, hence 50, not 60Hz). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a TV of any description that couldn't do 50Hz, let alone them not being common in the late 1990s.

@zhoont I'm expressing an opinion, Jesus.

@zhoont Seeing as the worst part of Fallout 4 is the base building and the worst part of Metro is the gameplay (the controls for Exodus are so bad they're borderline criminal), that's made sure I won't even visit the game's page for a look.

Looking forward to finally playing this at a locked 60FPS on my €1,200 PS6.

@Luna-Harmony Were you playing games in the early 90s? Adjusted for inflation this gen is miles away from being the most expensive ever, especially when you factor in the price of consoles like the 3DO and Neo Geo

@RubyCarbuncle Have you seen it first hand yourself? Must be cool to work for CNET.

@OldGamer999 It's called intelligence use of hardware. Raw resolution ain't quite the be all and end all like it used to be.

@OldGamer999 Considering that they have dedicated hardware for fancy AI upscaling...

@WiiWareWave Have you played through Rebirth in Performance Mode? The IQ and resolution are definitely hot garbage.

@nessisonett To play PS5 games? Does the existence of this thing make the PS5 null and void?

No, no it doesn't

@McBurn Doubtful the standard PS5 gets a price cut - it's gone up in price since launch, and slashing the price of it further while trying to sell the Pro console for almost 300 bucks more ain't gonna fly.

@Fallingshadow Would love to know what percentage of the user base is trying to install 1,000 games that we can "do without" this limit.

(Hint - it's effectively zero).

This seems like a mistake. Safe to assume that the 2TB is adding 100 quid or so to the price of this thing.

It's also safe to assume that the target market for the Pro is the enthusiast, many of whom will already own an SSD expansion.

@Flaming_Kaiser That has nothing to do with what I said.

@PuppetMaster It's literally got six times the install base to sell to in its launch week vs. what Rift Apart had.

And no, it's nothing like saying what you just said.

@PuppetMaster Eh, no, I'm not.

Tell me this - how does people being fans of the franchise since the PS2 games negate the fact that at Rift Apart's release in June 2021 was to an install base of about 9.5 million consoles vs. Astro Bot's release this week to an install base of circa 60 million consoles?

Astro Bot has a clear and distinct advantage here that (according to the limited scope of this article) wasn't capitalised on.

My perfectly silent 11xx chassis looks like my main console for another five years, then.

@PuppetMaster You missed the meaning in that comparison. The PS5 install base at the time of Rift Apart's launch is a fraction of what it is for Astro's release.

So yeah, it tracking behind Rift Apart is indeed worrying (though I'm not entirely convinced of the merits of reporting just physical sales in one country).

@sanderson72 And the overheating message says "some like it hot".

@Vaako007 That contradicts the reality of the games running like slideshows in 2013 though.

Yes PS3 was obtuse but powerful architecture, but the simple fact is the performance was just never there to begin with. The 360 was similarly spec'd, much easier to develop for (hence there was usually a performance delta between the two in favour of the 360 when it came to multiplats), but multiplats targeted broadly the same metrics on both consoles.

@Vaako007 There's a difference between "no Pro released" and "no Pro needed". Games on PS3 ran like a slideshow (hello The Last of Us) by the time it was hitting end of life.

And the PS6 releasing at a silly price is commercial suicide. See the PS3 again.

@rjejr S-E have a deep, long-standing connection to PlayStation, especially characters like Cloud, Tifa, etc. Nintendo (outside of the obvious) and their connection have zero connection to the platform. How do you not see the difference?

@CallMeDuraSouka Did the devs not collection a handsome wage per week for those six years of work?

@pukana GTA radio stations are iconic and are a huge part of the game. If they weren't, why are they including around 500 songs, and hiring some of the biggest names in their respective genres to voice the DJs? As a music dork, let me tell you whoever they hire to compile these stations knows their stuff too (instead of just sticking a few vaguely related songs on one station like you find in the majority of other games).

And there's zero risk here for the publisher. GTA6 is basically guaranteed to be the biggest entertainment product to ever exist.

Square-Enix heard it was gonna sell less than 17 billion copies and has zero NFTs in it, so weren't interested.

@Loamy You're not wrong! But those controls sure are... a choice 🤣

Having the five teams from the Wipeout 2097 timeline was simultaneously a delight and also boiled my piss as it does highlight how Sony have abandoned some of the franchise's that made the brand to begin with and how far too many of their games are cinematic third-person action-adventures.

@Ichiban Or just include a bot in clown make-up.

Bought Hotshot Racing, CTR, Hotwheels Unleashed 1 and 2, Redout 1 and 2 all at their respective launches lol.

Super Woden GP 2 was in my basket last week! Might pick it up with my Concord refund...

@The_Wailing_Doom The patches did nothing to fix the intensely dislikeable characters, the awful writing, the done-to-death trope, the mediocre gameplay.

@Maubari Did you casually ignore the bit where I said it's trash and their worst first party game since Lair? (yes, yes you did).

@TheTraditional Yup. Wipeout 2097 is pretty much my favourite game ever made and the state of the franchise (seemingly dead and buried) pains me.

@Maubari I think Garvin is an idiot and Days Gone is trash (the worst first party PlayStation game since Lair, easily), but let's not pretend no one knows what it is.

How about an arcade racer? I've owned every PlayStation since the PS1 and the PS5 is the only one without a decent arcade racer.

Sad, really.

@Northern_munkey British Electric Foundation too.

@PuppetMaster Yeah I'm just bemused by it. It's like being into classic Metallica (who I assume you are going off your tag), Megadeth, Anthrax, then not knowing who Slayer are lol.

@EfYI There's a marked difference between hurting, and being a bitter old ***** who dumps on everything because your distinctly mediocre game didn't get a sequel.

He's the latter.

>From our perspective, getting your music in a game like GTA 6 would effectively guarantee future royalties from an entire new generation – especially with a song as undeniably catchy as Temptation.

>Ware, to his credit, does acknowledge this: “Ah, but think of the exposure,” he continued. “Go f*ck yourself. I’ve worked in artist rights advocacy for 20 years [and] I know the game. This is iniquitous.”

He's not acknowledging it in a good way here...

@PuppetMaster I find it baffling that you'd have listened to all those bands and somehow Heaven 17 - who are very much contempoaries and bigger than some that you've mentioned - passed you by.

And "Temptation" has been featured on more 80s compilations than I can count. This dude is right to call R* out on their *****.

@OldGamer99 Mangetout!

@PloverNutter No, the problem is it has some of the worst writing and characters in fictional media, uses one of the most exhausted tropes in fiction, and the gameplay was wholesale lifted from games that did it better.

@get2sammyb Generous of you to call this whiny little bozo a "professional", because everything he's done after the fact of Days Gone says otherwise.

They could've given him a cameo in the game too, but they didn't want to dress any of the Bots up as clowns.