MrPeanutbutterz

So is that Concord controller available anywhere?

Misread as Anti Stream Arcade and was like "***** yeah, screw streaming!". Oh well.

@ZeroSum The different perspective of uh, being cool with being nickel and dimed by publishers and are happy with the continued enshittification of the market? I did consider it and deemed it to be exploitative garbage.

And for the millionth time - the game is out. Just gated off from people who can see this "pre-release play" for the anti consumer nonsense that it is.

@ZeroSum Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

Again - this isn't "play early". It's not some broken alpha build or a hobbled together beta. It's (at minimum) v.1.00 and they've deemed it to be in a saleable condition. They could have released it to everyone, but instead they've released it only to those with people suckered in by FoMo (which is a classic marketing tactic that) and/or more disposable income.

On what planet is giving regular users who don't want to pay a premium the product at a later date to when it's first officially availabile not dicking over them?

@Rob_230 Cripes, can't unsee the shoulder buttons now either!

Gah, was hoping this would be good, but alas.

The lack of consequence and sense of progression is what kills Forza Horizon for me. Play an hour, here's what should be an end-game hypercar you can plough through a muddy field and stone wall at 400km/h.

@BigJoze Your last sentence sums up my own view perfectly. But given the game being discussed and what had to be done to achieve the Platinum, I don't think any of it sounded like fun by most normal definitions of the word.

@ZeroSum The connection is clear as day. The game is available now if you want to pay a premium. The game - despite being in a fit enough state to be released by the publisher - is not available if you don't want to pay the premium and prefer to pay "just" the launch price.

And the premium gets you it over the weekend, whereas the regular schmoes have to wait until Monday (which is when most people's free time dwindles). The publisher using FoMo in this instance is clear as day as well.

It's also another example of publishers pushing their luck to see what they can get away with.

Compare and contrast with most other games that don't pull this garbage - everyone pays the regular price and gets it on the same day.

@Mikey856 That's assuming you play more games than I do to begin with.

I am unreasonably miffed at the fact that the sticks on the controller are a different colour to what you see in-game.

@MFTWrecks Fair enough. I just find that concept bizarre - Platinum all The Jumping Food games across all the regions for mega trophy number updoots, or Platinum Sekiro and WipEout Omega Collection once?

I know which I'm impressed by, and it isn't the former.

@get2sammyb Unhealthy and obsessive - definitely.

I recall that dude Hakoom (the guy with the obscene trophy level) bitching about how people lacked the willpower to follow through on trophies, and all I could think was "that's a bit rich coming from the guy that is quite clearly addicted to popping trophies and plays multiple versions of complete garbage to facilitate his addiction".

@MFTWrecks How's it a badge of honour?

There's no skill involved in what they did. They found a loophole and put their life on hold for a few days to exploit it.

Trophy hunters sure know to suck the fun clean out of something that's supposed to be fun. If I see that Plat on anyone's profile, all I'll think is they spent a few days of their life using an entertainment medium in such a way that wasn't particularly entertaining.

Then there's the crowd who feel entitled to Platinums just because. I recall one dude who had a meltdown in the Street Fighter 6 Battlehub because he couldn't get the ten wins in a tournament to secure the Platinum and was begging anyone who came up against him to throw the fight. I dunno dude, if you can't fulfil the criteria to unlock the trophy, ever stop to think that you don't actually deserve it?

@ZeroSum What people do with their own money isn't my issue, rather it sets a precedent for publisher's to say "yeah, a chunk of your audience are willing to pay an extra 30%, time to get milking". Which at the same time dicks over the regular player base who will buy at "launch" (I put that in inverted commas because the game has in fact launch, it's just the publisher has seen fit to gate it off and charge extra to access it now instead of next week).

To this day GR1 and 2 are the only games that have given me motion sickness. And I say that as someone who once played Titanfall 2 for 16 straight hours.

Give some love to one of your oldest then - namely WipEout - thanks

@TrickyDicky99 Horizon Forbidden West was indeed on PS Plus in that timeframe as an experiment - and it killed the sales of the game stone dead. Hence you could get it for 20 quid used as well.

End result - that particular experiment was a failure and we haven't seen many high profile Sony games hit the service since.

@Johnnycide Soooooooo... Astro Bot? Which is coincidentally not charging players extra to access it before others like this is.

Call it what it really is - it's "artificially delayed access" for regular consumers.

Delighted, it's an almost perfect fighting game and is much deserved. I've been playing fighting games since Street Fighter 2 in the arcades (sheesh), buy almost all of them that are worth a look, but Street Fighter 6 is shaping up to be my favourite ever made - 450 hours and counting. I'm so engrossed in it I even find myself watching high level replays and that (watching footage of a game I already own and play lots of) is something I never do.

Looking forward to Terry in a few weeks!

@SoulChimera They fixed those tournaments a year ago. In fact, just looking at my trophies, I got the Platinum this very day a year ago.

@Sequel A lot of retailers stick it in the post to ensure launch day delivery at the latest. My local retailer does this - I was just short of halfway through through Spider-Man 2 before the game unlocked at midnight for other people (I opted digital for Astro Bot though as I'll be replaying this game repeatedly).

What's funny is the same retailer is also a bricks'n'mortar store (Smyth's), and if I were to walk in and ask for a copy to be sold over the counter on the same day their delivery arrives I'd be told to sod off as that'd constitute breaking street date lol.

@Quintumply Fantastic, ta for the feedback. I play with my controller mic off by default, and I'd find lifting it up to my mouth to be immersion-breaking.

I can see myself 100%-ing all three of those save slots a-la Super Mario World.

@RubyCarbuncle Oh I don't doubt there's an audience for VR, I just don't see Sony alloting much time or resources to it for their new golden child (Asobi) with this sort of success on the vanilla console under their belts.

@Quintumply Is it possible to turn off the need to blow into the microphone? And to a lesser extent, the motion controls for your Dualsense speeder?

Give us a new WipEout already. Or a remaster (as in, up-res and 60FPS) of 2097. I know the soundtrack licencing would be a potential nightmare, but for most people interested in such a re-release they probably already own that soundtrack several times over already and can just use that (or sub in whatever music they want).

@RubyCarbuncle There's around 60 million PS5 consoles in homes vs. 2 to 3 million PSVR2 units. At one point Sony apparently halted PSVR2 production in order for the backlog sitting in retailers to sell.

Astro Bot is now looking like Sony's best reviewed game this generation, being called "as good as the best Mario games", has become the mascot that they've been looking for for a long time.. again, there ain't no way that these games going forward are gonna be bespoke VR titles.

@RubyCarbuncle These developers and this franchise are now the newst and shiniest jewel in Sony's crown. Ain't no way their future projects will be gated behind the floundering VR platform.