Mythologue

@djlard Of course, that famous witcher, the star of the show, the iconic face of the franchise.

Gerald.

Seeing the nominations only makes me realise how dry the year has been.

I really just love watching ads.

Besides the obvious (Elden Ring 2), I want to see an Echo Night revival. I can't say I've played the games yet, but I think a return to the franchise would be good incentive to give it a go.

It's a good move, all in all. Twitter is dying and Bluesky is on the rise. Maybe insulting advertisers and propogating extremist rhetoric wasn't such a fantastic play?

Banning xitter is usually a net positive. What a cesspit.

Can we actually have the PS5 prove itself first? I feel like I've spent more than 80% of my time on the PS5 playing old PS4 games.

I've wanted to be optimistic about this for some time. It looks like it's about as good as I expected it to be, which is great. My concern is performance and other technical issues. If it all runs smoothly, I'm looking forward to it.

The first strand-like console.

I don't believe that any game is worth more than £50, aside from some games that usually don't cost more than that anyway.

Good. Gender restricted clothing and armour is pretty antiquated.

RetroAchievements apparently has them listed.

£60 is too much for a new game, never mind a remake.

Looks pretty underwhelming ngl

You'd have to pay me to own a Cybertruck, real or digital.

To be clear, are they apologising to the Japanese players, or to the "Japanese" players?

TF2 is always and forever going to be the king of multiplayer class-based FPS as far as I'm concerned. Everything that's followed since has just been a low energy clone.

I'm looking forward to it. I'm not expecting it to be anything like Origins, 2 (but who would want that anyway?) or Inquisition, but from what I've seen, it could be solid.

If it's just a step or two ahead of Andromeda, and absolutely nothing like Anthem, then I'm happy with that. Just want to see Tevinter and Minrathous. Anything like the wilds of the Storm Coast would be a huge plus.

It makes sense if the character is meant to be a hero, rather than, say, the "hero" of Fable (which really just indicates anyone with excessive power in that world).

It doesn't really change my opinion on the game any.

I don't care about subscriptions at all, to be honest. I just hope they make online free again. It's free on PC. Why not PS, like it used to be?

There are a couple I've wanted to try but nothing that's really sold me as of yet. Just been replaying Mad Max, lamenting the fact that we'll probably never get a sequel.

This might be the worst month I'm personally aware of. Among Us is already cheap, Borderlands 3 is mediocre (and old), and NHL is...well, it's a sports game.

I always viewed Days Gone as Mad Max with all of the personality sucked out. I played for maybe two or three hours but had to bow out not long after. There are interesting systems in place, but when it's all brought together, it's just a painfully average open world zombie survival.

Probably the biggest concern surrounding GTAVI was how much the devs (or publisher) planned to lean into mtx. Possibly to the detriment of single player. It looks like concerns have been well-placed.

I'm giving it a few months following release before buying anyway. This game has me worried that the quality of GTA as a franchise might be declining.

It's usually a pretty big red flag when someone builds their identity around being as provocative and offensive as possible. Stories like these are an inevitability.

I can't get started on Shadow of the Erdtree yet, as badly as I want to.

I've been playing Demon's Souls and enjoying it a lot. I sense that I'll probably clock up at least 30 hours in that game. It's not as hard as I thought it would be but the boss runs are unforgiving, the run up to the Tower Knight in particular.

A lot like Dark Souls fundamentally, but the intricacies make it seem like an entirely different game altogether once you really get into it.

I would say it was always doomed to failure (or mediocrity, which I guess is a couple of steps ahead of failure).

The way I see it, VR is expensive hardware. Costly peripherals are usually more closely associated with PC gaming. So I think that VR would have found its place within the PC community, but not so much the console community.

Nascent and innovative ideas are usually better realised within a community that not only has enough money to spend on the things, but also has a far broader suite of tools (FOSS, SDKs, IDEs, CLIs, and so on) to play around with. PSVR is good for playing games. PCVR is good for games, as well as design, simulation, modeling, and more.

If VR is going to be an unequivocal success, it needs to find its footing on PC first. I think Sony maybe jumped in a little too early, or maybe console VR is just generally a non starter.

AI is good for STEM fields (medicine, astronomy, engineering, computer science, etc.), where those fields can employ technologies that academics, doctors, nurses, and so on, can use to enhance their work.

I don't think it's so good for artistic fields, never mind the ethical implications. When it comes to creativity, everything is better done by a human.

Here, they seem to be talking about management rather than the creative process itself. I don't know how to feel about that, personally.

@Tchunga There are at least four towns and a city in Elden Ring.

This is the sea change that is usually expected every console generation or two. MS have shown that they're gearing up to be competitive following the release of their next console, which will probably be around November, 2027 or 2028.

They've sown the seeds and they're preparing for a tentative victory in the tenth generation. I personally think it's coming. These showcases are beginning to demonstrate the cost of Sony's complacency and neglect for their own audience.

Crusader Kings is a decent game if you're into historical, deep strategy stuff. Other than that, this is a pretty bare collection. It's sad to think that it's also the most appealing to me this year, so far.

Dragon Age was the big one that stood out for me. Civilisation 7 is obviously up there. Outside of the rest, none really stand out to me, but I'm hopeful that SH2 will be good. That's wishful thinking though.

Honourable mentions to PoE2, a game I've been keeping my eye on for a while, and AC Shadows, which looked better than I thought it would.

Outside of PlayStation, Gears of War, Fable and Perfect Dark all caught my attention.

@rjejr The Lord of Blood variant is in the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum, one of the "river" locations. Looks a little like the acropolis. You have to traverse the passages of a barely lit mausoleum to reach it.

I like the look of Astro, but refusing to acknowledge the dearth of games is becoming frustrating. There seem to be two genres in Sony's arsenal; 3D mascot platformer, and third person action-adventure.

I don't know what happened to racing games and RPGs, or FPS games. A revival of Motorstorm and another deal with From would absolutely win me over again, but both seem pretty unlikely.

There's something about this game that's giving me Colonial Marines vibes.

I played the game through to its natural conclusion and enjoyed it, but I don't think I want more of the same, which I suspect this DLC will be. I can beat the game one or two more times, but I don't want to spend any more money.

Yeah, MS buried Sony with that showcase. Fable and Indiana Jones alone were pretty heavy hitters. If people are on the fence now as to which platform they want to invest in for the foreseeable, I think this might have just won them over to the green side.

Trophies are usually a needless inclusion. It's not like I dislike them, but they don't need to exist for everything. It lets people play the game the way they want to instead of being led along by pointless tasks that they wouldn't have given a second thought otherwise.

@Gaia093 Umm...no. Unproven Chinese developer because;

1) This is the first result that comes up when searching for the game.

"Black Myth: Wukong is an upcoming action role-playing game by Chinese developer Game Science..."

2) There are two companies named Game Science. One is Chinese, the other is American. It's an ambiguity issue.

Is this really such a big deal? It's being developed by an unproven Chinese developer, from what I can find. I might be wrong, but I'm sensing this will probably be a flop like The Day Before.

This really just screams "creative bankruptcy". As far as I can tell, it's just another game chasing a trend. We won't even remember it a year after its release.

If only developers started moving away from vehicle brands and returned to the design of Burnout and Split/Second, with fictional brands. Damage models are entirely uninteresting when using real brands and the restrictions that come with them.

That being said, decent racing games are few and far between these days. I'll keep my eye on it.

Silent Hill 2 first, if it's as good as I hope. Which it probably won't be, in all honesty.

Either Astrobot or Path of Exile 2 for second place. I played the first of the latter on PC. It's tough as nails but a lot of fun when you get deep into it and acquire more advanced powers.

I didn't really have any expectations for this, but I was hoping to be proven wrong. That they might have pulled something exciting out of the air. I can't say that I'm convinced they did that. We're roughly halfway through this generation. There's really not a lot to show for it.

Once more disappointed that Sony don't seem to be paying any mind to the racing and driving genres. As it stands, this is one OK platformer and a reboot that I'm hoping isn't going to be as dire as I'm expecting it to be.

I'm more than happy to discard the rest.

I still remember Thronebreaker and CP. If anything, developers need to spend more time developing games, not less. Annual and biannual franchises usually sacrifice quality in exchange for tighter release windows. I hope CDPR don't head in this direction.

This is good, but Sony really need to pick up the pace if they want to compete with something like RetroAchievements.

@Hyena_socks Yes. The risk is that there's a wall that every technological advancement is eventually going to hit. I actually think that graphics have gone as far as they need to, presently.

A more productive focus could go to NPC scripting, physics, and optimisation, among other things. The problem being that it's hard to market an entire console on the premise of better physics and AI pathing, frame rate, resolution, etc.

Thanks for noticing the PFP

Just another example of trolling and bombing. I loathe Ubisoft, but there's a pretty obvious reason why people are taking issue with this particular matter.

At the end of the day, I don't think it makes much of a difference. It's definitely going to sell.

@Hyena_socks This seems to be a case of diminishing returns. Compare the PS1 to the PS2 or the NES to the SNES, or the 2600 to the NES. The differences are visible and immediate.

Compare the PS4 to the PS5, however, and it's almost impossible to see any real evolution. Sony need to prove that the PS5 is an actual step above the PS4.

Unfortunately, I'm convinced at this point that the PS5 isn't really capable of all that much more than what the PS4 has already given us.