Mythologue

2024 has been pretty slow for me. Nothing all that exciting or truly groundbreaking. That being said, I've heard that Helldivers is solid, and I'm waiting on Shadow of the Erdtree.

You can use PPSSPP on the Steam Deck if I recall correctly. Just saying...

Shadow of the Erdtree in around three months, so a third playthrough of Elden Ring with a faith build. Besides BG3, there's nothing I've yet played on PS5 that comes close to this level of quality, so I'm always finding an excuse to play it again.

On Steam, Fallout 3 and my usual daily dose of RS14.

Just in time for entirely disabling its progenitor which multiple people spent money on. Classy Ubisoft.

@kcarnes9051 This is the same as how publishers can technically revoke a license to use a product which has been paid for, in full, by the consumer. Something which is already happening, and has happened prior. That's not entitlement, to assume that you get to use the thing that you spent money on. Arguments to the contrary are fiercely anti-consumer.

@kcarnes9051 How can it be entitlement when people are paying for it?

It's looking pretty dire, I have to admit. Little Nightmares and Pacific Drive are in the maybe pile. It looks like I'll have to wait until 2025.

If you're not going to place emphasis upon awards at the game awards, don't call it the game awards. We can see announcements literally anywhere. Upload them to YT, like GTA and Dragon Age.

Happy about the act III fixes. I love this game to pieces but the performance in the last third is abysmal.

Also can't remember where I saved prior to the end. Might have to go through a whole lot of fighting again just to see this epilogue.

@PinderSchloss The Witcher is more of a point and click game. Where some games can be translated to controller, I can't picture the original game working on a joystick. I mean, it could, but it'd probably require a full-on overhaul of the game's mechanics.

As for The Witcher 2, I wouldn't know.

@z0d15g0d The complaints are unimportant. The conversation is not.

How many people are actually upset about this, and then how many of them are upset just for the sake of being upset? This seems deeply unimportant.

People buy CoD because it's CoD. I imagine most of us here probably bought those games back in the day, around 2008/2009 or earlier, just to play with friends. That's probably what's happening today. One kid gets it, then you multiply it by four, five, six, or more.

I'm not a fan. I haven't played CoD multi-player in years. But that's just the way it is. And refusing to buy CoD doesn't change anything substantial. You get a different CoD, or you get more aggressive MTX. It's like a drop in the ocean.

Like others have mentioned, the success of the PS5 is possibly just a knock-on effect of the PS4's astounding success. Now that console was pretty fantastic, if for no other reason than it was (at least initially) vastly superior to its Xbox counterpart.

So people enter the PS ecosystem during the eighth gen and get roped in by its high quality array of exclusives. Then they enter into the ninth gen, perhaps expecting a repeat. The damage that MS did to itself with Mattrick or whatever his name was, can't really be understated.

But that doesn't really indicate the PS5 as being a superior console to the XSX/XSS. Predominantly, I picture the majority of the support coming from brand loyalty and what I like to call "ecosystem lag" (the struggle to join another platform based on creation of new accounts, new saves and progress, payments, etc.)

I moved from the 360 to the PS3 to the PS4, then briefly to the Xone before moving to the PS5. From what I can tell, there's really little in it between the PS5 and XSX/S, and I mostly just decided on this console because I had the previous one and it was more convenient.

For anyone curious, two hours of BG3 will probably see you through character creation, to the end of the nautiloid and maybe some ways in to opening sections of the bulk of the first act. Up to the ruins and remains of the nautiloid, maybe.

Probably not enough to even give you an idea of what the game is truly like.

I imagine the supposed discounts were considered to retain or push up subscriber numbers. I don't know what the numbers are but I've heard a number of people mention just letting it expire. It's probably going to level out and maybe begin to decline soon.

I'll probably just begin using Gamepass. I'm not a huge fan of subscription services either way, but day one releases and additional subscription services on top of that really sold me on the idea. Plus, kinda want to see what Starfield is all about, try Cities Skylines 2 and give Crusader Kings another go.

Got the Xenia Canary going, and running quite well, so I'm just testing out a number of games on there. TDU, Dirt, Fable II, Saints Row II, planning on trying Saw. Thinking of getting back into WoW.

@LowDefAl Then everyone who doesn't own premium will just suggest that they're not looking forward to any games. That skews the results more.

Corpo culture at it again.

@Neverwild Some people do, in fact, work for free. Also, Dwarf Fortress, No Man's Sky and Minecraft, just to name a few, saw years (or even decades) worth of free updates. To say nothing of the modding community.

@Deadhunter I don't know if you did the quest with the artist and his "patron", but the FPS in the house drops to maybe single digits...? There are also a number of audio bugs.

I seem to recall that these prices used to drop to something like £25, maybe? This just looks dire.

@nocdaes It's not so much the price as it is the price coupled with the idea that there are superior handheld options on the market. This seems to be the bronze medal option so I imagine people expect the price to reflect that.

It's wishful thinking, I know, but a modern Planescape game would slay.

Sounds like a "just buy it on Steam" type of game. Especially given the modding scene. Consoles have tried to dip into that environment but it'll never quite be the same.

@Olmaz Controversy aside, it's not even really that fantastic of a game. There are a bunch of technical issues, weird facial animations, stiff interactions, scripted behaviours, generic open world fare, clunky combat, needless filler, repetitive mandatory tasks, bizarre design decisions, mediocre story, and so on.

I have no doubt that the controversy played some part in it not being present, but it's equally as likely that there was a prevailing opinion that it didn't really raise the bar. Which it didn't.

Does that mean more tedious side missions? I like Yakuza but I don't think I can stomach another slog through meaningless content. Arcade stuff is good, minigames are good, but I imagine that's not what they were referring to here.

Ideal time for me is maybe 20 to 40 hours. At least for core content. It also doesn't help that some of my favourite games of all time are less than eight hours in length.

Torn between "eh" and "a little disappointing". I've played maybe three games on the PS5 so far that didn't release on the PS4. Those were BG3, Demon's Souls, and Ratchet and Clank. Ranging from fantastic to alright.

Yeah, it's OK, but at this stage in the PS4's life cycle I'm sure I'd played far more memorable games in greater density. It also doesn't help that emphasis has been placed on the SSD, which is fantastic, but it's not employed nearly as much as it should be.

I sense that this is the smallest leap between two console generations, possibly ever.

I'd really like to know who was using Twitter integration in the first place. How many play games on the PS5 with their phone next to them? I imagine it's a lot. The majority, surely. So...?

@ShadowofSparta DA2 recycled environments excessively.

This is a really strange piece of hardware. It's not nearly as versatile as the Steam Deck, it's not as portable as the Switch. I'm really having a hard time trying to picture which group, generally, they're aiming to target.

@Jacko11 But it does mention manual flags, which means you probably wouldn't be able to jump to literally anywhere. It would likely still be broken up into "chapters".

Yeah, as if there was ever any doubt. I have to say that the game does definitely drop off in the third act. It's not the quality of the writing, environments, interactions, etc., but the technical limitations. There's a specific house in act III where I'm sure the frames actually drop to single digits.

Besides that, though, it's very well deserved. I don't think I've ever really played anything like it. Personalisation, approach, tactics, writing and acting, character development...this is what moving a genre forward looks like.

Playing through Fable again (not the anniversary version) on Steam. Wanted to try an evil character for once, and it's great, dastardly fun, breaking into houses, pilfering and being generally chaotic. Also tried Daggerfall again (finally got through that damned tutorial). Feeling very directionless. That game is the farthest thing from hand-holding! Stupid big as well.

As for PS5, I thought I'd play through Sleeping Dogs again. It's been a while. Thinking of returning to Diablo IV and maybe subscribing to Game Pass so I can finally give Starfield a go.

Eh. I enjoyed Like a Dragon's reimagining of the franchise as a kinda Persona-style turn-based JRPG. I think I've had enough of the action-based games since I binged all of them from zero to six about a year ago.

People are still arguing over which shiny, glowing box is superior to the other shiny, glowing box, huh? If it matters that much, just buy a PC. There's no equal.

They could call it the "PS5 thick" for all I care. I don't ever see myself buying it.

Unlikely. With that being said, I don't really think that the PS4 is the bottleneck most think it is. I've only played a couple of pure PS5 exclusives that look better than the best PS4 games, like RDR2 and TLoU2. I really think Rockstar would have to go all out to leave the PS4 behind entirely (although that wouldn't surprise me). That was one piece of powerful hardware.

@all3forever It's not shovelware. Its rating is around 90% (roughly 9/10) on Steam.

I hate to be a cynic, but in all honesty, neither of these characters are interesting. Seriously. The best characters in SM were the villains. And just the villains.

As far as I'm concerned, they're effectively replacing a cardboard box with a ream of printing paper (or vice versa, whatever). Why does anyone even care about this?

@KundaliniRising333 I encountered a game breaking bug and I played it around half a year ago. I'm not so optimistic that it's fixed and working presently.

Sony are quite impressive in that they seem to outdo themselves each month with how disappointing these games are. I wonder if anyone actually looks at these and feels attracted to the prospect of subscribing. Remember when we got Motorstorm and Meatboy and Binding of Isaac and Detroit? Wonder what changed.

@Matroska But you were paying to play arcade games. You don't buy modern microtransactions to play a game. They're just shiny, superfluous items that do nothing, and are consistently updated to generate a profit. Some go for around £30 and that's usually just for a couple of outfits. It's grotesque. But for some serious cynicism, check out Star Citizen.

Every month, I'm reminded why I'm no longer with PS+. Every month, I hope to be proven wrong. Gamepass gets Starfield, Forza, Amnesia and Persona. PS+ gets broken, decade old 3PS games. Seriously now, c'mon.

Well, I always wanted a Bloodborne sequel. This is it. This is the canonical Bloodborne 2.

I wasn't convinced from the start. The poster was meant to "trick" the audience into associating it with The Last of Us and Days Gone. It's creatively bankrupt, and even if it were real, it just doesn't look that good. Guaranteed it ends up with mixed reviews or worse when it releases in "early access" (because that's not suspicious at all).

This may have stung more if it was about a game I'd actually ever care to play. As it stands, it sounds like something that might just be forgotten about in a couple of years.

Oh yeah, and AI VO is still trash. Shocker.

@Jacko11 Because they're all established brands, save for Fortnite and Apex. Call of Duty, GTA, MK, any choice of sports game, all perform well beyond the fact that they're just live service titles. It's because they were popular before.

New live service IPs from newly established studios probably won't survive much longer than a year. It's no coincidence that we always see the usual suspects on these lists.

@Jacko11 Published by companies with established reputations (2K, Activision, EA, Rockstar, Epic) that already had a large share in the multi-player market prior to the live service trend. A lucrative market doesn't mean you're going to find yourself with a sizeable share, or any share at all (look at how many live service games shut down this year alone).

I wish that they invested in the one area where they seem to be absolutely starved right now; arcade racing games. Maybe also western informed RPGs. Microsoft are crushing them in that respect right now.