Mythologue

I'm kinda itching to play Like a Dragon again since I never completed it. I'd probably do that, too, if BG3 wasn't absolutely consuming all of my time. It's just way too good of a game to drop.

More BG3. The third act is ridiculously layered. It'll probably be another week at least before I'm done. And then...possibly a second playthrough to catch what I missed.

On Steam, Bioshock. Classic game and still looks great somehow.

@Porco I'd recommend waiting another year or so. There are maybe four games that you'd miss out on right now with the PS5; Returnal (also on PC), Demon's Souls, Ratchet and Clank, and Baldur's Gate 3 (also on PC).

I still don't feel like this generation has really gotten started yet.

The fluidity of navigation and the combat were both strong points for me in the previous game. The story was OK, the characters were just sort of fine (apart from the villains which were fittingly over the top and ridiculous, which is what I expect). But the open world filler was painful. Ubisoft radio towers and pointless collectibles.

If this game dials back the filler and emphasises the story and villains, it'll be more my thing. From what I've heard, there might actually be more filler here. I imagine that makes it a weaker title than the previous one, unless the story is very strong.

As it stands, Elden Ring claims one of my very rare 10/10 spots, BG3 probably gets a 9 or an 8.5, which would probably place the previous Spiderman at an 8 or 7.5. So I'm estimating a personal 7 to 7.5 with this game.

Not a lot for me this week. Thankfully. I feel like I'll still be playing BG3 by the end of next week.

@Kalime78 Even with second hand ownership, you need to account for shipping or travel, which produces more carbon. Physical is burning (or whatever the specific process is), production of the physical medium (cases and discs), shipping, etc.

I'd recommend the 2021 Eurogamer article for more info.

I could never really get into "soulslike" games. After all, why play a soulslike when you can just play a Souls game? It might be fun but I don't think I'd ever be able to shake the sense that I could probably get more enjoyment out of just playing through Elden Ring or Bloodborne again.

@Kalime78 I've read different. Apparently, physical is more environmentally unfriendly (for print, shipping, etc.) and cloud streaming is more environmentally unfriendly compared to digital download.

Just let Sonic go already. After four, five, six attempts, it must be clear at this point that it's a franchise that simply doesn't work in tandem with modern gaming sensibilities.

I'm quite busy with BG3 right now to invest in PS+ for any reason. I have that and AI to play through. On top of that, my cleric-type build playthrough on Elden Ring.

Nothing here looks especially enticing by comparison, and I already own Disco, Alien, House of Ashes...

@tselliot All of those things have practical applications.

AI really is just a blight, huh?

If we were to count the remasters as full releases, and I do because they're full priced, ND have so far released three TLoU games with a fourth apparently on the way.

It was a good franchise when it initially released. But if we're to be fair here, it hasn't really aged well at all. It was a product of the times, a 3PS action adventure with survival mechanics. That doesn't hold up at all today.

Between this and support for flagging live services which are almost guaranteed to be DOA, the present Sony strategy seems catastrophic.

This game would've stormed the charts if it was released on physical. Still, as it stands, I bought it digitally because it's a stellar game and shouldn't be avoided, physical or no.

I bought it recently on sale. I was just hoping that it'd be the fantastic revolutionary title that they'd portrayed it as just prior to its launch.

It isn't. The AI is dated, the level design is bland, and I'm still encountering bugs that I noticed when I first played it on PC about a year ago. Three notable bugs in less than an hour.

I managed to get through about ten hours. After that, I just quit out. I don't think I'll be returning to it. Maybe I will but it's doubtful. I just hope this doesn't portend a poor Witcher 4 release. I'm desperately looking forward to it but I'm just not sure that I should be.

Something like this has been a long time coming. The industry seems to be divorcing itself from consumer wishes and Covid-19 obviously didn't help either.

This is Sony's sunken costs fallacy. They've probably invested a good few million (hundreds?) into GaaS titles. This isn't going to end well for them and we mere mortals have been indicating this for months, if not years.

Callisto doesn't really interest me. I think it looks fine but it's just Dead Space without the character. It's a shame that so many developers want to cling on to the past rather than try to branch out into something fresh and new.

Baldur's Gate 3 (tough but good) and Cyberpunk (still pretty much broken but OK I guess).

On Steam, DA:I. I forgot how huge that game is. Almost 30 hours in and I've still got at least three outstanding areas to explore, plus I don't know how many story missions, plus DLC areas.

@NotSoCryptic This probably isn't a brute force or dictionary search attack. I don't think 2FA would really impact it. If it was, a bunch of people would've been alerted to the attempts at a breach via texts and such. That, or they bypassed 2FA which is very possible even if it isn't necessarily easy (MITM attacks as one example).

I don't even know if this revolves around the accounts themselves, but rather the leaks of PII from a database, or something of the sort. 2FA won't protect you from that.

If it's any consolation, it seems that Bethesda is slowly sinking beneath its own hubris. Starfield is just OK, and is Bethesda's lowest rated game on Steam (apparently). Fallout 4 before it was probably the least well received Fallout game. The less said about F76, the better. It was broken when it released and it's deeply mediocre now. I don't think the community is missing out on much with this divorce.

That's another platinum I'm almost definitely not going to get. I just can't do the whole drawing mental lines between neon points on a map thing anymore. It's too clinical for me.

Maybe this means that big name publishers will finally start taking note and realising that GaaS titles just can't remain afloat, right?

...right?

@BrockSmith I doubt that'll happen. AI really isn't good enough to be able to replace the range of a genuine, authentic actor. That's to say nothing of motion capture. It'll be employed in some areas, probably, but VAs are always going to be a thing and I'm convinced that they're always going to outnumber AI at least 10 to 1.

@lightningbolt79 I'm not even really that excited about Spiderman 2. Sony seems to believe that the future of their platform is live services, which have been shown to be quite unreliable, not to mention generally pretty poor. Yeah, they need games badly, because this generation has probably been the absolute worst, going all the way back to the fifth.

Thousands of items is good until you realise that a lot of them are just filler. If we're being honest here, these sales usually have between 20 and 30 games actually worth checking out.

I'm glad that this is returning, finally. Although I'd question to whom this is really going to appeal. Most of us probably get a feel for general consensus from aggregates like on Metacritic and user reviews from Steam (which, in my opinion, still has the superior rating system out of all the ecosystems).

Maybe it's just me but, do these charts really mean anything? GTAV, Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 1 and 2, Minecraft? Are there, like, 30 games total in the charts or something?

Very much looking forward to starting BG3 soon. I've also been playing DA:I on Steam. Started AI recently but it'll unfortunately have to make way for BG now.

Larian are treating this game like Hello treated NMS. This game isn't even broken as far as I know (thanks, early access). That is some quite admirable commitment.

I haven't checked it but I imagine it'll probably look like;

Elden Ring
The Witcher 3
Persona 5

I don't think any of them exceed 100 hours though. Oh, and there's also RS2014 but Steam is my choice of platform for that game for...obvious reasons I won't mention here. Close to 1,000 hours. Probably my most played game ever.

It seems to be a reflection of the games industry in general. It's become so sterile and stagnant that one of the mentioned items here is DLC for a remake of a game. Does no one else see that as depressing? Two of the four items listed, in fact, are remakes or reboots. I mean, c'mon, is innovation just plain dead?

The game never quite sat right with me. ZD was good and I could get through it, primarily because it was a mysterious and curious world where you would spend time gradually unravelling its secrets. FW was a sequel, following the sequel bait of its predecessor, and it was just an unnecessary game overall.

I also never really got how Aloy is such an appealing mascot to so many. She always struck me as flat and emotionless. Needless to say, I couldn't complete FW. I can't see a scenario where I'd find myself playing the inevitable third entry either. One was enough.

It's refreshing to hear a developer mention game length where they boast about it being in excess of 20 hours rather than 200. I think 15 to 30 hours is a sweet spot for games of this nature. The Evil Within 2 was maybe 15 to 20 hours long and it was honestly a pretty decent length. It didn't drag but it also felt like it had plenty of content.

Bloodborne definitely ranks in my top ten but Elden Ring quite easily dethroned it and became one of my top three or top five games of all time. I think my absolute favourite game would probably be Half-Life 2 or Silent Hill 2 though. I don't think any game has yet been able to match the atmosphere of either, which is a testament to their quality considering how they're around two decades old.

@rjejr It has more than 250,000 reviews on Steam and scored a 95.

I expected no less than a 9/10 and I'm not in the slightest surprised that it scored a solid, legendary 10/10.

With that being said, and although I'm absolutely looking forward to it and will certainly be getting it very soon, I was recently playing DOS to prepare and found that I simply could not get into that game at all. I'm hoping that this is different enough, because otherwise it might just not sit right with me.

That aside, I really hope that this becomes a new standard and thoroughly upsets the present games industry. It's become entirely creatively bankrupt to the very core, and this is exactly what it needs. Just like Elden Ring before it, perplex the AAA developers and publishers and force them to actually rethink their approach to design.

@Ravix I'm not aware of the quality (I'd wait for Steam reviews and a complete Metacritic profile and ranking before deciding), but I'd recommend just buying / upgrading a PC.

Other than that, I'd probably make the shift to Xbox if I could, solely because I'm absolutely starved for games on the PS5 right now. That being said, that's based on my experience and it'll differ from person to person, naturally.

My philosophy is that if the game isn't a fun concept without VR, it probably won't be any more entertaining with VR. Keep Talking was fun because it wasn't just the VR that made it entertaining. It was a generally cool concept, with or without the hardware.

This, on the other hand, looks pretty bland and generic. Developers are really trying to push for the hardware to work, but they seem to be sacrificing any actual fun as a result. The breadth of the games selection, which usually seems to be little more than just "shoot things" or "escape room", isn't going to lead to any radical innovation.

@deathaxe BG3 is currently £49.99 on Steam. It's £57.99 on PS Store.

I dropped the subscription not long ago. Price hike or no, I just didn't see any value in it, in all fairness.

I can't say this is helping any. People who are on the fence are probably having their minds made up right now.

I don't think it's such a bad premise but you're sandwiching yourself in between Switch and Steam Deck when it comes to handheld options. There's simply no competition.

No open world AND no endless post-game? It's sounding better every time I hear about it.

I never could tell if subscription services were fated to an early demise or if they'd end up becoming a mainstay for most platforms. At the end of the day, I just can't envision either of them surviving, especially if there's a serious, obstinate reticence to adopt day one releases. At this point, I kinda hope they just die off entirely.

My expectations for announcements and future games are so low at this point that I don't even know if I'm capable of being disappointed anymore.

@AdamNovice Elden Ring did cause some uproar, in fact. Look up the criticisms leveraged by UI/UX designers, if only for a look into how out of touch the AAA games industry is these days.

After the release of BG3, I don't think I'm going to be excited for all that much (console-wise) for quite a few months, if not years. I've been slowly turning my attention to PC gaming, and seeing how s&box is shaping up.

I couldn't bring myself to finish Judgment. It's a perfectly fine game, but after storming through all of the Yakuza games, I think I had enough. There just wasn't enough new stuff there to keep me hooked, and the characters don't hold a candle to the originals. I'm happy setting aside PS+ for now, anyway, and buying games outright.

I wish remasters in general would just die off. They're usually pretty blatant cash grabs.

I've been playing the Pathfinder game that I got as part of the Humble Bundle deal, to try and get me into the mindset of thorough and complex RPGs. I like to think I'm ready for this. Well, I hope...