Mythologue

King is one of the only good people left on Twitter today. I used to read a lot of his stories (The Shining, Cell, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, etc.) back when I was a teen, so around when Alan Wake released. I'm glad he's managed to remain level headed to this day. Quality guy.

A risky manoeuvre given the relatively small install base of VR. It'll probably just be a tiny side project or glorified tech demo that people forget about after a month or so.

I think I'll start investing in a gaming PC so that I can keep up with the shifting landscape of MS exclusives. I have a feeling that might be my core platform in the next three to four years or so, since a number of Sony games and all (as far as I'm aware) MS games usually end up on PC anyway.

I am playing a fantasy, in fact. One of the greatest, most meaningful, most memorable, most influential fantasies in gaming history.

Dragon Age Origins.

EA, trying especially hard to reclaim their spot as worst company in the US.

People who own gaming PCs are just out there enjoying the drama, I imagine.

The one thing that JRPGs never seem to get right are the side quests. I always find them rather tedious. Even Yakuza 0 and Judgment, which are both stellar titles, are packed with needless filler. That's the one thing that's putting me off at this time. I'm going to wait for a substantial price drop.

@Matroska A while? It was mentioned once in a singular paragraph, and I think it's a legitimate criticism with respect to world building.

If I cared any less about this petty exchange, I'd fold into myself and form a singularity. Two corporate behemoths deciding who gets the shooty bang bang games. Quelle surprise.

I always viewed it as an uninspired Dead Space successor. There's just not a lot that excites me about it.

I would just like to know how similar it is to the first two. There are things I enjoyed (story, character development, combat, motion) and things I heavily disliked (collectibles and needless busy work, certain characters, generic open world filler).

After Elden Ring, I believe my standards for games have shot right up. Nothing as of yet has even touched it.

It's a shame that we're going to miss out on a cookie cutter endless runner and some base building game with timers that stretch into weeks and months. How could they do this to us?

Maybe two games I'm interested in trying (Far Cry 6 and Inscryption). The rest are pretty old titles that I already own (Thief and Deus Ex). There are definitely some decent games there, just that I imagine most people who wanted to play them probably already bought them (I think this is reflected in the poll).

Maybe I don't understand Diablo 4, but isn't it entirely cooperative? Are they really nerfing a non-competitive game? It seems pretty blatant what they're trying to do here if that's the case.

I'd rather know if the game is actually good first. There are rumours of MTX which would turn me off the game entirely, but they're just rumours right now.

Ah, typical Ubisoft. Synonymous with tone-deaf themes and mediocrity.

Most seem to be overlooking the rather obvious side effect of subscription services: you don't own the game. That means that you could spend hundreds on a service over more than a year / two years, play several dozen games or more, but then have to buy those games anyway if you terminate the service. So it's the cost of the games on top of whatever you spent on the subscription model.

That could, theoretically, mean that you either spend £100 plus, say, £35 (given sales and such) multiplied by the number of games you might still want to play, or £70 straight up, multiplied the same way.

It's a minute leap with respect to pricing, I imagine that's part of it. Even so, I've yet to feel any real incentive to upgrade. Claiming it's only a couple quid more I think doesn't really address the point, which is that the benefits of premium really aren't that fantastic, even for three pounds or so.

@Cordyceps Yeah, I want a GTA game set in (or near) Carcer City. I don't think the franchise has covered that level of absolute urban decay just yet, and it'd work pretty well I would say.

@Sil_Am It's actually roughly every three years. Also, if I'm not mistaken, they have two development teams (A and B).

If it's streaming, it's probably a hard pass from me. I'd love to play old games (namely, PS3, PS2 and PS1) but I can't stand streaming them. Then again, if it's a download, I'll probably give it a go.

I might be in the minority here but I can't imagine this is going to be the boost that people expect it to be (or hope it to be). The jump from the PS4 to the PS5 is arguably the least noticeable of any console generation. I've yet to play a game on the PS5 that matches the graphics of, say, RDR2.

Looks fine. I'm just tired of the whole "festival" trope. The Crew had a pretty tacky story but at least it was different from most other racing games at the time. There was actually something beneath all of the driving, some kind of incentive beyond the vacuous "be the best" goal.

Now, all racing games (FH, The Crew, Test Drive, Grid, etc.) have some homogeneous aim. Guess I just miss the days of corny stories like in NFS MW and mad combat racing like in Burnout 3. It all feels so safe today.

Well, this certainly has all the appearances of a day one flop.

I've been with PlayStation for over a decade now, but this Xbox showcase was possibly the first time that I've genuinely thought I might be on the wrong platform. They absolutely crushed it: the much anticipated Fable, leaning into comfortable territory with Forza, then Payday, Avowed, Starfield, and those are just the ones I recall. Sony need to up their game for sure. It's clear Xbox aren't playing around anymore.

Following Forspoken, I'm not really sure how to take this news. Aren't there better developers they could build a relationship with? Devolver, Frictional, CDPR?

Dragon Age Origins and then the rest (2 and Inquisition) on Steam, to get ready for whenever Dreadwolf releases.

Better than Sony's, I think, but only just marginally. My expectations were practically beneath the floorboards so I suppose that might be why I was a little more receptive to this showing.

Clever devs. Can't have microtransactions if you don't have a game. A stroke of pure genius.

Unless they can draw the attention of the hardcore Apple fanbase, this thing is absolutely DOA. I'm still trying to figure out who it's even meant to appeal to. This seems like Apple's Meta moment.

I'm a little more excited about Test Drive, assuming that shapes up well and doesn't end up in development hell. I've heard this game is more of an expansion type deal with TC2, including most of the same vehicles and allowing a transfer of your vehicles from that game.

I thought The Crew was quite revolutionary back when it was announced but, like most Ubisoft franchises such as Far Cry, Trials, Watch_Dogs, Rocksmith, Assassin's Creed, etc., it ended up becoming quite derivative down the line. Right down to the whole racing festival thing.

Am I missing something, or are we now really at the point where people are paying money for demos?

Latency is one of the reasons why I stopped with PSNow a few years back. It was fun playing PS3 games on PS4 but really just uncomfortable, and a little bit anxiety inducing considering the fact that a single drop out could erase a not insubstantial amount of progress. It seems like Sony have lofty goals that don't much align with the broader gaming community. I suppose time will tell if that's correct.

I don't know tbh. Never really played sports games (especially given how predatory they are these days) and the whole Jurassic World thing sounds like a by the numbers licensed game to profit off brand recognition.

The character swapping mechanic in GTAV was very well implemented and quite forward thinking for its time. I'm hoping it's implemented just as well here, maybe introduce a new layer of creativity to the level design and allow for players to pick multiple approaches.

The first couple of games established some great foundations. I'm really hoping this game builds on it in more than just superfluous ways.

I never saw these over the top visual effects to be all that necessary. It might just be me, but I actually find that they can be a little uncomfortable. A bit too excessive IMO.

It won't be a lot. I can't imagine so, anyway. There'll be maybe two or three very big games that see some tepid reception, and perhaps a handful of indies, ports, remasters, and some accessories / peripherals. The rest of the show will be conversations with devs.

@naruball I can't personally think of any instance where a lack of competition would be a good thing.

@naruball Sony have attempted much the same. The idea of third party publishers and developers seeking exclusivity deals with platforms is practically universal. So yeah, it's good. The alternative is a monopoly. You probably don't need me to tell you that it's a universally bad thing.

It's not too surprising. It was only a matter of time before Sony would begin to take advantage of their significant presence in the market. This is why competition is not only good, but entirely necessary.

This just seems to indicate that a game's financial success is never really indicative of its quality.

It just occurred to me that this is going to be one of those live service, packed to the brim with microtransactions things, isn't it?

Let's save some time here: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. I'm going to apply that philosophy here and suggest that this game never sees the light of day, or is anything like what we expect it to be. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but being cautious never hurt anyone.

I'm starting to wonder if there's really much point in following these showcases in the first place. If a game releases, and is good, then you get a good game. If a game is announced and looks good, that doesn't really say anything. If a game isn't announced at all, you torture yourself wondering if it does, in fact, exist. Take it from someone who's been waiting on Half Life the Third for roughly a decade and a half: it's not really worth it.

The gap that Sony repeatedly fail to fill is that of the arcade racing market. We used to have Burnout and Motorstorm. What do we have now?

Let's hope it's the much anticipated Bubsy sequel.

@andrewsqual That doesn't change the essence of the game, which was deeply uninspired.

I'm all for the "eat the rich" narrative (see: The Outer Worlds), but this game certainly isn't doing it. It's purely ironic.

I never found Days Gone to be all that special. It was just a fairly uninspired zombie survival / action game with Mad Max type vehicle upgrades. I only played it for roughly four or five hours before I completely lost interest.

I'm not so much upset by the lack of heavy hitters so much as I'm perturbed by the emphasis on multi-player titles. Sony is supposed to be an innovator, heavy emphasis on world building and ingenuity and flavour, why are they now leaning so heavily into clichés? It feels like the days of TLoU, God of War, Uncharted, Motorstorm, etc., are well and truly behind us.