RBMango

@DonJorginho That's so cool! I love this team even more now.

Besides a new KH4 trailer, this was the best KH news I could have woken up to this morning. Good riddance!

@UltimateOtaku91 That's actually a really good and apt label for them haha

@Kraven Completely agree. I remember Ellie trying to get into the hospital as a long stretch in the game, especially if you want to avoid direct combat as much as possible. In the show, it seems like she just magically pops into the laundry room that Nora just so happens to be in, and she only attracts the attention of one guard and a dog to get there.

"What does the hallway look like?"
"Empty and haunted."
"Oh, just like us!"

The "tense" atmosphere this episodes was going for got demolished for me when this kind of crap writing was barfed out. Also, just a thought: maybe don't talk out loud while walking through an eerie hallway that may or may not have humans and/or infected in it. Hand signals exist for a reason.

@Buckeye4Life2015 Too many issues for me to go full-on 10. A 9 is also an extraordinarily high score for anything in my eyes.

Easy 9/10 for me. Minor issues aside, it's easily one of the best games I've ever played. I still can't wrap my head around this being a new studio's debut game.

I have two questions:

What the hell is that studio name, and what the HELL is a "frog-type" game?

@DonJorginho GET OFF MY LAWN

@PlatinumMikey No, he's a character in the game. I won't spoil anything if you haven't played it yet.

Francois would not be happy reading this.

Absolutely wild

@NeonTiger If we're talking atmosphere, framerate performance, shot composition, attention to detail, nuances in facial and character animation, art direction, and even fidelity at times, I think Expedition 33 blows the vast majority of "AAA" games this generation out of the water. A few sequences of very subtle facial and eye movements rival the best I've seen from massively budgeted games from Sony and Rockstar. The comparisons to AAA games are justified when I see the creative prowess on display in Expedition 33. Flowers blowing in the wind realistically and other finer details don't make a game "AAA", personally.

@NeonTiger "Some objects like flowers in the flower store have one wind reaction animation, instead of individual ones, so it looks like a flag reacting to the wind, instead of how it should be, with separate animation cycles."

This kind of demand for and obsession with very specific and realistic details is why budgets balloon out of control. Sandfall had enough sense and economical restraint to know stuff like this did not matter for the kind of game they were making. How does the game's flow and atmosphere in any way improve if the flowers in one area blow in more than one direction?

This magnificent game deserves every iota of success and praise it's been getting.

@get2sammyb Nooooooo don't jinx it lol

So, how long are we giving it until PlayStation makes the same announcement? Expect an $800 PS5 Pro in less than a year, folks.

@thechetearly Agreed. I would love an in-game lore compendium. Maybe they can create a library within one of the in-game locations to have it be more immersive.

I'd gladly pay for an expansion. Extraordinary dev team and game!

End of August is much better for me with the Switch 2 at the beginning of June.

I won't be bothering with this concert then. A PlayStation classic like Shadow of the Colossus not being there is inexcusable. One of the most iconic soundtracks of all time being brushed aside in favor of the frankly generic by comparison Horizon soundtrack is a cardinal sin.

This was easily one of my favorite episodes of the series, so far, due to the strong performances and excellent pacing. I'm legit looking forward to next week's episode.

Sony woke up and chose chaos.

I actually thought this was one of Ramsay's better episodes performance-wise. Their performance is usually completely unconvincing to me, but what they can do decently is subdued sadness and quiet contemplation. When Ellie mourns over Joel's body and she puts her hand on his, that was the first time I felt something other than utter indifference this season.

STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LAW!

LOL good luck with that

I'm still iffy about Bloober Team, but this does look really cool. I like the idea of killing these monsters as quickly as possible before they merge and become abhorrent nightmares to deal with.

@AdamNovice Microsoft runs a VERY leaky ship, but I've been surprised at how prevalent this particular leak has been.

@lazarus11 I will never understand the praise for Starfield's soundtrack. It sounded generic as hell to me, and the best parts of it were ripped off straight from Vangelis's Blade Runner score. Outside of some of his work with Fallout, I don't understand the praise for Inon Zur in general.

My biggest concern is that they will reorchestrate the score. I can deal with changes to the color and lighting, but Oblivion has one of my all-time favorite game soundtracks. Just leave well enough alone, Bethesda.

@Wiceheid I strongly disagree that proximity chat is a feature that works better in theory than in practice. It does wonders for specific games, and removing it entirely from Marathon seems like a bad call if they're going for an extraction shooter when a large part of it is PvP interaction. I agree that developers should consider how the gameplay and social features of a game will shape its community, but removing a basic feature of extraction shooters in an attempt to combat "toxicity" seems like an inconsiderate solution. Why is Bungie bothering to make a PvP game in a more hardcore genre at all if they're going to be THIS afraid of players being dickheads? They should remove the in-match chat box and the ability to crouch so people won't teabag at that point.

@Wiceheid I understood your comment, and I think Bungie is being incredibly foolish if that's the mindset they're approaching Marathon with. Is the risk of "toxic" behavior in certain situations worth removing a standard feature of extraction shooters entirely? I don't think so. Trying to figure out the ins and outs of the gameplay and social implications of a proximity voice chat toggle seems a complete waste of time and antithetical to the genre's appeal. People will always find new ways of being dickheads, so removing proximity chat entirely at the expense of the game's tense atmosphere seems counterintuitive.

As an example, Battlefield 2042 tried this initially with the removal of scorecards because it didn't want players to feel bad if they were doing terribly in a match, and it got lambasted by its player base because it removed vital information to appease a subset of sensitive players.

@Wiceheid If someone is THAT worried about avenues of toxicity because of a proximity chat option, maybe they shouldn't be playing extraction shooters at all. Maybe Bungie should stop trying to cater to them at the expense of a more niche audience.

As for the unknown factors of proximity chat, isn't the mystery of that part of the fun of going into a hostile environment and not knowing who's out there and who might be listening? I don't play multiplayer games regularly and even I can appreciate the thrill of that experience.

“I don’t think anyone really has a good solution to that just yet."

It's called an on/off toggle, my dude. Create a proximity chat setting with three options: public, squad only, and off. Saying the lack of one is because of "toxicity" is a bull**** excuse.

@Bionic-Spencer Like you, I asked a few buddies of mine who range from casual multiplayer gamers to big extraction shooter fans to hardcore Destiny players what they thought of Marathon. The most positive response I got was along the lines of "it looks okay and I'd try it if it was free-to-play".

I also agree that this should have been a single-player project with a separate suite of traditional multiplayer modes.

@Repo_Dog Their track record supporting Destiny over the years and managing the studio itself has been turbulent, to say the least. Nothing I've heard from Bungie and some content creators at the alpha event has convinced me that Marathon won't have the same rough history. I get vanilla Destiny 1 vibes from Marathon.

Even if the footage blew my mind, I would still be extremely skeptical simply because it's Bungie.

Now I'm even more fascinated to see how this does.

Since this is one of PlayStation's biggest live service gambles, I'm much more interested in seeing how the game does financially than actually playing it. I'm sure this will do fine in the short term on Bungie's name and fanbase alone, but this thing's long-term success is a huge mystery to me.

I always look forward to these. Since PlayStation has all but abandoned annual large-scale showcases, this is the closest thing I get each year to a traditional E3 presentation.

Although I won't be playing the game, I look forward to seeing more of its killer art direction.

An animated show with different shorts would be better.

There was a time when I would have considered this kind of exchange quirky and cute, but I am well beyond that point, especially since KH4 has been MIA for almost three years.

@Keyblade-Dan I would argue the exact opposite. This recent licensing initiative is one of the rare things PlayStation has done this generation that actually honors its heritage. I think allowing things like Patapon and Everybody's Golf to leave PlayStation's old Japan Studio IP dungeon and get a new lease on life on Switch and PC is the opposite of death.

@GymratAmarillo I would hyperventilate if Team Asobi announced they were making a new Ape Escape.

Getting my prayer circle ready for Ape Escape, LocoRoco, Gravity Rush, Puppeteer, and Tokyo Jungle to get licensed out.

This is the next best thing if PlayStation is never going to touch these in-house again.

It could work if the level design is that memorable and snappy to navigate to the point where a mini-map is unnecessary. I'm not against it in theory, but it just adds even more pressure to deliver visually and design-wise.

I actually would call it ambitious to make a game that is consistently enjoyable and remove as much fat as possible. Too many games fall prey to hitting an arbitrary number of hours to justify its price and existence. Length stopped being a mark of ambition to me a long time ago.

@Majin_Deicide I'm still waiting for Rare Replay on PC. I love the irony that the ONE Xbox port I want multi-platform is the one that seems locked to the Xbox console forever.