Ravix

Picked up my Final Fantasy XVI playthrough last night. Now that I can give it the attention it deserves with BG3 far enough in the rear mirror. Good to see people still playing it here, too.

I might play some Hogwarts Legacy but honestly it's making me crave a much better open world game, so we shall see. I will try to finish it before buying something new. I will really try! There might not even be anything new that satisfies that urge, but I can hear RDR2 and TW3 calling me if there isn't 😅

And if I end up just doing a few bits of quick casual gaming away from RPG/story focused stuff, it'll be some Session: Skate Sim

Is DS3 going to be 'Beyond the Beach' then?

I want to skip straight to that tbh as it is the most interesting part left to discover of the DS universe. What lies beyond the beach, is it a lake or is it an ocean? 😛

As for 'on the beach' it does just sound like the usual Kojima trolling and it'll just be DS2, but we shall see.

Kingdom Come: Deliverence

A happy medium. You can fast travel, but you have to watch a little map animation, and you might get ambushed by Cumans and bandits en route as you aren't paying attention to the roads 😁

Is it actually popular, or is it a bunch of people getting swept up by "pokemon with guns" hype who will be bored of it in a month?

1. Glad it sold well despite the silly "boycott"
2. Glad people aren't in the comments saying "because it sold well it deserves a big bunch of awards"

This is a good middle ground, because it is a fine game and clearly a very popular IP, and Avalanche have done a superb job handling the IP in a loving manner and their passion shows... buuuut I've kind of fell off playing the game twice already, even though I am definitely enjoying it in short bursts.

I guess this is what happens when an article on some other site goes up using 4 or 5 month old quotes to write about it as if it is breaking news, and PushSquare uses that as as a source for its own news section 🙃

@Northern_munkey also, if they approached the actual owner of the character and IP itself.

They didn't advertise to speak with Ned Luke, so would have got absolutely spanked by R* and TakeTwo if they kept it and those companies were bothered about other companies trying to make money off of their IP's, even if Ned had allowed use of his voice, which he didn't lol.

It's just dumb in so many ways to try this on

GAME the store that tried to profit on the lack of PS5's available by forcing non official bundles on people that included their own awful £1 t-shirts, and some extra plastic tacky crap so they could mark up the price and pretend that the PS5 on its own was out of stock and impossible to order if it didn't have some of that crap chucked into a seperate box with it for £50 more 👍

Any game that delves deep into history, mythology and occult lore with a bunch of action and quality quest design is always going to peak my interest, but I hope there is a few real quality releases of this type before this comes out. Got to keep this one way in the back of the mind until then.

Picture looks like Geralt ate some bad pierogi 😁💩💨💨💨

Just beat a Level 31 Quagmire Troll with my level 22 Witch on Hogwarts Legacy I've been seeking combat and I've finally found it 😁😁😁 the fight helped me work out various ways of countering stuff, and protego into magic throw seems nice.

A lot of the early game is tutorial, and I got so overlevelled with barely any combat experience, and everything scales up anyway making levels a bit pointless. So I'm cracking on with some exploration (within the broom test side quest range, anyway), while putting off beasts class, which is a level 12 quest, for a little while longer

Protegooo, Stupify, Expelliarmuuuuuus, Confringooooo!

I'd love to see someone unexpected pop up with an impactful all new IP. In a time where Xbox is clearly trying to compete with big acquisitions, it'd be nice to see a smaller studio just organically grow into something much bigger before us, once again.

I'm also interested to see if anything gets shown from all the new studios that started when everyone with talent left every other corporate run studio, it may be a bit soon, but so many great devs left to do their own things with key players from some of the biggest games ever released being free to be creative, rather than profit focused. Usually that kind of passionate work leads to big profits anyway, and it all takes care of itself.

Basically we just want more games released on any platform that are made how they used to be, without corperate meddling, forced live service, trend thirst, and all this nonsense we've been seeing the last few years. I have faith that not all new games will be hampered by these ever growing trends, but it might be a bit of a rough year first.

Give us games you believe in, that's all we want 😁

4m braided cable is the way to go for single player games, never without power, can use it to charge headphones while wearing them too. Only works if you have somewhere it's not a trip hazard though 😬

At ~£9 it is the single best console QoL upgrade I've ever had

A demo would be great for this 🙏

So this means if they are paying the original artist their voice can be used for some AI reinterpretation of their voice in multiple titles?

Seems like this would absolutely screw a large number of actors and favour only the few who agree to it though, as "the few's" voice can be used in a bunch of games while they are not present, while "the many" miss out on roles that would usually be spread out more evenly because people obviously can't record as prolifically as an AI. This also means there is pressure to sign up and agree to it, or you will just not get any work as this gets more and more prominent.

Crazy s***

Nope.

I'll try the skate sim as that's on my wishlist, mainly out of curiosity, but even the "headliners" aren't for me.

It's about time they added a couple of PS Studios or bigger third party titles for the new year, it's been a while and they've seemingly removed more than added.

It'd be perfect timing right now as I've kind of fallen off of Hogwarts Legacy and just need something to excite me back into gaming again. Not played anything for over a week now, but I've also not played an extra game for over 6 months, which is kind of just wasting my sub :/

I'll always say if there's at least one or two big ones that I play then it's good value, but for me right now it isn't, unfortunately

@Fiendish-Beaver [ img] http:// link for the actual photo etc.jpg [ /img]

But no spaces. Same for .gifs too 😁

Come on people, characters aren't real, but the actors can still make them come to life, sooooo until you see the outcome there is nothing much to talk about. We know how the game brought these characters to life, now we wait and see how the show does it.

And if you want a laugh in the meantime we can look at how Tom Hardy went from looking like the love child of Fry and Laurie who couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag, to going method and playing an actual real person in Charles Bloomin' Bronson. Worked out pretty well for him in the end too

What about a Nick Offerman anthology that breaks the 4th wall with each episode a spin off of every character he's ever played, with Nick Offerman sat in a wingback chair with a glass of brandy narrating the set up for each episode 😁

Before some spooky 'The Twighlight Zone' final reveal that Nick Offerman never existed, he was just in our collective imagination 😱

Only day one would be Rise of the Ronin depending on how it looks and runs. If the hype confirms it is fantastic then I'll be there sharpish. No need to pre order, as games can be bought in an instant if they deliver on that sweet sweet hype

The rest will be back catalogue as usual, and the pickings are grand and plentiful. This is the way

[Removed - not getting involved with this s***] 😂

"Later this year" Problem solved with the addition of one letter.

But i'm interested in what PushSquare knows? They keep saying they don't expect to see it until 2025, what insider knowledge have you snaffled? Spill the beans. Who you been hacking? 😁

There's 3 I'm anticipating. Star Wars, Ronin and Black Myth, but I'm also anticipating some reveals and announcements from third party studios that have kept quiet for a while and the Sony Squad.

@JAMes-BroWWWn trophy count and number of games bought resets. But points do not, by the look of it on the app. So people should seek out any points they miss out on

I think I got my points for Hogwarts Legacy, which included a bonus 250 for it being "most wishlisted" or something, but I'll have to check.

I've actually had quite a good few discounts via stars, despite initially thinking the totals wouldn't stack that much.

And @Hundred_Hand_Slap yeah, you should get points for any spend on PS Store (even if you pay with third party seller vouchers) so keep an eye out or claim if you don't get them for a Sub payment. I've had two rounds of PS Plus since starting stars and they both added points.

For me it's been The Witcher 3, Zelda TotK, Final Fantasy XVI, BG3, now Hogwarts Legacy, and unfortunately Fifa/FC scattered between and other smaller titles, but I'm avoiding EA a lot more successfully due to the very good releases this year, and the Witcher 3 PS5 patch.

I dunno, it seems right-ish, as I was thinking somewhere 3-5 based on people's overall reaction to the game. I really did like it a lot though.

Push Square gave it a 9 too. So the top 4 must be absolute bangers... 😁😁

I didn't role play as Clive. I got action satisfaction from controlling Clive and his big f***ing beastly powers 😁

I think all of gaming needs to come together and discuss what an RPG is these days and sort themselves out. The only choices you have in FF16 are whether you want to kill something with fire or a big punchy stone hand.

Just call games action/cinematic action and be happy with it, unless you have legitimate choices to make with your character in game, then you can slap RPG in there too.

As I've finished the legendary Baldur's Gate 3 (finally) 😁 I'm resisting just going head first into a new character on that by playing some Hogwarts Legacy

Created my character last night - Eliza de Vere, chose Slytherin (because green is going to look nicer for my gear) I haven't decided if I'm going to be a total f*** to people, or to subvert the expectations of the house trope. I'm really tempted to save being a tw** for a hufflepuff run, as that just seems like a fun thing to do 😆

I'll see how the story goes and might restart if I don't like being Slytherin, or I don't like how my character fits in. But I really want that green gear 😅😅😅

Maybe some cyberpunk on the side. Depends how much time I actually spend gaming. Might not be much tbh 😆

@ApostateMage omg the animation for presenting the head had me rolling 😂😂

He's gonna hack the judge via heart monitor 😅

@BrotherFriede I'd rather see a Tchia x PaRappa the Rapper collab 😁

@Odium you are definitely not wrong. I mean, Alan Wake (the first one) had one of the single most pretentious final lines in game and cinema history, and that is why it is so good. It is perfectly on brand for Alan Wake 😁

That moment the line hit stays with me so clearly as both mine, and my freinds, reaction to it was an audible "HAAA!" because it is so unbelievably stupid and pretentious, but also, at the same time, thinking "that is absolutely genius, it is perfect, and I love it"

Alan Wake 2 dialling that up several notches is only fair.

@TheArt lol exactly.

But what can you expect, it's the PS blog 😅 all power to the voters in the 'just bought the one game this year awards'

I think difficulty levels in games does need looking at for various reasons.

There needs to be some balance. It's weird when basic grunt like enemies become more powerful just because you levelled up, they haven't gone through any progression, they have just been sat there waiting to get wrecked by you.

But often a big boss will be hard early, and by the time you've got your head around a game, a big boss will be a walk in the park, and not present the intended challenge to fit the narrative, which kind of kills immersion too.

I feel RPG developers can tackle this by being really detailed about their enemy types and hidden backstory elements. Is a level 7 werewolf any different to a level 20 werewolf, or is it just an easy way to reuse an enemy type? A need to be more creative with how enemies function in games would be welcome. But maybe not via random AI scaling. It has to be within the core of a game to work, I think.

This is another reason why I love Kingdom Come Deliverence. Your health never scales, improves or changes in any way. If you get stabbed in your fleshy bits, as a human, you are pretty much f***ed. And this applies to all of the enemies too. You can train to be stronger, and train to be more effective with a weapon, and acquire armour that suits your needs, but the same rule always applies. And if you are alone in the woods and get surrounded by 4 people who want to kill you, you best get to running away, because you can't just even those odds with a massive health bar, you have to be combat proficient to stand a chance, and even then you best be tactically sound, or have a big mace 😁

@Judal27 wasn't their like Flaming teleportation too, or something like that from one of the trailers? 😅

I'm hoping for some kind of soulscreed, I hope they lean heavily into the historical fiction and realism of setting, but then decorate it lovingly with folklore. Combat should be the easy part for them, maybe just add bigger parry windows or whatever via difficulty settings ala Jedi games for the accessibility and so people can play it more casually, but all based around what makes their previous games work so it's not hampering those who want a challenge.

Definitely one to keep an eye on

@OtsutsukiBoruto knew Cerny was at the game awards for a reason 😁😁😁

@Terra_Custodes how are the characters and story, usually? I don't mind games that aren't perfect, or extremely polished, and one of my favourite games of all time is Kingdom Come: Deliverence, which is buggy and janky at times, but it is filled with more charm and passion for its subject than maybe any other game I've played, and that and the setting far outweighed any technical hiccups.

I think for me the X Factor is always stuff like charm and character and clear passion from the developers for the subject. As that always shines through, whatever the game, genre or budget.

@Stickleman it's a fake business. There's definitely scam and fraud involved. If you act like you own a company but also don't pay any of the people that make the "product" and then shut down the entire company and pretend it never existed you would probably expect some sort of investigation.

100% these people will be in charge of another "business" within a year, and probably in another country.

They claim any funds the company had will be used to pay off "partners" yet they said they had no investors. So who are these "partners", other than themselves or their pet dogs with bank accounts.

@Neither_scene I'm tongue in cheek saying make it as good as a high end PC at any price for me and a few others willing to tap into the premium market 😁 so that is fair. I do wish they would throw out the rule book and just go for it. Build it and they will come etc, etc. Maybe a Pro Premium 😄

To be fair the PS line usually does perform a bit better than its direct PC equivalents, maybe by sacrificing infinity FPS. So if, like you say, that is what the Ps5 pro GPU will match up as, Sony will probably be squeezing a little more out of it with the way the games are optimised and how the system works.

For example a current 4070 runs Cyberpunk at 1440p high/ultra and the PS5 right now runs Cyberpunk at 1440p upscaled to 4k in raytracing mode.

Whatever it may be, any upgrade that's noticeable and I'll be buying one to replace my older PS5. I do think they just slightly undercut what the PS5 and series X launch models should have been in terms of next gen capability.

Name your price 💰💰💰

I hope they go nuts and drop some PC size specs with PS quality efficiency and just unashamedly go for the premium market for it. I'd rather have an insane PS Pro than get a slightly beefier PS or a gaming PC, I want to play console games with Max Ray Tracing settings above all else. Nothing makes a game more real than the lighting.

@Arkham24601 48" oled sounds perfect then. When you eventually do upgrade the jump will be massive. 1080 LCD to 4k Oled will be like you've stepped into a Sci fi in comparison 😁

"We didn't actually cut anyo.." Loud Music Blares Out Over Your Words

3rd in paid games on UK Digital, so not as bad. I know its Fifa and CoD, but normally big new games with big IPs still at least debut at 1 digitally for one week though. Ubisoft paints themselves into a corner with it's big price drops, I suppose.

Interesting on the digital PS store FF16 is finally back up to 5, and BG3 is back in the top 10 again.

Star Wars Outlaws

Rise of the Ronin Hope the gameplay is smooth and even more so that the graphics are a big step up for the studio. I need my historical fiction hit so hopefully it's got that nailed down. I really hope this one is a GotY contender.

Black Myth: Wukong Be interesting to see what this game actually turns out to be. Could be epic.

And then I'm happy to get swept up by hype if something else shows up that is really, really well received.

I'd argue that every winner clearly outstayed their welcome, as TGA made it known that the winners were not welcome on the TGA stage for longer than 30 seconds. And of course, a welcome has to come from the host of the gathering, so, semantically, we got 12 right.

Let's goooooo 😁

They hit the music during the first speech when Neil/Astarion was trying to say some genuinely meaningful personal things about how what they were doing was even more important to some people than just "playing games" And then Geoff is in robot-host mode and just laughs it off to do his next read 🤦‍♂️

And then some speeches they didn't even allow for that winning moment to sink in.

I get saving time, but 30 seconds is not long enough to take in the fact you are getting recognition in your industry and are standing in front of people who want to congratulate you for it and share in that small moment by hearing what it means to you.

Sam Lake, Alan Wake and the Alan Wake dancers were amazing though. At least they had that moment. The rest of the show didn't really celebrate this year's other games that well though, considering. Even Game of the Year was like "yes, here's game of the year... see you next year folks."

Reveals and trailers are fun to a point, but so is looking back on what we've all been playing and collectively acknowledging how good it has been.

@Qu1n0n3z considering all the awards are going to European and Asian developers, they should really reevaluate the show's start time 🧐

Florida Joker vs LA 'Susan'

If there was ever a time to reboot Celebrity Death Match in live action, it is now ⚒️🤡