Comments 398

Re: Only 35% of PS5, PS4 Elden Ring Players Have Progressed Enough to Start Shadow of the Erdtree

Rich33

@rjejr
Been a long time since i played and my memory is a bit hazy on this game but i think you may have done the other similar one.

The other similar one is deep underground the capital city i think, and it may be you have done this one. He is in a large underground tomb/mausoleum.

The one you need to defeat according to the pic here is in a separate area only accessed by teleporting (2 methods), the whole area has a red glow, he is located inside a greek looking building which has no roof with stars above and a cocoon in it which has a large withered arm sticking out.

Re: Xbox Bigwig Confirms Many More Microsoft Games Are Coming to PS5

Rich33

What a mess they must be in...

Exclusives arent about console wars for gamers... your exclusives line up is what you need to draw gamers to your console/platform.

Its all right talking drivel about the 'benefits of putting games on other systems', and 'the more people that get to play the games the better', but at the end of the day exclusives are a big part of customers choice mechanism - Fear of missing out is a big thing for all age groups.

Oh and one of the biggest reasons to stay on console and not move to PC - Sony take note because you seem to be forgetting this.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@glennthefrog
Not a problem at all.

You are quite correct in that some WANT 60fps, and others NEED it, which complicates matters.

One of the main issues though I think is that you have certain "opinions":

1. Some who can tolerate low fps and just dont (and some that sadly wont) understand how it can be such a problem, and a continually inceasing problem - as I said I know that newer TVs are inceasingly exasperating it (I was 100% fine with CRTs) but there are also other factors. Also I hear all the time that fps wasnt an issue before Digital Foundry... It was, people (myself included) just didnt know enough to know what the issues were.

2. Some of the people with low/no tolerance for under 60fps dont understand and sadly sometimes dont/wont believe that others cannot see major differences above a certain fps which is sometimes as low as 30.

3. Some with low/no tolerance for under 60fps do not know that this is the cause of why 'the game' looks bad or gives them a headache etc.

NB i have no idea why 60fps is the sweet spot so to say - I would prefer if all games run above 90-100fps and can easily tell the difference up to this point, but can tolerate down to just below 60 (60 is perfectly comfortable) - this is oddly common.

Current gen consoles are easily equipped to run any game at 60fps providing devs keep their ambitions in check, utilise the hardware properly with appropriate engines (consoles are not mega powerful PCs), program primarily for 60fps, and publishers dont rush the games out preventing full optimisation - unfortunately this doesnt always happen...
When it does we get games like SMMM, GOWR, Hogwarts Legacy (post summer 23 patch), R&C, SM2, (not a complete list) which can all run above 70fps most/all of the time (even with RT in insomniac games cases), up to 90 or even 100fps for some of those earlier on the list.

Re: Valorant Won't Have Gyro Controls on PS5 Because Xbox Doesn't Support It

Rich33

@arsmolinarc
Too many devs these days dont have the ability to match their ambition, or aim far higher than you should given the hardware capabilities.

The series S keeping this sillyness somewhat in check is a good thing for PS5 / SX owners.
(And no, I dont and will never own a Series S or X.)

The PS5 and SX arent exactly powerhouse machines, and are not capable of doing much more than we have already seen.

Re: Some PlayStation Fans Are Losing Their Minds Over LEGO Horizon Being on Switch

Rich33

BIG mistake in my opinion, from a long term business point of view.

You should always only ever use your studios / IPs to tempt others to your platform / keep them on your platform.

Otherwise you end up in the mess MS is making for itself.

GAMER "The only thing keeping me from moving to PC is Sony's games"

SONY "We will be releasing all our games on PC"

GAMER "thank you very much, off I go"

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@GamingFan4Lyf
I think in this case (if I recall correctly) the films included lots of unusual camera panning.
My belief is that just like with games, there are a lot more susceptible, its just people do not understand it - and people are only recently getting more educated about game framerates due to wider audiences now watching / reading things like digital foundry.
Couple that with it becoming more of a problem with newer (bigger?) TVs.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@Bettyswollocks
Very much depends - some games/engines bottleneck on the GPU, some on the CPU - i think the major bottleneck on UE5 has been found to be the GPU. And some bottleneck even with low useage on both due to poor utilisation of cores/compute units.

Funnily enough, even if games bottleneck on CPU, often (not always) this only happens during periods of heavy loading/streaming (Elden Ring im sure is a good example).
This shouldnt cause a big problem for PS5, due to the extra tech inside to take work off the CPU in this case (as per Cerny's detailed presentation) - however.. devs actually have to use this tech for the game to benefit, and this doesnt always happen particularly in the case of non-exclusives.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@NEStalgia
I lose track of what engine is used for what tbh! Lol.
But you are quite right that the engine for this game was just not fit for purpose. In fact i cant remember square using an engine that i have been impressed with for a long time?!
I think you made reference in other posts (apologies if it wasnt you) to various engines used by Sony studios and other 3rd parties, and even if you just consider engines that do achieve 60(+)fps, there is such a massive image quality difference between them, even when games are not doing anything too different.
Sony's tend to be the absolute cream of the crop, but I also really liked what hogwarts legacy used (modified UE4?). Stellar blade too used a very good engine which to me allowed for a very good image quality - though 1 big thing here was that they clearly opted to design for the 60fps modes.
On the other hand Jedi survivor (post ray tracing removal) still looked quite bad to me.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@GamingFan4Lyf
The way movies/TV present and move mean that generally much lower framerates are tolerable.
Someone else may be able to explain much better, but 1 key aspect is that you are not controlling the image (my tolerance for game cutscenes is much higher for instance, and 30fps cutscenes in 60fps games are not always intolerable, bad but not intolerable). It is also true however, that in someway the image is just built differently.
That said I have seen a few movies in recent years which have affected me - one was one of the marvel films (cant remember which now and i dont often rewatch), that I had to stop watching.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@glennthefrog
Its a good question.
As the framerate goes much below 60, even if the game is slow moving, the image goes from smoothish (to be perfectly smooth I need an image around 90-100fps, but I can enjoy 60 just fine), to literally looking like a slideshow where i see the image with much less clarity (a bit like blur but not quite), and i can see the distance skip between frames for moving objects.
If I persevere (or there are frame pacing issues /uneven/fast changing framerates) my eyes/brain do not adjust and i get headaches and severe motion sickness.
At around 30fps i see the distance skips more noticeably than the image itself and it really messes with my head.
VRR can help a bit, but is not a magic wand (except where it is used to 'unlock' framerates in excess of 60 on 120hz VRR mode).

Motion blur also gives me the same headaches and motion sickness.

To be honest I have had problems with framerates for a long time - since at least 2016 (and possibly all the way back to 2011, before which I was using CRT TVs).
I found just by trying them that Performance modes on PS4 Pro could help, but there were a couple of years I started playing games much less around then because of the problem.

One thing I will say (and this I have found to be very, very common) is that whilst i knew i had an issue with games and i learned performance modes could help, to start with i didnt know that it was framerates that were responsible (I have always been console rather than PC), and wasnt really educated to what they were and how they worked.
Through experience and general education which became much more mainstream, I now know a lot more, including the fact I can see even small changes including positive ones (well) beyond 60 - to be clear I think I have seen them for years, but didnt have the knowledge or experience to know/enumerate what I was seeing.

It is also true though that people see images as very smooth at varying framerates - what becomes irritating to me, is that just because some people cant see much difference between 30 and 60 (and i know this can be very true), a small often loud number of these people think/push the opinion that no one else can, and cant appreciate the affect it has on others. The poll they ran here a while ago proved this is a much more common problem than a lot of people think - and that doesnt account for people who have issues but dont know the reason (like myself a few years ago).

Over the years I have become more intolerant to framerates much lower than 60, or frame pacing/uneven/fast changing framerates.

The main reasons (for my increased intolerance) I think are:
How newer TVs work (this has definitely had an affect)
Age (maybe)
Having had 3 good years of playing games at 60 or higher.

The only game I have bought recently(ish) with issues was jedi survivor and i had to leave it until after the patch removing ray tracing, even then i could still see some issues - since then I now look for demos or analysis / detailed enough reviews before I buy/pre-order unless its released by the better Sony studios. Literally, I dont care how good a game is by other metrics - if framerates arent good enough it might as well be a 0 out of 10.

I hope this helps - explaining it sometimes is not easy for me.

Re: Final Fantasy 16 Patch 1.33 Makes Us Think the Frame Rate Will Never Be Fixed on PS5

Rich33

@GamingFan4Lyf @glennthefrog
Actually, there are a lot like myself who find anything much less than 60fps to be unplayable (and i dont have a twitter account) - it affects some people much more than others - some can barely tell the difference between 30 and 60, whereas i can see a 5fps change anywhere up to about 90fps, and cannot tolerate much less than locked 60fps.

I gave up on this game when i saw the slideshow of a demo - what i remember though is (apart from some battles which looked good and ran at 60fps), the game didnt even look good at all - stellar blade is not that dissimilar in terms of scale/game type and looks much better at an almost rock solid 60fps.

Re: Hogwarts Legacy PS5, PS4 Summer Update Detailed in New Video

Rich33

This game is one of the very best this generation imo (and i have enjoyed it a lot more than other 3rd party major titles of the last few years such as elden ring which was good, and Jedi), though i would recommend playing on its highest difficulty.

I was hoping for a somewhat higher difficulty mode or maybe some form of ng+, but oh well.

Re: Xbox Series S Specs Limit the Scope of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Rich33

1st thing i thought reading this article - With devs ambitions far exceeding their own talent on console hardware, thank goodness for Series S keeping them in check a bit.

2nd thing i thought reading this article - 30fps... never mind, thats abother game off my wishlist for what amounts to incompetence.

Re: Astro Bot Is the 'Biggest' Game Team ASOBI Has Ever Made

Rich33

@Shepherd_Tallon
Not to take anything away from the game - which really looks good, my second thought after watching the trailer, the 1st being I want it, was how well the trailer was designed and made all the way through to the date reveal at the end - it reminded me of the GOWR trailer. I think well done trailers are underestimated sometimes.

Re: Dragon's Dogma 2 Patch 1.150 Drops as Players Still Wait for Better PS5 Performance

Rich33

Capcom really dropped the ball with this one, and it will have a knock on effect because i will more or less now ignore MH Wilds until 60fps is tested and confirmed (and by then I may have bought other games to play).

2 other people i spoke to today who actually own DD2 (I waited for performance reviews), when we were discussing the SofP from last night, more or less had written MHW off given their experiences with DD2's performance.

Re: Astro Bot Looks Absolutely Glorious, Lands on PS5 This September

Rich33

@Keyblade-Dan
I agree - obviously hope its a bit less, but i have seen many games without the same Quality & Content launch for 70.

Having been gaming since the Speccy days, it does feel that whilst the RRP of games gets a lot of bad comments, it hasnt really gone up that much in recent years, and inflation adjusted may well have gone down - all while dev costs and expectations have skyrocketted.

Re: PC Players Are Fuming Until Dawn, God of War Ragnarok Appear to Require PSN Logins

Rich33

Multi player - dont have a problem at all - everyone else does this and it does allow Sony some control over cheaters and hate, which sounds like a good thing.

Just waiting for Sony to announce PSPlus subscription required on PC to play lol!

Single player - not sure i really agree with it (and not 100% sure Sony intend to include single player in this, tho I agree thats how it appeared, but if so they have been up front with it). If its true I only imagine sales for non PSN countries are expected to be very low.

Are there legal reasons to do with data protection that stops Sony setting up PSN in these countries??

Re: Poll: What Did You Think of Sony's State of Play for May 2024?

Rich33

Im sorry, i really wanted to see far more in the way of NEW Sony single player games - the games they made their brand on, given such a long period of almost silence

On the non Sony front Dynasty warriors looked interesting (we already knew about SH2), but i would have wanted a rating below "terrible", until astrobot brightened up my evening.

Astrobot - "Amazing"
Rest - "Sony have really fallen hard"

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Swings 11 Million Sales as Sony Calls PS5 Exclusive a 'Great Success'

Rich33

Well deserved - really liked the game. Better than the previous entries, but only just as they set a really high bar with their 1st.

Also, i may be odd but i thoroughly enjoyed some of the "low action" missions such as the school mission with younger peter.

(+insomniac are so far ahead of the curve in terms of technically getting the most out of PS5 with 1440 @ 75fps with raytracing).

Re: When Is PlayStation's State of Play?

Rich33

@Gamer_X
Im thinking PS5 PRO will be £550 / US$600, maybe a bit less if there is a decent drop on the base console, maybe even a bit more

NB this will depend on if it includes a disc drive - i dont think ive ever seen anything about this in any rumour, but they may go digital only to stop a spiralling cost.

Re: Stellar Blade PS5 Patch 1.003 Brings a Challenge Mode, New Outfits

Rich33

@trev666
Whilst I agree that most games launch in a completely unfinished state these days (often months before they should have done, and some are then never optimised to what i would say is minimum launch quality), this game launched in a really good state - better even than Lies of P which was generally excellent but had a few balance issues that were sorted quickly.
Im not saying its the best game ever - a decent 7.5 to 8 /10, and not as good imo as Lies of P which I would have scored a 9, but it definitely did not feel unfinished.

Re: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Set to Be a Huge Step Up in Storytelling

Rich33

I thought the first was a heavily flawed masterpiece.

3 major flaws they need to get right for a sequel:

1) 60fps locked performance is a must.
2) if you are going to have timed missions make sure its clear, and possible - several mission felt more urgent than the actual timed missions, and more than once i failed a timed mission because i started a timer (sometimes without knowing it) but because i hadnt visited a location previously got forced to do other stuff instead.
3) characters would often not get to where they needed to be, in order to start missions and often abandoned horses randomly on the map... and the horses would stay there forever.

That said some sections like the monastry i will remember for a very, very long time.

Re: Sony Seems to Have Broken the PS5's Game Time Tracker, Again

Rich33

I must admit to always having liked the feature as it gives me an idea to how much i played a game - particularly if thinking should i buy the sequel / similar game.

But its always been a bit "creaky" - i have been sure on multiple occasions that the number it comes back with is heavily inflated for some games but not others - with no real pattern (its not mostly/all sony games for example).