StrickenBiged

If they're looking for another name to put on the box, mine can be had for much cheaper than 140m Euros a year... just saying.

Good review.
I think what it helped me realise is I really want is a marriage of modern HITMAN's stealth and freeform assassination gameplay with AC's historical setting. This game sounds - like you say @ShogunRok, for better and worse - like a return to the series' roots. But I've played all those games already and I don't need to revisit that type of game.

No one has the time to play all these live service games. Focus on one live service cash cow if you must - heck, that's why you bought Bungie - but there's a hard ceiling on how many hours there are in a day, and days in a week. At some point, all these live service games must start to eat one another. Even Epic is laying people off as it pivots Fortnight to focus on user created content to try and promote the game's longevity.

Great that they've added a slider for people who want more control and challenge. I'll experiment with it, but I never had a problem with the original. It's a bit like that "why does my horse dodge trees" thing that came up a few years ago (in relation to a Zelda game if memory serves) and the developer responded "real horses won't run straight into trees". I've treated S-M's swinging like that: S-M is good at what he does and won't just swing face first into a wall, so why does the game need to let you do that? It might detract from the power fantasy to set the slider so low that it becomes immersion breaking.

Is "nuked" really the correct analogy? That implies a big detonation, whereas from the article it sounds like Sony is keeping this as hush as possible. It might be more apt to say "evaporated" or something else akin to a process that one does not notice happening.

I've re-started this game three times already, with three characters to level 3. So far the half-orc barb is my favourite. When that enraged triple-value crit goes off, ooooh it feels good. I think I'll stick with this guy for a bit, but I'm also keen to try on a warlock.

Best of luck to him going forward. PS is doing gangbusters and, whatever the enthusiast/hardcore audience may have thought of him, he's clearly steered the ship well. While he can't hold a controller, he can certainly lead a party of more capable adventurers. The bard who leads from the centre, perhaps. (I've dove deep into BG3, can you tell?)

Star ratings are dumb. As the screenshot in the article itself demonstrates, the majority of people tend to go with either 5 or 1 star and ignore 2-4. Valve fixed this ages ago on Steam with their average rating based on a simple 'would/not recommend' system, later expanded so you could see how that rating had changed over time.

Well deserved. IMO it's the best of FromSoftware's souls-type games

Unity has never been profitable, so I can see why they want to increase the price - it's existential. And when you consider how many engineers they have working to make the engine better, then compare to a simple mobile game built on Unity that suddenly goes viral, well I can see how Unity HQ are looking at that and thinking "when you tally up the man-hours that went into making that game possible, we put more time in than that dev who just imported a few assets in and played with the physics model a bit to make their infinite runner" (for the sake of argument). If the status quo continues, then Unity will eventually go pop, and then where will the indie devs that rely on it be?
That being said, the way they have gone about trying to make the changes happen has been cack-handed in the extreme. If it were up to me, I'd say that no game that was released on the old fee-structure should be affected, and that there will be a 3 year period before the fee changes come into effect (giving devs who are still making their games plenty of time to consider their options). And I'd make the new fee-structure a lot simpler, a straight forward revenue split, regardless of how well the game does, no tiers at all, and maybe whack it up to 5% or something. That's easy enough for everyone to get their heads around, and if indie games need to become ~5% more expensive to account for that, then fine, it's £3 on a £60 game, I think the market would swallow it.
But then Unity seems in an awful hurry to do something now, so maybe they are closer to running out of financial lifelines than we appreciate or they are letting on.

Glad I didn't pre-order this game and waited. Sounds like it might finally be time to jump in... After BG3... and S-M2... and finishing up H:FW... that should also give CDPR enough time to do some smaller patches to catch the unexpected.
Mad respect to CDPR for the care and support they show to their portfolio of games. Just a shame that they didn't have that attitude when it launched. Hopefully they learned a lesson, but given the mad amounts of money they made despite the state of the launch game I fear not.

Nooooo! I've been enjoying the court and regulator disclosures and leaks too much. If everything is almost done and dusted then the rare insight that we have had into the workings of the games industry goes away, and the industry goes back to being a black box out of which we can only draw speculation and inferences.

Sad times...

Presumably then they'll be taking the ground-pound move out of the game? It makes no sense that a fall could hurt the Spider-Men, but deliberately smashing oneself into the ground with enough force to create a shockwave that knocks bad-guys back wouldn't hurt you too. Maybe a ground-pound will also cause damage?

Finishing up 100% of the trophies in S-M:Remastered ahead of S-M2 at the moment, and then I might give Baldur's Gate 3 a go. With so little gaming time available now that I have a little one, I prefer to spend my money and time on games that review phenomenally well, or which come highly recommended by reviewers who's taste is similar to mine. So I might pick Lies of P up along the way at some point, but I don't think it's likely if I'm being honest.

Mine is still too young, but I can see this being a massive hit with my nephew. I might get it soon so that we can distract him when my brother comes to visit with something that my sister-in-law will be happy for him to play.

The link in the article appears to take one to an extract of a deposition of Phil Spencer, rather than the email. There's no discussion of WB or Nintendo in that extract.

This sort of thing should have been announced at least 3 years in advance. I think that's a reasonable timeframe for the game devs that use Unity to be able to stop and say "ok, this is what it will cost if we go with that engine, how does that affect our financial modelling" and any games in early development still have the opportunity to turn around and go "nope, that breaks the maths for us, let's go with [Engine B] instead".

Just finished a replay of S-M1 via the PS5 remaster, and boy am I pumped to jump into S-M2 next month. I almost forgot just how much fun swinging around was. Insomniac can keep the fast travel system - other than using it 5 times for that trophy, I haven't touched it at all.

@Loamy Thanks. It was a detail I thought was noticeable by its absence in reviews I read.

Out of interest, what's the RPG like in Starfield? Is it Fallout 3 style, where missions and quests involve some moral quandary and you can complete them in a variety of ways depending on how you feel about it, or is it more like Fallout 4 where you can be compliant or snarky in conversations, but your options for completing the quest are more limited?

A lot of my old stuff from my student days ended up being stored at my grandmother's house. Over last weekend just gone, she asked me to come and clear it out. I was making good progress until I discovered a cardboard box filled with old GamesTM magazines and got distracted!

Looks tasty! I enjoyed both Overcooked and Diner Dash with the Mrs, so will see if she fancies co-op on this too.

Currently giving Spider-Man 1 a repeat playthrough via the PS5 remaster before S-M2 drops next month. I think I'll get to Baldur's Gate 3 over Xmas.

@WolfyTn I'm not the biggest SW fan (enjoyed the Original and Prequel Trilogies, hated the Sequel Trilogy, watched Rogue One, and have no interest in any of the Disney+ TV shows) but I enjoyed the first of these two games a lot. If you haven't played it, I'd start there (I think it was free on PS+ Essential a little while back...?) and decide whether you liked that before jumping into this sequel.

Hopefully Digital Foundry will do a follow up showing the re-worked Performance Mode in action, but this sounds like the patch I have been waiting for before jumping in on this one.

I'll at least redeem Saints Row, though I doubt I'll ever get to it. I won't bother with the other two. I understand one is s bad it borders on being broken and the other wants you to treat it like a second job, neither of which is my wheelhouse.

I think Sony is playing the long game here.
It would have been better if Sony had just been honest about the fact that the subscription business model isn't sustainable. But what's happening with the creatives' strikes in Hollywood will eventually come for games if the platform holders continue down this road. Either the developers and publishers that make games will have to start cutting costs to make the maths work for them (leading to worse games for us), or prices for consumers have to rise.
By raising prices for consumers, Sony could offer more to publishers and developers whose games go on Extra and/or Premium in a sustainable way. That could lead to higher-quality 3rd party games eschewing GamePass but being available on PS+ Extra.
These price rises could be a sign of PlayStation's continuing strategy of distinguishing itself through the quality of its offerings.

To paraphrase Jurrassic Park:

Your game-devs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Seems fine to me. You'll use it for one to three hours while the TV is occupied by your significant other or your kids, then you'll be able to switch back to the main console.

I've got to imagine they'll have noted player feedback on Atreus' gameplay and combat mechanics and expand his options in some way. Maybe do something with his abilities - I don't want to say too much for fear of spoilers - to give him some more heavy-hitting combat options.

I'll always be interested in more of this incarnation of GoW, but if it is Atreus-centric and they don't do anything with his combat in particular, I'll be waiting for a decent sale.

I don't need one with my gaming habits as they are right now, but once the little one gets a bit older and wants to monopolise the TV, I'm sure I'd rather be playing PS5 than watch the utter doggerel that passes for kids television these days. As a parent who plays games, I can see the market for this, I'm just not quite there yet as the kiddo is still too young for TV.

Love FromSoftware for the Souls-like games, but this sounds like a skip for me. I hope those to whom this appeals have fun!

@Vriess You can go check out their accounts over at Companies House. Since 2018 they've had healthy annual revenues tending to be in excess of £20m. The strategy of free-updates-promote-more-sales seems to be working very well for them. If you're interested: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06663645/filing-history

I'd pick up a PS5 Pro if it meant that I didn't have to pick between the 60FPS performance and 30FPS resolution modes. I exclusively stick with the Performance mode in games that have the option, but I do feel like I'm missing out on all those traced rays.
Good business for Sony too, as they know many people who choose to upgrade then sell on their base console, and those that buy the console second hand then become customers for games, DLC, etc.

I'm just so sorry I bought the god-damned horse armour and helped start this train running at this point.

Oh well. I'll still see if Digital Foundry can spot any differences and might think about it again then, but not too fussed either way. Rockstar's over-prescriptive mission design is now very long in the tooth - I'll never forget failing a Heist that me and my mates had spent hours on because I missed the landing zone by a hair's breadth at the end of the getaway and failed the mission for the team - and it's clear they're more interested in GTA:O these days over anything else.

@get2sammyb How long do you think Hello Games can keep it's No Mans Sky free updates going for? I know they made absolute buckets at launch, but their latest set of accounts (to YE 31 Oct 21) still shows revenues for the year of ~£27m, a large chunk of which I'd wager is NMS sales. If you want to knock out the impact of their 2020 release, The Last Campfire, then their 2019 accounts show revenues just shy of £19m. Again, it's a guess, but I'd wager that Joe Danger sales are minimal by that point.

Isn't there an argument that a game that receives meaningful content updates will continue to sell?

@sanderson72 If you think that's bad, look at some of the abominable spellings that Webster wanted the fledgling USA to adopt, but which were rejected: e.g. "masheen" for machine, "soop" for soup, "dawter" for daughter...

Bummer that we didn't get Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge. I'm going to unsub.

A shame. I love me some Greek mythology, and enjoyed Immortals a lot. I'd have been there for a sequel.

@riceNpea That's another way of saying what I said, yes.

Oh Blizzard.

The saddest thing is that marketing counts for so much in this industry. A dev team or publisher can utterly trash its reputation with the hardcore audience (people like us who go on gaming news sites, play tens of games each year, etc) and it doesn't matter, the game will still sell like hotcakes off the back of a few flashy trailers.

I loved SV.

But I can't go back. That "I'll just play one more day-cycle before bed, my apples should be ready to harvest" loop stuck it's claws into me deep, and too many nights with too little sleep was screwing with my real life...

Maybe one day...

Still waiting on a stable 60FPS Respawn...

A pity. I was a fan of their huge discounts on popular releases to get people in the store. I got Hogwart's when it released for £50, and years ago got CoD: MW2 for £25 if memory serves, which was very helpful to the student-me.

I don't understand the sentiment that this is getting boring. I for one have loved all the scoops that have been coming out of badly redacted court documents, emails between the bigwigs of various companies coming into the public domain, etc.

Gaming is the biggest entertainment industry on the planet, yet is still one of the most secretive, and these insights into how the sausages get made have kept me glued to gamesindustry.biz and other sites as all this drama has unfolded.

Long may the drama run, as far as I'm concerned. It's fascinating.

@FatWormBlowsASparky No, actually. Did the same thing happen to one of them?

I've got one for this:

So this guy is a big game hunter in the US. One day he is in the woods with his trusty rifle when a bear wanders into the clearing in front of him. He lines up a shot, pulls the trigger, BANG!, but the bear is nowhere to be seen. Then he feels a claw tapping him on the shoulder. He turns around, and there's the bear.
This bear tells him that no one shoots at him and gets away with it, and the guy now has 2 options. Either the bear will maul him to death then and there, or the guy can drop his trousers, bend over, and let the bear give him a good seeing to. The guy decides he'd rather not die, so he goes with option 2.
Afterwards, limping somewhat and humiliated, the guy heads back to town and goes to the gun store. He gets a big, 50 cal. rifle, and resolves to kill that bear.
He heads back to the clearing with his new gun, and sure enough, the bear shows up. He lines up the shot, BANG!, but the bear is nowhere to be seen. Then he feels a familiar tap on the shoulder. The bear says "you know what to do".
The guy returns to town for a second time, humiliated, seething with rage, and determined to end that bear's existence. He buys himself a big RPG launcher this time.
He returns to the clearing, and sure enough, the bear wanders through again. He lines up the shot, bulls the trigger, and BOOM! - he was standing too close to where the RPG made impact and he is thrown backwards by the blast.
Dazed, and on his back, he looks up at the forest canopy, when the bear steps into his line of sight.
"You're into this, aren't you?" says the bear.

Not sure if I have the patience for Rockstar's games anymore. I enjoyed RDR2 a lot, but boy is the very prescriptive mission structure getting old. I don't know if I could handle another "mission failed" screen just because I tried to think outside the box and do something which the mission designers hadn't anticipated or wanted, like trying to out-flank some baddies, or head off someone I'm chasing, etc.

Do we want Redfall?