StrickenBiged

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?

I don't do PvP or live service, so it's a thanks-but-no-thanks from me. I hope those who are into this sort of thing enjoy it though.

I should have thought the fairest thing would be royalty payments. If the game does gangbusters, everyone wins. If it flops, then everyone is left disappointed.

Miles is very cool and all, but Peter is the OG, and I foresee that I'll be playing mostly as him. That being said, Miles did have a cool set of abilities, if perhaps a little OP.
I'm guessing Miles' tree will tap into his powers, whereas Peter will have more unlockable tech gizmos to balance the two of them. Or more symbiote powers, depending on where they take that in the story.
At the moment, while both are very cool characters, I feel like Miles needs his own game to have the room to breathe as a character. Maybe it's just me, but Peter is the Spider-Man that everyone knows best, and I think most people will play as most of the time.

I can wait on all these. I just picked up H:FW on Amazon for £31, so have a replay of H:ZD on the patched-in ultra-hard NG+ difficulty ahead of me to remind me of the story, and the DLC to finish off on that, before I get into H:FW and Burning Shores.
Plus I'm waiting at least a year on Diablo 4 to see how the monetisation really pans out.
Plus plus Warhammer 40k 10th Edition launches this month and I am desperately trying to get my army painted up in time to play some games of that.
But yeah, it's a strong month for PS5 if you're into these games.

Remedy realise how handily the disc-PS5 outsold the digital only one, right? And that they're releasing the game during the period when everyone is looking for and buying Christmas presents, right?

They should have made it meta. I'd like to break into ActiFission publishing HQ and rob Bobby Crotchstick's secret stash to get back my £'s spent on UnderBlotch skins I didn't want to get out of a 'swag-sack'. I'd like to smash my way into EA (Eccentric Amusements) and steal back all the money hoarded from players of FIFA (Football Impersonating Financial Acquisition-engine).

Shame there's no plat, but I'm still all over this for the setting.

@Futureshark Some of the Boomers were in their 30's in the 1990's, like my father and his buddies. They were the guys playing DOOM over dial-up internet, with their kids (me and my brother) looking over their shoulders in awe and thinking 'what a time to be alive' and 'this is so much cooler than Mario'. XD

DS was my first Kojima game, and I 'got it'. Those moments when Low Roar's music (a very sad RIP) came in when you approached a new location after an arduous trek across hostile terrain are among the best in my gaming experience. And I loved tinkering with ziplines and making a very efficient network to quickly get around the map in the endgame. Very much looking forward to seeing where the series goes next.

@grapetrap I'm still an Essential Tier scrub! Buuut... they keep making it more and more tempting to upgrade! XD

Is there still an upgrade path to get the director's cut on PS5 without having to pay the full game price? I have the original game on PS4, on disc.

I tried to have a look on PSN for a directors cut upgrade item, but was only able to find the PS4 version and that only refers to being able to buy the expansion, no reference to a PS5 upgrade. Do I need to buy that first to be able to 'see' the PS5 upgrade?

Edit: I'm only on PS+ Essential too. I'd rather just buy the upgrade, if that's possible.

If it was a movie about CoD, presumably the tagline would be "From Gamer to Racist"?

(Only took me 2 weeks to think of that one, good thing I don't write headlines for a living.)

@PSXDave Would absolutely love a remaster or sequel to Brutal Legend. Such a shame Double Fine was snapped up by MS...

More options should be great for accessibility, allowing less-able gamers to get in on the action. Great news.

I bet it's a pain in the bum to put a bomber jacket on over your wings.

First I've heard of this website. The Stardew Valley sheet music book makes me want to learn piano...

" it's now impossible for Geralt to eat or drink underwater [...] consuming pints of ale or grilled meats underwater is too much of a stretch."

Sorry CDPR, but all you need to do is go on YouTube and search 'eating underwater' to see that it is possible.