Suur

Usually these sorts of lists still contain many games that could be considered mostly mainstream, so it was a positive surprise to see that I haven't actually heard of most of these games. Not that I'm personally interested in almost any of these, but nice article regardless.

Did anyone really buy the game thinking "hmmmm they've been doing these wacky skins since 2014's AW, but THIS is the year where they'll stop"? Why bother being angry about this? These skins ultimately still sell and get attention, as proven by this news article. This is just the reality of many modern PvP live services, you either accept it or vote with your wallet.

Gotta disagree with zombies being complicated. Sure, compared to WaW and BO1 days the game mode has a lot more things to do, but that's kinda the natural evolution of the mode. BO3 and BO4 took it a bit too far, Shadows of Evil is very unfriendly to new players so it wasn't a great on-disc map, but Cold War simplified things a lot and from what I played BO6 is very similar. Plus, Liberty Falls is that WaW-BO1-style map where you can really focus on just slaughtering zombies without having to think about side objectives, mandatory quests etc.

While I understand the want to be a part of conversation you can realistically wait for that 72 hours and nothing would change. Most people have other things to do and are therefore slow in playing those new games anyway. If the discourse around a game dies down during those 72 hours then there's something wrong with the game and at that point being 72 hours "late" is a very small issue.

Nice I guess, but I already played it. How about some new games? I'm not gonna replay my older stuff just because it might have some better reflections at 30fps or look a bit sharper at 60.

It's ridiculous this 600+ employee company needs almost four years to produce a PS5 and a Series X version of the game. "b-but Sony provided them PS5 devkits just recently and they didn't want to release the Series X version before PS5 due to either parity or contractual obligations with Sony or Mojang!!" is something I have heard a few times, but as far as I'm aware no confirmation exists for that theory. Until it does I'll keep calling Mojang one of the laziest companies around. Considering the amount of content they can produce each year I'm much more inclined to believe they're just lazy anyway.

Gonne be an ***** and say that if this ends up with the studio being closed then that's fully deserved. Many people have this defeatist attitude regarding modern games industry and say that things like boycotts and voting with your wallet don't really work. Well, this time it clearly worked. People's livelihoods are at stake yes, but the reality is that voting with your wallet and workplace stability in games industry are almost always mutually exclusive. Can't have your cake and eat it too, I'm rather happy to see that consumers actually do still have power.

Maybe a weird comparison, but I bought the Grandia collection last spring when it came to Playstation. I played the first game and enjoyed it a lot. I also have a weirdly soft spot for those 90's JRPGs despite being mostly a 2000's kid, I assume these games will be right up my alley?

I'll just assume that everything new is eventually coming to PS5 and at some point they'll start porting games like Forza, Gears and Halo to it as well to reach new audiences.

Started playing this on PS5 a couple of weeks ago, dunno if it's still using the broken PS2 emulator or what but the game suffers from terrible fps drops. It's not unplayable but it does come pretty near.

@Ricky63 I don't really think it's about how the end products turned out and more about the hype. This is an industry that aims to get people hyped, and that's honestly what many of us are looking for. Sometimes the end product is worth the hype, sometimes it isn't, but there's nothing quite like being excited about many upcoming projects. Perhaps Geoff's showcases are a more realistic and down to earth representation of games industry at the moment, but it just doesn't excite me or clearly many others. And honestly, when I'm less excited I'm also less likely to spend money, so it really isn't good for the industry as a whole either.

@Ralizah I don't personally think the rewards need to be that interesting or intuitive. I get free money without any strings attached, that's enough for me and probably many others.

@GloriosaDaisy There was this tiny little game called Destiny which dropped seventh gen support in 2016 at Rise of Iron's release. Not exactly a new thing.

I guess this is nice, but anyone that wants to get invested in the Destiny universe is still required to watch 2+ hours of Youtube videos to get up to speed. Not sure if it's worth effort, IMO Destiny's plot only works so well to those who have been invested for a long time and have seen how the series has evolved over years.

@ironcrow86
Except Bully and LA Noire are both on PS4.

@anoyonmus
To be fair Origins and Odyssey are so similar on the surface that you really can't blame anybody for mixing them up.

I got to renew Premium at discounted price, but my friend hasn't been able so far so who knows what's going on.

@carlos82
The difference, I think, is that Quake is a small scale release and keeping it console exclusive isn't going to make Xbox a more appealing platform for someone who isn't invested in their ecosystem already. Unless these were just simple 4k ports like RDR I think these might be big enough to keep on Xbox. Good remasters of games belonging to big IPs is a whole another thing compared to making small remasters of a previously dead IP which, according to leaks, isn't even getting a new game any time soon. I love the Quake remasters and Nightdive is amazing, but that's just reality.

It's kinda amusing for me to read these glowing reviews, after my own experiences with the game. Bought it when PS5 early access launched because I do enjoy turn-based RPGs and, according to my friends "you don't need any DND knowledge" and "it's the hypest thing ever". The game didn't really look that interesting to me, I've never played CRPGs and don't care or know anything about DND, and last night after 4 hours of playtime... I just dropped it. Tutorials were straight up broken, combat was excruciatingly slow, and despite Act 1 supposedly being the best thing ever at no point was I hooked. Astarion was fun, I guess. I didn't even hate the game, I was just so apathetic. I still am, to the point that I genuinely don't even care about wasting 80€. I guess I kinda excpected the outcome, I also bought Elden Ring just based on hype and I wasn't interested in soulsborne before the game and certainly not after playing it for a few hours. Probably should stop buying stuff solely based on hype.

I'm absolutely nitpicking, but I can never understand this notion of clearing a backlog so you can play newer games. How about just doing both? I have a massive backlog, but if there's a release that interests me I'm buying it and playing it regardless, or maybe throwing it into the backlog too.

@3Above Assuming "early 2024" means Q1 there's no way this game and FF7R aren't coming very close to one another. Same with Persona 3R, and LAD 8. For anyone who likes the JRPG genre and is interested in all those games, it's going to be a very expensive first half of 2024. I'm already prepared to just buy both P3R and LAD 8 a bit later, I don't feel like spending about 250€ for games in a short period of time. Wouldn't really mind if even one of the games I mentioned gets delayed either.

I checked the store page just to see if they maybe advertise some technical specs there. Aside from the standard "PS4 Pro enhanced" there is nothing, so it's seriously not going to be anything other than basic port from 7th gen.

Diablo 4 for me is the biggest surprise so far, I didn't like the beta and hadn't played D3 in years but enjoyed it a lot. Endgame isn't the greatest for now, but it's certainly a very good foundation and still worth the price. Yakuza Ishin was marketed as a remake, but it certainly didn't look and feel that way and while the game ultimately was still good, I was a bit disappointed. Hogwarts was what I thought it would be, pretty standard RPG with Harry Potter-skin. FF16 was just an immense disappointment to the point that I'm not even mad, I care so little. Ultimately for me this year has been a bit of a disappointment in terms of new releases.

I'm about 6 hours in, have I gone past that "crashing point"? If I have I can also say that graphics mode and no issues with the game. Launch console, though it was just recently thoroughly cleaned.

@Triumph741
Alright, but then where was the mention of "console exclusivity"? It was suspiciously missing from pretty much anything that wasn't Xbox Game Studios, historically a sign of non-exclusivity.

Hard to imagine it being an exclusive, because the money required for "no platforms except Xbox and PC" must be a lot higher than "marketing rights for Xbox and no mention of any platforms for a while". Based on there being no GP mention, they didn't even want to pay for that. Full-on exclusivity seems impossible at that point, unless you want to argue that Microsoft did pay for exclusivity, but not for GP. Let's be real, that happening is extremely unlikely anyway and pretty much not happening with JRPGs, a genre that doesn't make much money on Xbox.

I mean, as a yearly thing this might've been good... but this was the first one since September 2021 and I'm just extremely whelmed. Not depressingly bad IMO but certainly not good, perhaps the worst kind of showcase.

Honestly, the fact that Premium members couldn't use last year's Black Friday discount to downgrade from Premium to Extra probably plays some sort of part in this. I had Premium because I had PS Now before the tier system, and it converted to the highest tier immediately. I planned on buying just Extra during the discount, but since I couldn't what other choice was there for me other than just buying Premium? Discounted Premium was cheaper than normal priced Extra, so the choice was obvious.

As someone who's spent over 3500 hours on this franchise over the last 8 years, being a Destiny fan really is like an abusive relationship. Bungie has been a scummy company for a while now and the game has become very predatory, but I just keep coming back no matter what. Hell, I got scammed 50€ by buying Lightfall, and no matter what I think right now their excellent marketing machine will make me buy Final shape as well. Guess excellent game mechanics really do help.

I unironically think Minecraft is the least likely to happen out of this list. PSVR2 version would require a native PS5 version, and Mojang hasn't even gotten a Series X version out yet. Their owners are unable to make them port the game to their console, a console which is almost 30 months old at this point. How is PSVR2 version ever gonna happen?

I certainly dislike the attitude of some Xbox and now Playstation players, which is basically "I have a subscription service and everything must come to it, I won't buy anything anymore". Sadly there are probably many Series S owners who technically own nothing. If you want to deprive yourself of some great experiences that might never come to any sub, then sure I guess. I just don't really understand that. PS+ Extra is a great supplementary service, but I still buy games if they're interesting enough for me. Worrying about "should I buy this game because it might come to Extra" just seems too paralyzing, so better not to even care.

@NeonPizza
I can barely tolerate "flat" horror games, you expect me to play one in VR? Don't feel like dying early. As for COTM, I did complete it and it was a nice experience... but to pay 680€ for just that, No Man's Sky and Zenith seemed very excessive. Admittedly didn't buy Moss, but I somehow feel I could get them cheaper on PC anyway. Or I could just pay multiple other things for much cheaper than what the VR2 cost.

Well, the headset did introduce me to VR... until I got bored with the weak line-up of actually worthwhile games, (no, I'm not gonna pay 25€ for fking kayak) sold off the headset and bought a Quest 2 with that money, as my computer is decent enough for VR. Not regretting it at all, the selection of games might not be that much larger but at least there are mods, VRChat etc.

I don't really get people complaining about difficult trophies. Nobody is entitled to any trophies, developers should be able to make trophy lists however they want. I didn't platinum this game, too tedious, but that's fine, I finished the game, got the trophies I wanted and then left.

@ShogunRok
You mentioned spending 65 hours with the game, but how would you compare the overall length to other RGG games? I tend to do varying amounts of side content in the games, so knowing what the closest game in terms of length would be helpful. It seems to me that Yakuza 0 is the best comparison, is that accurate?

This article just taught me that One Piece Odyssey's combat is turn based. Very interesting, I have no preference one way or another but it's getting a bit tiring how all these anime games have very similar feeling action combat systems. Being turn bases is, at the very least, something new. Definitely more interested in the game now.

Gotta say even as a huge Falcom fan, this really was a quiet gaming year when a PS4 version of a 2010 PSP game, which already had a fan-translation, is in the top 5 of GOTY. Considering what next year's bringing, I can say with absolute confidence that Trails Into Reverie isn't going to be in the top 5.

You mentioned that you haven't checked the game in a long while. That seems to be true, considering you don't seem to know that season 3 of the game has been ongoing for almost a month now. Instead, a new event is coming in 20th.

@Olmaz
Not sure why you'd want reflections, since they can be only seen when there is something reflective. Usually just mirrors or water. But, RTGI can be seen everywhere and really makes a difference.