Th3solution

I’m playing Elden Ring’s red-headed step sister, Dark Souls 2. So far, I’d consider it underrated. It’s a solid Souls game and having a great time with it.
Well.. not sure that’s the right way to describe the experience. I’m not a masochist. Dying over and over to gangs of enemies in a dark and depressing world shouldn’t be considered a good time, but somehow I like it. 😄

@purple_mouse_gaming Regarding Bloodborne for beginners — If there’s something I’d suggest it would be don’t hesitate to ask for help or consult online guides. Especially the first area is really tough and can immediately put people off. There’s some sound advice that can get you through those opening hours (which I’ll not go into detail here) that the game doesn’t really tell you so just a few little pieces of information can make a big difference if you are able to give it the proper time before feeling like it’s not for you.

It was my first FromSoft game and it was tough in the early going but became one of my very favorite PS4 games.

Really enjoy my Portal. I mostly reserve it for turn based games. It feels great in the hands and very much like a DualSense, but precision input heavy gaming is slightly better on an actual DualSense. Also, for me there’s still occasion stutters, but it’s mostly because I’m not hardwired to my router. A small stutter during Dark Souls can be the difference between victory and defeat. 😅

But overall, I love the device. It has increased my engagement. Works great to play while watching sports, or when you’d rather lay down in bed or on the couch.

@CrashBandicoat I have a similar experience. I don’t remember the Mo-Cap problem (I also played as female), but the game was the first in a sequence of bloated releases for the open world genre. I was really enjoying it, but the game was just too large and long and so I couldn’t keep up with it to the end. I’ve often felt like I should return to it, but at this point it’s so far out of my mind and many other games have taken its place in my backlog that I’d rather spend my time with.

This new Veilguard art style doesn’t really speak to me, but I can tolerate it if the game is good. I’ll keep an open mind also

Everybody’s Gone (…) was a pleasant surprise and one of my platinums. This looks good. I’m neck deep in backlog so I probably won’t click the “Add to Cart” button just yet, but added to the wishlist.

To have a follow up game developed and ready to go in three years is relatively unusual in the industry nowadays. Kudos if they can hit that target.

@Ergoshotz Firewalk and Haven have games coming out imminently, especially Firewalk with Concord. Both games are live service oriented so it all depends how those perform. I’m worried about both of them, but maybe there’s another Helldivers lighting to catch in a bottle for one or both of them. Of the two, I think Firewalk is more susceptible to closure.

As for Media Molecule, I think they might be the biggest ‘sunk cost fallacy’ studio they have. The time and energies put into Dreams must have been enormous compared to the weak commercial performance. Sony are in a tough spot with Mm because they have such critically acclaimed award winning talent there, so I don’t think they’ll shut them down unless their current project fails. I’d give them about two years to have something decent to show off first, and if not then probably they should move on. They already had a bunch of layoffs to the Mm team iirc.

Housemarque is a fairly recent acquisition so I don’t think they are at risk for a few years either, so similarly, as long as they are making progress on their current project and have something to show off soon, I feel like Sony will keep them around.

I agree that none of these four studios make a lot of money for Sony, but they each fill a certain void and provide some diversity to the first party projects. The big money making studios make games of a similar ilk so Sony does need to keep some of the less profitable studios if at all possible.

You have me at “If you land the hit, you'll gain back a small bit of health. Dodging is your main source of defence, with no block or parry…”

As a ‘dodge-preferred’ gamer, I’ve been unsettled by all these parry-dependent games lately.

@Americansamurai1 Simultaneously posted the same thought! 😄

@Korgon Dang, Folklore - that is a really deep cut. 😄 I really liked that game.

I’d love to see some of the less popular characters make an appearance. How cool would it be to get Trico or The Boy, or Ash, Conner, Kat, and Sir Galahad!

I wonder if these will be limited to Sony first and second party or if they will get permission to put in third party characters like the did with Big Daddy in PlayStation All-Stars.

We’re sure to get Nathan Drake, Ellie, Kratos, Aloy, Spider-Man, etc.

@EfYI Cheers, mate. 🍻 Unfortunately, justice appears to be in short supply in our universe at the moment. 😛 Thank you though!

@Mostik 😅 Thanks, buddy. Conflicting inner monologues come quite naturally for me.

LOGIC

[High: Success] It would certainly make sense that the chance of an expansion game to succeed financially is low, statistically speaking.

VOLITION

[High: Failure] But it hurts so much when it could have been so critically acclaimed!

DRAMA

[Low: Success] The pain! Oh, the pain!

INLAND EMPIRE
[Medium: Success] The video game industry is teasing you, manipulating you, purposefully torturing you. Haven’t you noticed? You are a puppet on the stage of life. Flailing, crumbling, splintering in a sea of mathematical nothingness. Embrace the psychedelic non-existence of the pale.

Hardcore to the MEGA!

@rjejr “Discordinating”? 😂 Is that real? If so that’s so brilliant. So close to dis-coordinating, which is kind of what it sounds like the platform actually does.

I am both surprised and not surprised by these statements from Miyazaki. I haven’t played Elden Ring yet, but it does look like an attempt to make the genre more approachable and “organic” to play at one’s own pace and preferred structure. By the same token, Demon’s Souls appears to be the least forgiving in regard to how you approach the game and what order you would choose to do things.

For me, online walkthroughs, boss guides, build guides, and wikis to explain the games’ terms, mechanics, maps, structure, and various systems and nuances are absolutely essential. They really have enhanced my enjoyment of the series. My first FromSoft game was Dark Souls on PS3 and I lasted about 3-4 hours maybe before I just gave up, partially because of the difficulty, but partially because of the lack of guidance to make progress through the game. I didn’t touch their games again until I played Bloodborne several years later. That first area is brutal and the only way I made it through to the first opportunity to level up was through online help on the forums here on Push Square. Advice from players taught me to just run past enemies, engage with the boss, and wake up the doll so I could start farming for echoes and leveling up to be strong enough to beat Cleric Beast. Later on, I finally searched and found the fountain of information online that I continued to access throughout my playthrough with Bloodborne and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it and still hold it as one of my favorite games of all time.

Subsequently I have gone back to Dark Souls 1 and played to completion with online guide assistance and recognize it for the masterpiece that it is also. Same for Demon’s Souls and now I’m currently playing Dark Souls 2. Absolutely love these games and I would have totally missed out if I hadn’t sought online help. Next will be Dark Souls 3 and then finally Elden Ring.

And I feel no shame in using all online support, even cheeses. My philosophy is that the game is cheesing me (enemies you can’t see around the corner jumping out and knocking you off a cliff, enemies hitting you through a wall, and all the various other cheap deaths) so I feel justified to cheese it.

I like me a good character creator and deep companion and squad management.

I thought the promotional footage they showed looked really good, but this is concerning. Watching a game and playing a game are certainly two independent experiences.

Honestly, I don’t spend much time at the Home Screen and I find most of the content there completely useless and arbitrary. And I guess that’s what the point of this article is, that however they do it, Sony needs a better way to algorithmically show people information that interests them. Right now I just interpret all the visual noise as advertisements to ignore. Fortnite and COD garbage updates have zero interest for me. And when it does try to highlight something for me that I actually played, it’s from months or even years ago. For example, it’s repeatedly showing me random little promos for Control, which is a game I absolutely loved, yes, but I platinum’d it in early 2021. I’m not going to go back and engage in that game. The still shots of Jesse are eye catching (since I have a crush on her 😅) but to what effect? Now when you have some info on Control 2 then by all means show me.

The system allows you to have “folllowed games” and that is where some of this comes from I guess. Unfortunately the list itself is flawed and going back through and clearing out games from the list every few weeks (because it seems to automatically add games to the list, such as any that you claim on PS+) is a chore and doesn’t really seem to effect what they show on the Home Screen in the end.

Oh man, I’m so disappointed — I was happy to not have any new releases this year that I was excited about and now I totally want this! It looks brilliant. Maybe some GTA meets Starfield meets Mass Effect meets Cyberpunk meets Uncharted meets Hogwarts Legacy…? All with a Star Wars coat of paint. Seems like a huge and rich gaming world.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

2024 is fairly lean but good grief 2025 appears to be shaping up to be insane.

The only 2024 release that speaks to me is Life is Strange, although DragonAge is a wild card. Flintlock looks like it could be interesting too.

But overall, I think there’s a saturation of Souls-inspired, Bloodborne-like settings, and samurai games. Sony has missed the mark getting out any Bloodborne remake or sequel and the Ghost of Tsushima sequel because now those genres are quite saturated.

This seems to be a common trend now — games that are digital only getting physical releases. It’s a good sign to me that perhaps the predictions of the death of discs is a bit premature.

So many of these games have a Bloodborne Lovecraftian aesthetic. Which is fine, but Sony has really dropped the ball not doing anything with the Bloodborne IP. Now there’s too many knock-offs.

The gameplay in the trailer doesn’t look Soulslike to me. More like a God of War-like.

Either way, it actually looks pretty fun. I’ll keep my eye on it.

@twitchtvpat Yeah, most of us know that Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, BluePoint, Housemarque, Bend, Guerilla, and Santa Monica all have projects that would go toe-to-toe with any of these Xbox announcements. But they just aren’t saying anything and I think everything with the Live Service initiative delayed everything and now we’re feeling the effect. So they have chosen to concede 2024 to Xbox, and that’s ok. 2025 has potential to be great.

I said even before this Xbox showcase that as a PS gamer I was more excited about what Xbox will likely bring to PS5 over the next year than what Sony has coming. Now this has made it even more frustrating.

It will be interesting to see if all these big releases end up in more GamePass subs. Because we know Xbox gamers won’t buy anything. 😅

But, as I’ve said before, I’m not starving for content on my PS5. I have a huge backlog and third party has kept good releases coming.

Man, it looks really fantastic. Like Stellar Blade on steroids. 😅 Definitely one to try the demo on though because it looks like it could be difficult for those of us who are mediocre at parry mechanics.

We can only hope that they give us all some free games or credits for our troubles. They’ve done that before with the PSN outages, so we can hope.

I suspect it will be closer to Suicide Squad than to Helldivers 2 on the multiplayer live service spectrum. But will probably land somewhere in-between.

Either way, it’s not likely to interest me. But more power to ya if you like this kind of game and have the time to spend on it.

As I’ve noted before, not much on the Xbox side interests me. I’ve got more than I can handle with Sony’s games and the third party multiplatform stuff.

The only exception is Hellblade II which I’m champing at the bit to play. And maybe Indiana Jones, depending on how that reviews. Although I’m not a fan of first person viewpoint in my action games.

Gears of War and Fable both seem interesting. Otherwise, eh… I mean options are nice, but I’m up to my neck in options already.

Isn’t this a bit like benching your closer, then pulling them off the bench to be the ball boy for the 2nd string pitcher out of the bullpen?

@CWill97 Yeah, probably need to withhold your expectations until after they get Metaphor: ReFantazio out the door first.

As much as I loved Part II, it did drag on for about 10 hours too long. Not that I didn’t like the ending and the decisions the characters made during those closing hours (trying to avoid spoilers here), but the gameplay sections that were placed at the end were just a little too much, imo, for a narrative heavy game. Here’s hoping that the TV show doesn’t overstay its welcome also.

Is Fumito Ueda still making a game? That’s my dream announcement.

I can’t decide if I like the game’s title. “Metaphor: ReFantazio” sounds just cringe enough to be offputting, but I give them props for not calling it something generic like “Legend of the Fantasy Chronicles” or some such. But really, what is a Fantazio and why is it being Re-peated? And of what is it a metaphor?

Thank goodness, it has a fishing mini-game. Don’t know what we’d do without that.

Slightly off subject, but is it weird how the industry gives us remasters and remakes ad nauseaum, especially when an upcoming sequel is involved, and yet there’s no way to play the first Beyond Good & Evil on modern consoles? A lot of these remakes we didn’t really need and certainly didn’t ask for, [cough] Horizon Zero Dawn [cough], but the first BG&E would be perfect for a remake in preparation for the sequel. Many of us didn’t get a chance to play it on previous generations and I don’t really want to turn on my PS3 ever again if I can help it.

Edit: I spoke (typed) too soon. A quick google showed me that a remaster is in the works, so I must have missed that. According to the Wikipedia page, “The official release date is set in early 2024” 😂😂😂. Welp, that’s not happening.
Anyways… at least it exists and appears close to release. So, my bad.

I have some memories of playing one of the Streets of Rage several years ago, so I might play SoR4 for nostalgia’s sake. And it seems to be a solid couch co-op game, and it’s nice to have a stable of those on hand in case people ever show up who want to play together.

It’s a wonder that we don’t have more leaks. The fact no one knows what BluePoint, Bend, Housemarque, Naughty Dog, or Santa Monica are working on is a miracle. With all the employees who have access to this information it’s amazing no one spills the beans

Well, either way, something is better than nothing.. I think?

But honestly, I don’t want to hear about projects that are 2-3 years away, or that are so early that they have a high chance to never see the light of day.

I would say they the normal cadence should be reveal the game at around 12-18 months, give an extended trailer at around 6 months, show substantial gameplay at around 3 months, have a larger state of play with a deeper dive at 2-4 weeks, and then release the game with appropriate expectations.

Of course I realize these things don’t always follow a perfect schedule, but sheesh — publishers are all over the shop here with reveals. Sometimes they tease a game over 8 years out (Hello, Elder Scrolls 6), and sometimes they reveal the game within a couple months of release (Astro Bot), or even less.

I think there needs to be a better balance to temper expectations

@themightyant Yeah, I was wondering if there’s a possibility this will break or destabilize the PS5 version to any degree. I suspect that’s what this testing period is for.

I’ve yet to play through my first run on the game yet. I just messed around with it a little and discovered it’s something that requires my undivided attention, at least at first until I learn the systems. So I put it on hold until I wrapped up some other games first. And also, I knew this update was coming so I figured maybe wait until the mods were available. Although now I’m wondering if I need to do my first playthrough unmodded to get the full effect. I don’t really know how mods work, necessarily. But it would be nice to enable something to help me if I’m getting stuck because I’m not adept at D&D.

I wonder if this is damage control preemptively done to calm the masses when TLoU3 is announced soon. I had wondered if the new IP they’re working on would come before TLoU3, but this suggest maybe it will come out afterward.

I think the other part of this story is that the game is locked at 30 fps even on the more powerful consoles. Every time this comes up we get a backlash of people who can’t tolerate less than 60 fps. Perhaps they are seeing that it didn’t seem to affect sales of Dragon’s Dogma 2?

Really weird that the exclusive interview the studio did was with Entertainment Weekly. EW is mostly about TV and movies. They have a meager gaming column, but mostly they write about gaming and TV/movie crossovers, like TLoU and Marvel stuff. Not sure why Asobi chose to do this with EW.

Finally cleared some time to go back to the Kingdom of Drangleic. So far I’m enjoying Dark Souls II, more than I thought I would. Is it as good as Bloodborne or the first Dark Souls? Well, no. But it’s still great.

I’ve said this before, but since Sony isn’t delivering the goods, I’m maintaining hype right now through the third party stuff. Heck, even Xbox has me more excited of some future games to be coming to my PS5. If they port Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones this year then I’ll be weirdly more excited about what Microsoft is doing on my console than what Sony is doing. That’s a problem.

@UnlimitedSevens 😄 Haha, yes, spot on. I’ve lived through those bottlenecks in other industries. Cheers 🍻 and here’s to meetings about meetings!

@UnlimitedSevens You’re speaking my language there, buddy. I agree. And I like that analogy about construction projects. It sounds like you’ve dealt with building construction contractors and subcontractors and all the layers of people who never communicate or do anything correctly the first time around and take 3-4 times longer to complete a project compared to the estimate. Or any sort of road construction crew who take years to fix a stretch of road and every time you drive by there’s 10 guys standing around watching one guy work. 😂

But I’m sure the game development industry is delayed for other reasons and I know someone who works in the industry is highly offended by my comparison to a road crew right now 😅. I’m sure they all work hard, as I’m sure the road crew is also. But project management is often the Achilles heel to these things and the rank-and-file are spinning their wheels whilst management keeps messing everything up. Look no further than the canceled Naughty Dog multiplayer project to know that was completely a management screw-up and all that wasted time wasn’t the creators’ fault. It’s like a contractor getting their crew to build a road and then canceling it in the middle and trying to change it to a house.

I’m no expert but AI is probably the only hope — Selling our creative souls to AI. Computers don’t need time off and develop things in seconds as opposed to hours, and don’t care if you change their project midstream. 1-2 year game development timeframes will be back, but at the cost of the project’s humanity. Or to return to your original metaphor, we’ll get a replica of the Sistine Chapel, but will we be able to tell? 😄

@Fiendish-Beaver Here’s where I like Sony’s approach — the Miles Morales, Lost Legacy, First Light type of approach of having a lower cost ‘expandalone’ is a great way to treat a quick turn around game with additional content that’s not quite a full sequel. I’d like to see third party explore this ‘in-between’ space a little more. Of course Sony has done the free route lately with GoW Ragnarok, Returnal, and GoT post release add-on content too. As well as more traditional DLC that is attached to the base game like the Horizon games had. But my preference is the standalone 7-8 hour game that is $25-40 to follow up a big hit game the next year or so. And in the case of SM2 I think it’s the worst kept secret that we’re likely to get that again, whether this year or next.

But when millions plop down $70 for the “new” FIFA or Madden, then I guess they’d be stupid not to continue to charge full price.