Comments 775

Re: The Ascent Update Actually Disables Cross-Play Between PS5 and PS4

TheRedComet

@Jaz007

It depends on the game. A stable framerate with good frame pacing is better than a framerate that is all over the place.

If the game can hold 57-60 fps without deviating, it should be unlocked.

If it’s like AC: Unity at its release, it should be capped. That game never got close to hitting 60 on PS4 hardware and more significantly it was completely all over the place. One second the FPS was in the 45-50 FPS range. Next second it was crawling at 24-27 FPS. Then a solid 30 for a minute. Then skyrocketing back to 50 only to drop down to 20.

Re: Elden Ring: All Patch 1.03.3 Notes

TheRedComet

Have they fixed the framerate problems the PS5 version suffers from?

That’s the only reason I haven’t bought it yet. From games typically run like ass but I was hoping they’d have patched it to serviceable by now.

Re: Test Your PlayStation General Knowledge - Issue 6

TheRedComet

@Anti-Matter

There are some M rated games that aren’t extreme. Give the classic Metal Gear Solid franchise a try. It’s definitely a game for adults with high minded concepts but Kojima’s weird humor permeates the entire experience.

It’s the polar opposite of a game like the Last of Us Part II or Resistance 3, where there’s no hope for anyone and it’s utterly depressing. Although in Resistance 3’s case it ends on a happy note.

But I like depressing subjects. Mainly because I’ve fought depression my entire adult life. After all, I’m a fan of the End of Evangelion. Got to be a little screwed up in the head to enjoy that psychotic depressing nonsense.

Re: Test Your PlayStation General Knowledge - Issue 6

TheRedComet

@playstation1995

There’s nothing wrong with E and E10 rated games.

I mean Ratchet and Clank basically feels like playing a Pixar movie. And Jak 1 felt like a game for everyone before it went really dark and brooding for its sequels.

I think there’s a time and a place for every type of game. After playing The Last of Us Part II I played through Mario 3D World. I needed a palette cleanser. TLOU 2 makes you hate humanity, or at least the version of humanity presented by Neil Druckmann. By the time I was done, I wanted to kill Ellie and Abby. Ellie for being an idiot and Abby for being a total… well can’t say that on this site.

Still loved the game though. But it was nice going through a happy go lucky Mario game after that depressing sadism.

Re: Sony's Cloud Streamed PS3 Games Are Causing a Storm on Social Media

TheRedComet

@Victor_Meldrew

It’s more complicated than you think.

It’s not laziness. It would be an enormous financial undertaking. They would need to build a team that knows Cell like the back of their hands, but are also intimately familiar with the PS5’s architecture.

Unlike with a PC where you can brute force many of the calculations, the PS5 doesn’t have the cooling overhead nor the raw power to perform PS3 emulation like RPCS3 on a solid gaming rig. So the team would need to be capable of extreme manual optimization of code, on both the PS5 side and the PS3 side, to pull it off. It would require every asset the PS5 offers, and they would need to get creative; for example, finding a way to leverage the Tempest audio chip to assist with emulating the SPEs.

And they have to do this without exceeding the PS5 cooling threshold. The PS5 doesn’t run its APU at max clock constantly; it fluctuates wildly based on draw, game needs, and cooling necessities. They would need to take that into consideration as they built out the emulator.

Re: Sony's Cloud Streamed PS3 Games Are Causing a Storm on Social Media

TheRedComet

@solocapers

I think the PS5 could do it, but they would need some hella good optimization in the emulator to pull it off.

They’d have to leverage the Tempest audio chip to assist with SPE emulation. It’s a similar concept to Cell in terms of how it functions, and it wouldn’t be needed for audio for PS3 titles.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the PS5 ran audibly louder playing emulated PS3 games over PS5 games. It would tax the system to max. But I feel like it could be done IF Sony was willing to spend the money and get together the old Cell SDK team from Naughty Dog, who understood the Cell better than the engineers who designed it.

Re: Sony's Cloud Streamed PS3 Games Are Causing a Storm on Social Media

TheRedComet

@Rural-Bandit

The Cell was… A beautiful disaster. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.

Funny thing is that if Cell released today, developers would have a much better grasp of how to use it out of the box. Modern GPU architectures from nVidia and AMD operate on similar principles to Cell; it’s one reason they are unavailable because they are great single instruction number crunchers for floating point operations, making them perfect for crypto mining algorithms. If crypto had been big back in 2006, the PS3 probably would have taken off with that crowd since Cell’s SPEs were built with the same objective in mind; crunch a bunch of numbers repeatedly and efficiently.

Cell came at a time when developers were used to multi instruction processors. It’s very concept was radical and Kutaragi, being the egoist that he was, thought that developers would take the time to learn his esoteric radical architecture. Outside of Sony’s first party studios, everyone hated the design.

But I will say that without Cell, games like Uncharted 3, Last of Us, and Resistance 3 would not have been possible on PS3 hardware. The RSX GPU was weak as hell; the 360’s GPU was far superior. Thanks to the SPEs, Sony studios could off load polygon positioning calculations to them to assist the RSX, as well as performing other GPU tasks like anti-aliasing algorithms. Without Cell, those games would never have released on PS3 with its dog crap RSX GPU.

Re: Reaction: Sony's Biggest Problem Is Consumer Relations

TheRedComet

I miss Jerry Lambert’s fake PS CEO Kevin Butler from the late PS3 era.

That was Sony’s marketing at its absolute best. The ads were both hilarious and informative.

I’d love to see them bring him back for that role. It’s one of the things that helped save the PS3 and made it the cool console to have when the Slim came out.

Re: PS5, PS4 Exclusives May Get Worse if Free with PS Plus Day One

TheRedComet

@Floki

Halo: CE, Halo 2, Unreal Championship, Project Gotham Racing, the only US release of Shenmue II (and the best version of that game), Jet Set Radio Future, MechAssault, Ninja Gaiden Black, Dead or Alive 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, the only console you could play Knights of the Old Republic, etc.

Out of the Xboxes, the OG Box had by far the best line up of exclusives.

Re: PS5, PS4 Exclusives May Get Worse if Free with PS Plus Day One

TheRedComet

@TrolleyProblems

No doubt it helped Sony a lot. I say that because the PS4 didn’t really hit its paces with must have exclusive games until 2016. But Microsoft fumbled the ball so badly before launch in 2013 that it made people distrust them (for good reasons) and then the console launched and spent years without any good exclusives whatsoever. At least Sony was dropping decent exclusives like Infamous Second Son and doing the best port job ever with the Last of Us remastered. Killzone Shadow Fall also helped a good bit in the early days. None of them earth shattering, but they gave gamers confidence that even more was on the way.

Two things really helped Sony with the 8th Gen war. One, they had successfully turned around the PS3 and built a cadre of loyal new fans plus brought back long term PS fans who went 360 early on after the PS3’s disastrous launch (like me) back into the fold later in its lifecycle. It set the PS4 up for early success regardless of what Microsoft did.

Two, Microsoft shot itself in the leg with a 12 gauge shotgun during the lead up to the Xbox One, having already blew a hole in the other leg with a .357 magnum during the later years of the 360 with the whole Kinect fiasco.

The Kinect/Wii people had already moved to mobile gaming by 2013. Then they had the audacity to come up with a super restrictive DRM scheme (that they thankfully went back on, although it can be argued that they were ahead of the curve; I think gamers would be far more accepting of the original plan now, since most games need some sort of online connection just to be playable these days) and most importantly didn’t have anything exclusively worth playing for nearly 5 years after the XBONE launch.

Had Microsoft not bent their actual gamer customers over a table during the last three years of the 360’s life by pushing us away by focusing solely on Kinect and then proceeded to launch a console so disastrous that even the team who launched the PS3 didn’t look half bad, I think the numbers for the PS4 and Xbone would have been very, very close. A repeat of the PS3 and 360 at the end of their lifecycles.

Re: PS5, PS4 Exclusives May Get Worse if Free with PS Plus Day One

TheRedComet

@ATaco

I don’t think Halo Infinite is a good case to use for subscriptions dumbing down games.

Halo Infinite is the way it is because 343’s management has been God awful since the day they were founded.

They spent WAY too much time developing the Slipspace engine that powers Infinite. They’d have been better served licensing a different engine or building on the Halo 4 branch of Bungie’s engine.

Re: PS5, PS4 Exclusives May Get Worse if Free with PS Plus Day One

TheRedComet

@Floki

The original Xbox had a fantastic exclusive library. They came out of the gates STRONG with the OG Fat Box.

The 360’s first half was good on exclusive games, too. Then the house that Gates built tried too hard to go after the Wii crowd and the foundations started cracking.

The Xbone is where Microsoft’s formerly grand mansion fell apart for a few years and it took them a long time to get back to their previous standing. Arguably they haven’t yet, but they’re making solid progress. The Series X will end up with a very strong exclusive library, something the XBONE failed to do for its entire lifecycle.

Re: PS Plus Premium's Classic Games Look 'Great' on PS5, PS4, But Sony's Saying Nothing About the Selection

TheRedComet

@twitchtvpat

I agree, it won’t ever happen mainly because gamers probably won’t ever use it. Sony would immediately regret spending the money.

Even with my PS5, I only have a handful of PS4 games I play. Right now that’s solely Dead or Alive 6. The majority of my active library is PS5.

BC is one of those things where people beg for it, but the stats don’t lie. People tend not to use it. Because of a little thing called time. You only have so much time to game, unless you’re a kid on weekends. Most gamers are adults with jobs. I work 50 hours per week plus I have other stuff I have to do when I’m off.

So even though I’d like to see it, it is something I would only use once in a while. If I’m going to spend the hours on a game, I want it to be a game that was designed for my 500 dollar console. I imagine many gamers have the same issue.

Re: PS Plus Premium's Classic Games Look 'Great' on PS5, PS4, But Sony's Saying Nothing About the Selection

TheRedComet

@OMGitsLiamT

They could do it if they tried and spent the money.

The fan community has built an emulator for the PC (RPCS3) that has 70% compatibility and the games that are fully playable actually run better than they did on the original PS3 hardware. And they didn’t have access to source code. They’ve had to basically make educated guesses and a bunch of trial and error. And new games are being added to compatibility list all the time. They are even capable of emulating games that heavily used the SPEs, like the Uncharted titles.

Sony has access to the original source code for the Cell’s instruction set, there are still plenty of developers at SCE who know the Cell like the back of their hand, and they have resources that the fan community could only dream of. Hell, the PS5 (the target hardware for an emulator) even has a coprocessor that operates similarly to the way the Cell did; the Tempest audio engine. It works on the same principles as Cell (one big multi thread processor core that manages several other small single instruction cores) and Cerny even spoke about how they based its design on the Cell. It doesn’t mean that someone could just run PS3 processor code on it, but I’m sure it could be levied to emulate the PS3’s SPE units to make emulation easier to accomplish and take a load off of the main AMD CPU, since it wouldn’t be needed for audio processing for PS3 titles.

The reason they won’t do it is because they don’t want to invest the time and money. They are afraid that relatively few users would take advantage of it. But they could certainly make it happen if they wanted to and the PS5 could easily emulate the hell out of the PS3: it has the raw power to do it plus the Tempest could be levied to accelerate SPE functions in hardware.

Re: PS Plus, PS Now Merged Service Revealed, Goes Live in June

TheRedComet

@daveofduncan

It’s a bit of a pain to mod PS1 and PS2s to output through HDMI. Plus you need a really good external upscaler like a Framemeister to make it look tolerable on a modern 4K tv. Those ain’t cheap.

The best solution for PS1 and PS2 is the original Phat 60GB PS3. However those things are horribly unreliable and you will pay through the nose to get one. Plus you better have access to reball equipment to reball the RSX or it’ll just YLOD on you constantly.

Re: PS Plus, PS Now Merged Service Revealed, Goes Live in June

TheRedComet

The mid tier looks very interesting.

My question is what versions of the game will be on there? Will Death Stranding Director's cut be available or will it be the PS4 version?

Until I see the launch line up I’ll stick with essential. But if the line up is good and the cross Gen games are PS5 native versions, I’ll probably upgrade.

The top tier sounds good in theory, but I would need to see the PS1 and PS2 library to consider it. If it’s the same crap we’ve had for years on Now I won’t be interested.

Re: PS5's DualSense Dubbed the Best Controller of All Time in Public Vote

TheRedComet

It’s easy for me.

1. DualSense (the only downsides to me are the weak trigger springs and the battery life is terrible, but it’s so comfortable and the haptics are amazing. I also like the adaptive triggers when programmed correctly)

2. Switch Pro Controller (I wish Nintendo would adopt analog triggers, but other than the controller is nearly perfect. And it’s battery life is out of this world.)

3. Xbox 360 (the perfect controller for FPS games thanks to the wonderful analog sticks, that have yet to be matched by any newer controller.)

4. SNES (it set the standard button layout we all use today and it introduced triggers. Plus one of the best Dpads of all time)

5. Saturn (best pad arrangement for fighting games, no contest. I always own an imitation Saturn controller for all my consoles)

6. Dualshock 4 (first Dualshock that was truly comfortable for long play sessions; marred by their terrible reliability and awful battery life; like worse than Dualsense bad)

Re: Poll: Did You Buy Tiny Tina's Wonderlands?

TheRedComet

@RubyCarbuncle

There’s a few tricks you can do to defeat the boss.

First, max out your weapon proficiency to 15 before you go off to face it. This is pretty easy to do if you explore all of biome one and biome 2. This unlocks triple trait weapons. I’d say go for the rocket launcher, but if you can’t find one then the electrophylon is a good alternative with the proper set up. It’ll rip the boss to shreds if you continuously reset the pylons as they dissipate. The Hollowseeker isn’t bad either, but it does require you to shoot while you move.

The advantage of the rocket launcher and the electropylon for bosses is that they are fire and forget. You empty the magazines and maneuver around projectiles, and then reset the pylons or launch more rockets.

Re: This Week Could Be Big for PlayStation, Say Swirling Rumours

TheRedComet

@Rob_230

Both the PS5 and Series X are better future proofed than the PS4 and XBONE were. I don’t see a mid cycle upgrade this generation. There’s no need to.

Especially AMD has all but confirmed that FSR 2.0 will be supported on PS5 and Series X in the near future. Plus UE5’s TSA solution baked into that engine. That gives developers options to run lower resolutions while maintaining high visual clarity and higher frame rates.

The mass adoption of higher resolution sets and monitors (1440p and 4K) caught Microsoft and Sony off guard last generation, and both their consoles were relatively underpowered even in 2013 when they released. So the mid cycle upgrade was their solution for customers who wanted their console to take advantage of their new TV sets.

Re: Xbox Game Pass Inspired PS Plus Reboot Reveal Rumoured with Splashy Lineup of Games

TheRedComet

@Snake_V5

Microsoft is heavily subsidizing Gamepass. Development costs are higher than ever for AAA development. And the third party day and date releases requires them to pay hefty sums.

Eventually Microsoft will need to raise the price if they ever want to actually make money off of it. Don’t get me wrong, Gamepass is amazing. But once it crosses the 50 million subscriber mark I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost jumped up a decent bit.

It works for them because they are worth 2 trillion dollars. By comparison, Sony is worth maybe 200 billion. Microsoft can easily subsidize AAA development. Sony can’t; they need those expensive 200 million dollar AAA first party games to sell.

Re: New PS5 Firmware Update Available Now, Overhauls Parties, Lets You Pin Games, Much More

TheRedComet

@thefourfoldroot

I went for the calendar route. I rotate games out per week. Like this week for example…

Every Day: Fortnite daily quests
Every Day: Dead or Alive 6 DOA quests x3

Tuesday and Thursday: HFW work on post game and trophies
Mon, Wed, Fri: Grand Theft Auto 5 (PS5) do two story missions. After that, play Metroid Dread for a while.

I’ve found the calendar system to work really well for consistently progressing through my games. Some games like Metroid aren’t really made for it, though. So I play it fast and loose with that one.