Titntin

I tried Stalker 2 this week as I'm back on GPU and Indy makes me very motion sick. I know many people are loving it, but it's definitely not for me.
I'm back to Star Wars Outlaws. I'm enjoying it a lot and it's a big game, so I'll have plenty to play.

Whatever you are playing this weekend, have fun!

@greengecko007 So much this. One writer here has had a drum to bang and bangs it loudly to the detriment of the entire site....

@TwiceBannedMan I can only agree - even your comment appears to be 'played with' so I can't like it, I can like any other comment here as normal.

@Northern_munkey You too pal! I'm now so fat I can barely do anything but game! It frustrates that personal bias appears to radically change outcomes of what should be more considered picks for a list like this, but that's the experience we get from a prominent writer here. It's why I can barely take notice of many of the reviews here, but it tends to be one person. The site remains a good source of news and a great place to engage with like minded real gamers - like yourself! A very happy New year to you, and all of push!

Good picks dude, results I can get behind.

I'm surprised Push put it on the list at all. It's been clear they have had little interest in this title since it's release..
I think it should be much higher, but this is push - I rarely agree with their reviews, so it's not surprising that I won't agree with their top ten. If I were only here for the reviews, I wouldn't be here at all 😀

I thought I could handle it. But I just can't get excited about earning a material to craft a new dress, so reluctant or not, it's uninstalled.
I can definitely see the attraction and appeal if you can get over that and I envy those that will, but ultimately it's just not me.

Having only recently started Star Wars Outlaws, I'm surprised by just how good it is. So much to explore, such a fantastic vibe.
The story and characters in DD2 put me off playing, they are insulingly bad, but I'll go back and push through that some time.
It was Elden Ring that set the bar for how inventive an open world could be and nothing has touched it since imo. Not even close.

@somnambulance Mate I'm so sorry to hear your wife was in an accident, that stuff can leave you shaken for a while, so looking after and supporting her is absolutely the right thing to do till the shock passes. Sending you and her Xmas vibes and hopefully everything back to normal for you guys soon...

@PorkChopExpress I was the same, didn't know if I'd like it after all the negativity, but given its price point, and that I got £10 in rewards once they reinstated the credit option on PSN rewards, and that I usually achieve 15% discount when I but my psn credit online, it was only £28.50 or so. Now I've experienced it I would have paid more. It's also been improved by some major updates since release, so I'm not experiencing some of the issues that may have held it back. Reports of issues on the pro with pssr are a little over-stated, but you can choose which up sampler you prefer. In reality there's not huge amounts between them, but on the initial planet the original upsampler is better for the vegetation and grass, even if pssr is slightly better in other areas. I hope you get to try it and enjoy it as much as I do! If you like ubi games (secret pleasure for me too) this is true to form, but enough differences and variety to be really fun.

P.S. Is your name from 'Big Trouble in Little China' ? If so, then take applause sir.

Started playing Star Wars Outlaws. I absolutely love it, such a great living breathing world to explore, highly recommend it if you've been considering it.

Whatever you are playing this weekend, I hope you have fun!

@Cry_Zero You'll never understand anything at all if you don't do basic research, in this case reading a few simple Google search answers would give you the information you need.
...and then you have the gall to to call out others for being racist when you have just demonstrated how you judge on superficial info and no knowledge? If you can't see the irony of your own post....

@Godot25 She has left Sony already, and published videos about it.

@GirlVersusGame Well written post - more eloquent than I could manage! You raise many good questions.

Training people to be upskirters, virtual or not is pathetic. What has the world become....

PEGI has been the most ineffective organisation I can remember and has been for many decades - I remember being in their offices a long time ago and they were rubbish then. They were smaller of course, but just as rubbish.

Edit: It was actually ELSPA whos offices I remember being in and having meetings - PEGI came later. I still have the same opinion of PEGI though, and these decisions demonstrate why

Wonderland was the only game by gearbox I could play. Once you got into the meat of the game is was great fun. Can't stand any of the Borderlands games at all, they were written by people who had heard the concept of humour, but clearly hadn't understood it.

@MasterChiefWiggum At that price it's an easy recommendation, both myself and my wife have been really enjoying it.
It took me more than 100 hours to finish Diablo 4 campaign for the first time, so there's plenty of meat there. Unfortunately it was the most bored I've been playing a game for a very long while. Many people seem to love it though, so I hope you will do too!

What a pathetic world we live in... this level of discourse belongs in a pre school playground.

I love wukong, it's a fantastic title and worthy of praise. But this is pathetic and makes me want to distance myself as far from the title as possible. Pathetic losers.

@Fuzzymonkeyfunk There is a toggle to remove some of it under 'accesability'. I also found it helps to switch the objective marker to continuously display so you you don't have to continuously hold out the stupid map. I still got stupidly sick, but hopefully that will help someone who just gets a little headache...
My wife says I got ill cause I switched the Xbox on! She definitely prefers PS, lol 😂

Unfortunately I've been motion sick since playing Indiana Jones on Xbox on Monday and Tuesday and have not been able to play anything else since! It's an awful shame as I signed back on to game pass after more than a year's absence just to play it and was really enjoying it. I'm not the only one to suffer this, there's several others who have posted on Reddit about how sick it makes them. I am very sensitive to it though and my half hour psvr2 experience left me ill and unable to walk in a straight line for 3 weeks...drat.
I should be ok tomorrow though, and am likely to start Star Wars outlaws now we have working options for the pro. I finished Veilguard last week and thoroughly enjoyed it...

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Both myself and my wife really enjoyed Forespoken, you are certainly not alone. It takes about 3 hours before you get all the traversal and magic options that make it so enjoyable, so if you get through the first hours you are likely to have a good time with the rest!
I've given up apologising for liking games others hate, my tastes are my own and have never been influenced but what others think. That might be why I still have my early 80s mohican despite reaching 60 when I really should know better! 🤣

Okami 2. Came from nowhere and somehow really touched me.
Intergalactic reminds me how much I've missed Naughty Dog games.

@DonJorginho
Not at all. Paid that for my 30th anniversary one and was happy to.
Standard colours are £65 @Argos. £10 uplift for a special edition is not even close to insane - I'm not sure you know what the word means.
Shop around and you can get standard black ones in the sales for £40 if money's tight.

This particular design is not to my taste, but I can see it appealing to many. Choice is always good.

Excellent. Possibly the best show to date and some really exciting announcements. We have plenty to look forward too.
Not every award went to my particular favourite, but I was delighted to see Astrobot get it's much deserved goty.

Insane. The game needed fixing, not more terrain there's no reason to drive on. My biggest disappointment this year.

@OldGamer999
What an unbelievably pathetic take. You flip almost every single day and it's hard to take anything you say seriously as you say exactly the opposite the very next day.
Quote from a post you made on this site this morning "Reasons games and my PS5 Pro is now my third party games console and main console." You also appear to hardly play games with ps5 being your most played system at 200 hours? I completed Vielguard last weekend and put 178 hours into that alone....
Quite frankly, why should anyone have any of intrest in what you say when you have no consistency at at all? Please don't ever ask me for advice again as the only advice you will ever hear from me is that you should take up a new hobby.

As for pssr, Space Marine 2 pro patch is a good example of what can be done when a dev takes a couple of days to get it right. It's no suprise that Ubi haven't tested properly, that's why their games always launch in such a shoddy state and they are desperate for a take over. At least they have put this stop gap in place for now till they get it right 😀

@LifeGirl
"just the opinion of a ridiculously small minority"

It would help if had any idea what you are writing about at all.
These awards are voted on by the broadest range of opinions of any awards, with representation and votes from over 100 well known and regarded publications and more than 30 countries.

You can not agree with them of course, but pretending they are from a small minority just exposes your ignorance.

@Northern_munkey Oh man , that sux hard. I'm glad you finally got the net back! Enjoy Darktide!

Approaching end game of veilguard after 150 hours playtime.
I have so many other titles to play, but my head has been turned by indy to the point where I'm about to buy 3 months GP (£22 cheapest I've found) just to play it. Looking forward to trying it.
I probably shouldn't admit this in public, but I want to try a bit of Infinity Nikki too...

Whatever you are playing this weekend, I hope you have fun!

I always enjoy these events despite the negativity from so many. However, it starts at 1am UK time, so I simply won't tune in and will catch highlights when I wake up.
I hope the winners of their awards get more than 30 seconds to celebrate and enjoy their accomplishments before being ushered off to make way for more paid advertising - that balance needs to be kept better.
I'm also hoping their are some good reveals and updates for all systems, so we have even more to look forward to for next year.

@Jrs1 They are, but I'm a sucker for Dirt 5 @ 120hz! So smooth!

@themightyant Glad to hear you are enjoying it! That's definitely my experience too, I'm noticing clear improvements even in non patched titles.
Whilst the odd missfire from teams that famously don't check their games is disappointing ( massive games @ unbi, I'm looking at you), they will get fixed soon.

What a landmark event!
It's not for me, but it's clear there is a massive audience that enjoys it. As long as they are enjoying it, I'm definitely very pro this type of event.
I may be an ex musician and a devotte of real performance and soul in my music, but when so many modern artists mime to a backing track anyway, why not have them mime via an avatar?

Respect to Epic - whatever 'this' is, they are at the vanguard of it and cleaning up.

PS Any tech heads who care for techie stuff, should check this out on a pro, the hardware ray tracing @ 60fps is effective regardless of the questionable aesthetic choices!

Still working my through Dragon Age Veilguard and thoroughly enjoying it. Seen about 10 minutes of what some people might complain of as 'woke' conversation in the over 120 hours I've played so far. It's a really fun game.
I had been playing Avatar and still need to finish it, but the recent update has added an annoying shimmer which has stopped me playing it. If you were to believe the ps5 pro haters it's the pro patch to blame, but my wife is also playing it in the same room on an og ps5 and has exactly the same issues. It's a bad patch.
I've also just bought the star wars outlaws game. I was going to wait till it was cheaper, but ps rewards have reinstated taking PSN credit as a reward and I had £15 available from that and I got the usual %14 credit discount buying it elsewhere. Together with the current %25 sale discount, it was cheap enough for me to jump in. Since the last big update it looks great and runs 60hz with no dips, huzzah.
Whatever you are playing this weekend, I hope you have fun 😊

Another strong and diverse line up, excellent.
If I ever clear my backlog I'd play all of these...

Thanks for all the memories Shu, I've watched it all, you will be missed.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Yeah, drive and stand didn't mean anything to me. Both my ps5s are horizontal and I've been all digital with everything for years now! I appreciate that's not everyone's needs, but I'd rather the machine didn't force me to buy an unused drive and stand and those that need them can buy them.
I don't have an issue with price either. Compared with a cosmic black Xbox at $600 (just 2tb slower SSD, no drive and the same spec) it's a bargain. Compared with my PC GPU (Evga ftw3 ultra 3090 at £2000), it's also a bargain, so value depends what you want to compare with to me.
You are correct though, the reduced PS slim PS5s are extremely good value. Unless you already have a top end 4k 120hz telly, the og ps5 is best value.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Absolutely agree mate. I used to love gaming on PC's well over 25 years ago and getting techy and nerdy about making games run brilliantly, but spent most time fiddling rather than playing. I was a dev, it was in my nature.
Now I just wanna play, so I flop in front of the big telly and play within a minute of switching on, no windows, no drivers, no multiple store fronts, no fiddling with a tons of setting to try and get best performance, just pure simple gaming. I do have a i9900K with 3090 and 64meg of ram etc etc, but gaming on it is a chore so I just develop the odd UE5 asset on it and use it to type replies like this - what a waste!
Pro is the best performance you can get from a console, with no faff and that's all I'm after.

As someone who has bought the machine, and has both a pro and an OG PS5 in the same room, each with their own TV, I can attest that its an excellent investment for me, with noticeable improvement on just about everything I've played. Bear in mind I'm an ex dev, so I've spent 2 decades looking at such differences, so other people may or may not notice and value the improvements. This was clearly a model aimed at the enthusiasts and many will be better served sticking with the OG model which is well discounted at the moment.
But for me, the Pro is a fantastic bit of kit. The differences are notable enough that my wife now wants us to replace the second machine with a pro, as she can clearly see the benefit. My poor wallet

Excellent. We can hope that this becomes the default for such games in the future... I do sub to premium as £10 a month seems reasonable to me, but making these titles available to anyone who wants them has to be a good thing!

What a delightful idea! Thank you guys for doing this

I've never had a better year for gaming - I have so many fantastic titles to play with some very good games still sitting in the backlog despite playing for many hours each day. I've watched this business evolve since inception and have never had such choice and options.
When I thought about all the games I played this year, many worthy of consideration, only one rose to the top and became my obvious choice. It was lovely to try and condense those feelings into a few words and have the chance of sharing them all with you in a 'readers choice article' and I appreciate the chance to do so..

I've no need for a portable, and I don't want Sony using resource to develop one which will come at the expense of more attention on PS5/6 development.
The portal suits my needs for gaming in the home.

I don't use a handheld other than portal and my switch remains docked. I want Sony studios to remain focussed on cutting edge games for PS5.
Given the above, I hope they don't use resources to produce another platform.

Nominations and votes are all provided to the show from all the biggest game outlets and have nothing to do with the show.
If you have an issue with the nominations, then you have an issue with a large number of your peers and not the show that presents them.

@Northern_munkey Totally agree man. I love this game and think it really deserves recognition.

Maybe I expect too much, but I think there's not much on here that's a genuine bargain, which I guess saves me money.
If I'm not buying a game at £70 then it needs to at least half price before I consider it a deal and none of these seem like a Black Friday bargain, it's just another sale like they have all year.
Case in point is Dragons Dogma 2, which has been at that price for many weeks, there's no special deal here. I did buy it last week as if you shop around for your psn credit it works out cheaper and I paid 27.80 once you factor in buying cheaper PSN credit (I bought £40 PSN credit for £34.99 ).
I miss the days of genuine huge bargains on Black Friday, now it's simply a sale like there is on any other day.

@LavenderShroud I don't have the fastest of internet speeds, but I have no issues at all streaming to the PS5. I often start up a game from ps plus via streaming first to see if it's worth playing before I download it and commit the storage.
I'm sorry if you don't have the same experience..

@danzoEX You could say the same for almost any legacy game that's received a patch, yet these teams have made them. Half a dozen Devs required for a few days at most to get a basic patch in place. The development tools make it very easy implement quick wins.
That's why I think it's a strange decision. You are entitled to think otherwise, but it certainly doesn't invalidate my view.