Xbox_Dashboard

My favorite part of this train wreck is Rocksteady teasing the Joker for the first DLC. Ya know...after he died.

Soooo...it's a Steamdeck?

Not bad at all. And Certainly a huge improvement or recent SoP's.

I'm genuinely excited for this. The Metro series has fantastic immersion as is. If they can translate that into VR...AND give us Ranger mode...hells ya.

Sweet! I've got 120g's of space ready on my PS5 Porta....errr... SteamDeck.

I swear my Steamdeck is becoming a glorified PS5 portable...

So a bargain-bin knock-off Jared Leto Joker is supposed to tempt us into this doa dumpster-fire?

I am really enjoying No Return. It isn't Factions, but the maps are solid, with decent AI. I had forgotten how distressing the Seraphites whistling is. And then I get a mode with Invisible enemies!? Lev is my favorite with their default Bow as primary. Only wish the additional characters had more skins.

@AdamNovice Iki Island was available on PS4. The PS5 Directors Cut was an odd upgrade which, according to Digital Foundry, was in some ways a downgrade for PS5.

Funny thing about using the Remaster title. You can only use it or Remake once and get some commercial success.

Or Rebirth...
Or Reimagining.
Or Regurgitated....

Wait...people were planning to play Foamstars in the first place? Gonna pass on this bargain bin Splatoon knock-off whether you cheaped on the Art or not.

It's the 'Remaster' in the title. Nothing more. Ghost had a somewhat controversial Directors Cut for 10$ that had no meaningful content added. Horizon 2 and GoW 2 had freebie upgrades. TLOU2 was leaked and then skewered alive by overreacting streamers for how greedy the company is 'this and that'. Most of this is just taking cheap shots at Naughty Dog for having no major releases in nearly 4 years and dissatisfaction in some way or other with the company. It's a lot of smoke really.

So that's what...6 months out till PC release? That's cool.

Ubisoft is taking yet another new direction to try and control our leisure dollars? Whooda thunk?

Pretty much the only must play coming this year.

I held out some hope this game would turn around...but...it...looks...really rough. I can't stand the GIGANTIC RNG numbers for every hit like it's Borderlands or something. The traversal is weird and vertical with not one hero who can fly. Now all of a sudden it's zoomy time. It looks doa as hell to me. They can't even buy off IGN for a cheap 8/10 this time.

Ghost, GoW2 and why not TLOU2 on PC so I can finally ditch the console wars and just Steamdeck it full-time.

@DennisReynolds To be fair I didn't like the Pedro or Bella castings either. So at least HBO is consistent with wanting the hottest talent. Pedro was fine. So was Bella. But they never even sniffed the level of excellence from the game performances of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. There were a couple of truly great episodes. That's it.

Hell, Laura Bailey was Abby's VA. She's 5'5" and at least is solidly built and not at all unattractive. I would much rather have at least some semblance of physicality in the actress who plays Abby

This is old school type casting for an apocalypse show.

Kaitlyn Dever is 5'2".
Bella Ramsey is 5'1".

Think I'll just stick with the Semi decent season 1 that had a couple of truly exceptional episodes when not featuring Pedro and Bella.

Abby is supposed to be Ellies counter. Taller, larger, just as driven. With Supreme motivation to become a force of a woman. No amount of Hollywood-ing is going to be able to fix a solid 7 inches of missing height.

I left FF14 after the 6.0 conclusion. It just felt like a perfect ending to a long story. It's been kind of floundering since then, I'm hoping DawnTrail might perk up my interest, but it's thus far been rather underwhelming. I had kind of hoped they would dip back into the Shard worlds instead of just focusing on Eorzea and the source. Maybe this is a stepping stone to that. Shadowbringers is still my favorite peak FF14 experience.

I've grown too frustrated with the state of Overwatch so I'm trying to finish up FF7 Remake and the Intermission. Far more relaxing!

New guard, same as the old guard. You would think after the big NFT loss they would know better than to bet heavily on new tech. Granted AI is gonna be in everything virtual more sooner than later. But creativity is not AI's strong suit. Which is a lot of Squ-enix' bread and butter.

@Jswift56 agreed. But minor correction...'IS' stellar. And it still has a regular player base on PS4.
R.I.P. PS3 factions.

Kratos made us sad.

QQ.

They should have gone back to back with GoW Valhalla and the Echoes expansion pack. Pretty much break the internet and PSN.

I didn't get into Rise nearly to the level I hit World. I'm back to playing it again now. This should be good timing after the light coming year.

This is the first I've ever watched it. In one of the best game years ever. Glad I did. Sony almost won by default with the GoW free DLC and FF16 DLC. Really good show overall. Everyone who won felt deserved. I even enjoyed the presenters and world premieres. Little long...but it was great.

Take my 10 Bucks already! Where's the 10 Bucks hole at?...wait...

Worth it for 10 bucks.

And here is what I've always feared with DRM. You are ALWAYS AND ONLY buying a license to watch or play whatever it is. The second anything gets killed, especially when streaming is required, that purchase becomes a waste of money.

I think Xbox would be far more successful as a publisher and service provider than just a simple closed fence type console manufacturer.

All these patches just remove any desire for me to get the physical version.

All hail our glorious Live Service future customers! This isn't surprising in the least.

Ok. I agree with all your points. Good article. But here's the thing, what's happening in the next year and a half? TLOU2 Remastered? That's 10 bucks. Wolverine? Early 2025 at best. Horizon 3? Late 2025/early 2026 if we're lucky. Jim Ryan retires at the end of March, that leaves a major leadership hole, irregardless if we like him or not. There's a gigantic hole in upcoming software, ESPECIALLY exclusive to Sony.

I say this not as criticism, but that it's an opportunity for Sony. They have a VERY viable, largely unused historical library across 3 consoles that's been barely touched. Hopefully they take advantage of this and build some decent emulators for PS5 and resurrect the ridiculous library of titles. I would even pay for them just to have one Mega Playstation that can play 30 years of titles. Back compat is the one and only area where Sony pales in comparison to either Xbox or Nintendo. It's time for Sony to take advantage of that. We ALL LOVE Sony's history in gaming, now give it to back to us.

So Embracer group is now the FTX of publishing houses? Did they have any intention of these big announcements? Or just to buy half of Squ-Enix and shut down most of the studios. Good lord what a catastrophe. Just garage sale the studios to real publishers so folks can keep their jobs.

Well that's the biggest no Brainer 10 Bucks I'll spend.

So happy there's an upgrade path.

Just give us an upgrade path. That's all I ask.

This seems a bit premature. The rest of the list mentioned have multiple decades of work. Druckman has a few games under his belt and hasn't put out anything in 3 years. The last being highly divisive.

This transition from single player stand alone games to everything being a live service, battle-pass, always-online game is like watching a slow motion train wreck.

It's been going on forever, there's no end in sight and it's all tragic.

Live service, always online, battle-pass...3 terms in one game that are all negative to me. Pass. IF they enable an offline single player with couch co-op...maybe. The gameplay still looks bland and boring.

Oh it's Ubisoft. That explains that. Didn't care much about this anyway. Now it's in the never care pile.

ND has lost a LOOOOT of talent since TLoU 2 came out. That's no bueno. I get this eery feeling Ole Jimbo saw the writing on the wall with Sony and called it a day. Doesn't look so great for the immediate future.

How is Sony this ignorant of market conditions? There's a multitude of Live Service games that haven't last 1 YEAR! In the past Year! Unless it's a fully committed MMO complete with a subscription model of some heavily estabished IP like say the Horizon or Sony Spiderman universe, I don't see how they can get by on a FTP model. Those rarely succeed. The TLOU2 Factions mode got snuffed by a failing Live Service company that just laid off 100 veterans. This is a terrible direction to go. Xbox is gonna eat Sony's lunch for years. They just bought the absolute Kings of Live Service! Once they rebuild the faith of old pc gamers by reinvigorating IP's like Starcraft and WoW, they are gonna crush Sony in LiveService.

I still miss old Destiny 1. Even with the monotone Dinklage. It was essentially a small MMO. Complete with farming for mats. D2 is...fine. I guess. I put a rough 500 hours into D1, but barely 100 in Destiny 2. The ever verse nonsense and the complete lack of need to keep up with my gear score prevent me from giving a crap. Don't worry, I'll still have a decent baseline score next expansion. Let alone the nonsense story.

@NeonPizza direct link is always better for latency. There's no way to argue that. But I didn't care for the included pair either.

@NeonPizza the audio comes directly from the PS5 via the USB dongle, so yes. I'm using the old PS4 gold headset with my PSVR2 and they work splendidly.

@UltimateOtaku91 I was curious on this and looked it up. Depending on which GotY award you are looking at, Sony exclusives have won surprisingly few. There's a few across the board like God of War, but not as many as I expected. Horizon being awarded nothing, ever, for either release seems criminal. Certain awards go way back like BAFTA, but even that Sony only has 5 exclusive wins.

I'm interested to see what happens in 24 when the major Sony Drought kicks in. It doesn't look like any major exclusives are coming (no the TLoU2 remake doesn't count) and there's been a rumor of a PS2 emulator being developed. It's not like Sony is going to put the Emotion engine chip on a USB stick and sell it to us, but a downloadable emulator or somesuch would be a nice addition. I'd even pay for it if there was a possibility of getting PS1, PS2 and PS3 emulators on the PS5. Especially if that meant access to the libraries and the disc's being usable. They have all the data. It's just a matter of executing the idea with a profit in mind. Xbox One developed the Back Compat program out of sheer desperation in year 2 when it was so far behind Playstation. Desperation inspires innovation. And companies rarely do anything without proper motivation. A year of no exclusives and Xbox making up significant ground in the market should do the trick.

Most of the comments revolving around the lack of a physical release instead of an incredibly high review for a single player, offline playable, possible masterpiece...is kind of weird. The only physical releases that might be worthy of our dollars, are complete editions with no download required. Day 1's mean precisely zip. They ALL require downloads when it's a Disc. Even Big N rarely puts out a complete 1.0 that never requires updating. If the argument is for resale purposes to Gamestop or somesuch....gimme a break. I'd rather permanently keep a digital copy than have the possibility of a 10cents on the dollar of the original investment for a trade in. Can we stop nitpicking about a dying chunk of data filled plastic and get back to the most important part? One of the best years in games ever and this is one of the 10's? I don't agree with a bunch of Push Squares clickbait tendencies, but I'm glad to see a thorough playthrough review with genuine insight.

Good thing the OPENING SCENE of EVERY GAME says:

'A Hideo Kojima Game'.
And/Or
Kojima Productions.

Rofl. Konami forgot how to make video games.