ZeroSum

"Kuro Games is giving away a ton of free pulls just for logging in,"

Told me all I needed to know about this game right there.

@DennisReynolds this is all sarcasm, right? Some underhanded mockery that most won't get? You can't sincerely be expressing emotional and romantic thoughts!?!?

With regards to the article, having played FF7 as a kid, I was of the mind that Team Aerith was the right choice, but now having played Remake and Rebirth, it's clear the true choice is Tifa. The added polygons told me so.

@Gunnerzaurus oh yeah, my bad. Carry on!

@Gunnerzaurus you and a lot of other people are missing the point that the currency used to buy the DLC is currency that can be obtained in game for free, quickly and easily. Every mission has 200-500 Super Credits scattered around the map for players to find. For free.

I haven't played in awhile, but can you still find super credits by just doing missions, are they not still just spread around maps? If so, what are we doing here? Complaining about armor sets that have to be purchased using currency that you can get free in the game?

@Vovander the Pac-Man episode was one of the more wild and enjoyable episodes, but it's also an outlier - other episodes are based on existing IPs/games, Pac-Man is both based on an existing IP and a yet to be released game - Shadow Labyrinth, so it sits in this weird space of being not a true reimagining (it's someone else's reinterpretation of Pac-Man) and also being a new interpretation to most as not a lot of people know about Shadow Labyrinth. Great episode nonetheless!

I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel like Love, Death + Robots was better.

With Secret Level, Miller has been given carte blanche to tell stories based on various IPs, some of the episodes reimagine and explore different parts of characters we know, while some play it safe and show us nothing new. Take the Sifu episode for example - if you're even vaguely familiar with the core mechanics of the game, you know every time Sifu enters a new fight in the episode, he's going to die and come back older and wiser. And that's the episode. Nothing new, nothing about the characters history explored, nothing outside of 'Sifu has a goal and will die multiple times fighting his way to it'. Its too safe. Compare that to the 40K episode which gives us the forging of Titus, and the Sifu episode looks bland and unimaginative.

Love, Death + Robots though didn't have any existing source material, so every episode had to be unique, to live and die on its own merit, which made it far more engaging and consistently interesting.

Sometimes I think something must be wrong with me...

I see characters of different ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations and appearances, and I just say "oh, cool" and carry on with my day. Is this the wrong reaction to take? Am I void of emotional response? Am I supposed to see a shaved head on a female character and either feel ecstatic or appalled?

I just don't get it. I don't understand humans anymore.

I've reached out to ThiGames for their comment, they make those trash 'jump' easy platinum games, to get their opinion. As they also make games, I would assume they also think they're entitled to win Game of the Year, regardless of the quality of their competition.

I'll let y'all know if/when they reply.

I'd appreciate it if Sony would allow users to hide store content or filter. Give us the ability to hide content based on the developer, that way the low effort chaf developers can be removed based on preference.

The trailer has me concerned. Ciri IS the Lady of Time & Space, she has the ability to go anywhere in space and anywhen in time, but the trailer portrays her as just a Witcher. Just a female Geralt. No sign of the unique abilities that she holds in the books nor even in Witcher 3.

If Ciri is just a regular witcher in this one, that'll be a disappointment.

@Northern_munkey what I really loved about the first one was the social aspect - if you were on any of the main roads, there was always other racers close to you. If you want to the crater there would always be 15-20 other racers around. Its as if the servers were dynamic - you were constantly being moved to a server with people close to where you were vs. every game since that just sticks you on a server with other people, regardless of where they are in relation to you on the map. Even TDU2 failed at that.

If someone wants to make a game that can recreate that, I'd be interested.

@DennisReynolds ended up being tied to an item in the store.

Posting this here incase anyone else is wondering where the points are.

On the left side of the store is a tab that lists the various editions aka founders packs. Find the one you purchased and click on it. Depending on your platform the game should attempt to take you to the store to buy the pack, but automatically close the store returning you to the game with the points and removing that edition from the available tiles.

@DennisReynolds lucky you with your 600 points! I picked the founders option with 300 points but have yet to actually receive the points!

Likely due to server issues between their back-end (pathofexile.com indicates I don't have access to PoE2) and the game itself. Hopefully it gets sorted soon.

Other than that I'm thoroughly enjoying the game! Even though I stumbled upon some frosty hag in the forest that absolutely destroyed me in second...

"There are 9201 people ahead of you in the queue" and at least one of them is likely @riceNpea afk!

If the queue continues to shrink at its current rate of roughly 6 per second, I should be able to login in around 22 minutes.

Idling tapping X when all of a sudden the "Contacting server" message didn't instantly vanish, instead it stayed on screen for 3 seconds before vanishing and giving the "an unexpected disconnection occured" message in the bottom left. 3 seconds... Just long enough to build up some hope!

Well I guess now we riot! Time to flip the coffee table, wedge the controller in the TV, defenestrate the console and set the house on fire!

@Zeke68 I am chill. Incredibly so. Aside from being satirical because we all know a sizeable chunk of gamers are going to react irrationally, I've been playing other things. Did I hope for a smooth launch at 11AM PST as advertised? Yes. Am I surprised at the lack of launch at 11AM? No.

The 1 million watching PoE2 on Twitch right now are the 1 million that can't login! 😂

Here we are an hour and change past the expected launch time and the servers are down for "last minute maintenance". While I can appreciate that this is being done to try to ensure that the maximum number of players can login without issue, I can't help but feel like this will cause more issues, as the people that would have held off logging in exactly at 11AM PST due to the predicted rush, are also now probably trying to login with the rest of us, creating a bigger queue, which I don't think is going to help.

It's almost as if the devs are competing for the worst game launch of 2024 at this point with this "Servers go live in 5, 4, 3, 2, wait no only joking, they're going to be offline for an extended and undefined period of time while we do some updates" approach.

I've been subscribed to the PlayStation YouTube channel for awhile, so I'll just watch the relevant (PlayStation) trailers there after the show has concluded.

Normally I'm calm and rational, but where is that entitled, irrational part of my personality?? Oh wait! There it is!

If I don't get to play this game today at exactly 11AM PST, I'll throw my console out of the window, wedge my controller into my TV screen with velocity, flip the coffee table upside down, burn my house and the neighbors houses down, get into an altercation with the local law enforcement agencies, come online to rant and rave about how unfair the world and life is, and end it all with a sincere "GGs".

Alternatively, I'm looking forward to playing this game today and hope that I don't have to wait long.

As a parent with a full time job, there is ample time where I can watch something rather than play something.

I have on average two hours a day to play something, where as some berk pays me to sit in a seat for eight hours a day, during which time I'll often have a streamer playing on my phone as "background noise".

I remember the day my dad finally went out to pick one up for me, not knowing anything about the games, we grabbed Jumping Flash. I still don't know what that game was actually about!

I remember waiting for the school bus when my buddy said he'd lend me his copy of Final Fantasy 7, I was excited despite not knowing what Final Fantasy was actually about - thankfully by that time I'd managed to nab a GameShark, otherwise no way I'd have come close to beating that game!

And being excited every month when a new copy of PlayStation Magazine would come out, just for the demo disc!

Quite interested in this and I'm booked off Friday so... Yeah, probably will. My only concern is that I own Diablo 3 and 4 but never get far in to them!

@OldGamer999 what does that have to do with NMS expeditions?

As for NMS expeditions coming back, it's a good way to pump life back in to the game now and then. Personally completed the first five expeditions, and unfortunately that made the Golden Vector a bit of a crutch when it comes to new play-throughs e.g. progress far enough along to get to the Anomaly and grab the Golden Vector as a quick/free ship upgrade.

And yes, I know it is my own fault for giving in every single time I do!

@colonelkilgore "The main concern of myself at least will be how games developed from the ground up with the PS5 Pro in mind end up performing."

There won't be any games built from the ground up for PS5 Pro in terms of using it as the base consoles during development. Just look at the PS4 Pro. Games will still be developed with performance targets for the PS5 as the target, and PS5 Pro being treated as the next step if they have time. If the PS5 Pro follows the same track as the PS4 Pro, we'll see a year or two of "Enhanced for PS5 Pro" games that largely have the same improvements that we're currently seeing before developers shift focus on to the next console.

Not saying it isn't worth it, but Pro consoles tend to have short support and short life spans.

"Sophie Turner, best known for her work as poor 2D renditions of what should have been engaging, exciting characters"

Dragon Age: Veilguard.

..but I may play less purely because season 2 of Arcane kicked off.

I went with a Shadow Dragon Elf Mage, 'cause I wanted to be able to call down lightening and do the magics!

@Max_the_German or...

and hear me out here...

You're waffling on about hardware bottlenecks and the CPU not being capable just because, while Santa Monica simply aren't interested in 120fps for Ragnarok even though the hardware may well be capable.

@Max_the_German I like my waffles with butter and maple syrup.

Digital Foundry already did a YouTube video, that PushSquare featured in another "This game runs better on PS5 Pro" article, highlighting that GT7 runs at 120fps at 4K on the PS5 Pro, so I don't know what you're waffling on about but 120fps is very much achievable.

At which point do we stop with these per-game articles and just do one "All games will look and run better on PS5 Pro!" article? 😂

@alienwithin you seem to be mistaken. GT7 is a current-gen game, however it was built in such a way that it could easily be parred down to run on last-gen hardware thanks to PDs game engine. Kazunori Yamauchi confirmed this is interviews just before GT7s release.

A lot of development studios build games using engines that existed in previous generations. The only thing that makes a game current-gen vs. last-gen is wether or not it was built with current-gen as the base, to take advantage of the hardware, which GT7 definitely was.

@Ajfennell77 tempted by Tekken 8, but I remember the days when in order to get extra characters you just had to complete the game...

@Nintendo4Sonic Death Note Killer Within is based on an okay anime series. A demon drops a Death Note from the demon realm into the human realm. The Death Note is a special note book where the name of anyone written on the pages will die. A human discovers this and decides to start acting out his version of social justice. What follows is a series based on suspense as the Death Note holder tries to stay anonymous and various government entities try to figure out who is behind the killings.

Makes up the basic premise of the game - 1 player has the Death Note and can kill other players. Everyone is anonymously and has to try to find out who the killer is.

I played Ghostwire when it was on Extra. While it looks good, it has stuttering, pop-in and frame rate issues in the more crowded areas, making it feel like visual polish was priority for the devs, not technical stability.

I don't really see the fuss.

Anyone who has played Fortnite recently could vouch that the majority of players you'll see in a match are using paid-for skins and items, often from other famous brands like DBZ, Star Wars and Marvel. Shoes are just another item. And the concept of tying in to a known brand for skins and items is also not new for Fortnite.

This is no different than Epic working with Konami to bring Snake to the game (he's in there), it's just Epic working with Nike and other brands.

Firewalk formed to make Concord. In their own words they were staff from other studios that came together to make the game they all dreamed of making. It just wasn't the game that players wanted.

As easy as it is for people to blame Sony, realistically this game was already baking in the oven before Sony purchased Firewalk, and it's highly likely that they pitched the dream to Sony to get their buy-in. If Sony hadn't purchased Firewalk, the game would have still been pushed out, it would have still flopped, and with 9 years of development that costs a lot of money, it's quite likely Firewalk would have still closed up. At least now there is a chance that some of the staff can move to other roles within Sony.

@nessisonett tanking implies it died on it's own merits a la Concord. There are 3 major teams that work on CoD games, each bringing something different to the games they develop.
Treyarch control Zombies and include it in their games, which is why it has stuck around in the Black Ops games. DMZ is unique to Infinity Ward, so Treyarch and Sledgehammer won't continue it. Instead, Sledgehammer tried their own take, working in conjunction with Treyarch in making DMZombies.

Popular speculation and rumor amongst the fans is that when Infinity Ward next get to develop a CoD (CoD 2026), they'll bring DMZ back as it's their exclusive mode.

@nessisonett as someone that played DMZ (CoDs take on extraction shooters), I can say it didn't tank. It still has a healthy player base even today. The reason it stopped being as large as it was is because when the newer CoD launched, Activision cut off support, which froze the game in place - no more updates, no balance patches, no mission resets.

"working with players and content creators."

I'm betting that didn't go over well on the Destiny forums. While I haven't been on there since just after Final Shape launched, one of the biggest and most consistent complaints was always that Bungie caters to the hardcore "no-life" content creators that have all day to play and hone their skills, while average-joe ends up becoming proverbial cannon-fodder for their streams.

Picked up Gris on sale so have been sinking into that. It's such a calm yet engrossing experience. Aside from Gris, decided I wanted something PvP with gun play that wasn't all about jumping around and slide-cancelling as soon as an enemy is close, so downloaded Battlefield 20...(52?) as I grabbed it when it was free but didn't try it. Quite entertaining having sniper battles while chaos unfolds around you.

The problem with Roblox isn't that there are no parental controls - my daughter has an account that has a PIN on it. She doesn't get access to any chat function, no purchasing ability outside of robux that I put on her account, and no access to any content that is deemed above her age range.

The problem with Roblox is that there are no checks in place when creating an account. You don't even need to register an email address and verify it. You simply select a username, setup a profile and password. Any kid with access to a browser can do that in a few minutes, without their parents knowing.

Complaining about this seems a little excessive, given that it's a free rewards program, but I did consider not opting back in just so I'd have 1 less thing to annoy me.

Honestly, I own all of the NHL games in recent history, and as tempting as it is to pick up NHL25 because Quinn Hughes got a cover spot, I'm going to pass.
I remember the brief window of time when between seasons you could just download an update to the rosters, now it's these annual releases if you want your preferred team to have the latest roster. With the changes between games being so minor now, it just isn't worth it anymore.

@Phelaidar as they've apparently closed the book on Killzone, at least it shows that they're a studio that doesn't string along franchises for the sake of it. We know we're getting one more Horizon game to see out the story, maybe they'll be done with it after that and move on to something else?

I enjoyed the Killzone series, even ShadowFall. Disappointed that there won't be any more of them.

In reality, these games weren't made to be the next CoD. They're different games with different styles and different focuses. CoD is all about accessibility - easy to pick up "arcade" FPS where everyone jumps or slides the second they engage an opponent, where the landscapes are well lit renditions of some famous battleground around the world. Killzone was the opposite of that, your class of choice had weight, while still arcade-style, it meant you couldn't sprint around and slide or jump, the landscapes were almost all gritty and often dark, giving you more of a sense of being in some hellscape far off dystopian future. That's what we enjoyed about Killzone. It wasn't a CoD clone, it was never going to sell as well as a CoD game. It was it's own thing. It gave you an alternative take on the FPS genre.

I watched this video yesterday and was quite impressed with the confetti and grass, and then I realized that I couldn't remember what the confetti and grass look like, because despite playing and completing the game, I don't stop to look at confetti and grass.

At this point we really are focusing on superfluous things.

If there is to be no DLC and development has ended, surely that increases the chances of it going on sale sometime, eh?

I'd like to provide an honest review, but as I have no interest in playing the game, I'll give it a 3/10. That's how these things work, right!?

Game releases.
Community work out what works best.
A sizeable number of players use what works best.
Developers review player stats and see a large number of players using the same class and figure class must be too strong.
Developers adjust balance, nerfing what works best in the process.

Players cry.