danlk1ng

@rjejr worst thing about that balcony is that there's no way back up, until you beat the guy - I jumped down there thinking I was just exploring a bit, and I had 7000 runes on me - which isn't even one level now but I was lv 20 or so at the time, so that was a lot

I did everntually manage to get the runes back and beat him, but I settled for a cheese tactic (kind of - I pummeled him with the Wild Strikes weapon art, which stunlocked him to death) rather than actual skill

What you mean is "the boring way" to Atlus Plateau

@rjejr generally speaking nothing bad happens at RoundTable hold. You shouldn't go jumping off any balconies without spending your runes first, though

What kind of order is this list in btw? I was hoping it would be in area order so I could just see if there's any I missed in Limgrave without looking at all the other areas — but it doesn't seem to be ordered like that. Nor by alphabetical order, so I'm not quite sure what it's meant to be

@sikthvash wow! I didn't even know about that, I thought it was just their own choice - hence my original comment

@sikthvash the books are even better if you haven't read them - partly because characters in books don't get killed off just because the actor decides to move on... (not got anything against actors who do this mind, it's their decision, just a shame sometimes)

@Jacko11 "made clear" is a massive overstatement. You've given an answer to every comment, doesn't mean you're right.

Just because you can buy a PS5 from some scalper (or some scalper who failed to sell it at massive profit and just wants to get rid of it at this point) doesn't mean you have to. It's perfectly reasonable to want to buy a new PS5 from an actual business, and get an actual warranty rather than just get one from some muppet who's decided "I know, I'll buy something at retail and sell it at a markup. I'm a business!"

Just out of curiosity I checked ebay, looked for PS5's with a "buy it now" price (I was looking at auctions too before, hence why I was seeing PS5 Disc versions at around £450, as the auction wasn't finished yet)

Yes, there are quite a lot in the £450-£500 range. These are all, without fail, the DIGITAL EDITION. The first disc version pops into the list at £520, and then we're back to digital PS5s again. All of the PS5s you can get for £500 on ebay are being sold for nearly a £150 markup. A lot of people want a PS5, but they're not so desperate as to hand over that kind of money to some wannabe Del Boy - no matter how many things you "make clear" lol

For the record I have a PS5, managed to get one at launch from an actual retailer. It's doable, just a matter of patience, persistence and good luck. Scalpers can all do one, they serve no useful purpose whatsoever other than for you to "make things clear"

@Jacko11 just looked on eBay - yes, there are lots of PS5s selling for £450-£500 (and below). Pretty much all of the ones in the sub-500 price range have lots of bids on them (except for a few that are around £500, but for the digital version)

The conclusion isn't "people aren't trying to get PS5s" - clearly enough people are trying, that most of those PS5s are going to be sold. The conslusion is that people are clearly refusing to pay ripoff prices to scalpers, as there are barely any bids on those ones

At the end of the day though, lots of folks just don't want to get their PS5 from some middle man on ebay who pretends "I'm A lEgItImAtE bUsInEsS"

@KundaliniRising333 but.. the article says that GTA5 is getting a performance RT mode, so why are you asking why it can't?

And yeah you're right, ray tracing at 60fps is in fact possible on PS5 (as demonstrated by Insomniac's PS5 outings), but there are sacrifices to be made to get there. Firstly, the performance RT mode in the Spiderman games lowers the number of NPC's (as in the random pedestrians wandering around), and doesn't use as intensive ray tracing settings as the full on "graphics mode" (think it might be called "fidelity mode" but I forget). Ray Tracing isn't as simple as "On" or "Off", there are various different things it can do, and not all games make use of all of them, or to the same extent.

I do completely agree though that GTA5 doesn't need Ray Tracing nor will it particularly benefit from it - but that's not going to stop Rockstar from putting it in just to say "it's got Ray Tracing now". It's not for the people who know what Ray Tracing actually is - it's for the people who are the gaming equivalent of the people who buy "audiophile" headphones

@Texan_Survivor @tameshiyaku @KundaliniRising333 you're confusing the general complexity of games between generations, with graphics specifically. For one thing, ray tracing is an absolute pain in the bum, hence why this is the first generation of consoles that's implemented it. A PS3 era game with added ray tracing isn't necessarily going to get any better FPS than a PS4 era game with added ray tracing, because ray tracing itself takes a bigger toll on frame rate than anything else, even on GPUs that can actually do it in real time

never mind that Elden Ring ad, I'd never even heard of Long Long Man before. Mind blown

@ThePizzaMule in terms of what game it's most similar (other than Souls games), breath of the wild is a really good comparison, even if it's a bit overused at this point. Not so much to do with the game mechanics (no farming for constantly breaking weapons in Elden ring! And BotW is definitely not a souls like), as the fact that Elden Ring's approach to the open world map is fairly similar to BotW. The map isn't littered with tasks, quest markers and question marks - you have the option to place your own markers down but otherwise the map is very minimalistic, and exploration is very rewarding.
In terms of accessibility - you can now counterattack enemies while blocking (doesn't sound like a huge thing if you're not a souls fan but it really is - in previous games you could either block or parry- but if you don't time your parry just right, you get hit, so in practice the majority of souls players don't to to parry. The new counterattack lets you counter after you've blocked the attack, so timing is a lot less crucial), you also get health flasks refills whenever you defeat a group of enemies (meaning you're more likely to want to keep going afterwards, rather than have constantly depleting health + heals), riding on horseback is a huge thing too as it means dealing with groups of enemies is easier than it's ever been, as well as bosses that are out in the open.
It's still a souls game, but it's by far the most forgiving yet, most of the time

@Col_McCafferty you really are determined to hate From Software for what seems to be very little reason (certainly not that you've actually tried the games). Oh well. Hopefully you'll at least still benefit, if other AAA devs finally get the message that open world games with maps full of tasks and question marks are just getting tedious. By far, the most common praise I've heard about Elden Ring is that their approach to making an explorable open world is much more enjoyable than the Ubisoft clones that are in abundance.
Which is exactly the way breath of the wild did it too (hence all the comparisons), but this is the first notable multiplatform example

@Col_McCafferty get off your bloody high horse - the game is doing well, and people are loving it, even people new to Souls games. If you could just drop the sanctimonious trolling for 5 mins and give Elden Ring a go, you might even find that you like it (maybe that's what you're so scared of!)

@Grimwood it's a PlayStation site, so they frame everything as "for PS4/PS5" even if it's a multiplatform game, unless the article is to do with something Playstation users are missing out on.

Of course PC users may well get an "easy mode" in the form of mods, although they'd have to be wary of anti-cheat, unless they're playing offline

@Col_McCafferty the technical flaws really aren't that much of a problem - it's nowhere near the point of being unplayable (although on PC strangely, it seems the only people complaining about performance are the ones with super expensive graphics cards - everyone running a moderately competent gaming rig - as opposed to a 2022 powerhouse - seems to be doing just fine) - it's not even a case of "I insist on playing it because I'm a souls fan, to hell with performance", a lot of people are genuinely loving it.

As for accessibility - it really does give you a lot more options than any other Souls game, it's just that "make bosses weaker" isn't one of those options. For someone who refuses to play it though, you sure do have an opinion

IMO "extreme difficulty" is the wrong way to view these games. They're not great games because of how extremely difficult they are - that's just something that's been blown out of proportion because apparently it counts as good PR when you're marketing to a certain masochistic class of gamer.

A lot of soulsborne players will describe the combat as "fair" - it's not an easy, power fantasy type of game, at least not unless you're going to spend time getting overlevelled for whatever area you're in. Fundamentally, the reason soulsborne fans really really don't like the suggestion that an "easy mode" should be added, is that part of the DNA of these games is that the difficulty of the combat is just something you can't do anything about. I have no doubt in my mind that if Souls games had an "easy mode" I definitely would have used it by now. But they don't. In not giving you the option to change the difficulty, they force you to change something that you do have the ability to change, whether it's a trying new tactic or play style, watching the boss more attentively and picking up on patterns, summon a friend/stranger/NPC, reading a guide online for some tips, finding an easy way to cheese the fight (not preferable for the purist, but a win is a win), or just plain grinding and getting overlevelled.

If what you want is a difficulty slider that lets you make the fight easier, then there are plenty of other games that will offer you that. Souls games don't give you that option, because the whole idea is that the game sets you a challenge and you can decide for yourself how you're going to overcome it - you don't get to simply take the challenge away. There are plenty of other games out there that will let you do that - because those games are more about telling you a story and letting you be a part of it, and letting you decide how much of a challenge you want. Whereas with Souls games, the challenge itself (not "extreme difficulty" - for the most part they're really not that hard, they just require more effort than most games) is part of the point. Like it or not, that's FromSoftware's deal. It doesn't have to be your cup of tea - there are tons of games that do offer difficulty settings, I really don't see why people think it should be dictated that FromSoftware abandon what they feel is an important part of their identity as a developer.

I agree completely with the accessibility argument. Matter of fact, I insist that FIFA should have a "massacre mode" where all the footballers are kitted out with weapons and the objective is to slaughter the other side, because football itself doesn't interest me whatsoever and this is the only way I'd be remotely interested in playing one of these games.

Sammy is right to say that "more and more games include a deep suite of options to allow players to tailor the experience to their tastes" - but it's not enough. Every game should be tailorable to every taste.

[/sarcasm]

For the record, I couldn't care less if From Software backed down and decided to include an "easy mode". But it's very clear that they're not going to at this point (there's a lot that they've done to make Elden Ring more accessible - they just don't give you personal control over your damage output/damage taken etc) - but let's not make out that they're morally inferior to developers who do decide to include accessibility options as a result

depends what you mean by "bosses" - I've defeated a fair number of optional ones by now, but story wise I've only defeated Margit - been having too much fun wandering the massive world

@TheCollector316 personally I find that unlikely (first paragraph) - given that Naughty Dog recently released the uncharted collection and allowed people to upgrade from 1 PS4 game (unless you already owned both of course) to the PS5 version including both games, for a small upgrade price.

Getting a free PS4 to PS5 upgrade might be a bit much to expect, but I don't think you'd have to buy the whole game all over again.

Then again, that's what happened with Spider-man on PS4 (and a few other games but this one is notable as it's a Sony first party game) so it's hard to really know what to expect

@patronmacabre "the 10 hour mark" is incredibly subjective. I'm about 20 hours in and I've beaten Margit but otherwise have yet to do very much in Stormveil castle, I've mostly been just wandering around Limgrave, and having fun doing so.

I'm assuming that you got further through Stormveil than I have after 10 hours, as I can't think of anything else that would have prompted the game to go more "quickly"

They do look good - but I'm using every opportunity to play Elden Ring at the minute, who knows when I'll find the time/motivation to start any of these

Didn't read the whole article if I'm honest, but I concur. Golden Seed is the obvious best choice - for a first playthrough anyway. Second only to a stonesword key, so you can unlock the imp statue before leaving the tutorial area and find that great item that's really easy to get to

@NeThZOR who even mentioned 4K? I'm playing in 1080p (even though my monitor can do 1440p - I can get 1440p at 120fps in some indie games, which is always very nice, but for the most part I play AAA games in 1080p)

I take your point though, in that if the people trying to play on 3080s are doing so in 4K on max settings, that might account for the similar performance issues with a 1060 at 1080p on medium

As hot takes go, this is pretty lukewarm

Of course it's ok to enjoy both (I will, and many other commenters on other posts clearly are too). But no one has time to play both, this shortly after both have released (I mean, some people do but they're clearly madmen). I suspect if HFW was the £50 title and Elden Ring was the £70 one (£60 for the people happy with the blue case- honestly, have they no shame?) many more of us might have dived into HFW first instead of prioritising Elden Ring

@FatalBubbles it's not "unplayable on PC" at all. The frame rate is choppy at times, yes, but it's easy enough to keep a fairly steady 60fps, with a few dips here and there, but nothing lower than 30fps or so (which is what Bloodborne runs at whether you like it or not)

The fact that the frame rates I get on a GTX 1060 (then minimum spec supposed to be able to play the game) is the same as what people get on a RTX 3080 though, is an issue as those guys should be locked at 60fps at all times really

@Matroska a lot of the frame rate issues (on PC anyway) seem to be game related issues rather than hardware holding the game back. I'm playing it on PC on a pretty low end graphics card (I mean, it does the job and it'll play the vast majority of modern titles, but I have to turn a lot of games down to low-medium settings, particularly if they're from the last couple of years). I'm playing on medium settings and I'm pretty much having exactly the same experience as the people with the state of the art, top tier graphics cards - and sure, they'll probably be running it on max settings, but they should really easily be able to do so (I can actually run it on max settings myself, and get 60fps as long as I stay in an enclosed area like a cave, but the framerate plummets if I go out in the open).

The 3080 Ti owners of the world really shouldn't be having these issues at all (despite the fact that I get a little bit of schadenfreude out of it, given the crazy GPU prices right now). Obviously I'm talking about the PC version, not Playstation, but I'd assume that the cause on PS5 is fairly similar given that the PS5 should easily be able to run the game at 60fps, if I'm running it on what I'm using

@Northern_munkey that's cheating - we're talking about games' performance at launch, not running on the next generation console via backwards compatibility, or a remastered version of an older game

@Tharsman I was one of the 3% who bought a physical PC copy. And yes, there's nothing physical about the game itself- the boxed PC copy is just a box with the launch edition fluff (stickers, woven patch etc) and then a steam key on a card.

And even then, the only reason I bothered getting a physical copy is I had some Argos vouchers to use up, otherwise I would have just gotten a steam key from humble bundle

further to that last comment - IGN have a guide on this and they specifically say "you must sit at the Site of Grace to reactivate fast travel. If you only claim the Site of Grace, you won't be able to fast travel" - which makes sense to me after what happened to me, lol

"the latter actually outperforms its console counterpart – albeit at a lower resolution."

That's not "outperforming" in any sense, if you have to lower the resolution

I'll admit that it's impressive, though

Haha this well and truly got me - although I wasn't actually able to fast travel as soon as I left the tunnel, I had to go all the way across the swamp and find another site of grace (Aeonia swamp shore) before it would unlock

In retrospect, I'm not sure if I actually rested at the site of grace in the tunnel, I think I only activated it (whereas I definitely did rest at the second one, and this is when fast travel unlocked) so I'm not sure if that's what triggers being able to fast travel again

@Blacksmith1985 damn.. stay safe, hope this all ends soon (in a good way) and that your life returns to the kind of normality where video games are an option again - not because video games are important, but because war sucks

@FleaBag_11 says who? The ray tracing police?

@Apfelschteiner unsliced bread seems to be where it's at these days - all the fanciest bread is unsliced (or at least, there's the option - all the naff bread is sliced by default). Unsliced bread is the best thing since sliced bread

@Voltan I've seen a post saying it works fine on a 1060 6GB (although you have to tone the graphics down if you want a fairly steady framerate). I'm certainly hoping that that's the case, since I'm rocking a 1060 3GB at present, haha

From soft doing ray traced graphics? naaahhh.. I think we've all misunderstood, and they're introducing a new NPC voiced by Raymond Tracing

@Emperor_Rusty with regards your question "I wonder how you would feel if a game you didn't like got full marks, would you still be so passionate in your view that your opinion of the game has no relevance?"

Absolutely. For example, for all I care FIFA can get 10/10. I don't care what it gets, and I won't be playing it even if it's declared "the perfect football game", not even if it would be accurate to call it that, because I don't like sports games generally. That rating isn't for me, it's for the people who actually play those games. FIFA can be declared game of the year for all I'm bothered. Maybe the people enjoying FIFA genuinely enjoy it more than I enjoy the games I enjoy - it doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly enjoy FIFA

This isn't even about me defending Elden ring's status as "perfect" or "10/10". People can rate it how they like - I just think games should be rated (by publications anyway - not by individiuals) in line with their target audience (and generally this is how they are rated - to the point that people complain bitterly if a game is rated low because the reviewer just isn't a fan of that type of game), rather than whether or not they're perfect for everyone, because they're not going to be

I miss when censorship meant real life oppression and unfair consequences. These days it's just kind of a word that gets used by fragile people who don't get exactly what they want

@suikoden it's marginally more useful than the "Is Horizon Forbidden West Multiplayer?" article but apparently pointing out the uselessness on that article (with some choice metaphors but there was no foul language involved) got me a comment removed for "unconstructive feedback" lol

@Emperor_Rusty but not everyone agrees as to what "a perfect game" is. If "a perfect game" to you is something that absolutely everyone will enjoy, then no game will be "a perfect game", there'll always be someone who dislikes the game, so you may as well just cap review scores at 8/10 (or lower if you want to account for people who just don't like video games at all, for whatever reason)

A much more reasonable interpretation of "perfect", in review scores anyway, is that a game is as good as it possibly could be, within the genre that it inhabits. Racing games don't need to appeal to soulsborne fans, soulsborne games don't need to appeal to fans of turn-based RPGs, FIFA doesn't have to appeal anyone who doesn't like FIFA. FIFA gets a lot of criticism at times, but it's never "this game just doesn't appeal to X" - it's to do with the lack of innovation between titles and the peristence of predatory microtransactions.

You're free to think that a 10/10 game is one that must be loved by absolutely every player who tries it regardless of their personal tastes, but that's just not how they're rated.

@dark_knightmare2 I'm looking forward to Elden Ring - I didn't take part in the network test, because at that point I wasn't convinced I was going to buy it at launch, but I've pre-ordered in the last month

Obviously time (and gameplay) will tell, but I like what I'm hearing about the way they've done the open world, as it sounds a lot like the way zelda: BOTW did it. Yes, there's a big open world, but it's not littered with icons telling you "there's something to do here", prompting you to 100% the whole map (I've been ignoring these promptings for a while now in Open World games, it's just too much stuff). What I like about BOTW is that there's a lot of optional content but there's nothing saying "here's something you have to do!". Die hard completionists can still do absolutely everything if they want, but the rest of us don't have to look at a map full of "stuff I haven't done" whenever we open it up. It sounds like Elden Ring is taking a similar approach to the map, at least

@Emperor_Rusty No.

10/10 doesn't mean "everyone will love it". That's just unrealistic. The rating will reflect how good/essential a game is for the audience that enjoys that genre of game, not it's appeal to audiences in general who might not be a fan of the genre.

Personally I can't stand football games, and I'm not particularly bothered about racing games either - but I don't insist that everyone knock FIFA down to 2/10 and Gran Tourismo 7 down to 5/10, just because neither of them are particularly my cup of tea. I don't even insist that players like myself should be accounted for in the review score, because that's just madness. There are tons of people who just think video games are a complete waste of time (and to be fair they're not entirely wrong, particularly given the number of games that have zero respect for players' time - but here I am, still playing video games), should reviews also account for all of their opinions and make 5/10 the maximum score that a game can possibly achieve? I think you'll agree that that's ludicrous, so don't insist on your personal taste being accounted for in reviews for games that aren't to your taste anyway

I knew within about 20 hours of playing AC Oddysey that while it was a decent game, it was going to be a long, frustrating slog to get to the end of it (not because of difficulty but because of the sheer bloat in AC Odyssey).

You don't have to 100% a game to be able to review it fairly and frankly. Sure, there might be some BS ending that none of the reviewers have got to yet, but if 40+ hours of gameplay is already holding up well enough to get the reviews it's getting, it's unlikely that the rest of the game is going to knock more than 1 out of 10 off the score

This is where I start to regret pre-ordering a boxed edition of a steam key.. Despite the fact that it's a digital game, no pre-load for me!

@CthulhuFhtagn I really hope FromSoft have sorted outtheir server issues before Friday- Playstation users haven't been affected but anyone playing any Dark Souls game on Steam has been completely without any of the multiplayer features for a month or so (I mean, some people have set up private servers but that seems too much effort to me). I can approach a tiny gap between a pillar and a wall without fear of reading "fatty!" and holes in the floor aren't constant being accused of being "giant but" - it's just not the same

@themightyant pesonally I'll probably be getting it from Argos. Not out of brand loyalty or anything - I'm part of a market research group that I get around £10 a month for, not in cash but redeemable for various products on their partner site, and one of these products is vouchers. The easiest way I've found to convert this into gaming money is to redeem it on Argos vouchers. I only actually spent about £10 cash on Elden Ring (and it feels a little strange to be getting a physical edition for PC - but the box will only contain the physical launch edition fluff, it's still a steam key)

I think I can technically spend it at Currys too, but only if I claim Love2shop vouchers, and it involves going into the store whereas Argos are happy to take my online buisness

(I know you can buy from Curry's online - it's the vouchers they only take in-store, at least they did when I last checked)

Definitely looking forward to this, although I'll be on PC. Looking forward to forbidden west too - decided to pre-order Elden ring instead purely because it's cheaper, and I'll wait for a sale on HFW (it's already £5 cheaper at Argos, for both versions - and £55 for PS4 and £60 for PS5 versions at Tesco)

Unconstructive feedback..

Fair enough I guess (I'd elaborate but no doubt it would be deemed "unconstructive feedback" ), although the question remains- who exactly is even wondering if horizon forbidden west has multiplayer at this point?