gonzilla

@Deadhunter I did. It's actually not terrible, IMO. It's a little repetitive, but the combat and traversal is fun, it looks good, performance is smooth, and the writing and cut scenes are great.

It feels a lot like Marvel's Avengers to me, but far less clunky. Same as that game, I can already tell I'll probably really enjoy the story then will pass on the endgame stuff, save for maybe just trying it out.

I've reported about 20 this way, with prices ranging from $2,500 to $50,000. All of them blatant violations. The vast majority are ignored/left up with an automated response:

"We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence."

Only 2 of about 20 I've reported so far have been taken down, all of them reported stating it is scalping and inflating prices of a limited quantity presale.

@1UP-HUSKY Honestly, I can only imagine it'll just be a matter of time until dbrand puts out new covers that are very similar to the 30th anniversary edition, or something better.

@carlos82 True, but the performance improvements are pretty significant.

After I got my PS5, to my friends who refused to upgrade, I'd half-jokingly tell them the PS5 is the best PS4 there is.

For those who said "I waited for the PS4 Pro", well, the PS5, even without a lot of exclusives, is like a Pro PS4 Pro.

@VaultGuy415 Well that stinks 👎 I purchased the game on disc (the Pip Boy/Collector's Edition no less) at launch, and the season pass, then got the PS Plus version years later just so I didn't have to use the disc anymore, and gave the disc to a friend. I guess the penalty for opting for convenience after already having spent hundreds on the game is to be expected to pony up another $20 for the upgrade, when others get the upgrade for free after buying it for $5 recently. Good times!

@zhoont Smart, because this is exactly what is happening I bought the physical copy at launch, got the PS Plus version at some point to not have to use the disc anymore, gave the disc to a friend, and now it's asking me to pay $20 for the upgrade. Good times.

I don't recall seeing anywhere that there were rules as to who would get it for free or not, or that it'd cost money, only that it was a "free upgrade".

I just read that Bethesda said on Discord this was a mistake and PS Plus players should get it as well, so, fingers crossed!

I already own the game but it's asking me to pay $20 for the upgrade, sigh. PS Store license confusion issues I guess. Would have bought it for $5 during the sale that ended yesterday if I knew I would have needed to in order to get the upgrade. I don't recall seeing anywhere that there were different rules for who can get the upgrade free or not, just that it was a "free upgrade".

EDIT: Just read that supposedly Bethesda said on their Discord that this was a mistake and PS Plus players should get it too, so, fingers crossed!

@gipsojo 38% of people who responded, not 38% of readers.

There's going to be some bias too, since people who are playing or plan to, or have some feeling about it, are likely the ones who would visit the page/poll in the first place.

Yeah, they're not dropping anytime soon.

Not saying I like it, but $70 seems reasonable considering games back in the 90s were also $50-60. 30-ish years ago. And prices haven't really gone up at all since then, even though development costs have grown significantly?

Could go down a rabbit hole of "yeah but there's more players" etc., which is true, but a $10 increase, although I don't like it either, doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

@Northern_munkey Because people like you with opinions like yours do things like this, which often end up ruining things and negatively affecting everyone else.

@gipsojo 60fps has been the standard/benchmark since, oh, N64 days? Maybe earlier? Maybe a bit later, around PS2? Around there somewhere.

Even 8-bit/16-bit systems and games largely played at 60fps (matching the 60Hz NTSC standard refresh rate). With interlaced TVs back then, though, 60 or 30 fps wasn't that big of a deal and it wasn't very noticeable. Probably with the larger-scale adoption of progressive displays (HDTVs, LCD TVs and such, "flat screens"), people started to pay more attention and framerate started to matter more as framerates that didn't match the native refresh rate were far more noticeable.

@SpacedDuck VRR probably helps. Also wondering if people are using any kind of frame-interpolation on their TVs (framerate "smoothing" features).

@invictus4000 Completely agree. It's bonkers to me that some of the more reputable review sites are recommending players to play using Quality mode in an action-centric game like this.

I've played in both, and Quality mode looks pretty, sure, but plays super juddery. Performance is smooth as silk and also looks fantastic — in motion, none of the issues they call out are noticeable, and you only spot them if you take a screenshot and zoom in and dissect every detail. I'm playing on a 4k UST laser projector on a 100" screen, and it looks fine. Not as crisp as Quality mode, sure, but not this blurry mess people are making it out to be.

I'll admit that in some of the articles where they highlighted the engraving on the Buster sword, for example, my thought was "that looks terrible" — but when actually playing the game, it's a non-issue and nowhere near as bad as they made it seem.

Drums next please!

@SgtTruth Gotham Knights really wasn't bad. I really enjoyed it, despite it playing in 30fps.

I always felt like it was another casualty of bandwagon hating.

From playing the closed alpha, it felt to me like there were flashes of Rocksteady personality in the storytelling and cutscenes, which I really enjoyed, but the gameplay was clearly an unfortunate result of WB shoving a GaaS model down their/our throats.

It was actually fun to play, I played as much as it let me. Traversal felt fine (agree Harley is the worst of the bunch, but I personally gravitated to Captain Boomerang predominantly and Shark here and there) and the mechanics were tight and played well, but it did just feel a bit hollow and repetitive.. But still fun to play. "Go over here and kill these things, now go over there and kill these things, next go to this other place and kill these things but also protect this thing at the same time" etc.

It's super unfortunate to see a parent company's leadership's poor decision making and lack of being in touch with their demographic affect something so much. I would have loved to see what this game could have been or what other game we would have gotten if it weren't for the GaaS mandate.

No Midnight Suns? Wack.

Up there as one of the best games I've played all year.

Personally always felt like Sony acquiring Bungie was done out of spite or retaliation for Microsoft acquiring Zenimax (id, Bethesda, etc.) and Ninja Theory, not because they loved Destiny.

That being said, as someone who deals with upper management not listening to employees saying "this is a bad idea" pretty regularly, when it turns out to, in fact, be a bad idea, this part especially resonated with me:

Sources speaking to the outlet claim this issue had been flagged to management months before this week's layoffs, with employees begging for positive changes.

Hoping for a smooth transition to new opportunities for those affected by the layoffs.

I'm not sold yet but also really curious about real-world reviews. My primary use case would be using it tethered through my phone (via 5G). Curious to see if latency in this scenario would just make it a non-starter.

@rockodoodle To this day, I have never had the feeling again that I had when I first booted up the Wii U, and vividly remember the moment (which I can't say for any other console/system I've owned). It was a completely novel and unique experience, right from the "home" screen, from the UI through to the sound design etc. Very, very cool system and a bummer it wasn't marketed very effectively.

"While the game handled like a dream..."

I was really looking forward to this game because of comments like this in previews and such, but when I finally got my hands on it, I personally felt the handling was waaaaay too floaty and made it frustratingly difficult to stay on the track, and made the game disappointingly discouraging to play, especially in the earlier levels. I'm no racing game rookie.. or at least I don't think I am.

Did I miss something?

Seeing a lot of comments here re: Gaming Heads losing their license to sell Sony products, knowing it was coming, etc.

I don't see that mentioned anywhere in this article, in their open letter, nor did I catch it in the Reddit thread if it's there. What did catch my attention is GH saying Sony has been paid royalties for the outstanding orders.

Are people jumping to conclusions about GH, or did I miss something somewhere?

Beta signup hasn't been working all morning. Clicking the "Sign Up Now" button gives a 404. Hopefully they fix it soon.

UST projectors FTW! Much brighter/sharper than long throw.

I've been rocking a 100" in my condo (all that fits in my space, but could go much bigger) with my UST projector which supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Super bright and crisp. No exaggeration, looks like a TV for 1/6 the cost of a similarly sized TV. I loves it. Full surround doesn't hurt either 😅

@Stevemalkpus There's a couple ways

Easiest is wrapping the text you want to italicize with underscores (won't let me type it without it converting automatically), so something like (underscore)this is italic(underscore). You can do the same for bold using asterisks, like (asterisk)this is bold(asterisk).

When you edit the message, it looks like it converts it to other tags, but haven't checked what all those are. For italic it converts it to [em] and [/em] and for bold it's [strong] and [/strong]. There's probably more!

@Stevemalkpus Are you being serious?

You do realize that there is literally nothing special or different about Sony's Pulse headphones compared to a regular pair of cans, right? They're just stereo headphones, albeit wireless and proprietary to the PS5. You can experience Tempest 3D audio just the same using a pair of headphones wired to your controller. Exactly the same. 3D audio (through headphones) is still stereo-based.

"3D Audio" is a gimmick name to make people think you need special equipment to experience it. You don't. It's literally still just plain old 2-channel sound when listening through headphones (pretty much any headphones), just using psychoacoustic tricks to make it seem like it's "3D" (i.e., sounds like surround sound through headphones).

But surely you know this.

Ahh yes, the same Zelnick who said they're not seeing any "pushback" from consumers on $70 games, directly followed by what they are seeing is consumers buying less $70 games. 🙄

.....

This dude is either an idiot or just totally out of touch.

"We hear our fans' love for Red Dead loud and clear, and the desire for greater support for Red Dead 2. So instead, here's the original 13 year old game with zero updates that we'll sell you for full price! 👍"

Rockstar are just the absolute worst sometimes.

@djlard Yeah, hearing a TG somewhere off screen and not having it show up on your map, followed by running around trying to find it only to find a trail of gold where it was just feels bad.

I haven't counted but don't feel like I've come across too many TGs in the 100-something hours I've played through the story, unlocking all the map, getting all the altars, etc. Feels like I came across and killed more during the beta than I have in the full game!

@GKT Yup, pretty much. As usual, the "backlash" and "uproar" seems to be from a very vocal minority.

D3 went through how many changes, patches, tweaks, balance updates, etc.? And it's still great fun to play.

People losing their damn minds over one patch to a game that just came out, that was built for ongoing updates and will be supported for many years to come and go through many iterations, is just silly to me.

@Justin113 Yeah, I'm aware, not my first RPG and not my first Final Fantasy. Been playing them for literally decades.

However, "officially" FF16 has something like 11 hours of cutscenes during a story that takes roughly 30 hours per SquEnix. So, conservatively, roughly 30% cutscenes?

There have been videos put up on YouTube recently that have all of the cutscenes stitched together, that come in between 17 and 20 hours total, pushing it to roughly 55-65% cutscenes. The demo had roughly 90 minutes of cutscenes and 30 minutes of gameplay.

Some people may like watching games, but I prefer playing them.

@3Above @danzoEX Yeah, based on the description they gave in the demo of what the Eikonic Challenge was, I chose not to play it. It explained it has powers and items you get much later in the game, which personally, I wanted the experience of finding out about the powers and what they were, obtaining them, and trying them out for the first time to be left completely unspoiled as part of the story/game. So, based on what was described in the demo, I intentionally chose not to play it.

Like I said I'm still planning on buying it because I'm a fan and already have an idea of what to expect, but if I wasn't or didn't, based on the demo alone (just the main demo, not the Eikonic Challenge), I would have been bored out of my wits and unimpressed with the combat, and it would not have sold me. Also, I felt like the demo ended too early, right when it was getting interesting after slogging through a ton of cutscenes with barely any gameplay.

I'm still planning on buying and playing the game and always have, but if I only had the demo to go off of, it probably wouldn't be enough to sell me.

I felt like the demo was 90% cutscenes.. Which, granted, I thought they were good, but the demo didn't really showcase the game much IMO. A lot of the demo felt like a 5 minute cutscene, followed by less than a minute of walking from one door to another, followed by another 5 minute cutscene.

@Uncharted2007 It is.

USA Link: https://tekken.com/closed-network-test

@TheShrunkenHeadsman "It's basically what digital workflow will become 10 years down the line."

Perhaps, however I don't think this will really take off in any meaningful way until people don't need to strap a chunk to their face/head.

Put this in contact lenses or something non-intrusive, now we're talking. Not likely in 10 years, though 😅

@NEStalgia "It's very obvious at the price this thing isn't aimed at consumers or entertainment, it's a commercial device geared toward medical, government/military, engineers etc. As an AutoCAD accessory I'm sure it's worth it's weight in gold. As a $3500 gaming toy it's the best epeen measuring stick ever built"

You would think so At that price point, it doesn't really seem geared towards general consumers. However all of the features they highlighted seem to be consumer features. Why would a business care about watching movies in 3D? Or recording scenes in 3D (I could see some application here although limited)? etc.

Not quite sure what Apple is aiming for here. It seems like a device aimed at consumers, but not at a consumer-friendly price. At that price, seems like it could be aimed at businesses, but they didn't really highlight many, if any, features for business use.

Then again though, Apple is very good at getting their fans to blindly part with their money with whatever they put out, so I'm sure they'll see decent sales, even if it is only from super niche early adopters with money to burn.

@Flaming_Kaiser Literally no different than plenty of other games nowadays 😅 There was the game, game+skins, and game+skins+season pass (all DLC). That's it. No different than countless other games that follow the exact same model. Nothing confusing here.

All of the DLC all came out after the game was released, starting with the Deadpool DLC which came out about a month after release, with the additional character DLCs coming out roughly one month apart since then. There wasn't an abundance of DLC before actual release. Again nothing surprising here.

@Titntin I've seen a lot of people complain about the writing. I found it to be hilarious and brilliant, I really enjoyed it, and this is from someone who typically skims stories and dialogue. I've been really confused why people have been so critical of the writing as it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek and doesn't take itself too seriously, this seemed pretty obvious to me.

Regarding the Marvel IP, I also don't get the hate. Who cares? I found the characters to be written and voiced very well and uniquely, and every character had a very distinct personality which made the relationship building stuff engaging (also something I typically don't care for). Taking the time to build the relationships actually had tangible benefits. Additionally, outside of the dialog, in combat every character had a very distinct skillset which added much more depth to the game.

All that being said, add me to the list of people who absolutely loved the game. I found it to be excellent. I personally put over 100 hours into it and burned through the campaign and all of the DLC and was left wanting more.

First one was cool except for when it wasn't The maps were annoying at times and the combat was generally good but could also be really obnoxious. Everything I've read about the sequel is that they've basically doubled-down on the first one with even bigger/more complex maps and similar combat. Seems like one of those where if you liked the first one you'll really like the sequel, but if not, the sequel isn't much different, just more of the same plus dual lightsabers and more cosmetics.

I'm sure I'll play it eventually once it goes on sale, but not itching to play it or anything.

Personally I really enjoyed the game and put a lot of time into it. I also balked at the 30fps and bought into all the negative press, but after waiting for it to go on sale and playing it (post patches), it's really not noticeable at all and it affected literally nothing in the game. It was more than playable at 30fps and played great. It was a lot of fun, it was gorgeous, combat was a blast, and had high production value.

Sadly I felt like this was another case of a perfectly decent (or, dare I say it, good) game that fell victim to a bad press bandwagon effect and unfair comparisons to other games. It was compared to the Arkham games a lot because...reasons? It's the same universe or it's another open world type game in the Batman universe? Similar (albeit different) combat? Totally different game though, and honestly the lack of mobs on the streets was totally fine and affected nothing, and the crime system worked great.

My personal opinion, but if you were curious about the game, I'd recommend checking it out at least, despite the 30fps. It's a good game and plays great, IMO.

Man, I'll admit I haven't been that big into Tekken since Tekken 3, but Tekken 8 is looking pretty darn good!

@PegasusActual93 How? There's been no gameplay revealed, at least that I can find. How do you know it's anything like Hexen or Ziggurat besides being an FPS with magic?

@Futureshark By far. Followed by Tetris DS IMO.

Sony seems a bit confused. Cross-gen needs to die, if they want more PS5s in households, they need to have more PS5 exclusives to help drive hardware sales.

Then they release an accessory, to the console they don't seem to be pushing very hard, that costs more than the console itself. Of course sales are going to have a bad time. Most average gamers aren't prepared to drop $1k on a console and VR headset, and most PSVR owners aren't going to be too excited about having to rebuy all their PSVR games for the PSVR2.

@Flaming_Kaiser I picked it up for $30 IIRC and thought the single player campaign was a lot of fun. I burned through it. Worth the $30 IMO.

Never quite understood why this game got bashed so much. My biggest complaint was the maps/UI were confusing to navigate and to figure out what to do in the endgame, but the gameplay was there and fun.

I literally just bought a WD 4TB 850x earlier in the week, and installed it yesterday. Now it's $100 cheaper -_-

@Member_the_game
"In this case though it's a strange one, there is an argument that the Nintendo Switch is still current Gen and there isn't a bigger potential user base currently on the Market than the Switch so I can totally see why they would want it available on there."

True, but OTOH, do they really need to make it work on the platform if they can't achieve their vision on the platform?

I know it's not as common nowadays and developers/publishers are taking less risks, but couldn't they just...not release it on that platform? Or develop a slightly different version of the game that's geared more towards that specific platform, like they used to do in the Wii days?

Totally agree that cross-gen needs to end already and isn't necessary.

Starter edition is $20, not $10.

I'm with a lot of others on this one, always been curious about it but not a fan of MMOs or games that I feel like I need to play regularly and don't end.

Picked up Midnight Suns on sale, it's a great game! Really enjoying it.

Sadly this game has flown under the radar for many.

@sanderson72 I've mentioned to many friends, half-jokingly, that the PS5 is "the best PS4 yet".. It really does run PS4 games fantastically, and silently, which is a nice change from the jet engine that is the PS4 Pro.

Jokes aside though, the PS5 has been out for nearly 2.5 years now, stock shortages have basically ended, there really isn't any good justification to keep dragging the PS4 along at this point besides cash grabs.

Even GoW:R, the devs said it was made for PS4 first then enhanced for PS5, which is just disappointing. Just make it a native PS5 game!

By releasing majorly anticipated titles as cross-gen, they're just giving players a reason not to move to the PS5 and stick to the PS4. High-demand exclusives drive hardware sales.