johncalmc

@PuppetMaster That was the point. I was talking about something totally irrelevant.

That's the problem. I haven't misunderstood - at all - how a visual novel works. I play loads of them. I'm playing one right now. But just being a visual novel doesn't give you free reign to write whatever you want. This isn't a controversial opinion. Books can be too long can't they? Too much unnecessary dialogue? So why can't that apply to a visual novel?

All I'm saying is that these games - and the Ace Attorney series, generally - could use a little trimming of the fat to maintain the pace of the storytelling.

@ArcadeHeroes @PuppetMaster @Foxhound

To clarify, since it's been mentioned a few times - the too much talking thing.

Yes, it's a visual novel. But you can still have too much talking! I play a lot of visual novels so it's not like I'm expecting Halo and I'm sat here thinking hang on why are all these people talking at each other?

The problem this one has - also a problem in other Ace Attorney games, but less so the first trilogy, moreso the Great Ace Attorney games - is that the games have a tendency to get bogged down in conversations that don't propel the plot forward much. Like, you know if Die Hard was four hours long and the extra two hours was just conversations between characters about what their favourite foods are, or which football team they support?

You'd say why is this conversation in here? Yeah, I might be interested to know that Hans Gruber likes Dairylea Dunkers and supports Crystal Palace but what about that fella we can't remember the name of who gets shot in the knees? Or that one who was also the painting from Ghostbusters 2? We don't need to know who the Ghostbusters 2 painting supports do we?

And when Die Hard is four hours it loses it's momentum. The plot has been lost, buried in middling, irrelevant chat. We didn't need it all. We gotta say what needs to be said to get things moving and you know add a bit of flavour and then get the hell out.

It all seems a bit superfluous, doesn't it? We just don't need all that information. And so I guess what I'm saying is, that when you've got a detective story, you've got to have an amount of chit chat as you're finding clues and discussing the case etc. but once you start drifting into less relevant topics over and over, and then repeating yourself again and again and again, and then repeating yourself again and again and again and again, there's just too much talking.

TL;DR ^^ That was too talky. I'm just saying that even visual novels can be too talky if they take too long to get to the point, and the momentum of the story can be lost in the process.

@Coolmusic For what it's worth, I'd played Investigations years ago but couldn't be bothered with emulating/translating the sequel, and I do think the second one is the better of the two. So if you liked Investigations hopefully you'll like Prosecutor's Gambit.

I'm blown away by how quickly they've acted on this. Fair play to them. They could have left it and then put it on PS Plus and crossed their fingers. Refunds is the right move.

I think I've seen half a trailer for this game. That half a trailer and the pedigree of the people making it was I really needed. I'm so in.

The only thing that's really odd about this is that usually things are just exclusive. Like Stellar Blade was once coming to everything, and then it was just exclusive because of Sony Bucks. But here they said it was technical difficulties with the Xbox that made it a defacto exclusive until they sorted it out. Really weird.

I already own Little Nightmares 2, and I don't care about wizard football or silly American rounders so this is no from me.

Always weird when the first time you hear about a game is when it's being shut down. Oh well.

My girlfriend is going to be so excited.

Seems like an odd decision for a demo but this is how Persona games generally start so I won't worry about it too much.

I'm really into this. Definitely one I'm looking forward to.

Hermen Hulst hit the "Break Glass In Case Of Emergency" that gives a green light to a Bloodborne PS5 port the second he saw the Concord sales.

From the outside looking in - I'm someone that doesn't play any multiplayer games at all outside of Final Fantasy XIV and games I play co-op with my partner - I think this one is cooked. By far the biggest problem with the game - again, I don't play these games - is the hideous character design.

Outside of the fun pink haired girl with the pointy ears I haven't seen a single character in this game that didn't make me grimace. It's not that they're ugly. It's that they seem so uninspired. No joke, when I first saw this game without sound on the video, and I saw one of the dudes, I thought this game had a character creator and they were showing me the generic male model before the player made their avatar.

Overwatch has cool characters, even if you don't want to play the game. Even Fortnite has a style that pops. Think of iconic character select screens. Street Fighter II, Tekken, even Twisted Metal. Every character has a theme, an appeal, something.

This looks like a bunch of people wearing garish clothes and little else. Oh, and there's a big yellow cylinder robot.

It's unpleasant to look at. It's unfathomable to me that these characters made it past first draft. I have no idea how anyone signed off on this. You couldn't market a single one of these people. You couldn't make a Funko Pop out of them. It's a mess.

Even if the game played badly, or it was mediocre, characters that people wanted to play as would get people playing. People play all sorts of rubbish for cool character designs. This is the inverse of that. Mechanically sound but utterly bereft of a single moment of aesthetic wonder. It looks like a hero shooter designed by A.I.

I don't think even a stint on PlayStation Plus could save it.

Sammy's clearing his review schedule as we speak.

I'm completely over Star Wars now as an IP and what little attraction I had to the Ubisoft formula has long since dwindled so I won't be buying this. I'll probably end up getting it for Christmas in a few years when it's less than £20 and I can't think of anything else I want for my dad to get me.

The Xbox and SEGA marketing thing has always sat badly with me. I know it's marketing. That's all. But most of these games - Persona, Yakuza - have no identity on Xbox. I'm sure SEGA is getting plenty of money out of it but still. Weird.

It couldn't be any less for me. It looks like a game made by AI using the prompt "Make me an ALDI Overwatch."

It suits Xbox to be as vague as possible on this so I'm not expecting clarity any time soon. Why tell the truth knowing that it could sway a potential buyer into buying a PlayStation rather than an Xbox when you can muddy the water and maybe sell a few more boxes?

There's also a good chance that they don't even know what they're doing yet. I mean, that's evident. Xbox is a mess. But I mean, it seems like there's an internal power struggle going on there with Phil Spencer and Co. wanting to win the console war and Microsoft upper management recognising that it ain't happening and just wanting to make money.

Eventually, presumably, Microsoft will win and everything will be on PlayStation. But for now there's probably still of i's that need dotting and t's that need crossing.

If I can't beat this in like two hours and get the mad dog ending then there's going to be trouble.

Guess that's game of the year sorted then.

@riceNpea Seems doubtful. That's in the Albert Hall.

It's incredible that Phil Spencer ever managed to cultivate the image that he was the one honest exec in an industry gone bad. The man has been talking utter nonsense for a decade.

For some reason the "Well that was a waste of time" under the headline killed me. It reads so disappointed. Like we're not mad Xbox, we're just disappointed. Ruthless stuff.

I'm into this, but we gotta just bring back PaRappa, man. Bring our boy home.

This is the most surprising news I have seen in this day. Fully expected this remake to be rubbish.

I have played Broken Sword like fifty times and I am still totally excited to play it again.

If Square Enix devotes resources to a Final Fantasy XIII remake then this world is truly lost.

I notice that you usually send all the FMV games to me to review but you kept this one for yourself. We see what you're up to, Sammy.

I can't imagine ever watching this movie because the only thing I like about Borderlands is the shooting, but I'm glad they toned down Tiny Tina at least. She's probably the worst character in video game history.

@JB_Whiting For what it's worth, I played the game twice and never experienced this issue at all. Unless I'm somehow not seeing it. Maybe I've lost the plot.

@MB81 There's loads to do outside of main story that's optional - harder enemies, raids, extra dungeons, treasure maps, hunts, crafting, fishing, the gold saucer, and more.

It works in that you play in a world with other players in but you play on your own. When you get to a dungeon you can either play on your own with AI party members helping or use matchmaking to find a party of humans.

I wrote a beginner's guide for the game on this very site.

Yes. A thousand times yes.

The maths on Gamepass never, ever made any sense. It's a last ditch attempt from Microsoft to brute force relevance in the video game space, and it makes no sense financially for Sony to follow suit.

I think they're gonna do some kind of spin-off. Like a Persona dancing or whatever. Something like that.

@Andee Starter Pack requires a sub. Free Trial doesn't but has restrictions. So it depends on how much you care about the restrictions as to whether it's worth the sub.

For me it was always worth it because without a sub you can only hold 300,000 gil, you can't have a house, you can't join a free company etc. So for the sake of £8 a month I just paid it.

But if you don't care about anything like that, then the free trial is a better option because you can play without a sub to level 70.

@NEStalgia You can't, unfortunately. You can do dungeons with A.I. companions but you're required to do trials which you need people for, and the raids between ARR and Heavensward require real people and are mandatory.

And the FF16 thing - in terms of storytelling they're similar. FF14 isn't sweary or bloody, but they both spend a lot of time on political shenanigans etc. and the side-quests/feature quests are basically the same. Obviously the combat is miles apart but FF14 isn't like any other FF in that regard.

@themightyant I personally think it's good from the start. It's just slower at the start. And there's less fully voiced scenes. I think people hear FF14 has one of the best Final Fantasy stories and then they're disappointed because they're not instantly blown away.

That said there's nothing in the A Realm Reborn arc that tells you to expect an all timer. It's just a fine Final Fantasy tale. It keeps getting better as you go and by the time you hit Shadowbringers it's about as good as Final Fantasy has ever been as far as I'm concerned.

So it's not like it's bad for 150 hours and then bang it's amazing. It's good, better, getting really good, and then it's brilliant.

This guide was created for people who've always kinda wondered about Final Fantasy 14, who've maybe thought about giving it a go, but have found the whole thing too overwhelming, or didn't know where to start. It's for Final Fantasy fans that don't know where to start with a multiplayer game, or players that are just curious.

I aimed to cover as much as I could as simply as I could to give you an overview of what to expect, but if there's anything else you want to know, any questions you might have, just @ me and I'll try my best to answer them!

I'd be way more interested in one of these games if they just did away with the whole Mortal Kombat of it and just made a game based on guest fighters. If they can get Conan into Mortal Kombat then why not a fighting game entirely about classic action heroes?

Gimme John Matrix from Commando versus Robocop. Let me see Tango versus Cash. Finally settle the debate over who is tougher - the chef from Under Siege or that shirtless saxophone player from The Lost Boys.

I can't wait for this to end with Max running into that girl from the True Colors one and then they have to team up into a Life Is Strange Avengers but not including the annoying lads from 2.

Gimme those Tekken 2 and Ridge Racer Type 4 trophies baby

It looks like a hero shooter. It's a vile art style. I have no idea what they were thinking.

This was one of my favourite games from the Xbox thing. And I really liked The Artful Escape, too so that's a bonus.

We can't swear on here so you'll have to use your imagination on this one when I say that this looks BAD WORD dreadful. The art style is BAD WORD hideous. It's like the CG video you see for a mobile free to play game to try and sucker you into downloading it. What on earth were they thinking with this?

I am sour about this news.

Sweet! Knew it was worth holding out and not playing it on Switch.

I'm tempering my expectations because the phrase "loosely based" worries me whenever one of these things is happening, and I mean c'mon, they're not going to get Yakuza right, are they? But I'm still super excited for it. Like super super excited.

Oh. Cheers, Phil.

Infinity Nikki. Only really interesting thing in the show. Astro Bot looks cool and I'm sure it'll be good since the PS5 pack in was good. Wasn't fussed on anything else.

I actually liked the CG trailer bit. Like, it didn't look amazing. But I can imagine a fun swashbuckling Uncharted style thing with those characters. The second the gameplay started I was shocked at how generic it looked. It's just Overwatch from ALDI. Awful stuff, but then I don't care about online shooters so I'm not exactly the target audience. Not sure who is.

The only thing I have to say is that the 2016 E3 was better than the 2015 E3.

The only other thing I have to add is that if Sony continues to say so little to its audience then naturally when they decide to address the peasants people are gonna expect them to have something to say. Either speak more and keep people's expectations in check or speak less and only speak when you really got something. They're trying to sit in the middle and pleasing basically nobody.