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@MatthewJP

I've seen the alleged Firewalk Studio whistleblowing, but no idea if it's made up rubbish or not.

Maybe IGN will assign their writer who 'focuses on investigative reporting and stories about how the games we all love get made' to bring us the full story, similar to the Game Science expose?

@Cambrius @glennthefrog The backlash is seen as being so toxic that some wish to apply balance, but just overcorrect to the point of silliness.

It's saccharine fluff to say that everybody at Firewalk is "talented" at their jobs when their product has so many points of failure.

@UltimateOtaku91

Why should the video game production industry be viewed any differently from others? If you put bad products to market — and irrespective of how "good" a game is, low sales/engagement = bad product — there are consequences. Always have been. Always will be. That's the cold, hard reality of existing in a fast moving billion dollar industry where investors front you millions of dollars and expect a return.

This failure is on everybody who had influence on the overall vision, design and implementation of this project. It's their fault they didn't read the market correctly, or get the product to it at the right time to capitalise on trends it was borne from.

It's nothing to do with X or Y ragebait YTer or Push Square forum posters who mocked the pronouns and character design.

@riceNpea Have watched a few YTers play it. Pushsquare wisely giving it a wide berth.

@GreatAuk

We treated video games like futuristic toys back then, to be played with over and over again. We often didn't have that many so replayed the same ones several times. Many of them were also very difficult, or needed to be completed in one sitting, so we could get a lot of mileage out of them before finally seeing the end credits.

I don't disagree with the overall gist of your point, but we definitely got more value from them than the three or four hour single playthrough time.

@riceNpea Hopefully after their Dustborn one.

@GamingFan4Lyf

I agree, hence my post a few above yours.

GTA was the sandbox open world series when so few existed. It defined that sense of freedom in a game, and, of course, did so with an appealling amount of edgy and mature content. I was 13/14 when III/Vice City came out, 16 for San Andreas. I skipped IV but enjoyed the gameplay evolution/characters of V, but thought it nothing special and the formula played out.

Is it just the case that there is a whole generation who've never played a new GTA single player game at launch that are excited to finally do so? As otherwise that trailer didn't look anything too exciting.

I might sound wildly out of touch based upon GTA V's evergreen sales numbers, but I don't understand hype for this game to the extent that we are discussing it permanently affecting AAA launch pricing.

I thought the series was getting long in the tooth back when V came out and haven't revisited any GTA game since I rolled the end credits on my PS3 back in 2013.

@fabio78

Forgot about Wild Guns Reloaded. Will get that when it's next on sale to complete the quartet!

@Waa-Laa

I completed the demo on PC last week and it was alright, nothing special. Many say that's the best part and the game gets a bit meandering, unchallenging and full of dull fetch quests from then on, so I'm not interested in seeing any further.

Glad you enjoyed it, though.

@LastSaneManOnEarth

Xbox is circling the drain: I say that as somebody who's been lucky enough to own every home console, at one point or another, since picking up a preowned Dreamcast in 2001.

Though I went with a GC initially in fifth gen in 2002, it was OG XB I chose in 2004 when I sold all my GC stuff off to buy one (later got a cheap PS2 in 2007). I got a 360 six months after launch in 2006 and only got a PS3 in 2010. I chose a XB1 over PS4 in 2014 and it was my main system until 2017 when I got a PS4 slim and Switch.

I say all this because it's pretty clear I more often than not preferred Xbox over PS, but I led with PS5 this time at launch and picked up a Series S alongside it (upgrading to Series X in summer 2022).

In the past two years that Series X has played The Callisto Protocol, Lost Judgment and...lots of shows on Crunchyroll. When Game Pass games have come (such as Lies of P or A Plague Tale: Requiem), I played them on PC anyway.

Xbox is moribund and the cross PC releases; split SKUs; frequent delaying or skipping of new releases for it (including even Capcom retro collections); and PS5 ports are a sign of that. It's not fanboyism to point out as much.

@RoomWithaMoose

I just don't think it's that deep. I didn't care about the reported tour bus shenanigans about many of my favourite bands whilst growing up; I'm not interested about the troubled productions which undergird many of my favourite films; and I don't care if a member of a Chinese dev team who've made a video game about a magic Monkey beating things with a giant stick said they'd do naughty things with a computer generated female human headed Yaoguai with a serpent's body.

@Oram77

This is gaming journalism, nowadays. You gotta muckrake if you wanna be heard over the cacophony. Don't worry about verifying sources — you got food to put on the table. Push it out to pixel now; check later.

@RoomWithaMoose

No, I really don't. I've no interest in peeking behind the curtain; especially not on the basis of such risible conjecture as that original IGN "expose".

Sounds like yet another attempt to smear Game Science by a gaming journalist looking to put their name in lights. When will they learn that 99.9% of us couldn't care less about any of this alleged behind the scenes stuff even if any of it were true.

Still loving the game and looking forward to completing the final three chapters when I return from a few weeks abroad.

Will add this to the Switch digital library as I already picked up and played the other two Natsume remakes.

Like many millennials, I only really have Mighty Morphin for reference, but Tommy's redemption arc from the evil version of the Green to ultimately the White Ranger was absolutely beloved by most at the time.

We all felt a pang of sadness when we heard of JDF's passing the other year.

I've been planning on getting one since the first concrete rumours, but I'm beginning to change my mind.

• I like black consoles. Current PS5 with midnight black plates looks great. Though I'm sure they'll release plates for Pro, too.
• PC is still my primary platform and I cannot think of anything in the next six months I'll be playing on PS5 that needs the extra horsepower. I was thinking Rebirth, but I don't trust Square Enix to Pro Patch it effectively.

I'm not the first to say this, but you're just paying more to play the game on launch, whilst everybody who refuses has to start it a few days late.

@Porco I know there was quite extensive patching, but last I checked the 360 HD versions running on Series X were still the best way to play 2 and 3, at least. Maybe that's changed.

@Tchunga Don't assume everybody else is playing with the same lazy spammy/ability dependent style as you. Mix it up.

They botched the first Collection. Why would anybody want this?

@Leon_93

Absolutely.

The writer just comes across as annoyed that what they were given to play wasn't in medias res and that made their write-up that much harder.

We don't need the games media to sell this one to us. Can't wait until October for this and SH2.

@DamzFX Who needs a map? The areas are very small. Not like you need one in Bloodborne or Nioh, or any other action combat game with relatively linear level design.

I don't mind the invisible walls either. Give me that every day of the week over allowing you to waste your time in mostly empty padded out frontier areas.

@Splat Yes, very rare digital preorder for me. Give us great single player AAA games, and we will support them.

@PuppetMaster

It's the 'a lot of people worked hard on this' line that I find out of touch. Seeing it more and more when games launch poorly and it's nothing but emotional manipulation in an era of well publicised industry layoffs. Can you imagine a member of the Borderlands (movie) or The Crow remake production crew saying you should still go pay to see them because 'a lot of people worked hard' on them?

@Golem25

The games industry is nascent and has a lot to learn from those more established. I find it remarkable how so many who work within are regularly on social media arguing with potential customers and making a fool out of themselves in view of future prospective employers. I can only guess that it's the largely peripatetic nature of it that emboldens so many of them to run their mouth off publicly.

Concord wasn't a day old, and an animation designer who had worked on the game was on Twitter telling its critics that they were wrong because 'a lot of people worked hard on the game' and dismissed them simply as 'talentless freaks'.

If this is the level of stubbornness that exists within dev team bubbles, it's no wonder they keep doubling down on design choices that run contrary to their product's success after receiving feedback. In my industry we can work very hard on a project for several weeks or months, but if the end result is even slightly askew of the client's expectations, that's all irrelevant and not a defence.

@The_Wailing_Doom

Ye Shu would be a wild two week courtship.

@Old-Red

I've made this point on a few Concord articles now. It keeps being blindly asserted that we should want Concord to succeed if we hope to see more single player Sony titles funded. It's just a desparate, last ditch attempt to sandbag for the game.

I've given the examples of EA, Take 2/Rockstar and Activision, of publishers whose single player output has been affected greatly since they struck live service gold.

@Elitepatriot The character on the right at the head of the article is a perfect example. Woman with a dyed purple afro, John Lennon sunglasses, bright pink lipstick and a Michael Jackson Thriller jacket. All of the characters look like freaks that character creators randomise or users purposefully design to look as absurd as possible.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Probably somebody who digitally preordered Concord and/or believes IGN articles at face value.

I just finished Chapter 3 with about 20 hours of playtime clocked — 9/10 so far.

I'm loving the graphics (best I have ever seen in a game on PC); the art direction (the animations between chapters are gorgeous); the gameplay loop (it's not mostly a "boss rush" after Chapter One and combat is incredibly fluid and satisfying); the variety of the skill trees and equipment upgrades.

@KawakiisaFraud

The common adage for decades when it comes to entertainment has been that sex sells. Whether we're discussing literature, television, music, film or, for much of its history, video gaming. Being part of an increasingly progressive industry, however, today's studios want to think they are beyond this, and are overcorrecting through often grotesque and/or bland character design. I think this is what you're alluding to.

There were 97 people playing on Steam when I checked around midday today, and I doubt it's massively better on PS5. They should pull the plug, refund those who've paid and Herman Hulst — who pushed this project every step of the way — should issue an apology and assurance to the Playstation fanbase that lessons will be learned.

Wow Capcom really know how to make the most of their retro catalogue.

Will be double dipping on the Switch and PC for this too!

Double dipping on Switch and PC like most of the recent Capcom compilations.

@breakneck

Not really. I remember beating Harmony of Dissonance in particular in two days. So short, that one.

Having never played them before, I bought a IPS/backlight modded GBA and (unmodded) DS and all the original carts back in September 2019 and ploughed through all sequentially in about six months before flogging the lot back off again. I rolled the credits on OoE just as Covid was becoming a reality.

Great there's a much easier (official) way for people to now play all six of them on modern systems.

Will buy this (and first Advance collection for either PC for Steam Deck or Switch.)

Currently the 2034th most played game on Steam with 121 players as of ten minutes ago.

Some of the stuff I scrolled past to get down that low including JR East Train Simulator, adult game King of Kinks and Winning Post 9 2022.

Got it on GoG for about £3 several years ago. Scratches the 'once-every-five-years' itch I get to play a classic Worms game.

They've earned the right to expand on their ambition. What a fantastic debut: from a gameplay and technical perspective.

@Hi569

Sony aren't publishing Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft are. I have Astrobot preordered to show Sony I will support their single player games. Earlier in the year I also bought Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade.

Moreover, I bought a single player game last week, although not Sony published: it's called Black Myth: Wukong and I've enjoyed it for 15 hours already. I anticipate buying at least three or four more AAA single player games at full price before the year's out, too

What was your point again?

The Star Wars licence cannot carry water for mid-gameplay the way it once did as Disney has put so many off the brand.

Sounds like one to pick up for dirt cheap in a few years if you've any interest in it.

Definitely next year then. I'm guessing March/April.

@Jacko11

I'm sure Sony would prefer the modest profits from Spiderman to the collosal loss and major PR disaster of Concord.

Its embarassing failure is going to make it even harder for them to launch this mythical golden goose Fortnite rival your entire argument depends on.

@Keyblade-Dan

Yes, it's very rare I preorder games but I digitally preordered Astrobot. Hopefully its success is to the moon so Sony get the message.

I'm on board. Like SH2 remake I'll treat this as entirely separate from the originals, which I can still play anytime.

Does sound like this becoming more and more likely to be a late Q1/Q2 2025 release though. That's ok, Q4 2024 is a little congested already.

@Jacko11 I've given examples of AAA publishers whose recent history has led me to my conclusion. You're just blindly asserting something you hope would be the case to defend the much maligned Concord.

If Concord was a runaway success and proved a lucrative investment, they'd commission three more big budget GAAS instead of single player games.

EA, Rockstar and Activision: once live services began to print them money, their single player output was affected greatly.

This is why many of us are glad of Concord's apparent failure, despite the hand-wringing from some. If it were to enjoy the level of success Jim Ryan and the bean counters at Sony surely anticipated, it would only have lead to a push for more and more GAAS to be produced at the expense of single player projects.

Timesplitters 2 is a classic. Really enjoyed replaying it on my Series X earlier in the year after tweaking a few controls. If you go into it expecting it to control like Black Ops 6, I don't know what to tell you.

Will be playing the whole trilogy on PS5 once they add trophy support because I never got around to Future Perfect back in the day.

Currently 1252nd on the Steam Charts with 352 playing.

Will perhaps buy if Rebirth gets a Pro patch and it's confirmed that performance mode mostly locks to 60 with vastly improved image quality.