nhSnork

~95% of my 1200+ item Switch library is third party, so I sure have some biased opinions on what they would need to do for that.😛

The best place to play any game is wherever you have some gaming time on your hands. As such, the living room qualifies less and less the older you become. Few debate the nigh supreme advantage of portability in regards to music and movies, so it's time to acknowledge that it's one of the best things to have ever happened to gaming as well.

Even after trying some Tekken 7 last weekend, I can't help associating Jin and Heihachi with Namco x Capcom/Project X Zone first and foremost. Is that how some people feel about Fire Emblem?😅

Code Vein!😂 Guess I had to be initiated into the "buy a game only to see it hit IGC not long afterwards" club one day, but this being the first PS4 game I've bought in almost five years is priceless. But overall, this "lukewarmly reviewed" game quickly joined the roster of soulslikes I rank high above Dark Souls itself (as seems to be par for the course with the team behind the monster hunting games I rank high above Monster Hunter😄), so it's an objective highlight of the month and, I daresay year anyway.

Granted, that leaves me little to look forward to in these announcements overall - the rest is either on Switch like Minecraft Dungeons and Immortals or multiplayer-focused like Rainbow Six Extraction and seemingly Battlefield 2042 or exclusive to PS5 users like Ghostwire Tokyo. But at least there's Tchia for now.

At this point, it does start to remind me of an old Russian joke whose protagonist sought to borrow badly worn clothes for visits to the local taxation office.😅

@TheDudeElDuderino not to engage in console war flexing, but maybe save some of that snark for when XBSX controller gets a gyroscope?😅

Imagine making PlayStation themed postage stamps only to exclude Tearaway.

Sounds like quite a few delicious eventual followups to the stuff I've been gradually binging like on Switch (Borderlands and Resident Evil, the latter also partly on the laptop since I've come to be a big wuss for the ink ribbons in the Vita-supported originals😏) or PS4 itself (like Horizon which was once my last retail purchase on the platform for years before last month's investment in Code Vein). Assuming they'll last that long, of course - Metro Exodus, for instance, is leaving the catalogue next week and I've barely started the first game.😆 There's also other stuff like Scarlet Nexus and Ace Combat 7 I'm curious to try in the near future although the Extra sub has already filled up most of my hard drive (and PS4's mood swings about the remaining capacity don't help), so time will tell.

@EquiinoxGII and even outside your mind, the original continuity/timeline is on multiple platforms including this the current and last generations alongside VIIR. Fanheads really have no leg to stand on with potential "ruined childhood" jabs, not that they ever really did.

@KilloWertz this generation should be over 120 mln units off the ground on the Nintendo front alone.🤔😅 We may well be a a couple years away from Gen 10 by now, not that it will stop PS5 from selling until Sony curtails its appeal with PS6.

@Ralizah I mean, clearly not everyone shares my binge psychology but it may well be there - even on sales, I have yet to grab Disgaea 4 and 5 (let alone 6) because after the first one it would still make more sense for me to try 2 and 3, especially since those already do exist in portable form on PSP and Vita. Otherwise, performance hiccups or not, Switch is still the best modern environment for indulging in Disgaea's kind of crazy tactical grindfest - and NIS seems to know it.

I've already beaten the original Mafia while Olli Olli World and Evil Dead are on Switch, so not much I see myself actually downloading except maybe the Destiny 2 piece which seems standalone and hopefully single player. But kicking off a new spare account's Extra sub has left my PS4 packed with more overdue stuff to play anyway, and the lineup itself is still pretty diverse.

Well, that was the biggest and longest offering in IGC history as it is.😄

I saw the Stars task for Destiny 2, too. Social media "sources" can shove their "ever reliable stuff", but this here is what I call a legit leak. And with most legit leaks, the source is a simple mundane SNAFU.😅

@Cycologist perhaps it's just a clash in announcement and Stars update schedules which Sony might not bother looking into since it's all technically on the same date. Time and future precedents (or lack thereof) will tell.

@DigimonMonster ..."these days"?🤔😅

@Jayslow on eShop, a preorder is set to charge the actual money with thr designated payment method a week before release date, which usually aligns with preload availability. If it's the same here, said release date getting pushed forward sure sounds like a cancellation cause lest things get more awkward otherwise. Although the article specifically uses the "refund" term... is that a synonym here, or does PSS really charge the full sum out the gate?

EDIT: ah, looks like we've got the answer, thanks to @PikaFyi above for the info.

TL; DR we're living in a world where people unironically treat "leaking" entertainment announcements as a career to have and retire from.

Kitase? Something big? Unrelated to VIIR? Sounds like I have yet another excuse to hope for XIII trilogy on Switch this year. As I've unapologetically done for years.😄

Welp, everything added smoothly. Axiom Verge 2 even started downloading right away for some reason, although I don't quite plan to try it here since it's long on eShop (where I still need to get and play the first one to boot). Might try Fallout 76 this weekend, but I'll be certainly taking Star Wars Jedi for a spin first.

Sounds like a solid lineup unless EA and/or Bethesda decide to pull a lasting E-8210604A on the Russian PSS and leave me with the only offering I'd have no reason to get on PS4.😜😆 But hey, as a still rather peripheral SW fan, facing this policy now would at least feel like a comparatively lesser oof than if I had actually managed to renew back in September for NFS Heat only to have the DW Read experience with it instead. Time will tell soon enough.

EDIT: being me, I managed to forget that Mass Effect is also EA, and that one eventually got added fine. So my wariness may be unwarranted here.😅

E-82106O4A on all three items but I recall getting similar birdflips from one of the June titles which got added properly on a later attempt, so... December's still young, I suppose. At least no page glitches like with Lego Harry Potter which I failed to grab even earlier today, the game simply not having an "add to library" button through the whole month and suggesting to "upgrade the tier" instead.😆

I mean, getting three Mass Effect games at once would be pretty damn neat on its own. Here's to it all controlling well. Even Biomutant might work to tide me over until the long announced Switch port on the same conditions.

@SleepyNick and "old trilogy" is a contradiction here? Gamers sure enjoy assuming that if they have played a game before, then everyone who's anyone has. And outside explicitly multiplayer-focused titles that need all the attendance they can get, how many publishers are even motivated to allow a sufficiently new game on a service where at least a third of the userbase will get it for the fraction of the launch price?

I was cautiously optimistic about getting Mass Effect even before the article proceeded to clarify it's all THREE games in one package. Fingers crossed for decent Vita controls as usual. Biomutant might be nice to at least glimpse into since the Switch version is still MIA, and Divine Knockout... I'm not sure about its claim as "the world's only 3D platform fighter" (Dissidia has entered the chat), but looks neat.

Paradise was an absolute blast on Switch and I'm gradually working my way through the first game on Gamecube but would naturally prefer something along the lines of Paradise. And portable, of course.

Huh, the PS debut overall? Only now? Even NDS had a port of the second game. Well, better late than never.

@Flaming_Kaiser these are all from Kotick's more administrative (if not downright criminal) "portfolio" that most people regardless of their own corruption and fallibility would prefer to avoid by default, if mostly in the face of the respective inhibitors since not everyone has Kotick's lawyer money. But my point referred to the general business practices under his and other CEOs' helm - the stuff that earns them their big money AND normally doesn't clash with the concerned legislation(s). How many of us would resist THAT? Yup.

Am I... missing something in the post's headline here?🤔😅

I'd be a hypocrite to decry snarkily repelling dramatic fanheads (and if anyone should have the money to afford losing a few sales for the sake of leaving the portion of this addict swarm behind, it's EA), but there are smarter and more civil ways to do that, especially at the head of a designated PR account, than juvenile jabs like "milkshake brain". This is pretty much MLPFiM's "Fake It Till You Make It" IRL indeed, even if I concur with the manager's other points.😅

@Flaming_Kaiser there is only so much class about business and commerce in general, and vehemently demanding the opposite in a domain whose output people use as pure entertainment and aesthetic drugs can come across as entitlement indeed (and no, the Maslow pyramid doesn't excuse that). Militant "stick it to the corporate Man" fans repeatedly remind the alleged sheeple in the audience that "corporations aren't our friends", but their words and actions don't often seem like they truly understand or account for this notion themselves. Just like they ignore the fact that in the shoes of Wilson, Kotick & Co they all would act the very absolute bloody same.

Finally bit the bullet yesterday (yes, for the eye-watering 230 BYN that could have swept a delicious lot off the current eShop Cyber Deals, but like I said, at least this means I won't have to divert a similar or potentially bigger sum from a spree next month. Which, come to think of it, wouldn't have been the case if I had successfully resubbed in September, so while I'm still a bit bummed about missing NFS Heat and Granblue Fantasy VS (possibly the only PSE offerings from my recent lapse that really feel missed😅)... all's well that ends well? Or gets off the to-do list for the next three months or so, at least.

For now, there's another trick - I've successfully added Nioh 2 and Heavenly Bodies, but Lego HP Collection page on the console store only shows "add to cart" and "upgrade the tier" (is it the Extra availability that causes the interference?🤔). Not sure how to circumvent this hiccup, but worst case scenario, it wouldn't be much of a loss as the Switch multiplat it is. I was mostly compelled to act this month by Nioh 2 (what with the first one hooking me a fair bit AND proving mostly manageable on Vita), and Nioh 2 I have received.😎

Yeah, at this point it's not that different from those packaged digital codes.😅

@thefourfoldroot1 tell that to the people who sell their used consoles together with the accounts (at proportional prices, of course). Obviously risky and not something the platform owners will condone, but a thing that happens nonetheless.

@mrmartinrohr "No trial with no trial period and no gameplay screenshots or video on the store"

Which is certainly awkward as far as digital game stores go, but not quite a disaster in the age of YouTube. As I often say, we should grab a time machine and go tell the gamers of 1982 how hard we have it here with pre-purchase research.😏

Lego HP is on Switch but Nioh 2 (whose predecessor proved pretty damn fun back when I got to properly play it during a blue moon home week with my PS4) and Heavenly Bodies sound like a possible catalyst to attempt a PS+ splurge again (the September one fell through after the sub card's actual price dragged in yet another third party payment system fee, noticeably exceeding what I had saved up and what I could add on a short notice). Granted, it'll also be the time of black fridays and cyber mondays on Switch, so the battle for the wallet remains. Although like I said before, the alleged save cloud maintenance deadlines would compel me to resubscribe around winter holidays at latest, even despite similarly abundant eShop sales traditionally happening at the time.😏

Clearly because Nintendo has made the consoles so underpow- wait.

These rat races aren't my biz, but I'm honestly with Microsoft on this one. For all their hardware limitations and policy oddities, the PlayStation family are still a legitimate bonanza of versatile gaming experiences for those who can make use of them (which, going by PS4 sales alone, is quite a crowd), including a lineup of own projects. If some audiences were to be lost for want of CoD and literal lack of anything to hook them on the current and past gen hardware... are they even a worthwhile market slice to cling to in the long run? Especially now that the bulk of multiplayer kids seem to be more into freemium BRs these days anyway? And for PS+ online baits, even not counting its recent additional incentives, there will always be EA stuff.😏

Only Injustice 2 isn't on Switch here, but if I ultimately do splurge on the 3 month renewal over the next few days (as September's NFS Heat and Granblue Fantasy Versus have been tempting me to), all three will get tossed into my library as usual. Still on the fence due to the respective region's sub cards costing an arm and a leg now (especially when your local banks gleefully buy Russian ruble for the pre-war ~3.3 BYN per hundred and sell for 4.2 BYN with equal glee - this is Belarus, baby!😏), but I'll have to renew at some point before New Year anyway or say goodbye to the bulk of clouded Vita saves (six months, was it?), so hey.

Reliance on ratings rather than the games' merits is bound to make the list weird anyway (Gravity Rush, Tearaway, NFS MW12... all HOW low here?), but it's still an eyebrow raiser that Soul Sacrifice is listed twice while something arguably even more peculiar among the MH inspirations like Toukiden or God Eater misses out. After all, the only pragmatic reason to indulge with such top charts at all is the spotlight value it can provide in regards to the titles different folks may have overlooked or never heard about, plus a testimony to the ultimately impressive library of what I still consider the best PlayStation console to date. Hot take? You haven't seen hot takes yet - I even genuinely enjoyed Resistance: Burning Skies!😜 But of course, few lists short of the full Wikipedia ones can do justice to everything that arguably bears mentioning on Vita dear - from the likes of Rollers of the Realm, Knock-Knock and Exile's End to the likes of Assassin's Creed Liberation, Oreshika and Odin's Sphere. Many of the gems are still not on Switch and some might never be for variably obvious reasons, so even ten years on, this lovable handheld offers quite a backlog to sink teeth into.

The most tangible attempt to date, credit where due. The design even tries to solve the problems of blocking the typical 3.5 mm port placement on most phones but should still cover the charger port (both being the reasons I opted out of a similar form factor and reluctantly picked up a less wieldy flip holder model earlier this year) which may be an issue if your battery is worn out... oh wait, it's for iPhones only, I forgot their owners aren't supposed to wear the battery out.😅 But even on Android, between these peeves and the price (plus a controller premium sub? That better not paywall the RP compatibility itself) which is guaranteed to get further bloated on import, I'd think twice about such a purchase despite the benefit of a full button set. As far as clunky peripherals go, a dedicated Vita grip is still cheaper and you'll still be streaming your PS4 games to a device that isn't simultaneously busy updating a truckload of messengers, weather widgets and whatnot in the background.

But to reiterate, credit where due. If your phone is the only option for properly portable RP (which, in the predictable yet bitter case of PS5, it pretty much is), this here may well be the best compromise to date, and it could still mean someone's difference between played Forbidden West once a day and once a month.

@tselliot and others like, say, Japanese. Which is why I've mentioned the possibility myself; point is, I wonder how easy it would still be to make this particular kind of mistake while engaged with the medium where titles with the proper "of" usage are an absolute multitude throughout the video game history. Heck, the very model design they snatched is normally associated with "God of War", not with "War of God".😅

Forget PS5s with tickets, the Buss case should be mercifully transparent with its notion that a sports team boss could be promptly DM'd by a crowd like people in the market for a PS5. It's like someone's account hacking prowess somehow marks the extent of their Twitter knowledge.😅

Forget models, how does one arrive at a title like "Zeus of Child"? It's one thing to lack command of a language, but if you're involved with video games, one would think you've come across no shortage of examples illustrating how the preposition works.🤔😅

Solves the holder necessity, at least, but still a compromise incomparable to a proper handheld like Vita in this regard. And if you're an Android user, the peripheral costs suddenly escalate to the price of an iPhone.😅

Honestly, far be it from me to consult Sony on their policies, but between stunts like PlayStation Classic and Chinese third parties dishing out handheld gaming devices by the dozen, would it be TOO expensive and commercially unviable to just release, I dunno, some kind of a Playstation Legacy - two pairs of shoulder buttons, clickable sticks, the rest being a good ol' Vita with optionally somewhat beefier hardware (to make room for at least limited PS2 emulation)? At least three or four platforms' worth of aforesaid legacy content plus PS4 and PS5 Remote Play with adequate controls (maybe minus some DualSense schticks to cut costs, but I'm sure the current library would still be more than playable), maybe even streaming Premium's PS3 titles since a Vita tier resolution would be more stream-friendly... what's not to love? Or does dedicated portable gaming hardware really have no purpose in other companies' corporate eyes than to one-up Nintendo? Time will tell, but if there's one positive thing about the subject of this post, it's that basic accessibility for gamers above the college age is something Sony isn't entirely dismissive about after all.

This has to be the first time I've ever seen PSP Go described as a "peripheral device".🤔

@Smash41 it's pretty much what left me outside the market for the new console. Duct-taping DualSense to the phone sure doesn't sound like a good alternative (and frankly, neither does streaming via what is essentially a palmtop PC constantly using the very same network connection for a truckload of other apps and features), only emphasizing how Sony has deliberately given up portability this gen.

Sadly, toxic passion is what defines fanship to begin with.

All three titles on PS4 and none on Switch! Although ironically enough, I might not even add them - as I've mentioned elsewhere, my sub is expiring this week, and the increasingly rare 12 month cards for the currently infamous region my account is tied to are being offered for roughly 110-130 bucks.😅 So I don't rule out a hiatus, but time will tell.

Grid Autosport Switch players: "First time?"

Kingdom Hearts: "First time?"

Virgin Switch publishers: opt for mandatory downloads to squeeze their releases on as small a card as possible.

Chad LRG: issues Blu-rays with a NES game and a Game Boy game thereon.

GoW is a promising first party classic I don't imagine getting my hands on otherwise (no PS5, no suitable PC hardware, lack of motivation to buy PS4 stuff directly in the face of the Remote Play control scheme roulette and low odds of upgrading to Extra in the visible future), so it makes the lineup for me by itself even though I'm not likely to install the others (as mentioned before, they're already much more portable elsewhere). As for fans bellyaching about PS+... what else is new?

Don't tell me it's taking a full remake to add the motion controls back.😅

@WaveBoy "RE7 on a TV for example pales in Comparison to experiencing it in VR even with the low pixely visuals and semi down graded environments. The motion head aiming alone makes a world of a difference, aside from feeling like you’re actually IN the bakers house"

YMMV. RE7 in VR was the definitive proof that the tech was really not for me. I never felt like I was any more "in the house" than on the TV screen, all the convenience mostly boiled down to easier navigation of various drawers and such (as expected of what is essentially a headmounted right stick alternative) but was eventually outweighed by the imposed control limitations (the garage skirmish was a particular headache, no pun intended). I wasn't even motion sick, just very underwhelmed because if there's any "transformative experience" the likes of @getsammyb praise, I expected to find it in this kind of game. But true VR truly remains the property of fictional domains like .hack, SAO, Bofuri or the more recent (and less gaming-oriented but technically superior) example in Belle. Our world doesn't appear any closer to it than it is to widely affordable cloud gaming and whatnot.

Only GoW has any odds of being actually installed (the other two are on Switch IIRC), and probably not until I ever get around to play through the original series (I even have GoW3 from the service's way back when). But FWIW it does appear to be the kind of game you could comfortably play on Vita, which only cements it as this month's highlight.

@Milktastrophe I've already commented on why having another option on the lower tier is a good thing due to the comparative distribution specifics. On the other hand, this said option will be gone two weeks after the higher tier's launch, so those it somehow rubs against the fur don't have much to "endure". Although I also don't quite see the point of using five specific games to advertise a tier whose primarily selling point is about offering dozens at a time.

@TrickyDicky99 but last time I checked, that one already had quite a few games that used to be on IGC prior. What's one more? And that only applies to the lucky PS5 owners (besides some folks who arranged their account to be temporarily assigned to another person's PS5😄), whereas the current majority of subscribers can still be safely assumed to remain on PS4 for the oft-discussed variety of reasons.

I honestly fail to see the problem here. On the one hand, higher tiers come with enough of a truckload to make the content of standard IGC offerings feel like a footnote if you sign up for them. On the other hand, the PS Now/Game Pass DNA of these tiers comes with the risk of lineup rotations, so every Extra title temporarily also offered on Essential is a title you have a month-long opportunity to "secure" on your sub rather than leave it at Sony's mercy. Where are the downsides, exactly?