patronmacabre

I gave:
5 points to FF7 Rebirth — a divisive game, but like TLOU2, it will be appreciated for what it wanted to do in the future.
4 points to Balatro — probably the best indie game since Undertale
3 points to Astro Bot — not as creative and expressive as Super Mario Odyssey, but an absolute joy to play
2 points to Metaphor: Refantazio — As a huge Persona fan, I don't know how I feel about this one. Part of me thinks it's the best Persona game that is not Persona 4. But the fact that I never think about this game anymore after beating is a major strike against it.
1 point to Zenless Zone Zero — I love Mihoyo games. This is way less addictive than Genshin or HSR. But I had a great 100 hours with it.

I honestly think the best thing PlayStation could have done for its live service push is completely off the table now.

But I genuinely think if Sony had bought Mihoyo instead of Bungie in 2022 (if Mihoyo was willing to sell), then PlayStation would be in a much, much stronger position these days.

However, I don't think that is realistic anymore — or good for the industry at large.

@Shigurui
I get you. My E2 Firefly team can already 0-cycle, Firefly is just my favorite character so I want to get Lingsha.

Feixiao will probably fit a very similar role to Firefly in the long run, being really good in MoC and AS but lacking in PF. Acheron teams, by contrast, are significantly worse in AS but significantly better in PF.

I think the nice thing for a heavily invested player is that there will be three "ideal" teams after Feixiao and Lingsha's release that don't have any overlap with each other.

Acheron/Pela/Jiaqiu/Fu Xuan
Firefly/Harmony Trailblazer/Ruan Mei/Lingsha
Feixiao/Topaz/Robin/Aventurine (though this might be subject to change).

"One thing worth noting is that there’ll be a special Warp Event during the first phase of the update which will plot the return of Black Swan, Robin, and Kafka all at once, so we sincerely hope you’ve been saving your Primogems."

Erm! Ackshully. The standard unit of premium currency in Honkai Star Rail is Polychrome.

But, seriously, 2.5 is going to wreck my wallet. I only have 18 warp tickets saved and I want Feixiao, Robin, and Lingsha.

@get2sammyb Fellow Firefly main, I see.

Thank you, Sammy for continuing to spread the good word of HSR.
As long as you don’t have a gambling problem, the game is fantastic. If you do, please stay as far away from this game as you can.

Genshin and HSR are perfectly reasonable F2P games if you ONLY spend money on the daily currency and the battle pass.

However, purchasing currency directly in those games is extremely predatory. I have to commit to never buying currency directly, because it is very easy to spend 100 dollars just to get a 5-star you want.

Hopefully, these changes will improve the monetization of the game for the better.

95% chance it's Baldur's Gate 3.
5% chance it's TotK.
0% chance for everything else.

1. When the game was in preproduction, it was publicly announced as a PS4 game.
2. Microsoft didn’t say it was an Xbox exclusive.
3. It’s not coming to Game Pass like the other two new Persona titles.

It’s going to be a multi-platform release. Atlus is just being Atlus.

People need to stop letting Atlus get away with this stuff.
Gamefreak gets raked over the coals for being lazy, so it's time that Atlus gets their fair share.
I say this as a huge Persona fan.

These games will come to PS and Switch, I'm not worried about that.

What irritates me to no end is that Persona 3 Reloaded has no indication of the female protagonist and Persona 5 Tactics once again doesn't have Akechi or Sumire.

Atlus really, really, really hates its fans.

@Vivisapprentice I think Helldivers 2 could be fun. It's definitely not my kind of game, but it's a game I would be willing to buy on discount.

I am a tiny bit worried about Wolverine, but that's entirely because I've been an Insomniac fan for over twenty years. Insomniac games tend to be very movement focused, and Wolverine needs a hook to make it stand out.

Also, Vivi is fantastic!

I try not to be a Playstation doomer. I was reasonably open to the GAAS shift if it was done well...
But the Showcase and the fallout really managed to singlehandedly kill my interest in Playstation Studios games for the foreseeable future (outside of Spider-Man).
Hopefully, we can see some games that I will be interested in.

Sony has plenty of titles that could make excellent transitions into live services if Sony wanted it.

Hot Shots Golf would make an exceptional live service game.
Mihoyo has shown that a game like Dark Cloud could be super relaxing and super profitable with a live service spinoff.
Rhythm games need live service models to succeed.

But when they're all shooters they're all going to cannibalize each other until everyone goes back to playing Fortnite.

This is sad.
I do like Daedalic as a developer, but this project was clearly wildly out of their capabilities.

I will defend Foamstars. It is a blatant ripoff of Splatoon and I'm all for it.

How was Sony so good at E3 press conferences and so, so, so bad at doing Nintendo Direct-style conferences?

It was pretty yikes.

All of this should be taken with a grain of salt, but from what I have collated...

P3 Remake is multiplat with Xbox marketing exclusivity.
P6 is PS exclusive.

Which is so batshit and nonsensical that I believe it coming from Atlus.

@4kgk2
I think reviewers were initially expected it to be a lot more like Breath of the Wild and were disappointed to see that it played like a much, much better Assassin's Creed.

When the Director's Cut came out, that version got an 87, which seems more in line with its quality.

@heavensdenon Xbox is doing fine and they have the backing of a 2 trillion dollar company.

I'm not sure where you heard that Microsoft and Sony are owned by the same entity — one is an American company and the other is a Japanese company. Maybe you mean overlap of executives?

While Xbox will be fine, the same can't really necessarily be said for Activision. It's very likely that they put a lot of stake into getting acquired and probably didn't plan to be stuck in legal limbo for what will probably be several years.

@heavensdenon UK, US, and EU are the three commissions that need to win approval. Other commissions are not sufficiently large enough markets to influence the decision.

FTC opposes the deal, but they have to prove in court that the merger harms competition, which is really hard to do. FTC is trying to stall indefinitely. CMA blocks the deal, but an appeals process will happen. EU passed the deal.

Theoretically, the merger could go through without the UK, but it will probably be a logistical nightmare.

The only thing that's certain is that nothing is going to happen for a very long time. The legal process is extremely slow. If MS does manage to get the merger approved, don't be surprised if the PS6 and Xbox successor are about to come out.

So, doing my research into the Competition Appeals Tribunal. It's relatively new so there just isn't that much in the way of decisions.

On the one hand, I think people are overstating the difficulty of appealing to the CAT. The reality is that it's fairly new and there just aren't that many cases. So, low sample size means there's a lot of room for surprises.

On the other hand, it is incorrect to assume that the CAT will be more open to MS's position than the CMA. On some key cases, it has remanded the CMA's decisions for being too open to accepting remedies.

But the horrible reality is this: between the CMA and the FTC, this whole debacle is going to take YEARS.

@get2sammyb
This is my understanding of the differences:
With the US and the FTC, Microsoft didn't really seem to care about the FTC's decision. This is because the FTC has to prove its case in court that the acquisition would hurt competition. While the current FTC is very anti-big tech, the US judiciary is extremely pro-business and almost always sides with businesses against federal agencies. Even if the FTC manages to win their case before administrative court, MS has options to appeal. The effectiveness of this depends on the particular appeals court, but MS will certainly shop around for the circuit most likely to side with them. And even if MS fails, they can appeal to the Supreme Court which is also extremely pro-business. Basically, the FTC's goal has been to stall the acquisition for as long as possible, realizing that the case was basically unwinnable given political conditions.

The reason the CMA is so much harder is that the CMA has a LOT more power in these decisions. Even if MS appeals the case, there's only a 1/3 chance that the Appeals Court will even hear the case. If they do successfully appeal the case, there's only a 1/3 chance that it will come out in MS's favor. Even if they successfully appeal the case, the appeal comes out in MS's favor, then the CMA has to apply the specified changes from the appeal. And then the CMA reviews the process again. It's not a different agency. So winning a case against the CMA is about as close to impossible as the FTC winning the case against MS.

I think gaming subscriptions are great for a very, very tiny subset of the playerbase that plays a lot of shorter games.
But the reality is that there are very people like that.

The bigger problem is that the writing has been on the wall for a while now that subscription services just aren't profitable. They require constant growth and need to constantly be in customer acquisition mode. Once the streaming service eventually raises the price to what it needs to be, people no longer find the services good value.

@XenonKnight OneDrive is pretty creative in the cloud space in that I despise its existence in every possible way and I hate that Office programs are always asking me to use it.

So obviously, I want to begin with screw Bobby Kotick and everything he stands for. He does not deserve to get the golden parachute he'll inevitably get.

With that out of the way, I wonder if Sony had played ball with Microsoft, if they could have gotten better contractual conditions.

Do you think there is any way Sony and Microsoft would have agreed to a 10-year contract that would have put all franchises previously on Playstation systems (so, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Hellblade, etc.) on Playstation for the duration of the contract? I wonder if the Sony lawyers tried that and MS refused.

I'm sure this accounts for some percentage of the Japanese sales, but the reality of the situation is that it's probably much smaller than people are led to believe.

Scalping, while incredibly annoying, just really isn't that lucrative a business especially when you have to account for overseas shipping costs, import taxes, and transaction fees.

I would be genuinely surprised if scalping accounts for 10% of sales in Japan.

Edit: The only way I can see this happening at a large scale is if the grey market is being used as a way to avoid the many transaction costs associated with scalping. Even then, the unemployment rate in Japan is 2.5% — scalping is extremely time and effort consuming and there are better ways to spend your time.

I gave it a 9, but really it's a 9.5. Between it and Elden Ring, I could be convinced either way which one is better.

Game is excellent overall. The two major issues are that it is clearly held back by the PS4 and the game handholds you so much during the main story puzzles. The latter problem can be easily fixed with a patch. I absolutely adored upper Vanaheim and thought it was the highlight of the game, but apparently some other people disagree with that sentiment. Similarly controversially, I really liked the "localization" choices made, especially with Odin and Thor. These Norse Gods are supposed to sound like intoxicated jerks, not pseudo-Shakespearean actors. The voice acting conveyed that.

The story is simultaneously more interesting and less artistic than God of War (2018). I definitely loved the commitment of 2018, but I found its story meandering and underwhelming at the end. Ragnarok started off incredibly slow, but just constantly got better and better. It was very satisfying and I loved Kratos' character arc over the course of the entire series.

I bought it. While it is definitely overpriced, I do love the game.

The visuals are a remarkable improvement. AI is also noticeably better and the game feels more fluid. Most sections seem slightly easier than in the original version, however, the dreaded hotel basement section is markedly more difficult because that AI is so much better.

Game feel is also significantly improved, though not up to the level of the sequel. Guns feel weightier and more powerful, especially the shotgun.

Regular enemies seem slightly less bullet spongey, but Bloaters seem much, much more powerful than in the original version.

I just don't understand why they didn't just phase out the sales of console-only units and require people to pay 550 for a console and a game.
There were many, many smarter ways to do this, but Sony has some of the worst PR and marketing.

Happy to see Sony still doing these games. These types of games rock if done well, but Quantic Dream was a cluster****.

Edit: Big IF the game turns out to be a narrative adventure game.

I think there was a very clear route for the game to follow as a trilogy.
Part 1: Midgar
Part 2: Up to Aerith's death
Part 3: The rest of FF7 (which was honestly mostly bad in the original.)

I fully expect part 3 will be very divergent from the original, simply because so much of the original story (like all of the huge materia questlines) were so boring and unnecessary.

Is Dominic Armato still voicing Guybrush? He sounds kind of different.

I want more wide linear areas. Please don't make it open world, but having more exploration in the areas would be excellent.

I am absolutely thrilled for this wild ride. It's going to be a cluster**** and it's my most anticipated game.

@mvhess Atlus has an extremely loyal fanbase (myself included). They've been doing the stuff Sony and Nintendo have done, but way more frequently and mostly get away with it. It's basically expected that a better version of any Atlus game will come out three years after the original. And you will pay full price for it.

One of my favorite games is getting a remake of a remaster.
Another one of my favorite games is getting a remaster of a remake.
And I am going to buy both happily because I am an idiot.

While this is stupid, it's mostly harmless.
No timed exclusivity will ever top the stupidity of Disgaea 6's timed exclusivity, though.
It was available on PS and Switch in Japan at the same time, but was a regional timed exclusive to Switch for like six months... even though you could, like, have a Japanese account and buy it on Playstation if you didn't care about reading.

Shadow of the Colossus Remake came out about 12 and a half years after the original, and 7 years after the remaster.

Demon's Souls Remake came out 11 years after the original.

The Last of Us Part 1 comes out 9 years and a few months after the original and 8 years and a few months after the remaster.

These timelines are all roughly in line with each other. They are low-intensity projects that can be made on a short timeline and help videogame studios recover between intense projects. Remakes like these are good things.

The only problem with TLOUP1 is the price. It should be 50 dollars, not 70 dollars.

I am excited for this and am guaranteed to buy this day one.

But I also think it is a bit much to ask 70 dollars for this. When Ratchet and Clank (2016) came out, it was priced at 40 dollars because it was made in about a year.

I think this game should have been priced at ~50 dollars to reflect that this was more of a budget project.

I think the fear here is that it's going to take so much manpower to maintain.
Life service games require a LOT of maintenance. Hopefully Sony and Naughty Dog can get a support studio to maintain it so Naughty Dog can get back to work on their usual games.

It's an incredible game.
The plot doesn't make any sense, but it has some of the coolest story presentation ever.

@Milktastrophe
Persona 5 original completely falls apart in the second half of the game. The first half is fantastic, sure, but the second half of the original is just terrible. The only thing that redeems the terrible second half of Persona 5 is the incredible additional chapter in Royal.

Please, readers, you can get Royal for less than 30 dollars. It's about a 120 hour long game. You cannot transfer your data from the original to Royal. If you have are lucky enough to have a PS5, your time is infinitely more valuable than 30 dollars.

I cannot in good conscience recommend the original version of Persona 5.

Persona is my favorite video game series. Whereas you can make a good argument that Golden was extraneous for Persona 4, Royal is the game Persona 5 should have been.

Vanilla Persona 5 is a disaster. Please just pay the money and get the good version.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that the reason that the sale was so cheap was because there wasn't a bidding war for it.

Microsoft would have loved Crystal Dynamics, but probably doesn't want to piss off the FTC.

Sony, of course, would have wanted to invest that 300 million into Epic.

Normally, I would say that 1) it's a video game movie and 2) It Takes Two didn't really have a very good story in the first place but...

I don't know, The Rock helped make Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle be way, way better than it had any right to be.

Genshin is an absolutely fantastic game. I genuinely and sincerely think it has a better open world than both Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring.
If you pay the 5 dollars for the monthly blessing, it's a great deal.
You can probably justify the battle pass too, but it's skippable.
For the love of everything good in the world, do not buy primogems outright.

I'm really glad Returnal and Inscryption are getting the late recognition they deserve. They were by far the best games of 2021 in my opinion.

I am so excited for this.
I will probably play this on PC, but hopefully SIE's 5% ownership of Devolver means that PS ports of their games come out sooner.

@TheCollector316
Mihoyo has 4,000 employees.

Calling it now.
It's going to be Mihoyo.

1) Hugely profitable.
2) Gives Sony a huge entry point into the Chinese market.
3) Gives Sony a huge live service game.
4) Helps Sony with the mobile/PC sector.
5) Sony and Mihoyo already have a working relationship together on Genshin.