theheadofabroom

@trev666 honestly it was simultaneous-turn-based with the option to skip turns, and the ability to queue stuff up, but the UI didn't make any of that obvious.

I think you could fix a lot that people disliked about it by fixing the UI, but I wouldn't be against adding a second mode that's more like a modern ARPG. The classic mode, with or without UI improvements, spoils absolutely still be available.

@Ryany I don't think they means XBox will "win" the generation, supply isn't any greater, it just means it has a chance to catch up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, given that competition generally drives innovation.

@Kooky_Daisuke it's not a spin-off of Bloodlines 2, it's just another game based on the same tabletop RPG. Think siblings, not parent and child. Same publisher, but the studios have nothing to do with each other.

Still radio silence about Bloodlines 2, unfortunately.

My nostalgia glands will burst if it ends up being the spiritual successor to Jurassic Park: Trespasser

@Gbarsotini for an open(ish) world?

Extra looks good to me, although I can see myself upping it to premium for the last couple of months of each 12 month period, and then switching back to extra come renewal time.

My biggest question is about mod support, and whether it's likely to also be on console. The original game greatly benefited from being able to swap out various systems such as aerodynamics, so you could explore designs based on real world craft that otherwise weren't viable in the game.

If there's the same level of mod support across platforms I'll likely pick it up on PlayStation. Otherwise I need to figure out whether my PC will run it without upgrades, and if it needs upgrades, I'm probably going to wait a while before picking this up.

@pharos_haven I highly encourage it, and if you like it, see if you can get mods on there without access to the Steam Workshop. Pretty sure there's an alternative launcher out there so you should be fine.

@Rafie at least generally trials don't currently give trophies, it's why I don't have any of the trophies from the beginning of Far Cry 4

I'm pretty sure you can delete a game from your trophy list, if it has 0%, would be nice if they change it to also be possible to remove games you only played as a trial too.

@GorosBat sounds about right. I think the people ragging on the use of cards are forgetting that there's not much difference between that and the traditional buttons-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen approach of XCom. (Some of which would be specific to a soldier or soldier class, and some of which would be disabled or enabled based on timers)

I also want this game released already so they can concentrate on XCom 3, which has to be out some time soon, given the first game of the reboot was 2012, the second game was 2016 and teased more to come (more teasing in 2017's WotC expansion), and then since then all we've had was 2020's Chimera Squad (which wasn't supposed to be part of the main series, not definitely canon).

@naruball I also can't imagine Nick Fury played by anyone else now - casting for the character is so much more important than casting for the look. Henry Cavil in The Witcher it's another example. He's far too good looking if you go by the source material, but he nails the character and that makes it so much more compelling.

Lance Reddick does great complex yet slightly sinister characters, he could easily be the best thing in this show (which doesn't look like the height of intellectual programming), so he seems like a pretty good choice.

I'm playing Slay the Spire and having a great time with it. I recently finished Cyberpunk 2077 (did take the different endings just to see how they approached it) and only have 6 trophies left, but I really can't be arsed playing it any more.

@lolwhatno unfortunately not (I read them)

@lolwhatno I really wish I shared your innocence 😉

Could be adding support for a new WiFi standard that won't be relevant for another 5 years, could be reduced Bluetooth latency, could be literally just cutting costs by using a new single chip that replaces 4 or 5 discrete components from the launch model.

It has to be something that makes it worth the costs of retooling factories, but beyond that, without a press release or a teardown, who knows?

I honestly don't get why everyone's so eager for a show? Just give us some games, that's all I want

@SplooshDmg always fun to watch.

Nobody really knows how to make a runaway success. I've worked places whereas their first of second thing was huge and then they spent a decade trying to recapture the magic, spending the money they gained from their success and not wanting to take the risks they did first time around. (Spoiler alert: trying to recapture the magic usually ends with redundancies. You're much better taking risks and trying something new)

It's easy to spot that something's bad, but when when it's good, for online stuff you have no idea what the community will do with it, what it'll become.

@Dudditz09 also trying to exercise self-control for Empire of Sin.

@The_Moose XCom 2 is definitely worth the money, as is War of the Chosen. It follows a failed run of the first game, so you don't really have to be that familiar with it. My only pause for thought is that if you have a PC that will play it, then it's probably better bought on Steam so you get access to the extensive library of mods to expand your experience once you've beaten the vanilla gameplay (i.e. what's available on console)

@Santifa Clay unlikable? Compared to Vito, the only protagonist in the series who got into it just for the money and the glamour? IDK man, I liked Clay a lot, almost as much as my old friend Tommy 😉

Also having played both versions (I bought them all on PC first when they came out, except the remake which I bought through the trilogy on PlayStation), the console edition of 3 was rough, I think all three are kinda better on PC if I'm honest.

@HavokOfficial I'm not sure it's that clear cut, given dialogue in Mafia 3, where it's all very vague. They were definitely leaving their options open.

@ryanburnsred I miss things like dynamic vehicle deformation and usable public transit from the original, but to me the personalities seem more fleshed out, and while they're not what I had imagined, they're not inconsistent?

I voted GoW:R, but really I'm looking forward to all of the top 3. I don't really care about showcases, but the GoW reboot was excellent, I'm looking forward to playing a few of the games announced already with the new Plus tiers, and VR2 is getting some hype within the industry, which is always a good sign.

@Gunnerzaurus difficulty levels area blunt tool that allows some games to be more accessible to people with some disabilities. That much is a fact. They're not enough for everyone, they're not needed by everyone, but they do help a lot of people.

I am disabled. I also run a Discord server for other disabled people. @Richnj's points are perfectly in line with points a number of my server's members have made. It's not too late to admit you're wrong.

They're are a lot of different ways that the human experience varies, and point I've made myself is that if your aim as a developer is to provide your players with a certain level of challenge, you absolutely cannot do that without tailoring each player's session to how they experience the world, because each player has their own level of skill and their own level of impairment, and so their perception of difficulty will be different when presented with the same stimulus requiring the same inputs. Otherwise you're not making it hard enough for some, and you're making it far too easy for others. As mentioned elsewhere, finer grained control of difficulty such as that in Fallen Order and Forbidden West give the best player experience, but obviously having 3 set levels is less work for the studio.

@Gelly they had a vision which will have been heavily compromised to get the game out of the door within a reasonable timeframe. If difficulty levels weren't a cut feature then I doubt it would have been coded in a way that allowed them to be added so quickly.

I have worked in games too, as a Developer, a Tools Programmer, an SDET, and originally as a QA tester. I've been in many types of meetings with pretty much all the stakeholders at some point and I've seen how things work.

The features released this close to the initial release are almost certainly things that were supposed to be part of the game, but had to be cut because there wasn't enough time to fully balance and test everything.

@Gelly I'm sure if they thought it was important they wouldn't have changed it, shouldn't you respect their creative vision?

@badbob001 that's the ideal for sure, I use these in games like Horizon and Fallen Order to make sure that even if I struggle with, say, getting the timing on stuff just right, I'm still going up against the full moveset of enemies, still having to overcome everything, just with slightly more forgiving timing/health/whatever option it gives me on that front

Nice, onto my wishlist this goes

@BoldAndBrash my avatar isn't any logo, it's a cartoonised photo of my face while wearing a cloth mask. I enjoyed the GTA games back when I was a teenager (SA came out when I was 16/17 and I loved it), but honestly they're just kinda annoying now that I've grown up a bit. My point was exactly that it's not either/or. There are plenty of companies out there still making stuff that's low-brow and deliberately offensive which appeal to the GTA crowd, and it's great that Sony are making sure that other gamers are covered too.

@BoldAndBrash I'm not sure how you can call them inoffensive when they get folks like you in such a tizzy? They're appealing to a broader set of tastes that they used to, and it's not like you can't still find plenty of games made with 16-25yo edgelords as their target demographic.

Just a reminder to folks that a lot of AAA games take 4-8 years to develop, so we're going to need to be patient with stuff that isn't already in the works (which will be part of why the valuation was so low)

@Golem25 for me it's probably a toss-up between Whittleton Creek and the Arc Society - the second game was damn good and added some great mechanics (although there'll always be a place in my heart for Sapienza)

The third game was a bit of a disappointment, but still better than anything before the reboot, and I loved the original games first time round.

I'm glad it's not a console-manufacturer and I'm glad these franchises might get some new games finally.

I don't think $300,000,000 is that low when with weigh the value of under-utilised IP (which SE constantly say underperform) against the liabilities of a large studio like that which likely doesn't have anything meaningful in production. Staff are, in business terms, a liability, as 1,200 heads it's likely to mean a yearly salary somewhere in the range of $60,000,000 - $180,000,000 plus other on-costs (licenses for professional creative software tend to be per-seat, and also eye-watering). Then you've got any existing debts, etc etc.

It's likely that the IP would have gone for more in its own, but that either there's some sort of legal agreement where some of it belongs to the studios, or neither party wanted to make 1,200 people redundant.

@Flaming_Kaiser oh I must have skimmed past the missing "not", I thought I was agreeing with you, and as it turns out, I was!

@Flaming_Kaiser yeah, I can see Americans referring to American Football as just "Football", but to proclaim it as the only "real" football is a bit rich. I'll entertain arguments about whether Rugby Football or Association Football get that title.

Association Football at least has the purest "the foot is what touches the ball" essence, while Rugby Football is the oldest standardised form of the game, from which American Football derived, and it's not uncommon for players in any position to kick the ball.

Also Rugby players don't bother with all that ridiculous padding that just results in traumatic brain injuries /half-joking

It feels like it could have been better if American Football had called itself American Rugby, because at least then it shares something in common, and we'd just be asking, "yeah, but League, Union, or American?"

@nomither6 nice trolling, nobody would call a game where a couple of players from each team somewhat rarely kick the ball "real football", right?

@Jayslow Broooo

@Rural-Bandit I might even just buy whatever's cheapest and spray it - I want to keep the ones that came with the console stock in case I have any issues and need to send it in, so they're staying white.

As for the house, that's the idea. We're trying to find a bungalow or a cottage, I've spoken before about being disabled, it would be nice to be all on one floor so I'm not having to plan everything around managing to get up and down the stairs. A lift would be an option too, but given our budget and needing to be commutable to where my partner works, we're unlikely to get enough space while still having the budget to do building work.

@Rural-Bandit eh it's still early early stages, nothing's certain yet other than the area and the budget, but it seems pointless trying to make it look good in a place we won't live in next year, touch wood.

@Rural-Bandit I'd probably have bought the black by now if we weren't now looking at moving house. May as well hold off to see what our media setup end up looking like.

One scoop pistachio, the other dark chocolate. Can't go wrong.

@SystemAddict IIRC it's actually one of the fastest SSDs on the market, mostly because you only get up to 1TB per NAND chip, so they need 8 of them, which is the most you can fit on a card, with all the parallel access benefits that brings when paired with a decent memory controller.

@MattBoothDev sure, but the difference is likely immaterial to me

Surely the real question is whether the 8tb Sabrent Rocket is compatible?

Evidently this is the drive that should have shipped with the system /s

See usually I'd be buying maybe 3 or 4 of these, but with the new PS plus tiers I'm not sure what the point would be. I can get a load of them on the Extra tier and it'll cost me less?

@Americansamurai1 the early game is particularly weak, but if you keep at it then it rises to the lofty heights of "fine". By the time you've hit level 20 you're starting to get some interesting skills and some legendary gear, and it's almost interesting?

I'm at level 34 and some of the later side content is good. One or two of the characters are interesting and well fleshed out. I guess some people will have strong feelings either way about how often this game is horny on main?

I could see them getting a limited amount of the PS3 library, the games that didn't make the most of the architecture, working well on the PS5, but I'm pretty sure there will be games which will only run with serious regressions in performance.

If they do this just for PS Plus Ultimate or whatever they're calling it, they can be selective about the library they offer, as well as making sure that remasters and remakes of some of the games which don't make it are included.

If they just roll it out and say you can play your old games, but only these ones - they're going to have a messaging nightmare.

@Rural-Bandit Eh It's basic game theory though: if you have a bunch of entities harmoniously coexisting then everything's fine, but as soon as one of them starts absorbing others, it makes sense for everyone else to absorb anything they can to grow to a size that can't be absorbed by a competitor.

Ultimately this is why without regulation, such as by strict competition authorities, capitalism inevitably leads to monopolies. If the state will not step in and say enough is enough, Sony and Microsoft are going to have to continue to acquire anything and everything they can, else lose any competitive advantage they have. Before Microsoft bought Bethesda things were going at a sustainable pace. Now that one of them has started throwing billions at the market, the gloves are off and neither can afford to stand down.

Please be Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 (It won't be)

@VatoLoco47 they'll be downloadable, apparently.