wildcat_kickz

@GKT No, I think each game would be opt-in for any enhancements to frame rate via a game patch. Maybe the tech would allow for a resolution bump? But 60fps is already easily possible for Bloodborne on PS5, but the game code has the frame rate capped.

All the people in the comments complaining about the PS5 Pro being unnecessary just have really bad FOMO. It's an enthusiast machine. No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. Jealousy is a bad look, folks.

@zhoont So did everyone else 😂

We can only hope for as much profanity in Dragon's Dogma 2 as there is in Deadwood.

@ryanburnsred Very true, though I imagine there will be cross pollination from time to time, especially closer to Witcher's release.

Love both Jedi games, so I'm pretty interested to see what he cooks up next. Hopefully, not more Star Wars, though.

Glad they've put a bow on it. All hands on deck for the Witcher!

Pretty unfortunate that they have to resort to these totally out-of-pocket crossovers to generate any kind of revenue for the game. At least the Witcher and Mass Effect gear look like they are lore appropriate, but a Slimer ghost and a Cadillac? Come on, Sony. You can do better...

These bizarre crossovers are some of the biggest turnoffs in games for me. I want escapism in games - not a constant reminder of real-world marketing deals.

@Rhaoulos I get the frustration, but I think joy of audience participation has been cultivated by FromSoft over the last 15 years. It seems, to me, that each release leans a little more into the obtuse nature of their story telling. It's definitely not for everyone, though.

That said, if you dig the combat and general gameplay of FromSoft, but want a little more of a cohesive narrative, I would highly recommend Lies of P. Seriously, one of the best games of 2023 and I think it holds its own with the very best of FromSoft.

@Northern_munkey Haters gonna hate.

@SamMR I loved all the cerebral gameplay mechanics from the first game (which is undoubtedly in their SH games too), but yeah, totally agree that combat and general traversal is pretty rough. It's like watching an action figure with not enough articulation points moving around.

I'm really hoping they can figure that out, because if they do, they could have a real banger on their hands!

@ZhuckelDror 🙄

God, I hope they improve the character animations (movement, in particular), but you can't deny the charm of the first game. Lovecraftian vibes = chef's kiss

@ZhuckelDror No offense, but I think you're digging your heels in when it's not necessary. If they just called it "exclusive," we'd be having a different conversation, but marketers do go out of their way to indicate a "console exclusive" to specifically delineate the difference.

@ZhuckelDror Language is fluid and not stagnant. The only constant is change.

@ZhuckelDror "Console Exclusive" has been a term used pretty regularly in the industry for the last 2 generations, or so (a decade, thereabouts). Xbox used the term a lot when they started releasing all their titles on PC, and now Sony uses it a lot too, given their penchant for releasing their own titles on PC. I understand that the term is paradoxical, but it's widely accepted in the industry.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Tencent publishing the game. Doesn't China have some restrictions on religious subtext?

I was hoping this would at least hit 40fps for 120hz TVs, but I still stand by my opinion that 30fps is totally fine for 3rd person games, as long as it's stable. If it's hiccupping all over the place, though, that paints a different story. Hopefully, they clean it up a little more by release, but I'll probably be getting it regardless. Just looks like too much fun.

Maybe I'll check it out for a night when it comes to PS Plus in a few months. Maybe

I feel like this is pretty on par, nowadays. You'd be hard pressed to find a full-length title coming in at any smaller than 80GB, especially an open world title.

When everyone was saying that the SSD would make games smaller, it didn't take into account that newer games have higher resolution textures, higher fidelity audio, more complex animations, etc. All of these (especially textures and audio) take up an enormous amount of space.

I really hope this Anvil "overhaul" reintroduces player-character clothing physics, which were puzzlingly removed from Valhalla completely. Mirage has a bit added, but it's still not as good as it was when it peaked with Origins. I wonder if the developer in responsible for that left the company and took their insight with them?

I think this game looks pretty damn good! Only problem is it comes out the same day as Dragon's Dogma 2. Which to chose!?

I get for us Westerners, this looks a lot like Ghost of Tsushima, but keep in mind there's ~600 years between the time periods of the two games. Should make for very different vibes and experiences!

Would someone please explain to me why this guy deserves so much animosity?

Do I think TLoU2 could have been more cohesive and have a more satisfying ending? Sure. Do I think either the story should have ended when Ellie first got to the farm or Ellie should have died saving Abby? Yes.

Do I think the story, as it is, is some affront to my existence? No. You know why? Because I'm adult who knows how to compartmentalize mild disappointment.

This is a human being who has put more creative energy into his work than any of us could ever dream of. Neil has earned his success.

I've tried so many times to get back into D2 after falling off in year 1, but every time I boot it up, the directionless menu/quest overload kills any desire I have. I really don't understand how a GaaS can have such terrible onboarding for new/lapsed players. It's like they're deliberately whittling down their audience, rather than trying to grow it. Oh well - guess I'll wait for Marathon.

@nessisonett I kinda think that's a false equivalency. $40 is the price of some full games, but that's pretty rare now, Helldivers 2 being an example.

Sure, Elden Ring launched at $60, but if it came out today, I'd wager it would be $70, easy. I suspect to play through all the expansion's content, it will take 30-40 hours for a fresh run, which is much longer than many $70 games. While how long it takes to play through content shouldn't be the end-all be-all of value, From Software has more than proven themselves as being capable of delivering a high-quality product.

I haven't seen From Software's/Bandai Namco's financials, so I can't comment on the profits, but I can say with certainty that those entities aren't non-profits. It would be unreasonable for them to sell the expansion without making a buck. The thing will have taken like 2.5 years to come out, so no doubt it was expensive to produce.

@nessisonett £35/$40 is a tough pill to swallow, but I suspect the size of the expansion will justify the price tag.

@Bez87 the ps4 (original) and ps5 (remaster) versions have separate trophy lists and are treated as different games. If you want to earn a platinum the organic way for the remaster, then you just need to play it as if you never had the ps4 version. Similarly to spider-man and ghost of Tsushima, there’s an option to import your ps4 save data into your ps5 version (this is done in-game). If you do, all the trophies you earned in that save file will unlock, but if you don’t import the save, that won’t happen.

I love this game, but the servers and matchmaking continue to be pretty bad. Waited like 10 minutes to get in and then couldn't matchmake with anyone, making higher difficulties basically unplayable.

Not only should they implement an AFK autokick, but they should also just have a server queue. At least then, you'd know how long you're actually going to wait to get into the game.

@Khayl @sanderson72 Dominic Monaghan is already in the worst Star Wars movie ever (IX), so let's give that idea a pass, haha.

Unless I misunderstood, didn't they just confirm that CoD will be day 1 with GamePass going forward? If true, that's a pretty ballsy move - potentially eliminating millions of copies sold on their platform. In order to make those lost sales back, they'd need to keep a sub for 5 months...

@MikeOrator I would totally agree that it's not more pretentious than demanding 4K and ray tracing in your games, but I've also never heard anyone say "I'm never gonna play a game that doesn't support 4K or ray tracing."

I think you understand this, but game optimization isn't a simple tool in a game engine - it's a series of learned coding skills that some individuals/developers are just better at than others, so I find it understandable that some devs will just have an easier time with getting better frame rates than others.

That said, I'm definitely in favor of a more open source industry, where knowledge like that could be disseminated more widely, but on the flip-side, there's an argument to make that that would devalue individual studios' internally honed skills.

@KundaliniRising333 TL;DR XD

@vrubayka @GilgaMax96 As I said, "Options are always nice and I hope they provide one." Both of you are perfectly free to skip this title if 30fps really is such a deal breaker for you, but I'm also perfectly free to think that has an air of pretention associated with it. Obviously, 60fps is better than 30fps, but completely walling yourself out of games because there isn't a 60fps option seems ludicrous, to me. To each their own, though.

I totally understand the need for 60fps in first person games where camera pans basically become smush at lower frame rates, but I think this whole debate is soooo overblown. In third person games, as long as the 30fps is rock solid, I don't really find it much of a hindrance. You get used to the frame pacing very quickly.

Options are always nice and I hope they provide one, but when I hear people say "I refuse to play a 30fps game," I just roll my eyes...

@Porco The South Korean government has nothing to do with this story. Sony has decided not to release the game in Korea. It wasn't mandated by the government.

I understand the move, but I wonder if a trigger warning at the start of the game would have been sufficient, similar to how Mafia 3 warned about racist themes in the game. I'm typically more in favor of leaving artistic expression as is and disseminating it as much as possible, while providing important historical context, when necessary.

For example: "This game depicts Shōin Yoshida and his teachings; however, while this game does not villainize Yoshida within the context of the story, we recognize him as a controversial historical individual who advocated for the subjugation of the Korean people. To learn more about Yoshida and his legacy, please follow the link below."

Of course, if Sony is pulling the release to get ahead of a potential Korean boycott and media frenzy that would follow, that would be something else entirely.

Yeah, not a fan of this move. This screams "cost-cutting," to me. My assumption is the "open world" will just be whatever the current year's Warzone map is, which is super disappointing. I'll echo what many comments have said already, but I personally love the highly tailored bombast of CoD campaigns and this move will likely rob the campaigns of those spectacle moments. It remains to be seen, but I'm highly skeptical of this move.

A little strange, as far as mixed themes go, but free is free! I'll give the new LoP weapon a go when I get the itch to go on another Krat killing spree.

I'm certainly very curious about Steelrising. I'm always up for a good Soulslike, but worry it just will seem like the store-brand Lies of P... Here's hoping it exceeds my expectations.

@Loamy Seriously one of the only intelligible things said in this entire comment thread. It's fiction. Don't like it? Don't play it. Don't want it to affect how you see the characters? Don't take it into account. I'll say it once more for posterity: it's fiction.

@PegasusActual93 Completely agree - Infinite Warfare had my favorite campaign in the entire CoD series. Basically felt like the military perspective of the Expanse universe. Also, multiplayer felt like splitting the difference between a typical CoD and Titanfall. I really hope that Infinity Ward's next game is IW2.

Not gonna lie - booted up Witcher 3 the other day, just to slow trot my way across the Kear Morhen map on Roach's back. Take in the sights, zen out with the incredible soundtrack. Masterclass.

@Ghostngoblins Adjusted for inflation, that'll be $70 in today's moneys.

@colonelkilgore I accidentally did that for Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man Remastered. I felt like I cheated!

@Bez87 It is. If you don't want an instant unlock, then don't import your save and just start fresh.

This entire article can get boiled down to "Brian Cox got a nice paycheck for a few hours of work."

@nomither6 I think we just have different tastes. I'll admit that I didn't play AW multiplayer, but thought the innovation in mobility was a welcome change (something that Infinity Ward improved further with Infinite Warfare). At that time, I was just playing CoD for the campaigns and thought that one was pretty good. WW2 I also thought was pretty good. Good Band of Brother's inspired campaign, decent MP maps, and a genuinely scary aesthetic take on Zombies. Vanguard's campaign was decent, though I think the MP wasn't what I wanted. I actually like the WW2 period setting, but Vanguard wanted to have it both ways with the period and modern attachments. Ultimately, I agree that it didn't live up to it's potential and the Fortnite bleed hit pretty hard in that installment. Definitely don't appreciate the metaverse style skins seeping into military shooters.

However - I think Treyarch "picking up the pieces" isn't quite accurate, especially since dev cycles are several years. BO4 campaign was so off track, they outright cancelled it. Cold War's campaign they gave to Raven. Treyarch was missing milestones and should have been the studio to release next, but Sledgehammer was forced to release something that was intended to be DLC for MW2 as a completely standalone game (something that wasn't Sledgehammer's choice, I might add).

No matter how you slice it, I think IW makes the best CoD games, but I digress.

I'd also agree with the general audience sentiment that they should stop annualizing these games and just give all the teams more time to innovate.

@KundaliniRising333 @GeeEssEff Haters gonna hate.

@pharos_haven Same reason people still play chess, basketball, Destiny, etc.: it's fun.

@KundaliniRising333 Please provide your real gaming credentials

@NotSoCryptic I understand there's a ton of cross pollination for each entry, but each one definitely still has a "main" dev team behind it, with others providing robust support. Even with Cold War, though Raven made the campaign, Treyarch was lead on MP and Zombies, especially since that entry used Treyarch's own engine.

Ultimately, CoD games live and die by their MP maps, gun customization and gunplay. Campaigns are good marketing beats, but don't really play a huge role (at least, outside of the media). I've personally preferred IW and SH maps and gunplay to Treyarch's, but I also recognize that's just my own tastes.

Either way, I'm excited to see a shift either into the future or past. I'm a little burnt out on the modern settings.