Flanders

1 hour ago, Talk Show Host said:

 

I really do not agree with that. The fact that Sony was able to produce so many new AAA IPs in just one generation says a lot about the way they matured their production pipeline through the years. That was essentially Cerny’s dream, this unification of development (which has its negatives as well), and this is why it is almost impossible for Microsoft to replicate that. We are actually seeing in real time how difficult it is. 

 

I do not believe Spencer can correct that any time soon. This generation is a "new AAA IP investment" for Microsoft, in order to reap the rewards next gen. If they are half as lucky or half as good as Sony was last gen, they should be happy.

 

Sony is a well oiled machine in their productions, that is not something you simply have. It takes years and years of effort, planning and, of course, talent. 

I think it’s also overlooked that the relative weakness of Sony’s first party offerings on the PS3 meant they were enormously liberated in what they could do on PS4.
 

There wasn’t a huge financial risk in letting Guerrilla jettison Killzone or Sucker Punch bin off Infamous because those were fundamentally not massively successful franchises. Whereas it was a lot more difficult for MS to make the call that Gears and Halo were past their prime.

We‘re not ready for the framerate debate over a game that is permanently speed ramping.

Are the Dark Souls games ever discounted on Steam? They’ve not popped up in any recent sales which is a a shame because I think the Deck might be the way I finally get over the Dark Souls 2 hump. 

I think you can chase as many trends as you want as long as you make something coherent that people like. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Hitman World of Assassination are basically live service games in their post-release models, but they’re fully functional single player experiences as well so they get the best of both worlds. 
 

You could chase the Destiny trend just fine as long as you shaped the game to that structure appropriately. The problem with the Avengers/Gotham Knights/Suicide Squad trio is that a superhero game is completely antithetical to that structure. Everyone would have thought an Avengers Destiny-a-like was dumb back in 2013, it’s not the development time that was the problem there. 

55 minutes ago, Calashnikov said:

What little twist was that? Seemed to end in the classic Bells & Bingo style, no?

It’s the way the bell tolls and the ganados all stop fighting while you’re still in gameplay for a few seconds, instead of just cutting straight to the cinematic. 
 

And then in the cutscene they walk right next to Leon without looking at him on their way past him to the exit.
 

Two small little flourishes that make the situation much more creepy. 

The little twist on how the village encounter ends is really clever and beautifully executed, and makes me hugely confident that the people who made this remake know what they’re doing. 

The Crater has massively turned me around on this game. I was really souring it as the main story went on, and I think that’s such a mess that it wasn’t an issue to just drop out of it and go exploring the Crater for hours. 
 

The design there is exceptional in so many ways. Because the enemies are so high level and varied you start to properly engage with all the game’s systems and it suddenly doesn’t seem so unwieldy. The storytelling is really

nifty in that section as well, it all becomes a lot more organic compared to the exposition-laden main quest. 

It’s like a FromSoft game done with Sony blockbuster sensibilities and it’s so, so weird how it’s part of Ragnarok as up to a quarter of the game. Is it DLC that they decided to add to the main game last minute? A proof of concept for a future direction for the series? Or the product of warring visions for this game that ended in a truce where both versions were included? 
 

I wonder also if a full game that used the Crater as a design template for something on an even larger open scale might have been beyond the technical capabilities of the PS4. 

In the past page we’ve had ‘people are fed up with single player blockbusters that have skill trees’ and ‘people are fed up of live service games’ - all we need is someone to pop up with ‘no one plays Call of Duty anymore’ to complete today’s RLLMUK Out of Touch Bingo. 

I respecced to an almighty wizard before entering NG+ but that was just to lark around. Might need to respec back to my old Ruins Greatsword build for proper new material - if only out of respect to the blacksmith. 

16 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

It's called humour.

I could accept making you complete half the game again if you didn’t end up in the DLC underlevelled because you were in NG+. I never got past the bastard hunter with a big hammer on the Bloodborne one, that’s right at the beginning! 

We can only hope that in keeping with Elden Ring’s generally much more welcoming design, the expansion is easily accessible with no hoops to jump through.

I love From dearly, but what you need to do to access the DLC in both Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne is the most colossal bullshit for something you’ve paid real money for. 

I was listening to a podcast about this film that mentioned how they had no idea what the fuck Kang’s powers are meant to be.

I remember when I read comics as a kid in the 90s that got to be a big problem, so many characters just ended up ‘doing stuff’ that involved waving their hands around with some indeterminate effect. 
 

Means there’s no real parameters on what can happen in an action scene, so all action scenes become weightless and boring.

1 hour ago, Majora said:

 

A lot of naysayers were claiming that the only reason people liked The Last of Us was because it had an 'ok story for a game' and it would never stand up against anything halfway decent on TV. 

 

Basically the same sort of people who make sweeping statements about how even the worst written TV show is better than the best written game or some such nonsense (although I feel like this particular brand of rhetoric has slowly died out as it becomes more and more impossible to defend).

Yeah was this stuff. With a side order of peevishness at the notion that this is the first time that a videogame adaptation has been good, because apparently the Sonic films and a few animes on Netflix weren’t aggressively bad.

I think an important piece of advice for a newcomer to From games is to have absolutely no hang-up about looking for assistance online. From everything to how upgrade mechanics work to how you access quest lines and areas you’d never otherwise have found on your own. 
 

These games have definitely been designed with online guides and helpful Reddit posts in mind. Obviously try and make your own way at first, but there’s no need to ever let any roadblock become frustrating, help is always at hand.

I am absolutely staggered by the scale of the crossover success this show has had. My mum and dad are watching it, my sister and her husband are watching it, my wife has got back on board with it after episode 3. 
 

It does all rather make a mockery of just how incredibly snooty Very Online gamers had become about the original game. Some really idiotic takes were flying around ahead of the show’s release.

23 minutes ago, Majora said:

A Resi 5 remake would simply be asking for trouble. Whether you want to label it as actually racist or not, it is at best extremely problematic. Even though it was really popular back in the day, a remake nowadays would be asking for trouble. Even if they removed scenes like a blond white woman being dragged into a house by an evil black man...nah. 

It was so weird how they tried to mitigate the racism by changing half the enemy models to indeterminate non-black ethnicities, but kept in stuff like that blond woman scene. 
 

I also seem to recall that the trailer played on every white person’s greatest fear - that black people are invisible in the dark if they close their eyes. 

I seem to be the only person on the internet who still thinks Suicide Squad looks alright. Doubt I’ll get it full price but the gameplay looks like it scratches the old Crackdown/Prototype itch. 

Think it’s a bit difficult to predict ABK or MS future strategy if the deal doesn’t go through, as I imagine that outcome would see executive heads roll at both companies. 

8 hours ago, HarryBizzle said:

I dunno. Rocksteady made 3 of the best games of the last 2 gens and they've been at work for 8 years since the last one. I think I can give 'em 15 mins to win me over.

100pc agree, it’s absolutely mad how people are turning their noses up at a Rocksteady game, battle pass bollocks or no.

Still, maybe at least this could conjure up the spirit of how Arkham Asylum was such a wonderful surprise out of nowhere. I still remember having barely heard of it, reading the initial rave reactions on here, then going out and buying the thing. 

I’ve thought for a while that a Game Pass for Nintendo or PlayStation could only really work as a stripped down cheaper package that only carries Microsoft Studios games.

Nintendo would be mad to let them put the full fat version on Switch when it carries so many indies that could be sold through their store. They aren’t going to let Hollow Knight 2 be available on their machine through a subscription service, for example. 

14 minutes ago, Halo said:

I remain incredibly sceptical.

 

The question has always been whether it’s a revolutionary new paradigm or an expensive gimmick (akin to 3D TV, motion controls[1], lightguns, music controllers, arcade sticks,  flight sticks, dance mats, toys to life etc). I believe it’s the latter.

 

I think if it was going to be a revolution then it would have happened by now. There’s been more than ample investment in the area. The Meta Quest sold well (albeit at a big loss), but its sales have peaked and are now declining.

 

I’m expecting PSVR2 to outright bomb, a slow withdrawal from Meta with their tails between their legs, and it becoming a niche 3rd party peripheral akin to racing controllers (and some slow natural growth of some AR/VR industrial applications). Which is fine. And the eternal obnoxious whining from adherents that certain games “should” be VR, which is less fine.

 

But maybe I’m horribly wrong and people can quote this forever to show how

embarrassingly out of touch I am!
 

[1] I do think the baby was thrown out with the bath water for motion controls and it will eventually make a comeback in some form.

Any return of motion controls is kind of linked to VR at this point isn’t it? 
 

We had a good decade of mainstream motion controls and developers ran into a brick wall in figuring out how to move beyond the basic early successes. It’s only since it’s been integrated into VR that we’ve started seeing implementation of what everyone dreamed of back when the Wii was unveiled. 

I’d be just fine with an iterative sequel that has more levels, new enemies, new weapons etc.

But if we were thinking more ambitious then I reckon you could blend the combat engine in this with Housemarque’s older 2D stuff, add on some more in-depth RPG/narrative mechanics and hey presto, you’ve got a western version of Nier Automata.

1 hour ago, BongoInferno said:

Exactly this except that it goes to a 10/10 GOAT 😀

 

The giveaway in the review on how much time the reviewer spent on it is the reference to ‘almost no persistent progression’. As you play the game more and your skills improve, you appreciate how much of a game changer the persistent weapon traits are.

Exactly! A hollow seeker with homing and a portal gun almost turns the game from a shooter to Vampire Survivors in 3D.

The snootier UK games media more or less don’t get Returnal, which is one of several reasons I don’t treat them as any barometer of what’s good anymore. 
 

Too wrapped up in praising tedious point and click adventures and FMV games that remind them of the 90s to appreciate a genuinely next gen game when it stares them in the face. 

The PS5 is a great machine, although I actually think it’s lost a bit of steam since it’s very underrated first six-seven months, which I honestly think is one of the best launch periods any console has ever had. 
 

Part of the problem is that window had next-gen only games and everything since has been cross-gen, which means the most technically impressive releases are all two years old now.

Xbox Series S has been a bit of a waste of time for me. Has never felt like a proper next gen console, too many games look a bit crap compared to the PS5. 
 

I essentially stopped using it altogether once I got a Steam Deck, almost all the highly rated stuff that’s on Game Pass these days is much better suited to a handheld. I don’t know why anyone would be playing Vampire Survivors on their living room TV.