Just because Sony may be pursuing more GaaS titles that doesn't mean the users are happy.
I can't see me ever playing a GaaS title, no matter who produces and publishes it.
Gaming PS5 vs Xbox Series S|X
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I can't see me ever playing a GaaS title, no matter who produces and publishes it.
They have to justify their shitty console with half released games somehow. Leave them to it I say.
Good to see some consistency. Nice one b8.
The news in recent weeks has genuinely got me concerned about the industry long-term.
I do fear that eventually games will be all subscription services that publishers can just turn off whenever they see fit. Games coming and going like shows on Netflix.
Mobile gaming is a HUGE money maker. The jewel in the Activision-Blizzard deal is King. Candy Crush makes an absurd amount of money, and its user base dwarfs any traditional games. I think eventually both companies want their titles available through streaming on every platform possible. That allows Sony and MS to tap massively into the mobile market while slowing or eventually stopping the expensive process of making hardware.
As someone who has an extensive catalogue of physical games and consoles over many generations this sincerely worries me.
The people calling media bias and asking for reviewers to have their reviews taken down because the didn't score their new toy 90+ just sums up Ponies perfectly.
After completing Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, I’ve been searching for something to take up the time that game occupied in my life. I needed something meaty that entertained me while not asking me to invest too much emotion. I wanted something I could play through without being totally mentally present as I recovered from Endwalker’s emotional ravishing, and Horizon Forbidden West perfectly filled that need. It was the video game equivalent of the post-coital cigarette that I’m looking forward to smoking for another 60 hours.
This is admittedly great. Somewhere between pretentious and genius
This is admittedly great. Somewhere between pretentious and genius
Burn them all
At least they’ll have better chance at filling a stadium that way.
Feel like games are getting an easy ride on the review front lately. Not sure if it's because we've been starved for games or because so many are sequels and the reviewers are typically the people who love that/those games.
Only lately?
Though I think you are right to question it, of late it's gotten more...coordinated. The two that I've mentioned elsewhere are Sifu with the difficulty and Elden Ring with the ludicrous BOTW comparisons and 10/10 scores. Isn't it just a little weird that they are all basically saying the same things at the same time, whilst arguably being wrong? Dunno, it's off to me.
I'd add Halo too, and potentially Horizon (though I need to play more)
Yeah, probably isn't a new thing. And let's be honest if a game averaged a low 8 then people would think it was mediocre as feck.
That's the problem. A solid 7 is bad now rather than good. A 5 is terrible rather than average. Goes for everything not just game reviews.
Elden ring is nothing like BoTW.
Elden ring is actually good.
I actually think Horizon is fairly accurate yet probably underrated compared to some of the others, if that makes sense. It’s a far more polished, better looking game than Elden Ring with an actual story and life like characters and a crazy amount of combat mechanics and a far more vibrant world. But it’s also not nearly as difficult and full of nasty bosses and oh you can explore here and look at this and do this and bla bla.
it’s weird because Elden Ring is by far the more addictive game of the two yet Horizon feels like a better overall modern game to me. I dunno, 8 or 9 feels fair for both to me, definitely not a 10.
Halo was crazy overrated for sure.
Will GT7 be PSVR2 compatible?
I already own a Series X, but if GT7 has VR support I will for sure be getting a digital edition PS5 and the VR kit. I've been looking at sim rigs but with a decent PC attached they're a lot of cash. Would get a decent wheel set too.
I already own a Series X, but if GT7 has VR support I will for sure be getting a digital edition PS5 and the VR kit. I've been looking at sim rigs but with a decent PC attached they're a lot of cash. Would get a decent wheel set too.
Reckon you can bank on it...Will GT7 be PSVR2 compatible?
I already own a Series X, but if GT7 has VR support I will for sure be getting a digital edition PS5 and the VR kit. I've been looking at sim rigs but with a decent PC attached they're a lot of cash. Would get a decent wheel set too.
Yeah fair enough. I know I need to give Horizon more time, it's obvious it gets better. The first 4 or so hours have been really average though. Reminds me of when people tell you how great a TV series is but you have to get to the 2nd or 3rd season first which is always a bit frustrating.
With Elden Ring, the people reviewing it are very much the people who love those games and go deep. Listening to a bunch of podcasts with others who have had early access but weren't chosen to be the reviewers, the response is a lot more mixed. Not sure I'd prefer it if a bunch of people who obviously wouldn't like Elden Ring reviewed it though.
I always wonder who picks the reviewers and why? For example, pick a reviewer that doesn't like a particular genre then that game is guaranteed a low score and the review is gonna have bad takes, and a lot of discussion online.
Conversely, if a fan does the review its getting the masterpiece score, a page of felatio and maybe a box quote.
For sure, I think the fact that FS games only appeal to a certain type of gamer (albeit, it's getting more and more popular with each game) means they get a lot of leeway and it's almost like "hey if you don't understand why this type of game and combat is a masterpiece then that's your fault, not the game's". I adored Bloodborne and am really enjoying Elden Ring but they are not perfect games. It's actually weird with Elden Ring, people keep saying the world looks great but honestly, even on my good PC, it looks very last gen compared to a lot of games released recently (Horizon, Ratchet, Halo etc). And it has performance issues across all platforms. How is that acceptable for a 10/10?
And yeah the start of Horizon is really slow and really average, it's unfortunate because the game gets great once it properly opens up.
I was shocked to see Halo sitting at 87 on metacritic given that us Xbox fans™ have been fairly harsh on it. Similarly Reddit's opinion is very mixed (even on /r/Halo).
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Yep, we've had this discussion before. I think giving a game 6/7 means it's decent and worth a play, though don't expect greatness and yet people also moan about that being harsh!
So now everything is a 8/9/10 which is ridiculous.
Very good point. Thing is it's not hard to add balance, but free copies and early access shows what these guys are really doing it for.
Personally I absolutely love From's games, all of them including DS2, and soulsbourne games like The Surge. And no doubt I'll love Elden, I'm already hooked. But I've already seen and talked about a lot of issues with it, some pretty major in terms of game design, and yet magically no reviews talk about any of it which they should and still give it high scores if they so wish. No chance it's a 10 by any metric though, it's far from flawless.
But gotta get that swag over any integrity.
Do you mean in terms of publishers dictating what reviewers can say?
Eurogamer's Horizon review said that they were told not to say certain things about the story, and I heard another former editor say something similar in a podcast recently. I suppose therefore it's not outside of the realm of likelihood that they're given a list of what they can and can't talk about, hence why they might end up sounding similar.
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Are we talking about story spoilers or something else?
Much of Forbidden West's narrative issues are frustratingly embargoed, but know that at times it will go fully off the rails into wild, nonsensical sci-fi.
This is the line. Sounds like they were limited in what they could say about the story, which might include spoilers.
True but I find Metacritic is quite good when you ignore the numbers and use the colours instead. Anything Green is probably good. Yellow is okay. Red is bad etc.
It makes it more like Rotten Tomatoes where it's simply aggregating review scores to determine if people liked it or not.
Yeah, if you shit on a game and you're not a big outlet then you may not receive a review copy next time. For the big outlets, there's an obvious conflict with sponsored content and advertising.
Can't comment on Elden Ring yet but for what it's worth I don't think a game has to be flawless to be a 10/10. If a game has little ambition and executes perfectly I don't think that has more right to be a 10 than something that sets out to be really ambitious and innovative, only to miss some beats along the way but totally excel and game change/genre define in others.
Oh 100% (I was on my phone so couldn't be arsed to elaborate!), I don't mean flawless as in terms of technical, I mean in terms of what they set out to achieve and what they did. For example, take BOTW, that's a bonafide masterpiece. Sure some of us have issues with some of it, like weapon degrading or lack of dungeons, but to them and what it achieves it's hard to argue against those kinds of scores even if I don't personally give it a 10.
Whereas with Elden Ring, there's obvious flaws and backwards steps from the off. The combat, for example, isn't as fluid as DS3 or BB, it's actually a lot like DS2 (which is universally derided). Enemy placement suffers from the same thing, so does the way the bosses simply get spammy on the second phases rather than genuine changes to attack patterns (again, another major issue with 2). Even the mechanics they've tried to work, like parrying, they've had a good idea (making the enemies way more random) but they've then made almost every enemy do that and left in the strict window timing, it's a mish-mash. It's all way more debatable than with the games generally regarded as all round 10's, it really isn't in that category for me.
Now of course that's my opinion, and of course I have no issue with people on here giving it 10 or it being their best game ever as it's clearly a top notch game and one I myself will no doubt love. The problem I have is that it's clearly flawed though and yet all reviews parrot the same exact thing "OMG it's like BOTW!" whilst mentioning none of the backwards steps and problems. They are clearly all magically singing from the same hymn sheet, as it's not like BOTW at all so someone has dreamed up that comparison and given it to them. It's like the reverse of Sifu, where they all banged on unanimously about this magic difficulty and how it's "not for everyone 'la!". With Elden Ring they are almost tricking people who otherwise have never tried a souls game into thinking it's something else, whereas with Sifu they convinced plenty of people not to buy it the same way. Speaking of which, Sifu is way more flawless and realised than ER is.
Reviews have for a long time been paid for, and the crib sheets they are given are nothing new. It just seems way more blatant lately, probably because at least back in the magazine days you actually had to have some kind of journalistic training/background to do it whereas now anybody can just put videos up. And I don't even blame them, free swag! But it's a problem when they are actively now openly unified as a whole.
Edge magazine still have a proper 1-10 review scale.
I don't think any game should be getting close to a 97. That should be an almost perfect game and no matter how good a game gets there is always room for improvement.
I have said for ages though that you can't trust the critics about the quality of a game. I watch playthroughs to see if a game is something that I would be interested in but even then I'm not sure if I'll enjoy the game until I play it myself.
So is it fair to say XBox are losing this fight... Again...? Surprise surprise.
@Alock1 what's happening with Starfield?
@Alock1 what's happening with Starfield?
I don't use much physical media other than games, but I want to watch a few blu rays. Am I right in saying that the ps5 has slightly better playback?
I've got both, so it's no bother. I'd just rather get the best experience.
I've got both, so it's no bother. I'd just rather get the best experience.
Should do. Sony will have a better Blu Ray playback than Microsoft. But I think there is a lack of Dolby Atmos...
Fight for what, sales, best place to play? I think Xbox with gamepass is a better proposition and I use mine way more than my PS. I do think Xbox need to build on last years momentum though with some games this year. Not convinced Redfall and Starfield will definitely come out this year, and any shine of having critical game like Deathloop hit gamepass is lost due to it being on PS for so long (not that GP fans will care as it's an extra game to play for no additional cost). Forza will be solid if it happens, but doesn't really move the needle. If PS do have God of War to follow up Horizon then momentum swings back PS way on the exclusive front, especially if something like TLOU Factions hits too.
The new PS subscription will be big but I don't think the value will be close to Gamepass since they won't put day 1 games on there. I'm sure it'll still get tons of subscribers in a short space of time though.
I was very interested in the Xbox dongle for streaming but that seems to have gone quiet. We should be hearing about the PS gamepass service soon but I would keep your expectations in check if it's anything like the recent leak..
Out of topic, but how long do you guys usually play on average? Is it an hour a day, or more? I don’t know how some people seem to finish new titles so fast. And get platinums and everything on top.
As a decent alternative, you can always use remote play via the Xbox app if you have a laptop lying around. I find it tremendously useful for playing in the bedroom, and probably use it more than I do the main console.
Admittedly a dongle would be an upgrade for sure but this is a good """free""" alternative.
Guardians of the Galaxy coming to Gamepass. Was tempted to buy it for some time but it always felt like it would be on Gamepass at some point.
Yeah, when I've finished with God Of War I might give that a go. Heard some good things.
Game pass winning again?
It's a good get tbf... Not enough heavy hitters on game pass for me though.