The video game industry is for sale, and MS is buying. Most concerning is that comment about Metaverse plans….ugh, just let people play games.
People thought cool guy Spencer was the Luke Skywalker of games, turns out it was just Palpatine the entire time, and we fell for it. So much for growing gaming and breaking down platform barriers, huh.
This gen, and maybe everyone after it, have become a true David vs. Goliath scenario for Sony, a complete reversal of the narrative for the past 2 gens. MS has spent enough money on buying devs that they could have bought Sony. Now, we see how long they can hold on before the Chinese mega publishers move in and absorb the scraps. Dang shame too, Sony has published many of the best games ever made in the past decade or so. MS didn’t publish any of them.
I bet Sony will hang on to the bitter end, and will cancel all their PC ports from here on out. Spencer’s dream comes true, and fewer of us get to play great games on the platforms we want, and will probably end up paying more for them. Monopolization only leads to worse products and higher prices.
Man, this will be the first Doom game/expansion ever that I will never play. I’ve always liked Doom a lot, it’s right up there with Mario in terms of being a foundational game, but Eternal was just so not Doom, it was essentially anti-Doom.
But I waded through the literal and figurative sludge with that one, and the unbearable expansion, but that was all I could take. I know a lot of people really love Eternal, but that game killed Doom. Doom can be beat with nothing but a pistol and your fists...if you want and are good enough. Eternal switched that to square pegs going into square holes, circles into circles holes, and so forth. Doom is supposed to have an unlimited number of ways to solve each problem, eternal has one way. It’s basically a big production QTE with bad platforming and janky dashing.
That all might be forgivable, because..well..it’s Doom, and Doom is awesome kind of by default. But good lord why is there so much lore? Why does any game need this much bad lore? Why is Doom aping Destiny instead of the other way around? No really, Eternal is basically Destiny. It’s embarrassing.
Anyway, I’m out so what I have to say doesn’t matter. I’m just mourning my old friend.
I would say it’s a 7, maybe. It’s not bad at all for a throwback JRPG, but there’s no reason for anyone who isn’t into the genre to play it.
There are some really weird difficulty spikes in the first 10 hours or so that really put me off. I like tough bosses in RPGs, but there is a little girl and a tough guy right after another that will wreck you. It’s pretty much clear sailing after that as long as you use the bard, white mage and berserker.
There’s a lot grinding here, as with the first 2 games. But it even more slow going, and battles are typically demanding. Every enemy has a weakness to exploit, and a strength to avoid. Eventually you pretty much plow through everything by spamming braves on your first turn with aoes. But by then, it feels earned to watch Adele’s arms flail wildly as she delivers 16 attacks in a row, many crits, and kills every enemy in the first turn. You will have the tools to do that, and that’s fun shit.
@sparent180: The crazy thing is man, the TFLOP difference isn't even an accurate measurement of power. The PS5 is absolutely the more powerful gaming machine.
I will keep saying it as many times as I have to: The SX isn't more powerful. It's just better at cranking out TFLOPS.
For example: The PS5 has a dedicated secondary CPU just for optimizing RAM and data streaming, it even does this automatically for developers without their input, but this advantage isn't displayed in TFLOPS.
And the RAM? The PS5 SSD is so outrageously fast it basically functions like a giant RAM pool anyway.
And the GPU? The Ps5 GPU is actually a little faster and can borrow power from the Tempest engine, and has the huge benefit of accessing that insane SSD directly.
C'mon people! Pay attention! The PS5 is better is every way. But hey, by all means, keep freaking out about a non-performance metric that doesn't really mean anything anymore.
@gamer112696: What's really remarkable is that if you compare the PS5 and Series X side-by-side, the PS5 is the clear winner.
Series X has a slightly faster CPU, but the RAM and GPU end up being about the same. SX has 10 gigs of faster RAM, 6 gigs run slower. The GPU has more compute units, but the PS5's are more powerful. The only notable difference is that the PS5 input/output bandwidth is more than twice as large than the SX. That's a staggering advantage that will dramatically improve loading and asset streaming performance.
On the other hand, if you look at how the SX is designed, it was made in such a way that suggests MS deliberately focused on areas that would pump-up the TFLOP count, but not necessarily lead to observable or meaningful gains in actual game quality and performance.
Cerny says this in so many ways without actually saying it, but most tellingly he explains how the "quality vs. quantity" ratio works differently for a RDNA TFLOP compared to a GCN TFLOP. Which is why the PS5 has fewer CU's on the GPU, but they are more powerful. The gains are greater because it was designed to be a quality over quantity system, because AMD has always been about bang for the buck.
I promise you, I absolutely promise anyone that the PS5 is the more powerful console, and the "But the TFLOPS!" folks right now will be enshrined in embarrassing memes for the rest of this generation. Sony absolutely made the better machine, and I'm saying this as someone who wants to get both.
At this point, I'm leaning towards the PS5 over the Series X. Panicking over teraflops doesn't really make sense, the qualitative difference in power here is more relevant than the quantitative difference. And the PS5 looks to be designed more for efficiency and ease of use for developers, which will yield positive results for game quality. I wouldn't be surprised if alot of Series X games end up looking a bit better, but the PS5 versions run and play better. I would go with the one that plays better.
And that 3D audio engine: holy flying crap on a stick did they mean business when they said they wanted better audio. This thing is NUTS. Dolby Atmos is the most sophisticated 3D audio tech available to mainstream consumers right now, and Tempest makes Atmos look my daughter when she's banging coffee cans with wooden spoons. Forget about it. Tempest is the Holy Grail of video game audio, and you don't even need expensive speakers to use it, it will work with everything.
Lastly, the expandable storage. No more overpriced propriety memory cards like the Vita did, and the series X continues with. You will be able to buy your own storage and slot it in, even thought it might take a year or two for the market to catch up. I imagine quite a bit of SSD cards coming up with "PS5 compatible" in the name. Even though 825 gigs will be a little limiting, you will have better and cheaper expansion options in the long run here than on the Series X. And the games are going to be significantly smaller since there won't be any asset duping, that shouldn't have the be explained anymore.
Anyways, that's my takeaway from it. My prediction is that the PS5 will be the overall better machine, but I might be wrong? Who cares? Video games are silly anyways.
I’ve never seen so many experts on a game they never played. You folks are so easily overcome with contagion, I can’t even imagine how you enjoy any games at all. Remember when everyone defended the slow and deliberate pace of RDR2? But this game is tedious? Remember when everyone praised Demons Souls for its brilliant online systems, but when this game iterates on that idea, it’s a lame attempt to please the instagram kids? Even when the game systems in place are blunt metaphors for the exact narrative themes in the plot.
In Death Stranding the world is terrified and lives almost entirely underground, in painful isolation from each other, sounds about right? But based on these review-score bois who are physiologically intolerant of another person’s opinion, I don’t think the internet is the solution Kojima seems to think it is.
I’m pretty happy to see more folks will get to be able to play this hopefully great game. I’ll be playing it on the Pro, since I expect it will be cross-compatible with the PS5 along with a few other upcoming Sony games.
Only reason to boohoo this is DFAA. Digital foundry analysis anxiety, a serious mental illness that affects thousands. Those poor souls, losing their minds over lazy conjecture and extreme close-ups of grass.
@silv3rst0rm: Calling a game "too hard" for any reason at any time is worse than suicide in the current climate of games, but just watch people play the hidden temple levels in this game. It's physically impossible for most people to keep up with that.
I was able to finish everything in DKCR except the time challenges, in TF I couldn't even get all the Kong letters in the last world and couldn't finish a single temple level, and man did I ever try, and try and try until my thumbs were callous. My wife is pretty good at these kinds of games and this game made her cry repeatedly, she did eventually finish it but never touched any of the extra stuff and never touched it again. She later forgot she had ever even played it when the Switched version was announced, so for how memorable the game was....ehh....not even close to being worth the suffering.
@michellebennet: The Wii U review was done by a different person, Wii U games were not underrated critically by this site at all.
And from someone who has played this game alot on the Wii U, a 6 is just about right. The levels are ludicrously long and the level design feels almost random. Nothing flows into the next thing in an intuitive way, and limited lives are not needed or asked for at this point in video games.
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