If it's just a cheaper way to save on Game Pass I'm not so desperate for that by itself. If it bridges each other's entitlements to purchased content however, we'll, then I could see the benefit certainly and have a couple friends I might do that with. It would of course require compartmentalizing our separate payment options, which was never part of Xbox's 7th gen XBLG family plan.
So far I found revisiting these fun. And mostly enticed by wanting to see someone other than Epic release a UE5 game. I also wanted to see Blooper's latest work leading up their Silent Hill 2 remake. Anyhow...
Would have been nice to see some consistency between games. Most notes in first Layers of Fear and its expansions are voiced, in Layers of Fear 2 they're not, just memories associated with physical objects. Also can't pause while reading notes in LoF2 for some reason, can in others.
I was on fence about playing in quality or performance and kept toggling between both for a long while. There were some few instances quality had an edge but most the time performance looked just as good. The main difference IMO was just RT reflections, in some cases better texture detail. You get mirror reflections in the first LoF content, mirrors appear grayed out in LoF2 despite using quality setting.
Audio is great though I did find issues when reading notes (mostly 1st game) where it appears the audio between lines splices too close together too soon.
I'm still going through LoF2 and curious when done how well they made it easy to revisit the games and their chapters for collectibles (or if they do at all). Hope they do. These games are labyrinths and often I'll encounter split paths unsure which one is the exploratory path and which one is the progressing path, if I go down the progression path the doors lock behind me for good, and I'll miss collectibles. So yeah, hope there's a way to jump back in and not require a perfect run to gather those.
I find it odd to see some complain it's not scary, I thought of these more as psychological thriller walking sims. Though there are horror elements they just kind of superficial more than anything and it's mostly a story focused game with more common focus on things like guilt or grief or madness.
As far as a UE5 tech demo goes... not all that impressed TBH. I wish in consoles there wouldn't be a quality vs performance option, just one well rounded build that splits the difference. I felt compelled to jump back into Scorn after not playing it for months and damn despite what people say about it overall that's a very visually impressive game, but that left me less impressed with this LoF. As far as it reflects on Blooper, we'll, they've always been sort of an underdog in my eyes. First LoF game was a stutter mess on all systems yet I came to appreciate it anyways. And Observer blew me away (still unoptimized) so I've kind of been rooting for them ever since. Little by little they become a more capable developer. Really liked Blair Witch and The Medium too. Anyhow, for me, revisiting these in UE5 for $21 (30% off discount for owners of either LoF game), wasn't a major sacrifice. Most anything a time commitment for now. I'd recommend it but know what you're getting into. It's a story driven walking sim. Don't expect a survival horror.
On a last note, though I enjoyed these games when I played them on their own years back. Playing them back to back in this release, some parts really drag on, get repetitive, and while it might not be much to endure in a single game, can start to get old halfway through this master collection. Still, overall, worth the price of admission.
Very peculiar. Someone would have to be an utter Sony shill to give this PC port trash an 8/10, but seems consistent with GameSpot's other dubious moves like delaying their Street Fighter 5 or Gran Turismo PS4 reviews in hopes that future updates could justify more favorable scores.
This is what happens when a new generation of gaming journalists launched their careers as "industry insiders" by regurgitating the boards of NeoGAF, which for years operated as a heavily moderated Sony fanboy safespace that permabanned descent. They try to keep an objective public facing here, but their cultish mentality oozes out of the nuances of plausible deniability.
It's on Game Pass so no major sacrifice just to see for myself, the English audio localization I've seen though seems awful I might try the Russian audio with subtitles just to keep that out of mind.
If the developer in this podcast equated Game Pass with PS Plus then that's the most telling thing about what went wrong. Xbox Live Gold is the Xbox equivalence to PlayStation Plus, Game Pass is the equivalent to PlayStation Now. The game went to PS Plus, not PS Now.
It doesn't matter it released in April instead of January, it wouldn't have been only 100K downloads, the PS5s had been selling out since launch up until then. Maybe their expectations about 100K downloads is telling that they didn't understand the difference.
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