Luseth

I don't think PC gaming is really comparable, yes there are alternative storefronts and there is always scope for more retailers to enter this space. The biggest company Valve allow keys to be sold elsewhere. However Sony and playstation is currently a closed system. You can only purchase games through their storefront, they do not give keys out to anyone else. It's essentially the same court case that has been going on with Apple and IOS over in the US. I have had some other thoughts on this since my post and just wanted to note them down as a digital only library comes fraught with it's own issues as well:- Account security. Digital libraries can be worth thousands of pounds. As they become more valuable, they'll inevitably become a bigger target for hackers and account theft, 2FA is here today but hackers are generally clever and may yet find ways around it. Loss of access. If your account is permanently banned or you lose login details etc you're potentially losing access to your entire library rather than just a single game. A lack of competition. As above, lack of competition. Sony's system is a closed system, there is going to be nowhere else you can buy a game from Playstation other than their store front where they will also take a cut of the profit of every single game sold. Changing terms over time. When you buy digitally you're buying under the terms that exist today, but those terms can change in the future. Store policies, licence agreements and account requirements aren't fixed forever and we have no idea at this point how they will evolve. Games disappearing from sale. Licensing issues already mean games occasionally disappear from digital stores. If there's no physical market, future players may simply have no legitimate way of buying those games. GTA VI will have a great soundtrack, if some of those licenses end there will be a day that potentially can't be bought. Store longevity. Sony isn't going anywhere any time soon, but digital purchases are ultimately tied to the continued operation of the platform and your account. Physical media doesn't have that dependency.

That's not accurate I don't believe is it? Quite a lot of games still contain a full game albeit without day 1 patches. You generally install the game from it and play from your hard drive admittedly and I think live service games also skew the figures. For example Ratchet and Clank Rift apart, Astro Bot, God of war ragnorok, Spiderman 2 could all be installed and played with just your console and the physical game from start to finish without ever needing an internet connection. The games that do generally follow the practice of a disc being just a download key are typically your Fifa's and Call of Duty's, companies that you would not really be surprised by this. The majority of game 'sales' now are also likely to be live service games which are generally only bought digitally, your fortnites, your Warzones and such which are also notably free and what I think is a big thing is they are not showing what their breakdown is, I suspect DLC's, micro transactions and such may also figure into their figures. Single player titles are much closer to 50% physical and 50% digital sales. 15% of all new game sales are still bought brand new and physical, that is quite a chunk of your fan base to alienate. It also does not include second hand sales so that percentage could be skewed the wrong way. All this is targeting is maximising profit and nothing today with improving things generally. Oh look at us we are doing this because we are following sales trends when in reality it's losing second hand game sales, it's the cost of manufacturing the disc, the case and paying someone to create art for it or layout the casing, the cost of transporting etc etc, all that will now go into the profit that they are making, it's not suddenly going to see a price drop of £5 on each game say because they are all now digital. I get that the trend is currently towards digital only however I don't think you will see the same moral compass from Sony as we have with say Valve, only this week have they also said that many user's won't be able to watch a number of digital films that they have bought and paid for on their consoles. With that in mind if they can do that with any digital content (which their T's & C's allow) there is also the preservation argument whereby we could see games literally disappear and become inaccessible by anyone at some point in the future. Your digital library with Sony won't be as secure as say your steam library, there is every likelihood that in the future you paying £70 for a game is so you can use it for up to 2 years and then you lose access or some other crap. Even following the TV / film industry with how prevalent subscriptions have been with Netflix, Disney etc they have all opted to retain physical copies for people to purchase, I could still go in HMV (surprisingly still exists) and buy a physical blu-ray film, similarly we still get physical cd's. For me and a few people I know now, we buy more games digitally yes however the plus of owning consoles is having the option of physical titles as well. If I am only going to be buying digital games moving forwards it will more likely be on PC. I can get mainly the same games, I can generally buy them cheaper, I have the options of what type of device I want 'Lots of power with a desktop, a portable hand held or something in the middle'. A lot of people own consoles for physical titles or exclusives in addition to their PC and such. What I also find mad is the number of people who just accept this saying ah it doesn't bother me or in some instances I have seen online where people are getting irrate or arsey with those who aren't keen on going digital only. Neither do starving children in parts of the world but it should because it affects other people unnecessarily (appreciate that this is a bit more of a blunt way to say it 😄 ) It's classic case of 'I'm alright Jeff'. If people want to play and enjoy a game they way they do why should it be ok to take that away just to give more profit to the shareholders and such?

Honestly it's looking like what I expected. I am sure it is fun enough to play but these triple A games are competing with less expensive games that play just as well and often have things these titles don't, good story, new mechanics and such. I only have so much time for gaming and have quite the backlog currently so my new game expenditure has dropped right off. For me the perfect Bond game would build upon what was done in Alpha Protocol years back.

Honestly I don't think I have played the dlc's properly despite owning the game of the year version. I have reinstalled it though so maybe once my current games are completed with I will move back onto it. I always fancied getting the platinum trophy and don't think I was far away from memory.

Unfortunately yes. @GazzaGarratt is aware as we spoke about it the other evening.

Thank you Phil, I would feel cheeky asking for Tempest as well after Tensei. I said in my reply that I will take my Rog on holiday now and when the kids are asleep, downtime of an evening I will boot up Tensei so thank you very much!

I enjoyed Diablo 4 but I think we got drawn away to something else at the time. Those sorts of games are good in that you don't have to think too much just go around and bash things in and pick up stuff. Shin Megami Tensei V is something I have wanted for a while, it's like a more mature pokemon type game and honestly I tried the first Crysis game (Remastered) and I think it felt clunky and since then I have not played any of them. It does seem a decent month though. @phil bottle have you played Tempest Rising, is it any good? Reminds me a bit of the command and conquer games?

Is this modded on pc? I keep meaning to take a look at the visual mods and see if I can set them up on my Ally. These look great.

Ironically it's what we have found with the crew in recent days. Can see this being a natural progression. If the price drops on the current Forza on PS I might pick it up.

Yup, someone there thought that COD was the best game in the world and everyone wants to play it so from their perspective it made sense. Ultimately they were expecting everyone on the subscription to pay for the game that probably half of the people subbing wanted essentially subsidising those people. Absolute madness, in fact the initial outcry should really have been the wake up call they needed, instead they have persisted for a few months now and they won't suddenly get those subscribers back now. Many of them will feel a little burnt and will be hesitant about committing to the service again. I had the subscription for my handheld and ended up cancelling it and unlikely will pick it up again soon now unless some special games come to the service.

You can also adopt them and dress them up as well... There is a bit of a thing online of people amassing collections of them 😄

Don't know if anyone saw but the PS5 price is going up by roughly £90 in the UK... Isn't this the first time console prices have gone up during the lifespan rather than down as the cost of manufacturing decreases generally as they get more efficient and such. Will the xbox follow suit, will the Switch see price increases at some point do you think? We have obviously seen it with PC gaming with components increasing dramatically in price in recent years.

I am still having a lot of fun, I think someone said to me the other day that it is essentially what they wanted from Dragons Dogma 2. Another thing that has been good since launch is the listening to player feedback and then updating and patching the game with incredible speed. I think the latest gripe was that many of the unique mounts are time limited but they appear now to be working through them and making them permanent.

I think it's indicative of the state of the gaming market moreso than the sale. There isn't much that is 'new' or 'innovative' and even if there were, the way these storefronts work you just end up looking at the same 100 or so games time and time again. I have tried to scroll through a few times recently and you scroll through and find you are looking at the same old tripe and just give up.

I have not looked to be honest, I am skint as it is and it's only going to tempt me. The last few times I looked as well there was just so much crap to wade through that I lost interest after a couple of minutes. I think with these you are best off knowing what you want in advance and just search for it, if the price is ok then pull the trigger.

I have seen those sort's of deals and really skeptical, I feel like you would buy it and they would reset the password somehow and steal the account back. I played a bit more yesterday and I think it was growing on me more and more, as you say it scratches an itch but I'm not entirely sure what itch that is 😄 It's not perfect by any means but it's big, there appears to be quite a bit to do and explore and you have to just keep in mind that the game is initially a sandbox to play in and then the story is a secondary feature. I suppose a bit like how Fallout 76 turned out and how Outward is meant to be I think?

So I have had a couple of hours on it now so I will give you a rundown of the key areas of a game for me:- Visually it looks great for the most part, there are elements where the textures appear quite rough though, I am sure you will have seen the waterfalls online as one example. Story I think is ok so far though it's a little what the hell is going on at the start but it is slow going, I have read like above that the first few hours it takes a bit to get going and I am seeing that. Gameplay I think is somewhat weak, not for the fact there isn't much there but I think there is too much and it throws everything at you quite quickly, the number of controls / button presses I have been given in the first couple of hours is mad. I do think this would be better on PC rather than PS5 where you can much more easily customise your controls I imagine. I think you can see where the MMO rubs off from their previous game, there are elements like the knowledge that I am fairly sure comes from Black Desert from memory. I don't think it explains stuff particularly great, it tries to but sometimes I still don't feel like I fully understand how to do something, it would be good if there was someway to go back and review a tutorial item or something. World building from what I have seen so far is great, it's huge, there's not too much hand holding but enough some people won't moan. I don't know yet how invested I will get in places. There seems to be a wealth of things to do with mini games and such Then as far as a game goes I think it's actually quite fun, when I said there was a lot in it before, there are things in this game that you would not typically put in a medieval setting. The dev's have not forgotten this is a game, that they can do whatever they want and don't have to follow a formula or I don't know, this is a medieval game so everyone must follow a certain style. I think of Witcher and every character was the same, the combat is what you would expect of it but with this I have no idea what is going to be given to me or thrown at me next. It is not polished, it does not feel like a Rockstar game or a Nintendo Zelda but I am having fun with it so far especially now the game's opening up a bit and there is a bit more direction with quests that need completing and such. Oh the arm wrestling mini game will ache your thumb it's horrible 😄 I have yet to come across any bugs on the PS5 and I had heard there were a few issues.

Yeah I enjoyed it, we tried to get Mart going on it last night but I think he may have been too tired to get his head round some of it. I can see me getting back into this a little bit even if it's just pottering about completing the game. I didn't get far through this when I played last time around but did have a lot of fun with the first Division! It still looks great, I enjoy the atmosphere and I always enjoy a good post apocalyptic style game.

It has been a mixed bag with the reviews, then just looking at steam reviews it sit's at 67%. Metacritic sit's at 78% which is a decent score in my eyes from a studio that produced an MMO most recently. That said, what is interesting is when you filter the playtime:- Players with 3+ hours and it comes out mostly positive Players with 1-3 hours and it suddenly becomes quite a mixed bag I know people generally consume quite quickly in today's world but for a game of this magnitude I can't imagine an hour is enough to judge it on? I think most of the common issues I have seen- - Game has quite a few bugs, this doesn't really surprise me with how big it is, Skyrim was exactly the same when it first came out, Fallout - Some of the games elements are not clear i.e. puzzles are too challenging, bosses can be difficult - I feel like this is a common issue with modern games. Games like Elden ring get praised for not handholding you as you go but then others don't get the same sort of response. - Some of the quests feel like an MMO, not really surprising considering the studio and where it has come from. I think the hype may have done some damage to this game in terms of how well it does, everyone saw the videos, clips etc and expected a game akin to the Witcher 3, not surprising, I think they have marketed the game well but then that will lead to disappointment for many. I think if you played Black desert you are probably more aware of what you are going to get here and won't be disappointed. If you want a world you can get lost in rather than expecting a story akin to the witcher level of quality then you will get quite a bit of enjoyment here I think from everything that is being reported. I have yet to install it but will put it on over the weekend I imagine.

£35 sounds a great price when you consider the size of the game. My only real concern is that it could be too big, in saying that I mean there is in my eyes potential for repetition and players getting a bit bored of the same world but obviously this can easily be designed away so we will see.

I have it on order so will let you know how I get on with it, I am still playing Avowed but will jump on and test it out so I can give initial thoughts.

Seems a good selection of games to be honest, I have always fancied trying a monster hunter game and I wouldn't mind giving ESO a go to having felt it passed me by a little. My brother has been talking about playing it too so maybe something to jump on together.

So I am caught up on the latest season now, I think the first half it didn't seem to flow as well as the first season however the second half it has all come together really well. It also has me hankering to play a fallout game again, so I am reinstalling Fallout 76 today with the intent to get back to playing it again (PS5) if anyone fancies joining me for something a little bit different 🙂

You see stuff like this and you feel lest bad for them and hope they get relegated.