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But it was, so who is going to take responsibility for it? Is Sony going to back down from the requirement? Is Valve going to refund all those users?

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FWIW, no need for it to be an attack vector if you just use one of those throwaway email services to sign up for a PSN account you’ll never use anywhere else.

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Could just make a throwaway account with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, what have you, then. No real/personally identifiable information attached.

Not saying I agree at all with what Sony is doing, but anyone who is concerned about their email/personal information getting leaked by something they didn’t want to sign up for, there are options to protect yourself.

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They shouldn’t.

I am just saying, if the concern is about putting your email on another service, then don’t put your email. You can use a throwaway one if you just want to get through it and play, or if it’s a matter of principle and you don’t want to, that’s cool too.

Just offering my 2 cents on keeping personal information safe on the web. It’s often unsafe to put all your eggs in one basket and email is no exception, so having some “burner accounts” on hand can help.

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The PC version of XVI is being actively worked on, Rebirth not long to follow I’d imagine, given that they released less than a year apart.

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Is there a dead dead game news channels channel?

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The title seems a bit misleading, it sounds like it is saying FromSoftware made a dungeon crawler-inspired game (or classic titles-inspired game, as the article title now states).

I’d have added a single “by” and moved some words around to make “This FPS Inspired by FromSoftware Dungeon Crawlers Is Made with GZDoom”

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No you’re good, it’s the article title itself!

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Even worse.

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I sincerely hope so. The later seasons weren’t perfect, but they were still interesting enough to leave me wanting more, and to have it just unceremoniously cut off stings pretty badly. Real Netflix move.

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Not sure if you watched up to the end of season 4, but it ends on a cliffhanger. They were building to a final season that would answer the “Can humanity and AI coexist in the same world?” question that the series had been asking since the beginning.

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What does Larian have to do with any of this?

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A game like Elden Ring I could get, but the player character gets a lot of facetime in Baldur’s Gate 3. Conversations/interactive cutscenes are a main pillar of that game.

Even if you wear a full helmet, of which there are relatively few compared to open face helmets, hats, circlets, etc., a lot of cutscenes still take place at camp or in other situations where your character takes off their armor and switches to casual clothing anyways.

And on top of that the game includes toggles to turn off headwear in cutscenes or always, which gives the character 100% facetime be they wearing a helmet or no. That’s more than what I’d call “split second” at least.

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Other than it being anti-cheat software failing to do the one thing it was made to do?

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PS4 controllers use Bluetooth and can be paired with a phone.

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Graphics are debatable. 7 Rebirth has a larger, more fleshed out world, and the characters are a bit more emotive and varied, but there are definitely a few parts of the environment that feel a bit last-gen (water especially). They really nail interior clutter, though, so buildings feel so lived in.

16 is smaller in scale, and honestly doesn’t even have many comparable town environments to put up next to 7, but the field environments are simply gorgeous throughout. The give and take of visual budgeting at work, I guess.

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Yes, I know a lot of people who barely touched the open world content and have just been blitzing the story.

I guess my take is that this is all a big step up from the older standard of grinding enemies outside of town for hours just to level up your materia, so I don’t mind the large volume of side objectives to do. Variety is always nice.

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Based on the trailer, I am assuming the entire game is self-contained within the city, though I’d expect it to be a lot bigger than the city was in X and Y.

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I am guessing this is meant to be the Switch 2 launch title. With that system being delayed (it was supposed to be released this year but now it’s 2025), hopefully they’ll use the extra time to heavily polish the game and make it pretty.

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Valhalla was one of the few games that launched on newer consoles, with visual enhancements over the previous gen, which may have had something to do with it. People were looking for something that would take advantage of the hardware they just sank a lot of money on and there weren’t many choices on the market at the time.

I’d say Mirage, the more recent game, should be indicative enough of the health of the series and made them $250 million, which is still good but not Valhalla level.

I’m assuming that this one will perform better because a Japan game is what people have been clamoring for this whole time, but I think this is still going to demonstrate a downward trend for the series overall.

Ghost of Tsushima 2 is rumored to be announced sometime soon, though, and that’s what I’m holding out for.

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youtu.be/Uw0yUlHefwU?si=s5boMchKwyKxkOAB

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On the one hand I agree, it was obviously a calculated move to bait sales before microtransactions were added, which is incredibly scummy. But on the other hand, if a game reviewer gave it a certain score before microtransactions were added and nothing was altered/removed from the experience that was originally reviewed, I guess I don’t see the problem with the score they assigned at the time (assuming it was reviewed in good faith).

You can install it out of the box and disable game updates and not see any microtransactions, which will let you play it exactly as it was when it was first reviewed. You won’t get to do any online play, but I guess the bigger takeaway in that case is that any game which relies on online/live service elements for continued engagement needs to have a big fucking “CAVEAT EMPTOR” on every review.

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Right, but what I was getting at with how prone to change online experiences inherently are, it seems odd to rely on reviews to begin with. Sure I suppose it is irresponsible for a publication to make claims about the quality of an online experience, knowing that there is no guarantee of consistency over time, but the customer also shouldn’t approach any online/live service experience with an expectation of consistency, because change is inherent to the model. Enjoy it while it lasts if it is fun, but again, caveat emptor.

The feeling of betrayal people have about online experiences is thankfully leading to pushback against live service models in general. Too many companies out there doing bait and switch bullshit.

If a game like Tekken happens to have a solid campaign and fun local multiplayer, I would be okay with leaving a good review up, because that is pretty much all that would have been reviewed ahead of time before there were other players to do online modes with. If a publication has a specific “no microtransactions” criteria, though, then I suppose they can do whatever they like afterwards. But anyone should be able to still obtain the day 1 version of the game and play it offline if you don’t like the direction they went with its updates. You might just need to be more creative on PC to find them.

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Not to mention how cool the new Mana game looks.

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Ghost Story Games is another rebranding of the same studio that made Bioshock (2K Boston) and Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games), and is still headed by Ken Levine. Basically, this is Bioshock 3 (4?) in all but name, if the “From the creators of Bioshock” wasn’t explicit enough.

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Remind me of bowling balls.

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I hate to say it, but games should stop using licensed music. Or at least if it has an expiry date, which they all seem to. Every game that licenses a song becomes a ticking time bomb before it is either pulled from sale or all of the music gets patched out, even if you purchased it before then.

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I’d say keep an open mind when it comes to industry and environment. I got my start in game dev but quickly left it after I realized it wasn’t really for me. I bounced around for a while after that, even picking up a job teaching English abroad (probably not advisable in your situation) before returning back to the US and taking a job working for a nonprofit.

A lot of industries like healthcare, finance, education, and enterprises in general have need of developers with experience and they still pay decently well. It may not be as exciting as FAANG/Silicon Valley style dev work, but you’re likelier to find stability and a more manageable work/life balance. It helped me finally learn to work to live instead of live to work, and I can also still take some pride that the work I do is used to help people.

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TBH, with how much criticism Square Enix received for including some AI-generated assets in Foamstars, I am surprised this game isn’t getting more condemnation from the anti-AI crowd.

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I want to trust Obsidian but…man does the combat look rough. Feels like a live service game that they pivoted at the last minute.

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Definitely won’t be all of them. Probably just a small set that are not huge money makers. They already publish some titles as third party, like Minecraft, Ori, and Lucky’s Tale.

Guessing we just get ports of, like, Hi-Fi Rush and Psychonauts, and continued support of some Activision titles that are 3rd party like Diablo 4, Spyro, Crash, and a token Call of Duty game.

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It is just part 2. Will there be a bundle of both at some point? Maybe. But it’s set to be a trilogy, each installment a separate release.

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It’s probably not too vital. It sets up some new backstory for Yuffie (and also ties into some elements of Dirge of Cerberus of all things), but I am assuming Rebirth will sum up the important parts of Yuffie’s story so far, at least in broad strokes, for when she joins the party.

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…Who hurt you?

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5, 8, 9, and 10 are the best of the earlier games and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

And this is why there can be no such thing as an “ideal” FF game outside of perhaps re-remastering 10 again.

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Makes me wonder where their line is between this and Black Mesa, though.

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Oof, any game that leaves reviewers putting the Avengers game in a more favorable light is not a good look.

Live service was a mistake.

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“Oh yeah, Spyro, my favorite Xbox character. Right next to Crash Bandicoot and Banjo Kazooie.”

Words that would have given me in 2001 an aneurysm.

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Funny idea, but I feel like a game about the political elite crushing a revolution of the people isn’t something that would ring well with a lot of folks, haha.

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Shame it’s a Unity project. I’d be worried for the developer if Unity ever decides to start charging fees per install or something equally bullshit again.

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If an independent developer is threatened by AI, then they’re using it wrong.

From a development standpoint, it is so nice if you are someone who is good at coding but bad at art to be able to use AI to help with the visual design of the game. It’s easy to say “just hire an artist” when so many indie devs are literally one-person operations who can barely afford rent, let alone wages for an artist.

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I haven’t had a look at the original text from China, but wondering how much they accounted for. Any of these rules could be easily circumvented if they didn’t account for multiple scenarios.

Rewards for spending money within a game for the first time

“We don’t have a reward for spending money for the first time, but everyone does have a digital coupon for $5 off of their first $10 purchase when they make an account.”

Rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions

“The players don’t get any extras when they buy more of our digital currency, but every gacha pull does make the next 5 pulls a bit cheaper.”

Rewards for daily log-ins.

“No, we’re not giving rewards for daily log-ins, but players can buy this bonus that adds a gift-giving NPC to the main town for 30 days, who will trade a small parcel of premium currency for a single gold coin once per day.”

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That’s not what I’m saying. I was just hoping this law has teeth, because companies who are greedy for money will always try to circumvent whatever new restrictions are sent their way.

I’m thinking back to earlier policies set by China like the restrictions against showing undead/human remains in video games. World of Warcraft set up all these euphemistic workarounds to circumvent the law while realistically changing as little as possible, basically defeating the purpose of it.

China outlawed loot boxes, but then season passes and gatcha models were implemented in short order to continue exploiting consumers. If the law doesn’t account for all sorts of scenarios that can be abused, it’s just going to be a game of cat and mouse.

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I guess this list must exclude early access because I don’t see The Day Before listed.

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I can’t say Yoko Taro’s work has always landed for me, but I can appreciate the fact that he doesn’t ever half-ass his vision. You can’t really find many other games like Nier and Drakengard out there, so he’s got me interested in whatever he does next.

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A lot of people stick with ongoing/live service games as their main mode of play. FFXIV is the majority of my playtime, with Baldur’s Gate 3 really being the only “this year” game I’ve played to a great extent.

Also plugging the Patient Gamers crowd that I find myself aligning more strongly with over time. Waiting to pick up games when they go on sale is not only easier on the wallet, but it is also a better experience overall with way too many developers these days releasing products on a “ship now, fix later” mindset.

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It had been mentioned previously. After Sony acquired Bungie, they put them to task on auditing a few other projects to figure out how to optimize the live service models of several upcoming games, with TLoU 2’s multiplayer mode being among them. After Bungie’s assessment was not overly favorable, the project was frozen (in news earlier this year) and now appears to have been officially canceled.

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Hoping they can get the multiplayer mod fixed after this update. Been playing bit by bit with a friend which has been fun, but it’s a travesty we have to rely on a mod because multiplayer wasn’t supported by default like basically every Tales game to come before.