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@CosmicRunaway - Still not started Horizon Zero Dawn Yet. I thought that Yakuza 0 was shorter than it turned out: I'll get the final chapter finished over the weekend sometime and then clear the decks for Horizon ... although I may as well wait until I get my Pro now.

Nioh has been shunted down my backlog, and I'm not even gonna think about buying Nier Automata until I'm done with it .... And then the new Mass Effect is released.

2017's been great for games so far. Expensive, but great.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

The Witcher 3...

Man, what a game. Lisa and I have been enthralled. After spending 200+ hours in Skyrim, I remember thinking it would be extremely tough to beat Skyrim in the open world category. The Witcher 3 slays it. If someone told me you could have a story as compelling as this while still maintaining the amount of free play and exploration this game has, I would have been very skeptical. Alas, here it is. Not to mention the amazing artistry and attention to detail in regards to the graphics and world-building in general.

The City of Novigrad is jaw-dropping. The city is alive with people, animals, and activity. As the business day comes to a close and the sun sets, drunks and slatterns start to appear around town as the torch-light shimmers on the water by the docks. A storm will roll in, with flashes of lightning and the streets fill with puddles while the clothing and hair of people in the streets becomes drenched. I could wander around the city for hours just taking in the sights. I have wandered around the city for hours taking in the sights!







No game is perfect, and there are some minor quibbles I have with the game, like some wonky combat here and there, and the fact that household chores will stop getting done once you start playing. but any issue is completely overshadowed by the rest of the game, which soars to incredible heights.

So many little details and memorable bits of game play have emerged over the 50+ hours I have spent in the game so far, that there are really too many to list. I know I am late to the party with this game, but I only was able to play it after recently upgrading my PC graphics. Such a great game!

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Glad to know you love the game, M. Even when you finish the main story, the expansions are top quality stuff.

Well, I finished Yakuza 0's main mode - the game continues on in an open world stylee with a few nice tweaks - this afternoon. Don't think I've ever played a game with such a strong, confident story. It's an adrenaline fuelled, kooky, mature, profane conundrum with more than its fair share of pathos.

The gameplay isn't half bad either: Think Streets of Rage crossed with Devil May Cry for the combat and nothing on God's green earth for everything else.

My immediate comparison is to Deadly Premonition, the unheralded, ugly, unbalanced (probable) mess of a game which captured my heart a few years ago. Yakuza 0 shares Deadly Premonition's offbeat nature mixed with moments of quiet profundity but is helped by a much greater budget and a development team who've honed their art over five previous iterations in the series. I can't wait for the English translation of the new Yakuza 1 remake to hit the shelves. Boy, can I not wait...



NEVA 4GET.

Glad it's cast its spell Seds

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RPS has slung out some more intrigue and opining of note... My favourite thing wasn't an upcoming but an old happening tho...



I love these reminiscence pieces about games I also played as kid. Of course Cadaver is a puzzle game! I see that now. At the time though, it was an adventure

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I wasn't interested in Chivalry replacement Mirage. But then I heard the silly voicing in the latest footage, offsetting that carnage once again with their broad palette of high-cartoon. And now I want it. Damn them . (The ranged magic is starting to look more like a plus too now, rather than a fad muddying the loadout types. Still gonna wait after launch, but looking more promising...)



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I never got into Insurgency, despite it having lots of solid FPS aspects. (Perhaps because they were too solid, and attracted a super-pro crowd). The strange cartoon WW2 trappings of the spin-off Day of Infamy give me mixed feelings too. (Do we need another gam-ification of war horrors?)...

But I do like this description of co-op play...



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And on the bonus indie intrigue end... A Kafka puzzle game?

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Agreed. It doesn't just look stunning, but the characters, down to the NPC's, are remarkably fleshed out. It definitely deserves its Game of the Year award. I'm just counting the days until Cyberpunk 2077 comes out.

I'm counting the years. Then counting the cost of the PC I'll need to run it.

Oh, holy crap. They've gone to town on the Shadow of Mordor sequel then. Full Mordor setting this time, and an expanded Nemesis system, including armies at your back for sieges, ally-Orcs that can defect or arrive at the nick of time, and a whole bustling bag of tricks by the looks. Lots of emergent storytelling potential here . (I'm sure the loops can only inter-link and spin distractingly so much, but given how effective they were last time, these expansions like promising if they hold true. The idea of orc chiefs as great big personable pawns that can interact, flip sides, and fall in the line of duty is potentially very pleasing )

16mins of alpha footage here:



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EDIT: Ok, and final bit of future-gazing. This text/puzzle/language adventure from the makers of 80 Days sounds intriguing

Sorry, last Alpha-Future tab, promise

Another deep space sci fi survival build-em-up? And one that looks good again? Made by the Worms guys? Sure, why not...



Liking the classic 'last chance for humanity' trappings, and the art style. But more importantly, liking the turret gun counter counting down as it holds back waves of bugs in the hold. Very deleted-scene

The suggestion of modifying the crew to aid survival is also intriguing...

Got my PS4 Pro today. It's not that much bigger than my old console, although it kinda dwarfs the new Slim. Noticeably heavier, though.



I much prefer how the original model looks, and am loath to sell it now. Maybe I'll just keep it as a collectable...

Transferring game data over was really easy thanks to the new USB drive witchcraft - Stuff I downloaded to the external drive with my old PS4 plays fine on the Pro after simply plugging it in to the new machine. No idea what happens with Pro-specific patches, although I noticed Horizon Zero Dawn has its graphics options greyed out on the standard model.

Oh yeah, after Jim Sterling's recent troubles, I'd like to take the opportunity to retract my previous views on Breath of The Wild.

While I may outwardly have said "nothing original in the mechanics and the performance seems downright bad, bordering on unacceptable, in places", inwardly I was thinking "what an amazing game, and surely the best of this (if not every) generation".

The UI definitely doesn't look like some Alpha version placeholder either, oh no.

I don't want the internet to hate me!

Oh god Rocket League I love you... More free innovative stuff on the way



That looks really promising. Proper floor-is-lava shenanigans. I doubt I'll get huge playtime out of it, because the heavily aerial games are up in a skill-ceiling sky where I will never freely fly, but the concept looks grand. I'm sure the initial weeks of experimental carnage will be great

(If they let you freeform mix it with all the previous gravity / ball size / cartoon-power-up expansions too it can only get better too )

My best guess is that this is what came from a failed Volleyball style game attempt much like Basketball. This seems more fun anyway.

I don't play basketball anymore, so I'll at the very least get a week's worth of fun out of it.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Also, finally bought a 2TB external hard drive for $100 after I downloaded the 4.50 PS4 update.

Aww damn, they played with volleyball? Shame that didn't work out, I could see a version of 'land the ball on their side of the net' being hilarious

Would be cool to see it make it into the trial zone at some point.

I also bought a 2TB external harddrive for $100, but it was for an XB1, not a PS4.

No wonder why people sometimes accuse us of being the same person haha.

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Works great, doesn't it? I was able to swap over my entire PS4 library to the Pro at the cost of zero bandwidth, and a lot quicker than when using that backup & restore thing.

In other news, Mass Effect Andromeda looks janky as all hell. Unfortunately it shows that Bioware put their B team (they devs who made the ME3 multiplayer apparently) on the project. It looks like a Mass Effect Greatest Hits album played by a second rate tribute band.

This is the studio which was once at the vanguard of story driven games. Now it looks like Spiders are making their games

I've seen a few videos and gifs of the poor animation in Andromeda, but honestly it doesn't look that bad to me. Maybe it's just because I haven't played many games from the current generation yet, or perhaps my standards are just much lower than everyone else's haha.

I don't mind the graphics so much, but holy hell that voice acting.

I could get past the animations and faces looking no better (and sometimes worse) than they were in ME1 a decade ago but the writing and voice acting seem awful. I watched a 2.5 hour stream last night and was shaking my head in disbelief through some of it.

I only saw a few minutes worth and that was all the disappointment I could handle. The voice acting alone already diminished a good amount of my enthusiasm. I'm not watching anymore gameplay videos.