Honestly… Starfield

At this point, I KNOW modded Starfield will just be better than the base game, it will launch with dozens of not hundred (…or thousands of bugs) and will take months of retooling to get it even halfway stable, yes it’s a large universe to explore… but procedural generation often is pretty ick in terms of depth, etc

I’ll prolly play it on PCGP… but I’m not dropping money on it, just not that interested

DKC 1 AND 2 in D and 3 in C?!

Yeah I don't even care if you got my GOAT Mario game, Yoshi's Island, in S.... this ain't it chief!

Prolly new, considering GoW2018 sold more copies than the original series... combined

Thus its prolly the first one that comes to mind for most people now.

With a sub size of almost 37m.... do people really expect everyone here to have deeply profound or esoteric tastes in the hobby of gaming?

Have you heard of the high elves.....

IGN is literally the definition of very vanilla takes in gaming.....

And ehh, literally "YouTubers" are subject to the EXACT same vices. Do people not remember when a bunch of YouTuber's were singing the praises of CP2077 while also being legally denied the ability to use their own gameplay footage (or else CDPR would sue) masterfully creating a false narrative of the game's stability? At the end of the day, EVERYTHING will have a bias and that bias can easily be influenced. We are humans who crave constructing the world or narratives as we see fit. There can just simply not be a review that goes "Game does X, it tells the story of Y and it runs for Z amount of hours... computing score.... 6/10." Every game will elicit a reaction from us and that reaction is what determines the journalism/review.

Metacritic is the best to look at as its a good aggregate for the general consensus on a game.

That is your opinion

There are far more people who think the game is mid at best than those who think its a good game

Thus, the only thing people cling to is the sexy twins... because reasons

You also have to ask “how SBMM is being implemented” because it’s not as straightforward as one might think

The first confirmed pop up of SBMM in CoD, for example, was in Black Ops 3, where it is described in pretty good detail how it was to be implemented on its patent.

In that game, SBMM was to be leveraged to mix high skill players who spent a lot of MTXs into low tier lobbies so younger or more impressionable people might conflate having weapon skins to high tier play.

… the end goal is to push MTXs.

For more modern shooters, the argument is that it’s to balance retention with newer models of MTXs (mostly season passes).

At the end of the day, it’s a business model that aims to maximize the profitability of a game with maybe the silver lining that lobbies have a little more parity.

Source: used to play CoD for money, I have been aware of harder SBMM implementation since like… Advanced Warfare?

Only one series comes to mind, Mass Effect

Hale (FemShep) just played the role so much better IMO

Also, because Samantha is genuinely best girl and let it be known that the Normandy was saved by a toothbrush

And that’s assuming the Xeno AI isn’t bugging the fuck out

Both God of War 2 and God of War Ragnarok, Silent Hill 2, Persona 2, Dishonored 2, Resident Evil 2

Hi-Fi Rush is not a AAA game though

And hype is real. Remember, CP2077, even in its broken aaa buggy release sold like hotcakes.

Hardly any PC game case has CDs these days, they are mostly just vouchers/codes for a digital store front.

Considering most of them are dead these days in terms of player base, my answer: “ RIP 🪦 “

Because it brings people who aren't familiar to the game into it.

You said it yourself, you never knew much about Fortnite, but maybe you know Travis Scott enough to be interested in seeing.

Radio is still radio (which IMO is also fairly dead compared to streaming avenues), this is just PR. Like having a famous actor/actress model for Giorgio Armani, Gucci, etc.

Ehh, some countries have weird priorities

But the team at Callisto basically just we like “the market for this game is too small and the cost to ‘localize’ too high” so they just shelved a Japanese release

Now I wish I had a Bloodborne SteelBook like that :c

Mass Effect 3: Citadel

It was between that and New Vegas: Lonesome Road for me

But it takes the cake because it was just such a goofy, fan servicey love letter to the end of the original trilogy. Had a fun Main mission but the side character stories were hilarious and the main attraction.

My guess is that with Halo, they mostly wanted people on their MP component (which is why it was free to play) to generate the most money.

I don’t really see games outside of MP focused games doing it much and the only BIG example of an SP focused AAA doing it was Horizon Forbidden West if you got the collectors edition of it and Sony did get a massive amount of backlash on that.

Unless game devs start deliberately making nothing but 100gb+ games AND so long as people buy physical, there will be a market need for a physical release. This is personally why I do encourage to buy physical when people can if it’s right to ownership offsets it’s lack of convenience

A lot of AAA?

Where are you getting this? Because most of my physical games (AAA or not) have most of the game on disc, the only thing missing of course is post-launch data.

Fakes

Also Japanese games tend to not be super valuable; they have a much larger resale market.

I have Valkyrie Profile, both it’s US and JAP formats. The Japanese format was like $30 (shipping included)… the average price for the US one currently sits at like ~$350.

The only game that is absurdly expensive that I have been interested in a Japanese format (because it only exists in Japan) is Serial Experiments Lain… shit is absurdly expensive!

IMO, Black Ops 1/2

"At the minute, I actually prefer my PS4"

How?

Like that is a genuine question, because damn near every facet of the PS5 is an objective improvement over the PS4, barring the DualSense which is a subjective answer as to whether its preferred over the DS4.

And every generation still has growing pains where-in previous gens are supported. This was the case between PS1->PS2, PS2->PS3 and so on. This generation leap gets the added benefit of not having hard separations between accessibility as almost every PS4 game (like 99% of em) can be played on the PS5. The same for the XBox, XBOne and XSX have cross gen support. That cross-gen availability is bound to prolong how supported the previous gen is.

Additionally, slowly games have begun to roll out to be PS5 only announcements so far. Final Fantasy XVI and VIIRebirth, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Stellar Blade, more than likely Spiderman 2 and Wolverine, etc.

The reality is that the jump between the PS4 and PS5 is like upgrading your GPU (in the PC space)... sure, it can play games with a better fidelity, but that doesn't mean your old GPU couldn't run them, just that the new GPU runs them better.

RDR2 still better for me

Better world building, more fun map to explore, better characters, etc. Nothing beats RDR2, just picking a direction and meeting some random NPCs that give you side quests

The only issue is that you have to be okay with deliberate tedium (ala Kingdom Come Deliverance)

If people complain CoD is a sweat fest as is…. Imagine nothing but getting beamed across the map by an SMG. Almost every gun in the game would immediately be unviable