Stamnoso

I might sort of understand from purely financial terms, but if they truly shut down Double Fine, it's really gonna hurt my little gamer heart. I love these guys and they have so many fresh and quirky ideas. idk...

Still dreaming of an Ace Combat 3 remake or relaunch, but happy to see AC8 there!

I think the new logo is pretty cool, I don't have as much nostalgia as some of you, so that is surely influencing my opinion here, but I quite like it. I good balance between simplicity, but some eye catching elements.

Yeah this is good news, I'm one of the ones that dropped after the last couple of price increases. I'm quite happy without GP funnily enough, so I might not re-suscribe despite this tbh.

I'm always interested in what Double Fine is doing, they feel quite fresh in an industry that is feeling the "fatigue" more and more. So, I'm gonna give this a try sooner rather than later.

I actually enjoyed the first one quite a lot, it felt more to the point of simple fun, a bit more like the good ol' days in a good sense. The humour was generally fun for me, although there were a couple of moments where I felt it was a bit much xDD.

Probably will give this a try at some point!

I might give this another chance based on the "pace improvements". I remember the 3ds version, I really wanted to like it, but it was so so slow sometimes.

Bit dissapointing this, but oh well, the trueachievements one is pretty cool.

17 games played, not bad, top by number of hours being FFXIV, no surprises there.

Hope you guys have a brilliant end of the year and get to play your favourite games over the festive period!

Agree with the value of it being subjective and I'm not subscribed to GP anymore after the last increase. That said, this type of release was always something I liked about GP, gave me the chance to try "less known" games. Many I have enjoyed quite a lot like Dungeons of Hinterberg, When the Past was Around, Little kitty big City, Donut County, The Gunk, Chants of Sennaar just to name a few.

If I was still subscribed I'd probably give this one a try, seems cozy and nice enough. I guess these won't always be everybodies cup of tea. If game pass had only been AAA, I don't think I would have ever subscribed, since I tend to enjoy indies more than AAA nowadays. So, a matter of preference not quality of service imo; that said all opinions are valid.

I couldn't quite get myself to enjoy DQVII on 3DS, but I love how this one looks like XD. Coffee talk I loved 1, 2 was all right, so maybe will give a try to the other one too.

I quite like my series X. A few years back I bought it in place of a ps5 because of the stock shortages and it's been my main system since then. Runs nicely and smoothly, plenty of great games to play.

We'll see how it goes, Octo 0 interests me, but also have some doubts from it moving away from its core concept. The Elliot game sounds cool, DQ is cool, but I have mixed experiences with the few games I played in the series. Precisely VII I found extremely boring in 3ds, I liked the concept, but I found the story to have an uninteresting pace and loads of pointless backtracking.

Only played 1 and 2, need to catch-up at some point! but within my limited experience yeah, I remember 1 having more tense moments of like "oh *****, one of those dudes".

@Kezelpaso Yeah, this is great, I usually keep an eye out for those you guys do a good job. That said, not all sites are equally diligent, but it can get confusing like you say, both for us readers and you guys xD.

Interesting games, but on premium now, so I don't think I'll be able to play these, I find all the news in many places quite confusing now being in a middle tier.

Anyway, for me I'm gonna "take a break" from GP once I complete Octopath 2. The only reason I got another month was because it was cheaper than buying the game and I got a couple of weeks worth of playtime left probably. After that, it's gonna be back to the olde "bought games" backlog for a while at least.

Things in life change, I will enjoy gaming regardless of this. Hope the PS5 people who haven't played Halo before enjoy it. Other than that, I will keep on enjoying my own gaming, be that on my xbox, switch, 3ds, pc or whatever I decide using in the future.

I love gaming since I was 6 and started on an Atari 2600. It's been 30+ years, but you know what? at the end of the day it's just gaming, I ain't gonna get upset over behemoth companies and their strategies. I got more important things to worry about quite honestly.

I'd suggest the same to you all, enjoy gaming, ask yourself how important really are some of these things if they are truly upsetting you? Would you get upset if you favourite local food joint started growing and they sold the same in the neighbouring town too? Would you get upset if your favourite "streamer" (if you got one") changed platforms? Would you really get upset if your local supermarket stopped selling your favourite drink, but you could still buy it somewhere else (even if a it further away)? etc. etc. I mean, in some of these nope and in others, more than the initial annoyed sigh and rant, I wouldn't truly get upset.

Lifes goes on, gamer fellows...life goes on.

@Meehanuk_1987 I haven't used it on my Series X, but I'm pretty sure cloud gaming is integrated into both current consoles (wiser people on this site can contradict me if I'm wrong).

I think if you go onto gamepass and you find a "streamable" game with the little cloud icon you can select it and choose "play" directly without installing it.

So, you'd think it should be possible to stream next gen games into the Series consoles. To be 100% sure I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I don't see why not (in principle)

@Banjo- Fair enough, I hadn't necessarily noticed that until you mentioned it, but I think you're right. I guess the point is if we end up in a place where there is no "series S" equivalent, I guess they think they still have mechanisms to allow people to jump and play "xbox" without the front cost of the premium hardware. Whether people will like it or not, I guess is a different thing and we will see.

@Meehanuk_1987 The thing is according to them everything is (or will be an xbox) so this new device is probably seen by them as just one way of gaming. You don't have the money for it? no problem use cloud gaming on a phone or a tablet or whatever.

Do I like it? No xDDD, but this is how I suspect, they'll defend themselves cause this "everything is an xbox" thing is a mantra they have been repeating a lot lately.

Return to Monkey Island is decent, but also felt kinda disappointing at the same time, that said worth a try if you like monkey island.

Shame about Jusant, was in my backlog for a while guess will keep an eye out for a good sale.

@IronMan30 haunted chocolatier? XD

Hardly ever, I would love to replay games and "savour" others more, but as a busy parent who works a full time job doing so it's not a luxury I can afford at the moment (unfortunately).

Still enjoy the gaming time I have anyways

Day of the tentacle, I love that game!

I don't know, I think this might be it for me too. I've been on current ultimate for a while, and quite like it cause I try and complete all sorts of games I might not buy, but 23 quid a month, seems excessive.

Could still do premium etc., but it feels like a significant step down for the same money ish I pay now, so I don't like that.

Been thinking of making the jump to PC for a while, and this might be it to be honest. That said, to start with I don't think I'm renewing anymore, I got a backlog of bought games to deal with anyway.

Pity this is where we ended up with GP, I guess all that noise about it not being profitable enough was true in the end (be that because of corporate greed or whatever). I guess it was nice while it lasted.

I guess for the JRPG lovers, Sea of Stars is a must try, It dissapointed me, but plenty of others seem to love it, so I'd say try it if you haven't done so yet.

I think the option should be there, but they should include the rechargeable battery pack when buying a controller and with the one that comes with the console.

Personally, I had rechargeable AA batteries and it was great.

The Ascent is pretty cool game, I would recommend too. Give it a try fellas!

I think this is likely to happen, I agree. At the end of the day, these companies want to keep growing and I think the "exclusive/closed" strategy that has been followed for a long time now is close to not being able to support the business expectations the likes of MS and Sony have.

I think this won't be a bad thing when/if it happens.

@Phil-Spencer-Gate I agree as long as MS's objective is to expand/maintain production outputs, which I think it's a fair assumption to make as today's business is all about growth growth growth.

I think in cases like the initiative and these massive long developments (i.e. due to constant restarts of dev etc.), for me the big questions is why? Why are some of these studios struggling to deliver?

My point being, you can close a studio, sack people, open a new one, hire new people; but if the problem has a root in things that are outside the studio jurisdiction (e.g. wider MS business processes hindering development), then there is a decent chance some of these new studios would find themselves fighting the same fights again.

Man, PD cancellation is a real pity, but I'm sure it'll come back eventually at some point.

Sorry for the people who lost their jobs of course, but The Initiative was hyped as @@@@ and was founded in what 2018? never released a single game. I'm not defending big corporations, but from an internal point of view I think it's easily justifiable, you can't have 7+ (probably was going to be close to 10) years development cycles. They just don't allow that kinda thing anymore on the big companies.

@Kaloudz I wonder that too, I mean when they release so much later than in PS5 and PC, I think there is a good chance a lot of people who own an XBox have already played it on one of the other platforms. I might be wrong, but seeing the sales it seems game pass would be a good way to ensure decent revenue equivalent to reasonable sales.

Steamworld ones are pretty good, worth a try if you haven't.

I played P4G last year, not sure I wanna play a new remake now, kinda a pity, maybe should have waited, but I enjoyed it anyway so XD

It's quite easy to be honest, don't lie or say things open to interpretation; show things contextualising them properly with language that all types of users can understand. Basically, just let people know if what is shown is what they can expect to see when the game runs in its device (console of PC with X specs. + settings)

Then, the second part is no more messes like the Cyberpunk one please, that was an embarrasment for CDPR, a very good reputation damaged. I still remember that teaser where they said "It'll come out when it's ready" and then it was a mess, so that came back to bite them in the ass big time.

@Tomato_Goose Thanks!, I got it, willprobably give it a go onceI complete the stuff I'm playing now, but very much looking forward to it.

Been wanting to play the Robocop game for a while! This is the perfect change, buying tonight 100%

I find this a bit ridiculous, of course it runs substantially worse than in series X, it's an inferior machine compared to it. Does it run well enough is the real point? locked 30 FPS etc. (plus comments from others) seem to suggest the answer is yes. This is like comparing performance in widely different PCs.

I mean, if you're the type of gamer that wants or values above else crystal clear image etc. you don't buy a series S, is pretty obvious.

I also find the comment of "possibly substantially finding the game more challenging in series X". I keep saying I doubt FPS is a key variable in this compared to just player skill and basically the difficulty of the game itself. I'm pretty certain that if we were to do a proper statistical analysis of this, in this kinda game the outcome would be that the impact of 30 vs 60 is negligible in most cases.

I mean as if nobody had ever completed a "hard" game in history whilst running at 30 fps (or less!), Bloodborne in ps4 to mention one. I don't recall anybody going "crap, if only this game run at 60 fps I could have killed the Orphan of Kos".

Of course, better graphics and performance they are always welcome, but I think having hardware options for a variety of people and budgets is a good thing and of course, there will be trade offs.

@JoyfulFire this is a very fair point, I thing the long term access to the library is probably a key concern for me and anybody who's been invested for long enough really.

@LaurenceJ1987 yeah, I agree with this, it's got its charm, I did enjoy it too.

More FFXIV and Control. Just completed Tails of Arise!

I got it in Sep 2022, cause I was struggling to find a PS5, but I like my Series X and is my main system now, I think it's a great machine and good services. I'm not planning to go back to PS5 as my main system at least, got other consoles, so don't discard buying a cheap one someday to play some exclusives (or might just finally upgrade my PC)

@FraserG Really? I mean crash 2 and 3 weren't particularly difficult in general I think, but crash 1 had some interesting difficulty spikes.

Well, this is quite vague in my opinion, not necessarily untrue I don't know.

I think there are more relevant metrics here, cause like others in this thread have pointed out, companies obviously get paid when they release in game pass, so (one of) the real question is how much is the money difference between what they get to publish in GP + 20% of expected sales vs 100% expected sales + no GP.

Also, percetanges are quite vague since 80% of something that is expected to sell 50,000 copies (e.g. a relatively unknown indie) vs 80% of something that is expected to sell on the millions, is obviously quite different. Obs, the money they would get paid for releasing in GP is different, but the comparisons might also be.

Finally, there is also the question of 80% loss when; at day one if you release on GP or at different points in the life cycle of the game. Again, games typically drop in price pretty quickly nowadays and expected sales are different at different points in the life cycle so how significant that 80% is is quite different depending on these and other points.

BTW this is not a defence nor the opposite for GP model, it's just that I find these kind of comments (from analysts or whatever) completely useless because they paint a very vague picture of reality that is easily misinterpreted by the "everyday" reader like us. Now, interesting to spark debate, but that's kind of it imo.

@Ricky-Spanish Yeh, did play it too. I think it's decent, wasn't excellent, but it's nice and short. The story was interesting with some reasonably charismatic characters. The other good fella described it quite nicely, the problem with its system is that there are portions that can get a bit repetitive and you might miss interesting stuff (or character background) in a single playthorugh since there isn't a "try again" kind of thing; that's good and bad in some ways.

Sounds like you're into this type of game, so I think it's worth you give it a try.

Have a good one all, hope you have time to relax and game a bit.

There are many good games here. Chants of Sennaar was a little game I enjoyed a lot. Also, I feel Immortals of Aveum deserves a lot more love that it has received, I though it was a pretty solid and fun game overall (only thing I found problematic was the M&K mapping implementation and they should fix it...)

Some pretty nice games, might go a pick up stray, but already got too much to play.

It's always amazing to see how GTAV keeps showing up in all (or most) these kind of lists.

@Fishysensei pooh! Sounds good might give this a try soon.

Done with Harold Halibut, so I started Control and carrying on with ffxiv too. Have a good Xmas period if you're celebrating and if not, doesn't matter, happy gaming anyway!!

Personally, if you compared the campaign with others from older games, then it isn't that brilliant, but it's decent. It's free and I would try it if I were you guys. Also the multiplayer angle, which was obviously the focus of this game is pretty fun.