DrBloodmoney

Damn son - this one was a beast! I can't possibly go through in any kind of order, or do it justice, so I'm going for the freeform thought-stream of my takeaways: Yo, I've never even heard of Grip before! Is that weird? I gotta admit - it looks liked rad! My brain spent more time than I'd care to admit, trying to figure out why you're wrong about your breakdown of the rotational direction of the wheels.... before reaslising I was too tired, and you're 100% right 😂 N++ Seems super weird... and I'm kinda into it? It is a source of extreme shame that I have owned Slain for over a year now, and failed to play it yet! Everything about STFU is awesome, and I'm glad you concur! This: made me laugh more than it should have! Superhot IS more of a puzzle game! Also rad! Dishonoured is in your "Generally Fun" category and not the "Super Fun" category... I await your Dishonoured series omnibus, but... Also other things! Okay I love you bye bye!

Hell of a write up man! Awesome work - I'm only about 2/3rds of the way through (as you know 😝!) but I reckon you and I are on a very similar page with a lot of this stuff - thoughts on Odin, Tir, Boss cheese and fucking Maven for sure, anyways! You're absolutely right about how good the game looks too... ...though it's funny... I've been thinking about this, and - maybe I'm crazy - but I have this strange reaction to Ragnarok's visuals, where I can objectively see that it is potentially the most technically accomplished visuals I think I've played on the console - there's other contenders for sure, (I've not played HFW yet,) but surely any list of the top has got to now include Ragnarok - ...but I'm not sure it ever really pops off the screen or stands out as much as it should, or as much as other games do for me, because as technically stunning as the visuals are, the actual art-design side of the game is not as interesting? It's almost as if the fact that they went for a "realistic" take on Godly stuff, means that even though it is some of the most technically competent graphics, it never pops as "art" because... it looks like a "real" thing in a world... and we've kind of seen that all already in GoW2018. The designs are somehow too... pedestrian, even when they are otherworldly, for the increase in fidelity between 2018 and Ragnarok to really feel as impressive as they probably are. Maybe they look too much like they all could be really made in a Lord of the Rings type movie, so it almost stops registering as interesting in a videogame environment? Possible I'm just being weird, I don't know - I'm reading that back, and it feels like I'm not really articulating it perfectly... but I guess it's this:

Done! 😝 😂 Courtesy of Batch 24:

It's nice that you came to this conclusion and this new methodology going forward completely independently and organically... ....and in no way as a necessity resulting from the newly implemented Sony policies that you yourself are a principle catalyst for. Why not? These games are not "history" to be preserved - they are an infection to be excised. There is no historic value to retaining these products for sale - the only parts of them that were ever of note will be preserved anyways. They exist only for trophies (as you admit) - and the trophies will remain. They will forever exist on every profile that "earned" them - on sites like this one, and on PSN - and will stand in perpetuity as a totem to the seductive power of base-banality, and the enduring legacy of quick-fix exploitation. I understand if you do not want to slam the door shut on a source of revenue - hell, I wouldn't either - but it's disingenuous at best to hide that further drip-fill profiteering behind a constructed veil of "historic preservation". If this is a mea-culpa to the community you have exploited, (rather than simply the next in a long line of free-media troll-marketing, designed to keep the games under the spotlight, and acquiesce to the old adage - that "all publicity is good publicity", as I strongly suspect it is)... ... then it can only work if it starts start with fully washing clean the stain your spillage has made - at least to the best of your ability.

I really like this game! I've been playing it with my sister in couch-co-op when I visit, and we've really enjoyed it - most so when playing in Newtonian, as that feels the most controllable and predictable in terms of movement... ...I do wonder though - were you playing alone? I suspect that Newtonian may be less fun that way - some of the best moments we've had were trying to save the other player as they slowly drift away - tethering a rope to a player, jumping off, and grabbing the other player just in time, for example - but alone, I guess that stuff wouldn't be possible.

Careful what you wish for - I love a great single player game too, don't get me wrong... but that kind of "Well, this works, and is popular, so let's replicate it everywhere else" is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the staggering glut of bad Multi-Player modes in the wake of COD4's sales, the decidedly middling "open-worldification" of every franchise post GTAIII, and the jamming in of QTE's into every bloody game in the wake of the original God of War. It's probably best they keep doing different things with different studios and franchises.

Welcome mate 👋 fellow gaming dad here, always happy to see another! Hope you have a great time on the forums 👍

game?

Exactly. So what's the problem?

That's all this is. No danger to Ratalaika and EastAsiaSoft. They don't publish asset-flips.

This is why I reckon there is now a certain inevitability to the major trophy sites - including, of course, PSNP - having their hands forced, and needing to alter their LB formulas to reduce existing, previously earned shovel-ware games' points values. If Sony takes the harsh option on any single Shovelware dev, that will be the first domino - since each one has so many asset-flip products out there. Such an action would basically hobble the Leaderboard permanently - it would be an "everyone freeze in place" situation, where those who already harvested the trophies from that crop of products cannot possibly be dethroned by any newcomer. If Sony does take this action - actually remove a dev's existing products from sale - (and that remains a big "if", of course,) then the genie will be thoroughly out of the bottle. In that scenario, the first one of the established, functional sites to say "okay, now we just accept that our trophy level can no longer match PSN level," and removes all points for shovel ware games across all profiles (or reduces them to 1 point, or whatever the chosen solution is,) will see a stampede of trophy hunters to it... ...and the others will scramble to do the same, in order to remain relevant.

So... here's the thing... ...I say this as someone who absolutely loved TLoU, and though TLoU Part II is better in every single way... ...yes. The violence in the game is absolutely grotesque at times - it's deliberately so. TLoUII is one of the few games out there trying to make a legitimate point about the futility and horror of pursing violence, and the poisonous nature of vengeance. It does it well - and a big part of that is in making the player see things from multiple sides of a conflict, humanising the people on both sides... and having the violence be so sickening and horrific to see - and forcing them to engage with it, from both ends - that the point lands. I actually think it's not just a great game, but an important one - and that it succeeds in every aspect of that central thesis statement - but it only succeeds as well as it does, by really amping the viciousness of that violence... and the empathy the player has to the people involved. It makes the player recoil, and hate what they are forced to do at times. Because that is the point of the game, I don't think it is gratuitous - but given what you said, I do think you should know going in that, yes, there is some really fucked up stuff in that game, and it's designed to make you recoil.