TheMightyEthan

I don't remember them saying one way or the other, so I'd assume they were on. My understanding from reading other things though was that that just makes it look sharper, it doesn't actually improve console performance.

Yeah, I watched a Digital Foundry breakdown of the last-gen versions yesterday, and it's unplayable on the 2013 consoles. We're talking framerates in the mid teens for extended periods whenever you're outdoors, graphical hangs of more than a minute before play resumes, constant shorter freezes as you move through the world and stuff loads in. The One X and PS4 Pro fair better, mostly 30 fps with drops into the mid-20's at stress points, and occasionally loading hitches but nothing like the base consoles, so it's at least playable. This is all with the 1.04 patch installed. For next-gen, PS5 runs at almost locked 1188p60 (it's running the PS4 Pro version which has a max res of 1188p), with occasional drops into the 50's. Series X has an option to choose between performance and quality modes, performance is 1080p60 (although it doesn't maintain 60 as well as PS5 does), quality is dynamic 1188-1800p30. Xbox handles backwards compatibility differently than Playstation does, so devs have more ability to make customizations for next-gen hardware, which is why X gets two modes and 5 doesn't. Series S is a pretty much locked 900p30 (because it's running the One S version, like how the PS5 is running the PS4 Pro version). *Edit - Moved this discussion to the Cyberpunk thread.

Game of the Year Ghost of Tsushima - This game took what is essentially the Assassin's Creed formula and did it better than Ubisoft ever has. Combat feels flowing and wonderful (the stances were genius), the world has a lot to do without feeling crowded, exploration is fun, the stealth is satisfying. Every part just comes perfectly together. The change to an Eastern setting was welcome as well. No game this year came close to sucking me in the way Ghost did. Runner-Up Spider-Man: Miles Morales - This was an excellent follow-up to Spider-Man 2018, and I think it actually benefited from its smaller scope. Spider-Man 2018 was great, but it kind of over-stayed its welcome a little bit, especially with the side content. MM, on the other hand, was just right. I was ready for it to end when it did, it wasn't too short but it also didn't drag. There are other ways it benefits from its smaller scope: the reduction in gadgets means you use the ones you do have more, fewer side activities means it's not overwhelming (similar to Ghost in this regard). Basically it just was a more focused experience than 2018, and was better for it. Honorable Mentions Ghostrunner - This game kind of came out of left field for me, but it was great. It's basically Mirror's Edge and Super Meat Boy had a baby that grew up to be super into cyberpunk. It's glorious. Astro's Playroom - This is another that kind of came out of nowhere. I'd heard about it, and that it was a cool showcase of the DualSense (which it is), but where I was expecting a tech demo I actually got a pretty great platformer. It was too short, because at its heart it is really a tech demo, but I hope the positive reception leads to them making a bigger, fuller game.

From what I'm hearing the console versions are no worse than the PC version if you play on next-gen via backward compatibility. On last-gen consoles though it runs like absolute poop.

Yeah, I tried one of the Valkyries and was like "nooooope."

It was basically 7 justices saying "this isn't even worth hearing" and the 2 others saying "we should hear the case, but you'll still lose after we do." There was no universe where it went any other way.

How faithful of a remake is Kiwami? Has it been significantly updated or is there still a lot of "old game is old"?

Actually, now that you say this I'm remembering better (it was a while ago that I listened to that podcast), and I'm thinking maybe she did say she wasn't done with it yet, but was like 40 hours in, so she just might not have got to the spoilery parts yet.

I was mostly basing that off of what Britney from What's Good Games said about it, and she's obsessed with Yakuza so I figured she would know. Is it maybe the kind of spoilers that won't actually mean anything to someone who hasn't played the other games, and therefore won't stick in your brain?

Yeah, the NG+ mode to get that trophy took me 3 hours 15 minutes on very easy. That's with only doing the bare minimum to finish the story, and enough side stuff to buy the last suit.

From what reviewers have said you can play Like a Dragon without having played the others, it's a good entry point. You'll miss out on a few references here and there, but mostly it's its own thing.

@The Cowboy JRPGing Poet It took me about 14 hours, but that's with doing everything that you can on 1 playthrough.

I like it, but it's also not near as constant in the full game as it was in the demo, and it doesn't keep cutting to them the way it did in the demo, it's just voiceover when they do talk.

I've been playing Immortals Fenyx Rising (which definitely should have a colon in it).I'm only a few hours in, but I'm really liking it so far. I don't think the comparisons to Breath of the Wild are really fair, there is definitely some influence there, especially at a surface level, but it doesn't seem like it's trying to be a BotW clone. It really plays a lot more like one of the recent Assassin's Creed games, although I'm enjoying it more than those. I especially like the more light-hearted, cartoony tone and aesthetic, it's something we don't see very much in AAA games outside of Nintendo, and it's really refreshing. It seems like even fantasy games now think they need to feel grounded in a base level of "realism", and then add their more fantastical elements on top of it. Immortals just throws any sense of reality out the window and runs full into cartoon reasoning, and I love it.

Yeah, those NVMe drives are insane, they've already spoiled me. Playing Immortals Fenyx Rising I fast-travelled and there was a like 5 second load screen and I was all "what the hell is this?!" I hope that Cyberpunk runs okay on PS4 for you guys, the videos they released of those versions looked not great performance-wise.

Ether One I actually platinumed this game, because that was easy to do, but I really didn't like it all that much. I liked the concept, but goddamn the puzzle design was obtuse. Like point-and-click adventure levels of obtuse. Every time I got stuck and finally looked up an answer, my reaction was always "I would literally never have figured that out." 2/5

Did base P5 ever come to PC?

So I bought Kingdom Hearts All in One because it was on sale for $30, but now I kind of feel like I should return it. I have a ton of other games to play: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Concrete Genie, Star Wars Squadrons, Hyrule Warriors 2, Watch Dogs Legion (which I'm also considering returning), Spider-Man Remastered, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Kingdom Hearts just seems like a huge thing hanging over my backlog, and the prospect of playing it is kind of daunting, but at the same time I've always been a little interested and I've never seen it get that cheap. Anyone have any advice?

I didn't know something like that existed, it's really cool.

Yeah, I wanna say it was like in the spring that Microsoft pushed a Windows update that lets you have apps on different drives, because that method works for any app, not just games.

This isn't true, you can install Gamepass games to any drive, I always put them on my secondary games-only SSD so I don't fill up my boot drive. There should be a way to choose which drive you're installing it to at the installation stage, but if there's not you can also go into your Windows settings/Apps, find them in the list, click the "move" button and move it to whatever drive you want.

Better to have it be delayed than put out half-finished.

Detroit: Become Human I really liked this game, definitely the best of David Cage's and Quantic Dream's. The character drama was actually pretty engaging, and the characters were all well-realized and well-performed. It's a little naive in its worldview, but the rest of it is good enough to make up for that. It's good enough that I'm working on the platinum. 4/5

Neat, maybe by the time the PS5 version comes out I'll be through my backlog and I can give this game a shot.