Sly Reflex

I had no idea you you kick whilst on the ground like that and I have played a stupid amount of this game. I still think about it a lot. In the terms of what this specific game did and how a lot of other games either did the thing before and MGSV improved on it by miles, or how they cribbed from MGSV and didn't' do it as well. I think the wildest thing about MGSV is how unorthodox the control system is and how long it takes to learn, but once you have it it feels like a second skin almost. Then you look at something like RDR2 that is just a clumsy mess of trying to crowbar the universal standard into a world where it feels at odds with each other, where a button press can make things go sideways in ways it never should because you have such juxtaposed actions on there.

I am honestly surprised there's not been a Fenix collection in the same way Master Chief got his. When you look at how much time, money and effort MS put in since their entry to the console space, to do what they are doing now is blisteringly bewildering? They've gone from having stuff like Halo, PGR, Gears, Viva Pinata, Banjo, Amped, Rallisport, Blinx, Links, Fable, Forza, Crackdown, they did a load of indie goodwill with XBLA, Alan Wake, State of Decay, Sea of Thieves, Sunset Overdrive and then they just sort of stopped? Ori I guess? Jet Set Radio? Grounded? I know not everything is directly 100% their work but Xbox show cased it. It just seems like MS stopped taking risks, not everything was huge but then again you have to at least try. It's like they are just like fuck it, we've made these franchises, we can just ride these forever, but even that has stopped. And to some degree I think capping something off is the right thing to do. Do we really need another Halo game? Or Gears? Why not just use the effort and lessons picked up during the development of those games to create something new that is a spiritual successor? Sometimes things just run their course. It's fine to end them. I would even argue that for stuff like Gran Turismo or other long running series, you can only be at the top so long. It's OK to bow out and let someone that has the drive you used to have take the wheel. But at least pas the baton and allow those that have the ideas and the energy in them to go and commit their thoughts to a game. For instance I have been playing Outer Worlds recently, which is clear it's a riff on the Fallout template to some degree, but instead of the bogeyman of late 80s early 90's nuclear war, we're looking at the modern horrors of capitalism taken to the extremes. I feel like things have to evolve like that. I think in an ideal world you would have remastered versions of your favorite games honed by the best people of today. People that really honed their craft in whatever digital restoration could be labeled as whilst still being true to the original alongside brand new stuff that is breaking the sort of barriers that cements it into being touched up 20 years do the line because it was so well received. Terrible post and poor execution, but I hope you understand where I am coming from.

Did Gears come out this gen or were they all last gen as well? I am so far behind on games I genuinely have no idea.

You're saying this about Triple Jump, but watching Giant Bomb play Shadow of the Colossus back when I bothered with them was painful as fuck. They are held in such high regard and they play like a grandmother at a demo pod in Virgin Megastores. I'm not expecting them to be world class speed runners or anything, but at least be competent, especially on a remake of a beloved game. The amount of times they would get things straight up incorrect as well, dates of release, RRP etc were always things they would mess up on. I get that they are inundated with a constant barrage of info all the time, but if it's your job to know this shit, it's your job. You have people that can tell you how many studs Paul Gascoigne had on his boots when he scored for England and who the lines men were at the World Cup final in 1990, all the unimportant shit, surely you can learn the history and ins and outs of the most important shit. That stuff always amazes me, like when football pundits pull some mad stat out. Same with any sort of historian or journalist that just has all this info at their hands. I don't think we've ever had that in the games circle. And it's not like we've no nerd shit flex their stuff, there's wrestling people that can tell you everything right back to the 70's including where people came from, names they went by, injuries they had, notable matches etc. I just don't think we have that in the video gaming space?

Devils advocate, but what are the standouts on XBOX that can't be played on PS? Don't count stuff from last gen. Because I am actually struggling outside of Forza? I would have said Sea of Thieves but that was last gen. Am I just really disconnected or did they do nothing? I am just looking at what they put out on PC and it's stuff like South of Midnight and Avowed, and despite hearing of them I don't really know anything about them? Aside from they made the anti woke people really mad, but then again what doesn't? I guess the Oblivion remake is them as well, since they went on a buying spree. Senua's 2 as well. It's not really a lot when you account for it being 5 years in at the end of this year. I know people complain about the PS5 but I can at least name some off the top of my head. Helldivers 2, GoW Ragnarok, Ghost of Tsushima, Demon's Souls remake. There's at least things there. Maybe most big games now are just multiplat, because they have to be to recoup the costs and make the most profit?

Someone was talking about this in discord last night. Those were former WhatCulture guys. I had no idea. I never really spent any time with them

This is by design. EA went for the F1 license and lost it to Codemasters. So EA went and bought Codemasters. Or rather, they bought the F1 license and got a free developer with it. They also got some other stuff that happened to be owned by Codemasters. So all their licenses and IP etc. Now the rally obligations are done, EA don't give a fuck. They saw out the contract, saw it wasn't worth it to them and moved on. None of this was about acquiring a talented dev team or any of their IP. It was about landing that sweet F1 license and all the other stuff was just a bonus. The more I think about it the more I think giving exclusive rights to a franchise or sports body is dumb as fuck. It's like having FIFA where only the likenesses and names can be used if you have all the things signed off. It doesn't breed good competition for people to enter the field and do it any better, so you just have these genres and fields of videogames that are well served each year, but because there's zero competition there's no incentive to really go all out. I think they killed Dirt Rally 3.0 for these WRC games as well, didn't they, with EA's dirty fingers in the pie? They truly are a blight.

Because people in suits think they know better when in fact they know absolutely fuck all.

It's a free update on the steam version. here's the blurb in the activity.

Most recently it's been Strangers Wrath. Honestly, that game is a work of art. It's so well written that it blows a lot of modern games stories out the window. It's full of minute details that the more I think about it, the more apparent it becomes.

I played the hell out of this back in the day. I wish they would reintroduce stuff like climbing and languages. Completely fucking up a quest line because you tried to be streetwise and get your cover blown can happen in this game. I feel like TESVI sort of has to look into stuff that was originally part of the game that was only doable then because it was all procedural generated because now we're seeing those mechanics being built into normal games and we have for quite some time now when you think about it. I know it's not a thread about TESVI, but to know where you are going you need to look where you have come from, and scouring over II, III and IV are something that really need analysing. Especially III.

Pay another £60 so you can watch that god awful wedding scene again.

A tweet is much cheaper than holding an event. When the coffers are low and you are trying to penny pinch, it's the obvious option.

L4D2 is still super buoyant on PC, you'd never not get a game. The issue is everyone playing is a fucking jedi now because they have thousands of hours played. As for the question, I don't know. Maybe something that has a daily mission where you have a rogue like thing going on.

I wonder if they binned off the old leveling system and made that more streamlined, because quite honestly it was sort of shit. It was super cumbersome. Skyrim did a way better job at it, even though that was gimped in its own way.