devise22

Yeah I'm also someone who doesn't think this is a grass is greener. Given this is the first console cycle with a gap developers got away with games that let's be honest, ran pretty crap on base consoles. Whether it was due to poor loading times, or even just bad framerate. As someone who only has a base PS4 and a junker of an old PC that can basically just play games from 2011 on high setting the PS5 being available at launch was something I was kind of hoping for.

There are a number of games I'm waiting to finally play on PS5, and obviously some titles for me like Cyberpunk I don't even want to bother with on the PS4. The only game I've gotten into thus far that also nextegen is AC Valhalla but the Ubi open world games have all ran pretty well on a base PS4, especially the last several AC's.

I think my larger frustration is the amount of accurate information there is on what is happening with stock shortages. It's obviously a frustrating time for the world, and being entitled about a game console with real human issues going on is nothing to sneeze at, so obviously one would only go so far. Still; it does feel like to me there is a case of some shortages not because of an issue with the amount of consoles manufactured but because of how the distribution strategies have been with both the PS5 and the new Xbox. I'm going to be really curious to see at what point it becomes easier to get one online, and if it's just a case of waiting out the holidays so they can mitigate delivery vs demand as they've been doing thus far.

@brian_: @redwing42: Yeah that comment in particular was like, a huge oof. Came out of nowhere too, and it's just so odd he's not more accustomed to seeing these sorts of things. Real sports teams have had these kinds of clubs for female fans for ages now and it has done great work in bringing out and showcasing the fan diversity.

It's so weird too because of late I've been feeling like JR has generally been on point. Most of his I'm outdated style reactions have been more comedic in nature, and fitting to what was on the screen without taking away from it. He's had the odd blunder but nothing quite as bad as this which was facepalm worthy and cringey awkward as pointed out.

I want it be a more fleshed out RPG experience, with more options to explore the diverse characters and overall facets of what make that universe so appealing. One of the biggest issues with the ME franchise from the get go was their desire to make you absolutely play as a human. That Andromeda stuck with this format no less was basically criminal. It's a universe filled with tons of interesting Aliens, if there aren't a whole suite of race options in this new thing it'll be a huge undersight imo.

Beyond that though I think another thing the original ME did that was a bit underwhelming was the falseness of it's class options. Yes there was some variety to abilities and powers and how you approached combat, but the game was still always combat. You were still fighting out of the situations they designed. RPG's are better when the diverse class options actually have an overall impact on the way you play the game. If your an engineer you should do less shooting and more hacking, more things with technology and equipment. For me for a sequel I'd like to see an actual attempt to separate the overall game experience from some of these classes, and hell even the narratives.

Bioware themselves explored the concepts of this with the original Dragon Age and some of SWTOR, the idea that the class and race you picked impacted your starting location and narrative. I want to see this concept extended. If I want to play as an engineer, or a medic on the Starship and never advance to Captain there should be an arc that does that. Games have gotten so obsessed with you being "the one person who does it all" and obessed with this idea that if you don't give the gamers "everything they want" that you won't sell. We have enough of this content already. Give us rich deep experiences with good characters, with good true options and choices in how you can play the game.

To be specific, I wouldn't mind entirely different single player story campaigns based on some of the several key positions you'd see filled on a ship. There can be an overarching narrative or a larger plot point but working more towards the idea that this thing is a crew and relationship simulator over top of a space and action sim is exactly what I want personally.

@halfpastwhenever: Yeah I would agree with a lot of what you said in response to @toughshed. Despite Cody's demeanor and overall promo style being classic babyface, a lot of his booking is actually kinda heel. He switches to a more traditional babyface against the Brodies and Archers of the world, but even then they find ways to use his managers in weird pseudo face ways.

But if you look at even his match booking, did Cody ever beat Cassidy clean? No. Cassidy was about to beat him in the first match until time ran out, and Cody got a legit heel run in coupled with his own manager running in in a far more heel version of that then they usually employ to lead to him beating Cassidy in the second encounter. Similarly the time limit draw with Darby that was mentioned. He also early in his TNT reign would use similarly kinda heel tactics against a lot of the up and coming babyfaces he would face.

Despite the wins, Cody hasn't had a traditionally dominant title reign. Regardless of all this I do agree with one thing, that them doing the are they or aren't they heel/face with every member of the Elite minus Page right now is pretty weird and perhaps a bit too much. I think there are instances where it works for sure, Kenny is probably the best example of it with the meta taunting of the fans expectations of him being the "ace" with the Roberts announcing and such. But there are times where they are certainly overthinking things; especially with themselves. It feels like they want to avoid booking themselves strongly and falling into that WWE esque trap that people in charge have that perhaps they are over booking their own storylines in an effort to keep things from being that same old thing. I think with some of these stories they may be better off to pick and direction and head it in just for stability sake, as you risk losing interest if every one of these stories keeps teetering on the idea that these characters may or may not be fully heel/face and are transitioning into something.

Hell fucking yes to all this. I kept coming back to that game after the updates and being wowed at the commitment they had in really fleshing out their promise. I've kind of just been waiting for the perfect time to really sink my teeth into it though and actually giving it a proper chance again post launch. An upgraded version for new consoles seems like the perfect way to do that.

Anayway; cool to see them going for more and more with this thing. Proving being a disappointment at launch doesn't have to be the end of the world, or the end of a game.

@garwalk: Totally this. So many of the threads on this site devolve into this weird pseudo celebrity gossip in regards to speculation about these very real peoples lives. I'm not saying you can't like, talk about this stuff in the appropriate setting but on a forum topic with the clear intention of reacting and talking about Abby's departure and time with the site is just such an asshole move. Stop doing it.

It's like how that CBSi layoff thread devolved into nothing but people speculating on the overall future of GB and how they are going to survive.

Anyway; while this is a huge bummer it has been par the course for a lot of the staff loses at GB. Them choosing to leave to pursue their own greener pastures. Like many I had to actually stop and wow at the concept of it already being 4 years. Abby joined the site and to me blended in pretty well pretty fast and had some hit features pretty early. (Sims, Six Crazy Frights) Ultimately some of my favorite site features have either been her ideas or involved her heavily such as Sea Beasts, Crime Crew and Clue Crew. Even the super Dan focused skits of the yesteryears like Sunshine and the DK feature benefitted greatly from her presence. GB has functioned well over the years and especially of late due to a solid diversity of opinions and tastes, which allows for a good mish mash of features, where overall it doesn't just feel like different people doing the same thing. I think she contributed greatly to that aspect of the site.

Regardless it is what is is and join the echo of wishing Abby the best in whatever she decides to do and I know I'll absolutely be checking in on her Twitch channel to see what she gets up to off/on post Giant Bomb.

As someone who skipped the PS4 Pro, it's my number one consideration. I own about 5 games that my base PS4 either runs too loudy or poorly, or given the popularity of souls likes it's one that requires constant death and simply has too poor load times to suffer through. God of War is one that comes to mind for me where I got about 5 hours in and couldn't keep suffering through those load times. There are even a few base games that I heard ran so badly on it that I just didn't even bother checking out, like Control.

I know a lot of folks are really bummed about launch software and that always happens when new consoles launch for the most part, but given the backlog of quality games I already have and the few things I saved or waited to play honestly I'm not too hurting for new content to play once the new consoles arrive.

I was among the folks that enjoyed both Cody promo's but despite that I'm still not overly thrilled with him winning the title back so quickly, most of the AEW title pictures haven't devolved to ping pong so them doing it for a returning babyface moment made sense to me.

I didn't think this weeks Dynamite was particularly great though. Jericho's match was a stinker but at least that one we kinda knew going in. I don't get the decision to have FTR face TH2 for the titles, especially after them fake mocking Best Friends for being backyard wrestlers and then Jack Evans gets a title shot. But I digress; the real issue there is more that the style TH2 works clashes entirely with FTR and it just piles up another match where FTR have come across as underwhelming. Their promo work has been great imo, and pairing them with Tully works. But other than their match with SCU and with Hangman/Page a high majority of FTR's AEW matches have been style clashes where things just don't look right and even as heels it doesn't really feel like they get momentum. I like the concept of the Clash with Greatness segments that they are doing, but here's hoping we actually get some great tag team wrestling matches out of FTR from it like it seemed was going to be the case with the first week with SCU.

The Cody/Brody Dog Collar match was probably the best match of the night and was a well worked old school style match that just had Cody winning a little too soon. Otherwise match wise it was more of a lackluster Dynamite, which I think is kind of a bummer considering the honoring to Jericho and that we knew Luthar was going to be in the main event. Like that's the night we decide no in ring for Bucks or Omega or Page, or Lucha or Jurassic? Will Hobbs might of been the next best looking ring talent tonight after the Brodie/Cody match.

Matches aside there was some truly great bits during Dynamite however. From the various fun celebrity congratulations for Jericho, to the build up to Archer/Mox and finally the Best Friends/FTR setup. MJF had a good promo at the end of the show and I literally couldn't stop laughing at the end bit where it was just Chris Jericho's name in every different position over a generic TV credits crawl. It was a funny way to end it.

To some of the comments in this thread though, like I will say I do echo the sentiment that I wish AEW would book longer term feuds more regularly. Some of it's best feuds (Inner Circle vs Elite, Cody vs MJF, Best Friends vs Proud and Powerful) had multiple weeks to grow and build into something and pretty much all of them had some solid payoff somewhere minus Cody/MJF. I find it odd though because despite their hesitance to book rematches regularly and how frustrating it can sometimes be when a feud is getting started or looks in a good spot only to have the first big match wind up seemingly the last match of the feud; these stories don't really end with those blow off matches. MJF almost joined Inner Circle a year ago and now they are doing that again. Cody/MJF still have issues and it'll likely come up again. I guess what I'm saying is while I still would rather they stick with things longer, that they don't isn't preventing them from taking their characters and doing interesting things with them regularly.

Like some of the hyperbole in this thread and I will call it that, regarding Brodie and the Dark Order because he lost is hilarious. Your telling me that a fake misinformation cult group whose entire identity is built on grooming losers can't move on from a title loss? Come on. Like I'm not saying I'd of booked Brodie to drop it that soon either but creatively they'll be just fine, and this has been the case with lots of their workers who were involved in good stories that were dropped. They often end up moving on to something else entertaining/interesting. A big reason they do this is because of their weird obsession with presenting themselves like MMA in some ways, and in MMA rematches are rare because you normally move on after someone loses. But I won't deny I also think this approach has hampered storylines where it was clear working a longer program even for a few more weeks or one more big show would be better. I also think their overall storytelling approach week to week is a little more flawed because they only have big PPV's once every like 3-4 months. This means they do a lot more one off big time title programs in the longer dead time on Dynamite to compensate.

This type of stuff always sucks, I hope that all the talented folks affected by these cuts land on their feet but man this stuff super sucks. You'll always see people defending cuts like these too because of all the up and coming games journalists and video people looking for work. However cutting tenured quality talented workers just because the new crop will settle for less than living wage in some instances is and always will be scummy. Scummy as shit. It's what asshole business people do.

Before anyone hits me with the "but cuts have to happen so what are you going to do" I'll just say I've seen countless examples of large companies making cuts in way healthier and less scummy ways than this. Even recently my friends business underwent massive cuts; and while some divisions did see straight layoffs they avoided a ton of layoffs by offering their senior staff already above a certain age early retirement incentives. It's no secret though that the games industry at large cycles through talented workers in various fields from journalism to game development. Sticking it out in that industry for a long time, even as long as some of the GB staff even have is rare. That said I have no actual inside knowledge of this situation so I'll leave it there. From the outside looking in though this seems like a raw deal for everyone involved. Positions being made redundant is often another word for throwing the one person does on another persons plate. But given they were recently acquired one would have to wait and see what actual Gamespot looks like and is planning to do going forward here.

Yeah it's a weird position to be in, because I don't think that Crystal really understands, and it's clear from even some of the comments in this thread but also like more wide; a lot of people bought Avengers for the Campaign not the Live Service stuff.

Count me in that camp, I had no intention of making this a common multiplayer game and the idea of doing larger group content ala Destiny Strikes and Raids only really appealed to me for one playthrough, with friends. Them going into hiatus with their road map this soon after release though is pretty concerning. Seems like they don't have a handle on what they really want this game to be, which has been a big problem for a lot of live service games of late.

Like, all I can really say is as someone who enjoyed much of the campaign, all I'd really want from a live service perspective is story content. More solo chapters for each character that are at least several hours in length. For group content I'd probably also much rather a more narrative focus. Overwatch did well with the concept of forcing you into a specific set of heros for teams on narrative based event missions. Those missions were never more than an hour and some change in length at best though. So leveraging some of the strengths the campaign had would be fun for a fixed hero set, especially IF the roster is ever going to expand like they promised. I just think going all in on this "It's an MMO right so Raids and Multiplayer and PVP down the road" is just not the type of thing I ever want out of this thing really and never was, so if they double down in that direction I fear they lose pretty much everyone who bought the game because they liked the campaign, and wanted a more narrative approach to a live service game.

For some reason adventure games were able to figure this shit out but like, more conventional modern genres seem to struggle between a heavy focus on ideas WoW popularized simply because a lot of their gameplay conventions are so mechanics heavy. Sometimes I wish games of this ilk (Destiny, Division, etc.) would spend more time making you care about the encounters than trying to gamify as much encounters as possible because it's a video game. Like yes, that stuff works for decades old PC MMO's but can we not choose how much of something we are going to let influence modern game design or what?

But yeah to hear the rumored state it's in, quite the bummer.