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I'm hoping my physical copy arrives tomorrow. This wasn't majorly on my radar but the clips and reviews have sold it for me. I think it will more than tide me over until the October releases.

Having played both betas (which were basically identical), it's very similar to the first game. I thought The Crew was very flawed but endearing, especially as someone who enjoyed TDU (and even TDU2).

The car handling definitely is a bit better, although still not as satisfying as other games. The bikes were pretty neat. The planes and boats were...fine? There's not all that much to them, but they handled OK and I'm sure they'd be a fun diversion. The betas didn't really show off much in the way of progression but I can't see how it could be worse than the first game and its bad story. And there are more cars, which can only be a good thing.

The graphics are still a bit poor, even considering the huge scale. Pop-in seems to be the only real problem though. The online world is still a touch disappointing in how empty it feels, although YMMV especially if you play with friends.

Overall, I'm probably going to do exactly what I did after trying the first game's open beta, which is wait for a sale. I mostly enjoyed the first game for the novelty of the huge open world and so I am a bit disappointed the map is so similar. If you really enjoyed the first game, then I can't see why you wouldn't like this unless you just find it too similar.

I don't really see the point in coding in such a feature when you could just not read the comments.

Besides, the quality varies wildly from video to video. I know everyone's just come off Star Spangled Beasters but most aren't really like that.

Frankly, I'm disappointed about the decision to cancel. I guess I can understand where the criticism is coming from (although I think it's ridiculously over the top) but the correct response is not to call for features to be banned. If people don't like the very mild patriotism on show, they simply shouldn't watch this feature. I do find it ironic given the week's events that have clearly informed opinions that people seem to have forgotten that one of the other hallmarks of totalitarianism is shutting down viewpoints that you don't like.

Still, I'm not going to say I cared enough about the feature to say anything else.

I finished the game. Personally, I enjoyed it. I've always had a soft spot for Heavy Rain and this is a much better game, and it's nice to see your choices actually having impact.

As for the story, I liked all three main characters which for me was the driving force of the plot. I know everyone focuses on the wider plot which is not as well done (although I don't think it's as bad as people are saying) but that had surprisingly little impact on my enjoyment of the story. I get Alex's criticisms, but I don't have a problem with those issues being in the background when the focus is clearly on the characters themselves and the decisions they make.

On my base PS4, it looked absolutely fantastic and aside from one level (of an avian variety) performance was fine.

I enjoyed the game quite a lot. I think it's much better than Heavy Rain (which I still liked). Never actually played Fahrenheit or Beyond.

I got probably the best endings. Alice, Kara and Luther escaped to Canada, Markus led a peaceful revolution that led the President to consider accepting the androids as another species and Connor turned deviant, broke free of control and remained friends with Hank.

Also, I got to the moment that Alex didn't like (as he's revealed in ROT13 code on Twitter) and I really didn't find it that bad.

...to be fair, I think it's me.

I enjoyed the story a fair bit, and having been someone with a good knowledge of Greek gods the reveals were better since this time I didn't know any of the lore beforehand. I liked how during that one bit Atreus wouldn't follow my commands whatsoever. That said, I thought it all ended a bit abruptly. I thought we would at least see Odin.

As for the combat, I really never liked the Axe stuff. Most of the time I could play conservatively and rely on distance shots whilst Atreus helped pummel them down. The Blades combat was much more fun and I got into the thick of it a lot more because I actually wanted to.

Overall I enjoyed the game a lot and think it's an immense accomplishment to reinvent God of War to the standard that they have, but I don't think I'm quite as enamoured as most critics (including Dan) seem to be.

They can be huge cash cows but are also very difficult to make and both the capital and ongoing costs are unbelievable, both monetarily and temporally.

Destiny 2 suffers from a lack of end-game stuff to do, but I would wager it takes far longer to create an hour of compelling content in a loot shooter than in pretty much any other genre. Not to mention balancing weapons and equipment is a total nightmare. I haven't played nearly enough of the Division to comment personally, but I hear that game has also focused on the PvP side for post launch support. I just think keeping the solo and PvE experiences fresh for that amount of time is inherently really, really tough, regardless of how good it feels to play.

I enjoyed Borderlands 2, but I put in 40 hours to finish the game and had no real desire to play again. I'm interested to see for Borderlands 3 if they do add post-launch support outside of the traditional DLC model and if so how they address the problems that others have had.

Patch 1.02 has fixed the narration stuff for me. I agree about the VO - I don't mind cheesy, but some of them make me want to cave my skull in.