stinger061

A few years ago my answer would have been 50+ but I've managed to slow myself down and instead focus on spending more time with a smaller number of games. I probably play 5 or 6 big 30+ hour games a year now and then 10-15 smaller games

The dream of purpose built next gen games sounds wonderful but in reality the vast majority of third party games already have to be designed around a range of specs for the PC so beyond the things like fast load times we aren't going to get a lot of games that can make design decisions based on guaranteed higher end tech. Sony's first party games are such high quality already so I am excited to see what they can produce.

The Last of Us Part II but it's written by the angry people of the internet

I rarely pay full retail price for any games now simply because of how much great stuff is coming out. By the time I'm through with one game the next one I'm keen on has been out long enough that it pops up in a sale. There area handful of my favourite developers and franchises that I'll pay the extra $10 for but for everything else it's easy enough to wait for a discount.

If these new consoles do land at $500-600 as predicted that seems far more likely to be a stumbling point for price sensitive people than $10 extra for a month or two after release of new games

Not sure if it's an accessibility option or dependent on difficulty but I am massively appreciating the way the game will make a checkpoint whenever you get a successful stealth kill in an encounter on normal. The worst part of stealth games (including TLOU1) is when you clear a bunch of enemies quietly only to make one mistake, die and then have to spend 10 minutes creeping around doing all those kills again

Had Days Gone come out of a random 3rd Party studio I wouldn't have thought too much about the issues it has but it's just so out of place among the other stuff they make. Obviously the studio doesn't have the reputation of a Naughty Dog or even Sucker Punch but Sony generally has a history of producing games that are either universally acclaimed or at least doing something different (Dreams). As others have said Days Gone is a B-level open world game which is ok on it's own but not what you've come to expect from a Sony studio. The fact that they have a game in the Zombie genre that many consider one of the best of all time makes it even more baffling that Days Gone gone the green light

A couple of years ago I found myself getting annoyed with certain games for being too long but I've taken a step back and realised for me the problem was I was always wanting to get a game finished and move onto the next one, which is a great way of not really enjoying anything. I made an active decision to buy fewer games and spent a ton of time playing more open ended games like Fortnite, Warframe and PUBG as well as spending more time with the story based games I was playing and overall just enjoyed my game playing time a whole lot more.

It's interesting how games that are specifically story based are the ones which receive criticism for length while the stuff without a defined end point has thrived. Battle Passes and seasonal based games I guess give some new content on a regular basis but it's mostly still the same mechanics which people don't seem to hate as much as repeated mechanics in story focussed games.

I turned them off as well. I care about trophies to some degree and will go back and look at what I've been given them for but the screenshot feature was a nice idea that wasn't particularly useful. With Hard Drive space on the new generation consoles potentially being at even more of a premium than it is now I can't see them sticking with it (at least not by default)

Hold instead of mash button prompts is something I now look for in every game. If we must keep QTE's it's nice to have the option to make them a bit more bearable. I haven't opted for any other accessibility options for my first playthrough but I'm sure I will when I go back. Being able to tailor the difficulty at such a granular level is awesome and is something I hope spreads through the industry.

So often games are made incredibly frustrating by one weird mechanic or difficult thing (like allies who die too fast or bullet sponge enemies). Being able to change those things individually instead of having to increase/decrease the difficulty of every other mechanic as a normal difficulty option does is awesome. Even the option to auto-complete puzzles is a thing I can see myself using more often. If I get stuck I'm going to go to the internet and just copy the answer anyway so might as well build the option right in.

While Waypoint could be inconsistent it felt like there was something to build on but unfortunately it seemed like things changed at a corporate level and budgets got changed which prevented Austin from really building it up. It’s a shame because I love Austin and in the early stages everything seemed good but you could tell in the last 12 months it was all starting to get a bit tough. I won’t speculate on the future of anyone else but I hope we continue to see and hear from that whole crew because they definitely have something to offer