Tom_Scherschel

I would be really interested to see a demographic breakdown of the Giant Bomb audience. Almost everyone commenting is coming at this offer from the perspective of watching it alone or with a roommate or date. Only one person here has mentioned the cost of taking a family to the movies (what up, @bongchilla). Mine is a family of five, so for any show I'm paying over $30 just in tickets, and then there's popcorn and soda. Generally, a night at the movies runs $75+. So $30 for new entertainment that can entertain the kids for 2 hours is a no-brainer. Plus, for that price, if the kids like it they can re-watch it as much as they want.

Totally agree that $30 is a lot to ask if you're just one person who will watch this one time, but there are millions of families out there that are starved for new things to do.

@wollywoo: After my kids wrung everything they could out of BotW we went looking for another open-world game that was age appropriate for them. We landed on Horizon, and it was going ok until they realized they couldn't climb anything and everything or paraglide down from high points. They lost interest pretty quickly.

Parasite Eve. The recent Resident Evil remakes are a great template in how to re-make and expand this style of game.

@tp0p: It would have been really nice if the Dual Shock 4 had worked with all PS5 games. New consoles will be expensive enough, but I need to have four controllers in my house so that my kids can play Minecraft or whatever else together. Guessing that extra Dual Sense controllers will go for $60+.

Also, I don't know anything about the guts of the Dual Sense or Dual Shock 4, but if @toughshed is right that it really is just a software block, then it seems like Sony is just setting themselves up for bad press followed by a reversal of this policy.

@castiel: Burn in is a real problem. I have mine calibrated down from the out of the box settings (lower brightness, contrast, etc.) and still have the "Nick" logo burned into the bottom right from my kids watching cartoons and the CNN "Breaking News" banner burned in on the left side after we were watching Coronavirus coverage every day for a month.

That said, you don't see it in most scenes of movies/games, and the TV has a pixel-sifter feature I've been running that is slowly working it out. Still worth it, in my opinion as the picture is *way* better than my traditional LED.

@bigsocrates: I agree with your general point (can't comment on Last of Us II, I'm only 15 hours in). I felt the same way about Final Fantasy VII Remake, Doom Eternal, and Death Stranding.

If you look at achievement/trophy data, the majority of players do not get past the halfway point in most AAA games. For all the time and money spent developing these long games, half the people buying them never see most of it. I've wondered lately why they keep making games so long, then? Do they have market research that says people are more likely to buy a game if it is over so many hours long?

God of War is an interesting example, because that never felt long to me. I think in that instance it had a very good story and in between story bits it had excellent, challenging combat and quite a bit of spectacle. So far, Last of Us Part II just has the story (which 15 hours in and another 10 or so to go already feels stretched).

There number 3 is my number one, but whatever. You know going into any GOTY discussion that there are only a handful of games that are actually contending for the number one spot. And people like what they like. My GOTY probably wouldn't be most people's, and that's fine.

Hasn't been a great year for games, in my opinion. Then again, I've had almost no time to play any. Personally, Alien: Isolation is my game of the year. Fantastic game, even if the last hour or so sees a step-down in quality, and the way they've used DLC to expand or fill in parts of the story has been really great without feeling exploitative.

@jasonr86: Advanced Warfare 4/5. The best that series has been since Modern Warfare 2. Super excited for the next advanced warfare/worried about what next year's CoD will be. (Remember after CoD4 we got World at War).

@oddysseus: Sci-fi. I could make up a lot of high-minded bullshit, but it boils down to "I LIke Spaceships"