I feel like subscriptions are just fine though.

If you can’t afford subscriptions like those, then you should probably have other priorities to really worry about.

That said, I play WoW on and off, I never play 24 months in a row or so until the next expansion. I often total at barely half a year or maybe even less depending on the expansion. Like currently I’ve only paid for one month and have bought game time with lots of gold I had, but I barely played during these times.

If someone would play every month every expansion they probably easily got their money’s worth out of it if they’re that invested in the game, and probably spend far less on other games or hobbies. I think subscriptions for MMO games have changed the least of all too, comparing it to like Netflix that changed prices regularly and easily doubled since it became popular. And they’re most definitely not going to reduce subscription fees because other unrelated things got more expensive.

Same principle for streaming services, you probably don’t watch all of them, so why not just limit yourself to one and swap between each? Nobody is forcing anyone to buy every streaming service, they’re luxury and entertainment products, if you can’t afford it then simply don’t buy it. I do think streaming services get out of hand, but they keep doing it because people keep buying it.

Throws ball at dog

Nintendo:

Politics in games isn’t the issue.

It’s the concept of pushing real world politics in games that is the problem.

Sometimes they can overlap, but they needn’t to. Some things are just obviously pushing the agendas of developers, instead of making it feel like a legit part of the game universe.

I recently tried it and only got through the first chapter before giving up, it’s just not fun to me.

It just looks like a generic 2015 game or something. Gunplay seems very bulletspongy, weapons seem very static and weightless, general atmosphere is dull, AI enemies just run around like imbeciles and spray into the general direction of the player. In a game like this immersion should be a huge priority, but when it comes to shooting it just looks so incredibly generic.

It just makes it look like this game was made for the sake of having a sequel, without really knowing what they could add to it. It just looks like a Fallout game with all the interesting parts stripped out of it.

I don’t know, it looks pretty weak and mediocre to me, quite dated too honestly, both visually and gameplay wise.

A while ago I read impressions from people that got to try this game on events and they did not seem to be too impressed.

I don’t think this title will live up to its name.

It’s not a myth when it really happens. I specifically remember DayZ being the first game I even reviewed on Steam because they abandoned it to work on a new project before wrapping up DayZ.

It’s just bad business to let projects linger in early access while starting new ones, or even sell loads and loads of DLC for these games. Frankly Steam should do something about it and punish studios abusing the system.

Not sure how to feel about the company behind DayZ getting in on it though. It’s kinda ironic, because they (or the guy that is/was leading them) are quite notorious for abandoning active running projects for something new, and repeatedly doing so. They even did this with DayZ until after a long time they picked it up again (I think), but I’m not sure what state the DayZ is in now.

Great, now I hope it will actually be well optimised though. I tried the first game again recently, but the performance in the main town is abysmal on high-end hardware.

I personally loved Avatar and Outlaws.

They’re not groundbreaking games, but they’re both very immersive and for fans of both franchises it’s a lot more fun to explore in these games.

Well, had to give it another try. Before, my 3070 could barely even handle the game at decent settings and higher framerates, now my 4080 Super shouldn’t be an issue at all.

After some testing I had hoped it’d be in a better state now, only shortly tried to load my save from a long time ago but it doesn’t look very promising, was at least hoping 100+ FPS at this point, but I face one side I get 70 FPS, and I turn to a misty valley and it burns down to like 20. Also initially had issues to even get the game running again, it would just freeze when the game window was active, I could hear my buttons having effect, but nothing would show until I took the focus off the game.

After rebooting it a couple of times and fiddling with some settings it seems to now work (still strangely the same settings as I started with), and sometimes it performs well and sometimes it struggles. Very inconsistent. If I turn off my MSI Afterburner undervolt config it feels like the game will melt my rig, the fans go absolutely crazy.

Also there seems to be quite some pop-in textures, terrain, trees and foliage. I don’t really recall this from before, at least not this noticable.

Hope it’s a driver thing or perhaps still more optimisation, because the game seems fun. Combat is still super basic and easy though, but being able to build a lively village makes up for it for me.

Pretty much this.

I will likely get downvoted into oblivion for saying this (as usual), and I will prelude by saying that I generally never care if there are gay, trans or whatever stuff in games. But transgenders and pronouns were never ever a thing in the Dragon Age franchise, and now they suddenly feature these so prominently. They just handled this very badly.

The fact that writing is generally just plain bad for this game, these inclusive options also seems to affect the rest of the game as well. And it indeed makes it look like they focused on the wrong narrative so much. The way Skill Up reviewed the game was perfect, his best summary was “it’s as if HR is standing in every room” or something along those lines. Like nobody is allowed to insult, or be insulted, in this franchise that used to be pretty dark and grim.

I haven’t read much into GTA 6 so far, only seen the trailer basically.

I do hope the singleplayer will still be as good as previous games, although I definitely would expect them to try and cash in on online even more.

T2 and Rockstar definitely fucked up with GTA 5 too. Originally there were supposed to be singleplayer expansions. Which they of course dropped in favor of how popular online got. And then they even proceeded to ban mods that took multiplayer-only cars to singleplayer, fucking disgusting move.

I’ll wait and see how the singleplayer is. I never bought GTA5 for its multiplayer, it only got less appealing the more they added to it too. The only part that interested me much later on were the RP servers, it genuinely looked fun on some of the moderated ones, so maybe Rockstar will try to get into that, but if online is just a carbon copy of GTA5 I won’t even bother.

People who don’t have a gaming PC but still want to game would be the next target audience in line, since they wouldn’t have another machine to play third-party games on anyway, so the exclusive would just be a bonus on top.

But I don’t think they’re even interested in paying so much extra for features they don’t even care about. Perhaps a smooth high framerate in casual shooters would be something they’d care for, but that can easily be achieved on base PS5 with at least 60+ FPS. I don’t think they’re the ones that care about true 4K, 120Hz/FPS or slightly better textures.

The only thing I can think of that people are hyped up for is GTA6. I fear that Rockstar might sell out to Sony and deliver a shitty 30FPS locked, low resolution and texture version of the game on older PS5 models on purpose, just to “push the hardware” of the newest model. But then again, they also couldn’t even be arsed to unlock framerate for RDR2 on PS5, not even after so many years.

That’s interesting and all, but I still don’t see a reason to upgrade my PS5 to a Pro, and frankly it wouldn’t even be that interesting for the price as a new player either.

Are there like any games that will really make use of the new hardware? Other than perhaps upgraded framerates and better 4K support. The average console player probably isn’t going to care that much, not for the giant price increase over minimal gains.

I feel like all games on this generation will still be limited to the base PS5 anyway, can’t imagine hardware matters much until the next generation consoles.

Well I got the game back when it came out. I did not know the game would be leaning so heavily on paid content after that, so it often felt like missing out on new stuff. It was the same with Elite Dangerous, I backed that from Kickstarter, and then they pull shit like that paid early access content.

I’d say I easily got my money’s worth out of both games for what I paid at the time. But it still feels like being screwed over when they start putting price tags on all new content. And it’s often not even a lot of content that justifies the price tag. Compare this to games like No Man’s Sky, that get free updates quite often.

I think this would’ve bothered me far less had the base games been free to play games, and then charge for DLC. To me Frontier turned into a greedy company so fast, it’s really up there with EA, Blizzard Activision and Epic.

I don’t know, it just looks like a €50 stand-alone expansion that could’ve been DLC for the first game. But now they get to sell it for more, and add new/more individual smaller DLC for this one.

Not been much of a fan of Frontier ever since Braben left. They started focusing very heavily on paid DLC since, especially back when for Elite Dangerous it was first just cosmetics, but they got greedy and now have paid early access for new ships, after the game was content starved for years. And before that instead of focusing on new content there was a long period where the only thing that got updated was a new microstransaction currency and raised prices of the DLC.

Doesn’t feel much different with the Planet Coaster and Zoo games. They get littered with paid DLC, and it’s almost taking The Sims forms of additional paid content.

Well the entire music industry is using it, can’t be that bad.

And like I said, I imagine it would actually bring more money to the table than being a Nintendo Online exclusive.

Even if they had put it on Spotify they would’ve gotten royalties from there. Which would be a nice bonus for them, because I can’t imagine anyone paying Nintendo Online just for the music.

Of course they’re not doing it on Spotify, and instead choose to lock it behind their own subscription service.

Nintendo is such a greedy shitty corporation. I wouldn’t even be surprised if now they are gonna go after people that posted their music elsewhere.

This would’ve actually been a perfect to be included with the alarm clock they recently released.