Ben-DutkaWell, plenty of news during Gamescom week, as usual.
Forget Rise of the Tomb Raider for a second; the PS4 has some amazing-looking games coming
Amid the uproar surrounding Microsoft's purchase of timed exclusivity for Rise of the Tomb Raider , it was all too easy to forget that Sony had a pretty great Gamescom briefing.
Not only did they show off several new exclusive titles, they showed of brand new IPs . That's significant. When's the last time Xbox came up with a brand new exclusive IP? Everyone points to Nintendo as king of the first-party exclusives, but I don't see how they even qualify if they haven't made a new character in several decades. PlayStation will be first to get Ninja Theory's upcoming Hellblade , which looks a lot like "Heavenly Sword 2." Hell, even the titles are similar: "Heavenly Sword" vs. "Hell Blade?" I mean, come on.
Then there's the extremely ambitious Wild , which could be a defining game of the generation. Another defining game could be No Man's Sky , which sounds downright revolutionary. These are huge games and absolutely nothing to sneeze at. Let's also not forget that Destiny will be best played on the PS4 (as Sony hasn't hesitated to claim throughout 2014). And next year, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End , Bloodborne , and The Order: 1886 , just to name a few…yeah, I'm perfectly okay with having to wait on the new Tomb Raider .
Okay, these new RPGs might be WAY too big
Yes, I do believe a game can be too huge. If I have to spend a zillion hours just to feel as if I accomplished anything, I really can't play it. Sure, you can finish the campaigns in less than 40 hours but let's face it: Who's really doing that? If you're a role-playing fan, since when do you race through a game like Dragon Age: Inquisition ? You may not take the total completionist mentality and invest a whopping 150 hours , but you'll almost certainly spend a lot more than 30 or 40 hours. That's just how RPG fans are. And the more I see of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , the more I'm convinced I won't have time for it.
And let's not forget that we're also getting two Assassin's Creed games this year (that Gamescom footage of Rogue looked sweet), as well as Grand Theft Auto V on next-gen consoles . All these massive open-world adventures are gonna star to pile up…
Personal gaming update
I can't go into detail just yet but I've been playing The Last Tinker: City of Color . It's entertaining and it definitely lives up to its title, but that's all I can say right now. I also got Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare , so you'll see a review for that this week. Next week, it'll be all about Diablo III: The Ultimate Evil Edition ; can't wait for that! Too bad I'm having a bi*** of a time beating Eldrith on Extreme difficulty in Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance …pissing me off. Oh, and just because there are plenty of huge multiplatform blockbusters set for the fall, don't forget about LittleBigPlanet 3 !
Metrico has a great premise but one of these days, developers are going to have to understand what the word "gimmick" means.
It really does. And to think we still have TGS and the VGAs. Not to mention next E3 where even more will be announced.
Next topic is a tired one but something occurred to me a few days ago whilst talking to a few buds while running around KZ's coop gamemode.
Women have always played big parts in video games. Sure, old Lara Croft was ugly with massive breasts nad behind but she was taking on dinosaurs and stuff. Like a badarse. In ff4, Rydia Rosa and the little girl (i forgot her name) weren't damsels in distress. Each were very powerful and interesting. Hell, most FF women are strong aside from the obvious eye candy. Samus from the Metroid series is a total badarse.
Crash Bandicoots sister, though younger, is clearly more intelligent but was also a cool character. Not every girl in video games is the princess needing to be rescued. FF9 and 12 had very strong and brave princesses. Jill from Resident evil 1 and 3 wasn't a push over nor was Claire in RE2 and Code Veronica, which stared a female villain. Heather from Silent Hill 3 wasn't someone to be messed with either.
This list could get even bigger, especially since I didn't play a lot of games back in the day but the point is anyone who says women didn't play a vital role in games is stupid. Thinking back, very rarely is a male character anything more than a hero. The women always have better character development and made into something so much more. For anyone to even say they need even bigger roles would be unfair to male characters who suffer from generic binds of "I'm a dude who needs to save people."
Anyway, not trying to start a flame war just wanted to talk about that here as well. It's something that's always being discussed anyway.
I spent this week playing Second Son which I platinumed. The evil ending is so…Evil. I've also been dabbling into MGS3. The control scheme is a killer. I'm having trouble getting used to it, because the game has so much in it. The Last of us and Killzone Shadowfall off and on.
My girlfriend likes Daylight quite a bit. After playing that maze for an hour we played Silent Hills. I have never seen her jump so high from fear before. The radio saying "Look behind you" was a killer. I'm so glad both Silent Hill AND Resident Evil are making comebacks. I know I enjoyed Downpour and my first playthrough of RE6, but I don't mind the direction they're headed in at all. Silent Hills being the twisted tormentted world it was always supposed to be brought to life by the ps4.
Next year is going to be something incredible for video games. I have no hopes for Rise of a Tomb Raider. Not because its xbox timed but because its xbox 360 AND xbox one. That, right there, is bad. I have to say, Crystal Dynamics didn't oppose the idea of being xbox exclusive which hurts. Its like they took my money and laughed at me as I walked away. I bought it two times, and my thanks is "only microsoft understands our vision" Yeah cause the Uncharted series is SO horrible and Sony doesn't understand what you guys want.
Also, more bad news from Square. Not only the dude who built the brand new Crystal engine thing that Agnis demo ran on, the lead programmer of FFXV who worked on 7 8 kh 1 and 2 left square as well. Mid project mind you. That's not good.
Oh, I've become a big Metal Gear fan. Thanks a lot PSX community, because of you guys I didn't miss out on something this amazing. I never bothered with it before and now that I have I can easily see what I've been missing. So thank you guys, I really appreciate it.
Yep,at first i didn't think that 2015 would be that great,but now i think that 2015 will be a good games year,there will be some fantastic games like the witcher 3,no man's sky,uncharted 4,the order,the division[also 2015?],Batman and all these are real next gen,not cross-gen!
about Tombraider;man,i read that it's still a cross-gen[also on 360] game in 2015!I DON'T WANT IT like this for my ps4,i want real next gen games in 2015 for my next gen,the first year ok i can understand it,but about 2!!years later and stil cross-gen?Pathetic AND not good enough for next gen.
Gaming update:i'm playing walking dead 2,great.
After this i will play some of my backlog,then later on the evil within and end of this year my ps4,finally YEAH.
Last edited by slow and smart on 8/17/2014 3:42:07 AM
not looking forwad to LBP 3 super keen but yeah there are plenty of games to go around wat ever ur platform for the most part anyways some ppl's taste say other wise but there is alot going on and a hong of alot more coming in the next 12months
happy gaming
Ben also gave me the opportunity to review the new Sword Art Online game for Vita so that's incoming for Japanese fans, I'm not sure when cuz there's crazy new busy-ness in my life but I'll do my best for all.
So is Hellblade exclusive?
I got Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed and it's a Japanese gamer's dream. Much better than I even thought it'd be. What a good time.
And I got Murdered: Soul Suspect. I love it so far, what a great idea, too bad that studio got killed. This thing needed room to breathe.
Last edited by WorldEndsWithMe on 8/17/2014 11:33:12 AM
Hell Blade is timed exclusive.
I am not even sure if there is any specific deal in place, they just decided to go PS4 first as there is only 12 people in Ninja Theory working on the game, so there is no way they could work on two versions of the game.
I got my workstation laptop for work loaded with a gtx 880m. So, in addition to playing Last of Us on my Ps4, I have been playing a lot of games this week "Remastered", and has it been delightful!
What an exciting week. Gamescom seemed bigger than I remember it being. Maybe not the same production value as the TGS but the content was close to E3.
PGU: Always Skyrim. Wish I could break free, but it's so damn awesome. And my Nivida card recently updated and now Skyrim looks a little better.
Golden Abyss still looks great on the Vita. Trying to find all of the treasures this time though. Proteus is great. It's hard to go into much more detail then that, but it's great game to play before bed.
This has been the summer of Indie titles.
Agree with Ben, this week is ALL about Diablo 3.
Ever since I heard about the D3 announcement several years ago, I have been waiting for a console release. Even when my colleagues played it on PC, I still waited. And I am glad I did, D3 for PS4 looks like the best edition of the game so far.
Finally got around to getting the Infamous SS Platinum trophy, next on the list will be Assassins Creed 4. I've got every trophy except the multiplayer ones. I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO glad that Ubi are ditching multiplayer for this years AC games, no more Multiplayer trophies!!!! They ALWAYS have a trophy for "Reach level 100", which is just too time consuming.
Diablo 3 is currently scoring a 91 on metacritic, and the reviews just keep pouring in with 90%+ scores.
Last edited by Akuma_ on 8/17/2014 9:22:00 PM