Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@Octane

They should make a theme that displays how much interest they earn from people who give them money before they need to.

@Dezzy Well, it's the reason I don't pre-order. Maybe a week in advance, so I get it delivered day one, but I don't see the need to pay for something I'm not getting for a long time.

@Peek-a-boo Well thanks a bunch! I'd forgotten about Star Wars BF2, now I'm going to have to struggle with the decision as to whether to fork out for that or not. Though if I do it'll be on PC as I don't have PS+ sub.

@Octane Ah, so you are taking the plunge with the Switch, hey?

I thought you would be waiting a little bit longer, but I guess the allure of Super Mario Odyssey is too strong!

@Dezzy I pre-ordered Gran Turismo Sport and Star Wars Battlefront II for £70 after the ‘save £10 off £75’ offer on Amazon during the summer holidays, along with £2 Prime discount for each title too; show me where I can pre-order both games today for a few pennies under £35 each.

As for The Frozen Wilds, there is a 10% discount on the PlayStation store (£14.29 instead of £16) for pre-ordering the upcoming story expansion. I’m going to play it on the day of availability, seeing as Horizon Zero Dawn is my second favourite game of this year... and I will also be saving a little bit of money too!

There’s nothing wrong with me being sensible with my money.

@Peek-a-boo Yep, there's a few games I don't mind buying a console for, and since 64 and Sunshine are easily my favourite Mario games, I need to play Odyssey. It helps knowing Prime 4 and Pikmin 4 will happen sometime within the next five years too. So that's at least three games I want for the Switch.

I bought my Wii U on the premise of Zelda, that didn't turn out very well... haha! Ended up as a Switch launch title, and it wasn't even the game I was hoping it to be. Oh well, there's bound to be more quality games coming to the Switch, and it's not going to be a disaster in the sales compartment, so I think we can expect solid support from Nintendo for a good few years.

I'm still a bit iffy on the price of everything, it's definitely the most expensive console I've ever bought if I include the SD-card and Pro Controller.

@Octane I have still got to play Breath of the Wild on my Wii U. It’s going to be my New Year resolution!

I purchased my OG PlayStation 4 about eighteen months into its lifespan, and that was a rather generous bundle for £329 along with a (resellable) physical copy for each of these trio of games; Bloodborne, The Order: 1886 and The Last of Us Remastered, the latter two of which I sold on Gumtree for £25 each.

This effectively meant that I had only paid £279 for my PS4, which is the RRP of a Nintendo Switch in the UK!

The Switch may well be only six months old, but it seems like an awful lot of money to pay at the moment. In regards to the European price, it is €330 for the Switch, €60 for Super Mario Odyssey, €80 for the Pro Controller and starting from €30 for a 64GB micro SD card; almost €500 ($500/£430) in all.

That’s Xbox One X territory! It seems way too expensive to me...

I am more than happy to wait until Metroid Prime 4 drops before I make up my mind.

@Dezzy
I would completely disagree. Yakuza 0, Resident Evil VII, Persona 5, Horizon: Zero Dawn, NieR: Automata, MLB The Show 17 (only baseball game worth a damn), Injustice 2 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy are all excellent games and there's more on the way.

@Peek-a-boo Why do you guys insist on an unbalanced comparison? That Switch calculation you just made includes a game and 3 controllers (one of which is completely non essential), plus a non essential SD card.

@Peek-a-boo I think I bought mine around the same time. A 1TB PS4 for €299! Why did you sell TLOU by the way?

@gcunit It's just the day one price I'm going to pay. A friend of mine has a Switch, and the Joy-Con are way too small for my hands. The Pro Controller is a necessity if I want to play comfortably for more than 30 minutes. And since save data and system updates are stuck on the console, with no way to expand the internal storage, you really need an SD card at some point. I'm going to get one, just so I have all the DLC and downloaded titles separately. What if I've used up all of the internal storage and I want to save a game and I can't? Just taking precautions. 32GB is nothing in this day and age.

As well as Gravity Rush 2, Nioh, Night in the Woods, WipEout Omega Collection, Nex Machina, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Pyre, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Undertale and, most recently, the long overdue return of Everybody’s Golf.

This has not only been the best year for the PlayStation 4 in terms of both quality and sheer variety, but it’s also the one where I just simply don’t have enough hours in the day to be able to play them all...

@gcunit Good luck with managing your meagre storage on your Switch in the coming years, and Octane specifically mentioned that he shall be buying a Pro Controller, hence the reason why I added it to my sums. And haven’t you read all the news about NBA 2K18 and DOOM? You need a micro SD card for them!

@Octane Already played The Last of Us on the PlayStation 3. For me, it is a ‘one-and-done’ kind of game.

I thoroughly hope we get to see some gameplay footage, however brief, of The Last of Us Part II at the PlayStation Experience in December. I am starting to come around on the idea of a follow-up after not feeling overly enthusiastic about it to begin with. I remember you being very excited (during the reveal)!

@Peek-a-boo Only NBA2K (which I'm not getting anytime soon), not Doom.

@Peek-a-boo I see. I admit, I haven't replayed the game either, aside from a few chapters, but I do plan on playing through it once more before the sequel comes out.

And yes, I got me excited. I've always said that I don't need a sequel. It's like Okami, perfect on its own. But if they're committed to another TLOU, I'm all for it. I liked TLOU more than the Uncharted games, so I'm curious to see what they can do with the sequel. But it's still a good two years away. I'm more excited for Days Gone at this point, I think that game may end up be my HZD of next year.

I haven't played Persona 5 or Horizon so I should rephrase my opinion a bit to account for that.
I've just had too many other open-world games to play for Horizon to compete with and I still haven't played Persona 4, which I want to first.

@Dezzy
I generally prefer a 'condensed' open world, like Yakuza and the newer Tomb Raider games offer but I'd put Horizon up there with the best of the genre. Plenty of rewards for people who want to explore.

@Peek-a-boo
Haven't finished Gravity Rush 2 yet, that's why I didn't mention it, but about halfway through I like it as much as the first one which is one of my favorite PlayStation games ever. And when throwing in remakes or remasters the year has been even better for sure. Yakuza Kiwami is the one I'm playing now. The flaws stand out more in 2017, especially after what 0 brought to the table, but the original was the last PS2 game I played to completion back when it came out in North America in 2006. Loved it then, still do now. The only two PS2 games I enjoyed more were MGS 3 and GTA: Vice City.

Really has been a tremendous year for PS4 and I'm looking forward to getting Assassin's Creed Origins not too long from now and that Horizon DLC as well. Add in the fact that Nintendo is back and 2017 has been a terrific year for gaming in general.

Just beat The Last of Us Remastered. Didn't enjoy it as much as I could have since I had some stuff spoiled, like the fact that Joel's daughter dies at the start of the game, the fact that Joel and Ellie don't die, and the fact that that David guy was a creep, but it was still one of the best Naughty Dog games I've played so far. I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much as Uncharted 4 because of the above spoilers, whereas I knew next to nothing about Uncharted 4 when I played it, but if I played it totally blind, it would without a doubt be my favorite Naughty Dog game. I'm really digging this whole serious plot thing ND has been doing lately, rather than the relatively happy-go-lucky nature of the first 3 Uncharted games. Don't get me wrong, 2 and 3 were good, (3 was anyway. I didn't play 2, but I hear only good things about it) but I tend to get a lot more invested in stories when I can take them seriously and there are legitimate risks involved.

My only real complaint is that the gameplay is basic and repetitive like most Naughty Dog games are (wayyy too much reliance on mechanics like finding a ladder or plank, pushing stuff around to climb on, or floating Ellie around on a raft thing), and that (minor spoilers) the ending was kind of anticlimactic and abrupt. When the credits started rolling, I kinda just thought "That's it?" I suppose it's not a big deal if they're making a second one, though.

Looks like FFXV is getting even more content in 2018, a second season pass featuring 4 DLC packs. This is the kind of thing I want BotW to do once Champions Ballad is out. Both games took forever to be released, don't waste what's been created.

@KirbyTheVampire I loved the micro-managing of items in TLOU, and the idea that every bullet counts. I think that's why I prefer it over Uncharted. I feel that the risk vs reward was higher in TLOU, making kills more satisfying.

Though I have to say, I'm currently playing Uncharted: Lost Legacy, and chapter 3, The Western Ghats, is amazing! I've already spend way more than an hour in that chapter, and I'm still not done! Great change of pace, and I hope they introduce some more variety in TLOU, without making it feel like a jack of all trades, master of none kind of game.

@Octane Yeah, I definitely enjoyed that part of the game, too. I almost wish they weren't quite so generous with the items, since I can only think of like one time where the lack of items became a legitimate problem for me, but it still encouraged a lot more strategic thinking than the Uncharted games. I just wish there was a little more variance to the overall gameplay, because if you're making a pretty slow-paced game, the objectives shouldn't be inane stuff like floating Ellie around or finding ladders. Doing that stuff a couple times is fine, but when it happens throughout the entire game over and over again, it starts feeling like they had this great idea for a story and characters and everything, but didn't really know how to include the actual gameplay. That's an issue I have with the Uncharted games as well.

Overall though, I enjoy TLOU and Uncharted a lot, and I'm really looking forward to playing The Lost Legacy.

@Gamer83 Although I hold 2015 in high esteem, mostly because it’s the year when Bloodborne came out, which still remains my personal favourite game of this generation, along with the likes of Life Is Strange, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, SOMA, Tales from the Borderlands and Until Dawn, all of which I had a thoroughly enjoyable time playing.

This year, however, has been the best year in terms of both quality and variety within a multitude of different genres. This year has also seen a long overdue resurgent of sorts from the Far East too, which has seen a noticeable absent in recent years.

Next year looks to be just as good in my opinion. It’s a pretty good time for our hobby!

@KirbyTheVampire It’s a crying shame that you already knew about those particular story beats in the game, given that they have a fundamental impact on both the story and the emotions those moments provoked if you had gone in blind, so to speak.

I wholeheartedly agree with you in regards to the ‘puzzles’. Seeing a box, a wooden plank or a ladder for the second time is bad enough, but they had long outstayed their welcome after three (or more) times. Here’s hoping they are a lot more varied or are more of an environmental variety in the sequel.

I’m not surprised to hear that you felt that the ending was abrupt, as it is a reoccurring comment over four years down the line.

I on the other hand genuinely believe it is the best ending I have witnessed in any video game. It is not only a very brave ending, but Naughty Dog decided to leave it to your own interpretation, which is one of the rarest things in this ever changing industry.

Here’s a superb article on Kotaku explaining why the ending is perfect as it is, and why a sequel isn’t needed... the latter of which I still have mixed thoughts about.

The Last of Us ended perfectly, and it doesn’t need a sequel.

This little part of the article is why I share the same thoughts:

And Ellie knew, didn't she?

It was left ambiguous (three cheers for ambiguity in video games!), but in that final scene, when she told that story about her friend dying, her doubts about Joel's hastily assembled story… Ellie knew.

And she let Joel lie to her, and decided that it was okay.

It’s an incredible experience.

@Octane The Western Ghats is an absolutely fantastic chapter, and was especially welcome after the rather slow start to the game.

Believe it or not, as much as I enjoyed the third chapter, the final chapter is not only my favourite in this game, but has the biggest and best set piece of the entire Uncharted series! I cannot wait to hear your thoughts upon watching the wonderfully hand drawn chibi characters when the credits roll.