Sheikah

It won't hurt them at all. At the end of the day FIFA have the name and EA have the game. I know who I'd put my money on to release a successful football game in 2024. Given how little changes between annual releases of FIFA I can imagine the game pretty much looking and playing more or less the same. Once it becomes known that this is just FIFA rebranded then the punters will just carry on buying it. Meanwhile, EA now keep all the profits.

That's a real shame. I'd heard good things about this game and was planning on getting it, and it seemed like it reviewed well. Also - worst Tales game? Have you ever played Tales of Legendia? [emoji14]

They should have just renamed it FEEFA.

You'd be better off selling your PS4 Pro like I did. I managed to sell it on eBay for 270 quid when I bought my PS5, thereby meaning I effectively paid 180 quid for a PS5 without losing any function. Being able to play games at better framerate/resolution as well as pretty much silently is worth it for me, as well as getting to play the occasional games like Returnal and Demon's Souls. Given the chip shortages I can't see the price of PS5s coming down meaningfully for a long time, so if you did want to pick up another down the line it'd likely still be 450 quid.

People just don't appreciate a good set up these days.

I think the thing about this service is that you can stack almost infinitely (or at least far longer), versus 3 years for Microsoft. They should definitely have anticipated this and it's not a good look, but I can imagine this would really hurt them if they let people continue to stack away.

Oh that's a bit rubbish. I was thinking of extending my Plus sub time further, glad I didn't bother now. Seems ridiculous as now anyone who does legitimately want to redeem Plus sub codes actually can't? Maybe you are still allowed to redeem them if your sub has expired?

Just to note you will need more than one month as you'll need the Now sub to run through to end of June. You need to have an active Now sub at the point they switch over to this new tier system.

Anyone seen the announcement that if you have both Plus and PS Now, come June, you'll get Plus Premium and it'll expire whenever the longest sub runs to? So I had my Plus sub stacked until 2025 already. I went and bought a 3-month Now sub from Eneba and redeemed that, so once June rolls round I should get Plus Premium until 2025 at no extra cost.

FIFA is a bit of a rubbish choice. It's the sort of game that most fans already have by this point, while those absolutely not interested in FIFA (like me) would simply never play it.

Ok but then, if you agree that the initial reveal will have no real effect on how well the subscription is received, does it actually matter how they handled the reveal? From their perspective I think they only needed people to generally know "it's coming", which they achieved. Whether people actually subscribe or not will depend on the games, which will eventually be revealed, possibly close to release. And they have the greatest chance of impressing when they can give a full list - which they can do only close to launch of the service. The hype of revealing the games included right before release could also be very favourable for them in terms of getting subscribers; people who will have seen the announcement of a retro game they used to love and who immediately then go on to subscribe. I know people would like to have seen some games "definitely coming" announced at the reveal, but I almost think putting little information out there works in a way - they're not selling anything at the point of reveal so they don't necessarily need to convince people at that stage. Dare I say it, there's even intrigue among the gaming community now, who are now more tuned into finding out more (exactly what will be on the service). Let them do a blowout close to launch, I say.

I think you are overestimating the amount of damage an early announcement does, purely because the majority of people do not stay abreast of gaming-related news. Most people who will eventually sign up for it probably don't know about it yet or at the very least just know it's happening but haven't thought much beyond that. What really sells is games - if they announce a few weeks before "here's this service and you'll be able to play these old games" then anyone who wants to play those old games might subscribe. I don't think how they handled the original announcement will really play into how well the subscription is received. I don't remember Game Pass being a big deal when it first launched either, it more or less evolved into being a great service.

Isn't it likely that they're working on making games compatible still? So they may not have a list until shortly before it launches. We only found out shortly before launch of the PS5 which PS4 games were actually compatible/incompatible (in the end only a few didn't work), which makes me think they work on it up until launch. I'm also thinking that announcing which games you can play shortly before it actually launches might create hype at the right time.

I know right. If I ordered the Digital Deluxe Edition, I'd at least want 100 bonus coins.

I'll give you that, that is a shit ton of clutter.

I think the more interesting question in response to this is...why would anyone not like Mass Effect?

Maybe you will read this back in future and see how silly/judgemental it sounds. I don't know anything about this person but it sounds entirely plausible. The idea that Nintendo's online e-shop infrastructure is fallible is, well...100% believable.

I see. So if you couldn't do it, it must be 100% impossible.

So they repeated the guardian ape boss once (with changes), and some other side bosses once. In Elden Ring they repeated these crystal bosses time and time again as the bosses of dungeons: Then they even put them as regular mobs late game. Same for dragon enemies, the same basic dragon was repeated countless times. There's also several instances of that giant moving bladed cart that can usually one hit kill you in catacombs. At least 5 instances of that I'd say. In fact nearly every dungeon in Elden Ring was a crystal themed one, a mine, caves or catacombs. With plenty of bosses being repeated among them. Think of how many times you killed those same tree spirit things to get beads for your wondrous flask too.

I'm surprised to hear your comments about reusing content. Sekiro wasn't that bad in that regard at all I thought. Where bosses were repurposed (e.g. the guardian ape) they were sufficiently made different. Elden Ring on the other hand, no matter how big it is, reuses quite a lot of content. All of the catacombs and mines dungeons looked very similar. You would see the same sorts of enemies show up in multiple areas. Dragon bosses were very similar. Not saying there wasn't a lot of original content too, but there was far more repeated content in Elden Ring and it was far more noticeable. I could give loads more examples. I'm not dissing Elden Ring for this though, it's a huge game so naturally there would be a fair bit of repeated content.

As long as you've got the specific bell you can go any time prior to beating the game. If you really want to be sure, use the bell and actually visit the past, then leave. Then you're definitely safe.

Nioh 2 is great, you're in for a treat.

I thought Sekiro was one of the strongest entries from FS. There is something to be said for limiting choice - I found with bosses and even many enemies you had to be clever and study the enemy to defeat them. Compare this to many Souls games and you have so many options to almost cheese any enemy (including co-op) that the experience sometimes feels less refined and too easy. It's also easily the most different game from all of the others made from Demon's Souls onwards. I really enjoyed it.

I am a bit tired of seeing this often repeated line about level scaling being such a "flaw" in FFVIII. It really doesn't hold up when you examine it closely. It doesn't really matter that enemies level up in FFVIII in line with your own level, because it takes more effort to maintain the minimum level. It's not a 'fundamental flaw' because having knowledge of level scaling doesn't automatically lead to a broken game. In fact, given how tedious it is to go about maintaining minimum level (while doing things like carding enemies), level scaling is more or less just a thing that happens to players. The impact of level scaling is blown way out of proportion. Given that you can junction powerful magic to strength and get the lionheart for Squall, you'll rinse enemies regardless of whether they have more HP due to your own level being higher. There are only a couple of bosses that cannot be utterly annihilated by a single lionheart, regardless of player level! Player level is a very minor aspect of your power in FFVIII, in the very same manner as in Chrono Cross.

I just think if you're going to spend several hours smacking weak enemies over the head to overlevel and trivialise the rest of the game, surely better to just have a difficulty slider to instantly achieve the same thing without wasting time doing that. Unless you enjoy grinding, of course. I actually think Chrono Cross is very clever in this regard in that it's well designed so that there's always a good level of challenge for where you are in the game, and no need to spend time grinding. That, and there's no random battles. It's leagues ahead of its Final Fantasy PS1 counterparts in that regard! Just to add though, you can clear sidequests for better equipment and abilities, so that's the way you can make the game easier. A bit like how you can make FFVIII easier by acquiring good magic and GFs to junction to stats. Both games take focus away from the traditional method of levelling and effectively make the "levelling" happen some other way. I'm totally for different takes on levelling, I've seen plenty of games that expect you to chip away at random enemies over and over. I'm looking at you, Dragon Quest!