Sheikah

What's this £5 tax on the colourful option? Not really fussed about an extra controller, there's not really many co op games anymore and I tend to play with people online.

I'm not exaggerating, I even looked up the gameplay of this particular Warriors game to check. Most of the mobilins, most of the time...just stand there. For you to hit them. That's basically the cornerstone of Warriors games; enemies standing around for you to hit lots of them at once, to feel powerful. Don't get me wrong, if you just stand there they will eventually hit you, but it's just a bit of a joke really - I don't understand why they bother with this approach. Better to put in far fewer enemies but have them constantly doing stuff, surely? The bosses look to be a lot more active but if you compare them to the bosses in actual mainline Zelda games, there's no comparison really. They lack the nuance and complex attack patterns of traditional bosses. In Dynasty Warriors games you get characters that have different movesets but it all amounts to just hitting enemies and doing damage. It's not like in mainline Zelda games where your different pieces of equipment are used to do actually different things - like hook up to ledges, bomb cracks, reveal hidden passages, etc. When you compare this to BoTW, in the mini shrines (I forget their name) you're using a variety of spells to manipulate mechanisms; you actually have to think about what you're doing.

But then you've basically provided a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist. You don't need to make the AI lifeless if you don't have a hundred of them on screen at a time. I swear the reason the Warrior games have this to begin with was to create an impressive tech demo on PS2 (showing off loads of enemies on screen at once), which then somehow carried over into the main game. Also that boss you show yourself fighting seems to have way less nuance and scripting to it than a boss from even the N64 Zelda games.

You say that but the Warriors games are renowned for having tons of low-rank enemies literally standing around doing next to nothing. For me the Warriors games were something you'd blast through with a friend but not think twice about afterwards. The amount of tie-ins they've done with that franchise is kind of insane.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

So I ordered this phone (Poco F3) last month from Aliexpress and it arrived yesterday; got through customs without charge (they marked it as being 18 USD in value), so got it for 251 quid with a fee-free card. It's kind of insane for the money - 256GB storage, 8GB RAM, 5G, Snapdragon 870, 120 Hz OLED screen. Dat screen, honestly - it's amazing. The only thing that is not flagship is the camera but I've tested it out and it's still good, IMO. If anyone is in the market for a new phone then you can't get better for your money than this.

To be honest we can't take too much from chart positions these days. As Tom Phillips (aka Tphi) from Eurogamer put the other day: "If you're a moderately-well promoted release you'll get into the top few places of the charts with little difficulty - it's why we don't make a big deal of chart placings anymore." It's basically a case that there are few enough copies of everything else being sold that you don't really have to sell too many copies of a new game for it to chart fairly high.

it's free, but it's also a bit poop.

Nice progress. I will say though that the gun weapon (adamant rail) is an obscene weapon, particularly if you upgrade the Hestia aspect with your accumulated Titan Bloods. You might feel it's not great right now but once you realise you can stand far away and obliterate anything the game becomes effortless. Basically if you pair up that weapon with doom and damage boosts you do ridiculous levels of damage with the shot after each reload (so you just reload shoot a lot).

That's interesting, although I don't think that suggests much to do with the rate of transition - based on the number of PS5s currently out there the vast majority of gamers will still be on PS4. It probably does say something about the type of gamers the people who have managed to get a PS5 are - those willing to spend more, buy games at full price at launch, and likely more "into" gaming.

Yeah, to be honest I am a bit disappointed to hear this. I feel that if £70 is going to become the new normal then games need to be launching in a more stable and feature complete state. This situation is making me even more convinced to wait before buying most new games these days.

I'll never really understand custom trainers, they almost always look ridiculous. Do people actually wear these or just collect them?

Exactly this. The only time you see Epic exclusives are due to paid exclusivity deals, not due to better margins.

I'm interested but there's no way I'll be paying 70 quid for it. I'll probably pick it up down the line when it's closer to 20-30 quid.

Noice. Keep doing what you're doing, Sony.

Yeah, would definitely have been interesting. That said, I'm sure the pandemic did cause even higher demand as well; if you look at Animal Crossing New Horizons for instance (which released right at the start of the first lockdown) that has done some crazy numbers relative to previous entries. With the pandemic people have been jumping on things that you can do at home.

It would have been interesting, but I suspect numbers would still have been crazy high. People had been waiting for the next consoles for a good while and I feel that people are more willing to pay 450 quid these days, the cost of phones in particular has made those prices normal now. Also the ability to play all your old games with an uptick in performance makes the sell much easier at launch. That, and Sony did a really good job of supporting the PS4 with exclusives last gen, to the point that people want the next console to play the next Horizon/God of war etc.

He should have been banned from this topic at the very least long ago. He's not interested in actual discussion.

Was the PS4 launched during a pandemic, yes or no?

Yeah, it runs really well now. I finished the game a couple of days ago and absolutely loved it. A real joy from start to finish. That ending music is stuck in my head too.

Ah right, my mistake. I got them mixed up since there's a sale on PSN right now, thought that's what was being referred to.

Got a link to the reduced price game? I'm on mobile at the moment and I can only see it full price. Maybe I already got it as a Plus freebie a while back...don't think so though.

I don't think Bastion is reduced, still displaying at full price for me. And the sale is still on.

Hell yeah. The original Resistance was awesome, I lost so many hours to playing that online. Give me the bullseye and I was unstoppable. [emoji14]

Yeah you can encounter the minotaur on his own as a miniboss in that region - but then still have to face him with Theseus at the end of the level too. If I recall though, he turns up slightly weakened for the end of level boss fight if you fought him earlier.