Sheikah

You're still missing the point here - DS was an 11 year old game and a lot of people wanted the chance to play it, with it only being a PS3 game previously. Their choice was to do a low effort remaster or actually put some love into it and give it a remake. The point was not to make a new game or a reimagining. At the end of the day they chose to put effort into it and make a launch title game that actually makes use of the PS5 hardware. There's nothing more to it than that.

Come off it, Bluepoint specialise in these remakes, it's not a loss of opportunity since this is what they do and pretty much nothing else. It's not like they would have been making a brand new game instead of this. Also I'm sure they'll easily make their money back from developing this (remakes/remasters are much cheaper to make than brand new games). The remake was also massively a critical success so their efforts were absolutely justified. Also with regards to game preservation, there are articles that show the extreme lengths that Bluepoint went to to preserve the feel of the original. That said, Demon's Souls on PS3 has been and gone and it's absolutely right that Bluepoint be given some licence to add their own flavour to the game. It would be a waste of the PS5 hardware to simply remaster it and it would not have gone down well to have a 'lazy' remaster as a PS5 launch title. You might want a pure remaster but I can tell you that the vast majority don't. I think it's important to adapt to your audience and not try to rigidly preserve games "just because".

Why suffice when you can have something far more impressive? Neither of you have given a compelling reason why they should do a worse thing instead of a better thing.

Nope, the point of a remake is whatever they want it to be. Your statement about what a remake should be is purely opinion. As I said, if this had been a remaster as a PS5 launch title this would not have looked good. People want to see their machine purchase justified. It is also much more preferable to see a quality remake than a remaster - there's no argument you can make that the game would have looked better as a remaster than the remake we got. They were clearly limited in what they could change which is why the gameplay feels familiar, but that's not a bad thing. The gameplay in the Souls series is already very good and not in need of modernisation.

I don't understand what you're asking. Why would you want an inferior remaster when they can give you a remake? A remaster would not look as graphically impressive. And graphics are what justify the purchase of a new next gen console, so it was absolutely needed. People want to see that hardware they've purchased justified. Can you imagine if it was just a shoddy looking remaster as the PS5 launch title, people would have kicked up a fuss. In this case it doesn't really matter if they change the gameplay much, because the gameplay was great to begin with. In fact I'm sure certain people would be complaining for destroying the "identity" of the original game if they did that. So by not changing it too much (in fact going to great lengths to preserve the feel of the original game), they've got quite a lot of credit for that.

Yeah, Demon's Souls was a good fit for a remake. The original came out only on PS3 in 2009. As well as that, people who are 18 now would only have been 7 then, so there'll be a lot of people who never even played it first time. It's also the first game in a very well regarded series so there was a lot of desire among players to see this one remade. It was also 3 generations ago, which is appropriate for a remake. TLOU however already got a HD remaster last gen so that one feels quite unnecessary. It's also worth noting that TLOU on PS4 can be played on PS5 via backwards compatibility, but there was no way to play DS without owning a PS3.

The remake of Demon's Souls was great and very highly regarded. It was the £70 price that wasn't needed.

I know, right. Unless it's a Shadow of the Colossus style remake, it does seem a bit of a strange choice.

I bet he is! After you parted ways did he head in the direction of a CEX?

Some tips with this game - if you can take the Athena keepsake you can fairly reliably get deflect dash at the beginning, which makes a lot of the game easier. Also the gun weapon is very strong, especially if you can upgrade to the aspect that does damage after a reload, then pair that up with Ares boons (doom). Having those in place can make a run very trivial.

Nah, you get to the end and everyone has a tea party.

You know, you can be such a thoroughly antagonising person to converse with on these forums. I try to dig down into what you're actually trying to say but it genuinely comes across that you're only interested in point scoring. I just...honestly don't get it. Are you this angry/annoyed all the time in real life?

Well that's not true is it, you're always talking about sales and success and directions companies are taking. Anyway, I find it interesting to think about because Game Pass is Microsoft's direction right now, but might not be forever, and how they do with it will likely dictate how quickly we move away from game ownership. Also this is a really good month for Plus, I'm surprised that you're finding ways to be critical about it. I mean, Oddworld being given away at launch, and Days Gone for people who don't have a PS5 (which is most people) is pretty incredible, actually. When you consider how Plus was at the start of the PS4 generation there is such a difference in terms of the offering now. And we just saw a load of games given away completely free, too.

In my case Plus has been giving me new games each month like Control Ultimate that have more than kept me busy. I'm also about to get Disco Elysium which just released on PS4/5 yesterday but won't be coming until who knows when for Xbox. Game Pass is obviously incredible value but you can't play them all at once. Getting 3 games a month is still more than I can handle and can realistically complete that month. You have to wonder whether Game Pass is doing what Microsoft wanted at this stage, it must cost them a fortune to keep going and subsidise with their promotional discounts. And at the end of it all far more people are still buying PlayStation.

PS5 users have been getting it good for a while. Like getting Bugsnax, Maneater, Maquette, Destruction All Stars and soon to be Oddworld Soulstorm, on top of the other games that both PS5 and PS4 owners get. So it wouldn't be surprising (or even a terrible thing) if one of the games was Days Gone. PS5 users will be getting Oddworld next month after all.

You know there's games in the Plus Collection that have previously been monthly Plus games? Plus Collection is also only for people who have a PS5.

Yeah. When you think about launches usually you get a bunch of games that mostly aren't great, that you'll play for a bit then drop - then you're basically stuck waiting for content. Having backwards compatibility and most of your existing games improved upon makes the PS5 a very easy sell (that, and the system is far quieter). Even if it took 2 years for a lot of PS5-specific content, I think about how much cheaper the PS5 will likely be by then and to me it doesn't justify the wait. For my own situation, if I waited 2 years before buying my PS5 then I doubt my PS4 Pro would have sold for anywhere near as much, so even if there was an official 50 quid or so discount to the PS5 by then, I reckon I'd ultimately be less well off by waiting. Not everyone wants to sell their console I admit, but even by waiting for a potential discount, the value proposition doesn't feel there. It took 2 years for the PS4 to receive an official 50 quid discount. Some people might value that saving, but that extra 50 quid feels like a very fair price to pay for 2 years of enhanced games, a mostly silent console, and the exclusives and better versions of games that release during that time.

But from a sales perspective, 16 million copies sold of an entry that wasn't available on any handheld at all...surely then this decision can't be related to sales? To be honest I reckon it's a case of covering all bases. Like you say there'll be people who have a Switch but probably not another console or PC who want to play Monster Hunter. Rather than bring out MH World 2 right now, which probably wouldn't sell as well as the last one just because people on their consoles have had their fill recently, they can wait a while and bring out a Switch-only title. The best thing to do would probably be to release a game simultaneously across every format, but I'm guessing the Switch would require some extra work to get a comparable version running.

Is there a reason this game is only on the Switch? Given that MH World sold 16 million copies (roughly 4 times as many as the next best selling game), it seems odd to me that this is only on Switch. Considering how shabby party features also are on Switch (particularly voice chat), and that MH World was graphically considered such an upgrade, I'm a bit puzzled by it.

I could say this about any aspect of this game at this point to most people here. Props to everyone for sticking to this game for so long, I found the content and truly new things dried up yonks back.

On the subject of institutional racism, it was alarming to see how low the percentage of over 70s accepting the vaccine was for some groups: White - 91% Pakistani - 74% Bangladeshi - 73% Black Caribbean - 69% Black African - 59% This is basically what happens when there is a history of mistreatment and underrepresentation in clinical trials, leading to lack of trust.

Yeah, it does feel odd to me. Vita never really "officially" died in my eyes because a successor never released. Seems odd to me that they're killing Vita shop support already.

Out of interest have you considered selling your PS4 instead? I sold my PS4 Pro 1TB after buying my PS5 for 260 quid including delivery, which covered more than half the cost of the PS5. The way I see it, once you have a PS5 there's no point in having the noisy and less powerful PS4, so may as well sell it. In terms of the cost of the PS5, it's a very good deal for the spec which makes me think we won't see dramatic price reductions for a long time. And I'm going to want to continue to play games over the next few years.

Out of interest what was the source for that? I went on the Government's main Covid page and the information on group sizes was laid out much more clearly. Was that a government page?