Sheikah

That's not what I was getting at. I was suggesting that based on your other comments, you were implying that it wasn't really crunch at all, which I disagree with. Cyberpunk is neither groundbreaking nor a particularly great game, so how can you justify crunch in this case? 2 months is the minimum. In reality it was probably closer to three. Three months of 6-day weeks and long days - absolutely that is a long period of time that will burn the employees out (in fact there are complaints that happened). These people are not saving lives here, they are making games. There's literally no need for crunch here. The sad thing is that's it's to serve the stakeholders. What is the worst that would happen if they didn't have 6-day week crunch and long days near the finish? It would take 20-30% longer at the end to do the same amount of work? Perhaps less as rested, contented employees do better work. You see what I am saying here? Maybe bitterness is the wrong word. Rather, some level of normalisation leads people to think bad practice is fine, because they experience bad practices themselves. Or people suffer bad work conditions then don't want to see others have better working rights, especially not if the other people are getting paid more. Your post here what I am getting at. Why do you respect them for working like dogs, when they are basically made to do that? In my view I hold the greatest respect for companies that value the wellbeing of their employees and who manage to develop games without doing that. There was one big game dev, I forget who, who said they don't crunch at all - so it's very much possible. Crunch is essentially a failure of management. If you can develop games but without burning out your workforce, surely that's better, no? If you want to work long hours then good on you, but I don't see what that has to do with anything we are discussing here. Wah...okay. I'm surprised to see you say this - you know the cream "at the top" are the ones crunching the people below? So is the ideal to have a bad ending to the Hunger Games scenario - fight to the top to impose misery on everyone else? I don't think so... I don't think I've more strongly disagreed with a statement in a looooong time. You could go back through history and utter that sentiment time and time again. Oh you want minimum wage do you? Well sounds like you're just not cut out for this!

A lot of your points about how they haven't been crunched have been made before but I really don't agree with them. They're being paid so it's fine, nobody explicitly said they had to crunch, they could leave if they wanted; or the worst one - I have to work hard too, so why should they have it good? That last one is a real sticking point for me, and generally a problem I see often in society. People themselves don't have a nice thing, so feel some bitterness towards the prospect of others having a nice thing. Just to note, I'm not saying that overtime or long hours aren't normal sometimes for everyone, but this is a case of extended months of 6-day weeks and very long hours. It's easy to say nobody is forcing them to work like crazy but often the case is that you're expected to do it. If they don't do it then likely they won't be put forward for promotion or have it otherwise marked against them. It can be very difficult to break out of an estsblished norm if the company has one and the end result is people getting burned out. It's a bit of a shit situation. I agree completely that higher ups/stakeholders are to blame here, but let's not go down that well-trod path of playing down crunch as a non issue. Even if they're well compensated, extended periods of (implicitly) forced crunch to serve the deadlines of higher ups is not good, especially for the mental health of employees. Not least because it resulted in a bug ridden game in spite of them doing multiple crunches for each of the many release dates the game had. They would have been better off not crunching and actually finishing the game properly.

Ahh, but he's gone and done a nice little song and everything.

Debated posting this since I don't want to be a negative Nancy, but I feel like I'm the complete opposite to you @WackerJr. Back when I was younger and played KH1 and 2, the story was much less complicated and the games felt like they took themselves less seriously. They were neat little games to play through some Disney environments without worrying too much about the story, and they had Final Fantasy characters and some neat little boss battles (like Sephiroth in KH1). When I got KH3, I had to watch an hour-long video just to know what was going on! I feel as though whoever has been given control of writing the story has nobody directly managing them and has had free reign to invent the most ludicrous, self-absorbed, intangible storyline that they possibly can! KH3 left a very bitter taste for me, it was a bit of a shame to see the series come to this. I decided after completing it that I'm done with the series.

Nintendo will fix drift for you, at least they did for me. I definitely recommend a pro controller though, the joycons are, frankly, inadequate for extended periods of play.

I heartily recommend Hades and The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+. Switch is a great indie machine.

I suspect Cyberpunk being taken down probably has a lot to do with CDPR wishing to rebuild their reputation, we know they've been in talks with Sony and it's probably an agreement they've come to while CDPR work on developing their patches. I think most developers wouldn't care enough to want their product pulled given that they'd be missing out on sales.

This really does serve as a good example. CDPR rolled the dice, thinking that they could hide footage and reviewer copies of the last gen version of the game until the last minute to avoid the bad press and get sales (during the Christmas period no less), then patch it later. I bet they are regretting not just delaying it again, it's going to have done untold damage to their previously stellar reputation, releasing it like this. In some ways it's a little strange that it's completely removed from the PS store since it does run pretty well on PS5 - you'd think they could maybe still allow people to buy it from the store on PS5.

It's difficult to accept an apology when they've clearly deliberately withheld the last gen footage (and reviewer copies) in the run up to launch to not change the message and ruin the hype train (and cause people to cancel orders). I'd have more respect for them if they just said "we wanted your money".

I got this yesterday and have been playing on PS5. No bugs yet and 60 FPS is very nice. I can tell already this game has a lot of depth and that I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

It still makes the game much easier and the gameplay wasn't designed around this particular control scheme.

The problem with the Wii version though is that the gameplay is not adjusted to compensate for the much easier control method. Motion controls make the game very trivial even on professional difficulty. The target range in particular becomes a joke.

Gee peee uuuuuu....tell me what to do. I do it for you... gee pee uuuuu!

Absolutely not worth it, especially as the regular version is included in the Plus collection.

Really enjoyed playing through Astro's Playroom last night, thought the throwbacks to past Sony products and nostalgia was excellent. I've also found an issue that many other UK peeps seem to be experiencing - the option to upgrade Assassins Creed Valhalla (PS4 disc version) to the PS5 version is missing (others have said this is also happening with Watch Dogs). There is a workaround that involves using a Turkish account but I'd rather not try that yet, especially as I don't know how that would work with potential future UK DLC packs.

Super Monkey Ball? Would you believe it, apparently the Gamecube game is a port of the arcade cabinet version that released in 2001. Hell of a joystick, that.

Oh man...they've really stitched you up. I guess the worst that happens is you get it a day later. Still, not great from them.

Mine is dispatched for delivery tomorrow, and delivery with Amazon. Woo!

2 more sleeps! Good to hear about the firmware update, sounds like we are probably benefiting from getting the console a week later. I've been hearing about some save bugs in Ubisoft's recent games too so hopefully they'll be close to having a patch by the time I come to play AC Valhalla.

But that just means the games won't be £70 in shops/online retailers before long either. We had the same thing at the start of the PS4 generation but people seem to have forgotten already. Games are expensive around launch because they know people want to buy games to play on their new system. Did you see game prices at the PS4 launch? They were mostly RRP too.

Top end RRP is whatever the digital price at launch is. They're not just charging a lot more digitally for the hell of it, that's the actual RRP. So it's actually a bump of £10 from the £60 top RRP of PS4 games.

I've just received my headset. From what I've read the mic is very good now - it has 2 in-built microphones.

I've no interest in Spider-Man either, but then I generally have no interest in superheroes, and find their prominence in entertainment to be a bit of a scourge. My copy of Assassin's Creed Valhalla (PS4 version) arrived yesterday. I'm really excited to play it on the PS5 free upgraded version when my console (hopefully arrives) on launch day next week. What little I've seen said about this AC game has been very positive (a few sites even saying it's the best AC game yet).

Ah, you wanted GAME to provide a Royal Mail option? Well that's only available to their GAME platinum card holders, or those paying the £30 topup. Seriously though...howcome you ordered from these hacks? [emoji14]

This looks nice, but sadly the hot chocolate advent calendar is sold out.