Video Game Thread v. Series Xbox One X Series Switch S 5

[soupytwist]

Gone Xbox this generation, was PS4 last generation.  I don't really have a preference in general just pick the one that I think suits me best - as I'm not as big gamer as I used to be I just picked up the cheaper Series S round Christmas time, gotta say I'm loving it so far, Gamepass is amazing - Forza Horizon, Gears 5 and now Wreckfest have been my main games so far, but there are tons to keep me busy!

Played the PS5 round my mates a few weeks ago - also looked great, really love that feedback effect on the new Pads.

Got a feeling whichever console you pick this is going to be a great generation.

[Dublagent66]

Ordered the Mafia trilogy (definitive editions).  So far, they've done an excellent job.  Playing through the first game now. 

Played the PS5 round my mates a few weeks ago - also looked great, really love that feedback effect on the new Pads.

The DualSense controller for PS5 is amazing.  Quite a big step ahead of the DualShock.

[Cool Chris]

The Shrines in Breath of the Wild where you manipulate the controllers to solve puzzles really piss me off. I do not want to be doing that crap in a video game. I REALLY do not want to be doing that crap in a Zelda game.

[Phoenix87x]

The Shrines in Breath of the Wild where you manipulate the controllers to solve puzzles really piss me off. I do not want to be doing that crap in a video game. I REALLY do not want to be doing that crap in a Zelda game.

They frustrated me as well. I don't like motion controls what so ever.

[Ben_Jamin]

The Shrines in Breath of the Wild where you manipulate the controllers to solve puzzles really piss me off. I do not want to be doing that crap in a video game. I REALLY do not want to be doing that crap in a Zelda game.

I didn't mind those. What really got me irritated was the one where you have to stasis that Ball and hit it onto the other side over the water and barriers into the hole. 

Good thing I had the master sword by then.

[Chino]

I was super bored last night and went to play a game on my PS4 for the first time in over a year and a half (haven't turned the thing on in more than 6 months). I almost don't want a PS5 at all now. The whole console felt so archaic and frustrating.

Like I said, I hadn't played it in a while and wasn't even sure what I wanted to play. I had a limited number of games available to play without a disc, and more than half of those were VR, which I wasn't in the mood to play. I decided I wanted to play a racing game, but had no digital racing games currently installed. I grabbed my Gran Turismo Sport disc and put it in. I couldn't play anything without a system update. I updated the system and tried again. Gran Turismo needed an update too... a 56GB update. I had to delete two digital games to make room for one game's update, which I didn't even bother waiting around for. I ended up watching a movie instead.

I've been spoiled by Steam and my PC's HD

[The Walrus]

That's not really archaic... you just need to update. PC games are the same way.

[Chino]

That's not really archaic... you just need to update. PC games are the same way.

Right, but my complaint is more about the severely limited HD sizes of the consoles. My PC can store my entire library and updates whenever an update is available. On my PS4, I had had to uninstall Gran Turismo to make room for another game, therefore GT never updated when new updates were released. Now if I decide I want to play Gran Turismo, it doesn't just have to download the most recent update, but all of the updates since launch (56GB worth). It's just kind of a pain in the ass.

Gran Turismo, GTA V, Skyrim, RDR2, and two VR titles take up 90% of my HD. I'm not even a gamer. I know people that buy multiple games per month. It must be really annoying if you like to play a wide variety of games.

[TheOutlawXanadu]

I'm about eight hours into Days Gone on PS5 and am generally enjoying it thus far. The extra power of the PS5 is much appreciated. The game is running at a solid 60 FPS with high resolution to boot. I decided to crank up the difficulty, which has resulted in a few more random deaths than I'd like, but I'd say it's a good balance thus far. The story is picking up steam and I'm generally enjoying the gameplay, although it can be a bit relentless at times. There are zombies everywhere.

[The Walrus]

That's not really archaic... you just need to update. PC games are the same way.

Right, but my complaint is more about the severely limited HD sizes of the consoles. My PC can store my entire library and updates whenever an update is available. On my PS4, I had had to uninstall Gran Turismo to make room for another game, therefore GT never updated when new updates were released. Now if I decide I want to play Gran Turismo, it doesn't just have to download the most recent update, but all of the updates since launch (56GB worth). It's just kind of a pain in the ass.

Gran Turismo, GTA V, Skyrim, RDR2, and two VR titles take up 90% of my HD. I'm not even a gamer. I know people that buy multiple games per month. It must be really annoying if you like to play a wide variety of games.

I'm sorry if I missed it but do you have an external hard drive attached? I think my PS4 has 1TB inside, and I have a 2TB external for it. I have installed: No Man's Sky, GTA5, Witcher 3 complete edition, Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, Resident Evil 7, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost of Tsushima.. maybe one more. I haven't checked in a while but I'm pretty sure there's still plenty of space for me to redownload FF7Remake and FF15, too. That's my whole PS4 collection able to fit on the system.

[Chino]

That's not really archaic... you just need to update. PC games are the same way.

Right, but my complaint is more about the severely limited HD sizes of the consoles. My PC can store my entire library and updates whenever an update is available. On my PS4, I had had to uninstall Gran Turismo to make room for another game, therefore GT never updated when new updates were released. Now if I decide I want to play Gran Turismo, it doesn't just have to download the most recent update, but all of the updates since launch (56GB worth). It's just kind of a pain in the ass.

Gran Turismo, GTA V, Skyrim, RDR2, and two VR titles take up 90% of my HD. I'm not even a gamer. I know people that buy multiple games per month. It must be really annoying if you like to play a wide variety of games.

I'm sorry if I missed it but do you have an external hard drive attached? I think my PS4 has 1TB inside, and I have a 2TB external for it. I have installed: No Man's Sky, GTA5, Witcher 3 complete edition, Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, Resident Evil 7, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost of Tsushima.. maybe one more. I haven't checked in a while but I'm pretty sure there's still plenty of space for me to redownload FF7Remake and FF15, too. That's my whole PS4 collection able to fit on the system.

I have a launch day 500GB. No external :/

[The Walrus]

That's not really archaic... you just need to update. PC games are the same way.

Right, but my complaint is more about the severely limited HD sizes of the consoles. My PC can store my entire library and updates whenever an update is available. On my PS4, I had had to uninstall Gran Turismo to make room for another game, therefore GT never updated when new updates were released. Now if I decide I want to play Gran Turismo, it doesn't just have to download the most recent update, but all of the updates since launch (56GB worth). It's just kind of a pain in the ass.

Gran Turismo, GTA V, Skyrim, RDR2, and two VR titles take up 90% of my HD. I'm not even a gamer. I know people that buy multiple games per month. It must be really annoying if you like to play a wide variety of games.

I'm sorry if I missed it but do you have an external hard drive attached? I think my PS4 has 1TB inside, and I have a 2TB external for it. I have installed: No Man's Sky, GTA5, Witcher 3 complete edition, Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, Resident Evil 7, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost of Tsushima.. maybe one more. I haven't checked in a while but I'm pretty sure there's still plenty of space for me to redownload FF7Remake and FF15, too. That's my whole PS4 collection able to fit on the system.

I have a launch day 500GB. No external :/

My guy! Grab you an external. Cheaper than dick. You'll be so glad if you buy one, and you can splurge and get more than 2TB if you want. Even if you're not a 'gamer' per se, it's so worth it. Probably the best thing you can buy for your consoles in that regard.

[Ben_Jamin]

I was super bored last night and went to play a game on my PS4 for the first time in over a year and a half (haven't turned the thing on in more than 6 months). I almost don't want a PS5 at all now. The whole console felt so archaic and frustrating.

Like I said, I hadn't played it in a while and wasn't even sure what I wanted to play. I had a limited number of games available to play without a disc, and more than half of those were VR, which I wasn't in the mood to play. I decided I wanted to play a racing game, but had no digital racing games currently installed. I grabbed my Gran Turismo Sport disc and put it in. I couldn't play anything without a system update. I updated the system and tried again. Gran Turismo needed an update too... a 56GB update. I had to delete two digital games to make room for one game's update, which I didn't even bother waiting around for. I ended up watching a movie instead.

I've been spoiled by Steam and my PC's HD

That's why I don't play ps4 games anymore. The download sizes and the constant updates, and if you miss one will make it bigger, is not something I want to wait for just to play a game at that moment In time.

I'm perfectly fine with my Nintendo games and switch.

[The Walrus]

Do y'all not have your PS4s actively connected to the Internet? I've literally never had to wait for a game to update when I open it... they just update automatically. While I'm playing other games.

[cramx3]

Game sizes are just getting ridiculous these days.  I mean, it makes sense with the depth the games of today have, but the consoles without large HDDs just don't really work very well for todays game sizes.

[Chino]

Do y'all not have your PS4s actively connected to the Internet? I've literally never had to wait for a game to update when I open it... they just update automatically. While I'm playing other games.

It does, but the problem is that they only update if they're currently in your library. I have had to delete so many games just to make room for a select few, most of the games I own aren't up to date as a result.

[The Walrus]

Well, developers ain't gonna back down from photorealistic graphics, so they need to both address the storage capacity problems this generation in particular is going to experience (or already experiencing), and address the file sizes of games, especially like Call of Duty. I find it absolutely fascinating that I have so many beautiful looking games on my Switch and the vast majority of them are well under 20 gigs. Breath of the Wild is 12 gigabytes. Is it the best looking game ever? No. But I find art style so much more important than photorealism (rare exceptions, RDR2 for example is the best looking game on Earth imo) because it lends itself to 1) potentially smaller file sizes and 2) a more timeless aesthetic. Almost my entire Switch library fits on my 256GB SD card.

Just my aimless rambling here.

@Chino - ahh, understandable. Well, if you get an external and throw all your games onto the storage, you wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. That's another bonus of added storage.

[cramx3]

I saw an article recently that after the latest COD update, if you have the 500G consoles then you couldn't even have both of the last two COD games on it (with complete installs, they did recently allow you to uninstall parts of the game to free up space).  It's an absolute joke how big these games are, but like I said, I kind of expect it when the games have so much depth to them now.

And it's not like the problem doesn't impact PC players.  PCs still have capacity issues as well if you don't have massive amount of storage.  My last PC (before I built a new one in 2020) was running low on storage and I had the same issue Chino has where I had to uninstall games so I could update the game I wanted to play.  I don't have that problem now, but in 5 years I might again.

[Chino]

The worst part is that on top of that, you need more space than the files you're downloading. When I went to update GT Sport, I needed over 70GB of free space even though the file was only 56GB. I get that there's some black magic computer stuff happening that requires that temporary space, but still. If you want to install 100GB game, you need like 130GB+ free in some cases. The newest gen consoles should have come with at least 2TB HDs IMO.

[Ben_Jamin]

What Cram said is what turns me off from playing those kind of games. They're amazing and look extremely awesome, and feel great, but the cost of that is in the amount of data it requires. It's similar to having FLAC files on an IPod. It's why I love my new Music Player as it has 2 memory card slots and sounds great, the downside to this is the interface sucks donkey butt, but I can manage it and I don't play with it too much at all, it does what it needs to and that is play music and I have access to all of my library, that is until I run out of memory space...

So even in the music aspect, I have a Switch. 

[cramx3]

Another thing that sucks about game sizes, is that a lot of internet providers are starting to put monthly data caps on your home internet which would make it costly to be downloading/updating multiple games.

[The Walrus]

Huh. I thought bandwidth caps have been a thing for a long time. I pay a little extra for unlimited bandwidth, but there was a time where I was going 150GB over my 150GB limit when I forgot to call them and get the promotion added to my account.

Call of Duty has literally no reason to be as big as it is. There's something fucky going on there.

[cramx3]

I don't have a cap on verizion fios and I pay for their cheapest plan.

[ErHaO]

Devs should make a larger effort for good compression. The Hitman trilogy in it's entirety with all DLCs included via Hitman 3 is much smaller than 1+2 via Hitman 2. That is an example of a developer that took the time and effort to make a game size managable.

An article about that: https://www.pcgamer.com/how-hitman-3s-devs-shrank-the-entire-trilogys-install-size-by-over-80gb/

They shrunk the size by like 80 gb (!).

And true enough, Hitman 3 on my Ps4pro is 60gb total, for the entire trilogy and all it's extra's, opposed to Hitman 2 which was more than a 100 gb's (and Hitman 1 which was around 60 on it's own back in the day). This should absolutely be possible for many of the big games that keep piling up gb's. The problem is, I think, that they just don't think it benefits sales enough vs the optimization costs.



As I have said before in this thread, devs have the tools to make file sizes much smaller now that SSD's are commonplace/the standard. No absolute need for duplicate stuff for load times anymore. The Hitman article also touches on that for a bit,  as for why hard drives require larger file sizes for managable load times.





(I am glad to live in a country where data caps haven't been a thing for well over a decade, regardless of your provider)

[Dublagent66]

The worst part is that on top of that, you need more space than the files you're downloading. When I went to update GT Sport, I needed over 70GB of free space even though the file was only 56GB. I get that there's some black magic computer stuff happening that requires that temporary space, but still. If you want to install 100GB game, you need like 130GB+ free in some cases. The newest gen consoles should have come with at least 2TB HDs IMO.

Even 2TB fills up pretty fast.  My PS4 has 1TB and 4TB of external storage which is plugged into my PS5 now.  That Seagate 4TB external HD came in pretty handy and it's only around 100 bucks. 

[The Walrus]

- I bought Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury the day it came out. Even more fun now than it was on Wii U. The increased movement speed is very much appreciated and playing with a proper controller instead of the big ol' tablet is much more comfortable. Almost done 100%ing the main game and then I'll finally get around to Bowser's Fury

- Despite Zelda being my favorite game series by a long shot, I still have yet to beat Age of Calamity and I am not sure why. I enjoy it. It is fun. It has a lot of depth. And yet... 5 or 6 months later I am hardly through the campaign. Eventually I will beat this although I miss adventure maps from the first HW... but I appreciate how uniquely Breath of the Wild-y this game is and how less it feels like a DW spinoff. Although I wish I could demolish more enemies on screen than the game allows... it feels much smaller in scale as a result and kind of slower than the first HW too. The smaller roster is a bit disappointing but the unique gameplay styles are very nice, Revali in particular is super fun

- Resumed Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for a short time, but still a long ways off beating it. Having fun simply crafting full armor sets from each monster before moving to the next which is beginning to be super frustrating with high rank monsters

- Pyra/Mythra came to Smash which makes me ABSURDLY happy and they're super fun to play

- Hades took over my life for a few weeks at the start of the year, monster game that

- Started Final Fantasy 14 but due to simply having no time I have been level 8 for weeks. Fun game... ugly fucking character designs and races though, Square is dog shit at making interesting races despite doing this for decades

Unfortunately my time for gaming has recently shrunk drastically and by next year it likely will be nonexistent, we will see how this year goes.

[XJDenton]

3D world is decent, albeit not quite as good as Odessey. But goddamn if there was a rule in game design it should be to not map 8-directional movement to an analogue stick.

[ErHaO]

I am really looking forward to playing Super Mario 3D world.  I am near the end of 3D land on the 3DS and enjoyed it. My only real complain with that one is that it is a bit unimaginative in terms of locations/characters. But the gameplay and leveldesign is fun. I assume World is a bigger/better package of the same core design. And Bowser's Fury looks neat too. This looks to be a rerelease of an old game where Nintendo did put in the effort.

[Kotowboy]

3D world is decent, albeit not quite as good as Odessey. But goddamn if there was a rule in game design it should be to not map 8-directional movement to an analogue stick.

I love Zelda twilight Princess - but the most frustrating part was in the Goron Mines - trying to jump from platform to platform.

The slightest twitch on the analogue stick and Link takes a left turn into the Lava.

[Herrick]

What do you mangs think of Star Citizen? I just read it has made 351 million dollars. I know this is a controversial topic. I don't really care one way or the other. I have not and will not put any money towards its development. I have no problem with people donating money to it. It looks like a very promising game but if they never finish it, I will not be disappointed.

[Bolsters]

They're selling ships for thousands of dollars. There's a package deal of them that costs $27,000. People are free to spend their own money however they want to of course, but it just seems really scummy and greedy to sell ships in a video game for these kinds of prices. A game that is still in alpha, no less. Then despite blowing out its Kickstarter goal every time, they just keep making more Kickstarters.

[Ben_Jamin]

They're selling ships for thousands of dollars. There's a package deal of them that costs $27,000. People are free to spend their own money however they want to of course, but it just seems really scummy and greedy to sell ships in a video game for these kinds of prices. A game that is still in alpha, no less. Then despite blowing out its Kickstarter goal every time, they just keep making more Kickstarters.

Two Way street. One it is messed up they are taking advantage. But also, If someone wants to be stupid and spend their money on something like a ship in a video game, then let them be stupid and buy it. That company is exploiting just how many people will buy these type of things.

But I want to know, who is actually buying these type of things? Gamers who are monetized from Youtube and Twitter?

[Podaar]

I bought Immortals Fenyx Rising yesterday. Played through the first hour of it and I can tell it's going to be a lot of fun. The combat seems rich and varied so far, with satisfying weight (especially for an Ubisoft game). I really like how the light tone and comedic story adds to the fun.

[XJDenton]

What do you mangs think of Star Citizen? I just read it has made 351 million dollars. I know this is a controversial topic. I don't really care one way or the other. I have not and will not put any money towards its development. I have no problem with people donating money to it. It looks like a very promising game but if they never finish it, I will not be disappointed.

I think if this were any other industry, having blown a quarter of a billion dollars and nearly a decade of time with only a barely functional tech demo to show for it would be ample justification to have the project scrapped.

[Herrick]

I bought Immortals Fenyx Rising yesterday. Played through the first hour of it and I can tell it's going to be a lot of fun. The combat seems rich and varied so far, with satisfying weight (especially for an Ubisoft game). I really like how the light tone and comedic story adds to the fun.

I want to play this game. I liked the demo. I'll wait for a sale though.

What do you mangs think of Star Citizen? I just read it has made 351 million dollars. I know this is a controversial topic. I don't really care one way or the other. I have not and will not put any money towards its development. I have no problem with people donating money to it. It looks like a very promising game but if they never finish it, I will not be disappointed.

I think if this were any other industry, having blown a quarter of a billion dollars and nearly a decade of time with only a barely functional tech demo to show for it would be ample justification to have the project scrapped.

I don't think it's necessarily the industry itself that allows them to get away with it. They don't have typical investors like a major game studio has.