A PS4 Thread: Because You Had to Play "Knack"

Nearing the end of Spiderman and everyone in the city is wearing face masks. IT JUST FEELS RIGHT.

xpost Keep at it! My favorite aspect of Dark Souls is how enemies that seem insurmountable at the start become pushovers by the end, underscoring your progress as a player.

for anyone who didn’t already know this: outer wilds is grebt.

best part of the ff7r demo imo is that they somehow manage to say "soldier boy" 12 times

Crank that?

tell em

Shadow of the Colossus remake (which I forgot existed?) is free via PS+ this month. Loved the original but haven’t played it since it was released. Remake is A+, really did a bang up job of keeping the feel of it while cleaning everything up. Looks beautiful, no muddiness and 10 FPS slowdowns, controls have been tightened, etc.

Game remains a stone cold classic.

There's not much to it, but it definitely looks great and has a great payoff.

I mean the spare simplicity is kinda fundamental to what makes it special, but I’ve come to terms with it being a “you had to be there” game.

I'm chalking it up to you had to be there, got bored at the third boss and haven't tried it since.

my terrible secret shame (vol 523) is that i've never played more than 20 minutes of shadow. the first 20 minutes. i really liked it, i just never purchased it! so i'll probably give it a shot while it's free.

i do worry that it'll be good in the "you had to be there" way. most games, even iconic games, are like that, i think. they're almost like car models, with incremental upgrades and advances over the years that cross brands and genres. the advances of shadow of the colossus were incorporated into a million other games since then, so when you go back to the original the outstanding qualities might not pop out so much.

I played ico 100 years ago and found the whole experience depressing but beautiful but just couldn't Carey through

There's a real strain of sadness through Shadow. Even achievements.

Achievement: murdered a very large innocent creature just moseying around

well, there's a twist at the end, iirc.

achievement: 3 of those large innocent creatures were your own children

oh wait, i can guess what it is: at the end of the game, you BECOME one of the creatures. i seriously think that's what it is

if i don't get to be a enormous creature trying to stomp on a tiny man on a horse in slow motion, i'm going to be disappointed

you get taken down by an insect

Epitaphs for malaria victims

spoilers

I didn't play at the game that long ago, but if I recall correctly the twist is that yeah, you are the asshole for killing all of these creatures for selfish purposes, despite warnings, and it turns out that that was the wrong thing to do, and you are punished for it.

most games, even iconic games, are like that, i think. they're almost like car models, with incremental upgrades and advances over the years that cross brands and genres.

the advances of shadow of the colossus were incorporated into a million other games since then, so when you go back to the original the outstanding qualities might not pop out so much.

and especially breath of the wild which will also be a "you had to be there" game in 10-15 years, mark my words

shadow of the colossus remains one of my favorite of all time game experiences but i dunno if I wanna replay it and sully that

all 3D graphics will go into the memory death hole
i do want to try this remake at some point, maybe after i go back and play Ico

thanks for the heads up that it’s on ps plus!

Just deleted it on the third boss. Fucking unbearable.

Haha, its irritating quirks are faithfully preserved. Honestly didn’t feel much frustration until the last boss.

Lot of respect to Bluepoint studios. Remaking a game is a treacherous and thankless endeavor, but they really killed it. Lot of love and care went into this. Maybe the best example of a remake you can find.

As far as influence, Breath of the Wild for sure, but also (most abused comparison but true) Dark Souls. Whole downcast lonely atmosphere, oblique storytelling, untold history revealed through ruined environments, and small but direct stuff like the little shining creatures you stumble upon who drop stuff if you’re quick enough to kill them before they disappear.

Someone posted this on another ilx thread a while back and it’s a good watch.

https://youtu.be/jQNeYbBiCKw

Mark Cerny is giving a presentation about the PS5 in half an hour, it was originally meant for GDC so is probably going to be heavy on the tech and light on the games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph8LyNIT9sg

the audio nerd part of this is pretty cool

people have tried to do 3d audio so many times, and it's interesting that they're going to go for the ear-scan tech that Sony headphones are also getting into

I'm more into this: https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/18/21185292/playstation-5-ps5-backward-compatible-ps4-pro

yeah thats not surprising, unlike previous gen-ups it's the same architecture as the ps4 so most stuff will work out of the box or with minor fixes

presumably the old games will run with the ps4 pro graphics settings

Has anyone posted an official list of the "top 100" PS4 games? It'd be good to know what won't be backwards compatible at or close to launch to focus on finishing them first.

i'd anticipate all games by major AAA developers being compatible, it'll be indie stuff and smaller budget stuff using custom engines that might not work

pretty disappointed no mention of PS1/2/3 compatibility tbh

PS2 emulation still isnt great and PS3 is a nightmare, theres no way they can guarantee that. they'll just continue doing the occasional releases of games that do work like the PS2 games that are on the PS4 store

they could do PS1 for sure though

they kind of admitted multiple times that going with a technically complex non-standard design on the PS3 was a bad idea. developer ramp-up time was bad, ability to emulate it in hardware, let alone software, is tricky... all in all, a good lesson for the industry :/

yeah you need a pretty beefy PC to emulate PS3 at consistent 30fps still, not sure if the PS5 will be beefy enough even for the games that do work

luckily most of the big games from that gen have been ported forward at this point but i get that's not the same since you can't use the disc you already have

Still want to try Tokyo Jungle :(

it is the best and deserves an update

Genuinely thought Cerny was Dana Carvey for a few seconds.

Finally got Lonely Mountain Downhill since it's on sale. So far so good

I'm having that thing of wanting to get lost in a huge game for the next few weeks, but putting it off cos I can't be bothered with the tedious first few hours of learning how everything works.

It always takes less time than you think

GT Sport so unbelievably satisfying to me rn

Haha those first few hours are always my favourite, learning how it works is the fun bit, beyond that it’s all just a big todo list.

Control, while it has some issues, was overall pretty great. I'm gonna save some thoughts for when it inevitably ends up in the yearly poll results.