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Yes and no. It's designed to be played with others it seems like, but you can turn off matchmaking and it gives you AI companions instead and as awful as that might sound, they actually DON'T suck. At least at the level of content I tried. That might not stick as well at endgame potentially but I've read that "99%" of the content can be done that way with no issues. Also, it seems like you can use matchmaking for everything though once again, may not apply to some endgame stuff. Haven't read one way or the other. Played a few things like that though because the matchmaking is broken as fuck right now. Hoping they get that sorted by tomorrow so I can try playing with people. One of the interesting gameplay things I found out about: Iron Man's ultimate ability is calling down the hulk buster suit and get in it. You then have the option of getting out of it and letting a teammate use it. Also, yes console. They made Spider-man a playstation exclusive character. :x Doesn't sound like a timed thing either. People are pissed. The reasoning behind it is absolute garbage bs too. https://www.ign.com/articles/marvels-avengers-how-spider-man-became-a-playstation-exclusive-character Honestly this reason is stupid enough and people are pissed enough I could see them backpedaling to a timed exclusivity though.

After this acquisition they'll still only be the 3rd largest publisher behind Tencent and Sony I believe I had read. Sony acquired 6 or 7 different devs this past year alone vs Microsoft who has only picked up three things video game related since 2019. Two of those just happen to be publishers instead of individual studios so the impact feels bigger and more immediate. I don't mean to diminish the impact this will have though because Activision-Blizzard themselves IS the 3rd biggest at the moment I believe so it's a pretty big deal even if it isn't as all encompassing as it seems.

That's all well and good for things in the long run, but how about we start simple and just finally fucking do cross platform games, Sony?

Firing Kotick would still only be a face value thing anyway. They need to remove him and at least half the people on the board of directors as well considering they're close friends of his who have also known about and allowed this shit and full out backed him up even after the stuff about him came out. As nice as most of this stuff is at face value, it's a bit meh overall when you really look at it. None of these have been "announcements" and none of them have committed to pulling support for the company. They've all been "leaked" internal memos and e-mails and shit that let them not actually be accountable for anything that is said. It's just like the Geoff Keighley with the Game Awards shit "What they're doing is wrong and they won't have any participation in the show this year... except their games still have nominations and can win awards... " and one of their executives is still part of the advisory board for the show. We'll see if the ones "evaluating" their business relationships with the company actually ever go anywhere.

I played it a little over a week ago. Was definitely super impressive. Everything was practically photorealistic other than the people. The rendering speed was amazing too considering all the individual, AI controlled moving objects in it. Saw some stats on it after I played it. There are 35,000 people and 45,073 cars. Map stats were also given. There is apparently 160 miles of road w/ 1248 intersections. The destruction detail on the cars was pretty good too. I spent most of my time flying around and even zipping through the city at max speed, there was very little frame rate drop, and it had no real issues rendering everything. You can definitely see where they cut some corners to make everything run smooth (the water at the coast looks like shit, no weather, and the skybox was static with no animation to it outside of intentionally adjusting the position of the sun, etc. ), but it still bodes well for games going forward. Would really like to see it on PC to see how it runs there too.

You do realize he has no part in nominating or voting for anything, right? He just runs it. Nominations are done by outside parties that are part of the industry (various gaming news outlets, "influencers" and things like that) from all around the world and voting is a mix of said jury and public fan voting. He did an AMA about the show a week or so before hand and got asked a ridiculous number of times about stuff like that as well as answering accusations of favoritism along those lines. Death Stranding didn't even win that many awards. They even have a list of the 'jury' that does the nominating/voting on the website: https://thegameawards.com/voting-jury' I wouldn't have touched the show that Spike did with a 10ft. pole, but he's done a good job with this one IMO.

I really can't get into those games. Really don't know why. I really enjoy the humor in them, but it took me like 5 attempts and 2 years to finally finish the story in BL2. Think I'm halfway through the first DLC otherwise. XD

Someone is legit going to get shot over this, aren't they?

Got a code for the closed beta for Avengers since I had it pre-ordered on Amazon (popped up at a $50 price tag at some point and wanted to reserve the price) so have been playing that for a couple hours. It plays a LOT better than it looked during the original gameplay reveal which was a pleasant surprised. There are some small things that bother me about it (switching tabs in the menu taking longer than it feels like it should being one of the main ones), but it was pretty enjoyable. In the broader scope of game mechanics, it feels like it will be a super nice looking, AAA version of that Marvel Heroes Omega game that shut down a while back. Which is to say, looter style game where your constantly pushing for new gear. Combat felt really solid though and was a good variety of combos and some interesting looking skill upgrades and the little bit I played of the available characters made each one feel sufficiently different. Looks like there will be cosmetic microtransations for different outfits and nameplates and things like that, but they also have a pretty good variety you can earn in the game itself. Not optimal, but at least it's not all in on that shit. May actually consider keeping the pre-order at this point. So far it looks like there might be some decent depth to the game, but it's hard to say from the little bit you have access to. Interested in seeing more though. Before I was relatively sure I wouldn't get it, but this has convinced me to reconsider.

That seemed pretty fair overall. Pretty much what I expected it to be too. IE: Mostly enjoyable until the campaign is over and the grind starts unless you REALLY like that kind of thing.

I love how people are so bitter and disillusioned with Blizzard that not only did they meta-bomb the game, they actually started giving positive reviews to the one game that had a lower score (at the time) than WC3:R to help the process along.

That is... not what they said at all. O_o They're axing the "road map" they were already not keeping up with anyway so they can put more focus on fixing core issues of the game and instead are doing "seasonal" content (which is what the Cataclysm was effectively) and they have more of those type of events coming this year still. Not that I expect anything particularly impressive until they get some of that shit fixed.

I don't even know if that can be considered a LEAK. They flat out published the info on the site. With a link and everything. And then they had the nerve to call it a "website vulnerability". Even beyond that, the majority of the current problem lies in the fact that after they were notified of the issue (before the story was made public), all they did was remove remove the link on the site but DIDN'T FUCKING DELETE THE FILE so people who knew what to look for/how to look for it could still find it and download it. That's when the shit really hit the fan and the data got passed around. The ESA must get their knowledge of how the internet works from Nintendo.

From what I've seen, Kotick is sticking around until everything clears and then he's bailing (with a large some of money in tow no doubt ). So that's a start. We'll see how everything else goes. The main thing I'm worried about is how this will affect the the strikes and the movement to unionize that was starting to get some traction. Time will tell. Chances are this whole thing won't be settled until next year anyway.

I don't think I've seen such a solid presentation of immediate joy followed by crushing disappointment from people as I have when they announced this. This was the Square-Enix tweet. The way it was written. They knew what they were doing. XD

Played through it a couple times now. Only real complaint is I'm not a huge fan of what they did with some of the music. It's almost over orchestrated at times and it loses some of it's impact (mostly the boss music and Shinra music). Hopefully not all of it is that severe. Really liked the combat and the "classic" mode was decent to though not exactly what I was expecting. Looking forward to it even more.

Square has also long ago established that they will take money from anywhere they can get it and advertise literally anything in a game no matter how fucking weird it is (ie: the entire "Cup Noodle" questline, etc. in FFXV) and have already shown that they're doing it with this. A set of exclusive skins has already been shown that is only available to specific cell service carriers (Verizon in the US and Virgin in the UK I believe) and another set is rumored to be a promotional tie-in with Intel (possibly for one of their processors). All of which boggles the mind. This kind of thing is normally thrown at consumable shit like energy drinks or whatever. Almost nobody is going to change cell carriers or buy a new computer processor for a set of game skins. Sony is also getting a bunch of other exclusive or timed exclusive content including non-cosmetic content so there was clearly a bag of money involved in this whole thing somewhere. To reiterate, this is the same company, through which, you effectively had to pay $50 to get this:

Game is wonderful. Also, I love that the nicest characters in the game (so far at least) are effectively the mob leader and the black market trader. Taking my time as well. Been playing quite a bit but just got to Monarch.

That one definitely stood out. When it first showed her I was like 😮 Wasn't sure it was actually supposed to be Senua or if it was just a similar style/theme considering the developer until it showed the title though. I want to see more from some of the others before I decide anything though. Godfall could have potential and I'm interested in seeing what New World could be like (though I won't hold my breath on that one). That Fast & Furious game looks so ridiculously dated though. WTF even was that? XD There were some fun parts otherwise during it too. The bit with the Muppets was hilarious and seeing Ikumi Nakamura again was everything I hoped it would be. Feel like the awards themselves were all over the place though. Like some of the eSports shit they didn't even give any correlation for what games the people were even known for so it was like... K. Glad to see Disco Elysium win a bunch of awards though. Definitely deserves it from everything I've seen. Kind of hoped Control had won more but it did get one so I was happy about that. I actually bought a couple of games that I was holding off on or hadn't heard of after seeing stuff about them through the Awards though so I guess they're doing their job. XD

Yeah, the GeForce now thing makes no sense to me. How is this in any way affecting the publishers when you have to already own the fucking game? This has to be a pretty fucking gray area in general for copyright stuff I would imagine since you're effectively just playing games you already bought and Nvidia is probably just trying to play nice but it's getting downright idiotic at this point with how the game publishers are acting about it.

Oh, hey Sony. Great timing. https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-executive-fired-after-pedophilia-allegations https://www.polygon.com/22798781/playstation-sony-gender-discrimination-lawsuit

In amusingly related news, rumor is that the Avengers game pushed back to September to avoid releasing in the same month as Cyberpunk (was also sandwiched on the other side by Last of Us 2 I believe) and then Cyberpunk moved to September as well so that game is still gonna get fucked.

Whether they had enough funding from the Kickstarter or not, the game was ALSO being financially backed by Shibuya Productions AND Sony and has for years. If they seriously need more than that for what's being presented and it's not just pure greed at this point (or even if it is), then I'm glad I never cared about this series at all. >_>

Of course they are. Jesus, what a fucking joke.

Actually, this is both better and worse than expected from what I've read. These particular shareholders are an activist shareholder group that have been criticizing Kotick for a long time already (which speaks well of them), however their "4.8 million shares" between them only account for 0.6% of the company so unless some other major shareholders jump on board it's not likely to lead anywhere. 😕