driveclub • QSF5

27 Oct 2015

Paris Games Week?

Another tradeshow was brought to our collective attention as Sony held a two hour press conference to open Paris Games Week. It was a well produced press conference but there weren’t any unexpected surprises. (Of course a Gran Turismo was coming, you’re a fool if you thought otherwise.)

Even without the bombastic reveals, it was nice to see release windows narrowed and more footage of announced titles.

Announcements

No Man’s Sky launches June 2016
Tekken 7 coming to PS4 & Xbox One
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End launches March 18, 2016
Nier sequel officially named Nier Automata via NeoGAF
DRIVECLUB Bikes launches today as an standalone expansion
Gran Turismo Sport announced for PlayStation 4
Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human announced for PlayStation 4
Street Fighter V launches February 16, 2016 via Capcom Unity
Uncharted 4 Multiplayer Beta will run from Dec. 4 – 13 via PlayStation.Blog

Media

My interest for Guerrilla Games’ Horizon: Zero Dawn grows with every piece of media I see. I don’t have a firm grasp on what exactly Monster Hunter is but this looks like a westernized Monster Hunter to me. I suggest you watch the walkthrough above, it’s neat to say the least. Then you can watch these two other videos if you wish.

Uncharted 4 Multiplayer PGW 2015 Trailer

Star Wars: Battlefront PGW 2015 Trailer

Detroit: Become Human PGW 2015 Reveal Trailer

13 Nov 2014

Savestate: AAA Sky Falls

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

AAA games faltering

DRIVECLUB, Halo: Master Chief Collection and Assassin’s Creed: Unity are still suffering from technical issues. They have networking issues, graphical glitches, performance drops and sometimes a combination of all the above. And these are just the high profile titles that have severe issues. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has its own controversy over dedicated servers but it’s being overshadowed.

Instead of dwelling on what is happening, I want to know why this is happening. The easy answer is to blame aggressive publishers that want to make holidays. But we’ve seen plenty of publishers make those timelines in the past.

What’s changed for this year?

Although we’re technically a year into the newest generation of consoles, we’re still not out of the woods yet with regards to console transition issues. Seven years ago, the first Assassin’s Creed debuted to horrible framerate issues and bugs as well.

In the case of DRIVECLUB, you can chalk this up to inexperience with networking. For the folks at 343 Industries, I can’t imagine it’s easy to get four titles humming along nicely (even if they’re remasters).

These are just excuses that I’m making up for these developers. They’re not going to tell us why these games are broken but they’ll continue to ask for forgiveness and patience while you wait.

Consumers are paying money for working products and if they can’t deliver a working product within the launch window, they should be eligible for refunds. It might be tough to convince a retailer to take back an opened game, but those who’ve purchased titles from Sony or Microsoft’s digital stores should receive a refund if they so desire.

Also, thank goodness for built-in recording and screenshot functionality.

Mario Kart 8 DLC Pack #1

Over at Nintendo’s little island of fun awaits Mario Kart 8’s first DLC pack. I bought it the dual pack and look forward to trying the new content. I just don’t know if it’s going to be sooner or later.

Random Thought of the Week

I’m addicted to Florida Natural Fruit Snacks.

30 Oct 2014

Savestate: Driving to Wait

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

Re: DRIVECLUB PS+ Edition Delay

Shuhei Yoshida officially delayed the DRIVECLUB PS+ Edition until further notice.

It’s understandable considering the networking side of the game has been a complete non-starter due to code issues. It’s been three weeks and if the tentpole feature of the game isn’t ready to go for paying customers, it makes sense to delay the freebie version.

I’m okay with the delay but I’m also someone who wasn’t waiting for DRIVECLUB to arrive in the first place. Some believe they’re owed this piece of shareware and claim their PlayStation Plus memberships were purchased because of it. It sounds ludicrous but I hope they learn their lesson: Never pay for potential unless you can exercise patience when something goes awry.

Re: Valkyria Chronicles coming to PC

Valkyria Chronicles was a fantastic PS3 title and now I can relive it with all the DLC that I never bought for $20? Sounds like quite the deal. I just need folks to confirm that it is a good PC port. If it is is, I’ll pick it up for $10 or so.

Now we just need Vanquish to make its way to PC. It deserves the 60 FPS treatment.

9 Oct 2014

Savestate: Driving Parity

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

Re: DRIVECLUB Reviews

Is anyone surprised by the relatively lukewarm reception to DRIVECLUB? Outside of visuals, it didn’t look particularly compelling. Simulation fans aren’t pleased with the decision to stick to 30FPS and it didn’t look crazy enough for the arcade racing aficionados. If they were going to straddle the line of simulation and arcade racing like Project Gotham Racing, they didn’t nail the style or personality.

The PlayStation Plus version of the game was delayed because paying customers cannot even get online without issues. It’s understandable but perhaps they should have delayed it in the first place.

I cannot wait for this console generation to pick up speed and more games to release because if this were year three or four of the generation, all this fervor over DRIVECLUB and Destiny would be washed away by day two of launch.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Unity Parity

“We decided to lock them at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff”

Senior Producer Vincent Pontbriand to VideoGamer.com

There’s nothing inherently wrong with parity. It’s nice to know that developers will try to get all versions of a game to run at a particular specification. But when a developer says that they’re forcing parity to “avoid all the debates and stuff” and co-marketting dollars shifted from one manufacturer to another, there’s a whiff of bullshit that’s tough to ignore. We don’t know if the PlayStation 4 needed to run at 900p30 as well but I do know if there was a technical reason, they shouldn’t have said otherwise.

We’re in a unique situation here with this console generation. The lead platform is usually the console with the largest install base and slightly weaker hardware. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 were the usual lead platforms during the last two generations. The PlayStation 4 broke that pattern. It’s a step more powerful than the Xbox One and not in an obscure way like with the PlayStation 3 and its Cell.

With all the games running better on the PlayStation 4 already and the fact that it has superior hardware, I don’t blame people for questioning Ubisoft’s motives.

Random Thought

Tenga Eggs aren’t what I thought they were.

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