monkeyking1969

I was in a bit of a gaming slump when many fo the The Dark Pictures Anthology games were coming out between 2019 and 2022. Its a shame because while not as large and as well crafted as Until Dawn, these games have been really fun to play! I am playing through them all right now. In no way perfect games, but a whole lot of fun.

Little Hope has an interesting story to tell, its a return to a bit of horror that made Until Dawn fun too. I do like the way Supermassive Games constructed this story a bit better than ist sister gameHouse of Ashes. Both games are good, but Little Hope has an intersting underlying permeise I liked more. Little Hope is all about, what is real, what is true, and what baggage people drag around - it is well told. It doesn't hurt that it is set in New England that is my own backyard.

The execution of these games are perfect, but the structure of the stories are different from each other and what the game has the player do is alway a bit interesting in a new way each time. Little Hope in particular is 'haunting' to play; I found the game both scary and cathartic. It certainly stafied an ich for a ghost story.

Evidently Supermassive uses a lot of teh same voice and motion capture actors, a very neat easter-egg chase for players to look for the actors morphing form games to gamingto new roles. However they always have a low-A to High-B list actor for lead the chast; in the came of Little Hope it is the excellent Will Poulter. For people in teh UK they might know him from the TV-show School of Comedy (2009) or teh movies Midsommar (2018); in teh US you saw him as a teen in "We're the Millers" (2013) or letley in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023). A young actors who has better acting chops than most - JMO.

In my opinion the The Dark Pictures Anthology : Season One PS4 & PS5 is a good deal. You gte teh four games and their compaion 'curators cuts' (directors cut) versions for $33 until May 9th. If you have PlayStation Plus you might have access to one r two of the 'main story' games with that subscription....hard to beat included content.

I think a lot of ills the 'business world' would be solved with the United States SEC and US Legislatures passing laws about how profits and how taxes are measured. Just a tweak....

The United States has set up a system where investors can do anything even seriously rotten and evil things like destroying functioning but low profit enterprises. They can fire thousands of people at a whim but let it count as "cost reductions". I think a few simple rules about how profits are counted and the penalties for layoffs for companies above 50 employees would fix many ills of the market. It would be just adjusting the scales ever so slightly so that firing people does not really 'work' as much as it used to. I think with that you woudl find many brick & mortar stores suddenly becoming 'worth saving'. You find many regional stores brands suddenly 'making it work'.

I don't think ist will saving physical media long term, but profitable properties like SI, National Geographics, PC Gamer, Time, People, Rolling Stone, and some other would likely last.

If you have a PS5 and you are a human being playing on a console, there are some experiences that are JUST improved by playing them on PS5. I think there are many exclusives that are remakes and remasters that are extremely worthy, and given how people play games the whole catalog does count.

Its somewhat ironic that on the mast part gamer DEMAND that games near the new system launch appear on the old system to not cut people off. We get our panties in a bunch by games being "too exclusive", yet we demand that there be tons of games that can not be played anywhere else to "justify" our choice - it a no win situation.

So, look at the games available on PS5, then play what interest you no matter when or where it was originally created.

I think many games that seemingly are called "bad" in the modern age 2000 to 2020, are not that bad just early for what they were trying to do.

Open world flying on an N64 controller in a time where so new 3D space control methods had been tested was just not a great place for that game to be attempted.

We can slam Superman 64 all we want, but some of that was just N64 was not nearly as good as it needed to be....PS was not nearly as good as it needed to be...Saturn was not nearly as good as it needed to be. The controllers, teh understanding of programming, the constep of gaming in 3d worlds was just developing and growing - there were mistakes.

On teh other hand...practice. I'll tell you what I adjusted to tank controls in RE games, I adjsued to finger bending button combos to make Armed Core work, I played the original Tomb Tander with D=pad controls and ist very idiosyncratic controls and camera. Fog, jaggy texture, low-poly characters are what we had and we enjoyed "at the time" teh games.

A lot of games systems and control that 18-30 years olds piss & moan about were do-able for us. People who are 40, 50 and 60 years old PLAYED so many games with issues the games were the cutting edge, state-of-the-art, and nothing better had been created.

The books are terrible...

Microsoft announcement few days ago was pretty much boiler plate of what folks like Jeff Gerstmann were thinking.

It turned out that is was only going to be four games, and after teh main video they confirmed it was nothing that interesting. However, they said they didn't want to step on annaumcnet of teams by announcing what THE GAMES were.

Then we find out that the two games for Nintendo that were revealed on teh latest Nintendo directs were two nothing burgers - Pentiment and Grounded will on Nintendo Switch. And, honestly teh two that will come to PS5 and not Switch - Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves - are so crusty old as not to matter.

What Microsoft s doing is not bad...more games for more players...but it going to be like this where nothing of note will come quickly to PS5 and Switch until it is nearly dead. Again this is not bad from a high view, but it not really going to move a needle on the ground.

To be honest, I think they have to/should do more. To have it on their ecosystem and PC until it dead, but then putting it on other systems looeses any sales synergy. What good is it on PS5 and Switch without a marketing push to sell it? It woudl make sense that it will not sell to it potential in this half-measure way.

It is just my opinion, but I believe they WOULD see more games sold, if they used launch synergy & marketing to be on everything! Maybe that is what they will do, but I say, "shi_t, or get off the pot."

@ginormous76: It seems to be considered the best of the bunch, and I landed on playing it first by accident. I typically play Supermassive games on the "normal setting" but I foudn soem fo the QTEs in House of Ashes to be quite unforgiving. So for my 3rd playthrough I'm on the easiest setting with the most help, just so I can see the various series of events - thankfully, there are just two more thing I have to do to save everyone who IS save-able.

After that, I will play Man of Madan

https://twitter.com/ObsoleteSony/status/1695856678363685043

So sue me....I will be talking lovingly about this game!

I admit like how these Supermassive games work; this could be a weird taste in games. However at my age something bit bit more contapetaive, visual and with choices that change the outcome is really enjoyable. I was ones of those people that thought the year Until Dawn came out, it was part of the Top-5 discussion for GOTY.

How I got here:
As I was signing up for PlayStation Plus Premium (and upgrade) I saw the Dark Pictures Anthology. I had heard of some of teh other games, like Man of Medan, a few years ago...like six years ago!! But I think because House come before Man alphabetically the House of Ashes showed up first on the list. I didn't know anything about the games in the anthology, but I figured they woudl all work the same way. If I play no other games the fact I could download the whole Anthology made the "Premium Upgrade price worth it. Yet, I seem to be playing them out of order...not that it matters story wise.

What a treat House of Ashes was to play this week! It is short only about 1/3 the size of Until Dawn, but seen as a compact little story - its enough. And, you get to see Disney child performer and the voice of Phineas & Ferb's sister covered in gallons of coagulated blood - what's not to like? What was most striking for me is the art direction used to create teh world. I enjoy studying Mesopotamian history; I have read many non-fiction book on the subject of the Akkad empire. So seeing some the culture and history rendered in game form was AMAZING!! David Hirst oversaw the art team's research into Mesopotamian architecture, dress for use in the game should be congratulated - the whole art team should win an award.

The game is no perfect, it didn't need to win an award two years ago. Nevertheless, it was just the sort of game I wanted to play and ist short enough that replaying it over and over again (something you must do in these games) is the work of only a few days. The ending of the story is a bit abrupt; it is serviceable enough to wrap it up though.

I think some of this falls into the same view of the world that is highlighted by this quote:

"The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I see this over and over again, a profitable business that makes money is bought up first by a conglomerate and the is attacked by "Investment Firms" that are not investing at all but rather tearing bit and pieces apart to sell off until nothing but a husk remains that is STILL profitable by other disreputable people "betting against" the company's stocks. The deck is stacked against any company taht does not have double digit growth.

Toy R's Us was not failing, it was set up to fail. GameStop was not failing, it was setup to fail. And so many other retailers and now these pirates are going after game companies. I think at least 2/3 of the companies on that list could have probably survived is they cut back a tiny bit, made a few 'conservatives bet' games, and regrew some strength. But, when you gte bought out the quality of what you can so is NEVER looked at...just how much sheer profit have a corp has made in the last 9 months.

For gaming the adage would be , "The market has enough for everyone's modest profit, but not enough for every multinationals' greed."

I truly think we need a stronger law passed by the US Legislature that will impose fines for speculating on company's failures or market manipulation. We need laws that makes firing staff to boost the bottom line untenable, and that punishes companies that reward executives for firing staff. I think layoffs should make using any tax breaks impossible, so that losing staff is simply not worth itas a scheme to increase profits.