Dexterryu

Shooting in VR is kinda mixed IMHO. Here is my experience: Any longer/larger gun that requires 2 hands and precise aiming is very weird in VR without a "gunstock" to properly use 2 hands with. Even still, they miss out on a lot of the feel of actually firing a rifle or shotgun due to the lack of weight and physical recoil. This is similar issue I have with most sword fighting games. The lack of physical weight to weapons is very immersion breaking if you've ever used any of them in real life (also why Beat Saber feels really nice). Hand guns work and feel generally really good, so long as the devs don't try to get too detailed and realistic with reloading (looking at H3). Bow & Arrow games are also good and work surprisingly well. Half Life: Alyx is by far the best (IMHO). It makes the wise choice of making the guns mostly 1 handed for aiming and has the best movement options depending on your tolerance for getting nautious.

Question on the DLC (apologize if this is already been ask/is known). Is it going to be similar to the Frozen Wilds in that it's meant to be played as part of a main run or if it is a post game add in (Like Witcher DLCs).

Elden Ring was the game who's world was visually interesting to the point that I wanted to keep playing it and exploring it. As for the most technically visually impressive... Plague Tale / Forbidden West / God of War.

I think the main thing here with all cards, is whether there is value in upgrading vs the asking price. Looking at the industry as a while, I think the crypto rush for GPUs inflated prices and the manufacturers saw this and adjusted MSRP. That said, with crypto crashing and cards being readily available people aren't willing to overpay. There's still going to be enthusiasts that have to max out/have the best (I realize a lot of people posting here are in that club), but those aren't the every day gamers that previously had to overpay to have ANY card. It'll be interesting to see what happens now that supply seems to exceed demands.

To each their own then. The biggest visual impact for me has been HDR vs resolution. Again, not saying they are bad things just not worth the asking price.

I do game at QHD, having had a 4k monitor in the past I just couldn't really tell the difference vs being able to go 144hz & 1000nit HDR. Again, diminishing returns on higher resolutions. And this is where it's going to be a tougher sell because games won't necessarily "look" better. So there's not going to be that visual jump like you'd expect. Not saying that higher frames or more depth is bad. Just that for most people it's not going to make them do a $1000+ upgrade.

I think they're going to be at an interesting point. With the "next gen" console generation really just starting to get regular "current gen only" titles they are going to be the limiting factor when it comes to GPU value. We're already at the point where we can play damn near photo-realistic games in UE5.x at high frame-rates at 4K... As a 3080 owner, I have zero interest in a 40X0 card for gaming purposes. Additionally, now that crypto is struggling the artificial demand for gaming cards isn't there either. The biggest thing is, at this point is where does Nvidia go from here beyond efficiency? Better graphics is darn near hit the diminishing returns point on more photo-realism vs animation IMHO.

All I gotta say is that I played the demo and feel like I've saved $70. Game had me very intrigued with the previews and such but man... that was rough. Everything from the controls to the dialogue felt like a B movie of gaming. Hope they tighten things up before they release.

Of the new release games that I played this year (all were very good) I'd rank as follows: 1) Elden Ring 2) God of War: Ragnarok 3) Horizon: Forbidden West 4) Plague Tale 5) Sifu 6) Stray

As awesome as this is... the budget to make the game was $500 Million. So they still haven't broken even yet. No doubt they will but it's not as profitable as you might think.

I know it feels like a weird complaint. As I'm playing the post story stuff I keep getting this feeling like they included what would be DLC in most other games. The verticality is something that's a bit hit & miss for me. It's cool to see, but after you've climbed very linear rocks/ruins once you've climbed them all. It makes traversal, back tracking, and searching a bit of a chore.

Approaching the end of the post game activities. Thought I'd chime in on likes vs dislikes of this game. Overall it's great, but felt the world and side-quests weren't quite as tight as the first game. I think this is mostly due to how the various realms were split up each into their own mini-open worlds vs mostly just midgard in the previous game. Finding that getting some of the collectables and such a bit more tedious due to the need to find a very specific, relatively hidden path. Coming from something like Elden Ring this stands out more. Outside of that the Valkyrie fights were much more fun than most of the berserkers. Again, everything else about the game is excellent. Love the characters, narrative, etc... Combat is really well done and fun.

And that's what I mean. They're both great in their own ways. They approach things differently and awesomely. Not really a good way to quantify one being better than the other.

Loved Elden Ring, but the games are very different in approach. Almost hard to compare them.

You're assuming they are calling up dell/IBM to buy servers. They're likely on Azure since MS has acquired Blizzard which means autoscaling/pay be the hour. Scale up when you have a lot of users, scale back down when you don't.

I find tanking/healing to be much more fun now. The minimization of CC was a much needed change. In OW1, as a tank I felt like any scrum I was constantly getting juggled around by all the knock backs and stuns. For healers the passive healing rewards smartly knowing when to mix it up.

I really loved Bloodborne. I played around with Sekiro a bit in may and got maybe 1/4 through before I left for vacation and when I came back I was basically stonewalled by the boss at the end of Ashina castle (the rematch with the guy that cuts off your arm in the beginning). I definitely want to get back to it but I'd basically be starting over to relearn the controls. So I didn't know anything about Miyazaki. I could feel something off about DS2 almost right after the prologue. The game has the atmosphere but the controls and mobs are just a little off. Almost feels a like a cross between DS and one of the many clones. At any rate, I loaded up DS3 and it was like ordering your favorite comfort food as the controls, mobs, and such felt like DS/DeS/Bloodborne/Elden Ring. I will go back to DS2 after I finish these because the world has definitely intrigued me but it is just different enough to feel like a different game.

Thanks for the replies guys. At the moment, I'm debating on whether to swap to DS3 and then come back to DS2 since the controls/timing are a bit different/off or just power through DS2.

Hi guys. I'm sure this question has been beaten to death but I'm not asking which is better. Elden Ring was my first From Software Game and I loved it. So much so that I decided to play the rest while since there's a lull in new AAA games coming out. So I played Demons Souls Remake, then BloodBorne. Loved them. I then bought the DS Trilogy. Just finished Dark Souls Remastered and loved it. Then I loaded up Dark Souls 2. At first, I kinda liked that it seemed a little more fluid but the more I play it the more things just feel off and less "fair". Like the game is trying too hard to be hard. At any rate, I feel like I'm making myself try to like the game. The world looks cool and the story/lore intriguing but the gameplay just isn't clicking. Again... something just feels a little off. It's little things like enemies seeming like they're on ice when you strafe them, getting hit by things when I've clearly moved aside. I want to like it, I want to explore the world but man, this one just seems to want to punish that with tons of things that you can't fight back agains like an archer that you can't reach shooting you from behind. I know I probably just need to 'git gud'-er or something. So my question is, does this problem continue in DS3? I'm debating on skipping DS2 and going right to DS3 if it's back to normal. Also, before someone suggests it, I have sekiro too. Was saving it for last since I heard it was the most challenging.

After Sony's thing last week and this, everything just feels very ho-hum or very far off.

Mixed on this. Positives: World graphics looked excellent. Ship customization looked really cool. Negatives Characters still have that Bethesda stiff robot-ness where they all like you're interacting with animatronics that talk at you. Combat looked really bland/weightless Not sure how I feel about the laser mining (Looks exactly like what I've gotten bored of in NMS).

Difficulty does not bother me so much as making me spend 15-30 minutes between attempts. The various SoG and Stakes of Marika in ER cut down on this dramatically. The only two points that I felt it was poorly done were the places like having to dodge the giant rolling balls to get back to Moongrum in the Academy. That got annoying and was just a waste of my time instead of having a stake and letting me face the boss continuously.

Question for you guys. Elden Ring is my first From Software game and I've really liked it. I tried Dark Souls early on and due to a really busy schedule I didn't get into the full level re-runs after every death of getting 1 shot by a boss. That said, now that I've played and am nearing the finish of Elden Ring (I'm in the Mountain Top of the Giants). I'm considering trying another one. I have BloodBourne from PS+ so that feels like a natural next one to try. However there is also the Demon Souls Remaster and Sekiro to try. So my question is if I wanted to try another which do you recommend. I really got to like the combat of Elden Ring once I got used to it. I loved the ability to explore and follow my curiosity vs following a set path. In fact my least favorite parts of the game are the legacy dungeons. Not that I hated them, but I liked the ability to see something neat in the world and go check it out or approach from an angle I felt best vs going from corridor A -> corridor B.

I can't really share anything on Luna since it is still in preview and heavily subject to NDA. That said, I would look at our autoscaling capabilities for an idea. As for the Movie industry... I think it depends on how they model it. For example Netflix/Amazon/Hulu have been very successful making movies exclusive to their platforms. I personally prefer it that way in that in many ways it's a better experience since I have a nice OLED and sound system. I realize not everyone is that fortunate but as commodities continue to improve the value proposition of going to the theatre is less and less. That said... the big blockbusters with cool special effects I do like the big-screen. In that regard I think Sony has the sweet spot in that they release their AAA games to be purchased and maybe a year or so down the road the end up on their subscription service.

I might be able to offer some unique perspective on this working as an engineer at AWS. People thought this couldn't be done in the mid-2000's with video streaming but with a lower barrier since 1080p was considered top end at that point. Video streaming was able to grow up with the improved bandwidth and technology in TVs. As of now, what I think is that it is coming, but not there yet. This is mostly due to the very high bar set by modern hardware (both Consoles and PC). That said, we're getting to the point where improvements in fidelity are coming as much from better API's and engines as they are from brute forcing with better/faster hardware. That's a big deal from a sense of cloud gaming. However, it is also somewhat centralized to main data centers. This is why some people have a good experience and some not. However, edge computing and CDNs are going to improve this massively over time. Get good GPUs at the edge and much of the latency issues will go away or become far less noticeable. My suspicion is that sometime prior to the next hardware revision that it will be viable. Looking at PS/Xbox, etc... the are already getting people used to the subscription model. That's where I think it will end up.