I hope you all had a fun-filled and thoroughly occult-themed Halloween last night, filled with all the stereotypical and gaudy trappings of one of the more popular festivals that we see every year.
Failing that, you might have stayed in, turned the lights off and ignored the knocking on the door as you watched the Rugby World Cup final – and what a final it was! – the F1 qualifying or just played a few games!
Paris Games Week and Sony’s press conference delivered a bunch of new and exciting talking points – though you’d have to be looking for a particular kind of game for it to have delivered a knock out blow – but one of the biggest surprises snuck out in the run up to the show, with Driveclub Bikes making itself known a little ahead of schedule.
Tomhlord was straight in there to say, “A roster of licenced bikes? If that handling is good, count me in!” And once it was in peoples’ hands later that same day, Freezebug opined that “It is a world away from the SBK or MotoGP bike games. It really does bring back the fun factor to biking games.”
Bennibop added, “Just been playing this it is fantastic fun especially on the none circuits. The [driveclub logo screen when you crash] is a little jarring at first but it’s there so they do not have to get the game related with PEGI.”
Of course, Kevling and a few others just thought it needed a different name. “I can understand keeping the brand,” he said, “but Driveclub Bikes sounds really clumsy, surely it should be Rideclub?”
With Bikes out now and private lobbies on the way next week, it’s a damned good time to be playing Driveclub!
Racing fans also have a lot to look forward to with the announcement of Gran Turismo Sport, which focusses in on the motorsports side of the driving spectrum – presumably ditching all of those PS2 era cars in the process – and reaches out into the real world with collaborations with the FIA and global championships.
Avenger said, “Okay, mixed feelings. What exactly is this? A free downloadable game like that of the GT6 Academy Demo and GT HD demo, or is this certifiably GT7? Whatever it is, it seems like the result of that collaboration with the FIA to do official championships and what not.”
Kennykazey added, “So apparently this is like a halfway thing between GT6 and 7. It’s got more features than previous Prologues, but that’s kinda what it is. Except it seems to be heavily based on GT6 instead of 7, but that’s speculation.”
Gamers are ever the cynics these days, and hornet1990 voiced the thought on many people’s minds:
I suspect it is less about testing the water but simply about making some money. At the end of the day Sony are a business in trouble, and they can’t afford to keep shelling out untold millions year after year for Yamauchi to create his “perfect” game. Especially not when Turn 10 are turning out a new Forza every two years with MS getting a nice regular income from it (and Horizon in between).
As suggested this is probably a half-way house. More content than a Prologue to be better value for money (and hence justify a full game price tag), and incorporating just enough new improvements developed for GT7 to feel like an improvement over 6, and then GT7 can then be focused on for release a year or two after this.
Either way, it will be a much anticipated first step for the Gran Turismo series on the PS4, and one that will hopefully have more than enough content to get people playing.
Finally, it wouldn’t have been a games event in Paris without a little focus on French game developers, with David Cage stepping up on stage to announce Quantic Dream’s new project: Detroit. It looks to revive the world and character of the impressive Kara tech demo from several years ago.
TSBonyman said, “Well, the in-engine stuff looks pretty impressive and QD always deliver in that respect anyway. Presumably gameplay won’t be too far removed from that of their previous games and that’s perfectly okay by me. I really liked the Kara tech demo as a self-contained story, but there was always that ‘I wonder what happens next’ aspect about it.”
This was the big hitter of the conference for DividSmythe, who wrote, “I’ve got to say this game had me most excited when this was revealed. I loved Heavy Rain but I thought Beyond: Two Souls a bit average, the only reason I got platinum out of it was because it was free on PS Now Beta. I’ll forgive B:TS was average because Heavy Rain was too good.”
On the other hand, Lieutenant Fatman said, “What does it mean to be alive? Sounds pretty deep. These themes have been explored with androids before, but I’ll be interested to see what Cage does with it. Two Souls was very good.”
Clearly people were in two minds about Two Souls, so hopefully Kara’s character and the exploration of Detroit can be a more definitively positive experience.
Everyone’s been busy with one game or another, but only a handful of people actually managed to get notable trophies to pling or reach the end of games.
In amidst his usual bevy of co-op play, R1MJAW also managed to puzzle his way through the final few levels of the Road to Gehenna expansion from The Talos Principle and get his 140th platinum trophy as a consequence.
Hornet1990 reached the end of The Witcher 3, and succeeded in getting the “good” ending, even though he found things to be a little too binary surrounding one particular decision point. Kennykazey, meanwhile, finished the Hearts of Stone expansion, finding its bosses to be much more challenging that anything in the main game, to the point of annoyance.
Finally, though he got a little bored partway through episode 4, DividSmythe found his way through to the end of Life Is Strange and found all the collectables for the platinum trophy there.
We’re nearly done, but you can head over to page two for the return of the Fastest Platinum boards. To finish off this page, we have the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments.