The Sony news and discussion thread

[Alex79]

It looks amazing! I can't even imagine what 19 year old me would have thought after just playing the original. I think my head would have exploded.

[DomsBeard]

My man Red XIII looks great

[Flabyo]

I’ve watched a few videos talking about the remake recently, and almost everyone in them is around the same sort of age. People who would’ve been in the early to mid teens in 97/98 when FF7 first came out. It’s a hugely important game to a lot of people, but it seems to be especially true of that age group.

For many it was the first jrpg they played, as Maximilian puts it in his video on the subject ‘RPG’s were about dragons and knights and shit and that held no interest for me as a teen’. It’s a gateway game, it got people into a genre they might’ve not played otherwise. In Europe especially, because very few of the jrpgs that were localised into English and released in the US made it here (the platform holders tended to only grant releases in Europe if they covered at least French and German as well as english, and not many Japanese publishers thought it was worth the effort)

It’s also hugely important to the development of the actual industry. It was one of the first console games that actually justified the cd rom format over cartridge, most of what had been done before was to throw in lots of FMV or redbook audio, but not really use the space for content. FF7, in the form they made it, could not have been done on the N64.

It changed the way a lot of developers looked at not just the genre (there’s way more RPG’s that step outside traditional fantasy after ff7 than before), but the way they built games at all.

It’s also the reason I’m a game developer. Sitting in my cold student flat playing through it while my housemates watched on, every one of us held firm by it, wanting to know what happened next, i knew that I wanted to make games. Games like FF7.

I don’t think I’ve ever quite got there (though some might say the Fable games are on the way there), but it’s why I do this.

I don’t think it’s my favourite final fantasy game though, that still belongs to Tactics, which came out the same year. (A recent kotaku piece on tactics said that saying it’s your favourite final fantasy is both correct, and cheating...)

So while my reaction to these trailers hasn’t brought me to tears of joy, hasn’t been as transcendental as it seems to be for those a few years younger than me, I’m happy to see a game I consider ‘important’ get this treatment.

[Alex79]

Yeah I feel similar. It was the first JRPG I played, but more than that, it was the first game I ever really remember talking about with a friend in the pub. We were both playing it and I remember we'd go down the social to wait for my then girlfriend to finish work and literally sit for three hours talking about nothing but the game. That became as much a part of my memory as playing the game itself.

It almost ruined games for me for a while. The whole reason I went so long hating Zelda was because after I finished FF7 and wanted another RPG someone suggested Ocarina Of Time. It didn't even come close to what I was looking for and I resented the series for that illogical reason for well over a decade!

[Flabyo]

Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be listening to all the many versions of “Opening - Bombing Mission” this afternoon.

[Alex79]

March 2020 PS+ games are:

Shadow Of The Colossus
Sonic Forces

SotC is brilliant, but I can't imagine anyone really wanting to play Sonic Forces. I guess YMMV.

[Flabyo]

There’s a different sonic game on games with gold on the other side of the fence this month, they get Sonic Generations.

[Suits]

I picked up a (faulty)boxed, complete, very good condition, white Sony PSP-1003 today, - £20.

It powers, but has no screen display.

So I'm really looking forward to taking it apart and having a look about to get it going again.

[Flabyo]

I had to dispose of the battery in my launch model PSP recently, it was clearly approaching swell death. Thankfully our recycling collection handles that kind of waste, cause they’re not something you can just drop in the bin.

It works off the mains adapter, but I’m doing my reading up to see which of the aftermarket company ones are worth considering. There’s a lot of cheap crappy batteries out there.

[Flabyo]

The FF7R demo is up on the PlayStation network. 7.6 gigs.

[Alex79]

The FF7R demo is up on the PlayStation network. 7.6 gigs.

Already kicking myself for not leaving my PS4 in standby last night.

[Alex79]

Quite a few games coming to PS Now this month, including, most notably, Control, Wolfenstien 2 and Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. Pleased with those! I haven't played any of the 'new' Tomb Raider games and wanted to try Control too, so nice update.

[Suits]

Oooo, Control is a good one.

I’ve been waiting for that to land on Gamepass for a while now.

[Alex79]

April PS+ games accidentally leaked on the official YouTube channel (I think it's since been taken down, but I viewed it myself before it was).

Uncharted 4
Dirt Rally 2.0

Two pretty awesome games there. Dirt Rally 2.0 is the first game that would have tempted me back to subscribing. I might just grab a month to play it for a while.

EDIT: Now confirmed

[James]

Uhh, this Tweeted from the official PlayStation account. I guess this is real?

[KSubzero1000]

Yo... what?

[James]

Quite.

[ColinAlonso]

The DualSense??

I'm calling it the DualShock 5, I'm that stuck in my ways with Sony controllers at this point.

Everything input wise seems the same as the DualShock 4 with a far nicer take on the light bar. There is quite a bit of change in the form factor (for the second console in a row for Sony). The touchpad in particular looks smaller. The controller also looks a lot less rounded, particularly at the bottom where the palms and fingers are (is there a name for this part of a controller??).

The colour scheme is very interesting... especially with the full console in mind...

Also while such a small thing, I like the coloured face buttons and wish Sony kept them.

Edit: It uses a USB-C charging port.

[Magical_Isopod]

I kinda hate that controller, aesthetically. Like, I'm sure it works great, but it looks like a cheap sneaker. (Sneakers = Trainers)

I seriously hope they have different colour variants out the gate by the time I wanna buy a PS5.

[KSubzero1000]

The DualSense??

I'm calling it the DualShock 5, I'm that stuck in my ways with Sony controllers at this point.

Yep, same here. By all means, redesign it. But there's no need to need to throw over 20 years of naming convention out the window to make it sound more important than it actually is. I get the whole 'haptic feedback' selling point but it's still basically an updated version of the DualShock 4 apart from that.