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Stuff.tv
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
Here's why you're not finishing your games anymore
Take a look at my PSN library, and you'll find a litany of unfinished games: Dave the Diver, FF7: Rebirth, Guardians of the Galaxy, God of War: Ragnarok, all with a story completion percentage well under that credit-rolling 100%. I feel a small sense of shame at not breaching their finales, and it's not a stretch to imagine all these acclaimed titles silently judging me from my console's SSD. This phenomenon isn't just a me problem. According to recent data, only 30% of PlayStation users finished Cyberpunk 2077, while a paltry 17% of players finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Sure, gamers like me are getting older, with more responsibilities and less opportunity to fire up our machines. However, something other than time might be holding us back from clearing our backlog. We need to look at the industry to find out what gives. Let's deal with the obvious answer first — games are much bigger these days. Referred to by many as 'Ubisoftication,' where every title just simply has to feature an immersive world spanning a hundred square miles featuring no less than 25 outposts to liberate, 50 radio towers to clamber, 200 treasure chests and 100 beasts to hunt. The landscape is now one big chore list. Not that it's relegated to Ubisoft titles either — one egregious sidequest in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild tasked you with finding no fewer than 900 in-game Korok seeds, before rewarding you with a golden poop (rude). Still, call me a sucker for being drawn to these games off the back of titles such as Red Dead 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Ghost of Tsushima, which all feature a rich narrative, rousing score, memorable characters, and unparalleled freedom — all that AAA goodness. Play The open world genre has been a tried and tested playstyle for decades, and developers have been desperate to keep their claws hooked into gamers, spending hundreds of millions on these titles and ramming them full of side quests galore. In crafting these expansive environments for us to explore, they've made the moment-to-moment gameplay that was once popular now extremely formulaic. These games pack in upwards of 25 hours of content for just the basic story campaign, while completionists need to lock in over 75 hours to nab that hallowed Platinum. I've dropped 100+ hours in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and there was so much of the map littered with icons to explore and investigate. Doing at least some of that then, becomes a part-time job, often turning gamers off way before the endgame. It's not just endemic in RPGs either, with a raft of sports games, shooters, fighting games and other sandbox titles offering a variant of the open world hub or live service models designed to siphon your precious limited time. Still, here's my take on the real reason — games are so ubiquitous and readily accessible now. Steam released over 18,000 games in 2024 — compare that to around 1,700 just 10 years ago. And with both Microsoft and Sony offering their respective Game Pass and PS Plus libraries, even console gamers have a huge compendium at their fingertips, leading to a heavy case of what psychologists call the paradox of choice. When faced with a slew of titles, we're actually expending more effort to choose and are more likely to experience regret and dissatisfaction with our eventual choice, a bit like scrolling endlessly on your Netflix just to pick something to watch. Gamers might remember a time when all they could play for long stretches was a single game. For me, that was 1998, when my teenage self tucked a freshly bought copy of GoldenEye 007 on the N64 into my backpack and hurried home. For the next few months, I'd play each sleuth-ly level on the game's several difficulties until the treacherous Alec Trevelyan's death count matched Sean Bean's onscreen deaths. Fast forward to today, with dozens of games a short download away and a backlog forming, the choice can be overwhelming, and we generally feel less 'attached' to the titles we pick and play as a result. More, in this instance, actually means less. Is there a way out of this messy compendium of completion-less campaigns? Short of cancelling your subscriptions and going physical only, I'd recommend restricting yourself to one game at a time. You could also mix up genres to alleviate open-world fatigue — after sunsetting a massive RPG, get engrossed in a first-person shooter or 2D platformer instead. The industry is also slowly taking notice, with some pushback on some copy and pasting those samey open world franchises. There's also increasing recognition for shorter AA titles — basically AAA without the bloat. Recent games like Split Fiction and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have sold in their millions, causing many developers to take heed. And in the wake of a deluge of external factors, such as the exponentially rising cost of making games and doing business, some predict that developers will set their sights on crafting smaller games with tighter narratives. And somehow, having 50 eight-hour games on my to-play list feels so much better than eight 50-hour games.
Tom's Guide
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
7 must-play PS5 games you (probably) haven't played this generation
This article is part of Tom's Guide's inaugural Gaming Week, an entire week of content dedicated to all things gaming. From insights into the latest hardware, guides to the best games you can play today, to the essential accessories we can't play without. Tom's Guide Gaming Week will guide you through the world of video games in 2025. Somehow, we're already well into the PS5's fifth year on the market. In the years since Sony's console hit the scene, we've been treated to some top-tier gaming experiences. Sony's console has brought us exclusives like Astro Bot, God of War: Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Helldivers 2 and Returnal, plus amazing multiplatform releases like Baldur's Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Elden Ring, to name but a few. Of course, anyone who keeps up with gaming knows there's always something new to play just around the corner, and the backlog only seems to get bigger. Inevitably, that means you can't always get to some of the best PS5 games and some games fall through the cracks or fail to get the audience they deserve. Seeing as it's gaming week here at Tom's Guide, I felt now was the perfect time to look back at some of the great PS5 games that you might not have gotten around to playing just yet. Third-person, soulslike combat isn't exactly unique these days, but Aggro Crab's fun indie adventure from Aggro Crab is has bags of charm. In Another Crab's Treasure, you take charge of Kril, a wayward hermit crab who has his shell taken away by a loan shark. Armed with a humble fork, you embark on an epic journey across the ocean, battling formidable foes, leveling up, earning new skills, and trying on various bits of sea-floor trash (each with unique abilities) in place of your stolen home. It's following the genre formula, but boasts distinct environments and enemies, satisfying combat, and a fun sense of humor that marks it out from many of its grimdark peers. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. And, unlike similar titles, if a boss takes one too many tries… You can always just pop into the menu real quick and take out your frustrations on the foe in question by toggling an option that equips our plucky hero with a 9mm pistol for a guaranteed one-hit kill. Everywhere I look, I see Firaxis' Marvel's Midnight Suns being called an underrated gem, and these gamers are right. This expansive XCOM-adjacent tactical RPG sees you forming a team of heroes like Blade, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, and Iron Man before heading out into the field and battering foes in brilliantly-realized scraps through an innovative card-based system. Of course, superhero-ing about is tiresome work, and perhaps what really makes the game tick is the in-between stuff, wherein you return to your team's base of operations, The Abbey, and juggle resources, upgrades, research projects and mission rewards while also sending your protagonist, the Hunter, off to hang out with individual teammates — and everything feeds back into making you more and more powerful. You might need some time to get to grips with the combat systems, but Midnight Suns is seriously worth investing time in. I only got around to playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown at the end of 2024, but it ended up being one of my favorite games of the whole year — and that was enough to earn it a spot on our list of the best games you didn't play in 2024. If you like Metroidvania exploration and challenging boss fights, The Lost Crown deserves to be on your radar. It boasts fluid and dynamic combat, engaging boss fights and platforming challenges, secrets to discover, and an intriguing story to boot. I've continued to be disappointed that we won't be getting a follow-up ever since (apparently due to lower-than-expected sales). Despite pitching a sequel, the team's subsequently been disbanded, which is a crying shame. Typically, I'm not an FPS kind of guy. My go-to games are usually sprawling RPGs or your typical single-player, third-person adventures. So when I picked up RoboCop: Rogue City, I really wasn't prepared to be as pleasantly surprised as I was. It's about as authentic a follow-up to the original movie as anyone could want, and it impresses in the visual department. Plus, it matches that admiration and glossy look with punchy combat. The story itself might not be the most inspiring, and it's not exactly ground-breaking gameplay, but for the sheer power fantasy of it all, this is well worth playing. Stomping through the streets as a walking tank of a man and doling out justice is seriously satisfying stuff. Now's a great time to play RoboCop: Rogue City, too, seeing as there's DLC inbound this summer. Hopefully, you added it to your PS Plus library last month — it's worth a play. Awaceb's Tchia is a lush island getaway that everyone should check out. Inspired by New Caledonia, you roam around a fictional archipelago as the titular protagonist in search of your kidnapped father. Exploration plays out Breath of the Wild style, equipping you with the ability to run, jump, sail, glide, and climb about the world with abandon, in search of new things to see and do. Throw in the brilliant 'soul-jumping' mechanic, allowing you to possess animals and inanimate objects, memorable minigames, and tons of collectibles to hoover up, and you've got a beautiful game with a unique identity that makes for a joyful journey Looking for a bite-sized adventure? Fancy playing what is doubtless one of the funniest games on the system? Coal Supper's absurd 'slapformer' is the must-play for you. Casting you as a balding, tiny traveling salesman, Thank Goodness You're Here! is essentially a playable sketch show that sends you off to Barnsworth, a strange town modeled on Northern England. There, you're suddenly wrapped up in the dramas and problems of the local population, helping to grease a man's arm so he can free himself from a grate, securing meat for the local pie shop, or assisting an innuendo-prone gardener played by Matt Berry with his chores. It's incredibly British, absolutely absurd, and side-splittingly funny. If there's one PS5 launch title I'd bet a lot of Ps5 owners haven't tried, it's The Pathless, which no doubt players skipped in favor of the heavy-hitters like Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Demon's Souls. Developed by Giant Squid — the team behind the 2016 underwater adventure, Abzû — The Pathless is another gorgeous, immersive third-person adventure that casts you as 'The Hunter', a nimble archer who is tasked with lifting a curse from the realm with the help of her trusted eagle companion. It's a game that soars thanks to its simple yet satisfying movement system. The Pathless combines a blistering sense of speed with surprising scope, and makes getting from place to place as satisfying as ticking off your main goals. Whether you're dashing from point to point, solving puzzles, or taking on the jumbo-sized, corrupted guardian animals, I'm sure you'll have a blast. And frankly, it's worth playing simply to listen to another album's worth of beautiful music from Austin Wintory.
Hindustan Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
5 best video game remakes and remasters to play in 2025: Last of Us Part 1, RE 4 and more
There are new video game launches every now and then, and it goes without saying that some of the new games coming out are truly incredible and do push the industry forward. Back in the last decade or so, we have had several critically acclaimed games, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us Part II, God of War: Ragnarok, the new Spider-Man games for PlayStation, and more. But there's just something about games that are several years old. They remind you of the old world, of nostalgia, of your childhood. But, not everyone can go back to these old games because they have grown accustomed to the way games look and feel now, with new UI, refined modern controls, and almost photo-realistic graphics. In this case, remastered or remakes of games do have an important role to play. They essentially allow the new generation of gamers to experience some of the older masterpieces. Yes, it isn't exactly the same experience, but still, they act as a gateway for people to go back in time and experience the classics. Let us tell you about five such games that have been remastered or remade over the years and are now available on modern consoles for you to play. Also Read: New Gmail scam alert: It's hard to spot and Google is rushing to fix it Resident Evil 4 was a classic on the PlayStation 2, having launched in 2005. It's considered one of the best Resident Evilgames ever. a remake was launched in 2023 with modern visuals and controls, allowing a whole new generation of gamers to experience this classic. It features Leon Kennedy in the lead role and, if you don't appreciate the style recent RE games have gone to, this might be a good way to experience what Resident Evil was, back in the day. Shadow of the Colossus was remade in 2018 for the PlayStation 4. The original launched in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, which had several limitations. Having a way to play this masterpiece now is truly beneficial, as it remains one of the best video game experiences you can have to take down 16 massive creatures known as Colossi. There's a lot of puzzle-solving and strategic movement, and the overall journey is stunning. Fortunately, it's available as part of the PlayStation Plus Extra subscription, so if you are subscribed, you don't need to pay extra to enjoy it. While it might not seem very old, The Last of Us Part I originally launched in 2013 for the PlayStation 3. Despite being relatively recent, playing the original version now feels dated due to performance issues, the frame rate used to dip to around 23–24 fps in taxing scenarios. The game was remastered for PlayStation 4, and then fully remade for PlayStation 5. This version features modern visuals, arguably even better than The Last of Us Part II, and is a must-play if you own a PS5. The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs ever made. The boss battles are some of the best ever, the storyline is gripping, and the amount of content is vast, you will always find something new to do. However, the original version needed performance improvements. Fortunately, it was optimised and remastered for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022. If you're in the mood for an RPG and haven't played The Witcher 3, or just want to revisit it, this version is the one to try. Persona 3 Reload is a remake of the classic Persona 3. You don't need to have played the previous Persona games to enjoy this one, as each game features a unique available on PS4, PS5, PC, and Xbox consoles, including Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. This isn't just a simple remake, it introduces numerous upgrades, including improved gameplay, updated visuals, and an updated art style. However, the core remains the same, blending traditional turn-based RPG mechanics with social simulation elements. Mobile finder: iPhone 16 LATEST price, specs and all details">iPhone 16 LATEST price, specs and all details
