So yeah, it's there, and the threat can grow suddenly and apparently recede even faster, so there's no conclusive way to gauge it, which I think just adds to the genius of it being something that has you uneasy as it looms behind you...

or it's just a bug

I hope you aren't this toxic

toxic

That's a laugh, seeing you use that word.
I guess you gave up on the whole "noble Political Incorrectness Warrior against the Social Justice Warriors" thing because they already lost.
Let's see another quote from another post:

Is it over the top? Is it really criticism?

Is saying they're coasting and playing it safe and not doing what people (read: you) wanted criticism? Yes, it is, and you're slipping if you think you can deny it.
At least I'm not so """toxic""" I actively tried to make someone leave the forum forever for the sin of trying to make a living.

So yeah, it's there, and the threat can grow suddenly and apparently recede even faster, so there's no conclusive way to gauge it, which I think just adds to the genius of it being something that has you uneasy as it looms behind you...

or it's just a bug

I hope you aren't this toxic and negative in real life, dude, you really need to...

Anyway, intentional or not (given the way the game is designed, it's likely intentional), anything that adds to a game experience in a positive way is definitely a feature, and the rot's mysterious nature is definitely something cool, regardless of what some simple-minded negative nancies who haven't played the game at all (TotatBiscuit, specifically) say. I recommend it! ;)

PS. If all of your saltiness comes from the fact that it's not on Xbox, it is available on PC as well, so don't feel too bad, you can still check it out!

So yeah, it's there, and the threat can grow suddenly and apparently recede even faster, so there's no conclusive way to gauge it, which I think just adds to the genius of it being something that has you uneasy as it looms behind you...

or it's just a bug

I had a particularly tough section where I died about four times to the same group of enemies, and the rot shot up above Senua's shoulders (permadeath occurs when the rot reaches her brain). I was extremely tense for a while, until I died again about an hour later, and the rot actually receded back down her arm. Compare this first picture that I took shortly before that death, and the super-spoilery one that I took shortly after:

So yeah, it's there, and the threat can grow suddenly and apparently recede even faster, so there's no conclusive way to gauge it, which I think just adds to the genius of it being something that has you uneasy as it looms behind you...

or maybe it's just not a very good game,

Experienced it twice, loved it twice, going to start another playthrough, and it's one of the few games that Sammy enjoys enough to play through more than once, so I'm pretty confident in saying that I feel like it's a great game.

and maybe the perma-death feature is pointless if you have two working hands,

Ultimately it isn't a real threat, but just another way that the game makes you feel uneasy. It's technically not a lie, but for those who play it on Hard difficulty, racking up deaths does get more and more stressful, especially since the infection can become visually misleading... Even knowing that the permadeath wasn't exactly what folks thought it was, I became pretty anxious near the end, despite only dying a small handful of times. It's a neat tool used very effectively by the devs.

and maybe the whole mental illness thing is shit:

Nah, the mental illness thing was used to great effect, and the context and different ways that they implemented it is shown in a documentary that comes with the game apart from the numerous ViDocs that they released over the past couple of years.

Unless you're an expert in mental health issues, it helps to actually play the game to know what you're talking about. ;)

...and from the looks of it, we're going to coast off another three years of much of the same repetitive grind that we have been for the past three years.

Stopped reading there.

You buried what looks like it might have been a great opinion piece about what gamers want and about a very interesting looking new game by starting off with dumb hyperbole. You may not be excited for Destiny 2, but others like me are. I can't speak for all of them, but you certainly put me off from caring about whatever point you were actually trying to make.

he can't resist trying to piss people off, it's why he shouldn't be here, he should be in therapy or something because normal people don't enjoy making people mad
(that said you're being a little hyperbolic yourself if you actually stopped reading there, or indeed if you're not telling the truth about it)

This is not a math problem. Fun is subjective. Some people like slicing their balls with razor blades. Clearly any statement with regard to fun or entertainment value is therefore automatically an opinion.

after the crunch, the freeze, the fizzle, at the end of all things, there will be Cody not understanding how he comes off to people
maybe you should get yourself tested
(that said this instance was not as bad as some, and the commonly held opinion tends to influence other opinions, in this case making people think "well does he state it that way? maybe he does")

You convinced me--I bought it.

I'm always happy to be a positive influence. It's what I live for, really. :v

Only played about an hour or so, but I've really enjoyed what I've played so far.

I've seen most reviewers finish it in 6-8 hours. It bummed me a bit that they seemed to have rushed through, because it took Sammy about 10 hours, and I'm over a dozen hours into the game, and I'm just under 3/4 of the way through (judging from the Lorestones, which I'm making an effort to find every single one on my first playthrough). There are a lot of hidden Lorestones that give you context for the areas that you are in, mostly through short retellings of Norse and Celtic mythologies. I can't go into them without getting into spoiler territory, but Sammy and I had some neat talks about the actual mythologies versus how they fit into the context of the game, and what lessons Senua was meant to learn from them, but it seems like most reviewers have skipped them for the sake of getting to the end credits.

The presentation alone pulled me in (seriously, headphones are a MUST for this game). Between Uncharted 4, Horizon, and now this, I'm a genuinely amazed at how good PS4 games are looking.

There aren't many games in recent memory that have brought tears to my eyes, but this game really hits you hard once the credits start rolling, and I couldn't even hear the last hour of the game, since Sammy had her headphones on. I could really go on and on about it, but despite a few nitpicks (early on, the game leads you to believe that you'll be able to revisit previous areas, but after a certain point, that is no longer the case, and if you miss a Lorestone, you've missed it for good), it's a fantastic experience from beginning to end, and even my nitpicks have subtle solutions (Each Lorestone has a mark on it for each area, which lets you know which ones you missed before you head to the next region. And Lorestones aren't required for anything, but there is an acknowledgement for finding them all in a single playthrough, and like I said, they really add to the experience).

Plus, it really stood out to me that Sammy went from frustrated, angry, and scared in the beginning (so much so that she had me do a particularly spoopy segment for her) to charging in face-first against hordes of enemies and a multi-boss fight in Hel itself for Senua's sake. The story really gets you to care about the characters that well...

Anyway, I really recommend watching the documentary included after you finish the game, because it really puts into perspective how much effort was put into nailing the psychosis elements of the game. As PSLifestyle's Michael Bryers put it, "by working closely with neuroscientists and those unfortunate few who have been diagnosed as psychotic, Hellblade carefully avoids those cheap, half-assed tropes that render a character insane and, therefore, woefully one-dimensional. Not only does it act as a disservice to those who suffer with mental illness, this practice of painting in broad strokes only minimizes the room for nuance, but Senua’s Sacrifice boldly cuts through the white noise". It's not only a great game in terms of story or the experience that it gives, but it also uses the medium to say something worth saying, which I feel is worth recognizing.

Anyway, since I have far too much rushing through my head that I don't want to talk about because spoilers, I'll end my post with some non-spoilery 4K screenshots that I hope you enjoy...

And if you're not too bothered by Spoilers, visual or otherwise, check these below...

Only played about an hour or so, but I've really enjoyed what I've played so far. The presentation alone pulled me in (seriously, headphones are a MUST for this game). Between Uncharted 4, Horizon, and now this, I'm a genuinely amazed at how good PS4 games are looking.

Was the first jump such an ordeal because you wanted to avoid tandem jumping?

You have a terrible habit that you have always been called out on, and you don't ever try to fix it. You never say "in my opinion". No, people are not supposed to infer that something is "just your opinion" when you phrase it as a fact. Do better.

This is not a math problem. Fun is subjective. Some people like slicing their balls with razor blades. Clearly any statement with regard to fun or entertainment value is therefore automatically an opinion.

Is your ISP charging you by the bit?

I think this is such a stupid argument and has been for the longest time. Your word choice puts people off in the extreme. You seem to want people to presume the extra short words other people put in to qualify their opinions AS OPINIONS because presumably you just can't be bothered to type them.

You may have a point that without objective proof, ANYTHING anyone says here is opinion.

You may have a point that concepts like "fun" are indeed essentially subjective and therefore no assertion being made with regard to them could legally be interpreted as an assertion of fact.

If this were a courtroom those points would matter, but this is a social group where people are trying to interact, not just win arguments. The idea that you'll spend time and effort to explain why all posts are opinion and all relevant concepts are subjective but you WON'T spend the time and effort to put in the few extra fractions of a section to qualify your statements out of politeness to other people negatively affects the reception of your opinions. It sends the message that while others qualify their statements, you don't have to, either because your opinions are less deserving of qualification, or that the manner in which others perceive your opinions is less important to you than your raw expression of those opinions.

Sigh.

I've often argued against folks like Cruel, who bemoan grinds, and who claim that you need to "grind for weeks" in Destiny to have fun or succeed. Those claims are false. You only grind as much as you want to. There are tons of different activities to do, and all of them these days help you get ahead.

Three of which were really actually 'fun' - Raids, Trials, and Crucible.

Raids are sometimes fun.

I like story missions, patrols, and strikes.

Anyway, I played a good bit, and I've enjoyed the experience quite a bit, even though it's pretty stressful and weird (to top it off, due to some remodeling and the way the cables are set up, my TV is on top of a cabinet, so I had to stand the entire time that I was playing, adding an extra bit of weirdness to the whole thing). Early on, you are given a choice of two paths that you can take. I got through most of the Valravn section, so when Sammy started that part, I told her that I could help her out if she got stuck... except the game surprised me. One section that was a simple puzzle for me was now a multi-part puzzle for her. The voices in her head gave her a different piece of advice than they had given me, and I could only help her with half of the puzzle. Shortly after, she had to do an entire puzzle room that I didn't see at all, so I couldn't do anything but watch her solve it herself. It threw me off and left me confused, and I wasn't even the one playing.

There was also a cool moment with the boss battle that I don't want to spoil, but Sammy's frustration made her blurt out something about the boss that was infuriating her, and a second later, she had an "A-ha!" look on her face as she figured out what she had to do to counter the frustrating aspect of the fight. Despite getting curb-stomped for much of the fight, she instantly turned it around once she had it figured out, and she managed to narrowly avoid one of those potentially-costly deaths.

Anyway, I thought that was cool, and I also think it's neat that when I go through the rooms that she did, I might run into different puzzles or fights.

Also, this game definitely isn't for everyone, but if nothing else, you should really experience the sequence where Senua dies in combat for the first time; definitely on my list of most memorable death sequences in gaming...

Wait... am I reading this wrong, or do you really believe that people would have the same reasons for moving to Greece as they would for playing a video game?

You are reading it wrong. Or I am not communicating correctly.

That being said, I'm also an outlier. I've played more games than most humans. Heck, it was my job for two glorious weeks to play every FPS game currently for sale at GameStop as "market research" to help fine tune Call of Duty's online multiplayer. I don't even remember all the games I played (it was like 5 a day, just to ensure I got to play a bit of all of them). My point is, I've seen some shit. I know games, I've played games. And, in the last five years or so, I've really been searching for games with novel mechanics that draw me in.

Back in the old days of Mac Gaming (Yes, i'm one of those), before every game in a genre was basically the same game reskinned, there were some great games like Quarterstaff, which featured interactive characters you could talk to, or Wizardry, which invented prestige classes, though no one knew that's what they'd be called when DnD finally did the same thing years later, or Citadel, which had too many novel features to include here, but I'll list a few: Parentage and upbringing determined your starting stats and available classes, spells were discovered as graffiti in the lower levels on the dungeon, so if you never looked at the walls you'd miss some important ones, though you could always experiment by randomly mixing runes to see if a new effect occurred, and combat was a 2D map where you could move freely and attack anyone within the radius on your weapon - all things I'd never seen before.

Now, as time has passed, we have a shorthand for most games. A yellow ! means they have a quest for you, good items are Purple, For some reason the entire way the game is played changes if you hit max level (seriously I hate that design element of modern games). It's... boring. Especially when games don't invest in a story to keep you hooked. Like, WHY should I spend my limited free time playing your game which is the same as everyone else's game? I played all of 5 minutes of the latest CoD because holy shit it's basically Destiny. Think bigger, guys.

So here you present me with a question: Do I want my games to surprise me? The answer is a resounding YES. I do. I have grown bored of the tired tropes of triple-A tripe. I yearn for the novel, the original, the unexpected. Save the Date was a revelation to me. Horizon Zero Dawn was a delightful surprise. I did not even bother buying Mass Effect Andromeda despite being enthralled with ME3's multiplayer. In a space where anything you can think to make is possible, making the same old thing is lazy at best. And I get it. The formula for corporate profits is minimal investment for maximal return. This is why Madden is just a stat update with 1 new feature every year. And why CoD is now aping Destiny. And why freemium games that are basically slot machines couched in competitive gameplay are all the rage (Hearthstone, anyone?).

If you don't game as much as I do, if you haven't lived through the development of the gamer shorthand and seen what it was when no one agreed on what it had to be, then you probably like that you can pick up any game and "get it" right away. I certainly did for a while. But I've changed. And now I want to be surprised.

You always wanted to go skydiving. And you did. You wanted to write a book about Bungie. So you are. Congrats, you have a will.

I moved to countries where I haven't spoken the language and knew nobody and had no place to stay, sleeping in parks until I had enough money. Because I wanted to go to Greece or whatever.

I ride motorcycles, I started a fountain pen website, I learned guitar, I was in a band. I wanted to do these things beforehand.

I wanted to buy Borderlands 2, based off Borderlands. So I did.

I wanted to buy Bioshock based on my actual ideals being those lambasted by the game. So I did.

I wanted to buy Tomb Raider based on gameplay videos, reviews, and reading the plot synopsis. So I did.

Oh man, I must not take any chances and be a shut-in because I wasn't sure about a game until I researched it thoroughly.

Based on that, how can you say you don't like surprises and the unexpected? Unless you hated that experience in Greece that sounds like you took a chance. I have difficulty seeing how that thirst for adventure would be quelled when it comes to picking up a video game.

You yourself have said before you do not like things like blind raiding, and would rather be told what to do. You can want to pick up a game and still be surprised. Technically everything we do is because we want to. Everything.

Wait... am I reading this wrong, or do you really believe that people would have the same reasons for moving to Greece as they would for playing a video game?

I have a 'thirst for adventure'... sometimes. I do things that might turn out badly, and sometimes they don't. But I don't have the same risk assessment process apply to a scuba diving trip as to a purchase of a laundry hamper - why are you surprised that Funk treats gameplaying differently than other life experiences?