pumpkinwhite123

Exactly. Was going to comment on the same thing. One usually sees mention of random reddit posts on click-bait websites. Didn't expect to see it on Polygon.

Note to author - If one has to quote an opinion, it ought to be an industry insider or someone with credentials covering that media. Quoting random reddit users reduces the quality of reporting. And if one has to, it better be something insightful or unique. In this case, same sentiment could have been expressed directly without quoting random unknowns.

The review makes valid points but as a reviewer you should try and look at the bigger picture as well. Not everyone has the time or skill to beat tough rogue-likes. Maybe the game was too easy for you. But it might be in someone else’s sweet-spot. It’s easy to review a game based on just your own experience. But part of the skill in reviewing the game is putting yourself in the shoes of various other types of gamers and then suggesting how you think they’ll receive it.

Another reviewer makes a very valid point that just 6% of gamers finished Returnal. When you take that into perspective is it really an overcorrection? A game that is tuned to be slightly more easy is not really a bad game. It’s a design decision, over which I think you are knocking them too much.

A point of reference is the IGN review that says the problem with the game is that it’s too repetitive having to grind through levels again and again. Your experience seems to be the opposite with you completing new biomes back to back in first tries. Goes to show how difficult it is to tune the difficulty of a rogue like.

I do respect the point you are making but I do think you are doing the game a disservice by not considering varying skill levels.

Don't know what the outcome will be in a year, but as of now the numbers definitely look bad. The bigger problem in my opinion is not that the numbers are relatively low for such a high budget game, it’s that they are continuing to decline and have not bottomed out yet. Typically a game will drop after launch but will eventually reach stability with consistent players. In this case nobody knows what that consistent player base number is, cause the player numbers just keep going down. I hope for the studio’s and developer’s sake it reaches stability soon.

Sony has absolutely been testing this in the US, and it is not new. Not sure why this is suddenly news now. As far as a year back, many users were reporting deep discounts on the complete edition of Stellar Blade. But not all accounts had the same discount. It was clearly targeted since the discount price was the same for the ones who got that discount. It was also reported on HellDivers 2. If one looks back into old threads on reddit or deals sites like slickdeals, I'm sure it'll be easy to find threads. I faintly recollect it happening for Astro Bot also, but I'm not absolutely certain about that one. In any case, point is -- targeted pricing on the PlayStation store in the United States is nothing new. They've been doing it for over a year.