Plus Sony drops compulsory PlayStation accounts for PC single player games
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou and Chris Button. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER.
FIONA: Hi I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
KYLE: and I’m Kyle Pauletto
FIONA: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
KYLE: This week the Sims are back baby with rereleases of the first two games, Sony relents on its forced PS accounts for PC games and cool indie game Clair Obscur is so popular it runs out of copies.
Here is the news for Sunday 2nd of February. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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FIONA: To celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Sims, Sims 1 and 2 have been re-released on PC.
Both games are out now and include most of the DLC packages that were available originally.
Fans are understandably excited.
It’s been so long since you’ve been able to play the first two games, with Sims 1 being a disc-only release which doesn’t run on most computers nowadays and Sims 2 taken offline over a decade ago.
Old save files should work on the games too which is neat but this isn’t a remaster it’s a straight re-release.
KYLE: You can buy each game individually or there is a pack that includes both.
Arguably the current version of Sims 4 is better in pretty much every way, but it’s hard to compete with nostalgia.
While Sims 4 is still going strong since its release nearly 11 years ago, some people just really miss the ability to trap a Sim in the pool by taking the ladder away.
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KYLE: The team behind the upcoming Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 game has revealed that the Collector’s Edition is so popular that they can’t meet the demand.
The developers, Sandfall Interactive, shared on X that they never thought they would sell out of the collector’s edition so early or that there would even be such a demand for their physical editions.
The team said it was quite a feat to even get the editions made and they will see what they can do about restocking but they can’t promise anything.
FIONA: It’s always great to see an indie game and studio receive so much love and attention, even before their game comes out.
The game will be released on April 24 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X\S and PC.
Oh and while we're on this game, there are already talks of a film adaptation. This thing isn’t even out yet! Talk about high expectations.
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FIONA: Uh oh, Sony is in trouble.
PC players have been pretty spoiled lately with a heap of precious PlayStation exclusive games making their way to PCs.
Sadly. Spider-Man 2’s PC launch has landed with a bit of a thud, with nearly half the steam reviews swinging to the negative side of the scale.
Some players are reporting random crashes, while others say that despite their high end rigs, the game is basically unplayable.
KYLE: IGN is reporting that the issue seems to be stemming from the games graphics controller, even for players with top of the line PCs.
Plus some of the key features players were looking forward to like DLSS and ray tracing arent working at all, load times are excessive, and textures are missing.
All in all, not exactly what you’d expect given the track record of the PS ports being pretty positive.
Lord knows I cannot afford a PlayStation 5 pro, so hopefully we get some updates soon, and this doesn’t deter Sony from making more ports.
FIONA: Well it seems Sony is already trying to win back fans, because they’ve announced that PC players will no longer need to have a PlayStation Network account to play their PC ports.
For single player games at least.
That’s right. Remember all that rigamarole around Helldivers II last year, which saw players in certain countries without PS accounts being locked out.
Well that was all for nothing, because Sony has thrown in the towel on forcing sign ups.
KYLE: They are going to try and entice you to sign up in other ways though, so they haven't gone full good guy mode don’t worry.
Instead they’ll add bonus content like certain Spider-Man suits or Armor for Kratos behind a sign up wall.
Lucky for me, I don’t even care that mu…oh my god look how sick that Spider-Man 2099 suit is dammit Sony.
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KYLE: That’s it for the headlines, here are the games coming out this week.
FIONA: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, by Warhorse Studios is the highly anticipated Action RPG sequel that promises a heap of new features for the series like crossbows and early medieval firearms. That’s coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X on the 4th of Feb.
KYLE: And out on the 6th is Rift of the NecroDancer, the latest rhythm action game in the necrodancer series that sees our hero transported to a strange world of rock and roll riffs and all new monsters to take down in rhythmic style. Pick it up on PC and Switch this Thursday.
FIONA: Keep Driving is a pixel art roguelite where you roll across the country picking up hitchhikers and listen to CDs of cool indie bands. It's got a good vibe to it and feels a bit like a spiritual successor to Oregon Trail in a way. Pick that one up on PC on the 6th.
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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FIONA: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus.
KYLE: And my name is Kyle Pauletto, thank you so much for listening.
FIONA: Hey have you been to our website lately? Sifter.com.au is the address and we’ve got a stack of interesting stories up there for you to read…how do game dev graduates feel about the industry and their prospects in it? Great reviews of games like Citizen Sleeper 2 and many more to come. That address again is sifter.com.au
KYLE: SIFTER is produced by myself, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Adam Christou, Courtney Smith and Chris Button. The episode is edited by both Senior Producer Mitch Loh and Gianni Di Giovanni who is SIFTER’s Executive Producer and also Walkthrough’s script editor.
FIONA: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
KYLE: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday.
