Red Dead Redemption 2

Is Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the greatest games of all time, really the best Xbox One and PS4 title? Yes, it is, because even with the hardware limitations, Rockstar Games delivered an excellent open-world action-adventure. The story is fantastic; the characters, especially protagonist Arthur Morgan, are fantastic; and the gameplay, while not for everyone, is realistic and incredibly detailed with a wide range of activities.

2019 ended a decade that was filled with a lot of fine games ranging from a variety of different genres. But it seems that one game really stuck out for a lot of players as seen via the user poll Metacritic put up, and that’s Sony and Naughty Dog’s survival based The Last of Us.

The game was voted Game of the Decade by those participating in the poll. It beat out the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2, Bloodborne and a host of other highly rated and beloved games. You can see the full list here. For many of those who play games and don’t dabble in other media, it was probably one of their first exposures to a narrative of its nature, I imagine, and the game’s influence on the industry is pretty obvious.

The game’s sequel, The Last of Us Part 2, is slated to come out later this year after suffering a delay. It’s obviously got a lot to live up to for some people, so hopefully Naughty Dog is up to the task.

Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2 is perhaps one of the biggest releases of the past few years. However, the first game continues to be a huge success for Sony. According to Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, The Last of Us has sold over 20 million copies on PS4 and PS3. It was last reported to have sold 17 million copies as of June 2018.

The Last of Us launched for the PlayStation 3 in 2013 and stuck out for its story-telling and graphical prowess. It would be re-released on the PS4 as The Last of Us Remastered and see several visual improvements. Along with the base game, there was also the Left Behind DLC which could be played standalone.

The Last of Us Part 2 releases on February 21st 2020 for PS4. Along with being “about 50 percent bigger” than the previous game, it will also have larger areas akin to Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Uncharted 2 sold over 6m copies on PS3, prior to the release of the Uncharted Collection on PS4.

Naughty Dog's reputation has grown significantly since then and today Uncharted 4 has sold over 16m copies on PS4 and The Last of Us has sold over 20m copies on PS3/PS4. https://t.co/w1OJVe1Af0

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) October 13, 2019

Sony has confirmed which two PS4 games it will be giving away for free to PlayStatio Plus subscribers during the month of October, and it’s… not the best lineup in the world. It’s not particularly bad, but not everyone will be happy with it.

The two free PS Plus games for the month of October are The Last of Us Remastered and MLB The Show 19. The Last of Us Remastered is, of course, an absolute masterpiece, and now is a great time to replay it (or play it) before the sequel hits next year. But this is a five year old game that a whole lot of people already have.

Then there’s MLB The Show 19, which is also a very well made and accomplished baseball sim. But it’s also a game that isn’t going to generate much (if any) interest in most places outside of North America (especially Europe), so a lot of people probably won’t care that it’s free.

Either way, if you haven’t played either of these two great games before, this is a great chance to do so. As mentioned earlier, these will be free during the month of October.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Yes, the story-telling was uneven and the ending was kind of disappointing. However, Kojima Productions’ Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain absolutely delivers on the promise of systemic stealth gameplay. Guide a robot arm into a guard’s face. Sabotage convoys with horse dung. Wait till dark for more cover and exploit every aspect of the environment to succeed. All of this only scratches the surface of what’s possible with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

DriveClub

Evolution Studios’ DriveClub had a pretty rough start with server issues and glitches making a lot of the content inaccessible. Nevertheless, the developer stuck with it, improving the experience, adding more content and branching out into different ideas (like bikes). By now, DriveClub stands as one of the better racing experiences out there, even if it isn’t as hyper-realistic as, say, Gran Turismo Sport.

Until Dawn

Wonky frame rate aside, there’s a whole lot to like about Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn. It has all the odes to a teenage horror slasher except the overall direction is influenced by your decision making. The backstory and lore is fairly well done, even if some of the characters can be grating (looking at you, Emily). Most importantly of all, it’s scary especially when making all the wrong decisions and potentially getting everyone killed because, well, they die in horrible, horrible ways.

PT- Seeing Lisa for the first time

Nobody was even quite sure what PT was or what was going on at first, so the creepy atmosphere, abandoned house, radio spouting strange stories about murders and some really disturbing imagery in the sink was creepy enough, but the single moment that would put the Playable Teaser over the top and on this list would be the first time we encountered Lisa, the horrid spectre that stalks the player and restarts the game if they make the wrong move.

A brand new update for The Last of Us Remastered has been released. Update 1.09 expands and improves upon the game’s support for Sony’s PS4 Pro console, mostly by adding more graphical options ad configurations for players to pick from when playing on Sony’s superpowered upgrade to the PS4.

However, while 4K and HDR TV owners are likely to experience the best of this new update, standard HDTV owners will greatly enjoy a graphical boost, too- this is because supersampling has been added into the game with this new update, which should improve graphical quality for lower resolution screens and panels, too. Unlike the Xbox One X, the PS4 Pro does not feature system level supersampling, so support for it must be added individually, on a game by game basis.

The Last of Us Remastered was an update of the original PS3 game, released in 2014 for the PS4; the enhancements in the new update will also all apply to Left Behind, its standalone DLC, which is included in the package with it, as well.

General:

• Modified PlayStation 4 Pro enhancements settings
• Added user options related to the PlayStation 4 Pro enhancement settings

Multiplayer:

• Fixed an issue that could cause a player to aim downward inadvertently
• Fixed an exploit where players could throw a smoke bomb to get inside of level collision

Though The Last of Us Remastered looks pretty good on the PS4 Pro…that is, before the most recent update. Senior communications manager revealed on the PlayStation US Blog that a new update has been introduced to improve performance on the PS4 Pro version of the game.

“We introduced bug fixes and optimizations that will ensure a consistent and high level of performance on the PS4 Pro. Now, when running The Last of Us Remastered on the PS4 Pro on a standard high-definition display, the game will run natively at 1080p and offer high-quality shadows when running at its high-framerate mode.”

However, NeoGAF quickly noted that supersampling was removed from the 1800p version, thus resulting in more jaggies and worse image quality. It was also revealed that supersampling was also removed from the 4K native, 30 FPS mode. Keep in mind that Naughty Dog hasn’t seemingly confirmed these changes. If its actually been removed for the sake of slightly better performance, than you have to wonder whether it’s worth it to sacrifice image quality in the process.