Oh geeze. When you said banned user on your wall, it didn't even register with me that it was a VGC account. That's nasty. If it helps, I was battling fruit flies with Lysol in vent in my bathrooms when I finished MGS4. Like, right when i finished it. My neighbor had an infestation that spilled over to my place, and heavily perfumed Lysol was my defense. I finished it the game under duress, got sick, and retreated to my mom's place at around 3am. And yes, that place had vents that connected the bathrooms, so I often smelled my neighbor's shit. I think the architect was Ivo Shandor.

That was the worst one. I had just worked a 12 hour shift as a cop. Then when I got off, some guy was hiding in the woods and they wanted everyone to come in and look for him. I ignored the call and waited at my local Walmart from like 8pm until midnight. There was a special deal where the 80GB Metal Gear PS3 bundle was "Just $500" and they gave a $100 gift card with the purchase of any Blu Ray player (which included the PS3). I got home at about 1am just in time to connect the system, update it, and go to sleep before my 6am shift the next day.

Then, along came THIS asshole: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/profile/25945/raiden-saves-snake/

You know I also love JRPGs more than any other kind of genre, and even as FF7 is a good game and TLoU is not a RPG, at least to me, there is not even a comparision.

I know you REALLY hate any kind of spoilers so I get you are avoing TLoU2 spoilers, but judging by the first game alone, TLoU is so far ahead...

That's my opinion, of course.

I like GTA, quite a lot actually, but mostly for the fun, and Cyberpunk has not really got me any GTA vibes, but I'll keep an eye for that, as I know we both usually like mostly the same games. CD Project games reeks of boring gameplay to me tho.

Nier Automata... thank you very much.

I still remember how bland it looked to me and how unnapealing anything but the gameplay looked, but boy oh boy how damn good that game is. Definitely a masterpiece.

Not my favorite game this gen, but one of the four to get a perfect mark from me regardless. Worth every single second.

Yakuza Collection is another on my list. Currently working my way through that series now. Next up is Kiwami 2 but that wont be for a few months. Have after stuff I want to play first. I beat Kiwami recently don't want to burn myself out. 

Release date effect

But yeah, ND knew exactly what we wanted.

That’s not really true. Lost Legacy is just as big a game as Uncharted 1. Uncharted 4 was a good 50% bigger than Uncharted 2 and 3. Now The Last of Us is said to be 25-30 hours long. They’re just making much bigger games than they did last gen.

Their output hasn’t been affected as badly as most other devs like Rockstar, BioWare, Rocksteady, etc.

mostly I think it comes down to Sony no longer being interested in putting sequels that exist just to exist. They want a sequel to be leap and not just more of the same with minor improvements. It’s working great for them so far they already have two most awarded games this gen with Death Stranding and Last of Us looking very likely to be the games to beat for these last two years of the gen.

It's not easy to make a gazillion sales open world game. Rockstar put effort to make sure every new open world game is bigger and has more features than the previous installment. No wonder no open world SP game has the sales a GTA has. With rare exceptions like CD Project games which are also taking their time in order to deliver a robust open world game.

Linear games are much easier to make.