I'm not gone on the segmented open world, lack of freedom due to level scaling or using a town hub to pick up 20 quests (litterally) and then expect to known what's what. That's less TES and more TES online. It also lacks simulation elements, NPC routines and much stuff asides. 

Best TES killers right now is the Kingdom Come Deliverence titles. 

Yeah I'm definitely not saying it's an ES killer by a longshot lol it's a AA game that's barely come out of early access, but it's a great compliment to that kind of game.

I would consider the Kingdom Come games to be the killers though as well. They're doing a better job than Bethesda ever has. But the fantasy elements makes ES more enjoyable tbh.

Yeah, I am really hoping the KCD devs slip into fantasy even if it's based on something like D&D. If they managed to get themselves in with Game of Thrones, they'd be perfect for it instead of whatever mess of a dev they licenced the IP to recently. 

Robocop is getting a new Rogue City release however I can't tell yet if it's standalone DLC or a sequel. It's 29,99 so maybe a DLC that got large enough to go standalone. Can't argue with that price though, even if it's 8 hours and as good as Rouge City it'll be worth it.

I fired up the Platinum Games TMNT game for the first time since it launched. I know PG was given less than a year to make it. So extremely short dev time. I think the art looks great. Probably my fave Shredder design.  Sadly it's just a borked game. Camera sucks. Bosses are greatly unbalanced. Mission design is a C grade PS2 game. It's sad. TMNT is my fave cartoon as a kid, and PG for a long time was my fave developer. I don't fault them for this game, but Activision. I would love to see them or maybe Clovers now? Even Capcom DMC team or Team Ninja. Given a real shot at a stylish action TMNT game. Proper time and budget.  I have no faith in a 3D TMNT game with great combat ever happening. I esp don't want one modeled after the brain-dead combat of Batman/Spiderman with parry/attack windows so large a 747 could fly through sideways.

Another Crabs Treasure, free on PS Extra, not only feels great to play as a souls like and quite unique feeling but it is wonderfully campy. Love the tone, the VA is terrible but in the best way and same for the world design and asset use, it's all so stupid but great at the same time. And if you don't feel you want to play it as a souls like there are assist options to reduce the difficulty or many aspects of the difficulty you so please, you can even turn on a mode that gives Krill, the protagonist a handgun shell on his back that one shots everything as an extreme easy mode or you can actually slow down the game if you're reflexes are aging. I don't like difficulty options, hate them, even modifiers and sliders but what they've done here us the best I've ever seen, they are buff and there are three different tiers of them but the options are mainly focused around a shortcoming you may have. I choose to prevent fall damage and loss of souls on death and I'm thinking about extending the oarry window. Everything else feels very reasonable and about just right and after Khazan it's so nice to see small health bars again, they say this is hard mode but certainly not after Khazan.

Would highly recommend after 2 hours or so. (Opinion subject to change). One of the stats to level is MSG which "enhances the damage of umami based attacks" 🤣 Good game. 

Just booted Nightreign

Plan to play with friends, but so far playing by myself yo test the game mechanics

One would need friends who are gamers to play Nightreign, my best friend has annoyances with smart phones. Many people like me and I see it echoed online esspecially with Nightreign that this is a case of the many great looking co-op games or even our favourite games of all time like Divinity OS2 we cannot experience their co-op mode, no matter how much we like the franchise we are sidelined. We aren't all as lucky as @SvennoJ to have the perfect wife....or a wife at all for that matter.

I'm not saying Nightreign looks bad, I'm sure it's fun with friends, I remember that feeling so well as split screen was my favourite way to play games for many years right from the start but Nightreign does not exactly look stellar, if it wasn't Elden Ring I think this would be hitting scores of 60's at best. It does not look balanced even slightly, it looks as if no thought went into it at all and it's just a mish mash of ideas, zero synergy, zero cohesion. I hope I'm wrong and if I do find a gamer friend, oh fuck it would have to be a hard-core gaming friend and all for this one, I might have a good game eto play but I think they'll have to do a lot of post launch work with this one. I see so many red flags with the game but I also see people having fun gor right now in their first few runs. I suspect there will be many influencers making videos saying they don't like this in the next few days regardless. The worst part of a souls game is summoning a player to help you fight a boss and that's what this is to a tee, you already see magic users just sitting back and having a melee player pull aggro, they really REALLLY needed to implement an aggro system of some sort. 

Every enemy in Elden Ring Night Reign and I have not seen one exception...

Played a decent amount of Nightreign as I got it early and it's fun.

It is sloppy and weird and balancing is all over the place but the experience is unique enough and there's enough meat in route and build planning for a couple of dozen hours. Let's see if it lasts.