The Monday letters page plays the PlayStation 2 to celebrate its 25th anniversary, as one reader recommends Immortals Fenyx Rising for free on PC.
Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk
Quick play
I beat the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 campaign at the weekend. That was quick, you might say, but not really. It only lasted four hours. And it still managed to be a complete waste of my time anyway. I’m not surprised Activision didn’t send it out to sites ahead of time because there’s no way this is going to review well in the end.
It’s also obvious why they didn’t do the thing where you can play the campaign a week ahead of time, like they have sometimes. And yet… I still wouldn’t say it’s the worst I’ve ever played. It’s better than Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 6’s campaign. Those are the lowest bars there are but even so, I’m not going to pretend it’s even worse than it is, just to make a point.
What I would say though is that Activision should just give up on campaign mode. I thought they always said, going back years, that hardly anyone plays them anyway, so it’s just a waste of time and money that they could spend on the multiplayer, and making bigger changes there.
I was completely fine with Black Ops 4 having no campaign, the problem with that is that you could see they didn’t take the resources from that and put it in the multiplayer, they just pocketed the difference. If Call Of Duty is going to stay on top it’s got to make more of an effort to change and it can start by ditching what doesn’t work and figuring out something new.
Campbell
Corporate shield
I’m not sure it would be an easy win for Steam Machine against PlayStation 6, like the Reader’s Feature suggested, but I do think Xbox’s demise has awakened a giant, perhaps others too if Amazon and Google also get ideas.
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However, I do think that Xbox was very easy competition for Sony. They kept them on their toes to a degree, but except for a very brief period, in the early days of the Xbox 360, they were nowhere close to being a threat to Sony.
That means that Sony got a free field to play almost the entire PlayStation’s existence and the fact that Xbox were in the industry meant that other big companies didn’t try to muscle in, because they thought there were already too many players.
The minute that ends you get that Steam annoucement. In a way Xbox has been running cover for PlayStation all these years and now Sony has lost an unintentional ally.
Focus
The old ways
Having just completed Super Mario Bros. 3 again (via Super Mario All-Stars on my Classic Mini SNES) I’ve just learned that the original NES release didn’t have a save or password feature!
How did anyone manage to complete this without using the warp whistles hidden in the game? It must have took a fair few hours in one sitting and a lot of skill back in the day.
Adams6legend
GC: Most 8-bit NES games were the same. Saves weren’t universal in the 16-bit era either, with many games relying on a password system of one sort or another.
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Not a fan
Played a game on PS4 Pro the other day for the first time in about four years, it’s an app box now. It made me appreciate the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
I’d forgotten how loud the fan can get. The attached video isn’t the loudest it will go, I’d say it’s about 60 – 70%. The PlayStation 5 and especially the Xbox Series X are as quiet as a mouse.
The loading times and 30fps were jarring also. It’s kinda first world problems but made me appreciate how well the current gen has delivered on the selling points of 60fps and lightning fast load times, while also making me remember that last gen hardware was really being stretched, keeping up with the games built for it.
The game I was playing was the DLC for Immortals Fenyx Rising. Loved the base game and got the Platinum for it. PlayStation Trophies are annoying though, as when they add DLC that has them it takes your completion down from 100%.
A bit of OCD, wanted to get it back up to 100%, and as the free PlayStation 5 upgrade generates a new trophy set for the PlayStation 5 version, I stuck with the PlayStation 4 version.
It’s a great game though, that I would recommend playing on either PlayStation 4 or 5.
Simnudo
GC: Yes, the incredibly noisy fan (it almost ruined our appreciation of The Last Of Us Part 2, it got so loud at times) is one of the main reasons the PlayStation 5 is so big.
Hive mind
Heads up GC readers. Immortals Fenyx Rising is currently free on Ubisoft Connect (PC) until 2nd of December.
It’s been on my wishlist for a while now, though I am not in any rush to play it currently as I am just finishing up Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, with a slight open world fatigue – after more than 150 hours in-game time (according to the Nintendo store app) and more than two years of real world time.
Ali K
GC: It’s always weird when two readers write in about the same relatively obscure subject – since the letter above yours seems unaware the game is currently free on PC. It happens a surprising amount. In fact, the PlayStation 2 one at the bottom of the page is also quite similar to the PS4 Pro one, in terms of general sentiment.
Art attack
As always, I enjoyed the Reader’s Features that turn up every weekend and was making my way through the Call of Duty is dead article just this weekend when something made me spit out my cornflakes. Now I should say I have zero interest in Call of Duty as an entertainment product, and know very little about it generally, other than the type of person it seems to attract.
The article made what I assume to be a pejorative reference to new play cards looking like something from Studio Ghibli and I was slightly dumb struck. Can someone explain how that’s a bad thing? It’s honestly the first interesting thing I’ve ever heard about a Call Of Duty game and at the very least I’ve come to defend Studio Ghibli being used as some kind of negative reference. Call Of Duty wishes it had an ounce of Ghibli character in my limited estimation.
Would also like to add I’m not sending any hate towards the author – enjoyed the article despite this. Just take Studio Ghibli out of your mouth (lol).
Chris
GC: Did you not click the link he provided? It’s AI slop specifically trained on the Studio Ghibli art style. It’s not even Call of Duty style imagery, with guns and soldiers, and still has a quasi-medieval theme. It’s one of the worst things we’ve ever seen from a major publisher.
A penny saved
For people who will be picking up a digital edition of Metroid Prime 4 but are put off by the £58.99 price tag there is a way to get it for £8 less.
It does mean having an available Switch voucher for the Switch 1 edition of games (or purchasing two for £84) then essentially pick up the Switch 1 edition of the game, which will cost £42, and then pay £7.99 for the upgrade, so it will cost just under £50.
I have an available voucher left so will be doing this if it reviews well.
Charlie H.
Modern conveniences
Recently I bought a refurbished phat PlayStation 2, not to celebrate the console’s anniversary but to play some old PlayStation 2 games that I have, because I didn’t want to buy them again digitally or attempt to stream them.
It was only after I started using the console that I was reminded of the fact that you can’t quit out of any game on the PlayStation 2. To change games you have to reset the console and press the disc eject button. Having to do this in 2025 feels so… old fashioned.
A good analogy might be if you bought a classic car only to be rudely reminded that in the ‘good old days’ drivers didn’t have power steering, they had to manually wind their windows up and down, and Bluetooth was pure science fiction, as was satellite navigation. When we were driving somewhere new in the long forgotten past we usually got completely lost and had to pull over and stare at a paper map.
People seem to relentlessly moan about the modern consoles that we have today, but they are nicely refined and comparatively user friendly. PlayStation 2 games are still great, however, even if you can’t quit out of them.
Michael Veal (@msv858)
Inbox also-rans
Kudos to the guy who did a reader’s review of the new Time Crisis mini-console, but holy heck is G’aim’e the worst name thing for anything ever. I don’t understand what it’s meant to mean.
Tosh
GC: We think it’s trying to put the ‘aim’ in game, while also mimicking the French phrase Je t’aime, i.e. I love you. But boy howdy is that an awkward name.
Can’t disagree on the Horizon Zero Dawn hate. The graphics are good, but those games are such a nothingburger. No wonder they’re popular.
Benson
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