AverageJoseph

OW2 and Bookworm Adventures from MyAbandonware, such a classic.

I gave it a solid 8. At the start it stumbles a bit, but by the end you'll feel like you're soaring. They somehow pull off two complete character arcs, with an oddball protagonist and an endearing sidekick, without either uttering a single word (maybe a squawk or two).

I can fully understand any complaints about gameplay that people might have, this game is probably not going to appeal to everyone. For anyone who wants a light adventure through a surrealist landscape, it's very well executed.

Been looking forward to Winter Burrow and 1000xResist looks so weird that I feel I have to at least try it.

OW2oooooooooooooooooo

@Jenkinss you can call it sad, you can call me a hater, but that's just excusing his behavior by trying to turn it around on me. I had a lot of goodwill towards Peter Molyneux before Curiosity and Godus. The past 10-15 years have shown who he really is.

He is a con man. And by his own admission, he's always been one. He said he essentially stole the computers he used to found Bullfrog. Now he's using the $40 million from selling NFTs for a game that never materialized to fund this new game. There is this fairytale "Willy Wonka of video games" version of him that exists and he perpetuates as part of the con. It should be dispelled with reality whenever he's asking for redemption or people's money.

He says this is the last time, but like everything else he says, no one should believe it.

@Titntin It's not just the meanies online picking on poor old uncle Pete. He's marred by his own words and actions. If you ignore what people are saying about him and just pay attention to what he's done and said himself since Milo, maybe you'd understand why they're saying those things about him. He's been given several chances at redemption already and he's only used them to dig himself deeper.

He fakes contrition, sheds a few tears, laments that it's all just too much for him and out of his hands, and then never changes his behavior. It's on him.

@Jenkinss he's funding this game with the money from his failed nft scam. He deserves it.

Crocodile tears.

If he wants redemption he should start by paying Bryan Henderson.

As a person of a certain generation, I don't really know much about tiktok, but my limited understanding is that it's mostly just boobies and butts, and the shaking thereof. Xbox is not going to win that battle

I finished Jusant, and been playing Ball x Pit with a bit of DRGS still. And I've dipped back into Summoners War on Bluestacks. I don't know why I play this game, it's pretty badly p2w gacha, but I've been coming back once a year or so since the beginning.

@GrapTops just put The Radical to work! He still hasn't figured out Nosferatu or Satan, but he's gotten pretty much everything else unlocked for me already.

I did not play it on day negative five, but I will be playing it on day one.

Well, the game I've never heard of won't be coming as soon as I didn't know it wouldn't.

@Questionable_Duck the name sounds like Indy DLC too. It had me fooled

The enemy variety in Jusant SUCKS!

I'm really liking it so far, good central gameplay loop and good progression. It kind of reminds me of Loop Hero, the base building part at least, and the aesthetic.

@Decimateh it has achievements. I've unlocked 3. For some reason the list isn't showing up. But they're unlocking. I think it's maybe because there was a store listing for a free trial. I'm sure it will get sorted out soon.

There's just too many new games to play or old games I never played before, and since 2018 with game pass I've never had a time that I didn't have one of those options. I bought all FF 1-9 and the Sega Classics and haven't replayed any of them haha

Caveat being games like Diablo that I will go back to but I don't consider it replaying. It's just an ongoing game that I return to from time to time.

@Jenkinss almost the same as me. I didn't make it all the way through Oblivion remaster, but I did do a full completion of Skyrim with the SE and fps boost at the start of the gen. I'm slowly going through Morrowind again too, but it's maybe an hour or two every other month at most

Will definitely play Keeper, and Ball x Pit may be the last game I ever play as it appears to be designed to melt my eyeballs

I guess there's always The Vale in that case

They've been hyping this on the rewards dash for a whole month lol womp womp

DRGS is plenty of letters and very constructive!

The one I've played and enjoyed the most is Monster Train 2, hundreds of hours put into this game and still working through all the Titans crowns combos

@FraserG maybe it's because they've realized they're never going to grow the market, so make something beefy for the homies who been here a minute

I was okay with MC taking his helmet off, it's just that he ALWAYS had it off. Like the episode where they go talk with Soren. It's basically Halo Mos Eisley, a hive of scum and villainy, hostile territory with bad guys everywhere, and he has his hat off the whole time. Just dumb.

And they should put the inhibitor implant back in MC. He shouldn't be getting busy with anyone.

I didn't watch s2 because I didn't want to reup Paramount just for that, but I might check it out on Netflix eventually. Doing Hulu right now until Stranger Things is done.

@somnambulance with OW1, Grounded 1+2, Pentiment, Avowed, and OW2 coming soon, I think Obsidian has been the most productive and consistently good since the end of xbone. Although, Psychonauts 2 is probably my favorite of all these games.

I got the other email on the 3rd. The one that explicitly tells me the price is going up and all the benefits that entails.

@themightyant He made some great games but he's a compulsive liar and a grifter. He had no reason to lie about the stuff that he did. If the games were great, which they were before Fable 3, why overpromise when he knows very well that those promises won't be kept?

There was the whole Curiosity prize fiasco. He also got into blockchain NFTs, ironically named Legacy. Whether it's malicious or not is debatable, I lean towards yes, but it's absolutely pathological and self-serving. Regardless of what he did before, he has zero credibility now, re endorsing Phil Spencer. He's probably hoping Phil hears it and funds his new Albion project that may or may not ever exist.

@Banjo- is it confirmed for Premium that they all come within a year except CoD? I'm trying to advise my brother on what to do because he pays month to month, and already felt like he wasn't playing enough to justify Ultimate.

Another thing I'm wondering is what happens to 3rd party day one games. Some of them, especially the bigger games, don't stick around for more than a year. Will those be added to Premium? Or does that tier just miss those games entirely?

@Banjo- yeah I guess this move was made for all day one games. It certainly feels like it's because of CoD though.

I wonder if it actually makes a difference too, like, what's to stop Premium customers just going up to Ultimate for a month when the game they want is released? People do this with other streaming services all the time. I don't think it's something within their control.

@Banjo- yes this is it, but I think the problem is they forgot, or never realized, how many people wanted day one but didn't care about CoD. Those people are left out in the cold.

The problem with the gift cards is they have to be used in 90 days.

At this point, with GPU stacked until August 2028, I'm just going to save my points and wait and see where the xbox platform is as a whole when that runs out. The console, the sub service, the rewards program, their continued existence is all very much up in the air. It's been a pretty good run, so I'm not going to get too upset about it either way, but I can't help feeling like things could have gone differently.

@themightyant The fact that some users have restrictions and others don't, and it seems to be driven by AI with no recourse, is a problem, no doubt. They've also always had a problem with regional parity and availability. I don't have the restrictions, but I just search throughout the day while working and usually don't earn every search point available. I understand not everyone can do that.

But the searching is largely the same activity as before, searching for a shopping item or a restaurant is not an inconvenience, it's just one search a day that is predetermined. Compare that to watching workout videos, or playing shopping games, I think it's in a better place as far as what they're actually asking people to do to earn points.

EDIT: Aside from playing Jewel lol, totally not worth. Like can't we get some different games at least? It's like a cat with a laser pointer, they got distracted by mobile for 5 minutes and then completely forgot about it.

An endorsement from Peter Molyneux is dubious at best

@Questionable_Duck I think I want to agree with you, but he seems to have fully bought into the corpo life at this point. The thing that supports your point in my mind, is that there were a few appearances in a row, when he was being trotted out there to talk about multiplat, where he looked like a ghost. I think that killed him, and we now have Darth Spencer. He's fully embraced the dark side.

haha I typed a whole thing and then read the thread and you guys have all summed it up.

There's just not a huge cross section between people who want to play a lot of different games, and CoD players who are buying skins. But it's arguably worse to go through that whole ABK thing and then tell people they weren't doing day one.

Although realistically, the damage they've done to the brand in the aftermath has been far worse, so maybe they should have just took their lumps and not included CoD. It seems they haven't learned their lesson at all either, because here they are adding Fortnite. Like wtf MS, don't you understand your players at all?

@themightyant "AND the ease of how to get them" still not true no matter how many times you say it. This last update, in January I believe, has made it way easier to earn points. The new streaks and quests are just logging into the app and playing any game for 15 minutes. Do you not remember when you had to earn an achievement every single day or log into specific games and do specific activities, sometimes for half an hour? Or when they had points spread all over different apps and activities? It was on the user to actively seek out and stay up to date on what was available and where, to the point that there were youtube channels and subreddits dedicated to keeping people informed.

They've reduced the points and increased the prices, but they've streamlined the whole thing, the apps are now unified, it's all either in the app or on the browser. It's easier to earn them AND to keep track of what is available to earn.

@brettvsgodzilla I just got up to hazard 4. It's starting to get really hectic!

I never thought a game would make me love escort missions, but I really like these BOB-33 missions haha

@Banjo- PC game pass is not long for this world. All the tiers have PC included now. Unless all the rumors about a PC/console hybrid were wrong, and the next xbox is only an actual xbox console, then xbox players could just get PC game pass and circumvent Ultimate. They'll never let that happen. It's not going to go over well with PC only players either.

@datamonkey I don't think that's what this is. They aren't in the position to be controlling things, and there are going to be huge consequences from this. They're barely hanging on to what little they built back up after xbone, and the reception to this change is overwhelmingly negative everywhere. They're also not the only one raising prices and laying people off.

They put half their eggs in ABK, but that didn't move players to xbox because they couldn't go exclusive. So their pivot was multiplat, but that actually hurts game pass which is where the rest of their eggs are at.

They couldn't back down from day one games, but that also eats into the cash cow CoD.

They have too many plans pulling in different directions. They're just taking shots in the dark to try to make it all work.

@Questionable_Duck just a miscalculation imo. It was fine how it was, but they weren't seeing growth, and they're out of touch so they thought "Bigger. MORE!" That's all I can think.

@Weebleman Fair enough . I really think that they bought Activision with the intention of making CoD exclusive and putting it on game pass. The courts stopped that and they've been reeling ever since. It's just wildly flailing without much rhyme or reason. Your problem is that you're trying to find some logic here lol

@Weebleman I've seen people suggesting this conspiracy that MS is masterminding some grand scheme to kill day one games. I see two problems with that.

One, they have to pay for day one up front. They need people to be subscribed at the highest tier to pay off the increased investment in day one games. Now up to 75 day one games, that's potentially a 50% increase in up front costs they need to recoup.

Two, the appeal of game pass is day one games. That's the reason it was so popular, and killing day one will not just transfer people down to lower tiers, it will kill the entire thing. I can't imagine they actually want to kill game pass.

Rather than these guys being some 4d chess playing geniuses, it's much more plausible that these suits are completely out of touch with their customers, and just really bad at their jobs.

There's quite a few I haven't played. Not that into FC or AC really, and a lot of those have been on game pass or gwg already. I wouldn't buy them even on sale, but I started Child of Light and it's pretty good. There's a few others that are worth a look, but the service itself is really not something I would pay for, or consider a bonus worth the price increase.

EA Play at least has a big back catalogue and new games added within a year. There's been quite a few games I've played that felt like real value there, like the Jedi Games, ME:L, ZUMA!! etc. and I'd miss it more than Ubi Classics for sure.

@abe_hikura yeah I've kind of been expecting this one. When I tried it at launch it was in a sorry state, so I've just kept putting it off.

It did just get a big update that sounds cool, but it's such a huge game. I'm really into Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, and Keeper and OW2 coming soon. I dunno at this point.

@JoyfulFire PC game pass is not going to be around much longer. PC is already included in all three tiers, and the new console hybrid is basically going to be a pc. There's zero chance they have a cheaper tier with day one when that thing launches.

@BethesdaBoyz Ravenclaw gets shafted, there's no companion quest.

@Tdx Yes, but they can't just raise the price on the day one games so high that no one subscribes to that tier. They pay for day one up front. They're increasing that to 75 games a year. If people are cancelling Ultimate en masse they won't be able to make that money back and they've just increased the amount they need to recoup by 50%.

This was a miscalculation on what people want, how much they can actually play, and what they're willing to pay for day one when they probably don't want all the other extras added on.

@abe_hikura Interesting. Who knows what that means lol. Hopefully it can improve the service to justify the price that's upsetting so many people. I'm skeptical

@abe_hikura what did they say about Epic?

This is what I've been saying should happen. It makes me wonder if they're testing any of these changes or just plowing ahead unconcerned. Either way it's unlikely they can walk this back at this point.

They've already made deals with Ubisoft and Epic so this is how it's going to be for a while. Maybe they'll eat some of it to try to save the service, and drop down to $25, or something, but they can't really rewind this once they've added new partnerships into the deal.

@Fiendish-Beaver all the games you've listed are rated 81 or lower, except Ghost of Yotei which isn't on Xbox and I singled out Terminator Resistance because it's got a 47. You can include whichever games you want, but you said this is the quality we should expect, and most the games on game pass are already meeting or exceeding the ratings of the games you've listed.

Take a look at what @Questionable_Duck has posted and look at the metacritic scores for every single game ever added to game pass. The vast majority are rated above 70, and that's at least comparable to the games you've listed. So, you got what you asked for because they've always added games of the quality you expect.