Benjamin

Would love a smaller Series X with a disc drive.

Perfect Dark was easily the highlight of the show for me and I'm optimistic for Gears. Hellblade, Avowed and Indiana Jones this year is quite strong. That sort of consistency would be fantastic.

This looks awesome. Hope it’s in good shape when it releases and 2025 would be nice.

It should be on hiatus for a while. Further stories in the Halo world would be cool (spin offs mostly) but only if a new team appears that can replicate what Staten, Marty and co brought to Halo AND if they can wade through the debacle that is the current lore set up.

ODST and Reach did such a great job of fleshing out the franchise without lore altering events. Halo 4 was essentially an ending for MC and Cortana but weirdly reignited the same covenant vs marines dynamic. Similar to Mass Effect 2, they immediately wrote themselves into a corner.

Halo 4 should have seen Chief and Cortana land somewhere brand new and completely alien, with new factions and new allies. Spin off titles could’ve continued to explore the Halo events e.g. ODST and Reach.

An Arkane game experience.

@everynowandben thanks

For those who have played the original or the remake, how does it compare to Arkane’s Prey - a game I loved?

Very cool. However, if you use a 360, you’ll soon need to use emulation to access soon to be delisted games. May as well go for it now.

A great opening hour - especially with headphones.

Prey might be the best game of that generation, Redfall is one of the worst from the current generation. A strange track record for Arkane Austin. The founder left after making Prey so perhaps there is a leadership issue. Hopefully Lyon keeps things together.

Tango seemed like a talented studio. What’s the justification to keep Double Fine going but not the maker of Hi-Fi Rush?

Why did this take 5+ years?

A real shame. Xbox 360 was the best console of the best generation so far. If MS sold it, I’d buy a modern 360 that allowed me to flip between the different dashboards and play my full 360 digital library. One can dream.

I’d like there to be no need to own an Xbox 360. Every OG Xbox and 360 title playable on modern Xbox consoles. Enhancements are secondary.

Another Xbox game going wrong behind the scenes? Is his departure the reason the game has taken so long?

I like replaying the Halo campaigns via 360 original versions. The menus, pause and loading screens are part of the experience.
Other than those I regularly play Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space 2, Splinter Cell and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

A one man institution who coloured many childhoods.

Waiting to see what the mood of this setting is like. Trailers and demos do a really bad job at setting the tone.

Every King has his fall. Let it go.

I love the Halo games and these are the best way to play them now. Still boot it up to reminisce with my buddy. In lockdown we played Matchmaking everyday. Halo 3 custom rotation. Sumo!!!!

Are the vehicle physics any better yet?

It functions just like Fable and many other sprawling adventure games. Impressive for the Switch but not an ideal way to play.

I think Baldur's Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom are the best games on that list.

BG3 is a daring leap for the CRPG genre much like Breath of the Wild was for the Open-World genre. Tears is standing on the shoulders of Breath, so I would give 2023 to BG3.

I've only seen a demo of Spider-Man 2 but I was impressed. It packed all the narrative and variety of a Spider-Man cartoon episode into a 15 minute mission, with great pacing and switching perspectives/characters on the fly, all whilst looking incredible. So that could well be a contender too.

Still too expensive for me. In 2008 I bought a Xbox 360 with 2 games for £200 and then in 2017 I bought a PS4 with 2 games for £200. That feels like the right price for a console to me.

Although Gears 1 is my favourite, Gears 2 was a great sequel and up there with my most played on Xbox Live. Good times.

Human expression is why I engage with art. AI generation is the antithesis of that. No interest in AI generated ideas.

@johnK I really recommend using the ‘Classic SFX/OST’. Adds so much to the experience.

AC1 remains my favourite. I had fun with AC2 and Unity too. And the sailing of Rogue was great (even if the rest of the game was weak). That’s all of the AC games I’ve played.

@NeoRatt They’re very different to me. I prefer street/circuit racing to open world racing, PGR’s driving model feels better and the aesthetic is perfect. Nothing lost by having both franchises available!

The next Killer Instinct roster is going to be interesting.

Tango and Obsidian are my top two there. They're putting out original and solid games at a good rate.

How about Banjo Kazooie and ports of the PGR series? Oh wait, Xbox has owned those IP for over ten and twenty years.

If I already owned a Series S and wanted to put money down for a disc drive, I'd rather sell the S and upgrade to the Series X. You get a drive, more power and a better built quality (all in one).

As someone who is still playing on a One S, a disc drive option for Series S doesn't entice me as I know I would want to upgrade to the Series X at a later date, making the purchase too transient.

I love that it’s being supported but it still pales when compared to MCC. The base move speed and time-to-kill are too fast, the vehicle and grenade physics have strange momentum and the aiming feels off. I keep checking in to see the improvements but bounce off for these reasons. Is that just me?

If the trade off is a drop in resolution, fine by me. But if 60fps sacrifices the visual effects in any way, 30fps no brainer.

That’s a huge amount of updates. I’m looking forward to playing this when I get a Series console next year.

Fallout New Ve- oh wait… Oblivion.

I wonder if the business deal for FF16 on Playstation wasn't worth the potential sales across Xbox consoles. Or perhaps Xbox amended their GamePass offer with Square.

Aside from the era, the setting and blue hues, it was the tone and thoughtful narrative that smartly wove into historical events that made the first game the best one.

Remember when Xbox backed Mistwalker Studios and we got Lost Odyssey? It didn't move the needle one bit. GamePass on phones and a dedicated streaming device is surely the future of Xbox in Japan.

I would really like Xbox to take UI cues from Playstation. The PS3, 4 and 5 dashboards have been elegant at launch and the Trophy system is vastly superior to Achievements.

Great sales recently. I’ve played Prey and Bioshock 2. There’s about 6 more I’d like to pick up!

I asked for an original Xbox over a PS2 after seeing 10 minutes of Halo CE. Then, after a 360 got the red ring of death, I bought an Xbox 360 Elite instead of a PS3 for more Halo 3 and the upcoming ODST.

Boo analogue sticks are in the wrong place! This might be a good controller for 2-D games though.

Weird take by the OP. Having said that I'll have a moan too; I don't like developer notes, updates or dlc notifications being displayed on a start screen. Similarly I don't like a game's tile to change on the dashboard.

King King on 360 was brilliant. There’s some horror in that game, especially if you don’t like bugs.

(Not horror but The Two Towers and Return of the King for the original Xbox were ace. I also really liked Enter the Matrix, Path of Neo and the Batman Begins game.)

The close likenesses of the tv actors having completely different voices is bizarre.

Weirdly sassy.

The art style and tonal change has put me off. Looks really goofy.

I bought The Darkness. Seriously impressive for 2007 and it still does some things better than modern fps. No ironsights, great storytelling and a uniquely weighted game, wherein scenarios you’d expect to be chopped for time, are elaborately paced gameplay sequences. In a similar camp as Call of Juarez, Half Life 2, Wolfenstein TNO, Dark Messiah. They all feel cross country, as though you are really traversing the story on foot over miles - because of that unique weighting.

No interest in a remake personally. The MCC remaster is amazing.