FMT

I'm enjoying it a lot, didn't play the ultimate edition and haven't played Gears 1 since it originally released.
Bit of a nostalgia glee going on, with me, for sure

Lots of lay offs at Tyson Foods incoming.

I'm having a great time. I played the first when it released on early access, and 2 is a lot more fun and... dare I say easier.
The addition of buggies is fantastic, zooming across the map on an ant takes all the grind out of getting from a to b and massively increases survivability.
2 has a lot more direction guiding you, 1 felt like an exploration sandbox, but this feels more like a game with purpose.

@Kaloudz If I recall, it was in a completely playable state. I didn't get far enough into it to see what was added later on. I'll be jumping on as soon as possible, trusting Rare to complete the game and myself to play for a while, before picking it up again to see what's added, then deciding its too difficult solo lol

Once I got past the first TV studio bit I find it a lot better. I like the detective elements far more than the action.
I wish they spent more time getting the FPS "feel" right, but the look sensitivity options are limited to a % scale. Which doesn't give scope to sorting out how jarring it is.
7 from me, but still enjoying it. I guess this is an example of over hype tainting my experience, I was expecting better.

@Kaloudz Of all three (music, movies and games), movies are the only thing I'll ever physically purchase. That's only when it's one of my favourite films where visual quality makes a difference. I consider the viewing experience of Dune 1 and 2 better on a 4K bluray than any streaming service. I can't say the same for.music though, Spotify sounds fine to me. Games are in a bracket where I see zero gains in having the physical disc, it's not like there's a quality drop between downloaded and direct from the disc. If the only digital option was streaming, Game Pass would have died long ago and I'd be fully in the keep games physical camp.

@Kaloudz Me neither, I'm all in on digital. This seems like a conversation for a minority of modern players (a very loud minority given the coverage and outrage).

To be fair, fans have been keeping Halo going in recent years. New maps are by fans, with Halo Studios just curating their deployment into playlists.
The Halo community is amazing. But they're exploited by MS right now, so their approval of this isn't surprising.
That said, Vampire Survivors with a Halo skin sounds great 👍

I voted Mythwrecked as my second favourite.
Very easy game and achievements (1000GS for around 6-8 hrs) and predictable but enjoyable story.

Playing on recommended difficulty.
Looks gorgeous, better than Avowed in my eyes.
Everything seems to work, haven't had anything more than loss of sound which is easy to fix (save, force close, open, load save) and only happened once.
It's brutal, for sure, but that's adding to the atmosphere.
I'm loving it, my only criticism is the prevalence of Cornish pasties in Cumbria, feels a little off.

It's a Rebellion game, and sounds like it's setting wouldn't be out of place in 2000AD. I doubt it could be further up my street. Can't wait.

@Kaloudz pure nostalgia I imagine. Sounds appealing to me, I cut my online mp teeth in Halo2 on OG xbox.

High hopes, but if Microsoft can be trusted to do anything, it's fumble the ball with Halo.
Such a shame, at least a new game should bring it out of its current life support status.

Live service games can do one. They're all trying to be the next fornite cash cow. Any praise directed at Halo Infinite for making a play into this field just saddens me.
It 100% could have worked for them, but they should have cooked it for at least another year before releasing. Releasing with rapid battle passes would have been entry level live service, hut they dropped that ball big style, what was it? 8 months before season 2? Being able to revisit a battle pass when you'd been given godly amounts of time to complete one completely negates the feature. Much as I love Halo, they don't deserve the credit for a feature negated by their own inaction.

Most excited for Atomfall. Love Rebellion as a studio.

@NeoRatt me too, and agreed.

Xbox really should stop using the word "dynamic" for these.
I suggest "practically static" or "spot the movement" wallpapers.
I've always been a little jealous of the PS dynamic backgrounds.

@Darude84 I can relate to that, while the Xbox ones don't do that to me. I had some Sharkoon surround headset for the PC that pressed against my ears, like the cavity in the cup wasn't held back enough by the cushioning. That got so painful after a couple of hours.

@Darude84
I find the current Xbox wireless headset very comfy for long gaming/music sessions. I have one of those heads where you can't buy a motorcycle helmet without finding a large retailer who stocks larger sizes. Same with go-karting, they have to scrabble round to find a helmet that'll fit.
I've never tried the Sony one, but it sounds like comfort city from what you're saying.

I think this Pierre guy in charge knows what he is doing.
I would much rather a return to linear campaigns. The open world Infinite campaign felt far to watered down for me, not that open world didn't introduce some great aspects, it did. But without campaign scoring introduced in 3 it was missing something quintessentially Halo. Along with a lot of other "fun with friends" aspects missing all over Infinite.
As a fan and player of Halo since the OG Xbox and CE, I like what Pierre is saying, but words are words, they're nothing without results to back them up and we've been here many times before and faced bitter disappointment each time since Bungie days.

I have these and use them for everything, my phone doesn't have a 3.5mm jack so Bluetooth headphones are needed and these deliver a more than acceptable music sound. Replaced £250 Astro A50 wireless which suffered periodic drops in connection and the Xbox headset simply sounds better.
My only big gripe, is when watching blurays, the xbox xometimes needs a reboot to fix crackling during high sound parts (like Sarduka (sp) chanting in Dune). That's my only real gripe. The turning the Xbox on when I only want them for bluetooth is just a tiny frustration, been happily living with that.
I'll be keen to see what's changed in the refresh, if they've fixed my gripe then I'll snap them up.

Halo going to PS5 would do wonders for Halo and the opposite for the console.
Seems likely to happen, but part of me hopes not, it really will be the death blow for the Xbox console and I like the console, I have a library I've invested in I hope will be available on future consoles, not consigned to earlier hardware.

@Titntin
Mint Blitz said another reason they are rebranding the studio, apart from the fact its almost an entirely new team, especially at the top with Pierre now in charge (after being brought in to fix MCC and nailing that), is that they're not just the 343i studio any more but a collection of studios. Hopefully that doesn't mean playground games is now exclusively Halo and no more Forza Horizon games.
But it does make sense if many new Halo games are being developed.

More words from the Halo devs. I wish I could feel as positive about them as Mint Blitz, but I'll curb my enthusiasm for now.

Hoping for brilliance, excepting disappointment.

I won't hold my breath. They'll have to do something really special to make Halo great again.

I struggle to understand the business sense behind Microsofts handling of Tango Gameworks.
I guess we know far too little detail, or MS are as stupid as they appear.

@GuyinPA75
Me too, any day of the week. Quite happy for all my games to be digital though. Wait, what we're we talking about?

18.5 hours in and still utterly hooked. The gameplay and vibe are spot on. Dungeons are surprisingly varied and the different spells per zone really add to the variety.
Story gets very interesting once you take a row boat ride and keeps getting better.
My personal pick for GOTY so far.

I have the recurring 1 month ultimate auto purchase whenever I get 10500 points. Get around 2 months a year free and that's just the points I get from playing. Can't be bothered to chase them.

I like it, about 9 hours in and base building feels like it could have been left on the shelf. Apart from a couple of main quests involving building certain buildings, base building seems to be tacked on to gatekeep better gear and skills. It's not Medieval Dynasty by any means, individual villagers are irrelevant and houses just add to the amount of villagers you can have.
This game is far better when questing and stopping executions, or finding random puzzles in the forest and figuring them out, imo. I'm loving that side of it, though have been distracted with farming mats for a better sword for the last hour. Jury is out on a score, but its been fun so far.
It suffers with being designed for kbm, so the controller implementation is quite lazy in places (move a cursor with the left stick). Add to that some untranslated text and it's clearly lacking a level.of polish, think Bethesda RPG on launch, not that bad to be fair but you get the idea lol

This headline is a little misleading. They haven't modified an xbox console into a powerhouse PC, they've used the case for a custom PC. No biggie, just came here expecting something different.

@FraserG you want them to expose flesh with you?
Or maybe you meant "bear" with you. As is bear the burden.
For some reason this linguistic mistake is common.

@dreadful I guess it's about doing the IP justice, I don't know. Because you're absolutely right, I've been reading 2000AD since the 70's and I'd absolutely drop life for a high quality Dredd game.
There is so much amazing creativity in the Rebellion comics side, but apart from the ever high quality comics. Off shoot projects are few and far between, since the awesome Dredd 2012 its all been promises. Where's Mega City One series? All we have is the Rogue Trooper CGI film to look forward to, nothing on the game front and they have a seriously competent gaming side. Doesn't make sense.

Infinites campaign was awful. The only open world bits in a Halo campaign are where you come out of a tunnel to a large open field where two armies are already fighting, but it should still proceed down a linear route after that wow moment. They should have focused more one releasing campaign dlc, but that means having resources not panic fixing the online mess.
Go back to sbmm from 3, stop trying to curate the online pvp experience and maximise engagement, it ends up having the opposite effect.
Or bin it.

Wow! 66 comments and 57 of them are discussing console wars, not the game in question.
Honestly, this juvenile bickering is so incredibly tiring. Genuinely interested to see what people .are of a medieval themed Doom, but good grief!
I'm thoroughly looking forward to this, loved Heretic/Hexen. What ID will do with the Medieval theme has me quite excited. At the very least it's going to look utterly amazing.

@GamingFan4Lyf Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that. Really appreciate it.

I hate the combat. The puzzles aren't technically puzzles, they are just wandering round till the you're told you are in the right place.
Still love it, especially the graphics, I find myself so immersed in it. Honestly, I like the slow pace so I can properly take in the stunning visuals. Definitely the best I've seen this generation, I'm jaw on the floor so much.
The performance as well, Bravo!

Really looking forward to this, loved the first one and don't recall having any issue the puzzles. I don't like QuickTime events, never have, but there weren't that many in the first that I recall. Previous comments on purexbox have shown how much of a marmite game this is, some are gonna hate it. Fair enough.

OG Xbox. A little late to the party but it was Halo 2 online that drew me in. People were already incredibly skilled at it, but after 247 games of Lone Wolves I finally beat 7 other random humans at a game of pure skill and practise. Definitely up there with my favourite gaming moments.
Unfortunately gaming will never achieve such heady glory days again, the market is too diluted imo.

Marmite game it seems, put me in the loved it camp.

I don't understand why they wouldn't sell Tango instead of shutting it down? Surely they'd fetch a fine price given their pedigree and recent acclaim for HFR?

I loved the first one, adored it even. Really looking forward to 2.

It doesn't matter how powerful a console is. Some developers will always choose sacrificing framerate for that tiny bit more fidelity.
What is inexcusable is not having a performance option. The only one I could maybe understand the reasoning for was Starfield, but it still had a whiff of bs excuse to it.
Drop the fidelity for 60 fps as an option. Personally I will choose 30 FPS and better graphics (as I did with Control). But then I'm old enough to recall gaming on a ZX81 when I had to type games in from C&VG, so my standard for being impressed is likely lower than others.
My point is, I don't understand why they don't put the investment in to give the option to play your preference.

Payed for it on release, first Diablo I've played on console. Sunk hundreds of hours unto 3 on PC trying out different classes and builds. 4 didn't click with me on release but now I'm enjoying it more. The construct season content is what's making the difference I think.

I love it, now there is Firefight. Not that I ever stopped playing it. Still needs tweaking and content drops (weapons, vehicles), but grapple and the movement have made this the best MP Halo since 3.
Hate the open world campaign, its killed campaign Halo for me.

Looking forward to this. I like chill games.

Played it when it first dropped on GP, don't remember completing it so giving it another go. I do like it, something else must have come up previously that dragged me away or I got bored of it.

Superb sci-fi story and gorgeous to look at. Surprised me how much I enjoyed it.

It was easy to socialise on the 360.
Chromehounds was a launch game and had such a solid clan/lobby system that was so good. It was affectionately known as Crackhounds for a reason. Maybe it was the age I was, or the time of life, or the point in time of online gaming evolution. But the online social side of it seemed to have hit a peak.

Down with this sort of thing!
Careful now!
They really should be regulated to ensure a minimum lifetime of the servers is stated when the game is purchased.
Servers will persist until 2030 at the earliest. That sort of thing. At least then you can gauge the value of your purchase.