Gamer83

Big game of February for me is Horizon: Forbidden West, which will be the first time PS5 game I've bought in a while. On the Xbox side, Crossfire X and King of Fighters XV are the ones I'm planning to get.

Halo Infinite has been my go-to game since it came out, don't play the multiplayer but love the campaign, first Halo campaign I've really been into since Reach. Other than that, I've been on a 360 kick lately. Dead or Alive 4 is one of my favorite fighting games of all-time, I've been playing that a lot since it was added to the backwards compatibility list, and I went nuts in the bc sale, so I'll probably start one of those games... Thinking either Split/Second or Killer is Dead.

I don't like seeing big publishers get purchased and I haven't been thrilled with where I've seen the gaming industry going for a while now. But it is what it is. Nothing I can do about it other than hope for the best. On the plus side, MS might actually clean up some of the nonsense that happened at Activision/Blizzard.

I actually don't think this month's selection is terrible. None of these are blockbuster games but Hydrophobia is pretty decent.

Bought it just for the campaign and glad I did. Wasn't the biggest fan of 4 and couldn't stand 5 but this campaign was extremely good. Best one from 343 by far and worthy of standing next to Bungie's work on the series.

His mistake here is acknowledging these idiotic fanboys at all.

Another killer sale, just bought Split/Second and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

@FraserG
Split/Second is one of the games I was considering, think I'm going to pull the trigger on a purchase after reading your reply.

Dead Rising 2: Case West, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Killer is Dead, Prey, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Gunvalkyrie, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Conan. Great sale, might add one or two more games before it ends.

Obviously not the popular choice but my favorite genre, eventhough 99% of my gaming is single player, is FPS and I've always enjoyed the campaigns in the non-WW II era Call of Duty games. That's my top choice. Close second is Tony Hawk Pro Skater, slipped a bit in later entries but the early THPS were phenomenal.

Wind Jammers 2 and Halo Infinite

Maybe something from the Activision catalog like one of the Modern Warfare games.

Wonder if the talks involve some $ going MS' way from Sony? I can see both sides of the argument, keep CoD multiplat or make it exclusive, but to me, the latter would be the way to go unless MS really doesn't care about console sales anymore. People can say what they want about the series, future Call of Duty games being exclusive to Xbox would put the Series line in more demand than it already is.

If I were Phil Spencer I'd tell Sony to kick rocks.

@Banjo-
Yup. Disgusting. Crash 4 is one of my favorite PS4 games.

Given how successful Forza has become with its two-tier strategy, I can't see MS, which owns the Project Gotham Racing IP, reviving Bizarre and bringing PGR back. But that would be awesome, it'd be my no.1 wish if I thought there was even a slight chance.

As it stands, it'd probably be easier for MS to rebuild Vicarious Visions and put the team to work on a new Tony Hawk game. Definitely would love to see that happen. It's utterly pathetic that Activision's 'reward' to for the great, and successful, TH remasters was to become a Call of Duty support studio.

I'm highly interested to see how this all plays out. Of the big 3, I think MS is the one most likely to willingly put its games on other platforms where it makes sense. For example, if new Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games get made, I could see Phil Spencer deciding to put them on PlayStation, due to legacy, and Nintendo due to the fact Nintendo fans love platformers. Of course, the big games, ones that could move consoles such as Call of Duty, I'd expect will be exclusive. A new Tony Hawk wouldn't move the needle like CoD but the series does have a following so that too is one that'd likely be exclusive.

So I ended up with Dead Rising 2: Case West, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (played it on PS3 years ago, this is a double dip because it's a phenomenal game), Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Killer is Dead, Prey, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Gunvalkyrie and Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Most of these purchases are games I owned in the past but never finished, however Gunvalkyrie and Killer is Dead are going to the first-time playthroughs, really looking forward to each. Always like Suda 51's games and I've heard mostly good stuff about Gunvalkyrie.

@mousieone
Fair enough. At the end of the day, what's done is done. I don't like it but the agreement has been made. Once the purchase is finalized we just see where it goes. Maybe MS will surprise people with some of the decisions it makes regarding these IPs and more importantly maybe it does a better job cleaning up the culture around Activision-Blizzard than I expect it to.

@mousieone
From a company relationship standpoint no doubt MS was closer with Bethesda than either Nintendo or Sony so I agree if it was going to be bought than MS made the most sense. Still, I would've preferred Bethesda stay independent and MS pay for timed or full exclusives on certain releases like Sony did with Deathloop.

Goes without saying. I've always been interested in the business side of gaming as well so it'll be intriguing to see how much this brings GP subscription numbers up.

Don't like this at all, and I'm not being hypocritical about it either. I didn't like when I read Sony was sniffing around SquareEnix and that only turned out to be rumors. Gigantic third party publishers being taken off the board isn't a good thing for gaming. I don't mind when studios like Double Fine or Ninja Theory get bought, especially if the extra funds are needed for the companies to stick around, but Activision and Bethesda? It's good for people into the console wars I guess, everybody else not so much.

All that said, once the deal is done, I just hope for the best. Maybe MS will clean up some of the crap (impossible to take care of all of it) going on at Activision and maybe we can get more than CoD on a consistent basis. A brand new Tony Hawk game would be great.

This is great, especially as I've been on a retro game kick. I still have most of my collection but some of these games on sale I idiotically traded in over the years, or just didn't buy. Big ones on the list for me are Panzer Dragoon Orta and Sonic & All-Stars Racing (the Vita version is good, I imagine on the 360 it's even better).

Gotta give MS credit, there have been some awesome sales over the last year. This is one of the best.

It's not perfect but MS is ahead of Sony (to be fair, the PS5 is an excellent PS4 bc machine) and miles ahead of Nintendo on this and the fact I can play damn near all my favorite original Xbox and 360 games in my collection, minus some sports titles, on the Series X is a huge reason I bought the console and why it's been my most played since getting it.

I only play the campaigns so judging based off that, I wouldn't say no. 1 but top 3 for sure.
1. Reach
2. Halo 3
3. Infinite

I've never used one of the Xbox Elite controllers so I won't go calling DualSense the best controller ever but of all the basic controllers I've ever used, going back to the NES era when I started, it's easily my favorite. The haptic feedback is awesome. I love the way they use the triggers when firing weapons, or how rumble will feel different depending on the environment you're exploring. It's a really cool control pad.

Series X - Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5

X360 (via backwards compatibility on Series X) - Dead or Alive 4, Rumble Roses XX, Saints Row 1

I've been interested in this game since the first sneak peak dropped but thinking it'll get a 2022 release is highly optimistic. Would love to be proven wrong but this feels like one of those games like Bayonetta 3 where an announcement was made early to try and keep momentum going for the system. One of those, 'look what we have on the way for you soon' type of deals, eventhough we all know 'soon' means at least 2 1/2-3 years away.

It sucks but if it means a much better game like Halo Infinite, so be it. I was getting a bit concerned anyway that not much had been shown.

Have the game pre-ordered and looking forward to it. Will be disappointed if it's delayed but if it's looking like it'll be a crap release if they stick to the current target of April then they have to push it back.

@PhileasFragg
We'll see how it plays out longterm but the combination of Series S and Game Pass may be what MS needed to crack the Japanese market. I'm not saying it will catch PlayStation, certainly won't do what Nintendo is doing, but 360 was, compared to how other American consoles sold in Japan, a pretty big success and if the Series line surpasses that, it's only a good thing for the future of Xbox.

I appreciate her passion but I'll politely decline. Not my kind of game at all.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, Demoniaca, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Hellblade 2, Starfield, Redfall (if it comes out in 2022).

@Dusk_Actual
Reach still has my favorite campaign, followed closely by 3. Aside from 4 and 5, all the campaigns are really great. I'd definitely recommend the Master Chief Collection.

@Dusk_Actual
I loved the Halo Infinite campaign as well, I actually don't play multiplayer much at all, I'm on my second run of the single player. Really like the way they handled Cortana in this. It wasn't perfect but they did the best they could given how they painted themselves into a corner with 5's horrible portrayal of her.

Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5 and Rumble Roses XX are the games in my rotation this week.

For me it's the first. I thought it had the best storytelling and while the gameplay was the roughest, I liked certain elements of it the most, particularly weapon upgrading.

Mass Effect, but I have a disc copy I just bought last week.

@Rural-Bandit
Yup. Interested to see how Fable turns out. Big departure from what Playground usually makes.

I don't think it'd be a bad idea but for right now I'd like to see MS continue the momentum it has from 2021 and focus on the Series X/S bringing the Xbox brand back to what it was in the 360 days. After that, a year or two from now it can explore things like VR.

Best of luck to him. Since the first Forza Horizon the series has been one of my favorites in gaming and Playground has established itself as one of my top 5 favorite devs.

0 is still my favorite in the series but Like a Dragon is a great soft reboot and one veterans and newcomers can enjoy equally since the story and characters are new.

My favorite N64 game after Resident Evil 2 but console FPS have come a long way since then and GE hasn't particularly aged well. If this remake/remaster does in fact happen, I can look past the rough edges and enjoy the game, I'll definitely get it for sure. But I could see younger audiences saying 'this is what people went on about all these years?' And I couldn't fully blame them. A lot of 32/64-bit era FPS don't stack up by today's standards, even if I do like going back to revisit some.

The usual two for me the last few weeks... Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5. Just bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition so will also look to start that and I usually revisit an original Xbox or 360 game or two. Right now playing Black, which is one of my favorite games from Criterion before they pretty much moved exclusively to racing.

Happy new year. Hope everybody had a safe, fun holiday season. Looking forward to what this year brings. I'll be more active on this website now that I have a Series X. MS provided a lot of great stuff in 2021 and I can't wait to see how it tries to keep the momentum going.

My favorite era of Halo. I stuck mostly to the campaigns (these days it's exclusively to the campaigns in any game series) but I enjoyed some Halo 3 multiplayer as well back in the day. I still say it's the best all-around entry in the series. Reach had a slightly better campaign but added all up, the combo of great single and multi put 3 over the others.

@KilloWertz
I think the decline started before Rare got bought by MS. Most of its N64 games were good but I thought some near the end were kind of meh, and Star Fox Adventures wasn't exactly up to par either. Nintendo did give up its stake in the company pretty easily and I remember even back then it made me raise an eyebrow.

Not to say Rare hasn't provided some good stuff for Xbox. Sea of Thieves isn't my kind of game but a lot of people seem to like it. The Viva Pinata games were good and while the receptions were mixed I thought Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts were all pretty decent.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection (eventhough I have some of the games from their launches on disc) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. Now have all TR games, including the Lara Croft spinoffs, available on Xbox consoles.

@LtSarge
Control, AW 2, hell I even liked Quantum Break and wouldn't mind seeing that story continued. Even with all the new studios it does seem like MS is missing that one that is truly dedicated to narrative-driven single player experiences. Remedy fits in perfectly for that.

@LtSarge
Great point, didn't think about that. Of course, I'd counter that by saying for years Insomniac didn't want to be purchased either, and even at one point seemed to have a bit of a falling out with Sony not too many years before the company was bought up and made part of the PlayStation first party team. Everybody has a price and MS has a lot of $, I'd love to see something happen. If not, I hope Remedy does do well enough to keep making its own choices who it wants to work with and doesn't get nabbed by one of the Chinese tech giants.