GeeEssEff

The adverts are clever. It’s the product that is the problem. In theory, it’s great being able to access gamepass via the cloud on all my devices….in practice it is a laggy unplayable mess for every game I have tried. Yes this is not going to be the case for everyone but I have seen enough comments from people who have a similar experience to me to know that it is still a widespread issue.

If casuals sign up for a month of gamepass, try to stream COD through their phone and find it a blurry lag fest then they are going to lose confidence, unsubscribe and go back to their native mobile games whilst associating Xbox with a poor user experience. Cloud gaming just isn’t at the quality where it is ready to be pushed out to the masses in my opinion.

I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Will almost certainly never play it but you can be damned sure I’m going to claim it

Black ops 6 hands down for me. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of hours in MP considering how long it has been out. I want to get to the campaign eventually and give Zombies more time as well.

Second will be Indiana Jones. I haven’t played massive amounts but I have played enough to know it is something special. This is from someone who has next to no interest in the Indiana Jones IP and had zero hype for the game in the run up but I gave it a go based on the positive reviews. Love it so far.

I feel if Xbox is your primary console and you sub to gamepass anyway to play online it is always excellent. If Xbox is your second or third tier console and you only sub to gamepass purely for the games it has been pretty average for the last two years.

When I saw the 6/10 this morning I knew this comment section would be pure gold and it has not disappointed.

@LogicStrikesAgain Your name checks out 👌

227 hours total
1. Black ops 6 - 87 hours
2. Dragons Dogma 2 -18 hours
3. Little kitty big city - 17 hours

I knew Little kitty would be up there because I was saving up for MS reward points in time for CoD so would turn it on for 15 mins a day to get my weekly bonus. I think I actually played it for about an hour total and certainly didn’t think I’d rack up 17 hours AFK time 😂

As someone who put about 120 hours into GT7 during its launch year I was really looking forward to FM. I fell in love with it at first and then just got bored of the grind. I remember spending about an hour doing test laps with the sole purpose of upgrading a car and saying to myself “why am I wasting my time with this?”

Needing to put hours and hours into a single car just to level it up enough to make it competitive was such a weird design choice. One of my favourite aspects of GT7 was taking a random car and tinkering with it to turn it into a track beast. I appreciate Turn10 have addressed this issue in updates since but it was too late for me, I had already lost interest.

Wildfrost is worth checking out for anyone who likes Slay the Spire/Monster Train.

@RaZieLDaNtE I am exactly the same! The amount of games I have got to the final mission and then either never completed or had a long hiatus before going back is crazy…must be something in our psychology 😂

I am mainly going to be playing the many games I picked up in the Autumn steam sale with some Dragon Age Veilguard thrown in.

Monday releases can get in the bin. Call me cynical but it feels like a ploy to get people to buy the deluxe upgrade so they can play it over the weekend.

@Kezelpaso Haha don’t even get me started on that bright green fairy running around. If people want to pay £10 to be at a disadvantage I say let them!

I love the skins….they make people stick out like a sore thumb. The amber faced cyborg thing from the thumbnail is just asking for headshots.

Does anyone know if the code only box still has the circle shaped slot for the disk? That would hit me straight in the OCD.

I have definitely bought more digital games over physical in the last decade but with the cost of everything going up I have got back into physical more and more this year. Games can be up to 30% cheaper day one and they drop in price much faster. Not to mention the option to trade in, resell or gift to a friend when I’m done with it, none of which can be done with a redemption code.

I’ve been wanting to try Aliens Dark Descent so really happy with this. Nine Sols is excellent for anyone who hasn’t played it! Good week.

@Ilyn I love the “Sony has abandoned VR” narrative. By the end of this year, PSVR2 will have over 250 games supporting it which equates to more than 10 games releasing per month. While they haven’t been developing many themselves they have been bringing in more than enough third party deals to ensure that VR players always have something to play. It’s an insane amount of choice and variety for a niche peripheral with a high barrier to entry but I guess people will continue to consider it abandoned unless Sony starts knocking out 3-5 first party VR titles a year.

I managed to get in and play yesterday and it’s a bit of a jank fest. I tried a free flight which worked fine but the textures were just ugly. I then tried the first mission in the campaign and the quality was all over the place. Regular stutters and frame rate drops and what the hell is going on with the dialogue? I understand this isn’t a story driven RPG so it’s very low priority but the NPC at the flight school sounds like he was both written and voiced by an AI. Quality wise 2024 feels like a downgrade to 2020 at the moment.

I have tried on four separate occasions since release and still haven’t even seen the main menu. Truly disappointing launch of a flagship title and an insightful peek into what Microsoft’s cloud future is going to look like.

That’s a shame I think everyone was rooting for this to be a success. I haven’t tried it myself yet. I was planning on diving in over Christmas after a few patches and some backlog clearing. If Stalker is a 4 I wonder what Microsoft Loading Screen Simulator 2024 will get 😬

Compulsion seem to be really good at making games that have captivating art styles and concepts but don’t play particularly well. South of Midnight looks interesting (just like Contrast and We happy few did before it) but I don’t have much confidence in it.

I don’t regret my Series X purchase but if I could go back in time I would put the money I have spent on the console and gamepass towards a decent gaming PC instead.

I am looking forward to giving flight sim and Indiana Jones a go but I doubt I will get into either of them. Stalker 2 on the other hand looks fantastic

@Steel76 Not boomerish at all. I base a lot of my decisions on things like phone and broadband contracts based on my experiences with their customer service teams. The whole reason I switched from Xbox One to PS4 as my main console was due to a series of really bad customer service experiences with Xbox.

@Rog-X No it’s Windows, Azure, 365 and countless business acquisitions over the last 4 decades which have turned Microsoft into a trillion dollar company.

Thanks for the update on Sony though Sifi, I understood the “one exclusive a year” comment the first 20 times you made it on here. I look forward to reading it a further 500 times in the future…..absolute broken record.

@K1LLEGAL For me the silly take part was that just because a Multi trillion dollar company can afford to do something their infinitely poorer competitor should follow suit. You are right though, anything can happen but I think hell will freeze over before we see Sony put a game like Spiderman 3 day one on plus. There’s no sustainable profit generation from their single player games so nothing stopping users buying a month of PS plus, completing it and unsubscribing. Xbox might be able to absorb that hit, particularly now they own a cash cow like ABK but Sony cannot.

@Wisegamer When did the tried and tested model of making a product and selling it become “milking their fanbase”?

It’s hardly a secret that this gamepass day one thing isnt particularly profitable for MS which is why they are releasing on other platforms, adding pay to play early gimmicks and splitting up GP tiers more aggressively. Sony don’t have the backing of a three trillion dollar parent company to bail them out or spend 80bil on publishers when it doesn’t go to plan. Comparing Sony and MS from a financial perspective is like comparing Me to Ed Sheeran. Silly take from a “wise gamer”

Definitely the best COD in a while. I’m really loving the multiplayer and the small amount of zombies I have played has been a blast. The respawns are a bit all over the place at the moment and a couple of the maps are terrible but it’s a huge return to form.

Best COD in years. I only really play Multiplayer and I have been glued to it since it came out.

PlayStation for third party and exclusives
Steamdeck for Indies and early access
Switch for exclusives and games to play with the wife
Xbox for gamepass

If MS plan to pump at least some of the extra ABK money back into their extensive list of studios then I’m hoping we see more positive results over the next 5-10 years. As it stands though it’s looking increasingly likely that the only ones to truly benefit from this acquisition are the shareholders.

Happy to have everything in one place. Makes more sense than two apps.

I am looking forward to playing this when it comes to console. In the unlikely event it gets a SteamDeck playable/verified badge I might even pick it up before then.

@Ricky-Spanish Haha love the drunk, guilty pleasure Christmas purchases.

Last year was the first time in a long time I didn’t get Fifa day one but got it around Christmas for basically half the cost. Not sure I’m going to buy this year’s atall as they have been landing on gamepass or PS plus around May/June the last few years and the upgrades really do feel negligible. We are basically just buying a yearly squad update and the odd gimmicky game mode.

It’s my favourite extreme sports game but I played it to death in PS5 when it released so won’t be double dipping on gamepass

Chronicles of Riddick!

@Mustoe are we reading the same comment section? Almost all of the comments are saying it’s way overpriced and even Sammy B has said its “insane”. At the moment only 15% of the poll intend to buy it at some point, 7% are undecided and a mass majority of 78% have no intention of buying it, mostly due to the cost. This has been unanimously panned across the board with maybe 2/3 defensive comments in a sea of 400+ comments absolutely slamming it.

I wouldn’t. My base Series X is barely justifying its own cost with the amount I use it.

This is one of the most bizarre releases I’ve ever seen. As a founder I could pay £22 or £40 to gain early access to a title that is going to be free to play in a matter of months. Then once it leaves early access all my progress gets wiped, I have to start all over again and all I have to show for the experience is some exclusive cosmetics.

I’m looking forward to playing this when it comes to Xbox but for me the amount they are charging for EA here is wild. I was under the impression developers were meant to pay gamers to be beta testers, not the other way round.

@HeavyHoggJP crossplay is the big update I am waiting for as well. I play on PS5 and every single one of my friends who has it plays on PC. Larian have said it’s still happening and tbf to them they have been regularly supporting with excellent updates. Maybe it’s not an easy thing to implement.

@Kezelpaso Legend that worked thank you!

@kezelpaso Any idea what time this hits gamepass? There doesn’t seem to be a pre-download option and I wouldn’t mind getting stuck in after work 😀

@Trmn8r I’m well aware they aren’t selling games on iPhones. The point I was trying to make is platform fees exist, MS charge them as well and 30% seems to be the industry standard. If I subscribe to FF14 on Xbox, Microsoft are going to get a cut of that subscription fee for every month, on top of a cut of any cosmetics, DLC, add ons etc. Why should it be any different if I subscribe to stream games via apple? Now if apple are trying to charge a percentage of every single gamepass sub ever then I agree it’s excessive but either way it’s just business. If users are streaming Xbox games on their phone they aren’t buying games off the App Store or subscribing to Apple Arcade so to some extent Apple is just protecting its own interests. And let’s be honest if the roles were reversed and MS was charging a fortune to put Apple TV on Xbox you would be cheering them on like there’s no tomorrow.

This comment is coming from a place of naivety more than anything but don’t Microsoft get around 30% for third party games sold on the Xbox? I don’t understand the intricacies of Apples policy here but also don’t understand how it’s any different from the platform fees Xbox charge to developers.

@Kezelpaso I loved Blops 3 and 4 and could never understand the backlash to them. They actually dared to try something different and quirky. I think the writing was on the wall with Cold War though as that basically felt like MW with a 80s reskin. I was hoping it was just a blip and we would get back to the Blops of old with this one but looks like they are quite happy to not change up the recipe too much moving forward.

Also completely agree with you about the movement being a potential issue. I was playing last night and some dude I was in a fight with suddenly did some weird direction change, jumped, slid on landing and had got completely behind me before I even had time to blink. The whole thing just felt completely unnatural and looked bizarre.

I’m enjoying the beta but it doesn’t feel like a black ops….. It feels like Modern Warfare 4. CODs used to differ quite a lot from each other in gameplay, tone, UI, weapons etc year to year but now they seem to have just settled on a formula which they iterate on slightly. It’s working because the gameplay is solid and it still sells ridiculous amounts but they are all kind of just merging into one and don’t seem to have a personality of their own.

Xbox Series X: Power Your Dreams!

*as long as you dream in 30fps

Cool I will give it a go!

@JayJ He doesn’t need Sony to repair his Xbox controller he needs Microsoft to do it….whataboutism isn’t going to sort out his problem

@Old_Man_Harper A lack of runway is a definite problem. I probably need to spend more time in the training rather than assuming I have what it takes to just get in a plane and fly it but I’m impatient.

@InterceptorAlpha cheers mate I will come back to this in November and give it another go. I do want to get back into it but I tend to download it, fly around a bit, do (fail) some landing challenges and delete it to free up space for something else.

Sounds like you have to be able to land the plane first…a skill that has eluded me with Flight Sim. I am looking forward to this one though. Just flying around staring at the scenery is magic even if I am terrible at the actual game.