GeeEssEff

@Reaper_cet It’s a bit different when a company spends 80billion to obtain exclusivity to games they would have got anyway and then shuts several of the studios they have purchased. Literally everyone in gaming hates Embracer group for doing that and yet in their entire lifetime they have spent a fraction of what MS has in just 3 years. I think gamers are finally getting sick of it and realising it’s not all sunshine and lollipops and ABK games on gamepass.

No one knows what would have happened if MS hadn’t acquired these publishers but it’s fairly reasonable to assume that they are in the process of shedding costs to help pay for the ABK deal…a deal that I have a feeling the only people who will see the benefit of are the Microsoft shareholders because so far the gamers and employees certainly haven’t seen any benefit whatsoever.

Truly mindless article. Why would you use Quick Resume for some games and not others?!? If you have to do that then what is the point of quick resume at all. If Jez Corden, Tom Warren or Phil Spencer aren’t tweeting Pure Xbox really do not have anything to write about.

@Banjo- and to top it off at 8 hours long I don’t even need a full month subscription, I could complete it in an afternoon! If only they sold day passes to GP

Ohhh this would be good news if true. I will be resubbing to GP later in May to give Hellblade 2 a try so LOTF would be a juicy bonus.

Going to wait till all DLC is out and it’s fully patched before trying it again but the updates are a step in the right direction.

I got bored after about 60 hours. Loved it at first but it just started to feel more like a chore than a fun RPG and I haven’t been back to it since. These updates sound positive though and it definitely wouldn’t be too little too late for me. If they made enough QoL improvements I could see myself going back and at least finishing the story. I have everything crossed for a better inventory management system as that alone would go a long way.

@cardcrusher29 Apple TV is excellent! What it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. Aside the ones you mentioned The Morning show, Foundation, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses and Shrinking are all well worth a watch.

@BAMozzy I’m not dismissing any game that doesn’t score 9 or above, I’m very aware there’s been some good games on GP. I’m saying if I relied solely on gamepass for all my gaming over the last 3 years I wouldn’t have had anywhere near as much fun as I have buying games like Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, Resi evil 4, god of war Ragnorok, Spiderman 2, Alan Wake 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart and I could go on with an list much longer than this of my fav games that either haven’t appeared on GP or wernt on at launch.

Happy with just and Xbox and GP? That’s absolutely fine but the gamepass model doesn’t suit everyone. I didn’t get much further than your first paragraph cuz I couldn’t be bothered with the mental gymnastics you were trying to pull to suggest gamepass games are free. Suffice to say every game I mentioned above is single player and can be played without GP or PS+ so the “your paying for it anyway” argument is pretty weak when a lot of people are just happy with single player games.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I know I was being facetious. It’s absolutely not free and anyone saying it is clearly does not understand the concept of a contract between vendor and customer. Stop paying Microsoft = Lose access to the games.

@BAMozzy Your point works if every game ever released on gamepass. In the top 20 games released this year on Metacritic only 1 came day and date to gamepass and that’s Persona 3 Reload, a remake of a game released in 2006. I still would need to buy Dragons Dogma 2, Infinite Wealth, Prince of Persia, Balatro, Tekken 8, Unicorn Overlord etc.

If everything I wanted to play came out on gamepass I would have sold my PS5 by now but it simply doesn’t. Instead I find myself buying games and unsubbing from GP for months at a time because I’m too busy with the infinitely better games that aren’t on the service. The “day one” games on GP would be great if they were all bangers but the vast majority of them are 7/10 at best. On top of that a good portion of the first party games release half baked as well: Forza M, Redfall, Halo Infinite for example.

I’m quite happy buying the top games full price on release if I’m really interested or waiting for a sale if I’m not. If I buy them on disk I can trade them in or sell them as well when I’m bored but either way an important thing for me is that I own them. The system you’re talking about is a world where i could give MS £750 over the course of five years and come away owning absolutely nothing.

P.S how do you get it free? I have looked everywhere on my series X but it keeps trying to charge me £12.99 per month.

@Enigk I used to work in a bookies in the late noughties and we had a regular who bought a Man United top and a Chelsea top, cut them both in half and sewed them together and wore it nearly every day. I asked him why he did this and he was like “dunno just funny seeing peoples reactions”. Your comment reminded me of this and I very much enjoyed it.

It’s excellent. I love all the little Easter eggs, nods to the game, the music and the the quirky sense of humour. I’m only half way through the series so can’t get a definitive score but if I had to score it now it would be 9.

@Sol4ris I started writing some long reply then looked at the beautiful weather out the window and just thought “what the hell am I doing with my life arguing with randos on the internet about which soulless multi billion dollar company is slightly more evil”…..have a fantastic weekend my friend I hope it’s sunny in whatever part of the UK you are in.

@GamingFan4Lyf See I purposely left Xbox published games out my list because I think if a company published something it probably has a right to some level of exclusivity. Things like Quantum Break and Ryse which are third party developed but never made the leap so again there’s examples for both.

I absolutely agree with you about the practice needing to change, particularly with current markets. If it’s Xbox who do it it’s not because MS are some benevolent entity who want peace and prosperity for all…it’s because their $80 billion spending spree has failed to get the result they want.

I also don’t care what plastic box people buy but I will call out something when I think someone’s talking crap on either side and two things I will absolutely call out is Xbox tax and the idea that Sony are the only ones making exclusivity deals. My view is if you are the first to do something you can’t complain when someone else does it better, no matter how much time has passed. No Xbox fans were complaining during the 360 era…because we were too busy playing Bioshock and Mass Effect. We are all at least a little biased towards one or the other. I am biased towards PS because I have experienced first hand how little MS cares about me as a customer when something goes wrong. So now anything I buy is on PS and I have a Series X for sporadic gamepass membership when there’s a few games I want to play.

I know it’s purely conjecture (a bit like your Xbox PC console) but if MS hadn’t completely fumbled the Xbox One release we would be living in a completely different world. If anyone for one second thinks that world would have involved Xbox sharing, playing nice and not throwing their money around like a Kardashian kid they are kidding themselves. They have proven both in gaming and in their wider technology business exactly what they are capable of when they are market leader and it’s very rarely philanthropic.

Anyway it’s Saturday morning for me and I imagine the middle of the night for you. I hope you have a fantastic weekend whatever you do. I imagine it’s something fun and American like a road trip or a BBQ….i will be planting potatoes because my wife has told me to 😕

@GamingFan4Lyf Can you provide examples? And by examples I mean literally anything other than FF7 remake which people have been moaning about non stop for the last 4 years and frankly it’s getting boring because it’s as much on Square as it is on Sony.

We are talking third party exclusivity deals here (timed or otherwise) because xbox make as many as PS: Stalker 2, planet of Lana, tunic, cuphead. rogue legacy 2, high on life, gunk, vampire survivors, party animals, warhammer Darktide, Ark 2 just to mention a few. But because Xbox didn’t get the FF7 remakes everyone loses their minds and forgets everything MS have done in the third party space.

Also worth mentioning Xbox really went to town with this practice during the 360 era with games like mass effect, bioshock, dead rising, tales of vesperia, the last remnant, blue dragon and being the FIRST to make stupid cod exclusivity deals for maps/weapons etc but because we all hate Sony we forget the history and pretend that they started and mastered the exclusivity deal. PS is the ‘premium’ market leader right now and as such it’s getting good deals. To pretend Microsoft hasn’t done the same and wouldn’t continue to do the same if it was market leader is naive and completely ignorant of modern gaming history. They are as bad as each other.

@GamingFan4Lyf it probably won’t shock you to find out I feel exactly the same way. Blind forest is one of my favourite games of all time.

It’s also an excellent example of a game franchise funded by a console manufacturer, marketed predominantly as an exclusive and taking years (if ever) to appear on a competing console…it’s not just “evil” Sony doing it.

@GamingFan4Lyf Sony did have a hand in it. They funded part of Kenas development and marketing. It’s exactly like Ori and Moon studios with MS funding their development.

Does WoW still require a monthly subscription fee? I could never fathom buying a game and then needing to pay a monthly fee just to play it. It’s one of the things that’s always put me off giving it a go.

Future Crossplay support is excellent news. I will probably get it on Steamdeck at some point anyway but not being able to play with my friends on PC has been a bit of a downer. Looking forward to seeing what the modding tools bring as well if it does indeed come to console. Larian truly are one in a million.

This is quite a good drop. I want to play Another Crabs Treasure, I am intrigued by Eiyuden and Orcs Must Die looks like a bit of silly fun.

@Foxx_64740 I bought Have a nice death on PS on release and dropped off it pretty quick. It’s not a bad game it just didn’t seem to do anything new or different to previous roguelites/metroidvanias. Hope you enjoy it though!

@IOI That’s why I said “if you buy most of your games digitally” right at the start of my comment.

@Rodimusprime13 See those ratios are actually pretty good. However I did some googling and you only get the 20 points per £/$ if you are on GPU and are earning 400 points per month. If you’re not on GPU it’s 1 point hence my 53 points for DD2. I also don’t understand why credit in UK costs so much more points.

Like I said in my first comment in this thread, any company willing to do a half decent reward programme is good. Ms rewards is good if you play your console daily, are willing to do little tasks daily on various different apps and it’s significantly better if your subbed to GPU and play GP games. PS stars is good if you have PS plus and buy games digitally. They have both, unsurprisingly, built their reward programmes around what their core demographics are doing.

Personally I don’t play games every day, i subscribe to GPU intermittently but PS plus a year at a time, I buy most of my games digitally, 95% them are on PS and I’d rather put pins in my eyes then use Bing. It’s not rocket science which one I am going to get more value out of. I’m absolutely not crapping on MS rewards here either I’m just saying for certain things they are comparable and one of those things is purchase to credit conversion….at least in the UK where MS credit seems to cost 4.5 times as much as PS

@Rodimusprime13 Honestly I think compared to MS rewards, PS stars is as good if not better if you buy most of your games digitally. It might be different in Canada but in UK I get 10 points for every pound spent so a £70 gets me 700 points (if it’s one of the selected games of the month I might get an extra 50 which I think is what you were alluding to). £5 credit is indeed 1250 points but on Xbox it’s at least 5900 points…nearly five times as much. At the end of the day whichever store front you use the most is going to give you the most value but the credit system on stars is certainly not to be sniffed at. I don’t really understand the level system on MS rewards (apparently I’m only level 1?!) but I bought Dragon's Dogma 2 on Xbox and only got 53 points for it. That would have been 530 on PS and nearly half way to a £5 credit.

I will always defend a company giving us something for nothing so I am a fan of MS rewards. It takes me an age to get enough points for a month of GPU but it’s better than nothing.

The absolute pinnacle of horde survival games for me is Killing Floor 2. It’s not the most polished game, it can be a grind and it gets a bit repetitive but it’s just so much fun. I’m desperately waiting for any news on the third.

Probably my most anticipated game this year. I adore the Ori games and so far everything I have read/seen about this suggest it’s going to be a classic. In the unlikely event it’s steamdeck compatible I might even dive in on the early access but very keen for a console release date!

Looking forward to giving this ago. I have quickly bounced off every narrative adventure game I have tried except for Firewatch but the art style and premise makes me want to give it a try. A good gamepass addition.

Our definitions of “Must-buy” differ wildly.

I would consider a small tip for true indie games I love like Balatro and Incsryption. The prospect of tipping for a game made by the likes of EA, Ubisoft or Blizzard just seems mad to me. For starters I have absolutely zero trust that any developers would ever see any of that money. Secondly I imagine a fairly significant chunk of Devs creating these games are contractors so would be working for a completely different company by the time I come to tip them.

@RIghteousNixon Ok I will remember to take what looks for all the world like a statement of fact to be an opinion in future. I still think that for something you believe to be so prevalent and obvious you would be able to provide at least one example though. Even if it’s off the top of your head. I can provide examples of non anti-Xbox bias off the top of my head as I have done previously in this comment section: hi fi rush, psychonauts 2, every Forza Horizon, Flight simulator, Gears 1-3, Halo 1-5, Age of Empires 1-4, all reviewed and were received well because they are interesting or did something different or had a solid story but most importantly because they are fun.

I’ve lost track of how many times I have said this in response to the ridiculous Xbox tax conspiracy theory but: When MS make good/fun games they get good reviews. It really is as simple as that. There’s no media cabal out to get the poor little trillion dollar company, they just haven’t been showered with praise recently because they haven’t deserved it. And when I say they haven’t deserved it I mean that in both the quality and quantity of output. If they hadn’t bought Bethesda the only first party games they would have released so far this gen are Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport and Pentiment. That’s a truly pathetic offering nearly 4 years in but by all means let’s keep pretending it’s the media who are being overly mean to MS and not just MS being a terrible games publisher.

@RIghteousNixon So you kinda just proved your whole “blatently obvious” statement false by saying it’s all subjective. So really there is no bias….. you just see bias because you, yourself are biased towards Xbox. Nice work.

@RIghteousNixon blatantly obviously? Shouldn’t be too difficult to provide examples then. When exactly have reviewers been unfair to Xbox?

@IOI Agree it will get hate for being digital only exactly like Alan Wake 2 did. It will get hate for being short exactly like Spiderman 2 did. It will not however get hate just for being an Xbox game. Psychonauts 2, hi fi rush, Forza Horizon 5 are just a few examples of Xbox studio games that are adored by critics and players alike. When Xbox delivers it is acknowledged. The Xbox Tax conspiracy has gained traction recently after a year of hugely hyped but fairly average games in Redfall, Starfield and Forza Motorsport. The media wasn’t underwhelmed by these because of bias, they were underwhelmed because they are underwhelming games.

Plus I’m pretty sure the Starfield on PS5 rumours were started by Jez Corden and that guy from XboxEra, who for the most part are known for being pretty pro Xbox. The media train ran with it because it was a huge story in the gaming world and it gained clicks and engagement. If you want to read less stuff about the doom of Xbox stop clicking on the articles and engaging. Enough people do that and the sites will realise the console war content isn’t driving the ad revenue and fingers crossed we see less of it.

Shall we wait till it releases before assessing its GOTY potential? How can you predict something is going to be GOTY based on screenshots, cinematic trailers and the roughly 2 minutes total gameplay we have seen.

I’m interested but not sure I’m £15.99 interested.

@Grumblevolcano Yep I agree with that to some extent but I think they could have the desired effect just by confirming that they are 100% going to still be releasing future gen hardware which they did already. It’s pretty much a given that the next Xbox will be the most powerful hardware available as it has been for the past two generations so either tell us what is going to be so great about this new console so we know why we should be hyped or shut up till it’s ready to show. With the amount of times they have made promises like this that they haven’t delivered on this gen I can’t see it making a blind bit of difference to most people’s hardware choices. The Xbox players are going to continue Xboxing, the PS players will continue playstationing and the Switch players Switching. In my mind all they are doing is setting themselves up for the usual eye rolls when they release something that, in actual fact, is not the best thing since sliced bread that revolutionises gaming.

It would be cool if I’m wrong but I lost all my trust in the Xbox hype train after the mediocre run of Redfall, Starfield and Forza Motorsport and the June 2022 “everything you see here will release in the next 12 months” showcase.

MS never seem to learn their lesson about overhyping stuff. It would be so much cooler if they just blew everyone away with a surprise reveal. Instead they spend years telling us how great something is going to be and most of the time it doesn’t live up to expectations.

No preference really. My favourite game is Elden Ring but arcadey games like Tekken, FIFA and CoD will get most hours out of me overall because they are easy to dip in and out of.it completely depends on the game genre, how much it costs and whether it outstays its welcome by the end. I wouldn’t feel I was getting my moneys worth for a £50 digital game I couldn’t resell if I complete it in 8 hours.

I’m not really much of a framerate snob but this seems a bit weird. It’s not a massive open world game with vast amounts of moving parts; items that need to stay where they should after being moved, branching quests and NPCs that need to be kept track of etc. I’m absolutely not an expert on any of this stuff but I would have thought if there’s one game where you would be able to squeeze out 60fps it’s an 8 hour linear narrative adventure. Not sure how it can be lauded as a true next gen technical marvel and be running at 30fps tbh.

I found the first pretty boring. I can see why people enjoyed it but I am a gameplay over narrative type of player and walking through pretty environments with the odd bit of basic combat and puzzling doesn’t do it for me. I will try it next time I’m subbed to GP, mainly to ogle the graphics but can’t see myself getting very far before getting bored.

@CutchuSlow Even the human assistance is terrible (when you eventually get through to them). Their support, or should I say lack of support, is one of the main reasons I switched from Xbox as my main to PS last gen. They hacked me off that much.

Personally I have played all the ABK games that I want to already so nothing in that list for me. I would be more interested in the future day one games although not sure what they have cooking outside of Cod?

Pointless waste of hardware. Nothing but a downgrade from the Series X and further confirmation of Microsoft’s idyllic future where the consumer pays them £X a month to own absolutely nothing.

@cardcrusher29 Out of interest what are you doing to get enough points for GPU every month? Last year I gave it a real good shot with the bing daily crap, logging into Xbox app and playing my Xbox regularly (albeit not every day) and it still took months to save up what I needed.

If MS get a handheld right it could be a game changer. They will be entering the market at a time where they have a fair amount of competitors to draw inspiration from and mistakes to learn from as well. They may be on to a winner if they can combine Steamdeck’s user friendliness with the Ally/LegionGo’s adaptability, all wrapped up in a more powerful but affordable package. It is quite a risky move though. No guarantee it will sell well outside the hardcore fans and it would need to be pretty special to tempt people into trading in their current handhelds. Interesting times!

Is anyone else moving to New Zealand today?

The salty comments here are really sad. If it had scored lower overall everyone would be saying “All the PS sites are scoring it badly because it’s an Xbox studios game 😭” and it still would have been classed as “Xbox Tax”. It was never going to get the exact same score because different sites are reviewing it and it has over a years worth of gameplay updates under its belt.

The fact of the matter is there is no journalistic conspiracy against Xbox. Their best games (Forza Horizons, Gears, most Halos, Flight simulator etc) have reviewed exceptionally well and arguably some of their mid games have reviewed better than they should….looking at you Starfield. Also worth pointing out that multiplat games often score higher on Xbox on Metacritic with Dead Island 2, Diablo 4, Alan wake 2, Balatro and new Prince of persia being some recent examples. “Xbox Tax” is nothing more than a justification fanboys came up with for Microsoft’s spell of bang average games. Journalists have proven over and over again when an Xbox game deserves praise it will get it

While it was undoubtedly an amazing generation I do wonder if a lot of people look back with rose tinted glasses due to the time in their life rather than the console and games themselves. Personally for me the 360 generation represents just starting uni, discovering adult freedom while still having very little responsibility, regularly playing online with a group of friends and just having massive amounts of time to devote to gaming. I genuinely believe games nowadays are of a higher quality but nothing will beat that generation for sheer fun…despite 2 red rings of death.

What the f*%# was that because it sure as hell wasn’t Timesplitters.

@K1LLEGAL Microsoft might have helped fund the original Ori but Gamepass certainly didn’t. Ori launched nearly 2 years before gamepass was a thing.