JustinSane

Banishers is one of the best AA games out there. Great combat, fun story, and runs/looks great! I played through it already, but I'm going to give it another go!

Didn't we just have one of the biggest outages across the board just last week with AWS? Hundreds of important apps and sites were down and people couldn't conduct business. I fear this is just the beginning for hacks and outages.

@TheOldHunter4K End of November through the first few weeks of the new year are typically slow for new releases. Things usually start back up mid January. The game awards will give some more 2026 release dates for third party and Xbox first party games. But yeah, it's ALWAYS slow around the holidays

Really? Haha of course. Pretty awesome though for a console that you can find for $200

I mean, it's like a year away from release and who knows, the new versions of UE5 might negate a lot of those issues. We'll see how well Stalker 2 looks and runs in the updated UE5 engine when it's released.

Check out performance videos for the Series S for this game. Pretty wild that it runs this well on the weaker platform, especially with 120hz and VRR modes, being UE5 and all.

Played the beta last spring and even then it ran almost flawlessly on Seried X and S. It's a ton of fun too. It's nice to have a game optimized months before actual release and not an afterthought.

As of right now, all I care about is the engine update. Performance has been rocky to say the least. It looks and runs decent on a display with VRR, but the upscaling artifacts and ghosting are really bad. It's just a noisy outcome for the graphics. I've put about 25 hours into it, and feel like I should just wait until they DO update the engine.

So excited for Jump Space. All the previews I've seen have been positive! Ever since it was shown a few years back, I've been waiting.

Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the ugliest modern gen AAA games I've played in a long time. I have to play on a small monitor to be able to stand the upscaling artifacts. It also runs terribly. I mostly play on my 85" 120hz TV with VRR and 90% of games look great. This one does not. Endgame content is also extremely lacking for MHW. Reviews were very biased since it's a monster Hunter game.

I've tried. With this and the first. Just not my thing, and I don't understand the hype, but to each their own. Working through Wukong and WuChang. I have momentum with those titles so I need to push through.

@DienteDeHombre haha I just said this. It looks to be better than most the stuff on this list. I've watched a ton of previews

You guys don't have Jump Space (formerly Jump Ship) on this list. Comes out Sept 19th. All of the previews and people that have played it absolutely love it! I'm excited.

@HeavyHoggJP haha nice! I have Eneloops and then the big boys are the black Eneloop pros. I use them in my IEM for the band. They last double the amount of time as Duracell or Energizer.

@DWMcKie my Xbox controllers have less stick drift than my Switch or PS5. Like WAY less. Also, controllers for the Xbox are half the price of other consoles.

Buy some Panasonic Eneloop Pro rechargeable batteries and game for days. I've charged the same few sets hundreds of times and I can still get tons of hours. They're more expensive, but totally worth it. I also wish phones had removable batteries again

I just beat Reborn Treant - Soulwood just today. I was always terrible at souls like games. Elden Ring wasn't overly difficult for the most part as you can get help with bosses, but this game was hard for me. I think I'm getting it though. It's been a blast so far and I'm glad they're improving the experience. Just need to fix the hiccups with performance.

@Nexozi next year could mean a Halo remake, Gears, Forza Horizon, Everwild, Perfect Dark, Clockwork Revolution, Fable.... Bonkers to even think about. We still have Crimson Desert this year too for a killer 3rd party title. Not enough time in a day.

They'll announce something for the end of the year at Gamescom in August and maybe a shadow drop then. We'll probably get more Fable and Gears gameplay at that point as well. Game Pass subscribers are getting their money's worth.

I'm in the tech test and it runs beautifully on Series X AND S. 60 fps on both consoles with a few dips, but those dips seem to be server related more than anything. It's a lot more polished than I thought for a game I heard very little about.

The gripes are basically, "I've never played a Forza Horizon so I'm overwhelmed by how much content there is." That's such a backhanded gripe

@Fiendish-Beaver it's all about Game Pass. It has and it will be even more about GP in the future. If they release more and more games on PS, that's where they'll get most of their sales and the rest of the income will be GP. If you look closely, that's where it looks to be heading.

@Dromosus it's not just the Series S version. It's an ugly game with bad performance. If anyone says otherwise, then they're just fanboying. DF did tests with high end GPU/CPU combos and frame stuttering affected them all, with frame rates well below 60 fps.

Witcher 3, Watch Dogs Legion, AC Valhalla/Odyssey/Origins, Forza Horizon 4/5, GOW4/5, and the list goes on... All those games run at 60 fps on the Series S. MHW can barely hit 30 fps on an ugly engine. They should have used CryEngine. Even Unreal Engine 4 looks and runs better than this. I love Monster Hunter, but this sours the experience on ALL platforms.

GTA 4 also has an unlocked frame rate, so on the Series X and S, it's 60 fps which makes the game that much better.

Obviously Forza Horizon is king, but this isn't even a jester. It's SOOO ugly. God, it looks like a poor man's Xbox One title. Motorfest is way better than this as well. I can't believe people thought this would rival either one of those titles.

Eternal Strands, Towerborne, and believe it or not, I'm excited for the new Double Dragon.

They better fix the upscaling artifacts. God it was bad, and it didn't even look very good. Here's hoping most the work went into performance before release. I'd rather have a lower resolution than that noisy upscaling.

@Lup it reminds me so much of Immortals Fenyx Rising. I absolutely loved that game.

@MeanBeanEgg just an example. I never said IGN was bad. They align with my thoughts most times. Eurogamer, Gamespot, etc. All gave it not just good, but GREAT scores

@YeyoFairy according to nearly every other review, it's a HUGE win.

IGN gave it a 9. Stalker 2 was the same thing. Are you guys just salty or....

I've had a really good experience so far. You need to be hardwired for it to be smooth. I have a really fast connection. Yes there are issues here and there, but it's been better than most from what I've seen.

80 on metacritic for the Xbox version. How is there such a difference? Stalker has always been an obscure game. Slow and tactical.

Oof. A lot of reviewers will say you either hate it or love it. I played it on my 85 inch TV with VRR and the framerate is no longer an issue. And other reviewers have said the story, gameplay, and writing are too notch, so... Just look at the metacritic scores. Some are saying it's a masterpiece.

Issues like that with your profile can be fixed sometimes by deleting the profile off of the console storage and downloading the profile from the cloud. This happened a few times with my old 360 and it worked every time.

I have it set to Quality with RT on and it's actually pretty decent with my 120hz TV. Feels a lot like Avatar's 40 fps mode. Towns still suck though.

@abe_hikura I was hoping they'd go the way of Atomic Heart and not even give an option for a "quality mode." I understand a 120 fps mode, but 30 seems just lazy. Especially since a lot of games get patches to get them up to par for a 60 fps option. So in other words, developers should just take a but more time

Avatar has a 40 fps mode on the S. I'm assuming that'll be patched in. I have an X and S, along with a PS5 and I am fortunate to have 120hz displays with all of them. The 40 fps options are really nice. Hellblade 2 should at least get that treatment.

From what I've seen from Digital Foundry on the PS5 version, I'm baffled that passed certification. Terrible input lag and artifacts on performance mode. Weird frame rate targets on balance and quality which makes it feel like it's stuttering. Watch the video and that version is a mess. All the DF guys could do is say, "I don't know what they're trying to do."

@Arcticpandapopz the saving and starting back where you left off is absolutely amazing!

Eneba. I have 2 years saved up and I paid roughly $75 for each year. It's not a scam. Just get the worldwide codes. I've been buying from them for years. If that amount of money scares you off, then compare that to purchasing one game or an entire year of hundreds of games.

@RBRTMNZ I would go out on a limb and say the combat is one of my favorites in any game. Top 5 at least. Story is "meh" but it's a good time for 20 hours or so. Plus, there's that huge update in August. I also loved Evil West.

I played all the way through the game. Totally a AA experience, but the combat screams AAA. It runs at a locked 60 fps, even on the Series S. This is one of those games that was released at a time when it was overlooked. I'd say a solid 7.5, but it's more fun than most of the recent AAA releases.

I have found out that games that I've thoroughly enjoyed have been in the 7-8 out of 10. Those games seem to be my bread and butter. If this game is just "decent" I'll take it. I did read some negative things about previews prior to this year, but clearly they've been working hard. Excited. And since it's game pass, I'll try it regardless of reviews.

@BAMozzy it's from the creators of Banner Saga, but it's nothing like those games. I'm not a fan of banner saga at ALL, but a co op beat em up with RPG elements. Hell yeah! This kinda reminds me of Sacred Citadel on steroids.

@cardcrusher29 there it is. The FSR 3 frame generation update was dropped yesterday. Making the experience a whole lot better. It was hovering between 45 and 50 fps and is now mostly a locked 60 on both the Series X and S. And I was talking about consoles.

Just waiting for the FSR 3 frame gen update for Immortals of Aveum. It was presumably coming out in April, but hasn't happened yet. They're taking major boost to the game's performance. I'll believe it when I see it.

Hellblade 2, Towerborne, AC Red (hopefully), Indiana Jones, Stalker 2, SW Outlaws, Avowed... I mean, wow!

With FSR 3.1 coming to Xbox, the performance may improve enough to be worth it. But really, some of the most gorgeous games don't have RT. So why do we NEED it? Especially if it's a forced feature with no performance option. But again, if FSR 3.1 (planned to be used in Indiana Jones) is as advertised, it could be a game changer.