Kienda

@Kaloudz Ni No Kuni is fantastic, especially for fans of JRPGs.

The gameplay is a typical turn based RPG but it has an element of real time, think a mixture of Dragon Quest XI and Final Fantasy 12. The characters auto attack basic moves and you can free move them on the battle field, but also issue commands. There are also little pets you get in addition to other party members.

It has a world map similar to FF7 where you traverse it and fight mobs but then go into towns or locations to explore.

The story and world are very charming. Obviously if you like Ghibli movies it will have added appeal. Very suitable for younger audiences even though dealing with ‘grown up’ issues but magical enough for anyone to enjoy.

Also, this is one of the few games that has a character with a Welsh accent. And he’s a great mascot for the game.

I’ve done a lot of grumbling about 343i, but none of that matters when someone is handling this kind of situation.

Hoping for the best for her and her family.

@Boucho11 oh my goodness, someone else had the Lion King as one of their first completions.

That makes me happy.

The Lion King on the Sega Mega Drive.

That was the first game I could complete on my own and I probably played through it 50+ times to the point where I could perfect it each time and completely in a very quick time. I’d finish school before my brother and try complete it before he got home.

First and only Platinum I ever got was Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4. I haven’t 100% completed any other modern game that I can recall.

343i? More like 234n!

You know… because… <clears throat> because we can’t play 2, 3 or 4 player split screen multiplayer so it’s 234n…

234Nope, get it?

Tough crowd…

Immortal’s Fenyx Rising. I only started playing it today and only around 5 hours in but it is excellent. A mixture of Assassin’s Creed and Breath of the Wild, two franchises I love.

The great thing is my kids love it to and so we’ve just spent the evening playing it together and taking turns. Just like we did when BotW released.

@Danimal25 Im not sure where the contradiction is but maybe I didn’t make myself clear so I will explain a bit.

My view is that the customers lose when exclusivity deals are made. Instead of CoD being made equal in the PS4/XB1 era, Sony paid for exclusive content and game modes. The CoD gamers on Xbox, through no fault of their own, were short changed by the deal.

Likewise, if Microsoft now takes CoD away from Sony, the gamers on PlayStation will lose out.

Either way the customers are the ones losing.

My hope with this deal is that CoD exists as a multi platform title with both versions being equal.

The only change I think should happen is CoD should join Game Pass. That shouldn’t harm Sony as much and they could even bid to have it on PS+ (But I’m not sure MS will allow that).

That to me sounds fair. If Xbox has it as an exclusive then it isn’t fair.

So I’m not sure where I contradicted myself. Maybe I just wasn’t clear enough about my thoughts on that.

@Serpentes420 Sony may not have bought studios to get third party exclusives, but they have spent money to block games going onto Xbox.

There is a reason Final Fantasy 7 Remake is still not on Xbox and that is Sony.

There are numerous other titles like that. And we also have learned that contracts for other games are blocking them going on Game Pass.

Sony is also notorious for paying for timed exclusives and CoD was a game they got content for over and above Xbox in the past.

Microsoft’s spending spree is a reaction to years of Sony’s antics and it isn’t hard to see how the business practice of blocking third party exclusives from the competition is not a good thing. It’s just only now people are moaning because Xbox is going to have the power to do it instead of Sony.

Ultimately, the ones who lose in the end are us the gamers.

It’s odd that none of these regulators care that Nintendo never gets any Call of Duty games, or most third party AAA’s for that matter.

Isn’t that unfair compared to Nintendo’s rivals?

I think some people are misunderstanding what Phil is saying here.

This isn’t him being indecisive or hiding anything from us. This is his attempt to show that Microsoft is not keeping games from other platforms. Xbox will have some exclusive games that Sony won’t have. But those games will also be available in Game Pass meaning anyone with a phone, tablet, PC, Xbox and in future a smart TV will be able to play them.

That being said, some games will launch on PlayStation and Switch. And that’s not him neglecting Xbox or anything. It’s just clever business.

Regulators are simply worried that Sony won’t get Call of Duty and some other games that may give Microsoft the monopoly.

Funnily enough, no one cares that Switch doesn’t have CoD and only gets a half-baked FIFA each year.

Well this is a shame.

My kids play a LOT of couch co-op from Minecraft to Fortnite to Star Ward Battlefront II and the Plants Vs Zombies games, and many many more, all of which offer split screen co-op.

In fact, I’m still surprised that PvZ:BFN has split screen that is so smooth and playable through the whole game from the campaign to the multiplayer and yet 343 can’t deliver it on Xbox’s flagship game.

It’s really pathetic. A genuine disappointment.

Yay! I’m glad they are catering to the Asian market more.

PlayStation and Nintendo have the monopoly when it comes to Japanese games (obviously) but I would love to see more third party JRPGs and the like coming to Xbox.

It saddens my soul every time I see sales charts for Xbox that are just filled FPS shooters all the time and even Pure Xbox rarely covers the non-mainstream Xbox games.

The Xbox library has a lot of diverse titles already but it also needs a good injection of Asian flavour into it. I hope this helps to cater to that.

@Stoned_Patrol @Bris it’s funny really because some weeks I spend more time on sites like this than I do gaming. For example, the time I spend waiting for my kids at school pick up or watching them at sports practice or waiting while they have piano practice and things is time I spend on my phone mainly browsing gaming news.

So as someone who works long hours (luckily from home) and has a family to spend time with, my gaming time varies wildly. It can be literally 1 hour in a Saturday and that’s it, or if I get lucky it could be a couple hours every night because everyone is asleep early. It varies based on life.

My average would be about 5-7 hours a week though.

@Tc93 Wait, so the head of Xbox can’t be a fan of PC even though it is an Xbox platform?

Not to mention the fact PC is also part of the company he works for.

Personally, I prefer my executives to be real fans of games. As a gamer myself, I own various platforms at all times and while I favour some I don’t discount the others. And as for Phil, he needs to know the competition. You can’t compete with a team/opponent/company you know nothing about. And some of the best rivalries are born out of appreciation/inspiration from close competitors.

@funkhouser the trailer probably isn’t doing the game justice.

The original Slime Rancher was a game I had no interest in until I sat and watched my kids playing it and it was so much better than what I expected.

It’s still a lot about sucking up slimes. But there is a lot to explore in the world, secrets to find and so forth. So it’s actually more of an exploration game with collecting more than it is a farming sim or anything.

I was looking forward to this game as I love Rocket League and thought it would be a new take on that.

To be fair, it’s quite fun, but it’s not Rocket League levels of fun.

The main thing for me is that in most cases it feels like you are just racing yourself and blindly hoping you get it in faster than others.

You may see other players, but you can’t hit each other’s balls (which is understandable because the trolling would be insane). But there isn’t that much other players can do to stop you other than the odd rocket. I personally think they needed to do a bit more to have interaction between the players to make it more competitive.

It’s a fun game. Probably great for kids in the 7-12yr bracket. But for me it just made me want to play Rocket League, which I did.

@R1kdangerous a few weeks ago my sister-in-law held up her Cornish pasty during a group photo by the sea and in the process had the whole thing nabbed by a seagull.

Our kids then spent the rest of our lunchtime pretending to be ninjas and chasing away the seagulls that came near us.

Those Cornish seagulls are something else. Haha

It’s not hard understand.

This is lawyer/corporate speak to try get the deal over the line. That is all.

It holds water also as every Blizzard game has a similar rival. WoW has other MMOs, CoD has tons of rival FPS games etc.

What the wording REALLY says is that there is nothing the acquisition is doing to take away a unique feature away from rivals. Activision-Blizzard do not own the patent to a software that Xbox owning would create a monopoly issue over. (Think if a car manufacturer bought the rights to make electric cars that puts other car companies out of business).

That kind of thing would be a unique aspect that would be unfair on rivals and may cause problems, but Microsoft is simply saying there is no unique aspect of Activision-Blizzard that cannot be mimicked by rivals so there should be no legal barrier to the acquisition.

To be honest, I’m probably going to wait until the Switch version releases before introducing my daughter to this game.

The graphics will but a bit lacking I imagine but she’s only 7 and plays Switch the most so it makes sense to just keep it for that platform.

I know it may seem odd coming to Game Pass early, but if we didn’t have Switches and it wasn’t free for it my daughter would have only gotten in on Xbox. I’m sure there are a lot of Xbox only families who will benefit.

Skylanders - That’s all I want included.

I’m a big fan of many of these franchises. World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Crash Team Racing. All those games I enjoy and would be fantastic additions to Game Pass.

But I really hope they both include the old Skylanders games and revive the franchise.

They could even add Skylanders to Game Pass and have the characters as unlockable inside the game (and still allow those of us with figurines to use our own).

I feel like the online outrage about this game is a bit over the top.

I’m not sure if it is my cup of tea, but it doesn’t look as bad as people are saying. In all likelihood it will just be a standard game that will sink because it’s fun for people to crap on it and no one wants to give it a chance. It probably should have been free to play as it will likely be competing with Word of Warships. So that could be a mistake, just as Rocket Arena from EA should have launched free of charge a few years ago.

Also, this developer doesn’t sound anything more than someone having a moan and wanting some attention. No wonder it’s in Kotaku…

I think all of us as kids watched someone power washing something and really wanted to do it ourselves.

So it’s probably got something to do with that. It’s just very satisfying to blast something clean with a thin spray of water.

Wait?! Phantasy Star Online: Episode 1 & 2 will be playable again online?

I might invest in an OG Xbox just for this.

But I always wanted to be a jousting knight on a flying seahorse…

Noooo! I put Children of Morta off for too long and now it’s too late.

Assassin’s Creed Origins, Rocket League and some D&D tonight with friends.

It was absolutely bonkers that they didn’t release this physically at launch.

They’d have actually got a PS4 sale out of me last year. Back then I didn’t have Game Pass and only bought physical.

Now I have played it on Game Pass and have no desire to spend money on a game I technically own already.

Beyond Good & Evil HD is just £2.02

That’s an instant buy from me.

I actually like that logo. However, all this corporate virtue signalling is getting old fast.

Can we not just respect everyone, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability and body type all the time?

Raise awareness by providing products for people with disabilities. It’s far more valuable and honourable than all these gimmicks.

I don’t know why this article got so many toxic comments.

I own PlayStation, Xbox and Switch (multiples of each for my kids). I love my consoles all for different reasons and have never understood the console war nonsense.

However, it is perfectly fine for PureXbox to sing the praises of the Xbox Series X. And it is good to point these things out.

I’ve read so many comments of PlayStation fanboys saying the Series X is weaker and performs worse etc. It isn’t true. So slap them with facts, I say. The PS5 has a faster SSD and better exclusives. The Xbox has better backwards comparability options and so forth.

Overall though, this generation will be far more competitive than last season and that is good for all gamers. So instead of bemoaning whoever for liking whatever. Or just being happy their console is stronger. Let’s just be happy that we all have great gaming adventures ahead of us.

@UltimateOtaku91 I agree. I love this website, but it has a high focus on Xbox first party titles, first person shooters and the like and miss a lot of news from games I’m interested in.

They are lower staffed than Push Square and NintendoLife so it’s understandable and they can’t cover everything. But to draw in a bigger audience I’d recommend being far more varied on what games are reported on.

@Kloppo too late, used up my fun at Church and now I only have Fall Guys left until next Sunday!

Slime Rancher 2

Loved the first one. Can’t wait to play the second.

Me and my kids will be jumping in this afternoon after Church!

Downloaded it on all our Xboxes in preparation. And yes, I’m far more excited than the kids…

Looks great BUT why does the XP notification have to be in the centre of the crosshairs?

I’m ashamed to admit that I actually enjoyed the Goat Simulator 3 reveal and actually let out a chuckle when it said 3 instead of 2.

I guess I’m just a sad old man.

I’m quietly optimistic.

I’ve never played a Ninja Gaiden game so I can’t wait to get my butt kicked by these.

We live in hope!

I for one loved the remake and can’t wait to play it again on Xbox.

This game deserves an Xbox release, more so for the fans than anything else.

One thing I think will be interesting is if it is Xbox One or just Xbox Series. And also will Intergrade be available on both.

I imagine the Fable devs were going about their work as normal when suddenly a giant bleep-storm erupts on social media because someone without game dev knowledge leaks some very normal process to the equally uninformed public who also freak out because they think it’s a problem, when in reality it’s just part of the process.

Social media is like the village gossip that spreads around the world before the game devs can get their pants on and correct the situation (which won’t be corrected because most won’t see this updated news).

@Bossonova Not really. In my opinion the games PS+ offers monthly are far superior to GwG.

FIFA22 this month vs Super Meat Boy?

Both services can be hit or miss though.

Personally, I like that younger gamers or lower income households will still get games for years to come.

You can buy an Xbox One for under £100. Get Xbox Game Pass for around £50 for a year. And you have yourself a fantastic little console with loads of games and future ones at that.

Not to mention that Microsoft is releasing cloud versions of Series games on the Xbox One.

I know it is underpowered for enthusiasts and those of us who can afford the latest gen, but I honestly think the Xbox One / PS4 / Switch are all super good value offerings that deliver fantastic gaming experiences for a low budget.

So while I want to see gaming advance with the new generation, I’m also happy to see a future for those who can’t move forward just yet.

Thanks to Spotify I listen to more music.

Thanks to Game Pass I play more games.

As a consumer, I’m quite happy with this setup.

It is fair to say that I buy more games on other consoles though.

This should be a learning experience for Microsoft and I hope there is sufficient uproar about it for them to make some changes.

We shouldn’t be restricted from playing games we own in this manner. It’s not user friendly.

Thanks for this info. Much appreciated.

So long Master Chief…

90 minutes seems perfect to me. Or whatever they decide.

(Sorry, I had to balance out the first two comments.)

I personally don’t mind this at all.

My kids have Series S consoles hooked up to 1080p displays. All I really expect is 1080p and hopefully 60fps on most games (although even that’s a stretch sometimes).

Our Xbox Series X is on the main 4K TV downstairs. That’s where we expect the magic to happen.

Yorkshire Tea is clearly the superior flavour (imho) but the PG Tips adverts with the monkeys were the best.

Both controllers should be made for real.

I love Reggie.

Now we gotta support these types of games so they keep coming to Xbox!