MattWithoutFear

@themightyant ah geez I'd blocked horse armour from memory! shudders I will say that the Forza "play early" included the season pass so I bought that knowing I wouldn't be disappointed down the line. I guess if that was the standard I'd be happy but not everything is going to be a Forza expansion

@themightyant when it's just the season pass though, that's just DLC right? Admittedly this seems more like a deluxe version with characters and seems priced highly for that; if it was Forza-level expansions being promised with a new island area or something, that might be different and more palatable.

@themightyant I don't see the issue personally. How is it different from games like Far Cry having a Gold edition that includes the season pass for £30 more? That's basically what this is but with the base game for "free" on game pass.

@K1LLEGAL Don't forget Hot Wheels. I'm looking forward to diving into that!

@ZYDIO there was a 360 remaster that got canned but it did leak (you can play it on PC and there are clips on YT); the rumour was Nintendo kiboshed it out of pettiness so that there wouldn't be a better looking version on another platform (that's what Jeff Grubb has hinted at anyway). That's why we we've just got this port of the OG game here.

There was ALSO a Goldeneye Rogue Agent game that came out for GameCube (I think) but that was just trying to trade off the Goldeneye name. You played a former mi6 agent with an electronic eye implant - a golden eye... Smh

People giving it an F - what were you expecting that you thought this Direct was a massive fail? Are these just Ponies out in force?
I really liked it - not too much face time, deep dives into the games, shadow dropped bonus game that looks fun and (most importantly) release dates for (almost) everything.

@belmont Yeah that's what I understand. Game Pass FTW

I'm just gonna sit in the menu screen for an hour!

Justin Roiland's lawyer: My client is innocent! Unrelated, he's also resigned from his company...

@themightyant 100% agree with your points. That said, while I did miss the big set piece moments, I did find that I also made my own more frequently, as the open world sandbox allowed more freedom and creativity.

Whether that's a good substitute, I don't know; I couldn't talk to my brother about specific cool moments that we both experienced but I could tell him about cool stuff I was able to pull off.

@NimrodsSon cool thanks!

Nolan North as Deadpool might be what pushes me over the line to get this game. I like turn based games and loved xcom, but the fire emblem dating sim stuff really put me off.

Wow, didn't expect so many votes for Forza with it being the sim version.

@cragis0001 the optimist in me hopes that the second half of the year will be for any/all of State of Decay 3, Hellblade, Avowed etc. Basically everything that wasn't shown in June's 'new 12 months' showcase (apart from Fable and PD, which are likely well out still).

@FatalBubbles you could argue that FF16 isn't coming to Xbox, but I get your point about them being established Starfield vs Diablo would be a coin toss for me in terms of which I go to first.

There's the ever-present worry about "bug-thesda" plus any funnies with the new engine, but I'm also waiting to see if Diablo Immortal's monetisation tactics will bleed into D4.

Tl;Dr April makes sense

@cragis0001 they're going to get a lot of flak if those games from last year's "next 12 months" showcase slip beyond the June cut-off. I think/hope it'll be more like:
Jan: AoE 2
Feb: Forza Motorsport
March: Ghostwire Tokyo
April: Minecraft Legends
May: Redfall
June: Starfield

Ugh just realised that it's just projecting the games on the screen in the vr "hub". Slightly less whelmed now, I wanted my immersive halo experience

This is awesome. Halo Infinite in VR? Yes please! Can't wait.

"It's also a follow-up to the popular Razer Kishi"
I'm confused, isn't the Kishi V2 the follow up to the Kishi?

Haha who was excited for Skull and Bones when it was £60?! Now it's £70. This'll be Babylons-Fall-level of DOA.

@Titntin "It now transpires he does wish to make cod single platform in three years"
It doesn't mean that at all - it just means that the CURRENT deal that Sony has with Activision will only be extended an additional 3 years beyond it's current close date. After that Sony can negotiate a new deal with MS, as they would have to if ABK was still its own entity. But the idea that a deal ending means no more deals at all is a non-starter.

Phil is on record about wanting to get CoD on Nintendo so it seems odd that they'll take it off PS if they're planning a Switch version.

Warzone is f2p will likely remain platform agnostic, as f2p games need as big a player base as possible to survive. What might happen is that the other games' MP go f2p as well and then the campaigns go into Game Pass for Xbox and cost money on other platforms.

But your point that a deal ending means no more deals at all is a non-starter.

And then after 3 years you have to negotiate a new deal. That's how it works. No deal ever says "for perpetuity".

Portal 2? Hell yes. Finally a nugget worth hanging onto from the Games with (fools) Gold.

@trukme thanks!

Did the co-op in this ever get patched? Tried it with my brother at launch and it was all kinds of buggy even in just the first couple of hours; sound issues, quests givers not showing for him as the guest, drop outs from the session. Gameplay seemed fun but it was too much hard work.

I wonder if this will work for unlisted games like FEAR.

This is a step in the right direction and gives much more choice and agency back to players!

Man this game needed another 6-12 months in the oven before it was ready. Can't wait for campaign DLC to drop in 2026... 😔

Bought Guardians Of The Galaxy the week before it was announced. No regrets, it's a great game.

@blockfight @fox_mattcloud I read that it's coming to Sky as Comcast have the Paramount rights.
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/how-to-watch-paramount-plus-uk/
"Upon launch in the UK, Paramount Plus will be available at no extra cost to existing Sky Cinema subscribers, which includes Sky Q customers."

Wired and convex thumbsticks? Pass.

@themightyant on that we can agree. I absolutely loved Astral Chain!

@themightyant I think you're just taking a more optimistic view of it and I'm being more cynical. To me it seems like it got brought up, he said he was sorry for the way it went down and held his hands up, saw the public attention and buzz around Scalebound coming back into focus and is trying to ride it to a new project. There's a lot of talk about how they're in trouble internally and things are sinking, and to me (and no doubt others) it looks like he's trying to reach for branches to stay afloat.

@themightyant I missed that bit about his original apology way back when - fair point - but this resurgence of Scalebound attention started in Nov'21 and has been snowballing since then. Maybe it's because of today's news cycle where everyone wants a piece of the pie but Platinum aren't shying away from drawing attention to it and are calling out MS publically to keep focus on the matter.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-11-20-platinumgames-director-hideki-kamiya-apologises-to-microsoft-for-scalebound-cancellation

@themightyant surely repentance would be mentioning it once and moving on? However, this has been coming up repeatedly over the last few weeks in interviews they've done like they're trying to "Snyderverse" it into existence. Truly repentant people don't wait 4 years to say sorry and then constantly bring up the fact they're available to work on it now.

Fingers crossed we get a GP Ultimate perk for a limited time trial of Paramount+ !

This all just smacks of desperation...

@themightyant I have a phone mount for home streaming and find it's much more comfortable if you can angle the mount to have the phone sitting as above the controller as possible (as you look down) rather than leaning out on top of it. You don't need to see the controller for playing

This is promising. Looks more ergonomic to hold than the Razer Kishi but NGL would've preferred a version with a USB C connection, as that would help with latency and also be one fewer device to charge.

@jarvismp what would Microsoft be taking away exactly? Should Crash Team Racing not exist because Nintendo already has Mario Kart? If MS made a brawler, that wouldn't suddenly make SSB null and void. For people who don't have a Switch, a fun brawler might be a good thing.

Kotick's face at 1m40s when she mentions Activision's shares being down - that phony smile falls from his face.
Yes Bobby, that was down to the company culture you oversaw and were a part of.
What a POS.

Got myself a Quest 2 recently (Merry Christmas to me!) and am loving it. If MS opened up the Xbox to 3rd party headsets and developed some VR games using their IPs then I'd be well up for that.

@BlueOcean unfortunately it wasn't even giving me a total to pay as it hadn't calculated the tax that was needed; I was getting stuck before even getting to the payment option screen.

@BlueOcean Good to know. Haven't had luck yet, tried changing region but I need a US postal address when I go to pay (presumably for VAT/sales tax as it changes from state to state over there)

@K1LLEGAL thanks, bud!

The LotR shadow bundle is $10.49 on the US site but £23.99 on the GB site?! Are Xbox games region locked? Could I just buy it on the US store at a third of the price?

Is this game still buggy in co-op? My brother and I tried it together at launch and, while we loved the aesthetic, we had to stop due to the bugs - characters freezing, quests not loading etc. It was a mess.

Just saw pre-order copies in Smyths when I was doing a Christmas toy collection run.

Lmao at "Nevertheless, the brand awareness of Cyberpunk that we’ve managed to build is huge." Not all publicity is good publicity - somehow, I can't see Acitivision coming out with this line of reasoning - "Hey, at least eveyone's talking about us..."

2 words, guys, "Sortable columns". Tracking down a game to check if it's on the list is a pain when they're sorted by date-added and there's no way to sort the list by name.