RBRTMNZ

I'm going to do the month of Ubisoft Plus. I am excited to play this, AC Mirage, and The Crew.

I love the options "Fairly often to be fair" and "Pretty much never to be honest". Perhaps this is wrong but it feels so British to my American brain.

@InterceptorAlpha It felt like they prioritized their "Bought not built" slogan over making the game fun and interesting.

@Nightcrawler71 It was so annoying to get penalized when the AI treated the race like a game of bumper cars. My preference was to start in 24th and work my way up. The first lap was rough sometimes.

I really hated the progression system. Some of the cars suck to drive their stock version and by the time you unlock upgrades you’re on to the next series.

I experienced but didn’t mind the other issues as they were easily resolved by rewinding. I think they would be better off focusing on game performance as it still crashes frequently especially when using quick resume.

@AlwaysPlaying I thought it was boring and just to be clear I am not criticizing the games. I just think the format sucks because it asks you to sit through very long segments so when you're not into a game the whole presentation grinds to a halt.

I think it would be much smarter to do a fun 15 minute presentation with trailers for these games plus a few other things like GP announcements and then put the developer commentary up online for anyone who wants a deep dive.

My distaste for these long developer segments might be a personal preference but no other publisher does their presentations like this, including publishers with excellent marketing teams, so my guess is that most fans are not interested in these type of back to back deep dives in a presentation.

Every Xbox Developer Direct I have watched should have just been a blog post. They're so boring.

When I played this game I stood directly in front of a machine gun that was shooting me, reloaded while it continued firing at me, and still didn’t die. I like these games, they’re a lot of fun, but it is definitely dumb turn your brain off fun.

@Cherip-the-Ripper Yes I totally agree that valid criticism has a place but what tends to happen in comments sections is valid criticism is often met with negative reactions and the whole discussion becomes poisoned. I think the tone of comment sections, especially for gaming sites, has been toxic for so long that it is hard for people to have nuanced critical conversations.

I find myself being dragged down into the negativity too often, which is a personal problem, I am very feisty, so I think it is definitely best for me to at least carefully choose my spots, and more often just avoid critical comments even when they are well intentioned.

I'm going to try to only join the discussions around games I love. No one needs to hear my critique of a game that I didn't enjoy.

@nomither6 You don't think Marcus is mean? Would you let your boss or friends and family talk to you the way he does to his subordinates because I would not. He is consistently belittling and dismissive towards them. He doesn't just reject their ideas, he is a d*** about doing so. If other people are treating you like that, especially your boss, then you need to learn to stand up for yourself and stop it. If you're treating other people like that then you're a mean person and should stop.

@LX_FENIX Haha, sorry about that. I was just surprised because I played GoW 1 over the holidays and the whole time I was shocked by how mean Marcus is to everyone. I didn't remember it being so bad.

@LX_FENIX Jesus Christ, she is having horrifying visions that are preventing her from sleeping and you’re reaction is ugh typical angry female meanwhile Marcus is a giant ***** to everyone at all times for no reason but you like him enough to use his name as your handle. That’s a bit of a double standard for women.

I love Gears 4/5. They’re mine and my wife’s favorite games to play together. They would probably be top 10 games for me based on the split screen gameplay but I don’t like the world and characters. There are too many awful nouns to remember.

@WOBNIARP You know you're right. It is none of my business so even if I am right, that the value of rewards does not justify making an effort to earn them, I am wrong to chastise others for participating. My heart is in the right place, I really want to be helpful by pointing out that this program does not offer much value, but it doesn't make any sense to argue with people over it when they want to participate.

@WOBNIARP You’ve missed my point entirely. I’m not dense, I know it’s not a job, my point is that it is way more labor than an actual job so it’s a waste of time.

@WOBNIARP When I’m sleeping I’m earning rest and that is extremely important to me, perhaps more so than money because I do my best work when well rested.

When people are playing games specifically to earn rewards they are earning rewards and those are worth less than a pence. Let’s be generous and say it takes 10 minutes/day to earn the 1000 points. That’s roughly 166 points per an hour. Game pass costs 12000 points so earning a single month requires 72 hours to earn £13 worth of value for an hourly rate of 18 pence per hour. That is worse than prisoners earn. Actively trying to earn rewards is an incredibly bad use of time.

Do people not realize that the old system was also terrible? It's like literally the lowest paying job you can give yourself. If you really need the money to support your gaming get a retail job for literally one or two days and make the same amount you'll make all year through rewards. You will absolutely have more time for playing games you actually like by doing so.

@jedinite Fine you didn’t literally say it’s bad but you essentially said it’s not good. You disagreed that it is one of the best games of the year and the reason you gave is that it is not your kind of game. I on the other hand think AW2 is one of the best games of the year even though it is not my kind of game.

There is a huge difference in our stances. I don’t think that my personal preferences disqualify a game from any top 10 lists besides my own and despite your reading comprehension might have you believe I never said anything remotely close to that about AW2. I said it deserves the praise it is receiving.

@jedinite I didn’t say that at all. I specifically described AW2 as praise worthy so I’m really not sure why you think I said you shouldn’t like it. What I actually said is that my lack of interest in AW2 does not make it bad. I did so to try to get you to see what you’re doing in saying that HiFi is bad because it’s not your kid of game.

@BaldBelper78 Ain’t nothing wrong with that. I’m glad you enjoy it. Jedi Survivor was my favorite game of the year despite its ample flaws. All I’m trying to say is the reason this game gets so much hate is that it’s fans can’t seem to acknowledge or even discern that it is extremely flawed and then go online proclaiming it one of the best games in years.

@BaldBelper78 It’s not space though. It’s a video game. Sometimes realism and fun are not compatible. This was one of those times. The game would be better with less planets. Fun games make up some reason that others cannot be visited like they were rendered uninhabitable by past wars.

@BaldBelper78 To name a few, fast Travel, exploration, animation, performance, inventory management, boring tasks to apply skill points, terrible way finding, empty planets. It’s great that some people can still find fun with the game but that some fans won’t admit or acknowledge the flaws, and think it is a GOTY, is the reason everyone keeps making fun of the game.

Starfield is the new Days Gone. The extremely vocal minority who love it keep it in the news giving everyone else the opportunity to continually point out it’s ample flaws.

I find it very concerning that Starfield, Forza, and Redfall were all among the worst performing games of the year. Software development is Microsoft's core competency so their games should at least run well.

@Dan1283 It would be nice to have an exclusive win it, unfortunately Microsoft did not release a GOTY contender let alone a winner. I loved Hi-Fi Rush but there were a lot of better games this year and while Forza had top notch racing, it performs like crap and felt soulless.

@jedinite A game does not need to be "my kinda game" for me to understand that it is still high quality and a great game for people who do like that type of game. For example, I have zero interest in Alan Wake 2 because it does not look like my kind game but I can see why it is receiving praise. If you cannot see that Hi-Fi Rush is great it says a lot more about you than it does Hi-Fi Rush.

@Dan1283 I thought Forza was good thanks to the racing but agree it doesn’t belong in a top 10 list due to the performance issues, bland presentation, and insane car progression system. Hi-Fi Rush on the other hand is an absolute gem and one of the best games of the year.

I shouldn't be but I am a bit shocked at the winner. That game is so bad.

This is genius! I'm doing it. I was just thinking that I should wait for a sale on PoP even though I am super hyped and now I don't need to. Plus I can play AC Mirage and Crew Motorfest for $18. Sign me up!

I love my Series X and a bunch of Microsoft's back catalog of games and even I am concerned after the last couple of years. I find this year's slate of bug riddled and boring games to be much more concerning than even last year's dry spell.

It’s shocking how willing people are to dunk on themselves online.

I’m happy they finally made a good end of the year wrap. Lasts year’s sucked but this is better than the one I got from Sony today.

744 hours! And I have a Switch and PS5. I might have a bit of a problem but it’s a great problem to have.

The best part about waiting and watching the trailers after the show is that I can just skip over all the pointless cinematic trailers. They're a complete waste of time. I'm annoyed that the marketing BS works on enough people that we will never stop getting them.

@FraserG Good looking out! For some reason I thought this was the Countdown sale. I will see what happens next week before making my purchase.

Well I guess then its time for me to pay full price for Armored Core 6.

I would bet money that even though it reviewed as mid, a year from now there will be weirdos claiming it was snubbed from the Game Awards because it came out in December.

@Banjo- That's perfectly fine but there are better ways to handle that confusion. I don't go around calling all Asian people Chinese when I am unable to discern their ethnicity.

@fraserg How is reptillos comment still up? I come to this site for the well moderated community more than anything else. Allowing this type of pointless ***** comment does not make for a good well moderated community.

@Banjo- No, he implied that there is a problem with the protagonist being Latina and showed his ignorance by labeling this almost certainly not Mexican woman as Mexican.

@darkswabber My initial point was that games falling outside the top 40% percent of reviewed games are not great but to extend this to games scoring 5-6 meaning they’re not even in the top 50% of reviewed games, I don’t disagree, they might be good/average, but my point remains, there are literally thousands of games that review above good/average. With thousands of 7-10 games I’m probably only playing a 6 in some very rare cases like if it’s my favorite genre and I’ve already played everything better.

To put it in context, you’re right that Atomic Heart(56th percentile) is not bad, I played a couple of hours and it was fine, but I dropped off because like other games in its review range it has glaring weaknesses (combat, puzzles, dialogue) that make it clear there are hundreds of better games I could be playing. I would only play it if the setting had drawn me in more or if I was really into first person melee. It’s quality makes it niche and the scores reflect that.

Wo Long. It's ugly and the story is bad but the combat is so so so good. I thought Lies of P was the best soulsike this year but Wo Long had better combat.

@darkswabber Is a 70-75 great? Opencritic breaks the games into tiers. The top two tiers account for the best 40% of all games being reviewed and currently the dividing line for tier 3 is 74 so if a game receives a score below 74 it is at best a 59th percentile game which to me is not great. I have enjoyed games that have scored below 74 but I can always see the glaring issues keeping those games from being great.

I voted Remnant 2 but also wanted to shout out Thirsty Suitors. It’s a great little turn based rpg where the “combat” is in the form of emotional conversations in which your dialogue choices have a real impact on the battle and you need to listen to the opponent to figure out their weaknesses.

I'm 0/12 on the games I have my eye on going on sale. Hopefully Nintendo and Sony have better sales.

@iplaygamesnstuff So you believe the store you worked at sold spots on the best seller list so naturally everyone must do it? That’s a really big jump to your conclusion especially considering that the Game Awards has an independent voting process and almost certainly uses an independent third party to tabulate votes as all big awards shows do. Plus even your conclusion about your employer is probably wrong. A lot of products debut as best sellers thanks to pre-orders. A much easier conclusion would be that you have basic taste in media. I’m not saying that’s the case but it’s much less of a jump than you’re making.

@iplaygamesnstuff It sounds like you’re confusing popularity and sales for quality. Thing an are not popular because they’re good. They’re popular because of a combination of marketing and conforming to things that are already popular. That’s not to say popular things cannot still be good but when you make a product like that it’s nearly impossible to make something special that stands out or pushes the industry forward.

It's not a surprise at all that it wasn't nominated so why bring it up and give the haters one more chance to dunk on the game?

@Decimateh You compelled me to look through the ratings on the xbox store and you are right that exclusives do have a lot of bad reviews but after reading through them I still don't think they are review bombing.

I think it's more just the place people tend to express their frustration when an exclusive game doesn't work right. Metacritic review bombs tend to regurgitate bad faith talking points whereas a huge portion of the bad reviews on the xbox store are describing very specific technical issues. I would not personally give a game a 1/5 due to a technical issue but I also don't think it's illegitimate.

Additionally, whereas most 1 star reviews on other exclusives are almost entirely focused on technical issues, Starfield does have a lot of thoughtful 1 star reviews from people simply disappointed by the game. They're much more substantive and unique than typical review bombs and seem like criticisms from people who actually played.

And I am not saying review bombs do not happen when games hit Game Pass. I just thinks its more likely to happen to indie games like Thirsty Suitors with queer themes and interesting art. Rather than some concerted effort by weirdos who like xbox enough to spend money on owning one but somehow still hate it enough to waste their time review bombing.