RadioHedgeFund

Enhanced character models…. Same janky animations

Cruising across the stars with my crew sounds great but it would be even better if having a maximum complement wasn’t locked behind hundreds of hours of grind.

Oh no it’s the Croc situation all over again: a bunch of adults who were once kids who enjoyed an objectionable awful game now want to relive their childhoods.

Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog were both terrible games.

JSRF is amazing though.

I look forward to having to run the decrapify script on my console to get it to run games properly

I can only assume there are others like me who stick with Xbox not because of the future but because of the past. I have loads of 360 games I am just not ready to let go of, to the point that I replay Fable 2, Horizon 1 and the FFXIII trilogy on a regular basis.

Given the Series S will continue to support these games for a long time yet, what reason do I have to buy the next Xbox instead of a 2nd hand PS5 to catch up on what I missed over there?

It’s not that it was bad, but the change in seasons basically equated to the snow disappearing on the mountain and the lake drying up. The seasons were needed for the UK because it’s a country with very variable weather, but we only ever picture Mexico as summer.

They had me at ‘….just like the first game’. It will be nice to be forced into using lower class cars. The last few games just let you use the same car for every event if you liked which was silly.

Personally I think it’s time somebody like the EU came down on virtual currencies across the board. It happened back in the 360 gen when we went from Microsoft (and Nintendo) points to actual monetary value. Epic should be forced to list everything in localised currency with an in-game checklist getting you the next Battlepass ‘for free’ with the purchase of the last one.

And then apply it to every other freemium game.

I always liked the final 360 dashboard. Seeing all your friends Avatars at once was a nice touch, I liked having the shop baked right into the dash and it was dead easy to navigate with nice themes.

As with everything great about the Xbox 360, they ruined it with the Xbox One. First time around that was hideous.

A box that runs Windows without a power shell script to debloat it all doesn't sound promising. It will be like the Xbox One's Kinect runtime all over again.

"Finished the campaign? Play multiplayer on Xbox."

@Weebleman The trick system in Tricky is rather clunky by modern standards with lengthy animations and rather slow gameplay until you grind up some stats.

SSX3 on the other hand has a lot of nuance to its system, thanks in part to the board press system but also the ability to change the d-pad spin at the last minute to throw things off-axis for more points and much faster Uber animations.

Gamers are for better or worse quite tribal and consider which console brand they align with quite a personal one and part of their identity. At the core of this for Xbox has always been your gamertag and gamerscore. Achievements still mean something to people.

One thing I would do is reframe the mobile arm around portability of this identity, last seen on Windows Phone. I'm Microsoft and own King. Integrating Xbox Live and Achievements into games like Candy Crush is almost too easy and it spreads the brand and makes people align with it with almost zero effort from themselves.

Offer an XBL plugin for all mobile developers to integrate achievements into their own titles and bring back some first party bangers like Hexic Rush.

I would also put more emphasis on the value of the Series S. In a world of ever-increasing costs promoting a cheaper console should be really easy. Bundle it with 2 controllers and a selection of digital vouchers of games parents can play with their kids.

The family market has been neglected for too long by Xbox as a brand. Sony launched the PS5 with Sackboy's Adventure. They recognised that a console is used by all members of a family and offered a title to match. I'm not going to co-op Halo or Gears with my 6 year old.

We can lament the loss of Phil Spencer but he's the one who has been at the helm during what has arguably been the nadir of the brand and ran it into the ground. Gamer or not, he's not exactly done very well in the face of Sony and Nintendo.

Whether the new president will be any better we don't yet know but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt before making any rash opinions.

“Seasons are more varied than Mexico”

Forza Horizon 1 has more varied seasons than Mexico and that is perpetually stuck in early Autumn. The map differences were negligible at best.

@Odium If somebody can name me a more comprehensive local multiplayer title released in the last 25 years I'd call them a liar.

I used to quite like the Friends tab on the 360 but now I'm the only one left with an Xbox so it's rather pointless!

Goldeneye remains largely pointless so long as Perfect Dark still exists

There are some of us that couldn't give 2 figs about GTA. Fair play if others enjoy it but I just see 6 as just another crime sim with scumbag protagonists that took the place of what could have been Red Dead 4.

Fable might also be more of the same but to some of us it's preferable.

Makes me wonder if, with all the warehouse customisation in FH6 that maybe you can also walk around as your avatar in that too in a limited number of locales.

The first game still remains a high point for the festival experience. 2 was fun but since then each game has felt like a racing mmo, a game that just exists for the heck of it. I have high hopes 6 can recreate that feeling of going from zero to hero.

Yes! They have the roleplaying aspect absolutely down. Here's hoping you continue to gain weight for eating too many pies.

I'm kind of torn. Do I judge the game based on its own merits, as a self contained entity with a proper protagonist or do I judge it based on wanting a next-gen Fable 2 where I can roleplay as my fat, pie-scoffing wizard alter ego?

Publishing their exclusives elsewhere was already the sign they’d checked out. In 2026 what reason, really is there to own an Xbox console over a PS5?

@Markatron84 Halo and Gears? Both series essentially recycle the same ideas game to game. This doesn’t make them bad titles.

1. We still won’t get JSRF

2. 2x remakes, more of the same Forza and an unproven Fable reboot.

3. I only see value in the middle tier now.

4. GTAVI will be the exact same game as V which was the exact same game as III. I wonder if critics will have the balls to call Rockstar out on that one?

@RiverGenie If you think publishers never sent this sort of stuff to gaming magazines back in the day you haven’t been paying attention 😉

This is a great thing. We’ve barely began to scratch the surface of the current gen with most games, if we’re being honest looking no better than top-tier PS4 games such as Forbidden West and Ragnorok.

Now that could just be the ever diminishing returns of ongoing console generations but it also proves that the next generation is largely a pointless one anyway.

Stick with the Series X and PS5 until 2030 at the earliest.

@Titntin I can’t knock the success and clearly the template has legs. It would be a shame though if it wasn’t just GTAV all over again, you know?

Injecting a little RDR into the player characters instead of going with the same old 1980s-style American satire wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

@Titntin Oh FH has been on diminishing returns since, what number 2? /But/ it’s likely to be my personal GOTY just because I enjoy cruising the open roads.

My gameplay loop for GTA is/was to rent it for a weekend just to dick around with the cheats for a few days and run some police chases. In this case I didn’t really find 5 to be any different to 3 and 6 doesn’t look like it’s moving the goalposts. I did enjoy LCS on the PSP because that sort of gameplay loop was perfect for a portable.

That’s as much enjoyment as I can squeeze out of them because I personally don’t like playing as outright bad guys. I loved RDR because at least John Marston has a shred of honour and isn’t a complete tool.

On a cultural level GTA was also responsible for what I saw as the regression of the games industry on themes and marketing, undoing so much of the progress made in the PS1 era. It was ‘mature’ in the way that teenage boys found. Compare the themes in many of those similar games to something like Persona 4 and its night and day.

My money is on Forza Horizon 6. If Fable comes out it might come close but I have my doubts because I want a next-gen Fable 2 and not another story driven RPG which are ten-a-penny.

The industry will no doubt be fawning over GTA6 which despite its technical prowess will be yet another HD reskin of GTA3 and much like its predecessors do nothing for moving the ‘genre’ on. The template was wearing thin in the last game, papered over by its sheer scope.

Driving around a city causing mayhem whilst following another satirical storyline about the American dream? At least set it in another country.

If the world had remained sensible and not counted its chickens with AI the Series S would be £149, the X £249 against a £299 PS5 and I imagine niche devices like this might not take off at all.

Despite its obvious shortcomings I continue to plough time into Starfield, over 130 hours at last count. If you do the wise thing and completely ignore the main plot line it’s the space RPG of my dreams with some incredible quest lines along the way. You can literally play it however you want. I don’t mind the janky conversations because I think Bethesda games have a certain charm to them.

If I had any complaints they would be to make fast travel more consistent and available anywhere, to completely ditch the stupid light chasing mini game when you get each space magic power and to make regenerating health much lower down the skill tree. When you’re just starting out there are never enough med kits.

@JayJ Why would I watch the awards when I can come here for all the trailers at the end anyway?

Ironically absolutely nothing. Looks like they were having to scrape the barrel to fill the game slots.

They cannot commit to improving the series whilst keeping up with an annual release schedule.

They need to split the series up and keep the multiplayer going as a live service model with annual content drops so they feel ‘special’ but then put out a new campaign mode every 2 years. If you have 2 studios working on this it gives them 4 years to do each one.

SSX Tricky
Jet Set Radio Future

This is actually good news.

Warner Bros. couldn’t give two hoots about their back catalogue of movies and TV. Netflix might just dump the entire Cartoon Network back catalogue onto streaming but at least it will be somewhere to watch.

Now do final fantasy vi

They need to do one of two things here: either go right back to their original influence and base it around the innate simplicity of Phantasy Star Online or finally make the first-person Diablo 3 they’ve always threatened to build.

In the first instance it needs to be all about the gear. Levelling should be old fashioned xp to stat increases that are just there to gate off the better items. The fun of the game becomes fire teaming a dungeon or just the organic PVE mode. No skill tree nonsense or anything like that. Items are fixed-stat with none of this infusion crap. A better gun is a better gun.

In the second instance it becomes all about the character. There should be dozens of different skills to level up and unlock each one mappable to a certain button. The debate then turns from gear to character builds. Gear merely buffs the stats of the character. They should in this case add more classes into the game to vary the gameplay.

In either case for the love of Master Chief can we please get them to sign a contract sticking them to one damned currency! I don’t want to earn ‘thing X’ for character X and ‘thing Y’ for character Y. One again Diablo 3 for me streamlines this so well.

Zero is an absolute mess of a game, nowhere near the peerless original. Perfect Dark 64 remains the best FPS ever made, crammed to the brim with more ideas than entire genres managed in a lifetime.

I think about how modern FPS games have essentially devolved into Space Invaders: move from side to side into (destructible) cover and pop out to shoot waves of enemies. At a base level this is Halo and Call of Duty in a nutshell.

Perfect Dark’s mission objectives get harder and more complex with the difficulty, not just the enemies. The amount of creativity crammed into the multiplayer is absurd, with modes and weapons still being cribbed by modern shooters.

PGR3
Hexic
Geometry Wars

What more do you need from a console launch?

Here’s a few more:

8. On-device voice commands that really worked. A quick ‘Xbox, Pause’ into the Kinect was all that was needed if you needed the loo or wanted a snack.

9. Mobile integration with Windows Phone 7 meaning brilliant mobile titles like Hexic Rush and Halo: Spartan Assault all carried Achievements that contributed to your Gamerscore.

10. Xbox Live Arcade lighting a fire under the indie market with lower priced titles. Geometry Wars is still the best Xbox game ever made.

11. Local console accounts meaning you don’t have to make a Microsoft Account just so your kids can play and enjoy things on their own login. This is probably the biggest thing I miss from the 360.

But we don’t want more powerful. We want affordable. If it’s more than £400 they can go fish.

Nothing. We got zip for the 20th anniversary for the 360 back in September.

We say tight level design, but we’ve known for years that the Call of Duty single player maps are designed by an intern with a set square.

Xbox have never really got it, have they? If you want to be the centre of a digital living room or whatever then you have to capture the family market. The Kinect was an admirable attempt but sank with the Xbox One and its lack of family titles and need for your kids to have a Microsoft account to even log in. Yeah, no.

Kids are naturally curious and want to see what their parents are up to. The Switch might be a handheld but it recognises that online opponents may as well be bots and real relationships are built on the couch: you can share the experience on the big screen.

A kid seeing their parent buried in a dedicated handheld is no different to seeing them doomscrolling, giving the impression the device is more important than them. Don’t get me started on VR.

If we want to develop healthy gaming habits in our kids it needs to be done via the TV like it was for us.

Microsoft will never beat Sony or Nintendo chasing a niche within a niche.

The Series S is the best console of the generation. Ideally priced, looks nice under your TV with, to my eyes at least no loss of graphical fidelity.

Complaints from the industry fall on deaf ears. Devs only have themselves to blame if they didn’t treat the S as the baseline, and then make it run better on the PS5 rather than reverse engineering.

It also has helped the Switch 2 because lower spec ports of games already exist which, once Microsoft bin it next year will be very helpful going forwards.

If they can find the time to throw a few a fistful of yen at a FFX port for mobile, that would be great.

Given that the brand wasn’t really anything other than Halo for the first 4 years it would have been nicer to get something for the 20th anniversary of the 360 back in September, like a PGR3 port or something.