RadioHedgeFund

@WCB Both. You can FTP over roms via a local web interface or run them from USB. The X1 will do anything up to the N64 and PSP pretty well.

The Series S is an emulation powerhouse able to run GameCube and Dreamcast games at full speed.

Given you can dev unlock your Xbox and install RetroArch I would agree with Microsoft

This is actually a terrible game. It’s a good thing we have SWOS on Series X which is a lot more than PlayStation and Nintendo

Realistic announcement: Final Fantasy VII Remake coming to Game Pass before Christmas.

Wishful thinking: JSRF rerelease on B/C.

Really looking forward to it. I really enjoyed the campaigns from 4 and 5. They were a huge step up in pacing over the first 2 games (although Reach still has the best in the series) and didn’t have any endless corridors for padding.

Co-op is fun but I’d rather play it through in single player first before launching into a buddy mission with my sons anyway.

I can live with multiplayer challenges after playing Fortnite for 3 years. If anything just getting XP for playing the matches makes things a little dull. Doing the challenges encourages different play styles and to get better at the game. A footballer doesn’t get better just sat on a bench every game!

It seems like a financial no-brainer: take a large upfront payment for Gamepass on your risky indie property that might not break even and then use the publicity from that to then eventually port the title to rival platforms and get more sales.

Without seeing the challenges we cannot pass judgement. For all we know 343 have devised a clever set of challenges that encourage the player to get better at the game rather than just rewards for turning up.

This does kind of suck in many ways for those of us like me who are rubbish at FPS games but still want to play them, however they might also have played a lot of Titanfall and stolen their ideas for making sure rubbish players feel valued.

Demo needed now!

Good news, kids: you can recreate the Call of Duty alpha experience in your own neighbourhood!

Get yourself an old nerf gun and then walk 50 paces in one direction. Now imagine yourself shooting endlessly recycling badguys for 5 minutes. Turn 90 degrees in one direction and walk another 50 paces. Turn 90 degrees again and walk 25 paces. Imagine yourself shooting some more endless goons for 5 minutes.

Repeat until bored.

Sadly it makes the game twice as smooth rather than twice as fast.

The loss of campaign co-op at launch isn’t as big as many fans make out and Forge is a nice feature to have but ultimately only for a tiny %age of fans.

The rest of us get campaign on Gamepass (because nobody is paying $50 for it) and a nice ongoing multiplayer that plays really well.

I’m with him on Battle Royale. Unable to see my friends (well, 3 live in another city and 1 lives in another country) we started playing Fortnite on a Thursday night as a weekly hangout and we’ve kept it going for the last 18 months. I don’t think we have ever missed a week either.

Our friend who lives in Turkey recently moved to Cambodia and he gets up at 5am his time (11pm UK time) to play with us for an hour before he goes to work and we go to bed!

The thing is co-op in Halo only got fun when Reach came out. 1-3 are great games but they do suffer from a lot of padding, CE especially. Co-op in that was great because at least you had someone to talk to whilst navigating the endless corridors between firefights!

Split-screen I get because of the increased processing required but I however don’t see why online co-op couldn’t have been integrated for launch. How much extra coding would that require beyond taking the template from Halo 5?

I want to enjoy COD but I always felt the level designer who they poached from Bungie got a raw deal. They only hired him based on his fantastic use of a ruler and pencil in padding out Halo CE with endless corridors and this is all they got.

I keep replaying the Demo waiting patiently for 23rd September and the GP launch of Sable.

Vice City again. Killer soundtrack, chopper for the first time, fantastic lead character and great game mechanics.

San Andreas was too big. 4 and 5 went too far down the Tarantino nonsense path instead of hilarious satire of the previous ones.

Shout out to Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on the PSP. They were pretty boss too.

@The_New_Butler I would argue storage isn’t an issue. The smallest amount of games you could fit on it from a next gen perspective is 5, based on a 95gb installation size.

Are you really playing this many games at once?

@Royalblues The entire series has great photo modes. I have some great snaps from even the first game. https://500px.com/photo/1022226578/colorado-fall-by-carlstjames

“Master Chief, the Covenant have found earth abd are preparing to glass the planet. You need to go out and complete bounties for Cortana. These will allow you to collect 500 samples of HaloWeave which you can then transform into HaloShards at the Tower.”

“Which tower, Sir?”

“I don’t even have time to tell you why I don’t have time to tell you. Once you have 50 HaloShards you can trade these for bounties which will earn you HaloMarks which you can then spend on HaloLight at the Tower. Each 5 HaloLight will give you 5 minutes of boosted HaloCoins from the Covenant loot drops.”

“I need a weapon!”

“You will have to go out and earn HaloCoins to buy one from the Vendors at our base.”

<Meanwhile in space>

“FIRE THE GLASS CANNON! NO FOE CAN WITHSTAND OUR MIGHT!”

<GAME OVER>

Given they have the Sensible Software back catalogue I’d be interested in an HD update and port of Cannon Fodder. Thankfully we already have SWOS.

@mousieone XIII-2 is one of my favourite in the whole series. Fantastic game.

I think X-2 is probably the worst in the whole series.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is the ultimate sequel. It corrects everything bad about the first game whilst standing on feet so tall many still consider it to be the best in the series. I’d love a remake with a 1:1 recreation of Venice not unlike Paris from AC Unity.

Fable 2 gets a nod too for correcting the mistakes of the original and if Forza Horizon never existed it would be the best 1st party game on the 360.

I consider game pass a rental service. If a game comes out I like the look of I’ll stump for a month and then give it a go. If I like it I will probably wait a few months and grab it on sale.

This seems like a smart move, especially if progress carries over to mobile too (where the heck is the Switch version?!)

It would be nice to see Konami experiment with the always online nature of the game a little by offering some crazy game modes like 50v50 on a regular pitch or a quick play 5-a-side mode with no outs.

I want a good Mexican music station. Hispanic hip hop is actually pretty good.

Hands down the best game for music is FH1. A good mix of new and old music (New Order, Stone Roses) all meant for driving and DJs that enhances the motoring festival backdrop.

I know how this sounds out loud but one thing that annoyed me about FH4 was the lack of inclusion on the default characters at the beginning. There was actually a good amount of female, Asian and Afro Caribbean characters to pick from; it’s just (and again, I know how this sounds) both white guy options had blonde hair. There was no dark hair option or ginger and you don’t see that many men of any racial background with blonde hair!

An actual avatar creator would be most welcome.

I do miss Snap. It was helpful to put YouTube up so you can follow through a game walkthrough. I used to use my 360 as my primary TV box with Sky back in the day and fell in love with the Xbox One multimedia push on day one.

Now it does none of those things. It’s not the same machine I bought in 2013.

I give it a few months before they announce the cancellation of the entire idea due to fan backlash.

Either:

• Halo Infinite release date or at the very least some sort of multiplayer beta
• FFVII Remake for game pass. This seems like a no brainer as only 20% of FFXV sales were Xbox consoles so getting that big chunk of cash from Microsoft offsets what might be quite small sales figures.

The assumption being that it’s better for devs to get a big wodge up front from Microsoft than have to rely on sales estimates. You can then flog DLC to a much wider user base too.

@Hypnotoad107 There are many reasons to buy a Series X/S console but first party exclusive titles are not one of them.

It wasn’t always this way. I still regard the 360 as the best home console ever made. It’s list of exclusives was fantastic and I don’t even like shooters! I was sold on the promise of the Xbox One from day one. I already used my 360 for all my TV and music so that first day sales pitch had me in.

But then Microsoft killed all their exclusives, got rid of all the cool multimedia features and set themselves down a path they are only now recovering from.

@Hypnotoad107 whilst it is no Nintendo lineup it is better than nothing and it does give PS5 owners a sense of pride.

Microsoft have nothing yet.

I buy a new console to play games I cannot get elsewhere. A new console needs exclusive games to define its existence otherwise why not just shove an SSD into an Xbox One X?

PS5 is winning this race so far because it has a strong library of exactly that whereas the Xbox Series X has zero compelling reasons to buy at the minute and probably for the next year.

I will however pick up a Series S but only because I can finally have a console that competently emulates the Dreamcast and GameCube.

Family games have largely been ignored by Microsoft for years and it would be nice. The brand has always struggled in this area really. The 360 didn’t have much by way of family games you could play with your kids compared to titles like LBP on the PS3 and the Xbox One was even worse.

Sony have always covered all the bases from day one. Look at the PS5 launch: you could happily let your kids play Spider-Man, Astrobot and Sackboy without batting an eyelid and these games also offered plenty for parents to tackle too! Ratchet and Clank just added to that portfolio. Where the heck is anything from Microsoft?

Is it any wonder the Switch is so popular? Of course Nintendo’s output mostly ticks that box (especially for couch multiplayer with your kids) but it also has every great indie Xbox 360 title on it now too, barring Braid.

Sony have just brought up a couple of studios that previously made exclusive titles for them anyway. I wouldn’t call that an arms race.

Microsoft on the other hand purchased a big 3rd party studio to fatten their rental service.

I don’t mind the big races against the likes of a train or hovercraft. These are the natural evolution of the plane races from FH1.

But what I’d really like to see is a return of more of the story-type missions that help to sell the idea of the festival fictional universe. 4 almost felt like a step back in this regard: the film director and documentary missions were nice but I’d like to see a return of the named boss characters, real name rivals rather than random gamertags and less of an emphasis of the online features in single player.

The roadmap should have been ‘build an entirely new road’. Seriously, just bin the multiplayer and knock out some more single player add-ons instead.

The worlds of Forza Horizon are incredible and they are a British developer to boot so should get the humour right. And surely they hired some old Lionhead talent when they shuttered?

‘Ever’ implies they will never be a better version going forwards. It should be ‘Best Windows YET for gaming’

@Originut it’s still on their website: http://www.monteriggioniturismo.it/it/itinerari/scopri-i-luoghi-di-assassins-creed/

I’ve not travelled much outside the UK but one place I have been is Venice and I did enjoy spotting all the places I spent on my honeymoon when AC2 came out.

I’m also kind of with you on Valhalla. I think it’s the best ‘ACRPG’ game in the series but I do miss the sprawling metropoli of Unity and Syndicate. The gang hideout missions in Syndicate were probably my favourite moment of the series: tiny little puzzles where you have to work out how to off the guards without getting caught.

Not sure if they do it now but years ago you could do an Assassins Creed tour around Monteriggioni in Italy which serves as the base of Ezio in AC2.

Is the machine is finally getting some actual exclusives it needed them. It’s just a shame they didn’t go with a different shade of green for the boxes to differentiate them.

@BlueOcean It’s definitely there.

I want to know who is developing the Xbox One version. Is it playground themselves or have they farmed it out to Sumo like they did with the 360 port of FH2?

@Widey85 I’m kind of with you here. I actually enjoyed Valhalla a lot. The return of one-hit stealth kills really helps reduce a lot of the grind and the mythological bits were fun but there was something a little ‘off’ about pillaging innocent villages and monasteries just for the heck of it. I had no qualms robbing the Royal Navy in black flag but this wasn’t like that.

I find the whole RPG aspects of the last 3 leave me cold. I liked how Black Flag and Rogue dealt with it: use money for your ship and resources for yourself.

Despite the glitches I still think 3 my favourite because in that there was no way to increase your health and if you left an area to regenerate the enemies all reset. This forced the player to actually improve at the game and take stealth seriously rather than just countering your way through every fight towards the end like Ezio or unrealistically wielding 2 50kg swords at once.

@sqxrz but he made Soundwave look like Tom Cruise in terms of charisma

Yeah.

Aides Pierce =/= Fan Favourite

I’m sold on being an Xbox gamer but I don’t really like Gamepass. It’s a great deal and all but I like to have ownership over my software rather than be tied into a constant rental.

The best on is Need for Speed 2 on the PS1.

You could race as a T-Rex, a shipping container and a log.

They never topped that.

Do people still enjoy cars confined to set tracks? I’ve tried going back to FM and Gran Turismo and I just wish the track opened up and I could really let the engine rip.

Forza Horizon has spoiled me and I cannot go back.