Comments 624

Re: Sarah Bond: Our Next-Gen Console Will Be 'Very Premium' & Informed By ROG Xbox Ally

RadioHedgeFund

The more power you give to devs the more entitled gamers become that they’ve got to use it. Even with all the beefy processors of this generation there are few games on either console that look as good as Forbidden West on the PS4!

Microsoft would do well to build a console that can play current gen titles at stable frame rates without and pop-in. That shouldn’t cost the earth to build

Re: Six Things We Want To See From Forza Horizon 6 And Its Japan Setting

RadioHedgeFund

1. Get rid of seasons. They made sense in the UK game because of the ever changing weather but amounted to a little bit of extra snow on the mountain in Mexico. Just make the game perpetually cherry blossom spring.

2. Bring back the festival schtick. They made something of an effort to do this with 5 after 3 and 4 just kind of felt like videogame multiplayer maps rather than something lived in. I want proper event sites like in 1, not just floating icons.

3. Completely ditch the wheel spins and give every event series its own reward track based on difficulty so you know exactly what you need to do to get that car or outfit you want and it might require getting better at the game.

4. Keep the silly events but dial down the craziness. The tracks floating in the sky and arena were just daft in 5 but I still want to race the Shinkansen!

5. Bring back somebody like Rob Da Bank to curate the soundtrack and amplify the festival feel. The music in these games is normally really good but they’ve been going downhill since 2. I have the entire soundtrack to the first game on constant rotation in my car. A J-Pop radio station is a must!

Re: Forza Horizon 6's Map The 'Biggest Yet' As Dev Confirms Tokyo City Location

RadioHedgeFund

An ongoing issue I have with Horizon is the silly sense of scale. Colorado was ok because that’s not a country, just a region. It felt like a realistic setting for a motoring festival. Ditto Cote De Azure.

Australia kind of felt like some sort of Minecraft world with the different biomes. The compression in the UK setting was just silly though. You can’t drive from Edinburgh to the Cotswolds in 5 minutes! They should have confined the entire play area to either Cumbria or Derbyshire.

It looks like we’re going to get a silly map again with 6. They should have just set the entire thing on Hokkaido and be done with it.

Re: Microsoft 'Wraps Up' Xbox Series X|S Era As Hardware Chief Teases What's Next

RadioHedgeFund

My Series S generally serves me well as an Xbox 360 that plays Fortnite and Destiny 2. There are precious few modern titles that I bother with but having access to my older purchases keeps me around. I think the Series S is my favourite dinky console since the GameCube.

But I experimented for a few months just using an Apple TV and Gamepass streaming (using Onecast) and the results were so good that I'll probably just use that going forwards.

Re: Talking Point: After Almost Two Years, How Do You Feel About Xbox's Starfield In 2025?

RadioHedgeFund

As a storyline it's utterly terrible. Some of the missions take upwards of 2 hours to complete and the lack of a way to teleport to the surface of a planet after a lengthy dungeon baffling.

But if you immediately ignore the storyline and play it as a freeform space RPG it's fantastic. There are so many great questions, loads of factions to work with or just roleplay anything from a space pirate to a greengrocer.

Re: PS6 To Provide 'New & Enhanced' Experience As Sony & Microsoft Plan For Next-Gen

RadioHedgeFund

@Jenkinss There is clearly room for all sorts of devices across the market. It helps to keep things healthy. But as consumers we have a finite amount of time to devote to recreation and everything that might eat into that time, from sports to video games to writing to reading to gardening is all in competition with each other on some level.

Sony and Nintendo are both big fish in the same pond.

Re: PS6 To Provide 'New & Enhanced' Experience As Sony & Microsoft Plan For Next-Gen

RadioHedgeFund

Microsoft can polish it all they like but they're now a 3rd party publisher who just happens to have a perpetual rental service on their own agnostic hardware.

Sony and Microsoft are going around in circles trying to chase what is becoming an increasingly niche market (the 'Frames Per Second' gamers) whilst Nintendo continue to eat their lunch.

I'm not saying all consoles need to be the Switch, but what Sony need to concentrate on next gen is bringing the cost of development, software and hardware back down. Hobbyists are going to go to the PC regardless and the majority of their PS5 userbase are your FIFA/COD crowd who play titles than run perfectly well on a phone.

I don't mean to sound derogatory there: there is room for every sort of gamer on platforms! But making another expensive technical marvel to run games that still play perfectly well on a PS4 is rather ludicrous.

Re: Poll: How Would You Grade The Xbox Games Showcase 2025?

RadioHedgeFund

There’s still too many FPS and overly violent ARPGs for my personal tastes. Super Meatboy 3D looked ace!

The biggest news was Phil Spencer’s cryptic hint at the end for 2026. Fable and ‘New Forza’ (which I assume is Horizon 6) and ‘classic from the beginning’. Will we see Halo 7 next year as well? Or is it something else?!

Re: Talking Point: 25 Years On, What Do You Think Of The 'Perfect Dark' Franchise?

RadioHedgeFund

The original Perfect Dark is still the greatest FPS ever made. It’s got more ideas in 5 minutes of gameplay than most other shooters have over an entire series.

Why have other games never stolen its customisable multiplayer bot AI? The way the level objectives also scale with difficulty? The way level objectives are not just ‘kill everything’? Campaign co-op where one player is all the enemies? Tight multiplayer levels built for 4 players, not 40? The ability to disarm opponents.

And then there are the guns! Assault rifles that can be paid down as proximity mines or sentry turrets. Tranquilisers designed to blur your opponents vision. Grenades that bounce off walls almost indefinitely until they hit something. Snipers that can see through walls. Robocop’s Pistol.

And you can play the multiplayer as Dave Perry vs Shigeru Miyamoto.