RadioHedgeFund

Forza Horizon.

I have never seen a game nail it's aesthetic and theme like this first try. It set the bar so high that none of the sequels have come close to matching it's festival atmosphere, appearing more as maps for MMO racing instead.

A decade later the map is still fun to drive and has those trademark 360 sunsets that come very close to matching the haze of Fable 2. And the soundtrack is an exquisite mix, with repeated plays on Radio X in the UK and my car stereo.

Second would be Fable 2, a game that truly allows roleplaying without the game.mechanics getting in the way of every NPC conversation taking 10 minutes. (See: Bioware)

I am enjoying Starfield a lot more than I did Skyrim.

I just wish simple game mechanics (like say having a full crew complement) are locked away behind a ridiculous amount of grinding at attributes you might not even want.

Wait, people actually use the newer uglier Avatars?!?

Now then, maybe Jedi Survivor might make it too?

I've nothing against whoever is playing the character here but it would have been nice to get Wesley Snipes back to do the voice acting.

4 words:
Jet
Set
Radio
Future

I went to a lecture by the director of Fable 3 and Fable: The Journey and he showed off some internal videos of Milo that had to be seen to be believed. It wasn't that the tech didn't work, it was that they had no idea how to turn it into a playable game. So it was that Milo was canned and The Journey was born.

At the end of the day exclusives push sales and Xbox just hasn't had enough. I have a Series S because the PS5 is too big to go under my TV and I value access to my back catalogue, not because it has the best games.

Microsoft have history here. I have some great memories teaching Kodu game lab to High School kids.

Forza Horizon 2 is one of the greatest racing titles of all time with considerable post-game depth if you want to do all hundred+ tours. How that missed out on GOTY over tripe like Dragon Age I will never know.

I can understand Starfield because they released it half-finished but no love for Hi-Fi Rush?

There is a strong case that the Xbox 360 is the greatest console of all time. It might have piggybacked a few ideas but it not only ushered in the proper modern era of online gaming but it also had the best selection of system exclusives of any Xbox console.

What started with PGR3 was finished with Forza Horizon. Let me.put this another way: if the Series X wasn't backwardly compatible with all my old 360 purchases I would have sold up to PlayStation years ago.

All I really want is some music!

I'll throw another one out there: Perfect Dark, the best local multiplayer FPS ever made is also on Game Pass. 23 years old and still no game has come close to rivalling it's depth of options.

Forza Horizon 1. Easily my favourite of the series, this is confounded more by the fact that I can never start again or I will lose all my custom car paint jobs. Microsoft turned the servers off and so my copy of them is the only one that will ever be there.

It's like modern developers don't study game design theory at all. Surely game design 101 is just the Miyamoto quote about delayed games?

Axis Football sounds far too much like a WW2-era FIFA game between the enemy powers.... Unfortunate choice of name!

Once Again showing that Larian were the problem, not the Series S.

I think it's one of the finest roleplaying games I have ever played.

It's not an RPG, mind. That is a great story to play through, characters to level and fall in love with along the way.

But a ROLE playing game? Where does one begin at how wonderfully open ended the game is in playing as whoever you want to be and taking the side missions as they come. That's Starfield.

If they did a scale model with a lamp in the light that switches between green and red I'm there.

@AlwaysPlaying I'm not sure. I'm sure this guy is a really talented guy and allbut for me what made Fable was it's refusal to bow to the conventions of regular western RPGs by concentrating less on tedious stat management and more on building a memorable world full of humour and grace. Now from the trailer it looked like this was the direction Playground are definitely going

There is a reason I still play Fable 2 every year; I think it's the greatest western RPG ever made.

I’d argue this year has made up for it. Starfield is immense. Forza looks a lot better than GT7 and personally I’d put HiFi Rush as my GOTY.

It’s exactly what a I want: stealth skills that scale with player skill instead of level gating, a bustling metropolis to protect and classic parkour.

The best AC map is still Unity. It looks gorgeous on modern consoles.

The 360 came out in 2005!

If we end up with more dropped features then a good workaround would be to allow S owners to stream X titles, even if they’ve just purchased it rather than subbing to anything.

@StonyKL Were the specs of both consoles not designed to run the same game at 1080p and 4K respectively? It makes sense to design for 1080p and then move upwards.

There is only one game on the list that anyone gives a fig about and all it needs is a wodge of cash and some assets from Sega.

If the box isn’t delivering the goods then that’s on the devs to make sure that happens. If they built for S and then upgraded the assets for X rather than going in the opposite direction they would have no issues.

If a game like Forbidden West can run without issue on the PS4 and Nintendo can continue to squeeze magic from the ancient architecture of the Switch then it’s all possible.

With Baldur’s gate 3 why not make the multiplayer like Diablo where the players cannot venture that far from each other. The. You only have to render the one environment.

Sunday Night Perfect Dark recreating with my friends how we all did so badly at college.

I use it at least on a weekly basis for my Fortnite games. If there is a game on Gamepass I want to play I will hunt down a cheap month code from an online retailer and just hook my iPad Pro up to the TV saving me the cost of a console.

What I’d really like is the ability to stream my Xbox purchases assuming a paid sub was required for access.

It’s weird how they say it’s not being used because there is always a 10 minute queue to get online.

If the problem is split screen then make it so players have to stay on the same screen together and cannot just wander off.

One environmental render, no problem.

@ZYDIO there have been ads /since/ the 360 days. It’s nothing new and they’ve always been unobtrusive.

@ZYDIO That’s a bit of an overreaction to a Home Screen, the hallway of your console.

I find it amusing that the final dashboard for the 360 was nigh on perfect and Microsoft have spent the last decade trying to build something as good and functional but keep coming up short.

Is this the same as dev account unlocking your Xbox for emulators?

Wow, they really missed the boat in finally giving next gen owners something unique for their console.

I remember my friend having the translucent green model and thinking Halo was the business. I then looked into getting one myself but quickly realised it was just a PS2 minus the interesting Japanese titles and a controller that made games like SSX Tricky twice as hard because it only had 2 shoulder buttons.

I did later buy a 360 and it remains my favourite console of all time.

@shoeses Due to a workaround on the backend with Backwards Compatibility you can still play all the free 360 and Xbox games they gave you without needing a sub at all.

Given how terrible GWG has been for the last few years it was time for Microsoft to take the dog out and shoot it.

I would have however liked to have seen streaming added across every tier for the games available. Microsoft claimed during the Activision case that hardly anyone uses it so maybe it’s time to widen its appeal?

A service like this shouldn’t have any lag at all.

Why stream a title that’s a few KB in size when you could hold it entirely in the RAM of the host console and just feed save data back to the server?

Oh now I get why they bought Activision.

@Markatron84 The dialog added to the motoring festival feeling in 1 & 2. Since then the game has felt a lot more ‘videogamey’ and ruined the illusion. The seasons completely ruined the idea as it meant that after a year of weekly season rotations apparently the Horizon Festival has been running for 12 years!

It’s a typo. It already includes online play!

Whilst I’m sure others are excited there is probably one game on that list I’d be bothered about playing again.

An always online title is tailor made for game pass. Customers aren’t saddled with dead weight should the servers go down but the continued sub means continued engagement,

Not the Xbox but I did skive off work when Metroid Prime and Wind Waker both came out.

For me the fun of GTA is putting a few cheats on (REMEMBER THOSE, DEVS?) and then just causing chaos. Thus I get about 2-3 days fun out of them before I get bored.

GTAV has been around so long that I got my jolly’s out of it by renting it from Blockbuster on the Xbox 360 just after launch and haven’t played it since!

I wouldn’t be surprised if they just canned Skull and Bones and just morphed it into this instead.

Greatest FPS ever made.

Most comprehensive local multiplayer ever put together.

Prove me wrong.

Nadella seemingly ignoring the last 30 years of the games industry then. Sega and Nintendo drew their battle lines on exclusivity or even exclusive features. Who can remember the Mortal Kombat blood fiasco or Aladdin?

Microsoft are just sore because they either closed their studios or canned their licensed exclusives and are now paying the price.