SingleStooge

Currently going through this on PS5. It's my 1st ever time with this franchise. It certainly has its moments. Gameplay elements of combat and puzzles reminds me of Resident Evil games. Certainly recommend this for survival horror fans.

Bloober Team and Konami are currently remaking Silent Hill 1. If that ends up like SH2, then it's another winner. Don't know if that is gonna be a PS5 exclusive or multi-platform.

Xbox already had two updates this month. One on the 9th, and the other on the 22nd according to their status page. Was confused by this article, as thought there was yet another Xbox update today.

Isn't the reason Microsoft made Xbox in the 1st place is to provide competition to Playstation and Nintendo? Never heard of "We built the console, because we wanted to build a better PC...."

In terms of "innovation". This so-called hybrid console/PC will prevent players from actually playing games. With constant Win11 updates, Xbox updates, Microsoft Store updates, download / install games and then their updates. For those with limited time, this will eat up all their available time constantly.

Just checked Xbox Status page, and all green. Typical October. This thing always happens at this time of the year.

@mcyr1984 That was released last year and was in some GoTY nominations for 2024. It won't be a contender for this year's GoTY nominations.

1. Clair Obscur Expedition 33
2. Blue Prince
3. Atomfall
4. South Of Midnight

"The reason for this is likely because the UK has just implemented new rules forcing "all sites and apps that allow pornography to have strong age checks in place" - with verification methods including credit card checks, photo ID-matching and even "email-based age estimation"."

Is the UK actually doing that? As far as what the Australian govt points out to us Aussies, is that they want all social media sites to ban access to anyone under 16yo. No mention videogame companies are forced to comply, unless they fall under the term 'app'? Looks to me that everyone will be forced to verify their age; not just the age group that Western govts want to restrict.

Yes, this is Chinese Dark Souls / Bloodborne hybrid. Plays exactly like those FromSoftware titles. My 1st impressions was mixed, as had a torrid start but after grinding out levels it becomes better. Also, there are game mechanics that are not even explained or explained poorly.

@shoeses In the case of Switch 2 games, they already are and MKW doesn't even look like a $US80 game.

And I thought Microsoft would increase their upcoming 1st-party titles from this holiday season as initially announced. Didn't think they'll start of early with OW2 in October? Never played the 1st game, but Obsidian hardly ever releases their games in a polished state. Do you think OW2 will be better polished on release? I think not. Players will expect that for $US80; not a broken buggy mess.

10M players does not make a title successful. Just how many units did it sell across all platforms? Personally, I wasn't impressed by the gameplay, and the "openworld" structure that actively discourages exploration.

If the reported $US20m to $US30M pricetag on developing the game is true, then Sandfall and Kepler has already recovered the cost and made a hefty profit from the 3.3M sales so far.

To me, Expedition 33 is on par to the major AAA RPG studios, and if they did decide to have the game cost $US70, people would still happily pay that amount.

I'm playing this on Gamepass, but I did buy a physical copy on my experience.

This is better than that other outstanding RPG that came out earlier this year, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? Damn, indie and small AA studios are really providing stiff competition to the well established AAA devs such as Ubisoft, EA, Bethesda. Also they are the only ones who innovate, rather than bring out endless sequels to franchises.

Got Oblivion on release with the x360 console. Was the 1st ever RPG game I've played. Loved it, but the closing of Oblivion gates got repetitive over time. Liked Fallout 3 alot as well.
Don't understand all these leak news of Oblivion Remastered getting released before end of this month. Nothing has been officially announced by Microsoft nor Bethesda.

Then I'm glad I installed this update before the Huggin Molly boss fight. That fight was great and the music accompanying it was brilliant. I'll say at least the combat in boss battles is way better than the repetitive arena ones.

Still no photomode! This game is perfectly suited with its vibrant color tones, lighting effects, and animation. All such games should have one. About time Microsoft owned game studios should follow Playstation's lead on this. It is a pain keeping on going in Settings, Interface, HUD, and choose Hide All frequently to take a screenshot.

Up to Chapter 4 and really liking it. Love the stop-motion animation and vibrant color tone, which got me interested in the 1st place. The combat sections are OK and harks back to the x360 days. It is set in small arenas with multiple enemy types and a single health cube thingy that can be used only once. It would be better if the combat was over the shoulder 3rd-person like God Of War, but guess the developer isn't a huge studio with a big budget.

The physical version in Australia retails for around $AU20, so I think it's worthwhile picking that up and install the update. Heard, it's only for Xbox Series / PS5 / PC, with Xbox1 and PS4 missing out on this update. Could be 100% wrong.

That's the lowest score I've seen so far. Mind you, I've never played any Stalker games as I don't play games on PC - console only.
I was going to try this via Xbox Gamepass, but given the bugs and that A-Life system not being in the game (as advertised), I'll wait until sometime next year to give this a go.
On the other hand, given the problems the developer had over the development time the state of the game could be forgiven for the most part - unlike other studios such as Bethesda and CDPR.

I have both consoles and have no problem with their button layouts.

Thought the entire point of Gamepass is that they have 1st-party release Day One, but this new Standard tier forgoes that. What is also up with Microsoft getting rid of Gamepass (console)? Is Microsoft against their own brand?
There are reports that this price increase is to secretly make everyone pay for the next CoD game if they want to play it or not? If that is true, then the corporate dimwits has really lost the plot.
I say, if Microsoft thinks that this new structure will make more people convert to Gamepass in droves (for CoD), then they have their heads in the clouds. Might have the opposite effect?

Only heard of this from a Gameranx video of upcoming June 2024 titles. They refer that the Persona series is an offshoot of this. If it comes to Gamepass, might look into it.

I chose Hellblade. Enslaved is a very close second. Loved that game on the x360.

PC Gamer gave this a 58. Was surprised that Pure Xbox has a lot of criticisms of this sequel, but given Microsoft's recent track-record of average and terrible exclusives it comes as no surprise.

Did like the 1st one alot as it was unique. Shame Ninja Theory, after all this time, didn't improve on gameplay mechanics and its story arc isn't exceptional. Did they only focus on visuals and sound? This is supposed to be a videogame; not a film. I certainly hope Ninja Theory won't go on the chopping block as they developed great games before.

As for a previous comment of PS-exclusives being bland recently, I agree in part. I find Spiderman just one big collectathon. GoW Ragnarok was good gameplay-wise, but everything else was just average. Ghost of Tsushima is visually stunning with a brilliant story and gameplay, but its open-world is empty (nothing to do apart from main and side quests).

Apart from excellent exclusive and 3rd-party titles, the Xbox dashboard had customisable avatars which you can change their appearance.
As for 3rd-party titles, they included Max Payne and F.E.A.R. which were top-tear FPSs with unique mechanics and never emulated again for some odd reason.

The time to really start worrying is if every single 1st-party Xbox game / franchise is ported to Playstation. That would then include Halo, Gears, Fable, Hellblade, Forza, Elder Scrolls 6 onwards, and along with the currently rumoured list. If Phil Sencer actually confirms this, then why would people get an Xbox. For Gamepass? If the rumour (mentioned earlier) of Gamepass not getting Day 1 release then what would the point - just indie and AA titles?
Playstation releases their 1st-party titles onto PC, so they're not technically exclusive either. At least their head of Playstation doesn't release their games onto Xbox.
Another thing, what was the point in buying all those major game studios / publishers and spending billions of dollars and then go 3rd party if true?

Wonder if that was Microsoft's intention all along. Buy Activision Blizzard and dismiss 1000s of staff. Not a nice New Year gift. They could've merged those staff into Microsoft's gaming studios.

One major advantage that physical has over digital that the majority of people don't realise or completely ignore is that you have zero chance of getting hacked. How many instances of people getting their credit card details stolen from online sites and they have to deal with the fallout. Doesn't matter if from the Xbox / Microsoft Store. Any online retailer is prone no matter what they say.

At least Playstation and Nintendo isn't going down that path in the immediate future. I always opt for physical for Playstation. As for Xbox, I rely on Gamepass but do not download games that run 100s of Gb as it takes far too long to download. That's when Cloud comes in.

RE2 Remake is excellent. Wonder how long until Gamepass gets RE3 and RE4 Remakes.

Atomic Heart was considered "Bioshock-like" or heavily inspired by Bioshock, but turned out mediocre. Close To The Sun does look similar to Bioshock in art-style. Need to try it out. Steam and IGN gave it a 3/5.

Looks like I need to try out HiFi Rush. Never went under my radar. Very surprised with the no.1 spot. Thought BG3 would be a shoe-in.

It was really hard. Mine is
1. Sea Of Stars
2. Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
3. Lies Of P
4. Robocop Rogue City
5. Planet Of Lana

That is if the quests can even be completed. A week ago, quests couldn't be completed and corresponding achievements wouldn't unlock due to faults at Microsoft. Now, it has happened again, and still ongoing. Twice within 2 weeks is not a good sign. The previous 11 months nothing like that happened. Why all of sudden in December?

As for HiFi Rush, didn't Tango Gameworks / Bethesda got paid so-and-so amount of money to put it on Gamepass? Why would Bethesda complain it didn't make enough money according to the rumour? Grounded didn't get a physical release either and there's zero mention if that game made money or not. As for 1st-party titles on Gamepass, if the developers are worried of not getting enough money from Microsoft, then do physical releases first then put it on Gamepass after a period of time.

Absolutely not Forspoken! Bombed badly on the PS5 and Sony closed down the developer studio due to poor sales from terrible optimisation, poor gameplay and story.
Apart from Forspoken and FF Pixel Remaster, I never heard of the rest.

Stalker 2. If it does come out this year, its post apocalyptic horror vibe might be a winner.

As everyone noted, the hardware is great apart from the ethernet connection not working properly. Have constant problems with the wired connection, which I have zero issues on the PS4. Can only connect via wi-fi. '9th-gen' console and almost 2023, and this is an issue?

As for 1st-party titles. It's a resounding F--. Very poor compared to what Sony brought out. Microsoft needs to bring out its 1st-party titles pronto. Grounded and Plague Tale Requiem were the only two noteworthy.

"This price reflects the content, scale, and technical complexity of these titles..." Is the reason, then why on Earth do the vast majority of AAA titles on launch are buggy as hell, unplayable, and missing a host of features expecting players to pay further in "season passes" as well as mandatory patch updates of xxGBs that can take hours on end? And now have the gall to increase prices to $US70?
Developers / publishers should get their act together and release their AAA games in proper playable states first and foremost with zero missing features and then it would be worth the new asking price.

Thought of getting Callisto Protocol on launch, but after news of its Season Pass that players have to pay for a Hard Mode, and 25 death animations for the "full experience", I'm giving it a miss until this time next year or so if it comes out as a 'Complete Edition'.

Voted for Witcher 3. Never played Witcher 1 and 2, and started off with Witcher 3. The best RPG ever done, and those two expansions especially Blood and Wine elevated it even higher. Loved the humour. While Cyberpunk is great, it is not as good as Witcher 3.

Personally, I'm playing this on a 4K TV that goes up to 60fps. I'm playing on performance mode w/o FSR at all, and have no fps drops whatsoever, so I have zero idea how FSR is supposed to benefit. Maybe for those playing on 720p / 1080p TVs? If a TV goes up to 60fps, would this FSR cause problems with the TV as the fps can go beyond what the TV can handle.

I got the Series X on the purpose to play videogames in 4K / 60fps or higher. Isn't that the point of 'next-gen' consoles in the 1st place? If Microsoft / Sony / Nintendo is so anxious of console power consumption vs climate change, then why on Earth are they forcing players to constantly be online to download entire games, firmware and game updates, etc. (spending up to an entire day doing so depending on the game filesize and internet speed) even though they got discs. The unnecessary power consumption doing that is worse than actually installing the game from the disc.

This developer only made car racing games and never did any open-world rpg / sandbox games. Surprised they never got anyone experienced in storyline writing until now. Guerrilla Games only made Killzone games before Horizon Zero Dawn, and they had the foresight to get a writer who did Fallout New Vegas to help them with that game early enough, and it turned out for the better. Fingers crossed whatever recommendations / changes this writer makes is for Fable's advantage.

Voted for CoD4. Call of Duty (classic) was really good and unique taking in three different perspectives of allied soldiers in WW2. Modern Warfare 2 (2009) was good as well even with the controversial airport part.

Liked the 1st one, but could not finish it, as the difficulty spike on Ch.16 was unbelievably brutal, especially that infuriating cart push section. Maybe Asobo expected every player to pick up every upgrade item and have everything upgraded by then, but not everyone does that.

Does this sequel have multiple difficulty settings, or even allow the player to progress to the next section if they fail to advance after a certain number of tries (just like what GTA5 did)?

Voted for Hot Pursuit, as that was developed by the team that did the Burnout series.
I liked both Underground games.

As for gamepass games, I never consider the game's length when trying it out or know from reviews. If I don't like it, then it doesn't matter as I didn't pay around $AU80 to $AU100 for them.
Buying games on disc is a different story. I tend to go for sandbox / openworld / rpg as provides more gameplay per buck.

@Tangerine There's quite a few reports that the anime series did have an influence on the current resurgence / interest in CP2077. I haven't seen the series myself, so I cannot comment on it. I'm 92hrs in and just progressed into Act 3. Loving the game and its good that its gaining popularity 2yrs after its dreadful launch. CDPR is commended on sticking to it, as the game world is too good to be squandered.

@SinfulDestroyer According to PushSquare alot.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/09/the-ps5-ps4-release-schedule-in-2023-is-officially-utterly-ridiculous

I think it depends on if you don't mind metal music. If you don't then you won't play this anyway. If you do, or don't mind it, then by the overall positive reviews, you'll have a blast.

@FraserG Agree. How the final season played out is fitting. Apart from the fiddly and awkward console controls, Telltale did a remarkable job with this. One of the best game series I've played, and Clementine is possibly my most memorable protagonist.