Sol76

I am not sure what to do at the moment…. I am eligible for a free Horizon 4 token as I have bought the season pass , car pass and some other DLC for the game pass edition. But I have not received my token yet even though almost everyone around me did. Xbox customer service told me that it can come somewhere in the coming weeks / months. I don’t want to loose access to the game if it leaves gamepass but I don’t want to buy it and ( would be very typical ) receive the token 1,5 minute AFTER i bought the game just to be sure…

A coffeeshop in the Netherlands is something different , but I guess that’s not what they mean.

Absolutely loved the first one and parts of the second but story wise the second one lost me after 1 hour or so. Graphics were amazing and the faces were very nice but there were times where I asked myself what the game was about. In the end you’ll figure out some parts but I felt it was very hard to keep my focus and attention throughout the middle part of the game.
In the end : happy to have played it with gamepass ,

@Dimey

Another upcoming devaluation of the points like the last time they “forgot” to inform us beforehand ??

Well , that would be nice to add to the fallout 76 freebie game from Amazon prime.
Great month !

I just started yesterday and watched 3 episodes. I didn’t know what to expect as Fallout games are normally not my cup of tea but was surprised about the show. It is really good imo. It grabbed me and now I am actually thinking about starting up one of those games and play it properly.

Isn’t there something to do with the licensing ?
That is the biggest problem in bringing games to the BC program.
Music license , brands , characters ….. now , all of that is licensed for a set amount of time or is console specific or something. To preserve those games they will need to work out a way that these licenses are ongoing , for as long as that game is playable , on what generation of consoles that may be.

Every beginning of a new gen we get expectations that are never met. 4K 60FPS … , 4K 60 FPS WITH RT , 4K 120 FPS , 8K 60FPS and such and within 1,5 year into that generation we all see that those things will never happen in this Gen. So we can safely say that the next gen will deliver what MS “promised” for this gen.

There are a couple of things I get from this list , one of them is that I am apparently not the “average” gamer. The only one that I’ve played is Horizon 5.

It totally depends on the mood if I can cope with the A.I. At times it is frustrating at the end of a long fair , everything went wel and smooth , expecting a good bonus for driving fast , safe and smooth. But the moment I want to park , some kamikaze driver ends up hitting me from behind and damaging my car , upsetting the passenger and as a cherry on a cake …. Hit a pedestrian and get a fine of 100€.
Pedestrians by the way are in a league of their own. They seem to have major difficulties with choosing their path and the moments they decide to cross the streets but preferably right before you pass by.
I have my fun with it. It is a nice break from the fast racing and stuff but I also feel that it is quite shallow and within an hour you more or less experienced everything that is in the game. After that is is just repetition. Don’t get me wrong , it still is fun but for how long? The management part is very thin and won’t add too much to the whole experience. But even though it is not a huge thing i need to get it to work properly because my co worker generates 0,0 money for more than a couple of days.
It needs some patches to iron out the weird A.I. behavior , framerate dips and passengers in your car that seem to appear out of nowhere. If you can look past it and this genre is something you like , there is good fun to be had with this.

Just played a small piece but what is up with the A.I.? Was picking up a fair and was hit from behind. Waiting for a red light dor some time and again someone hit me with full speed.
It all looks like good fun but it needs some patches. Getting damage without your fault all the time and needing to repair that with you hard earned fairs takes away the fun a bit.

Is this the update that I just downloaded or is it still planned in the coming weeks ?

Maybe a very stupid question , but would it ( in theory ) be possible to access your digital library from the past , like from the 360 era but also the games that are not BC. Or would that be a “digital rights” kind of problem? This would actually be preserving our digital library because I ( and probably many , many others , have more digital games bought on the 360 but that never went BC.

I use it regularly but not with all the games. Flightsimulator just works better when it has a fresh boot. Some of the time the achievement notification stops showing after quick resume and with new releases it is not as reliable as I wanted and lost progress more than once.

Ubisoft should patch the crew to take out the live service part. Offline is so much to do and it would be a nice gesture to the players that have been supporting it by “renting” the license.
Live service games are utter *****. We play them all but this just happens when they get a brainfart and pull the plug.

@J_Mo_Money

You are oh so true. Could not agree more.
What is more satisfying than complain about 3 bad pixels in a game where hundreds of people worked really hard on for months. The complaining threads get the most likes … why ? Does it make your own life better if you bring others down? It sure feels like complaining just to complain. If a game is 99,5% great and 0,5% trash , you will hear a lot of ***** about that 0,5 % but just a little bit about the 99,5% great game. If a type of game is not for you ( for me it is RTS or card based games ) just don’t play it. I am not going to play Baldur Gate and complain afterwards that the game is ***** just because it is not my type of game.
I like Starfield , but on the other hand I also have a good time with some of the 5€ shovelware. You just have to appreciate what it does well and not focus on the things it does not do for you.

These “dynamic” backgrounds still feel like they are not being used to their full potential. This could be so much bigger than it is now. Why not with every AAA game a real dynamic background with things going on everywhere on screen. Come on , I had fully dynamic screensavers and backgrounds on my pc 15 to 20 years ago when internal memory was still a fraction of what is available on the current gen machines.

I don’t get installation sizes anymore , he send me a picture with 243 Gb download as an UPDATE , not an installation. There seems to be more differences but based on what is a major riddle for me.
Example , we both have a series X , we both have cyberpunk , his installation size is 60,5Gb , mine is 65,3Gb … same game , same platform , still different.

And the update was 240+ Gb ? At least that’s what a friend showed me.
Good luck with that!

The disc-less series X that they said it was “old news” , the new and enhanced controllers ? Or is it just game news ?

Bad / sub par reviews are killing. Extremely bad reviews , like this one , give it a cult status and a large group of gamers do want to see what the fuss is about. To be honest , the game was not on my radar until the “worst game of the year” news came across. Now I am curious how bad it is and I am getting interested strangely enough.

Same here ! Happy to be able to play through MGS1 on current systems but my god did my eyes hurt after 1 hour of unsharp blockyness on my screen.
There are far better versions out there running at a higher resolution.
My thoughts exactly , nice to be able to play , but man , they should have made a little more effort to make this more fitting to modern standards.

One of the reasons I uninstalled the whole COD MW(2) mess. The insane installation size , the even more absurd amount of patches and updates of crazy sizes. I have a lot of games installed but COD is the one that is really stretching it. A 45 Gb patch to prepare for the big 90 Gb patch a week later ?? Followed by a 28 Gb patch a couple of days later to fix the things the previous patch broke. I can imagine a casual game of COD is out of the question if you start up the game and there is a 30+ GB patch / update waiting for you.
But what is up with the insane patch sizes ? On other systems patches are around 5 Gb and on Xbox they are like 45Gb ? Is that lazy programming or just the way the Xbox works ? It seems to be heavily related to COD because other games don’t seem to have those big differences in patch sizes.

I am happy that the first game finally came out for current systems but man am i disappointed with the treatment it got. This is simply a 1 on 1 port from the original , blocky , low res ps1 game. IMHO they could have AT LEAST bump the resolution a bit and smoothen the whole thing out a little so it looks ok on bigger televisions. There is a MUCH better / smoother looking version on pc available.

I’ve bought MGS 1 and I am extremely happy that they ported it to this gen , but was there really no possibility to crank up the resolution a bit? There was a PC version that looked much , MUCH smoother. This hurts the eyes a bit.

@JakobU
If you really feel like that , good luck with your conscious when turning on your Xbox and waste planetary recourses to play a game purely for your own pleasure.

I think it is a spectaculair thing. Amazing piece of technology. There could not be a better place for it than Vegas.

This was probably one of the most fitting trailers that I’ve seen for games. Creating the perfect atmosphere for the game.
I’ve noticed my interest declining with the last gears chapters. The first three ? Top notch !!! Great story , solid gameplay , well chosen characters and it was new , you did not know what you could expect and man .. did we get a lot of huge set pieces and a massive tense and action packed campaign but it never went over the top. Judgment was not more than ok. 4 didn’t grab me at all and 5 was all lost on me. Cannot remember a single thing of it. I just remember i didn’t like it at all even though a lot of people called it a refreshment and a good change by going semi open world. I loved the action packed closed worlds. A little bit of freedom to wander around but not too much. I hope they go back to the roots and give us a no nonsense gears experience without all the extra bells and whistles.

Do I hear Jim Ryan crying somewhere ?

Great game , completed it yesterday. Really feels like an Original A.C.
Let this be the new foundation for games to come.

The reddit community … enough said , point has been made.
Reddit , the place where people come to ask if they can drink bleach , where they come to ask if they need to go to a doctor or just put a bandage on if two fingers are just hanging loose on a piece of skin. Where people are telling stories so crazy that you’d ask yourself how on earth they survived all those years and still live.
But hey … let’s take them serious. Not to be disrespectful, but there is a mighty amount of garbage on that platform.
It’s like : hey .. I can finish this game easily .. give it a 10/10. Tomorrow in the same game they see 2 pixels wrongly colored : Terrible game ! Waste of time and money 1/10.

I like the game , very much. It feels like a different kind of Motorsport but also feels familiar.
I do have to say that VR racing ( GT7 on PS5 ) did kill the normal flat screen racing a little bit. Racing in VR is sooooo immersive. I would love to see this game run in VR.

I bought it mainly for the car pass and the 2x credits coming with the VIP pass. I would have bought them anyway. That you get an early access is a nice bonus.
But paying alone for just a custom overall or special paint scheme / livery , something pure cosmetical and an early access is something I would not do. It has to add something of value. 5 days early access is not something I want to pay for.

I have got 15 hours in it now and although it is a welcome addition and a good game , somehow I like 11 better.. This is completely personal but I liked the krypt , well , that’s gone… I really liked the 3 play styles with their own special moves , also gone .. and I did like the environmental moves during the fights … you guessed it, gone.
It looks great , plays great but the Kameos are not that special to me. Inversions is ok but feels so simplified against the open world of SF6 or the KRYPT in MK11 , but again , that is personal taste. Many of you will probably think : happy they ditched that weird labyrinth and those different play styles.
Graphically it is top notch. Crisp and colorful , detailed and the backgrounds are lively. The tearoom stands out because of the way the customers react to the fight that is going on. All those things make it a good game , for me just not a unmissable great game.

And no … there are no extra playable characters available at launch except for Tsang sung. That was a pre order character and not unlockable in game. The rest of the Kombat Pack characters are not available yet. They will be downloadable a week before they are available in the store for premium members.

Actually … bundling ( some of ) them would be a nice move. I know they got licenses / rights and stuff but giving out some special license to use that particular game in a bundle could generate at least some cash for the owners of that IP for a game that otherwise would be gone forever and will never generate any money anymore.
There must be a way that it can be profitable for everyone and not “lose” older games.
I do not expect every 360 will still be working after another 18 years.

Yes they should !
With better battery life than the dual sense.

Forza had some magnificent fantasy tracks in the past games. I would love to see them make a comeback.
To be honest .. I like the real life tracks very much and no self respecting racing game can do without them but .. if you have driven the RB ring , or Road America or any other track that is featured in almost every racing game , that track gets dull very quickly. Fantasy tracks are unique for a game (series) and most of the time they are pretty fun to drive.

If they were the ones responsible for those insanely cheap ass title updates with just another difficulty level to mask the short game… they SHOULD be fired , and hit with sticks on the way out.

@PhileasFragg
That person is also “playing” AC: MIRAGE , FORZA MOTORSPORT and STARFIELD.
So yeah , probably someone that has access to preview builds.

Actually thinking about buying a second series X exclusively for flightsim 2020 and 2024 that comes next year. They will suck up a good portion of ssd space. But .. I could not give any **** about a color or a special edition. A big sorry for the designers but those Porsche consoles , even though they are in the proper race colors , are not very attractive imho. A mid gen upgrade is always welcome , whatever the upgrade is. Larger ssd , higher speeds , better chipset , more internal memory. Whatever they bring as an upgrade , I’ll welcome it with open arms. But a different colour or external modification is not what I’m looking for anymore. It is the inside that counts. The series X is a very capable console but there are quite a few games that have a 30fps RT mode OR a 60FPS mode without RT / lower resolution. I would rather have a console that runs all the bells and whistles than a different color.

We all thought multiple times that there would be some major bangers in the past with special occasions. Like xx years gwg or when XBL turned xx years. I cannot recall anything special tbh so my expectations are not that high.

Does this mean that Jim still needs to send new PS5 pro or ps6 dev kits to Microsoft owned companies to secure parity between consoles ?
Hihihi I love that idea because you know how he hates that.

LOL , he is going to be head Activision/Blizzard after the acquisition. Or even better , replace Jim Ryan who get’s the sack after the diarrhea that came out of his mouth the last couple of months. Larry Hyrb at least knows how to promote a brand in a positive way.

That was kind of a given , seeing the end of Survivor.

To be completely honest .. I bought it on the 360 without finishing the story , bought it later on the X1 , again , not finished the story even though I started it with fresh motivation. Coincidentally two weeks ago I was pointed to a sale and was tempted again to buy the Series X version. Probably to start it with renewed strength but never finish it….. The sale passed and I thought I might get it next time as the games are on sale 51 weeks of the year.
For some reason I am tempted to start it once again but probably because there are so many distractions from the story I will never finish it.

Chorus was a huge surprise when it was added but man , was that an enjoyable one.
At the end the story was a little mehh for my taste but the gameplay was rock solid. They should make a part 2 if you’d ask me.

If the whole world is saying yes and you are the only one that says no , you are either absolutely brilliant and a visionary or need to get you head out of your …. and stop being backwards. I am leaning towards the second option in this case.
Everybody ( and authority ) is entitled to have his own opinion , but if nobody is supporting your take on this you might reconsider and ask yourself some serious questions if your objections are really that important.

Is it me or do you see the Series S have a sharper image from time to time ?
The kitchen part around the 2 minute mark shows a much sharper image on the series S compared to the performance mode on the series X.

Still baffles me why they don’t put these by masses in the store as downloadable backgrounds. For a small fee of course. Or put them in the games as a reward when unlocking a specific achievement like we’ve had with the gamerpics on the 360. I think , even though you don’t see much from them at the moment with the cluttered dashboard , people want to have that stuff from their favorite game.

I used to think DF was great with their analysis but when I played some games they covered on both systems , most of their points seems futile and are only apparent when doing a screen by screen analysis. When playing the games and having everything in motion I could not see the jagged edges on a building in the back that was on screen for 2,5 seconds. If you take a screenshot yesss , off course you can see a difference but be honest … how many players are comparing screen by screen and notice a 1 to 4 fps difference between consoles when they are in full gameplay.
Yes , it is nice to see an analysis but we should not OVER analyze it. It is good that they point out a major difference ( like 10 / 15 FPS , different max resolution, game and graphic modes and such ) but sometimes it feels like nitpicking and making things bigger than they in real gameplay are.

Wow … Winning is losing in this case.

Looks like the residu of a sticky and cheap version of duct tape.