Tdx

Two boomer shooters: Dusk and Ion Fury. Dusk is really solid with wild and twisting level design. Ion Fury is absolutely awesome with impactful shooting, a great synth soundtrack and huge levels that are complex but never confusing.

Buying Candy Crush crushed Xbox

@Scrubchub There’s an interesting GDC talk on YT where the devs show off all the systems they used to efficiently create mass amounts of dialogue, conversations, architecture and quests.

@FarmDog08 I'd really recommend Origins - a serious tone, handcrafted locations and cities, focused plot, excellent main character, and stealth/bow are viable for the entire game.

Chipping away at AC Odyssey. It just keeps going. A pretty and frictionless busywork game - sometimes what you need.

Their art style is so original but the amount of cutscenes and story in PN2 killed me. Glad this is a simple gameplay-first puzzle game.

Amos Roddy soundtrack? Now it’s a must play for me.

They have an airplane seat testing area? That's hilarious

Stealth boomer shooter? Looks great

Many times a year. Especially retro games like Mega Man, Contra, SotN, Doom, old sports games.

On Xbox? I’d like to replay Skyrim/Fallout/Starfield at least every year. And Wildlands and Far Cry are my comfort games.

Was just considering replaying the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time since release.

AC Odyssey. It’s keeping me busy.

Silksong, Blue Prince were awesome. Citizen Sleeper 2, Hexen Remastered were also great.

I'm hoping SteamOS is ready and official by then.

Why does a game like Ball x Pit not come to Premium? They should should leave Premium as the indie tier not the somtimes-indies-sometimes-not tier.

They need a huge GP drop today. Multiple AAA games to shift the narrative. AC Shadows, BG3, Dragons Dogma 2 - games like that.

I would buy any controller that had gyro aiming

@BattleMonkey I didn't know about that ending. Just watched on YouTube - "eh, plenty of fish in the sea" - hilarious.

If they upgraded the games to be 4K/60fps that'd be one thing, but even some of the great ones like Far Cry Primal are sub-1080p. It also makes the games list cluttered with bargain-bin stuff like Monopoly and AC Chronicles.

Replayed Shadow Complex. One of the first metroidvania revival games from the Xbox arcade days. Has a fantastic sense of progression from normal dude to super soldier. And a cool flashlight mechanic that shows what items are needed for each obstacle. A hassle to 100% however.

Trying to get into AC Odyssey again. I loved AC Origins so I keep thinking it’ll click. Everything feels slightly worse in Odyssey - spongey combat, goofy tone, unfocused plot, stealth/bow is less viable, much more ludonarrative dissonance. But I haven’t given up yet.

Whoever made this doesn’t understand it from MS’s perspective. The “day 1 releases” are like 90% of the cost to MS they need to recoup. The other stuff like EA and Ubi classics are probably minor costs. Part of the GP strategy is to get you interested in a few premium games and keep feeding you random stuff to keep you subscribed.

Yeah. Personally I use GP 95% for indie games. Don’t care about MS first party or CoD or EA. So if indies come to Premium day 1 that works for me.

Edit: I doubt most of the good ones will after seeing which games didn't move to Premium

In 2022, we had GPU for less than $6/mo with the conversion. We all said "these are the golden day, enjoy it" and we were right.

In 2023, we said the ABK merger would spike prices, and we were right.

In 2024, MS said GP was profitable but we knew it wasn't with all the true costs included, and we were right.

In 2025, MS increased hardware and GPU prices and we said they were no longer interested in the console market. Are we right?

Silksong. Holy hell, this game can be tough. Just finished the final boss - 94% completion after 86 hours playing with no guide/help along the way. Incredible.

Silksong. Absolutely phenomenal.

Been completely avoiding all discussion/reviews/guides and just enjoying every second.

I didn’t see any gameplay in that 3 minutes. Just cut scenes, quicktime events and pressing forward.

Silksong. It’s absolutely magnificent.

Avoiding all scores/reviews/videos/discussion.

My favorite gunplay in any video game. Awesome gameplay loop. Compelling worlds. Especially 4 and Primal (Survivor mode).

But yeah, Ubi always messes it up with 2-3 design decisions that hurt the whole experience. At least they’re warning us this time

I answered this as I want to support this site.

1. Only games coverage
2. No mobile ad banners
3. No clickbait drama articles
4. Reviewers actually finishing the games they review

Played through a bunch of indies this week so I could clear the backlog for Silksong. In rank order:

Hexen Remastered - AWESOME exploration and atmosphere, love the remastered QoL stuff, can be very demanding to remember multiple maps at once. Highly recommended.

Heretic Remastered - fast and fun, expansion levels aren’t good

Rogue Prince of Persia - great soundtrack and movement, not enough variety or content after winning a few runs

I Am Your Beast - decent gameplay, grating voice acting and too-strict grading system

Herdling - nice vibe, not enough gameplay

BL3 was terribly annoying

Another 3rd person hand-holdy cinematic game - I was hoping these would die with the last console gen. I've had enough of these for a lifetime.

Of course the PS publications give the cinematic 3rd person adventure game the highest scores.

Had a retro week. Finished Ninja Gaiden Ragequit (aka Ninja Gaiden 3) and Castlevania 3 on the NES. Sometimes I forget how stiff and brutally cheap those old games were. Kids simply weren’t meant to ever finish most of them. Games like Contra or the Mega Man series still hold up due to the perfect controls and fantastic music - and also the lack of cheapness - however, they are the exception rather than the standard for that era.

Playing through Cat Quest 2 with the girlfriend.

Will probably start on some GP indies and then jump to Silksong (!) the following week.

Replaying Far Cry 6. Was hoping I’d like it more than I did the first time since I love the series and it looks so pretty. Pero no.

Happy to see Silksong get a release date.

Awesome. Can’t wait.

Add native gyro next gen please

Finished Elden Ring. It had its moments but I didn’t really enjoy it after the first 10-20 hours (which were great). Mid-game was a slog and end-game was pretty relentless. Made me miss Dark Souls 1-2. Kinda killed my interest in soulslikes.

Started AC Odyssey. I’m down for an old fashioned Ubi map clearing once in a while. I loved Origins so I’m optimistic. The melee combat feels more spongey so hoping I can spec out for bow/stealth eventually.

Also chipping away at Dawn of Sorrow on handheld.

Really glad this exists but I have a backbone for travel, which is far more convenient.

This game was a mess. I finished it and put >50 hours in.

The thing that killed it for me (beyond the total jank gameplay and bugs) was the game structure. I was hoping for more of an open RPG type game (like Fallout), but we got a linear narrative type game (like Cyberpunk).

Starfield DLC announcement 😬

Playing through Elden Ring. It’s entertaining, but it’s definitely my least favorite FromSoft game (played all the others). The open world really does feel bland and repetitive and it destroys the tension and level balance. The initial exploration was fascinating and then becomes pointless. All the old FS problems are back too: camera issues (other souls games like LoP and Nioh proved this can be fixed), wiki-dependent quests (kills immersion for me), item bloat, loquaciously cryptic NPCs, awkward platforming, etc. The art and vistas are absolutely amazing but the lack of environmental effects and 2011 animations make it a pretty ugly game. Fortunately, the bosses are fun to fight (despite the over/under leveling issues and constant reuse) and the linear sections are decent.

Overall it just feels like a mess. It makes me want to replay Dark Souls 1 instead. Still have like 1/4 of the game to go.

Nice. I love boomer shooters and have never played either somehow.

At least we’ll always have Just Cause 2.

Finished a replay of Far Cry 5 on Infamous difficulty. Awesome gameplay, beautiful environment - the best in the series and maybe my favorite for any FPS. Yet the repeated captures, painful monologues, tanky enemies and side character goofiness prevent it from being my favorite game in the series.

Started Elden Ring for the first time. I’ve finished all the other FromSoft souls games and this one definitely feels different. I appreciate the constant surprises everywhere. So far it feels a bit aimless but interesting.

Prepare for a lot of “Starfield is actually good” Reddit posts.

Very happy that the nay-saying hivemind didn't stop the DLC development.

I hate all his games. Cool cinematics, but terrible games. Even MGS1 is overrated as hell.

Awesome. This was the one game I was looking forward to this year (besides Silksong). Blasphemous is one of my favorites and this looks just as good.

Absolutely. Huge metroidvania fan and HK is one of the best. Even if Silksong is only decent I’ll still love it.

They could also have something completely genre-defining planned.

Finished Blue Prince. Brilliant, addictive game. Very memorable. Surprisingly, I was able to reach the end organically without looking up a single solution, which makes it much more satisfying. Once I stopped trying to get to room 46 and started to focus on collecting new rooms and clues it really clicked. It’s not a roguelike as much as it’s a board that resets every day.

I think updating Wildlands to 60fps is the first thing we need.

Wildlands is a 10/10 game to me - one of the best open world game designs with excellent stealth mechanics and amazing atmosphere. There is very little time spent outside of pure gameplay. I mainly play solo with AI teammates off and it's fantastic.

Breakpoint is like a 4/10 game to me - absolutely horrible across all dimensions: game design, nonsense world lore, story, dialogue, hub area, immersion-killing stuff everywhere, voice acting, mission design, etc. The only things it does better than Wildlands is smoother aiming, more outfits and prettier trees.

Ghost Recon in first person would be awesome - there's a first-person mod for WL already. But 3rd person is sometimes useful for stealth gameplay, where you need to scan 360 quickly or peak around a corner.