The bloody ethernet connection working reliably?

Some stuff in here looks good. Vampire Crawlers is sure to be a banger, Void/Breaker looks interesting, and I'm unironically super-hyped for Tanuki: Pon's Summer. That will keep me out of mischief until you-know-what.

I'm actually super-hyped for Tanuki: Pon's Summer. It looks utterly adorable, stress-free, the antithesis of GTAVI.

Okay, I saw this and was like 'meh', but now I'm curious.

Its not without its problems although, to their credit, Peal Abyss have been working pretty tirelessly to iron them out (including softening the tough-as-nails bosses), but it's generally brilliant. And even the hard bosses aren't insurmountable. I absolutely SUCK at Souls games, and I've managed to beat every boss so far - even the Reed Devil - and that guy suuuuuuucks.

Mouthwashing I've been waiting for ages. Does not disappoint.

Terrible Lizards - this was not even remotely on my radar and it's AWESOME. Don't sleep on it.

This is Xbox's "Oasis on everybody's iTunes account" moment.

Insanity. Let's all travel back to the office so we can talk to AI less efficiently while we drink ***** coffee after sitting in traffic for hours.

We had a chance to change the world, and we didn't.

@Spider-Kev - "Its-a me, Mario! This is-a my favourite shop on the Ceetadel."

The full screen ad is SO irritating. The fact it defaults to 'Buy' rather than 'Close' is such a dark pattern, and honestly, I'm not even convinced its entire legal. And the store takeovers are just as irritating. They make the store front unecessarily difficult to navigate, presenting an entire array of options as a single cohesive option is just awful UI. I become more convinced every day that Microsoft is staffed entirely by fresh-out-of-grad-schoolers.

I feel for people who lost their jobs. For passionate Devs who just wanted to make the next ME. But this isn't a surprise. Bioware's games went downhill from Andromeda. Anthem's attempt to capture Destiny's lighting in a bottle was ill conceived, and Veilguard was just a toothless shell. As liberal as I am, and as much as it pains me to agree with the 'go woke, go broke' brigade, in this case? Their were right. Veilguard was, totally, an utter disaster of a game. I can totally understand why it didn't land with fans.

Doing something different is all well and good, but you're isolating your existing customers. If you're doing that you better have something INSANELY strong to come out with. At its best, Veilguard was... fine.

It very much feels like Bioware suffered a corporate death. RIP.

AI is here and its staying. I'm an indie game dev with a couple of commercial VR projects under my belt, and I've been a sofware engineer for over two decades. I use AI in both my day job and my game development. It's a part of my workflow now.

I think it's worth pointing out there's a big difference between using AI as a tool and just dumping out entirely AI generated slop. AI hasn't fundamentally changed the work that I do, I can just do it a LOT faster now with fewer mistakes and a lot less research and guesswork.

Dexerto: It's too expensive. 5/5

The next generation will be the first generation since the Sega Master System that I won't own console hardware. I don't see a world where Project Helix is under £1k.

I upgraded my PC to an Xbox slaughtering monster, and it cost me less than Project Helix likely will - and I pretty much had to gut it. Google TV lets me stream from my PC to my TV pretty much perfectly.

I don't know where consoles go from here. Games are going up. Hardware is going up. Subscriptions are going up while delivering less. The quality of the games, generally is going down (the Xbox store is FLOODED with sokoban AI slop).

Okay, I mean, if you have limited resources you launch on the biggest platforms. Sony and Nintendo are the biggest platforms. It doesn't mean 'not ever' it just means 'not yet'.

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status

Status says they're having a major outage and have been for four hours.

HAAAAAAhahahahaha... wheeze HAAAAAAHAAAHAAA

Well, that's a big ol' nothing burger.

oh no, not Sokocat Combo.

@BustedUpBiker every week or two, it'll just disconnect, require a MAC reset, but more than that the entire router will need a power cycle. And then it only works sporadically.

I have things that have been plugged into my router for YEARS and never failed. I've never known a wired connection to be unstable. It's a super common problem as well - all over the forums, so it's not like it isn't unknown.

I just want the wired internet to stop crapping out every other week, to be fair.

This isn't an improving situation. AI is buying up all the RAM, there's no incentive for them to open new fabs because the AI bubble might burst, plus they're making an 80% markup on prices. Increasing console prices means a shrinking user base which means less incentive for publishers to greelight new games - especially smaller more experimental titles.

I genuinely think we might not even SEE the next generation of console unless something radical happens. The way prices for the X and PS5 are increasing, Helix is going to be WELL over £1000 when it launches. I mean, look at the Steam Machine - the 2TB model is over £1000 and that's only the power of a PS5 and only has 16GB of RAM and a piddly 8GB of VRAM.

Next gen is cooked.

@AverageGamer Steam has its own DRM service that is handled by entirely offline by the Steam Client. Some games require you to launch them from Steam because they use that DRM, but you DON'T have to be online for it to work.

Some don't use Steam's DRM, or ANY DRM. Some games implement their own.

@ZeD It works differently. You dont have to access a service. The Steam client is on your PC. The license is on your PC. There's no online connection necessary to verify a game's license. It's all done locally on your machine. As long as I have Steam installed, I can play games that use their DRM.

@ZeD That is only partially the case. Some games DO run Steam's DRM, but it isn't mandatory and its extremely lightweight, and all games downloaded through Steam can be played offline forever as long as they don't operate a third-party DRM. The Steam client itself does the license check - which is exactly what the Xbox should do.

When Xbox goes down which, for me, is very frequently because the wired connection is so awful, unless I have a game I actually OWN (a non-GamePass game) and has no online component, and I also just happen to have it installed, I ain't playing nothing.

So basicallly, it's bricked.

It's a terrible and unnecessary and badly designed system.

Xbox have royal screwed up how they handle digital content. Without an internet connection the Series X becomes a brick, and it has the worst internet connection of any piece of hardware in my house, constantly dropping or flaking out. It can't currently run over a wired connection. The only piece of hardware I have EVER owned that struggled with a hard line to the router.

You know what I don't need when I'm playing the digital games I bought from Steam on my PC? An internet connection. Steam doesn't care. My Steamdeck doesn't care. It's basically "Yeah, this is yours, you own it now."

That's how you do digital.

Honestly I've not really noticed a problem, obviously I'm in a minority, but dls are usually blisteringly fast for me. I consistently get 800MBPS+ on a wired connection.

The biggest frustration for me is that the wired connection just doesn't work consistently. It regularly fails requiring a full MAC reset AND a router reboot, and even then that sometimes doesn't fix it. It's the only device in my home that EVER has a problem with a wired connection.

Was Conker ever a part of Gold? I've definitely played it, and I haven't bought it.

What bothers me is the enshittification of GamePass. We're seeing it creeping in month by month. Price creep, value reduction and now, with Forza Horizon 6, upgrades for a game costing the same amount as a full price game in an obvious attempt to get GamePass subscribers to both pay for GamePass, and ALSO pay for full price games.

I've already determined that the Series X is going to be my last console, breaking a chain that began with the Master System. With console prices going up and up and up, and game prices doing the same, PC represents a far healthier ecosystem.

While the idea of a consoleless future get industry exectutives excited, the thing that nobody seems to bring up is that the hardware needs to exist SOMEWHERE, and it needs to be paid for SOMEHOW. Yes, having a server farm filled with blades is cheaper than manufacturing physical hardware, but with the bottleneck currently being the internal components (GPU, RAM, SSD), 'console' manufacturers still need to eat that cost or recover it from somewhere.

You don't just magically 'have a chip in your TV' that plays games. And we're still a long way from streaming games being anywhere near the same experience as playing natively.

I have Gigibit fibre broadband, and even so, streaming games has noticable lag, artifacting, and stuttering. Not to mention not running in 4k ever.

I don't know the answer, but I don't think its streaming.

Xbox are going one further and announcing the gameless console.

Well, I wasn't planning on getting Helix anyway. Now I'm definitely not.

The Myst remake was absolutely stellar; brilliant puzzles, stunningly beautiful graphics and very chill. This is an absolute must for me.

Alright, but maybe concentrate on fixing the wired internet connection that keeps dropping out and forcing me to reset my router every few weeks. Or maybe the videos on the store that only play for thirty seconds before infinitely buffering. Or sort out the endless sokoban AI slop and repackaged low-effort games - or at least introduce a Steam style refund system if you're not going to curate your store front.

Shiny boot logo is soooooo far down the list of priorities that Xbox need to fix.

It isn't just that either, because actually a AAA game isn't usually 70 quid. Look at Forza Horizon 5 for example - if you want the very basic bare-bones game then that's, then sure, that's sixty quid. But that's not really what you want.

If you want the actual full game with all the content? A HUNDRED AND TEN POUNDS. No. Absolutely not.

I haven't bought a triple A title at full price for... I can't remember when. I'm buying the latest Lego Batman at eighty quid when it comes out, but that'll probably be the only triple A I'll buy at full price this year. Other than that, all my gaming now is on sale. I'm also buying a lot more indie and 'AA' titles. They're more interesting and better value anyway. I'm also finding I'm moving more and more towards the PC market. Steam is a much better value proposition (and store) than Xbox.

Ah yes. Elite: Dangerous. If you fancy playing half of a dead last-gen game, then that's the one for you.

This is a good move, but lost subscribers are lost subscribers. Honestly, and I might be alone here, but the price hike meant that, not only did I let my sub lapse, but I'm finding I'm spending more time and money on Steam and PC gaming in general.

Not only has it put me off GamePass, but its put me off console gaming entirely - Project Helix might be the first time I don't own a generation of console at all. The combination of general price-hikes, iffy software, poor support, and an uncurated stores that are increasingly flooded with scam games has really put me off. Xbox didn't have an awful lot of goodwill to start with, they really, really, couldn't afford to burn any of it.

The longer this generation has gone on, the less and less impressed I am with console gaming generally.

I dropped my sub because of the bloat. EA+ was fine, it was at least a good value proposition. But then we get Ubisoft's awful, stale back-catalogue, Fortnite premium or whatever, and we're all basically paying for COD?

Thanks, but no thanks.

And the next tier down? You lose the day one exclusives. Like you're being punished.

So ultimately that's why I chose to let it lapse. The thing is - I don't mind paying what it costs. I object to paying for a bunch of crap I don't want - or being treated like a second-class citizen.

It's one of the reasons I let my subscription lapse, to be honest. I already own any Ubi games I want, and the Ubi+ service isn't anywhere near as good as the EA Play equivalent. Same with Fortnite. Never play it, don't want it. Finally, I realised I wasn't using 80% of the stuff that GPU was getting bloated with, but none of the other tiers offered the things I did want.

So I just let it go. Honestly, haven't regretted it one bit.

These are good improvements, and it's good to see the developers listening to feedback. Particularly with the bosses. They're brutally difficult, and its very jarring in a game where the rest of the combat is so easy.

I don't mind admitting, I swore at Hornsplitter like a LOT before I figured out how to take him down.

Not normally a fan of DontNod, but Aphelion looks decent. Kind of reminds me of a more action-oriented Deliver Us The Moon and The Invicible, which are both stone cold bangers.

Well this all seems like its going terribly well.

Xbox's constant march towards ever greater enshittification continues. Just like GamePass, I can see the rewards program ending up being something I simply no longer engage in. The next generation machines might be the first time since I bought the Sega Master System that I don't buy a console, opting solely for PC gaming.

Its as buggy as hell. The skateboard could have been left out entirely to no detriment, its just a gimmick. The worlds are vast and utterly bereft of much interesting to do. The gunplay is average. The jokes don't land as well as they did in the first one. The characters aren't as interesting. Somehow, the graphics seem worse. The whole thing seems like its been rushed.

BUT

I'm still having a good time and, ultimately, that's all that matters.

This massive push to ramp up the price while stuffing the service full of stuff that I don't want and will never use, at the expense of the things that I do want, is precisely why I unsubbed at the end of last year.

You know what? I don't miss it. I'm in the fortunate position that I have a fairly beefy PC, so I'm just gravitating more and more to Steam. The next-gen might be the first time I don't buy a console.

It looks like The Ascent, but first person. Interesting. There aren't enough soft scifi games. Obviously, now there'll be one fewer...

@Realist is it, though? Like I said, every single mechanic bar-none is, generously, lacklustre. At its absolute best this game never raises itself anything above being solidly average. Most of it is downright bad. Even as improved as it is, it still isn't a good game. The whole thing feels like a jumble of mismatched parts. Like a Star Wars game made by committee.

I've been playing this recently, and I've switched between Outlaws and Jedi Survivor, and it's really thrown into stark relief for me how good Jedi Survivor is, and how bad Outlaws is.

Even now, every single mechanic in Outlaws is clumsily implemented. Stealth is still half-hearted, combat is lacklustre, and levels are beautiful, empty settings for poorly paced action. Every single part of the game feels half-hearted.

It's an incredibly pretty game apart from the fact that it has some of the most aggressive resolution upscaling of any game I've seen since Veilguard, although Jedi utterly destroys it in the looks department, but it's a husk. Basic stealth features are either missing entirely (seriously, what stealth game in about the last ten years doesn't allow you to move bodies?) or broken (the number of times I've taken out an enemy from hiding to be spotted by enemies who couldn't possibly have seen me). Traversal is messy, which in a game which is basically Assassin's Creed in space, is an absolute travesty. The speeder combat is such an awful mess that it should have been canned entirely, which would be forgivable if actually traversing the world on the speeder was fun, which it isn't, particularly.

Its a game that is far less than the sum of its parts.

It's such a shame because it shows how good this kind of small story can work in a rich world like Star Wars, and it makes me pine for what a modern Star Wars RPG could have been. But this game? It's a janky, bug-filled, barely functional mess, even now.

My sub ran out in December, and I haven't renewed. There just isn't a compelling enough offer for me anymore. Ultimate is rammed full of stuff I don't want to pay for, and the tiers under that are missing features that I want, so I just cancelled. A lot of the games have been disappointing or obvious filler, particularly the Xbox first-party games, and some of the practices (labelling free games as GamePass) feel downright deceptive.

Haven't missed it at all, to be honest.