ThatFilbo

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.

@themightyant - umm doesn't Anthem become unplayable in less than a week? 😬

Another week, another Kemco RPG Maker poop. Surely there'll be more Outbreak bundles. Didn't MS say they were going to stop those?

It's one thing Sony has always done better, and Xbox should implement, although it's probably a little late now. Getting a Platinum for a game is so much more satisfying than just racking up points. I had a fair number of games that I platted on PS, but on Xbox, I'm just kind of... 'meh'. I remember when they brought the points in, there was talk of them being worth something. But that never happened.

This is deeply disappointing. I came back to Horizon a while ago and realised I really didn't gel with it. I far prefer the 'sim-light' feel of Motorsport. To hear that this product has been dumped by MS is gutting. I thought Motosport was a game with a bright future. Yes it needed some tweaks, there were parts in there that were a mistake, but with some love, it could have been brilliant.

I let my GamePass sub lapse this year, and I won't be resubbing, and decisions like this are part of the reason why.

I got as far as "I need to go to the video store to return my copy of The Dark Crystal" and uninstalled it. I can't deal with that level of awful writing. We get it. It's the nineties.Tell Me Why was exactly the same, I don't get the hype, they're super clumsy.

This month is the first month since even Xbox Live was first launched that I've let my subscription lapse. This latest drop hasn't convinced me that I'm wrong.

I'm looking at the offering from Xbox, and instead of 'the greatest deal in gaming', all I see is a set of tiers that don't really serve me, and a bloated service stuffed with filler. I want day one releases - but I couldn't care less about Fortnite. I don't want the dog water Ubi+ sub, I'm not even that bothered about EA, to be honest. So, since the price increase, none of the tiers suits me.

Before I cancelled my sub, I had 50+ games installed on my Xbox - three of them were GamePass. Out of the last 42 GamePass releases, there were five that I thought were compelling, and I already owned two of them.

It's worth knowing that 'A Game About Digging A Hole' can be completed in under two hours, and once it's done, it's done. I have it on Steam, and my total playtime 119 minutes.

And, what the hell is a "soulslike deckbuilder"? That's just word soup.