Welsh_Will

@Sol4ris How much conspiracy-tin do you need to cover that Master Chief helmet?!

@JayJ Online connection is an unnecessary ball ache, I agree with that. It's not been an issue for me personally so I'd forgotten it even required it to be honest. I'm not sure what that has to do with DLC though? There are plenty of offline games with microtransactions nowadays!

@JayJ GT7 has it's faults, but to call it live service is ridiculous. The support post-release has been excellent and all free, loads of new cars, new tracks and the vr mode as the obvious high points. The fact that there are mtx at all sucks, and I can understand why they'd be off putting, particularly in the early game. But they're so expensive for what you get they're pretty redundant anyway (something like £15 for 2 million credits, which won't even get you one legendary car). The game wants you to "earn" those fancier cars, which isn't for everybody, but when you do buy a new supercar it definitely feels like an achievement. I'm looking forward to the new Forza, but it'll take a lot for it to keep me as engaged as GT7 has this last year.

@InterceptorAlpha Agree, though I don't know Command and Conquer. I'd add Bear McCreary for God of War and Gustavo Santaolalla for The Last of Us to the list though

Series X is my first xbox, and I always wanted to play left for dead. Second would be Hit and Run, never played it back in the day but I've heard souch about it in the years since. PGR always looked fun, but apart from Burnout I've never got into an arcade racer.

@FraserG Fair enough. I mean, pretty rubbish really, but I get it, nature of the beast and all that. Thanks for the reply anyway!

When you do these types of articles regarding upcoming games, could you also state the review embargo date/time? Most of this info is readily available, but embargo dates can often be dubiously hard to find. I want this game to be good, but am not getting caught up in the hype until reviews are out.

@Spider-Kev They're all on gamepass, and I don't think you need to sign up to anything extra.

The best way to earn points is to use the Microsoft Rewards on Xbox app and the Bing search app on your phone once a day to run through a bunch of news headlines, plus the https://rewards.microsoft.com/ site. At first I was only completing the quests on this page, but I've saved up around 45k points the last 4-ish months by spending 10 minutes a day doing these steps. I'm to buy a second controller purely with points!

@abe_hikura Civ (on PS5 at least) is infinitely better than the Switch version. Turn times are so much faster you barely have time to work out what you're gonna do next!

Started watching Spiral the other night, it's on netflix atm. Promising intro rapidly devolved into endlessly-dull detective waffle.

The chirrup / chime doesn't bother me at all, appreciate it being there incase accidentally turn the machine on or something. But the splash screen can do one - for some reason with my setup the volume on the consoles seems to be higher than netflix/amazon etc, so if you turn the xbox on without first knocking the volume down, that screen ***** THUNDERS through the house!

Been looking forward to Crusader Kings for a long time, and keen to give Weird West a go too. However, I'm halfway through Elden Ring, barely scratched the surface of Horizon Forbidden West or Tunic, and I haven't bought it yet but Gran Turismo 7 is dancing seductively behind them all. Not enough hours in the day!

Bit of a weird challenge for Dishonoured - play the game badly!

Hopefully it'll fix the Dolby Atmos sound delay through ARC too, it's completely unusable as it stands.

People shouldn't sleep on this one! It can take a while to get into the rhythm of it, but it's honestly one of my all time favourite games. The gameplay really is sublime.

I've got to say Spelunky 2 is far and away the highlight over Mass Effect. The gameplay is perfect, and it'll keep you engaged (and enraged) for hundreds and hundreds of hours.