somnambulance

@dskatter Oh man, I’m about ready to drop all my other games I’m playing currently to go all-in on Indy after watching the Electric Playground review. I’m so glad Xbox finally has a first party game that’s probably for me this generation! I haven’t been so excited to own an Xbox since Halo Infinite. This reviewing so well beats the Hi-Fi Rush shadow drop for me.

@BeyondKnight Most reviews are looking like Xbox finally has a critical hit on their hand, baffling that Xbox waited til after GotY candidates could be announced to release the game.

I hope there’s some big reveals because next year’s release slate is basically just a Gamepass calendar with Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei at an unknown time for me (oh, and Lost Records… I’m definitely getting that one). I’m trying to reduce my purchases down to 15 games next year, but right now I’m only at 3. Lol. Five if Metroid Prime 4 and GTA6 actually happen.

@Major_Player You quoted the wrong person. @dsksatter is the person you’re quoting and I see that kindly a response has been given.

For the record, I’ve had an Xbox account since the OG Xbox and have been with the company through the generations, by the way. Call me a PS fanboy if you like, but I’m console agnostic. Xbox was my primary platform in gaming for the 360 era and first half of the Xbox One era. I’ve been primarily PlayStation since maybe 2020, and would say I shifted there with the current generation as Switch exclusives have tapered out. I play on all 3 ecosystems when the console exclusives are there. I have been critical of Xbox this generation, sure, but that’s because I know their ecosystem could appeal to me more, as it once did in the past. If you want to shoot shots, you should know who you’re firing at. I’m pretty transparent about being a software instead of hardware person.

PureXbox has the lowest review currently. Sort of crazy, considering the used to review higher than average for Xbox games.

As much as I like Shawn Layden, just remember that he works for Tencent now, so he wants what’s going to serve his current employer best, I’m sure.

If I toss out my son’s 86 hours of Minecraft from the top spot, my top 3 this year on Xbox is…

1. Guitar Hero 3
2. MLB the Show 2024
3. Palworld

Man, that’s… weird… I played like 4 games in MLB the Show and that’s it, so it feels weird to see it in the rankings.

I wonder if it’s not counting my Nine Sols time since I know it’s higher than Stalker 2 and my hour of Stalker 2 was in my top 20. Just mostly playing this week.

Looks like I’ll be streaming this one on xCloud then. I like that Xbox is finally starting to pick up with the releases, but, man, the S must stand for streaming with Series S because there’s just no space on the console storage.

I’m at 96% full with three games installed… and ironically am not playing those games, but rather streaming the wonderful but brutal Nine Sols.

This is a Game Pass A. Stalker, Nine Sols, Flight Sim, Metal Slug, and Spyro are all fantastic additions, high quality, and then StarCraft for PC. There’s really no misses here. Best month on Game Pass since potentially those early launch months for me. I went back to Game Pass after not having it for most of the year too, so I’m typically harsh on the value of the service.

For me, I’ve yet to invest much time in either of them, but Nine Sols and Stalker are both highly interesting games. I think Nine Sols will get my vote though.

I just hope the review embargo lifts before the early access…

Sort of a bizarre year for Booty to win the award when this year was marked by studio closures and Xbox hasn’t had a big success story this year for a game release, outside Black Ops 6. Looking at next year’s schedule, next year might make more sense, but the biggest stories in Xbox this year were largely panic-inducing for segments of the fanbase. Not trying to be negative, just saying that this year seemed like a rougher year for Xbox from a PR perspective.

I sort of agree. Stalker is an ambitious game and I’m still not sure if it’s for me, but there’s definitely a case where some ambitious and unique games get trampled. Meanwhile, inoffensive and dull games that run well typically hit that 7/10, 8/10 spread, so their scores make them look like a better game. If a game gets some good and some bad reviews, that often looks worse than a game that gets uniformly decent reviews.

@kevinm360 Yes! This is exactly it!

I’m just glad it was announced. I will take waiting five years for something that looks cool over announcing games two months in advance of release like the industry is trending. Let me look forward to games, darn it!

I wish him luck. He’s starting at a good pivot point in the generation, it seems. Hope he does a good job making Xbox a better platform.

@Bigmanfan Shadows I had originally preordered, but I cancelled my preorder when Yotei was announced… and then the game got delayed! Yotei sort of knocked out all the wind Shadows had for me, but I could be wrong. If it reviews decently and the year is otherwise quiet, I could be interested.

I’m hoping next year is the year I make the most out of Gamepass, as I plan on reducing my gaming spend next year someway somehow.

@Bigmanfan I’ll be honest, I outright disliked the beta. Next year’s looking sort of sparse to me at the moment, so I was contemplating getting it, but nah, the beta unsold me completely. AC Shadows… unless it reviews really well, I’ll probably stick to Ghost of Yotei

I just hope it’s good. I don’t care how long it is. In fact, I prefer my games on the shorter side, so I hope this one isn’t TOO long. Give me a nice 10-20 hour game and that’s the sweet spot.

@Bigmanfan Oh yeah, you’re right! Jeez, that’s personal bias on my part!

Avowed IS practically the only big game releasing around its release window, so they’ve got a real shot to make it stand out, for sure (unless TGA has some big surprises incoming).

@kevinm360 Unless we’re getting CoD Kidz. Lol.

That’s a joke, but I’m sort of surprised we haven’t gotten some goofy thing like that by now.

I want to see Xbox deliver with a solid line-up of games. Plain and simple. I want to use my Xbox more next year than any other year.

It would be funny if Xbox signed the contract to work with Toys for Bob, so they could put out CoD2025. I mean, they did turn into a Warzone support studio for a while. It’s certainly interesting how Activision is basically a CoD factory as @GamingFan4Lyf put it. Does Activision actually make other games at this point? (And I’m not talking about the “other half” in Blizzard, which basically operates like Blizzard, same as it ever was).

It worked fine for me the day I tried. I think that was Friday or Saturday. I’ve not been back to it since though. Like all Flight Sims for me, it’s fine, but a very, very casual game. Flight Sim ever being GotY sounds sort of strange to me, but I like it

@Batesy125s Yeah, I’m grateful that the grand majority of my personal friends are Kojima fans, and the best of them are sailing on the Ruse Cruise, if you know what I mean. Lol

Totally not sure. The game is designed to be basically the most divisive game it can be. I’ve got about an hour in and I have no idea what to think yet. It runs better than Cyberjunk 2077 did at launch though.

I just hope that it’s really solid. I hope it’s finally the big first party Xbox game in a long while that really hits the spot.

I imagine this weekend it’ll be a casual mix of Flight Sim, Stalker 2, and DQ3 with some multiplayer games with the family perhaps.

I’m not sure how I feel about Stalker 2 yet, but it’s definitely hardcore. Not sure if I’ve had issues or if it’s just merciless. Don’t have any concrete thoughts about it yet.

I tried it earlier and it played well for me. I rather liked it, honestly. Feels almost like the THPS Underground moment for the series. Looking forward to the reviews now that it’s got the server issues sorted out.

Truth be told, I had hit a gaming hiatus when the Xbox One had launched. The end of the 360/PS3 era was honestly sort of disastrous, in my opinion. My spending went waaaaayyy down in 2012 and didn’t much recover the next couple years. 2013 was an ok year, but 2014 I hardly played anything, same with 2015. I had a friend of mine who had just married into money and he actually gifted me an Xbox One at launch, which was probably the highlight for me for the generation, but then I couldn’t play it… since my apartment didn’t have internet and it required an internet connection just to start. It’s standard practice now, but just a little over ten years ago now, it wasn’t the same, I suppose.

Now, that said, in 2016, I received Ori and the Blind Forest as a gift for my birthday. My wife and I moved to our first house a little bit before that, and honestly that ushered in my gaming renaissance. It brought me back to gaming, perhaps stronger than I was before, and that capitulated the next year with the launch of the Switch. I bought a PS4 in 2018, marking the first time I owned “the Big Three.” I did transition to playing PlayStation and Switch more than the old Xbone over the course of 2018, but Ori and Xbox brought me back to gaming, so I can say Ori and the Blind Forest was my highlight of that generation. It frankly blew me away.

Oh, and kudos to Cuphead’s launch too. My son had a complicated birth and had to stay in the hospital for two weeks. My job at the time allowed me paid time off (my boss was a true hero of a man, shame he got canned a few months later for working a side hustle since he “got it,” you know?) until everything was ok, and honestly my life was hospital, Cuphead, TV, sleep, repeat for a bit, and the challenge was sort of something of a solace in those times. One of the most cathartic games I’ve played and it’s such a strange blur of a memory now.

@Stamnoso I quite enjoyed my session with Flight Sim today, so Xbox can do a quality game. Honestly, Stalker played alright when I finally got to play it too, though that GotY talk seemed even more baffling after playing a half hour of it. It’s just very apparent that it’s an extremely niche AAA game from the get go. It’s unique for sure, but you can tell it’s in a different category than say… Astro Bot or Rebirth. Similar realm to Black Myth Wukong, for what it’s worth though.

I don’t like the color palette for Avowed, but I very much liked reading that the game has soul. Avowed, South by Midnight, I suspect these types of games will be what redeems the Xbox brand for me next year while I’m cautiously anticipating bigger games like Fable. I’m just hoping Indy is solid though. That release date is so weird and isolating.

I… honestly didn’t know there were new avatars. This seems like an Xbox mistake for not utilizing the app. I definitely liked having one in the 360 era and my kids have made avatars and enjoyed doing it and they weren’t even alive in the 360 era. Sometimes just making use of these little apps somewhere can give them life!

@Stamnoso I liked Forspoken and put it in my top 10 list last year and Sonic Frontiers and Pokemon ScarVi were in the year before. I get jank, don’t mind it, and I’m open minded, but there’s a wide gap between subjectively liking something and thinking it’s GotY worthy. I didn’t like Baldur’s Gate 3, but I tried it and knew it was a GotY tier title immediately, even if it didn’t have gameplay to my taste.

Phil and Xbox in general sort of seem tone deaf at times and I sort of think they need some new voices AND ears, so they can get to a better understanding of how people are responding to them. I will give the team credit for Black Ops 6, which is the best CoD in ages, but I do question Phil’s taste outside multiplayer shooters and emotive indies, the two genres that seem closest to his heart, and honestly two genres where his opinion seems to be on point. Oddly enough, his GotY comment would’ve raised more eyebrows for Black Ops if he said it, but he would’ve been more on point. I actually think TGA waited for Stalker 2 to be playable before saying the nominees too. Jeez, do I hope Indy delivers at this point though.

I’m not sure Xbox will track our yearly playtime on our 360s when that rolls out, but I’ve definitely invested more time into gaming on my 360 this year than my Series S.

@Stamnoso Phil Spencer’s GotY comment is definitely going to haunt him. We keep getting statements from him that make his barometer for quality titles seem sort of suspect. He thought Starfield could be GotY tier too, and Xbox thought Redfall would land in the low 80s on Metacritic based on their market research on it.

Honestly, I was going to play this yesterday, but the long downloads prevented that. Being a Series S owner is quite frustrating for large games. My console is full on storage with Black Ops, Flight Sim, and Stalker, but Black Ops filled up the storage so much that it blocked Stalker from fully installing. 😑 I had set three hours aside to play it and… the game was not ready by that time. Huge bummer. I’ve read a lot of contrasting thoughts about this one. At the very least, it’s sounding like it isn’t like Redfall where the seed is rotten, but more that the seed hasn’t quite rooted yet for some. I hope I like it… but if it flops, I mean I need storage space for Nine Sols and Indy. Seems like I’ll be able to figure out if Stalker’s worth the space pretty quick, based on PJ’s review.

@Decimateh
For me, here’s all the games in 2025 that look more interesting than GTA at this point in time:
Death Stranding 2
Ghost of Yotei
Silksong
Metroid Prime 4
Judas (if it comes out)
Fable

And yeah Silksong better come out. If Metroid Prime 4 can finally release, anything is possible. 2025 looks to be a really solid year for Gamepass and it looks to be rather quiet outside that… and I’m sort of broke at the moment, so I’m ok with buying less on PS and Switch if it’s a quieter year.

@MeanBeanEgg Death Stranding 2 is GotY 2025. I don’t even need to play it or any other games to know that for myself. Unless of course OD also comes out! I’m just a Kojima fanboy what can I say? But seriously, for me, I do see a few games on the horizon that could steal GTA’s thunder in the GotY spectrum.

But seriously with GTA6 too, just remember that Rockstar isn’t the same company they were when RDR2 came out. One of their founders and main story architects is gone. Rockstar put out an awful remaster of the GTA3 trilogy not that long ago as well. They’ve been milking GTA5 and Online for ages, and even going back to GTA Online, it launched broken. We just don’t know enough about GTA6 yet, and I hazard to guess we won’t know enough til it releases. It’ll be the fastest selling game of all time when it launches, for sure, but, with all the hype, who knows if it’ll land to expectations? Theres rumors that games might increase in price with GTA6 as well. There’s a part of me that thinks GTA6 could full stop crash the industry single handedly if Rockstar prioritizes greed over quality.

Back to the subject at hand, I hate the color palette for Avowed, but I’m looking forward to trying it. Next year looks barren at the moment outside Game Pass and the twin Sony first party titles for me, so bring it on! I love hearing that a game feels like it has a soul. It’s increasingly rare to hear that in this industry. It makes me hopeful.

@OldGamer999 I just wish I could get the game to finish downloading its massive updates. I deleted everything on my hard drive outside Flight Sim 24 and Black Ops Multiplayer and Warzone and I’m at 95% hard drive space used now. It took 2.5 hours to download a patch and now another 2.5 hours for a second patch. 5 hours, really? I preinstalled the game. I’d have downloaded the patches earlier but Black Ops is so far, I had delete half that game to fit Stalker on my console and CoD has an update to get through as well. Xbox really needs to figure out this file size and download speed thing. I’ve got good internet and don’t have this download issue non other platforms. The file sizes are getting to the point of being comedic with a Series S as well. I know I’m just complaining for first world problems, but my time is limited, especially time when the wife and kids aren’t home and I am!

Well, I suppose I’ll grab out the Switch for some Dragon Quest while I see if I can get this game to download today before I miss my opportunity to play it.

@Balaam_ I couldn’t say it better myself. I was totally put off Dragon Age’s color palette too, and honestly unless Avowed scored in the 90s on my favorite review outlets, I’d probably steer clear of it, but, hey, Gamepass post-Black Ops, right? I’ll try it, same as I’ll try Stalker and… honestly have tried Black Ops… and I’ll save money over buying things I normally would be skeptical of. Outside Gamepass, 2025’s sort of looking like a wasteland to me, so I hope for the best on anything I try there

@Fiendish-Beaver Well, that’s no matter because the PS5 is an Xbox.

I’m genuinely curious about this game. Reading that it’s the best but most broken game of the year is like a hook yanking my ear, making me need to see.

I still want to try it. I’ve not sat down and read the reviews, just the snippets, but it’s sort of disheartening to see how off Uncle Phil is with saying this is a GotY tier game when it’s clearly far too buggy for that. At the very least, if I don’t like this and Flight Sim is still unplayable, surely Indy and Nine Sols will work ok, right?

…right?

@parappatherapper Lol. I understand that. I’m in a similar position, though not in software… and directly in QA. I hear it all. I’m my whole department… in the entirety of the two largest offices in my company. It’s sad that business is like that, but I know it is. Gotta feed the family though, right?

This is why QA shouldn’t be laid off in droves at MS, I suppose. The gaming industry gets away with far too much.

If you go to a restaurant and the food was half cooked, you’d leave the establishment and never come back. I don’t know what the solution is for gaming, but things clearly need to change.

With this one, DQ3, potentially Stalker, probably Indy, and Flight Sim, my year is done. Happy with this selection big time. Best Xbox Gamepass line up in ages (I know DQ3 isn’t, but I mean the rest).

Jeez, at this rate, I’m going to have to delete Black Ops 6 before I finish it just to fit Flight Sim and Stalker…

@YeyoFairy It’s a Keita Takahashi game. He made Katamari and Wattam. His games are for you or they are not. They aren’t necessarily kids games, but typically anyone can play them. They’re definitely distinctive in how they play and what they are. For me, personally, I’d rather play To a T than 90% or what actually hit Gamepass this year, and I could say the same for Silksong, except that’d be a 100% instead.

I just want To A T and Silksong. Just an update on either would be nice.

@OldGamer999 I don’t mind when the reviews come out as long as I get to read something before I play. It’s Game Pass, so that’s lower stress than a purchase (especially with this month having such a strong release schedule), but I still like to read the reviews. I trust this site’s staff in particular.

File size is probably one of the bigger issues with Xbox this generation as a Series S owner. I’m basically either streaming games on xCloud or playing basically two games and that’s it because there’s so little space and file sizes are massive. I wasn’t expecting to wait on the reviews for Stalker 2 and Flight Sim to install, but I literally can’t figure out yet if I can fit them on my Xbox without just dumping the hard drive clean. 😂

Cant believe how big Genshin’s file is, given its size elsewhere!