@Fiendish-Beaver Thanks! That probably means it will take me...6,000 hours probably? Considering the most amount of time I've ever put into a single game is 500 hours, I can probably rest assured I will not ever get that achievement, haha. Then again, E-Day could get its hooks into me.

Are you going for the achievement?

@Fiendish-Beaver Oh. My. GOD that's a lotta re-ups! How many years did that take?? Also, much respect to you, Mr. Beaver sir...you are a legend!!!

I love this list, it screams "Play every mode thoroughly for the next couple years!" Only question is...how many times would re-upping for the "final time" be?

Bro, we're going on 19 years without a new game. I will take anything at this point. Now GIMME!!!!!!

GTA games always give me a bizarre feeling of emptiness since the worlds are miles wide but an inch deep. You can commit crazy crimes, yet you never really have any consequences, and the world around you reacts but quickly goes back as if nothing ever happened. I dunno, just not for me!

@lokozar To be fair, I've been mid-way through so many narrative-driven games and YouTube's dumb algorithm will just suggest videos where the thumbnail is "CHARACTER DIES" or "ENDING" with a picture of the ending.

I personally dislike Rockstar and think this leaker situation is funny, but I will always feel bad for people gettin' their stories spoiled!

Nakey Jakey's "Rockstar's Game Design Is Outdated" video basically covers all of the reasons I have zero interest in this game until seeing actual gameplay.

GTAV was unbearable to play, IMHO. The worst thing was constantly seeing crazy stuff happening in the distance during missions but getting a "MISSION FAILED" and teleported to the mission start if I dared break-off to check it out. Basically getting "MISSION FAILED" over and over and over if I dared do anything the game didn't like. Plus the controls are insanely bad.

Hopefully this game isn't more of the same, but I'm not getting my hopes up based on the fact that we HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN ACTUAL FINISHED GAMEPLAY YET. I'd be surprised if they weren't hiding something.

If they don't also release a proper gameplay trailer, it would be a crazy ask for people to pre-order a $80 code-in-a-box...

Need...Hunter...Schafer...game...

In the words of Marcus Fenix, "Nice!"

Pre-order off of an old cutscene trailer and cover art reveal? Where's the gameplay? It's giving Starfield to me...

I loved Vanguard and am happy more people will get to experience it!

I just hope this gives Activision cause to change the main menu music. Ever since that Godzilla vs. Kong crossover, it's been that shouting, jungle song. Funny that they never bothered to change it back, haha...

@MrStark Well, Vanguard is the GOAT for griefing!

For some reason, Sledgehammer let you kill your teammates on hardcore as many times as you wanted so long as you did it "accidentally" (i.e. shoot at an opponent and then turn to hit your teammate without letting go of fire). I think they ended-up patching it out, but for a while it was a COD experience like no other.

@BacklogBrad Don't forget the rise of battle passes and eSports that encourage people to go all-in on one game. Like I've already decided I'm ONLY playing a handful of series (Gears, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Overwatch, Resident Evil, Pokemon Champions) and ignoring the rest and it still feels like too much!!!

Only positive spin/cope I can imagine is that Ninja Theory was done with the Senua trilogy and had no projects in the pipeline, and higher-ups at MS wanted Xbox to cut spending down somehow, so rather than cancel any projects in-progress, went with NT...

@InfamousOrange Yes, they have a good opportunity with E-Day to setup Gears 6 however they want by reframing the Locust or otherwise adding new info that would help make whatever future story thread not seem out-of-place.

I feel like it would be easy to finish-off Kait/JD/Del's story in a way that sets the series up nicely, plot-wise.

@Millionski Well they should at least release COD a month early on Xbox or something. But I think Helix exclusivity would make a lot of sense. I mean, exclusives-wise, Sony doesn't have anything that can compete with it.

A broader strategy of system-selling exclusives is what Xbox needs. Put the Rare IPs to work to capture the Nintendo audience. COD, Gears, and Halo to capture the shooter crowd. A new IP from Blizzard and future sequels being exclusive. They also have Machine Games, Arcane, and id!!!

All that Sony will have left is the action-adventure games (Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Studio Santa Monica, Insomniac, Housemarque), which Xbox can either choose to compete with, or maybe just leave that alone and focus on social games or RPGs.

Just make COD an Xbox exclusive for the next gen. No one is going to abandon their PS5 for a Series X, but they may choose Helix over PS6.

Exclusivity means so much more than "Haha, Playstation doesn't get it!"

This is a bold statement that the Xbox brand will stand on its own, with system-selling exclusives at the forefront.

I'm optimistic that this will be the end of the "cancel all of our projects!" mindset from Phil Spencer's bumbling regime, and that IPs like Perfect Dark will return stronger than ever before. Asha is a shaping up to be a real legend.

I'm done. Goodbye. Xbox sucks. All those IPs wasted. Zero games.

No games, no consoles. Just GamePass offering rentals of multiplatform games. Xbox is just a digital Blockbuster. What a waste.

@TapeLoader Yep, 15 years ago, I woulda said Turok 1 & 2 were the only good ones, but in the absence of any new games since 2008, I've revisited all of them multiple times and have learned to love each for different reasons. Nightdive better remaster all of 'em, especially Rage Wars!!!

@TapeLoader It's been 17 years since the last game, so I'll take anything at this point! Personally, it checks-off a lot of boxes for me as a fan, so I'm very, very excited.

Ummm, Turok Origins, helloooooo....???

Multiplayer would break people who don't know how to wall-bounce, haha. Bring it baaaack...

One of my favorite devs! Loved the character design in Spacelords (aka Raiders if the Broken Planet), too bad the main character here is the only thing in the game lacking any rizz whatsoever.

Again...Microsoft will do anything except actually make games.

Xbox over here releasing consoles faster than they release games. I don't see any good reason why we have to wait 6+ years between Halo and Gears releases.

Shut up and make games, Phil.

Exclusive or not, Xbox's games output is disappointing and sad.

What! That was my favorite part of Doom 2016. BOOOOO!!! Sure, it wasn't anything "crazy", but it didn't have to be. Tons of people played multiplayer for years and years past release. It was unique, simple, and (god forbid) fun.

Nice cop-out, iD Software!

I guess if they are going multiplatform, maybe we'll get what we wanted all this time...for them to make some actual games.

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! My jaw is on the floor. I haven't felt this excited about a game in a loooong time!!

"Take it or leave it...it's free, so you're getting what you paid for!" That's the way all Game Pass games come off to me. I know there are other factors contributing to a rocky development cycle, but still...Microsoft's quality control for its exclusives is severely lacking.

Phil is the smartest, most handsome, tallest man alive. Xbox doesn't need things like games or consoles...they have Phil!

My god, they have no good reason not to have made Gears 6 next. There are a million ways to easily stitch together a story about the Gears 5 "choice", play levels taking place during an E-Day via flashback, and go to space.

Game Pass is just paying to have a backlog. Well, with the new tier, maybe that means MS is ready to start making more than 1 AAA game per year again?

In addition to difficulty levels, they should also have a setting called "Respect For Your Time" that changes the game's length to ~20 hours. Just like Dragon Age 2 Still never beat Inquisition, due to the typical RPG padding.

@Fiendish-Beaver Yep. I think they should've made Gears 6 and started the game with E-Day (to please nostalgic fans), and then did a story act before Gears 4 with Marcus and younger JD where something happens to JD like he inhales a Locust spore or something (alternate chapter for Del where something similar happens, maybe he is exposed to spore while dying?).

Then it fast forwards to after Gears 5 and the spore causes JD/Del to survive his death by crystallizing. Then someone figures out a way to reverse Locust back to humans, but it requires a super rare mineral (maybe a scientist in act 1 was working on something?) , and so Kait has to decide whether to reverse JD/Del or her mother.

@JokerBoy422 Halo Reach at least came out after Halo's 1-3 story arch, just like Gears of War Judgement came out after the OG trilogy. The E-Day story has already been told via books too. IDK, I always make the mistake of taking the story seriously in games and getting personally invested, so I was really expecting Gears 6. Anyway, I'll get over it. Multiplayer is what I like best anyway.

This is just like the next Mass Effect game. The old story is OVER. IDK why we need to go back. I loved it too but it's time to move on. The Coalition could take the Gears 6 story into whatever direction they want...they could have another "war" easily. They can have flashbacks where you play as old characters. There's no excuse for this laziness. Ugh.

Annoyed it's not Gears 6. Giving up on a story that we've spent the last 8 years following via books and games really grinds my gears. Laaaaaame.

I'm still reeeeally hoping it releases a month early on Xbox to get back at PlayStation for pulling that same kinda garbage on past CODs.

Surprised Phil hasn't popped up to congratulate Sony on the success of Stallar Blade.

Gamers need Xbox and Playstation to compete with each other. If there's only one console (Playstation), Sony has no reason to make any first party IP games and can just rely on 3rd party support.

Case in-point: Steam. Valve stopped making games long ago.

The opposite would be Nintendo, who's console is so weak that third party support is horrendous and they NEED to crank out high quality first party games on a consistent basis to maintain business.

@abe_hikura The original Perfect Dark was just a reskin of GoldenEye with futuristic weapons and gadgets, so a reskin of the Tomb Raider games with some fun spy tech would be a simple and effective concept, IMHO (and was what I was hoping for).

@GamingFan4Lyf Whatever they're doing, they need to try something different. With the money and talent at Xbox's studios, the fact they can't get anything right is just sad and embarrassing.

Dang, how did I not hear about Off the Grid???

Dang I just wanted to say Judas looks cool. More of the same Bioshock gameplay, which I believe hasn't been replicated once over the last 12 years.

@rustyduck Probably because of the game selection? It's definitely not for everyone.

I only have Ultimate to play Gears and Guilty Gear on my phone. Otherwise, I'd rather just buy the games I really want to play instead of feeling like I need to play all the third-party mid-tier titles we seem to get every month just to feel like I didn't waste my money.

MS needs more first party games BADLY, IMHO.

Just finished 4's campaign after owning it since launch. Loved the gameplay, but didn't connect with the new characters (I couldn't tell you anything about them other than they live outside the COG settlements).

Hopefully 5 won't take me 8 years too. I already know about "the choice" at the end, and I'd like to think The Coalition wouldn't have done that without an idea for the sequel. Good or bad, I think they need to execute on their vision and not cater to the section of the fanbase that probably wouldn't like the story regardless (and would probably love scrapping all the new characters and focusing on the old ones). It's too late for them to back out now.

Cliff as a consultant would be amazing. Living legend.