swedetrap

I'd give it a solid 9/10, if only because the control scheme just feels 'off' to me somehow. Like I can equip a wand in one hand and a spell in the other but when I switch back to a sword I still have a spell equipped that I can't use? Why? And this stops me from blocking? What am I missing? There's been a few irritations like that - all related to the controls. Otherwise I absolutely LOVE this game.

@Prestige-worldwide Is your sarcasm meter broken or did you just not have one to begin with?

It's an Xbox game, so of course it'll be somewhere in the mid-70s. A like for like PS title would definitely score a 93, win Best Game at the Game Awards and receive a standing ovation from Kojima himself via X/Twitter.

@GrumpyMert I've made a game out of counting the number of "I don't like it because like to buy my games!" replies to all of the Game Pass articles. It's amusing how many people seem to think that's some sort of argument. Like, "that's nice, and? you do you, boo."

Personally I end up trying 20x the games I normally would because Game Pass gives me access to them. I don't see an argument to it being a good thing beyond blatant self-righteousness.

If people want to buy a PS5,67 whatever and pay $69+ for a game, physical or not, cool - there you go.

If people want to buy an Xbox Whatever and pay $19 a month and just use Game Pass, cool, you have that too.

This whole idea that you're either in the blu-ray or Netflix, digital or physical, PS or Xbox camp is so dated and stupid. The world changed a long time ago - blame Steam if you want to blame anyone. Xbox's biggest crime to date in my mind was still being a decade too early to the inevitable all-digital future with some of the worst messaging ever, way back in 2013. As I sit here and look at my dust-caked PS5, I think "gosh, I'm glad someone somewhere enjoys using these things but I haven't touched mine in ages, and probably won't until Ghosts of Yotei finally comes out." PS is wonderful for those once-a-year PS single player adventure games but that's like 20ish hours of my gaming year. Hanging my hat entirely on that alone ain't gonna happen.

As for Nintendo, we seem to keep forgetting that they've stumbled before (cough, Wii U, cough) and could again. Switch is great I guess, but to be honest, the sheer amount of shovelware on the thing has relegated it to collecting more dust in my house than the Playstation does at this point. I want to play what's next, not yet another Mario side-scroller. Been there, done that.

@Boogaloo_Jenkins While I don't really care for it, there always seemed to be a LOT of people playing Skull and Bones whenever I tried to play it. Like Star Wars Outlaws, I suspect it's one of those games where the Internet opinions of it didn't match up with reality very much at all. I have a few friends that absolutely love it and have hundreds of hours into it.

Ridiculously excited for this one.

@Rodimusprime13 Good sales, sure, but only relative to one another. 20 years on, the entire market is contracting on the console side, despite overall industry growth. The switch has been a big success, no doubt. PlayStation has only been a success measured against Xbox. Failing to improve sales against each of their past console generations is most definitely not something any business would want to hang their hat on. The global population has grown by 25% since PS2 and the gaming portion of that population by an even greater percentage. If anyone thinks Sony is happy to be touting their 2nd Gen console as the best selling when they're 5 generations in, they're crazy. They'll say they are, sure, but that's a PR spin.

Satya is forever bent at the knee for his shareholders, just like every good CEO should be, and much to the detriment of Xbox fans everywhere.

Like your Windows Phone? Too bad, Satya killed it.

Like your Microsoft Band? That's a shame, it's dead.

Enjoy Surface hardware under Panos? Aw shucks, he's out.

Satya will change his tune depending on the direction of the wind at a moment's notice and not give the first damn about you, your investment in their gaming platform, or anything else.

Unfortunately, he's also responsible for taking Microsoft to heights no one thought possible in the 21st century in a post-Gates world.

Let's face it, this console generation sort of sucked. I love my Series X and I tolerate my PS5 for a (very small) handful of exclusives, but everyone utterly failed to demonstrate what made this 'next' generation so much better than the last, and COVID certainly didn't help.

Will it improve in the coming years? Probably not, at least not in terms of dedicated hardware. The whole concept of a gaming box is so rooted in the 90's and earlier that its almost absurd. We don't use DVD players, CD players, etc. anymore, so why are we using gaming consoles? I ask this question myself almost constantly, even though I have all of them - and play about 30% of my games via cloud these days via subscription. Do I care about "ownership?" Not really. I care about playing what I want to play, where and when I want to play it. And I'm not in grammar school anymore so honestly, who cares which stupid plastic box is "better?"

The key to growing Game Pass has virtually nothing to do with console sales and pretty much everything to do with Samsung/LG televisions and Amazon Fire Sticks, etc. As console sales continue to slow for everyone, Xbox will need Game Pass subscribers on other devices in order to have a chance. We keep hearing how amazing it is that the Switch has almost sold as many units as the PS2 but the PS2 was 20 years ago – in other words, a lot of devices have replaced console gaming given the growth in the industry and the increase in the number of people playing games. If Xbox can't find a way to get those people to part with their monthly subscription monies, they're pretty much screwed. Personally I love game pass and I'm glad they kept going but I'm not holding my breath that any of the big 3 are conducting business in 10 years in the same way they are today. The market has just changed too much.

If this breaks out of the norm and actually IS something like a Phantasy Star V, a Panzer Dragoon Saga 2, or OutRun Coast 2 Coast 2 Coast, I'm going to be WAY happier than a simple "hey, here's FF16 you guys. Enjoy!"

Rather than microconsoles or more Duke controllers is various colors, I'd like to see AA budget development of some of the classic franchises:

• Midtown Madness
• Project Gotham Racing
• Amped
• Crimson Skies
• Banjo and What's His Name (not my thing but everyone else seems to love these games)

None of these games need $200,000,000 budgets - just smaller teams that love the source material and want to do right by it. They don't need to be open world, or live service elements, or anything else - just give us the 2005 experience in sequel form with 40k60 and some updated gameplay. We'll get Fable and Perfect Dark for the big stuff.

$5 says we get a surprised 5th preview.

I remember when I was so ridiculously stoked for Exoprimal to come out. Then I played it. Fast forward to reading this article and honestly I don't think I've even thought about it since until just now. Such a shame.

@GuyinPA75 Once upon a time, I agreed with you. Alas, some of us have mild gambling problems and friends that we're constantly needing to 1-up.

I'm still popping back into Infinite from time to time. Aside from Black Ops 6, its my favorite PVP FPS. (Almost) nothing else out there feels quite as good to play, even in 2025.

As a fan of both Hot Wheels games I ALMOST preordered LEGO Drive but put it off due to gamepass. So happy I did because man, that game did NOT do anything for me at all for some reason.

I don't see why Disney would do this. Clearly they would've read Pure Xbox's review of the game and know it's trash and have already moved onto Moana 5, the Live Action Video Game Film, exclusive to Amazon Luna.

@InterceptorAlpha All good points but my primary concern is really to be able to play between console, handheld and cloud without having to make multiple purchases. I’ve never been into mods much and I VR on Meta Quest 3 because my old Vive was always such a pain to set up.

As for sales, yeah, that’s always a good point but I find that I never end up playing 90% of what I bought on Steam sales anyway - I’m not sure why. Those sales lead to a lot of impulse buys for me that never really pan out. YMMV obviously.

Regarding Indiana Jones and Steam player counts, and purely personally speaking, I’m not sure why I’d ever buy a game on steam if I could get the play anywhere version from the Xbox store. I get every Atlus and Sega game via MS now for that reason - and I pretty much buy all of them as I’m something of a fan. Steam hasn’t given me many reasons to be loyal to them beyond an annual sale of decreasing annual value. And ever since I traded off my Steamdeck for a ROG Ally that spends half its time playing game pass games, steams relevance in my life continues to dwindle despite my 300 or so game backlog.

Looking forward to getting Carrion back but am definitely getting Cyber Cowboy day one if it’s priced reasonably.

One has to wonder if Flight Simulator 2024 would’ve placed higher if not for all of the launch issues. It’s definitely in my top 10 now but wouldn’t have been had they not fixed it a bit since launch.

Finished Indiana Jones and have moved onto The Casting of Frank Stone, which is like going from the best book you ever read to reading the back of a cereal box. And not a kids sugary cereal box.

Somewhere between 40-50 because they've had some great sales this year and Gamepass is the gateway drug for 3rd party publishers - there's no way I'm ever letting go of Persona 3, as example.

0% physical though. I don't need more coasters.

Indiana Jones is a given. So happy to see Hellblade 2 rated so highly among site visitors though. I was under the impression that it wasn't very well received, but maybe that was just general lack of press coverage (and Xbox's rather mediocre marketing around it).

Contradiction for contradictions sake. I could see where Stalker 2 isnt for everyone but when yours is literally the only poor review in a sea of praise, yeah, you need attention.

@king_bear Need a tissue for your tears?

Why would I expect to see anything from Xbox on the world's longest butt-kissing Sony PlayStation infomercial? Surely, you're joking, right?

They've literally created a category where you can "win" Most Anticipated Hideo Kojima Game so that Hideo and that ass-clown host that I shall not name can snuggle on-stage, any semblance of objectivity about game quality be damned.

The whole thing is a bad joke. I simply can't wait to see Nintendo "win" Best Family Game as a consolation priz....NOPE! That'll go to (the admittedly great) Astro Bot!

A FULL PLAYSTATION SWEEP and they had only one original new game.

@NostromoXP Your assessment of Eurogamer is 100% on the money.

The 4/10 Stalker 2 received here has only served to make it so that I don’t take Pure Xbox reviews seriously anymore.

Solution: put it down as a “review in progress” and at least check elsewhere. A lot of us, myself included, have yet to experience a single bug - lucky me, I know - but it’s a great game and I can’t help but think this is all just clickbait at this point.

This alone might get my crap PSVR2 out of back of the closet it’s currently sitting in. GT in VR was great but I was already over GT by that point anyway so this might just be what the doctor ordered. I wonder if it’ll have cross progression though - I’d hate to start all over.

@somnambulance Agreed but I’d also argue that you could potentially say the same for pretty much every gaming company out there. Everyone had some sort of negative PR.

@x3King84 a lot of fun. Spooky as hell and pretty difficult.

@PurvisP I wish I had a second MS controller to test with but unfortunately I don't. My elite is getting old but feels fine in every other game. Possible I just slowly got used to it in other games but after reading so many comments elsewhere about control issues I'm not sure

@x3King84 fits their new ad campaign pretty well, no?

It's basically 'use a hall effect controller' which sadly MS doesn't make. Absolutely NOT ideal by any means but does solve this admittedly annoying controller dead zone issue for now.

Clearly I'm playing a different game because I've not had any technical issues to speak of on either series x or PC. There some control stick weirdness on my elite 2 pad on Xbox but once I read a reddit post about using a third party controller (that I admittedly was lucky enough to already own) it went away. And yeah, I hate the inventory system, but honestly it's a solid game for me otherwise. 8 or 9. I'm not sure what you're playing.

I've owned this on PlayStation since Day 1 and later bought it on PC and always wondered why I never bothered to actually play it. I assumed it was because MGS was once my all-time favorite game and this was just so radically different that I didn't want to face potential disappointment. Nope. It turns out I really just wanted it to be an Xbox title (not unlike Hellblade all those years ago). Truly a masterpiece. A weird as hell masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless.

IF I can tear myself away from BO6, I am very stoked to finally get my hands on Stalker 2. And I'm a sucker for Flight Simulator for some reason, always have been. Fall '24 looks fantastic to me.

I dropped $599 USD on the 2TB Series X. Honestly, it SHOULD be selling for $499, with the digital 1TB white version going for $399 and so on. That said, I'm happy I have a combined 4TB of storage, despite the fact that the console itself is actually pretty damn ugly in person. The green flecks (are they stars? really?) look pretty bad up close. From a distance its less offensive. Fortunately it sits across the room. Now if only the base wasn't bright green (mine sits on its side)

I picked up a 2TB Galaxy Sailor Moon whatever it's called Black model Series X, only because the idea of FINALLY having a combined 4TB of space for Series X|S games is something I've been waiting at least a couple of years for. As someone who has CoD and the Halo series installed all the time, I can never have enough storage space, so the upgrade made sense.

Now if only they'd optimize this stuff...

Game Pass price hikes aside (and it's admittedly VERY hard to set them aside because they sting in today's economy), I think MS has had their hands full adapting 2 extremely large publishers into their own culture, clearing a slew of licenses (if you're waiting for Tony Hawk, for example, that's a music licensing nightmare because you're now a new owner trying to 'rent' and 'stream' a game that was had music licensed for physical and digital SALE only), and let's face it - there's something to be said for playing the Nintendo game of trickle. If they dump it all at once, they risk light months down the road. This way, at least they can say "Hey look! Spyro!" when a game gets delayed - and we all know that's inevitable.

I'm cautiously optimistic overall. MS isn't stupid. They're playing a long game with the Xbox brand, and that brand isn't centered around a console anymore. Never mind that I just had a shiny new 2TB Series X delivered this afternoon. 5 years from now I fully expect to be playing on an ethernet connected firestick.

I'm still not sure why Xbox can't have had a great showing without it having been at PlayStation's expense? Who cares? Yeah, my PS5 is collecting dust, but it has been since I played through Last of Us for the umpteenth time (and now that we're not getting this nifty MP game, probably a bit longer). But games are games. I have a job. I'll go where the games are. Xbox has always had me because of Game Pass. I might be predominantly on PC now but 90% of my gaming still comes from my GP subscription. Looks like that monthly money is going to get me a LOT of good stuff in the coming years. Yay.

I had no idea I was watching the trailer for a Dragon Age game until the final title reveal. I rewatched it and still, nothing to indicate that was the case. I'm confused. I thought I was watching some kind of EA take on the hero shooter genre with a knights and dragons theme. I couldn't care less about any of this woke vs not BS and I'm all about games being as diverse as society cares to make them, but this looks like hot garbage and not at all in the vein of what fans of the original games would want in 2024. The art style alone cheapens whatever impact this is supposed to have as a trailer. Now as to whether or not it'll end up being fun, well, no one here really knows that quite yet, so let's wait and see what gameplay actually looks like. But yeah, Bioware and EA seem to want to completely disappoint all of their fans. No doubt about it.

It was almost TOO much, if such a thing is possible. Perfect Dark was my highlight. No wait, it was Doom. No wait, I think it was Indiana Jones. Maybe Gears? I can't decide.

This is all so dumb. Despite subscribing to Netflix, many still buy games on Blu-ray (4K or otherwise) and despite Sony's MANY attempts in the past to outright own various platforms, everyone else has found a way to make a VCR, a DVD player, a PC, a phone, etc. Tech paradigms are finite. The idea of a console has died out before and it'll die out again, only to be resurrected somewhere down the line. So long as Xbox lets me play my Xbox games (past, present, and future) wherever I want, I couldn't care less what brand is on the box itself. Right now I'm playing 80% ROG Ally, 20% Xbox Series X and my PS5 and Switch haven't been touched in ages. I have a garage full of GameCubes and OG Xbox's etc. that maybe someday I'll hook up again for old times sake but when my newer hardware plays all of this stuff, who cares? It's a plastic box at the end of the day. The Xbox (seemingly sincere) commitment to backward compatibility forever has long since negated my need for them to continue to make new/better boxes when my favorite Xbox console to date was made by ASUS.

Weird how much hate the 1st game gets though. It's my second all-time favorite game behind Metal Gear Solid.

The sequel to my favorite and incredibly cinematic game plays at 30fps? Great. I'm in. The first one wasn't exactly super-fast, twitchy action and I didn't want this one to be either. Would I play it at 60fps on PC? Maybe, but honestly the original game had weight that I doubt would translate to 60 or 120fps anyway. I still don't get the obsession with frame rate on games like this. Forza? Totally. Competitive shooters like CoD? Absolutely. Slow-moving narrative single-player games? Who cares?

I have three friends that spend most of their game time playing on game pass cloud, mostly MLB the show and Forza. They love it. One of them doesn't even own an Xbox at all.