vrubayka

4 years later and Halo Infinite is still the only killer app - and will remain one since everything upcoming is multiplatform. It has its problems and Bungie's Halo is still better but I really enjoyed the sandbox, the verticality and the signature "Halo" feel that makes it stand out from other shooters. It also looked pretty great and ran at 120fps. Everything else that came out was wholly unimpressive. Gears E-Day might be that something that harkens back to the 360 days but it's definitely not a guarantee.

As for the console itself, it served as a backwards compatibility machine for me mostly. I love that feature and will be forever sad that more games didn't make the list.

Since the collapse of the brand happened mostly in the last generation, it doesn't feel like a total disappointment. But I did hope for some things: Perfect Dark cancellation was definitely a low blow, and mainstay franchises like Forza Motorsport becoming embarrassing laughing stocks is sad to see.

Xbox turning into mostly a software publisher + some licensed hardware might help them manage their games better. The Halo 1 remake or Obsidian's output isn't really anything to write home about so hopefully in the next generation they come back with games worth playing and being excited about.

There was also a Fable game announced 5 years ago, remember that? What a mess...

Free online play would have helped Series consoles a lot. Now that Xbox has way less draw even as a piece of hardware, let alone a dedicated gaming console, it's not going to make a difference. In 2020 this might have made Sony very nervous, but now they're simply going to shrug it off.

It'd be cool if Xbox made online free for all of their consoles, but I understand that this next-gen machine is basically a PC where you'll be able to play games from other services like Steam so a paywall makes no sense, but One and Series are walled garden systems so they're going to keep charging for it.

Also it will have 4 player online coop vs. 2 in anniversary remaster

@Questionable_Duck yup, mgs d might run at 60fps if they disable all the new tech like they did with Wukong on Xbox. At that point why even use ue5

This will never run at 60fps unless they use frame gen like Wukong does.

GR is not a stealth game, it doesn't need to be. First person allows for IMO better feel of the squad, a more intimate interaction with the world and a smaller scope (in theory).

Use GRAW games on PC as example. Very tactics-heavy, great usage of the first person perspective. Stealth as a means to strike suddenly is a great idea, but clearing outposts by meleeing everybody or using magical suppressed pistols that make no noise at all is not Ghost Recon. It first got introduced in Wildlands because Ubi decided to turn another of their franchises into the same general Ubi-game: clearing outposts, upgrade trees, stealth with half-blind and half-deaf enemies. Enough already.

Do a proper tactical shooter - not in terms of unforgiving difficulty - but in terms of using your squad to complete objectives. And obviously a lot of work needs to be put into squad AI. In Wildlands they are either OP (when using the sync shot) or they are completely useless in shootouts. They need to feel like they're present on the battlefield, not just following you and be ignored by the enemies.

I have no illusions about online servers somehow living beyond the EOL by fans taking over. Nobody is transferring server tools to fans nor are developers going to implement LAN support.

How about this? Don't make single player games require full online connectivity for them to properly function. No more The Crew. No more Hitman. No more Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Stop it. All single player content needs to be on-disk/on SSD, not on a server. No more delisting DLCs because they have some online DRM that stopped working (Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell DLCs on PC). Make games playable and completable offline, and then make any online component separate. MMOs that are multiplayer-first are a different thing, and should be treated differently. Honestly the fact that the initiative even exists should signal to the developers that online-bound games need to have some sort of offline playability. And most certainly single player games shouldn't have anything like that.

I thought VRR always works on series? As long as a supported TV is connected

@Lrapsody I doubt many of them work in gamedev at all

People used to roast Xbox for doing endless sequels to Halo-Gears-Forza. If only we could get sequels, now it's remakes and remasters...

Gears 2-3, The Darkness, Splinter Cell Double Agent (OG Xbox), Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1-2

I never played the good Halo games around their release - but replaying the Bungie ones in MCC i remember playing Halo 3 The Ark and the whole vehicular mayhem was going on and it clicked and i felt how amazing the sandbox was in H3. I'll never forget how fun that game is. Genius games

@Kaloudz Are you being paid to write these essays or what? It doesn't matter if Booty reassured customers - Spencer said Everwild was on track in February. It doesn't matter what they say - it's all subject to change

@Simu001 Judas isn't an Xbox game, it's made by Ken Levine's independent studio

No new BC games, that was aleady known. What they're doing now with BC is getting these old games to be streamable for the handheld (no way they can get these games to run natively). And they are probably looking into enhancing Xbox One/Series games for the next gen.

@Nintendo4Sonic 4k 120fps on Series X suggests that the game isn't demanding. I'm sure it's going to be between 1440p and 1080p at 120fps on the S.

All three Gears games are awesome, Gears 2 perhaps the most entertaining of the three.

@smoreon It received and FPS boost patch years ago, it's already 60fps on Series S|X

Gears of War: E-Day and Perfect Dark

@Fiendish-Beaver Pong was amazing when it first came out, this looks bad.

Army of TWO, especially The 40th Day since it's not backwards compatible.
Condemned 2

The amount of money they put in this crap they could have invested into enhancing and FPS boosting backwards compatible games but now on top of games being made for the absolute lowest common denominator, we'll have annoying notifications about AI playing the thing for us. Riveting

Understandable. MCC was and to some degree still is a mess because it had too many moving parts.
Campaign local + online Co-Op with PC/PS5 crossplay and good netcode is good enough. And please no nickel and diming with pre-order bonuses, just full complete packages of the classic games.

This used to be an unlockable in the OG THPS3. The nickel and diming is way worse than what Activision themselves were doing with THPS 1+2.

The ramainig games in the Army of Two trilogy, MechAssault, Tenchu Return to Darkness, both True Crime games, Ghost Recon 2 and Summit Strike

@Ricky-Spanish The Coalition cancelled two unannounced smaller projects in February 2023, maybe that's why it's been some time

@Nicstockes This has gore and dismemberment so how do they figure?

I went back and beat Gears 2 and 3 on insane. I also completed Halo Infinite which was quite enjoyable. Other games were mostly backwards compatible ones.

Almost all games I've played this year are from the OG Xbox and 360. I would have played even more, if they expanded the program.

Crackdown 1 is great, as is Saints Row 1. Great games from that nice period of transitioning from the PS2 era

Samsung smartphones from early 2010s, nostalgic...

Splinter Cell games

Avowed is February 2025. Everything that truly interests me is sadly beyond 2025 like Gears and Perfect Dark. I feel like these games will come out at the end of the generation and will be truly properly optimized for the next Xbox.

Yeah that's great, but when Gears E-Day, a sequel to an important Xbox franchise comes out, not only is Xbox Series X not going to be the home of that game (it'll be a fully multiplat release, with a slight time exclusivity for Xbox/PC) , the Xbox consoles won't even have parity with PlayStation because the Pro will have the best resolution/frame rate. At least with base PS5 the performance and visuals were usually almost identical but now they'll probably implement better raytacing, more solid frame rates if not outright a higher frame rate mode like 120fps and higher resolution.

If Gears would be a UE5 showcase with 60fps and great graphics and only on Xbox and PC, it would show that the Pro is meaningles because you can get great graphics on the base console, but now even if visuals are impressive, it just prompts the question, how much better it looks/runs on the Pro?

Halo Infinite campaign also runs at 120fps, at least on Series X, not just multiplayer

@Ricky-Spanish a first person shooter doesn't need 60fps?

@Titntin I just thought it's a strange comment to leave on an article about RDR1 not running at 60 FPS on Xbox.

@Titntin Because you said "If you love your Xbox, accept that there will be other versions out there that will offer better specs than you will get".

@Titntin This has nothing to do with Xbox hardware being outdated. RDR1 runs at 60fps on PS5 so it can run at 60 on the Series as well. It's just that Rockstar saw no reason to release the remaster because the original game was backwards compatible. But unlike the BC version, the remaster was patched to run at 60, something that FPS Boost can't do because you need to change the game's code, only Rockstar can do that. So it's just a silly situation where R* though the remaster won't sell well because of the original version being available.

Manhunt on the original Xbox and PS2 had that feature too, you could lure enemies by speaking into the mic.

I don't know where I got it from, but I have this formula in my head: Sufficient amount of Profit = Budget x 3.
So having made 10 bln $., the formula would suggest that spending 3.3bln $ is an appropriate investment. I really doubt that Microsoft spent anything close to that number.

Backwards compatibility is the only feature that Xbox truly has over other consoles. Everything else is just a technical quirk, like Quick Resume, etc. I've played hundreds of hours of BC titles and would love the library to grow bigger. If Microsoft can't understand that it's a massive feature for them that will ultimately only bring them profit and goodwill... That would be sad. The BC team funding couldn't have been higher than that of ONE modern AAA title. Seeing how rough the latest first party games are, I can't help but think that it would have been a better investment.

Ok fair enough. We'll see if Gears E-Day and Perfect Dark run at 60fps while also having an adequate resolution on the Series X.

For example Space Marine 2 runs at a slightly unstable 60fps and 720p-1080p upscaled to 1440p on the SX. Whereas Gears 5 ran at 60fps starting at 1584p topping out at 4K on Xbox One X.

But that's not UE5, which for example the 30fps Avowed is using.

I am perfectly content with 1080p. However, if it's 1080p agressivly upscaled from sub-720p or if it's achieving 60fps using frame generation from otherwise unstable 45fps, then it doesn't seem that impressive. Using new technology with bad performance just for the sake of new technology is not a good thing, especially when remaking an old game. If it's such a faithful remake then it retains linear and cramped environment - not an open world or a world with massive hubs. I hope it looks and performs well on the X.

@jesse_dylan How about we start making 60fps games instead of games running performance-heavy tech like Global Illumination and Ray tracing. This generation has many next-gen only games running at 60fps, it has already become a standard.

I'd like to point out that Stalker 2 is reportedly running at 60fps (only one graphics mode available at Gamescom) according to Digital Foundry. An open world Unreal Engine 5 shooter. So Series S might not be the real culprit behind 30fps in Avowed.

Somebody actually used the term "mansplain" unironically. Insane.

Please don't add a child section to your game. No need to reinvent wheels, just add a fun vehicle level.

@LikelySatan you're not smart and not funny, never forget that

@LikelySatan The content is locked behind an MTX paywall. Nothing wrong with punishing the publisher with negative reviews for such a decision.