Topic: The everything Xbox thread

I love Forza Horizon 4 performance mode. It blows my mind, it's as smooth as the 360 version of Daytona USA... Forza Horizon 4 is the best racing game ever... but I prefer the soundtrack of FH3!

@DarkRula I bought the Ultimate Edition but I haven't played the new areas yet, that's why I was missing two barns (expansions) plus the two available in the events. I got that one winning a championship, where and how should I do the drift taps?

@BlueOcean Drift taps are where you lightly hit a car's rear off a barrier while drifting. There's an easy spot to do so in Surfers Paradise at the very north-west of the city. Use a rally car like the Subaru WRX and the e-brake, and you should have it done easily.

@DarkRula @DarthNocturnal One thing I have to thank Playground for is to include so different radio stations in both games... so I never have to listen to the rappers of Block Party.

Once again I triggered the rumour (tap drifts) accidentally by playing my first race in Hot Wheels. It is fun! It's a bit like Sonic All-stars Racing. In my statistics it says that my favourite radio station is Hospital but I also play Timeless, Vagrant, Epitoph, Future Classic and, if I like the song, I tune Pulse and Bass Arena too. What is your favourite radio station according to the game?

I am talking about FH3 because I still haven't played FH4 enough time.

@BlueOcean My favourite station would either be Vagrant or Epitaph. Really like the pop-punk and metalcore side of those 2 stations. Top 3 songs in the game would probably be Bored to Death, Naviety and Gold.

Pulse, no question. Always Pulse. I don't think I ever tune into any other station unless it gets forced on me through bucket lists and the like, and even then I'll sometimes swap back.

As an Azure/SSMS nut xcloud sounds fantastic. As a gamer I don’t have the internet, interest or will to deal with this. I suppose my plan to take a year off next year was a good idea.

I just caved and bought the Xbox One X 1TB Forza Horizon 4 bundle with RDR2 on Amazon for £399.99. I don't even have a 4K TV but that will be something I will get soon anyway.

@FragRed Congratulations, it's an amazing deal, pun not intended. Don't worry about the TV, many people use the console for HD TV, the supersampling from UHD to HD is brilliant with much less shimmering and much better anti-aliasing. You also get better performance, textures, loading times... And some games aren't 1080p on the base Xbox One. For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2 is 864p on Xbox One S and native 4K on Xbox One X.

You also get two of the best games of the whole generation in the bundle. Forza Horizon 4 is so good that I got the Ultimate Addons bundle.

The only way I'm going for RDR2 is less than 50% of the price. There's currently too much on the radar for me to bother much with it.

There's a lot of mystery around the X018 reveals, but whatever comes from it is sure to be exciting.

@DarthNocturnal I don't find GTA appealing enough but I think that the Wild West and more historical gameplay of Red Dead Redemption 2 are much more interesting. It's why I also prefer any Assassin's Creed to both Watch Dogs (Watch Dogs 2 in particular is exactly the least appealing game ever to me).

I really hope that Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie are remade (Nuts & Bolts still looks great) and that Rare develops or co-develops a new game in the series. 3D platformers are back . Sea of Thieves perfoms smoothly and the visuals are awesome while being cartoon, I think that they would make a great new Banjo-Kazooie game. Sea of Thieves is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played in spite of being disappointed by the Forsaken Shores new area. I wish that Rare would also do anything else and not just updating this game.

@BlueOcean Nah, not stuck in Mattrick era. Just following the overall industry and tech trends, plus things Phil has said over the past year+ and extrapolating the logical course for Xbox (and the industry at large) based on Xbox's traditional role and what the major publishers want. Make no mistake, the industry isn't run by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, it's run by Ubisoft, Activision, EA, 2K, Warner, and Squeenix. They absolutely, thoroughly, completely can't stand console "generations", it's a massive thorn in their business models which are based on PC and mobile. As they push toward streaming-only, console "generations" are just going to appear worse and worse to their businesses. Like with x86, it's a safe bet they're applying a lot of pressure to MS/Sony to do something about that console cycle that never existed as a desirable business model but was just a biproduct of where tech was back 25 years ago. If it's not X, and it's not Scarlett, it'll be the one after Scarlett, but that model change is inevitable. I'm just giving MS the assumption that they're the most forward thinking of the bunch willing to make big changes, while Sony has followed MS and Nintendo for the past decade or so.

FH soundtracks: I tend to like British pop and am fairly ambivalent to negative on Australian Pop, so Pulse works out better in 4 than 3 to me. I haven't spent enough time with other channels yet, but Pulse's playlist seems oddly shallow this time.....it's getting repetitious which is a shame because Pulse usually as great soundtracks in these games. Bass Arena, Hospital, and Timeless also get some play time. So far that's it. Not sure if I have more to unlock or not in 4. There's Block Party (no thanks) and a rock station that's ok ,but rock and racing just don't go together to me unless it's NASCAR or trucks in a desert.

Still, nothing is more awesome than doing the jump ramp challenge things, approaching a snowy winter mountain ledge, uphill, at 110mph in a giant red Dodge RAM turbocharged truck at the climax of Grieg's Peer Gynt as you take flight (Also, that truck is basically "easy mode" )

@DarkRula Are you finding Pulse in 4 kind of repetitive yet? It seems shallower than usual.

@FragRed About flippin' time! Don't worry about not having a 4k display, the supersampling on 1080p screens renders 4k screens unnecessary more or less. I.E. the image quality difference is very stark to me when supersampled on the X (moreso than the PS4 Pro...checkerboarding apparently doesn't supersample so well.) Blue and Thanos hate my praise of FH4 Quality mode's visuals over Performance mode But I do think supersampling has a lot to do with that on my 1080p PC monitor I play on. I'm noticing more that raw 1080 is looking bad to me after getting used to X1X SS when I play Switch. It definitely is worth it even on 1080.

@JaxonH The best way I can describe the flaws of RDR2 is "clunky." The whole game feels clunky. The characters move like trucks. The physics/movement model feels copied right from L.A. Noire, and it was always questionable. It gives it "weight" and I realize cowboys are gear laden (more than 1940's detectives), but the long hesitation between input and the character turning like their legs are made of lead is also unnatural, and like L.A. Noire it takes an unnatural amount of time to turn from facing one object to another.

Whoever came up with the dialog system of aiming with the aiming button to activate the tiny corner dialog menu should be taken to the saloon at high noon. Not only does it defy 25+ years of gaming convention of "walk to character, press button" but it breaks its own in-game systems. Yes, I know Ocarina had a "aim to talk to someone far away" system, but Ocarina didn't have guns to aim as a main loop. There's a sidequest where you come across a broken wagon at roadside and can help or rob him. So I go to him to talk to him requiring aiming. He's talking still so it decides it won't let me aim now. He finishes talking, and it lets me aim, and instead of dialog, I pull a gun on him, because it's the same stupid context-sensitive button. He freaks out and flees on horseback, and the quest is lost. At another point, an ally is being strangleheld and I get to try to rescue them. I go to pull a gun to deal with the situation, the game decides I want to talk to him instead. It then, with the bottom corner context options tells me to now hit RT to aim [a gun]. So in a game that the only buttons that match gaming conventions of LT aim, RT fire, they add in LT to bring up action/dialog menu in a context specific (but broken) way, and intermittently LT+RT is what lets you aim the gun, then hit RT again to fire? It's not just inconsistent with gaming convention, it's inconsistent with its own conventions which means you can never trust your knowledge of the game's controls to play and interact, you need to stare always at the bottom right corner of the screen to see which input options exist at the present moment in time. Plus the dialog option exists to let you talk to people at a distance rather than having to walk to everyone unnaturally, but half the time if I aim at someone from a distance, the "greet" option is grayed out until I walk up to them anyway.

I also can't explain why "map" that has been on "SELECT" (I still call these buttons START/SELECT rather than View/Menu, Options/Touchpad, +/-. It's a standard convention to use for everything but 8th gen) for every game nearly since forever, put "change camera distance" on SELECT, and put menu on START, but press-and-hold START to bring up the map. Needless to say I change the camera angle a lot by accident. I can't imagine how they do it on PS4. Press the "map rectangle" to change camera angle, press the teeny, tiny, hard to hit "options" button and hold it to bring up the map? Eek!

Another favorite moment, I stumbled upon some gallows while a hanging was going on. There's a sobbing newly minted widow that tells me to go away....but if I aim at her, nothing happens. The deputy is up on the platform, I aim at him and get the options to "praise" or "scold"....odd options for the deputy who just performed a hanging. So then I aim at the hanging victim. Again, I get the options to "praise or scold".....weird...praise him for hanging so well, or scold him for being a criminal maybe? Maybe for the deputy it's a political message "praise law and order or scold capital punishment?" So it has "RB to Study"....so I try "studying" the hanging corpose. It tells me it's a domestic cat. Huh? Finally I realize there was a cat walking in the grass some distance behind the gallows, and since there were no dialog options for the deputy or hanging body, the game deiced to lock onto the cat when I aimed in it's direction at the gallows for talking/interacting. Why can't I just "press A to talk" to whatever's in front of me?

Shopping makes most sense in the catalogs, a.k.a. menu-driven shopping like a JRPG, since browsing on the shelves is slow. Aim, hope to actually lock onto the item you want. If you want to see the stats/effects you have to "examine" and wait for the slow lifting animations, then put it down.... Very L.A. Noire, again, but somehow doesn't fit as well without examining evidence. You can forgive clunkiness in L. A. Noire, it's a puzzle/adventure game at heart with a bit of Ace Attorney mixed in.

And I love that they tried something different with the health/stamina/horse stamina/dead eye thing (maybe RDR1 had that too, I haven't played much of it yet, though it looks amazing on X), but again...it's clunky. 4 meters, each with their own bar, replenished by tonics or over time, but to maintain regeneration you maintain the cores, the cores are maintained by appropriate foods/drinks, some of which help one a little or a lot, some help one hurt the other, so you have to sort your beans from your smokes from your canned fruit from your fresh veggies as they all refill/help/hurt cores differently (when did it become Harvest Moon?) but then watch for weight gain/weight loss indicators if your'e not eating enough....... the idea is fantastic. The implementation is confusing and awkward with all the provisions available that affect you differently.

At least it doesn't have RDR1's meme-ready running animation (shudder)

The game itself is really amazing, and a fantastic world to play in, but the more I wrestle with the controls, the easier Dark Souls becomes. Sure it has challenging fights, but at least I know what happens when I push a button. RDR2 has no particular gameplay challenge. Shooting is kind of Hoagan's Alley with better graphics. And there's more time with interactive story and navigation than what I'd specifically call "gameplay", it's more of an "interactive entertainment experience" than a "video game". But dang if sucky controls can't turn even the simplest game into a Souls-like.

I'm getting used to it in a way, but I think I'll never get used to it. If I change my camera instead of bring up my map one more time I'm going to have to hurt somebody.

Looks like MS may be planning some new controller solutions for their xCloud program. Really hope we hear some news about this at X018 would love to forego having to get another box to get it on that sweet Horizon 4 action!

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-10-29-here-are-micros...

@NEStalgia There does seem fewer songs that have really grabbed me on 4 over 3, but half the time I'm not listening anyway. I've got my own stuff or I'll have videos on in the background.

@redd214 Ouch, those prototypes are terrible! Just thinking of the stresses put on joycons during intense play that are firmly mounted to a metal rail, I can't imagine hand grips on a non-mechanically connected grip for real gameplay.

Considering MS is the only company that managed to come up with a tablet keyboard that feels and works great while being razor thin, and a mouse that folds flat, is thin, and works on any surface, (Type Cover, Arc Mouse) I do hope they can come up with something. But it usually takes them about 4 generational refreshes or so to actually get such things right, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to early adopt. I mean even the XBox controller began life as "The Duke" lol

@NEStalgia reading the article it appears the prototypes themselves are from years ago so no point in judging them really. Type cover is decent enough (wife has had multiple surfaces through the years) but would hardly say their the only one to do it well. You sure do complain a lot man, lighten up

Anywho, in addition to the X/Red Dead 2 deals, Walmart also has a great deal on the S if anyones in the market for one. NBA2K19, Horizon 4, PUBG, or Minecraft plus RDR2, extra controller, $5 XBL credit all for $260.

https://www.walmart.com/co/Choice-of-Microsoft-Xbox-One-S-1TB...

@redd214 I'm a consummate pessimist, but I pale in comparison to the complainers that dwell on NL Type Cover is great though. Actual full travel scissor switches, backlighting, at only 2mm or so depth, and sturdy as a full keyboard with a magnesium base. I've tried many a keyboard and never found one that got it so right for a thin board and didn't feel like creaking, stressing plastic. Arc mouse though...that thing is a wonder to behold I can't help but grin every time I snap my mouse in half. For may reasons.

A portable controller that does some of that...magnesium backing, bendable, foldable would be pretty cool. It would also make the Elite look cheap, but that's another thing

@NEStalgia @BlueOcean Thanks! Yeah, I wasn't sure about it for a long while partly as it was pushed as this the 4K console and partly due to the high price which I just couldn't justify, so this deal was perfect for me to jump on board. But I am glad that the X is so impressive on HD TVs thanks to the supersampling I really didn't want to buy a 4K TV any time soon.

I am really excited to play Forza Horizon 4 - much prefer arcade racers and I am sure I will get over the clunky controls of RDR2, well I hope I will.

@FragRed let us know if you prefer quality or performance mode on fh4. I need ammo against blue and thanos .

Rdr2 is definitely worthwhile and excellent despite the bizarre controls. Still a fantastic experience, just a shame controls and a few design choices keep it from perfection. A must play either way though. (Especially on the X )

@NEStalgia You never know, by this time next generation, Rockstar may have a game with modern day controls.... Oh who am I kidding, that's about as likely as Bethesda releasing a Elder Scrolls or Fallout game without all the bugs and glitches

I shall have to spend some time in FH4 in both modes then. I also agree with your point that it's a few big third party publishers that run the show with the direction consoles go. It's the reason Sony and Microsoft go around asking them what they want from each new generation and why the publishers were so eager to get the current consoles out the door. However, I do think as soon as EA and Ubisoft get their streaming services running with decent results, they will ditch Microsoft and Sony's streaming service and go solo. Why share revenues with a company you no longer need at a time when hardware will, for the most part, be obsolete in a world where it's all streaming based.

And with that, Microsoft are definitely in a better position than Sony to go streaming in terms of the backend. They have data centres and the capitol to pump into this venture unlike Sony. Nintendo will just do Nintendo and hope they can continue creating hardware that sells based on their first party lineup. Sony is the one I really think is in a hard place as to whether they try and compete with full streaming services or stay mainly hardware based. They have the brand power and first party studios so that may help.

What ever happens, streaming won't catch on for enough people to justify it being the main way to play games for years to come - perhaps a decade or more at least, so none of this really maters yet. Hardware will remain the number one interest in most consumers for a long time to come.

@NEStalgia I have been checking FH3 X-enhanced and FH4 in Quality and Performance modes on a HD TV. As expected, the Digital Foundry video is true, Performance mode is basically the same as Quality mode in FH4 but performance being in 1080p and 60 fps and with less sophisticated lighting, but I have discovered something. You used to mention things like the trees being lower-quality and "uglier" in Performance mode. The trees and the other elements are exactly the same when you go near them in both modes, when the camera is in front of them (I did this on purpose) so I have reached the conclusion that the extra quality that you perceive is the supersampling from 4K to HD. The trees and other elements display shimmering in Performance mode that is nullified in Quality mode. Add to that the super anti-aliasing of the excellent supersampling of X and you get a more realistic image in Quality mode. They are basically the same visuals, but the supersampling and super anti-aliasing is cleaning the graphics, this is more obvious the closer you play to your TV. Don't write another wall text about this, just to end the topic, you were partly right about one thing but wrong about the origin and dimension. I think Performance mode is best anyway, because 60 fps is glorious in a racing game, but it's good that the game has the two options. In other games like Tomb Raider I go for the quality mode. Just answer one question, how do you deal with Switch visuals on a TV?

EDIT: I haven't bought Red Dead Redemption 2 yet, it is on my radar but... hearing all this stuff about unnatural controls in a game that you are constantly dealing with them... How could the developers overlook so many things? Somebody else is playing the game and can comment?