Topic: The everything Xbox thread

Expand

@BlueOcean Due to possible confusion in translations, I'll attempt to say this in your native tongue of British English: P* off, you git! Push Square? Who do you think I am? Cobalt? LOL

Seriously though, nah, I'm a multiplatform fan...no PS or XB fanboying from me. Some Nintendo fanboying probably....but that's at least tempered I honestly do like all the platforms and I honestly do get ticked when they start screwing up stuff that didn't need to be screwed up.

Sony earned my long time distrust of their network with the hacks and my CC being used to buy WoW characters in Singapore. But at can at least excuse that message thing: They didn't break it, hackers found an exploit and are abusing it. Their website can't be excused though.

Nintendo actually gets a slap on the wrist this month too. I keep hearing that 6.0 introduced some issue of spontaneous reboots while sleeping. Hasn't happened to me but it might involve sleeping while docked while internet connection drops. Apparently 6.1 doesn't fix it, but Nintendo's at least aware of it.

MS gets a special slap on the wrist though because they RE-INTRODUCED a problem that they'd already solved. Classic Windows. But that's the big big big no-no in software. Don't re-break things. It's weird though. Both machines with both identical pairs of drives started having the same problem with teh update. The one solved itself with rebooting and such. The other one won't resolve it at all. Strangely if I turn off "turn off drives" it actually does turn them off, then turns them back on again. If turn on "turn off drives" it doesn't turn them off for minutes after it shuts down, then does, but starts turning them on again. That's the real issue here: It's actively breaking my $300+ of hard drives unless I disable a ton of useful XBox features and go with power-save mode. Due to a re-introduced bug.

I'll have you know I actually ordered the "official" Seagate Game Hub (I actually paid money for a Seagate.....that's how bad the situation is.... ) to try. I was going to anyway just because it's a cheap 8TB for archive. If it's dog slow I'm not using it. But at least if I have to leave it on 24/7 I feel better running that one than an X300 performance drive that idles over 130F if I don't have the enclosure fan on. Not happy about having to buy that right now due to an MS bug breaking things in the update. But I can justify it as I wanted the archive space anyway. Even if it's in ugly white only. I suspect it will have the same problem. I dont' think it's a drive compatibility problem since the other drives have been fine for 6 months until the patch. But at least if I'm stuck running the drive 24/7 (which is better for it than constant spin up/down) that drive is cooler and quieter. GRRRRR

When I did PC, I had all kinds of strings of weird hardware and software failures. My last rig burned up TWO GPUs and they were almost never even used for gaming. Then two HDDs. Then a PSU. Like $1200 hardware in a $2500 super rig all burned up and I almost never even used it. Ryu and Thanos have heard all about that

" PlayStation Paradise, where nothing wrong ever happens and consoles are silent, beautiful and safe."
Unlike the X360 I had to pay attention to mainboard revisions and manufacture dates to be sure I wasn't getting one of the "guaranteed to fail!" models?

To be fair, PS hardware has never failed on me. OTOH to be fair, I've never really used my PS hardware nearly as much as my Nintendo and XB hardware.... Also to be fair, I really really wanted the SixAxis...no....DualShock 3 to fail....

@GrumbleVolcano Did I not tell you I was given the "born under a dark cloud" perk when my character was created? If you want to go to a casino and bet against the house, just make sure I'm the dealer: instant jackpot.

Edit: yes, it's abuse of smileys, but I figure when I go on a sarcastic rant someone's bound to take me seriously and get offended.

Expand

@Ryu_Niiyama Ok so I'm finally getting to this one. I'll try to pare down the text walling. I'll try

Lore: Lore is dead. The Animus is now a simulator for whatever you want. The Brotherhood of Steel was there 35 years after the first vault opened on the East Coast. WWII had cyborg women on the front lines. Ganon turned into a giant pink spider after Hyrule went high tech because IDK. If you want consistent lore, 2018 video gaming is not the place to be I can buy that this model of animus is a simulator. Because why not? Actually it's more believable than the original technically though I thought the original was more interesting. Ok, so it's shoe-horned in to let people pick the protag's gender. But it would have made more sense if both of them were either separate characters like Evie/Jacob or if it was Alexa/Alexios, whichever gender you imagine them being, as a single character rather than two completely different individuals. Yeah, gender selectors kinda break the lore, maybe it's not the best mechanism, but generally it's probably better to just suspend some disbelief in lore to piece most of it together well for everyone.

I agree, they screwed the story with the DNA strand thing. I'd have been cool with "the hero Alex" (fill in the appearance blanks here.) It would have made more sense than the weird lore maipulations. But that's kind of the problem with trying to fill in lore in an evolving interactive entertainment franchise: It can't really ever make sense long term. And the more dots you connect the less it makes sense later.

In some ways I think the problem is "the books." I don't look at books, comics, films, animes, etc to build the "lore" of a game. I don't think 80% of the people buying the game do. They outsource that stuff out. It may be "canon' but they don't adhere to their own canon. For me (and most players) what's in the game and on the box is the story. As such, most people aren't going into this game with any expectation that Kassandra is the lead. Just the niche that read the side stories. For most people Alex is on the box, it's his game. or as a pick your own it's equally either, whoever you want. But personally I see now "Kass is lead" just going into it with the game itself without outside reference. Maybe Alex leads, maybe neither leads. But Kass definitely doesn't lead for most people that didn't read that. Of course the game is competing directly against Lara who's selling just fine and setting records, so it's not an industry thing. It's just a Ubi thing or AC franchise thing, certainly not a consumer expectations thing.

raises hand I'm one of those 6 that bought Liberation on Vita! I wonder who the other 4 were?

That said given how the industry is treating digital and unlimited broadband assumptions, it's not just gender demographic that they pander only to majorities....it's in all things. Internet is spotty almost everywhere but as long as the major metros are fine that's "the bulk of the game buying population" for them. Good enough! That's probably going to be a lot worse than just pandering to straight white males age 14-28, that actively cuts off access to huge market segments.

"Motivation for playing": Well I put men wanting to play Alex because they want to be him forefront. There's also the men that will want to play female characters to stare at them. Similarly there are women that will want to play Kass to be her. But don't underestimate the sheer number of women that will play Alex to stare. That's a thing. You once said (and I quote) that you "don't get hetero"...you really weren't kidding! Matter of fact I was showing the game to someone and explaining you could pick the male or female character (I was demonstrating so I picked Alex) and the response was "oh yeah, he's good.... (alarmed)I don't have to play as a woman do I??" IF the roles would have been reversed a thousand Kotaku-ites would have piled on the mysoginist pig for oogling attractive female video game characters. But the reality is: Alex is for (straight) women what original Lara was for men (ok, old Lara never actually interested me much, but I'm not the internet. ) Don't underestimate women playing the hunk to look at the hunk any more than men playing the babe to look a the babe. You and I may both be old skool prudes, but the rest of the world is apparently not. You don't play a female character and oogle her. I don't play female characters and oogle them. But lots of men do. And lots of women do the reverse. We're just weird. Also 95% of men will agree with you that women have terrible taste in men.

Still I wholly agree with you that a female character (in a historic) setting would have a very different adventure. But, again, that won't sit well with the PC/equality crowd who's narrative is "Women are men too." Any difference between the two is not acceptable. And they have the loudest voice on any gender issue, so that's what the money pays attention to. Don't rock the Kotaku crowd! In a modern game or future game, sure, that's enforced in the modern world. There are women in the marines, they're held to identical standard as men. There are women in the elite ops of the air force. They train with the men and must pass the same tests as the men. In a modern military setting, a female character is interchangeable with a male character...IRL as well. You're either a marine or not, you're either an elite ops officer or you're not. Gender separates nothing. There's few women. Because while the PC crowd pretends otherwise, most women can't match the same strength/endurance tests as as many men. But there are some. Set a game in 2018 and you're golden with any character interchanged with name and VA. Set it in 3024 and you're fine. Set it in Sparta........ yeah that doesn't work.

Shepard works. Both characters are Shepard. The interchangeability works for the time period. Whether it's a male or female shepard you're just playing Shepard. AC went with more of an RPG cardboard but not quite model, worse than EA's model. Jade Empire just had totally different characters. KotR had pure cardboard.

Controls: I don't know. I haven't plaeyd Odyssey enough. Origins though, it feels parkour-ish enough and assassin-y enough more times than not. I don't really brawl in it ever unless things go bad. Odyssey does seem more combat heavy though. Like Connor. Ugh! But it also has a stealth focus skill tree, so I'm thinking as you advance it can be more brawl or more stealth oriented. IMO Parkour was only truly great in the first game.

I do agree that true AC is dead. I do like the new series but I think of them separate. 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations was the last actual AC. 3 was not AC (the worst of the bunch but they may fix that in the remaster!), 4 wasn't AC AT ALL it was a Skull and Bones Beta with an Assassin's DLC pack. Great pirate game, but not AC. Unity was probably good if you could get it to boot. I wouldn't know Syndicate....it was....it was a cool steampunk Hitman/Thief/thing? It did some things better, some things worse. Good game, but I never felt Victorian was the right setting for AC. Too modern. Origins though....I really like it. It returns to the roots of 1 in many ways, but also reboots it. It's "Real" AC, but in an MGSV sorto of way instead of a Prince of Persia way. I miss PoP but I can recogize AS's new direction as equally AC. Odyssey: Too soon to tell. So far it's very Origins but with some BotW. it's not the old AC, definitely. But that doesn't make it worse.

I've been waiting or AC: Japan since the teaser at the end of 1. I think that kept me from enjoying 2 as much as I should have....I was bummed it wasn't the hinted Japan.