I don't want to harp on about the RDR controls too much and put more people off as it's something that I certainly think people should experience (if only to write rude words in the incredible snow!)... I'm definitely finding them easier the longer I go on but certain things seem just unnecessarily difficult. I'll use the bow as my example; normally love bows in games, yet this one, you have to 'analogue' the trigger (as in don't press it fully down) whilst trying to keep the camera and aiming reticule on an animal that - quite naturally - doesn't sit still. Making it simple is obviously a waste of everyone's time but I remember raging at the tutorial mission because I couldn't get the hang of it (took me forever) and whilst I've gotten better at it, I'm still not awesome and it just feels unnecessarily fiddly; you need to be fast, precise and efficient, instead I am like a Hippopotamus trying to do calligraphy...?
I think the most damning part overall is the fact that they fall apart to the greatest degree when you need them the most - hitting RB to get into cover but inexplicably climbing onto said cover (meant to be 'X' I think?) and then having to pray to the control gods that you can get down and hide again in time before having your face decorated with a bullet introduces the wrong sort of tension, at least for me? The other 'learning experience' was sometimes when you pull the trigger, it instead makes Arthur do something/load a bullet/flip a switch on his rifle rather than firing, yet other times he'll fire straight away - I end up in something of a mini-guessing game as to whether my RT press will fire or get the gun ready (and reload is a different button so i know it's not that) and was/is maddeningly inconsistent; again, I've got a handle on it now but first impressions count and I'm not sure as many people will be as forgiving which is a colossal shame.
@NEStalgia see you mention you use an Elite controller, as luck would have it I haven't been using mine for RDR just out of coincidence - have you seen the issues people have been having with elite controllers and the game? Mainly to do with having the sliders turned on, seems to stop the game registering the input so just a heads up (from what i've read you'd know about it by now if you were having the issue)!
Oh, and welcome @FragRed to the wonderfully pretty world of 'X' - not sure if it's your first 'box (there are a lot of pages and some pretty intimidating posts to traverse to find everyone's full history!) but hope you enjoy it as much as I have mine; it's been a long slog getting to this point from the original one, Kinect and an insane number of UI overhauls but I feel generally a lot more positive about xbox than I did maybe a year ago!
@NEStalgia No, Game Pass has many more than 100 games at the moment and no, not only third-party games that had low sales join Game Pass, Rocket League is just an example. But yes, I don't see games like Red Dead Redemption joining Game Pass anytime soon.
@FragRed Welcome to the X club! My advice for Forza Horizon 4 as someone who started with the previous game is choose a challenge or race on the map (view/"select" button) and go for it; don't accelerate the most powerful cars quickly like a casual racer like me used to do but use the analogue Xbox One triggers that are lovely for smooth acceleration; brake with both the left trigger and the handbrake (A) but not at the same time but try different things with them. Braking is safer for turning but with handbrake you can do crazy things (I am still learning).
And let us know what you think about Red Dead Redemption 2 controls of course.
@Dezzy They will remaster and/or make Final Fantasy XIII backwards compatible eventually and they must be doing something with Final Fantasy VIII too, the omission on Xbox One and Switch.
@ThanosReXXX "No English speaking sports fan..."
So, by giving a thumbs down and chanting "finish him!" I'm doing it wrong?
Seriously though I always interpreted the series name to be a reference to the power/strength/force (literal) meaning, which applies to racing machines very aptly.
I tried SoT again and had a better time. It's decorated with pumpkins and gourds for Halloween! That was a fun surprise! I spent half the session on the island enjoying the decor instead of playing. While I was on my ship preparing a gold hoarders quest I looked up from my looking glass to see some random waving at me. So I joined in and we set sail to the destination. Took me forever to find it, and it was right next to me. I was charming snakes, he was finding a crate of bananas. I did find the treasure this time and avoided skeletons. They respawn a little too much. The visitor vanished after I found the treasure box, but it was nice that this time a random found me and actually helped rather than shooting me. Even if we had no idea what was going on. It's a little awkward playing, mic off, when randoms show up and nobody knows what the other is trying to do. But hey, I completed a mission and didn't get trolled, so it was a much better session.
@BrainOfGrimlock I oddly didn't have a problem with the hunting tutorial. I didn't have to partly hold the trigger in an analog state, you just can't hold it long, I guess that's more of a rapid, straight back pull and release. I'll say that it doesn't feel very much like archery. Games like Tomb Raider, Thief, etc get it a lot better IMO. Even AC: Origins has a much better bow. The bow feels like a fiddly gun, and arrows have far too much range of straight flight and heavy impact. My bigger issue is you're supposed to aim for the neck, but at a reasonable quiet distance the animal is just too small on a screen to hit that target reasonably, and the game encourages standing quite a bit too far compared to real bows (unless we're talking military long bows of the feudal age and mechanical compound bows, of which these are not....)
It's functional, and I didn't find it problematic, but I found it kind of unsatisfying. Animal AI is fantastic, but the actual hunting is worse than AC: Origins.
The cover system however...yeah that's not very good. Gears, Deus Ex, and The Division this is not. Heck, Killzone and The Order 1886 this is not. I spend more time trying to get back into cover after arthur inexplicably separates from cover than remaining in cover. I've learned, while in cover, just never touch the left stick and I'll be fine.
The "Arthur plays with his rifle" issue is either just the reload animation, or maybe they included weapon jamming subtlety, or you got caught by the "the game decided you wanted to interact with something when you pressed LT, so now you have to press RT to tell it you really just want to aim, so that way you can press RT again to actually fire" conundrum.
Elite: I haven't had any issues with the Elite with it. I don't have the trigger locks on though for RDR2....I set them by game and only use locks on games that require holding the trigger for long periods, or ones that require rapid presses. Things like Destiny and halo get trigger locks for me, due to manual rapid fire guns. Wildlands and RDR I don't since the guns feel better with full trigger pulls and I don't feel a need for hair triggers. The analog range and deadzone can be set per trigger in the Accessories app, so I'm guessing the game uses a lower actuation point than most and if you're using trigger locks you'd have to set the range differently for the game. Just a guess, but at least if not using the locks, it seems fine
@BlueOcean yeah, "~100" means approximately. Officially they sell it as "more than 100 games", and originally it was supposed to be 100 rotating games, but yeah I haven't actually see them rotate things out as they add things so far, not sure what's up with that. Technically rotating things out sucks badly if your'e partly into the game, so I never liked that aspect of it as it seems designed to be a "try before you buy" system than an actual subscription library if things are routinely rotated out. I like that they haven't been doing that but I don't know how it will play out long term. (PS Now boasts more than 300 games, and now does the download thing as well as streaming for everything but PS3, and lowered the price, so as Sony modifies Now to clone GP, maybe MS is extending the library of GP to match Now.)
Mostly it's first parties, older games, indies, and online games that aren't selling well or are past their prime. There's exceptions, but mostly that's what I'm seeing. The biggest newer ones are TES:O (An MMO that's kind of useless without Summersett expansion as MMOs tend to be without their latest expansions, so ti's more of an advertising demo for a game that hasn't sold great and most of it's player base is on PC so this helps pad the servers), The Division that was a disappointment, had it's player base gutted by newer games, and has a sequel on the way that will kill it off soon, but this builds audience fo the sequel. Doom is long in the tooth with a sequel on the way but is probably the most "high end" 3rd party on there. Wolf2 had disappointing sales on all platforms. The Tomb Raiders stand out but those are games that are often discounted very cheap on sales for some reason so it fits GP. 3rd parties seem to use GP as a tool for bolstering online player base, raising awareness before a sequel, or as bait for buying expansions. Not unlike GwG really. I expect For Honor will make it to GP after he current expansion pack bombs. The Crew 2 at some point as well. (or GwG, as For Honor already has been.)
Rocket league IMO makes more of it's money from microtransactions than purchase, so that makes a lot of sense for them. GP works well for the "this should be freemium but isn't" genres
@Dezzy@BlueOcean I imagine FFXIII trilogy will be a bundle of some sort and a remaster on all platforms including Switch. But not for another 1-2 years. They have all the other FF's coming out on X1 and Switch in 2019. They need to make 13 a big deal after all that is over. It's Squeenix, so if you don't hear back from them in 20-30 years, shoot them an email.
VIII I'm not sure what's with that, they seem to have abandoned it almost entirely. It's not even on PS4 or the psx mini. It's on PS3, Vita, and PSP. They put it on PC in 2013. Maybe they're planning on giving it the remaster treatment, but it wasn't a seminal release and is largely the ugly duckling of FF. If they didn't do a full remaster of 9 and 7 gets a total remake, I can't imagine 8 getting that. I wonder if there's an issue with losing assets or source for it. 8's too unloved to get an expensive remaster, but it's unlike Squeenix to not do a cash-in port on PS4 at least, and with it oddly missing from "All FF except 8 is going multiplat" announcements, it does seem out of place.
@Yosheel No worries, I didn't take it as such. Perhaps I could have been a bit clearer in my initial comment, and added up front that my Italian friends are also football (soccer) fanatics, and they explained it to me in this way. It came about during a talk about how the Dutch and the Americans cheer on their teams, and went from there. And seeing as racing is also sports, well... I hope you see how I got there, concerning this specific subject.
Context-sensitive, as Conker the squirrel would say...
But I'll stop here, since it's more or less off-topic anyway...
But in all seriousness: I think there's more than enough reasons to buy games before you actually have the console you need to play them on, especially in the case of titles offered at discount prices. I did the same for my Xbox 360, and even for my Wii U, for which I bought a game almost 2 years before I finally bought the console itself. I knew I was going to get one anyway, so I simply figured it would be the smart thing to do, not to miss out on the massive discount. You never know how long they're gonna last, or if certain titles simply become unavailable at some point.
Technically, I also "bought" games for the Xbox One well before I got it, seeing as I have been collecting all the Xbox One games on Games with Gold for almost two years before I finally got the console itself. Wasn't that hard to do anyway, since I was still actively using my Xbox 360, Xbox Live Gold included, so all I had to do was select all the monthly free Xbox One games as well.
Took me a hell of a lot of time to download it all, when I finally got the console, though...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@NEStalgia Yeah, it can be both. But as a sports-related battle cry, it usually means what I mentioned.
But I'll leave it at that. Not going to expand upon it with person #2, when I just agreed to drop the argument with person #1...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@Yosheel Well, seeing as we have all the holidays and special events coming up in the next two months to come, starting with Black Friday, there's probably going to be plenty of sales to go around, so better grab hold of your wallet...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@NEStalgia You have a wide range of excuses, don't you? LOL There are many third-party games available on Game Pass and many of them are great (AAA), that's all that matters; plus all the new first-party games, and these haven't gone out of the subscription (Sea of Thieves there since its launch). If you really want a game, you can just buy it and get a discount on both game and DLC if you are subscribed. It's the best way to have a big collection of games, then it's up to you if you want to buy some of them. It's like a long-term rental. It's also brilliant because you don't have to wait for a sale to buy a game, you can play the game on launch "for free" (I mean, included in the subscription price) and buy it later with a discount (10% minimum or higher with Deals with Gold). There is absolutely nothing bad to say about Game Pass, we can't expect all third-party games to be included in the deal.
@BrainOfGrimlock I love how you describe Red Dead Redemption 2, it's the typical thing you don't read on the reviews, it makes information more complete for everyone to know.
I would recommend the Elite controller to any Xbox One owner. I haven't had any issues with mine and if you do there is guarantee. The only thing that it doesn't cover is the rubber tops after three months (yes, I asked). Two of my rubber tops broke but this was after years and they are replaceable although I haven't found where to buy original ones yet (Microsoft don't sell them). So if anyone knows where to get good ones please let me know.
I started using the paddles recently and they are more useful than I thought. I use the bottom left paddle to run, the top left paddle for magic/defence/etc., the bottom right paddle to crouch and the top right paddle to jump. This way you don't have to click on the stick for running and you can jump and do something else at the same time, like aiming or moving the camera. They are very comfortable, too. Using the Xbox accessories app you can design different buttons layouts.
@BlueOcean@NEStalgia thanks both for the replies - will write something more detailed tomorrow/when i get chance as late here (stoopid direct being on so late!) but just dropped in quickly to say a lot of my RDR2 bow/gun issues may (or may not) have just been explained away; fired up PES for a ‘nightcap’ game as I regularly do, only to find my guys could sprint only intermittently (they’re terrible players as i’m in a rubbish league, but even then we’re talking Arthur Morgan slow). I double checked I was pressing the right button & Konami haven’t patched the game to require me to tap A repeatedly to sprint & sure enough, they haven’t - turns out though that my controller is partially busted with both RB/RT affected after further testing on Doom.
It may be fixable but it’s not world ending, I do have an elite (amazing thinf) & another spare in the other room, i like using the elite wired though which means I don’t/can’t use it in the lounge as my cats get a little ‘chewy’!
Ironically the one thing I called out when I got the ‘X’ is that the bumpers on the controllers felt cheaper than the launch model - hate being right sometimes, thankfully doesn’t happen often!
Irrespective, I look forward to trying out RDR2 tomorrow with a fully functioning controller and feeling overjoyed that all my control-based issues with the game have evaporated. Ahem.
For the last option, you obviously need to go to the relevant site for your location.
EDIT:
Damn... misread your comment, and mistakenly focused on paddles. Well, seeing as these sites mention replacement parts, I'm pretty sure that other controller parts will be available from there as well, and at the very least from Microsoft themselves, so the third link should help out either way.
@BlueOcean Oh, yeah the exclusives starting with SoT are not supposed to rotate, they're permanent AFAIK. They've also added a lot of pre-SoT stuff. MCC, Halo 5, Quantum Break, ReCore, Gears 1 & 4, Forza 7. Even as an MS-only sub it's pretty cool. That's how I got FH4 until a good sale, and SoT which I doubt I'd buy but it's fun to play with, plus Crackdown 3 in a few months. I like Game Pass in general. I would like to see it become a bit more "netflix" for 3rd parties rather than what is at times a dumping ground of unloved and promotional titles, but the MS stuff alone is top notch. EA sells their own GP clone unfortunately for their legacy titles, which is just kind of gross. It's "cheap", but I hear it's all but impossible to cancel the auto billing. It would have been nicer to unify that than have that weird EA Access thing going on too.
@BrainOfGrimlock LOL, well a broken controller would take the RDR2 controls to a whole new level of NG+ That makes sense with the hunting now! Elite is fine wireless....technically for wired I prefer the Razer Wolverine Ultimate, anyway
The Elite actually has infamously delicate bumpers. Metal bumper buttons with the same plastic "bridge" connecting them as the stock controller.
As for RDR2, well hunting I don't think is problematic (bland, uninspired, and arrow physics best described as Elf Magic, but not problematic.) Cover system is still junk though
There's issues for signing into Xbox Live, and since I haven't set the console to remember my password or become my home console, I'm locked out of everything.
I really should have done those things as soon as I had it...
I would like to see [Game Pass] become a bit more "netflix" for 3rd parties.
If Game Pass included all third-party games it would be much more expensive and you know that while some big publishers like to try Xbox Game Pass a little bit (Capcom, Square Enix and Sega, ironic being Japanese companies), others would rather have their own subscription (EA) and others don't want to rent their games at all (Rockstar?). Each publisher has a different business approach but they like to test the waters sometimes. Obviously, small publishers see Game Pass as a chance to gain further benefits. Thanks for describing RDR2 controls, it is insightful.
@BrainOfGrimlock I want to read that controls review of yours. I always felt that bows were easy to get right on a controller after playing games like the new Tomb Raider trilogy (the combination or analogue trigger and trigger rumble on Xbox One is awesome) so it seems that Red Dead Redemption 2 is using cumbersome combinations and uncommon button mapping for lots of actions and even alternative controls/context controls for a single button? This is where I get lost so perhaps you and @NEStalgia could compare it to other games? A context button only works fine when it's a "story" button like in Resident Evil 4 (use, open, kick, drain, etc.). For quick and frequent actions that you can perform anywhere it seems confusing.
@ThanosReXXX Thanks, I only need stick caps, I was hoping that somebody had bought some and could recommend. Otherwise I'll just get any. The ones that broke if you are curious are the concave ones and now I am using the convex ones. Now it's funny because I see that each design has its own advantages. EDIT: I see that the last link is for official spare parts, but I can't register the Elite controller serial number.
@BlueOcean Hmm, you're right, I thought I remembered they were going to add Motorsport 7, but it's not there.
Yeah Game Pass, and eventually streaming is going to at some point become the Disnified mess that TV streaming has become where to get all the games you'll need a subscription to Microsoft, EA, 2k, Ubi (but to get all the Ubi games you'll need the Ubi Premier pass, except Just Dance which will have its own separate pass), Warner pass, Squeenix Pass, Sega pass, and then by the time you're done you're paying $250/mo for game access, but Comcast will bundle it in your cable bill for a mere $293 with basic TV, STARZ, and high speed internet (capped at 1TB.) (Some of that is lost on you in the UK, but still )
RDR2 Controls: The uncommon button mapping is frustrating, but that's the part that (eventually) you learn to live with. You still do unintended things from time to time because of it out of instinct though. 90% of games have map on SELECT (View), this one puts "cycle camera angles" on that button and puts map on "press and hold START (Menu)". Reload on B. Pick up object is on X, unless it's a gun, then you press and hold Y for unknown reasons. Other objects that are story objects are sometimes Y for unknown reasons instead of X. It changes depending on situation.
There's one critical context button: LT. It doesn't really compare to any other game because of the nature of LT. "use/open/kick/drain for RE4" all falls under "interact" as a command on one button. This isn't like that specifically. LT has two functions in RDR2.
LT Mode 1: Draw and aim gun (like 99% of all other games with guns. Gears, Halo (with aimable guns), Destiny, etc.
LT Mode 2: "Bring up interaction menu in bottom right corner for object in the general direction you're looking at." This is the context problem. In this mode, if I'm walking or riding down the street and want to "lock on" to the sheriff standing on he corner and greet, provoke, etc. him I look more or less at him, the camera locks onto him as I walk/ride, and I can hit A to greet, B to provoke, or contextually, maybe Y to ask for a quest update, or such. Similarly in a store, I can hold LT to look at the shelf items I can buy and hit Y to "examine" or A to "Buy" depending on the menu options.
Mode 2 on its own sounds problematic and unreliable because it is unreliable. Especially when menu options can be grayed out until you're standing in the right place, for no reason. And you always have to read the bottom right options to know the available options.
Where it becomes more problematic than annoying is when the game isn't short if you want to interact, or draw a gun. So my prior example was a quest giver, broken down wagon driver. I went to "interact" with him in mode 2. The game didn't realize he was interactable at that moment, or I was looking at the wrong angle. Instead Arthur draws a gun and aims at the guy. The guy freaks out, gets on his remaining horse, abandons his wagon, and rides away. Quest opportunity lost. Maybe forever? Maybe he respawns at some point. Because the game decided I meant LT Mode 1: Aim a gun.
So standing in front of a guy, your only way to interact is "aim at him" with LT. The game decides if you mean "aim camera and bring up interaction/talk menu" or "aim a gun at his head." Usually it gets it right. Sometimes it doesn't.
It also gets it wrong with my earlier cat example. If you're looking at something that can't be interacted with a man that was hung and his deputy executioner, it seems to pick the next object in line of sight (even if it's not visible on screen/behind a partial wall) to interact with.
Finally the 3rd place it errors is in hostage type situations. You hold LT to aim a gun. Instead it brings up an interaction menu. That much I can even understand (you're aming at both a hostile and friendly after all.) But then inexplicably you hit the RT button...a button that has no other function than "fire weapon", in order to tell it you'd like to enter "aim gun mode". So you effectively have to fire, to tell it you intend to fire later. Imagine picking up a real gun with instructions that say "cock chamber and pull trigger to remove safety, then aim and pull trigger to fire". That's RDR2's hostage encounters. You just have to remember "right now do I am then fire, or do I aim then use the interaction menu, or aim then press the fire button to ready the weapon to fire?"
It's the kind of stuff you can train your mind to deal with it, but it tends to cause some fumbling and mistakes anyway when in fast/stressful moments. 95% of the time the game guesses right. But that 5% of the time it doesn't stands out in memory.
@DarkRula don't tell me XBL account/store/licensing servers are down again? They never went down for 15 years. Suddenly it's frequent.
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