Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@DarthNocturnal considering 4 is coming out in mere months, i don't all in one is happening for 3, unfortunately. Each has a season pass of course...

That's a fantastic video, wow! Lots of great features mentioned looking forward to playing it eventually!

So after being disappointed with The Crew 2 I am thinking of picking up Forza Horizon 3 for my racing fix but I am wondering am I too late for this one and should I just wait till 4?

@Tasuki I don’t think you’re too late for Horizon 3, go for it!

I picked up Horizon 2 three months before Horizon 3 was to launch. It's never too later to jump into the series.

@Tasuki Just do it, you won't regret it! And if you can get a discount bundle with either one or both DLC expansions, then go for that one.

Just in case you want to know more about those, I'll just post their respective videos here once again:

And I don't want to spoil too much, but here is just a little bit of more in-depth gameplay of the Hot Wheels expansion, to give you a general idea of what to expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhHWT-95t4k

Anyone here try Nier Automata yet? I'm debating whether or not to double dip. I have it on PS4....I'm preferring to move my library to X1 for now....comparison shows graphical improvements on X from Pro are visible but minor, yet I gave it a spin last night, and it plays VERY different from what I pictured what with the shooting aspect....but it kind of "feels" like a Sony game to me. I'm curious how it "feels" on the X1 controller (and if it looks much better, because it kind of looks like a slightly polished FFX to me on the Pro, but I've heard even on PC it doesn't get much better ) Some games feel "Sony " to me in terms of camera and controlling right with parallel sticks....this may fit that bill.

@ThanosReXXX I think I figured out what became of Quantum Break. It looks like in addition to the 87GB game, there's a 79GB download that acts like DLC but is free, that is called Quantum Break Episodes Pack. I think they just moved the video into local DLC. Which makes sense, but does make for a roughly 170GB game install. Almost 80GB as a somewhat mandatory DLC patch is pretty brutal if you don't have absolute top shelf internet, so it kind of limits it to a subset of players that can touch it, but it's better than being gone I suppose. (in hindsight a game that required half of it to be streamed was probably not a wise design choice )

I gave Darksiders Warmastered edition a try from Game Pass.....it's interesting. So different from DS2 in more than just theme....the whole gameplay genre is different. Where II was a Zelda/Diablo-ish hybrid with 3rd person combat, 1 seems to be more Baynetta/DMC like as a game. Kind of shocking how different they are. I also had to laugh (I played DS2 on WiiU), I loaded up DS2: Deathfinitive as well....and it's still a stuttery, jerky mess all too often even on the 1X. How badly did they mess that game up in the dying breaths of THQ?

@Tasuki At least I'm not the only one! Horizon 3 is great, and I'm not even a racing fan, so it means something when I say that As for waiting for 4, it depends, do you like driving on the wrong side of the road with flat land, beaches and open skies of Oz, or driving on the wrong side of the road through the hilly English countryside?

I'm the sort that thinks "all racing games are the same" but Horizon to me feels enough of a video game that each "campaign" is really a unique campaign, despite no real story, it's worth seeing all the terrain. 4 coming out in Oct actually helped me decide to buy Game Pass. Previously I'd yawn through any coverage of any racing game, but I'm kind of addicted to 3

@NEStalgia played a bit of Nier, believe there was a beta or demo on the ps4. I really really enjoyed it but came at a insanely busy time with Horizon, Switch launch etc. Been meaning to go back to it, great that it's coming to the X1 as well.

In terms of Darksiders, played thru and 100% both on the ps3 and have both of the remaster as well. It is quite crazy how different they are. Seems the third is going to be more like the first from what we've been shown thus far. Solid games overall, not genre changers but good quality "AA" action games that are fun to invest a week or 2 into.

Glad the racing bug bit you, you have a lot of catching up to do lol! 😊

@redd214 Yeah it had dropped off the radar for me. Sadly I managed to buy it on a PSN sale for $30 3 weeks before I decided to get an XBox and move most of my library to it Sooo tempted to swap it, but maybe it feels at home on a Playstation anyway. I've heard it's not a terribly long game (despite being an RPG) so maybe there's less incentive to move it to XB. But it seems graphically ugly but cool in gameplay. I didn't expect a SHMUP on feet crossed with Bayonetta.

I loved DS2 and knew that 1 was strangely set in an apocalyptic NYC instead of a fantasy world (and it crossed into that world briefly) but it is truly weird how they're whole different games, genres, art styles, everything. I'd half expect DS3 to be an SRPG.

Haha yeah, I'm a casual racer for sure, but it definitely has me hooked for now! I wouldn't bank on any racing seats in my future though

@NEStalgia I started with 1 but yeah was quite a departure going from essentially an action/3rd person Metroidvania to a full on loot based action rpg lite. I had fun with both but thought 2 was overall a better game. Was really hoping the 3rd would be a co op diablo-esque beat em up where you could team up with 3 others each being one of the horseman. Oh well maybe that's part 4.

So the Blizzard Mountain DLC of Horizon 3 is 60% off with Gold Deals. Please can the Hot Wheels DLC be the same for next week?

@redd214 Yeah, I think Vigil originally intended one game for each of the horsemen. We've done War and Death, so now we need Fury and Strife's games now before we start grouping them together Though I still wonder how we swapped out Pestilence. I also hope the story starts being more coherent next time. It was a darned good Zelda-like puzzle dungeon game in II. Shame it was a one time deal.

@DarkRula It's weird that it's just Blizzard and not Hot Wheels (and not the season pass?!) on sale. MS does some things better than Sony but their handling of Forza DLC is just plain weird. Meanwhile the big car pack for Forza 7 is also on sale. Everything but Hot Wheels.

@JoakimZ @ThanosReXXX Thanks for the response,. I enjoy open world racing like The Crew 2 or Burnout Paradise over circuit racing. I like to be able to drive around and take the sites in in between races to help break up the monotony of circuit racing. I think I will be picking this up this weekend.

@NEStalgia I didn't 4 was coming to the game pass. Now I am really glad I picked that up.

@Tasuki All 1st party games as of Sea of Thieves earlier this year come to Game Pass at launch.

@Tasuki Yep! All 1st party Microsoft Game Studios games go right into Game Pass on release day starting with Sea of Thieves and State of Decay, so Horizon 4, Crackdown 3, We Happy Few (that game looks great but is waaaay to real for me to tolerate being in tat world....), Gears 5 I believe all go into Game Pass day 1. Presumably Halo Infinity and Fable 4 (if it's real) will too....if they ever release

@NEStalgia Yeah, they're somewhat different games, but for me personally, the same vibe stayed intact. And the art style isn't really all that different. Would also be quite hard to do, with the same artists working on it and all. What is different, is the setting and the gameplay, mostly, but the main gameplay mechanics are still roughly the same as well (other than combat, which is more dynamic in the second game, but I just see that as a natural evolution of said mechanics). Not a whole lot of mountain/wall-scaling in the second game anymore, which was traded in for more open spaces, but other than that, there's also still the same mechanics for boss fighting, closed chambers etc, etc.

And what you didn't get, apparently, is that the second game takes place in another dimension/an astral plane, where Death can become a physical entity. Except for the odd one out, most of the other "people" you meet, are actually also avatars that don't really have any physical presence on the terrestrial plane. It's fantasy interwoven with legends and Biblical tales, hence the whole "four Horsemen" theme running through all the games.

If you haven't finished the first, the story and switch of locale can be a bit weird, but in the bigger story it makes perfect sense. And if the game's style was so shockingly different, then that should also show in the "flashback to Death's episodes" cut scenes. And it absolutely doesn't: both games fit together quite well, except the second one simply has some improvements in gameplay and game mechanics. (niggles/bugs aside)

I have both games on two consoles: the first editions of both on the Xbox 360, And the normal version of the second one, and the Warmastered Edition of the first game on the Wii U.

Good to know about the Quantum Break solution. I was already wondering how they were going to provide for that in the future. But apparently, they think it's worth it, to support the game for the long run, which is both good and commendable. And now the game is back on my radar once again. In my mind, I already had visions of the game briefly fading in and out of black in places where a video should have been, and then just proceeding with the game, taking HUGE chunks out of the story as a whole.

But they probably thought that not supporting the game might create enough backlash for it to be more than worth it to make the effort to keep the game intact. Even though it wasn't really a big seller, so they could also have opted to let the game die a quiet death, somewhere in the near future....

Big download, though. In a perfect world, they would have just released the game as a three or four disc edition that contains the game on one, and the video on the two or three other discs. In that way, it'll be easier to preserve it as well. But they probably won't go that far. This was probably already quite the decision to make, but at least they did it.

Well done, Phil and consorts, I suppose...

@ThanosReXXX Character art style is the same, but world art style definitely is more cartoon/comic in II, while going a bit more "realistic" (but somewhat comic) in the first. Gameplay wise, the second was full-on Zelda type game-play along with the Diablo loot system. Platforming is fairly different between the two. I adore the second one. The first one so far I also like it, but it's amazing how different it is. It's truly a different genre even where there is some intersection in combat.

Yeah the download is prohibitive by far....just the video pack is bigger than the majority of full games even on the 1X! The only things I have bigger than it so far are the main game portion of itself by a few gig, Gears 4, Halo 5, Middle Earth Shadow of War, and Forza 7. Works for me but for a lot of people they probably will be watching those fades to black you have in your mind. I surely would have just a year ago. After like 4TB of downloads so far between the X and PS4Pro this month I guess I can't complain (Thank goodness I'm not on Comcast, I'd be paying $200 extra for my gaming this month ) XB can't afford to let an exclusive die off. There are so precious few of them

@Tasuki You're more than welcome. And for the near future: also welcome to the Forza Horizon addicts club...

And it doesn't get more open world than Forza Horizon: there are no limits, and there is no pressure to finish races, if you don't feel like it. One small, and enjoyable tip: be sure to completely dissect every area you find yourself in for the so-called "barn finds", which is basically a considerable number of hidden locations (contrary to race and festival locations, you only get ballpark directions), where you'll find unlockable vehicles.

These can simply be unlocked by using them to complete a given assignment with, which can vary from racing, speed trapping, jumping or anything else possible with a car. Once the objective is completed (successfully, obviously), the car/vehicle will be added to your roster.

Be sure to post your findings in this thread, once you've put a few hours in. Always interesting to hear about other people's findings, especially if they compare positively...

@NEStalgia Of course the world art is different: one is on Earth, and the other is in a different realm. On the second, they could basically go all out, and in the first, they could only do so much, most of which ended up being an apocalyptic, demon-infested version of Earth, but it still had to look like it regardless.

The main characters were drawn by the same artists, so it's a signature style. Different characters doesn't mean different style. Armor and weapons are clearly similar in style, and as such recognizable to be coming from the same hand that made the ones in the first game as well. Perhaps your view on things also comes from playing the games in the wrong order. That would more than likely instantly make the first game feel somewhat more restrictive, also because the combat is not as dynamic as in the second game.

That the video download for Quantum Break is so big, is no surprise to me: it probably contains both the full HD and the 4K video bundle, and in total, it consists of four episodes of around 22 minutes each, so that's probably more than enough material to account for the size of it.