Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@NEStalgia Those Sonic Boom 3D games are rubbish and not even made by Sega, I haven't even bothered. Sonic Adventure, 2, Unleashed, Heroes, The Secret Rings, Colours... They all have some positive things... I could not beat Heroes because of the camera and awful level design.

This is the statue:

https://www.first4figures.com/collectibles/banjo-kazooie/banj...

@BlueOcean If you like Unleashed, you might be ok with Forces

That statue is awesome!

@NEStalgia I didn't play the full Unleashed game because I played at my friend's (I will get it when it's backwards compatible) but what I really mean is that the only game that got it right is Generations LOL. Sonic Forces looks technically fine and even the camera seems right but they say that the level design is really bland...

Yeah, I didn't actively dislike it when I played it....it wasn't bad in any particular way, I just kind of got bored and moved onto other things without finishing it.

I will not buy it now, I think.

Any survival horror fans should consider The Evil Within 2 (it's really cheap on the Xbox store now). I also liked the first one but I admit that it's too hardcore. The Evil Within 2 gives you a chance to heal almost everywhere while the first game not only is more difficult but there aren't many healing items, it makes Resident Evil Remake easy and generous. Anyway, both The Evil Within and its sequel have several difficulty modes and are worth playing. The first one is more linear and intense (and the DLC is good), the second one is more open but has better gameplay and more developed characters.

@DarthNocturnal @NEStalgia LOL sorry y'all, not a car woman. I can discuss motorcycles till I'm blue in the face but a car...yeah, um I've been riding my Toyota Tacoma single cab since college...and before that was a Ford Focus...so yeah. Which also is why I don't buy forza but I'll run down motoGP in a second.

Sunset Overdrive has just been announced for PC.

@Ryu_Niiyama Well, I have the "joy" of having like a million luxury and supercar dealers around here, so nothing in Forza actually seems particularly special to me....a McLaren, Porche or Ferrarri is just another Chevy 'round these here parts. BMWs & Merceedes are more or less Plymouths. Every traffic light looks like a Forza starting grid.

You learn to know the pricing of this stuff when you loathe everyone around you. For a mil or three you can buy pretty much anything in Horizon. For 100 mil, you can buy most of the things in Horizon at once. or just buy the dealership which sounds a lot smarter.

Why do I have a xbone?

@BlueOcean Yeah, I'd say stick with Generations. That's pretty much what I said in my review of the game.

What makes this whole Forza Ultimate for hundred million funny is that FIFA 19 Ultimate is also listed for that price. How many footballers can I get for that?

@Ryu_Niiyama XBox is just a cheap, clean, quiet, low power consumption, easy to use, easy to maintain DirectX Windows machine.

I'm pretty sure that was the whole stated point of it back in 2000.....

@NEStalgia meh its a mild complaint really. I mean on one hand as a PC gamer this is great because I dont have to shell out money for a console from MS at this point from now on ....well except NHL but that is because EA needs to fall down a well.

We are really gettting to that windows ecosystem that MS has been striving for since forever. Which is great. On the other hand though its like...the buyer's remorse shows up and hits me in the eye.

I'm going to have to look and see what games I have that are exclusive to the console.

Id like to appeal to internet group think for a moment. For FH4 add ons, as a game pass subscriber, would you guys buy ultimate now, buy the add ons pack as dlc for gp, or do neither and wait for deep discounts at a future date?

Ok so the sales started, and I can get the S for about 195.70 right now. (nearly 50% off)

I'm not sure if that's gonna be the best price, or it could go down over the weekend...

Somewhat churlish to criticise a sale, but the levels of discount seem a little lower than normal - possibly due to the number of recent titles included? I might hold off for anything substantial (namely FH4) until the xmas sale?

Only thing I am very tempted to pick up is the original RDR but i’m in two minds whether i’ll play it for more than an hour; I finished #2 this evening and have such massive affection for it now i’d like to go straight into the sequel and see how well knit together they actually are, but at the same time I also have a colossal hatred of the game (#2) due to some utterly laborious & dreadful design choices. The two things swaying me to buy it are 1) How good the ‘X enhancements apparently are & 2) Have seen two comments/articles now saying that although controls are still clunky, the original game is more fun overall as a lot of the abhorrent systems are streamlined/less obtrusive.

@NEStalgia I was contemplating that very question (Forza H4) earlier today and couldn’t make my mind up so I’ve held off - rationale being i’m unlike to play it a lot right now & if anything it will only get cheaper between now and the inevitable xmas sales? Naturally the choice is yours

With you on Hitman - I’d just love to know how much WB were involved with this version rubbish? I’m so very sceptical of them after some of the stuff they pulled with Batman & LotR. Saw the latest Mordor game is heavily discounted in the sale and yet i’m still apathetic towards it after how they crippled it themselves. I guess a lot of us here are lucky to be of an age where we’re not crippled by the ‘must play day 1 else FOMO’ feelings - there are so many games now that I can happily boycott and not really feel i’m missing out all too much.

I don’t think I was as up to speed on people’s opinions and such when FFX released; guess i’ve only seen people’s reaction of late, especially when the remakes came out and people were so excited. I remembered being bored to tears first time out and whilst admittedly enjoying a better experience when I replayed a year or so ago it still pales next to others in the series.

Glad you’re enjoying ‘the XIIIs’, you almost tempted me to dip my toes back in their murky waters but remembered I have XC2 sat waiting for me! Let us know how you get on with them as you get further in, be quite interested as I definitely don’t hate XIII, just Hope & Vanille (although neither are a patch on Lymle if any of you ever played Star Ocean 4?)!

Have you given up on RDR2 now btw? Sounds like your FF love in may have taken precedence?

@ThanosReXXX Absolution is the ‘weird sheep’ of the Hitman series for me, it seemed to be following gaming trends of the time and wanted to be more 3rd person action game than a Hitman game. I won’t say I flat out hated it but if they’d made the next title in a similar vein it’s very likely I would have avoided it! I think the latest two (not that i’ve played 2 yet) are the closest to Blood Money and I certainly had a lot of fun so hope you get the same experience!

It’s a weird thing with the replies, normally I don’t ever really engage with people on the net at all but there’s nice people & good discussion here so just ‘not replying’ seemed rude. A bit like adding the @‘s was clearly pointless - irrespective, thanks for your patience and so long as you’re all aware that if I suddenly go silent on you over the next few weeks it’s nothing personal then all’s good!

I’m going to end there for now, writing this on a phone and i’m going cross eyed trying to format and read back etc! You can often tell i think when i’ve written on phone or laptop; formatting, punctuation & more importantly flow are often much worse/more difficult when typing on a tiny keyboard!

@NEStalgia If it were me, I'd wait for a discount not involving Game Pass, so I could actually OWN the game, and then go for the most complete bundle that they offer, much like the discount bundle that they offered for the Xbox One version of Forza Horizon 2 a month or so ago.

@Yosheel That's a REALLY low price man, I don't know if even I would dare to wager a bet that it's going to get even cheaper, better get it while it's hot...

@BrainOfGrimlock Haha, no worries, man. All in your own time. I'm a reasonably relaxed and patient person, used to playing the long game. Comes with the territory of being an IT-related Sales & Marketing professional. And I've got the memory of an elephant, so we're all good.

You get all the cars and gameplay bonus rewards with the Ultimate Edition so it makes sense to activate it as soon as possible. Plus, the expansions are included and the first one is out this year.

Because you are a Game Pass subscriber, it makes more sense to buy the Ultimate Add-ons Bundle only, the normal edition of the game is included in Game Pass. This way you get the Ultimate Edition by buying only the DLC bundle (which is 10% off for Game Pass subscribers). If you really want to own the base game you can do it in the future when it's cheaper. This is what I did.

Forza Ultimate Add-ons Bundle will cost you $45, £36 in UK and €45 in EU. With this and Game Pass you have absolutely everything. It's worth reminding that Forza Horizon 3 Ultimate Edition did not include the two expansions, so Forza Horizon 4 is far more generous.

@BrainOfGrimlock See my answer above about Forza Horizon 4. There is an article and video on Eurogamer/Digital Foundry about the first Red Dead Redemption, if you want to check them out. I was interested in RDR2 before I heard about boring sections and awkward controls so I won't pay a big amount without trying it first. A demo would sell me the game or not, but I guess that Rockstar doesn't care about the undecided buyers. I have many other games anyway. I haven never played Hitman but I got Blood Money with Games with Gold so that is my opportunity to try the series. Is it good?

@Ryu_Niiyama Yeah, I mean the original promise of XBox was bringing "Windows to the living room space" (stated goal) so it shouldn't be surprising that today that's literally what it is As a former PC gamer that couldn't stand the cost and time consumption of PC gaming any longer, a "pre-done, cheap, gaming PC as a VCR" is what I dreamed the XBox would become back in 2001 even though OG XB didn't really get there, and as a PC gamer at the time I resented (coming right off KotR) that Mass Effect, Halo, and Jade Empire were console exclusives. It was a nice day when they came to PC. The new version feels like Microsoft's rendition of Valve's doomed Steambox, except you're locked to the MS store instead of locked to Steam. It feels like I never left PC, except I have an extra 10 hours a week not spent cursing pieces of fiberglass and parsing boot logs!

@BrainOfGrimlock The discounts are great (a lot of prices match or beat prior sales.) Yeah the new games are "only" 20% off, but hey, Amazon doesn't offer that anymore and it's digital.... Not the best deal that will ever be for them, but not bad for 8-week or less old games.

Deus Ex: MD for like $5 is both sad and funny. I fear we'll never ever get digital Human Revolution Director's Cut Man that OG launch is horribly ugly.....the game is amazing but it's one of the few games the visuals are bad enough I don't want to sit through it again. The remaster eased up on the "everything is shades of gold" filter, and made textures and lighting that looked at least better than Halo 1 original. Square....because of course.

RDR1 on the X looks great. I mean it doesn't look like RDR2, or anywhere close, but if you boot RDR1 before you boot RDR2 (I did it the day before 2 released) it looks almost like a current gen game. The assets are notably low poly comparatively of course, but the picture looks great overall. I was impressed with how good it looked on X. Shame they can't fix the meme-ready running animation too.

Hitman: Oh given their own releases I think it's safe to say Warner is very involved with the version rubbish. I still can't figure out what version is what of Shadow of War....and I own one of them. Though only Squeenix manages to be more confusing (seriously, until Royal (which still doesn't include everything) figuring out FFXV needed a flow chart on the order of Smash conspiracy theorists just to add to cart.)

I have a weirder gaming addiction - I buy the games day 1, play them for an hour or two, then go back to old ones I won't keep doing that, I've just been enjoying it with this years killer wave of games. Fallout 76 kind of killed the party there... Then again, I waited like 8 years for FFX-2 and I still missed the sale by 3 days. For games like Horizon, Game Pass is fun: Try it free day one, then wait for a sale.

FFX: I think praise for FFX is kind of like Praise for Ocarina. It's only the best Zelda if it's the one you started with. Everyone else knew ALttP was the best all along, but there's always more people who joined later than earlier, so the Ocarina people drown out the ALttP people. Similarly I think a lot of people started with a PS2 and FFX so it's "the best" and was visually much more spectacular. Prior to that it was VII that was all the rage, because a big pool of people joined in with PSX and VII. The lifers already knew IV and VI were the ones to beat, and the dedicated fans know IX is the masterpiece that shall never be topped.. X isn't bad by any stretch, it's arguably the last "true" FF.....but I'd argue IX was, which was kind of the point of IX, a grand sendoff for the old ways before the PS2 hardware and a direction shift. X was the last of the more traditional experiences, but it was the first of the new direction ,and you can see its influence in XIII and XV. It was linear, it had Blitzball, it deamphasized towns (but didn't eliminate them like XIII), and the roles of summons were...odd. It gets better mid-way. I like it more than I did before, but IMO the PSX and SNES FF games were the "real" FF games, and BD/Octo is mostly what's carrying that torch. And WoFF. it may be a Pokemon clone but it seriously has that IV-IX feel. The dungeon music....it's just "right."

XC2 waits for no one. Play XC2. Play Torna. Fantastic games, definitely put them first. (Unless you hate the Xeno formula....it's still the Xeno formula.) Plus Torna's the better design from Nomora

• @BlueOcean BTW, FFXIII-Lightening Returns really impresses me so far. It's very different from the first two, and feels a lot more coherent. Snow somehow got cool! And Hope....ok he's still a little dweeb but I don't want to murder him anymore! The player has agency....the player can move around. There are ladders. You can explore (haven't found treasures yet), talking to NPCs requires pressing A! Not just triggering cutscenes! Combat is extremely different. It's a kind of real-time...RTB instead of ATB. You get two gauges that charge, and two attack stances. You still try to stagger and attack but a real time button mapped set of attacks/blocks/perfect-blocks (almost MH meets Type-0? Why not, Gran Pulse always wanted to be MH.) makes it unique, dynamic, fun, not really a turn based RPG....maybe closer if anything to latter Dragon Age games. But different. XIII is enjoyable, after the fact, as a cool experience, if deeply flawed game. XIII-2 seems to fix a lot of problems and turn XIII into a "it's mostly like FF now more or less", XIII-LR is just a plain cool game, that's different from everything else. I'm ok with XIII and XIII-2 being a prologue for the very cool LR.
• I just discovered a cool forum feature. Adding a plus at the start, I believe, seems to indent a paragraph and make it a bulleted list!

RDR2: I'll get back to it. Someday. Nier, Starlink, MHGU/World kind of pulled me in in the mean-time along with FF. And Smash and Pokemon soon....wow.

Hitman: Yeah they did that with Splinter Cell: Conviction, too. All the stealth games were going action in the mid to late 7th gen. It was annoying. They righted both ships in the 8th (but sadly Splinter Cell still bombed.)

It's fun that we have another text waller here to annoy Blue & Redd This thread is somehow the gathering of text wallers. It must be something about XBox...which is weird considering last gen XBox owners seemed incapable of expressions longer than "dooood"

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, Ultimate Edition is buy to own, but it's "only" 20% off.... I'm sure it will go down more at some point. Just not sure if it's before the expacks come out or not. The trailer hyped me for pack1

Also, you really still need business cards listing you as an "S&M Professional"

@NEStalgia Well, there's also three X'es in my gamer profile, so in that respect, it would be a nice fit.
And the Infinity Glove as well...