Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@ThanosReXXX Fifty Shades of Thanos.

@NEStalgia O's to Infinity, and beyond...

@ThanosReXXX Yeah I ended up buying it before falling asleep. And its actually sold out now. There's still some bundles for that price but some are completely gone, including the one I bought.

Additionally, outside Amazon, I bought one month of Gold since they were selling it for around 50 cents, and used that to buy Lego Jurassic World and Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition on sale.

I think that's enough spending for the weekend... I already feel a bit woozy thinking about it.

Anyway, so I'm officially part of the xbox family now. And it also has the honor of being the first home console I actually buy for myself, with my own money.

@Yosheel Well, with that month of Gold, you can still also grab the freebies that are up, unless these titles don't interest you. Also be sure to check out the Marketplace on the console, and enter "free" or "demo" in the search bar. You'll be surprised how much stuff is available.

A large part of the free stuff has paid in-game content, but it doesn't disturb or hamper the gameplay if you stick to the free stuff only. Just takes longer to grind your character up to respectable levels, in most cases...

And there's quite a few demos on there as well, which is always nice to have a good "try before you buy" experience. Anyways, welcome to the club for real, and have fun with it.

P.S.

And keep an eye on cdkeys.com for those cheap 1 year Live Gold subscriptions. You may never know if they are going to be dropping those prices for Black Friday, or around Christmas, so always worth it to keep tabs on it every 2 - 3 weeks or so.

@Yosheel Oh, and the original Crackdown is also still available for free download, until the end of the month.

I'll look at the gold freebies. I kinda assumed they'd be automatic or something.

As an update, it seems my brother fell for it too. He just ordered the Forza bundle.

The gents at amazon will think I'm loaded, since we share the account.

@Yosheel Well, better share all that free game and demo stuff with your brother too, then.

And put this in your browser's favorites, so you can check out every month if it has something you might like.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/games-with-gold
If you can't buy/select games in that region, the page will automatically give you a pop-up asking you to change the region, so just use that link and see if it works, or change it to your own region.

And no, it's not automatic, but once you've got the Xbox One installed, scroll down on the home page, and you'll find Games with Gold there. Or you can simply sign up/sign in on that link I just gave you, and claim the free games from your internet browser.

I don't know if you and/or your brother have any credit cards, but if not, you can use PayPal. The free games also still need to be registered, and Microsoft uses either credit card or PayPal for that.

@NEStalgia Please stop using acronyms for everything! BD? Blu-ray Disc? Blue Dragon? And WoFF is... World of Final Fantasy, OK... RTB is real-time what? ATB? The DJ?

Hey, shouldn't you beat FFXIII before playing XXIII-2 AND Lightning Returns? Or are you talking about when you played them back in the day? Hum...

This is almost mandatory for you but I will use it too. What do you guys think about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided? I haven't played any but I have heard mixed opinions about the series. I don't ask about Human Revolution because you say that the Director's Cut is the good version and it's not backwards compatible and I don't have a 360 (or a PS3) anyway.

I also consider the Black Friday sale super good, the only games that are not hugely discounted are new games but FFXIII was a very nice surprise. On top of that they restored the uncompressed FMV and enhanced the games for X. Just wow. I need to beat the Kingdom Hearts already.

For once Resident Evil games are not included in a sale! I have them all, mind you. I was expecting to see Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection but it's resisting.

@Yosheel I was as excited when I bought the Xbox One X as I was when my parents gave me the N64, no joke.

@Yosheel Hey, congrats!!

Step. Up. Your. BOOM TEXTWALLING.

@Yosheel You know what? Since I'm on a roll, linking and tipping away, I'll save you the search for the Crackdown freebie as well. Here you go:
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/product/Crackdown/66acd000...

@BlueOcean Good luck trying to cure @NEStalgia of that particular ailment...

haha yeah, I got crackdown as soon as I heard it was free. But thanks for the link, I'll give it to my brother.

@Yosheel Kinda weird though, that it is Xbox One X-enhanced, but not Xbox One S-enhanced.
Well, the performance is probably better, but other than that, I didn't see much difference, and I've still got my Xbox 360 hooked up to my TV, so I can easily compare back and forth.

@Yosheel By the way: Crackdown is great fun in co-op, in case you didn't know yet, so you can complete the entire game together with your brother.

@ThanosReXXX Which of them? I must admit that I like @NEStalgia more now that I know him better.

@Yosheel Did your brother get the white Xbox One S Forza Horizon 4 bundle? Which one did you get??

@BlueOcean The acronym using.
I think the same can be said for several of us. We've all had our discussions/misunderstandings before, but now, we're all good.

@BlueOcean It will seem silly, but I got the Minecraft Holiday bundle... Partly because minecraft dlc is universal, so I can use the extra content on the switch, as well as the new xbox. The included minecoins will probably pay for another year of my online realm.

@NEStalgia I'm still too young for that!

@ThanosReXXX Acronyms abuse is bad, it reminds me of MK, are you talking about Mario Kart or Mortal Kombat (both very popular in the 90s)? I started playing Wolfenstein The New Order. It has 60 fps and dynamic resolution scaling up to 1080p. On Xbox One X seems to be running at 1080p all the time which is great, so even though some games are not X-enhanced, they run and look better on Xbox One X and future Xbox consoles.

EDIT:
@Yosheel Is that the white Xbox One S or the Minecraft Limited Edition console?

@BlueOcean Haha, Hey, imagine the textwalling if I didn't use acronyms

ATB = Active Time Battle (the actual name for the battle system used in FFVII, FFVIII FFXII, FFXIII, WoFF. I mean it's actually called ATB in the game, you have and ATB gauge and everything. I just made up RTB though - Real Time Battle, for Lightening Returns (LR), since it's more real time than active time.

Well I played most of XIII back in the day, so I wanted to check out what the sequels were like in advance, despite wanting to play XIII to true completion first. I already knew the story from trying to figure out XIII's story (and it still makes no sense even when you read it, so I'm good ) Just playing the first hour or so of each to get a feel for them. When I actually play, I'll go in order.

Deus Ex: I'm biased. I love the series. Always have. The Warren Spector PC original is a bonified classic. Gameplay doesn't hold up but it's classic. I half-way love Invisible War. It was badly hampered by constraining it to fit on the OG XBox, and really should have been PC exclusive at that time. It wasn't an amazing game but somehow I can't hate it. Still, it's the DX nobody talks about for a reason. I'm REALLY disappointed the series is on "indefinite hiatus."

Human Revolution was a really solid reboot/prequel, and a classic all its own. It has two problems: Ugly graphics smeared with a too-heavy gold filter, and fudged up boss battles for Stealth characters because they outsourced those, and instead of patching all this for free, Squeenix re-sold the game as a new edition.

Mankind Divided doesn't live up to Human Revolution. It's a great game, and improves stealth mechanics, but the pacing, story, and flow is kind of "middle of trilogy" syndrome, with the conclusion on hiatus. I'd still recommend it though, especially for a few bucks. I mean it's not Invisible War....that would be a questionable recommendation The one caveat as an X owner is: It and Mass Effect: Andromeda are I think the only two games where PS4 Pro is the "best place to play" - It released in the year after the Pro, before the X, and flopped in sales, so they made a Pro patch but never made an X patch. As a result the game runs at 900p meant for the OG XBox One, but runs in checkerboard 4k with higher res textures on Pro. Both versions look fairly decent though, but my next playthrough will probably be on Pro for that reason (with a Brook adapter to use my Elite! )

Director's Cut: It actually is BC, but physical only, no digital purchase. If you haven't played it and don't mind physical, I'd strongly recommend you buy it anyway, used. Also, you have a WiiU, and Director's Cut was originally meant as a WiiU exclusive (that makes heavy use of the GamePad, so that might be an option too.)

If you still want it on XBox, though, the standard edition is BC digitally, and it's on sale for only a few bucks.

Story-wise the order is: Mankind Divided, Human Revolution, ??? (Unmade sequel), Original Deus Ex (PC only, very dated design, amazing in its day), DX Invisible War (The finale. I never asked for that. No one did.)

If you've never played it, if you like western RPGs, and/or stealth-action games, I definitely recommend either buying both for dirt cheap on the sale (even Deluxe with DLC is peanuts), or buy MD, and grab HR physically or for WiiU.

I still have the WiiU version but I'm not inclined to connect the WiiU again for now. Plus I do have my save files from years ago still in tact for standard edition, so that's incentive to continue with the standard one.

It's too good a game to let the graphics and broken boss battles prevent you from playing at all! But physically, you can get the "better" version both on X1 and WiiU if it doesn't need to be digital (I own the base game physically on 360, Director's Cut on WiiU....so I was really aiming for digital now, regardless of the version.)

@BlueOcean I know, but both me and Yosheel have the Xbox One S, so that's why I was wondering why Crackdown is only labeled as Xbox One X-enhanced, while performance does also seem to be smoother on the S, except there's little to no graphical difference, far as I myself can tell, switching back and forth between the two consoles.

@Yosheel Too young for Text walls or for S&M Professionals?

@BlueOcean Awww, shucks