Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@Zuljaras I love Fable too (Fable 4 should be in development) and they have acquired and founded first-party studios so more first-party output besides Forza is a given. Backwards/forwards compatibility, cross-buy, etc. sold me the (recent) Xbox concept besides the better controller and hardware.

@NEStalgia Yeah, tell me about it. Even in my line of work, I've met plenty of paranoid people among the (potential) customers we'd approach on a daily basis.

I've actually been trained to use that paranoia, or at least the buying reasons therein, to attach the USP's to, which will entice people to sign up for whatever it is that I am selling them.

But no hard feelings, I wasn't offended or anything. Just gave my view on things, is all.

By the way: I found out that I was a bit too positive about GameCube consoles sold by Lukie Games. They're a bit more expensive than $50...

Oh, and just out of curiosity, I also looked up what a physical copy of Black costs:
https://www.lukiegames.com/Black-Xbox-Game.html
So, a bit more expensive then. That would normally not be an issue for me, but now, with the mandatory installs and disc needing to be in the drive while playing, I found it more convenient to just re-buy the game digitally, even though I still own the physical version.

And in closing, I'll just add a Let's Play, to show off some in-game footage, might help you make up your mind one way or the other...

P.S.

Dead or Alive censored on PlayStation? Wtf? And why is it even on there?

@ThanosReXXX Well, it's the least Dutch place there is, if that makes any sense. But I usually avoid the tourist spots anyway, and that's pretty much the reason why I don't visit Amsterdam very often.

@Zuljaras X1 exclusives surprised me. I felt the same as you (I'm not a long time Sony fan, I skipped the early era and was Nintendo-centric, joined in with PS3 and some late PS2 play) but I've picked up all the XBox exclusives and some of them surprised me how fun they are. They're not "Famous Franchise" type stuff like Nintendo and Sony but they're fun experimental games that remind me what I loved about PC gaming back in the golden age of the late 90's early 00's. Things like ReCore, Sunset Overdrive (you can see where a lot of early Spiderman gameplay came from with Overdrive, Insomniac's prior game to Spidey and R&C reboot.) I'm also not a racing fan, but I have to say, if you get the X....try out Forza Horizon. I'm not explicitly a racing fan, but that series turned me into a Horizon fan. If you ever had fun with the Sega racers in the arcades back in the 90's....there's a certain magic to it.

Sony has the hit blockbusters, but XBox kind of carries the Sega legacy well, not franchises or blockbusters but a lot of cool stuff that you'd start pumping quarters into if you walked past it in an arcade. Sony exclusives are the meat and potatoes....but sometimes I end up overfilling on the pretzels, dip, and ice cream before I ever get to the meat and potatoes.... It's one of those things nobody in their right mind would actually buy a console for those things...but once you have it....you can't put it down... They're not the reason to buy the machine, but definitely look into some of those "b-list" exclusives if you decide to get the box. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised just how fun and addictive they can be despite not being those epic experiences that you dig into for a month straight. I didn't think much of them either until I owned them. I can say with certainty, ScreamRide is not a game you would ever see from Sony. It seems like some novelty you'd see with special physical inputs in an arcade. Weird stuff from Frontier (the makers of Elite Dangerous.)

Fable, is in hiatus with LionHead having been shut down and Peter Molyenaux vanishing into the mists. But big rumors say 4 is happening, and the buyout of Obsidian and inExile kind of tells me it is. You buy two big names in RPGs and have an underused RPG IP that fans are begging for....can't be a coincidence.

I still love my PS4 games though. I treat them as kind of special treats now, while Switch and X1 make up the "every day machines."

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, I mean I deal with a lot of pretty secure industries etc, so it's understandable, but it does make for a way of thinking that might seem neurotic to the outside world.

Haha, what is it about Black that sets it apart exactly? LPs don't give a very good feel for that.

And yeah, with Sony censoring virtually everything these days, I believe there's been some controversy over DoA6. They've gone weirdly Nintendo at a time while Nintendo is putting Senran "Pedo" Kagura on Japanese Directs.... They censored some costumes in Xtreme 3 Scarlett, and presumably similar costumes will be censored in 6 (or so the rumors go.) Granted, I'm not sure those soft porn costumes really should be in the game or not, but it's not the place of the console vendor to decide that. Sony's gone back to 1994 and done the whole SNES MK green blood thing all over again. I'm surprised PS4 got the Night Trap remaster.... Apparently they moved their HQ to the US and the political correctness crowd has taken over after Treehouse finally shook them loose.

Edit: But unlike Nintendo, Sony's actually applying the censorship to Japan as well! You might find the Japanese developers favoring XBox from now on, and the Japan market taking the hint, at least the small portion that isn't all-Nintendo. Maybe by next year 500 people a month will buy an XBox in Japan! That would be like a 700% increase in sales!

@Octane Yeah, that makes sense. Must also be why I didn't have much trouble feeling right at home here.
And the beach isn't that far away either, so if I ever miss that, I can just take a train and be there in 30 minutes.

So, are you still in the Netherlands, or what? If so, it might be entertaining to meet for a chat and a drink, over here of course. I know plenty of places that aren't touristic or busy at all, if that's what bothers you.

And if you're only visiting every now and then, I'd say visit Amsterdam in (early) Spring time. Not nearly as busy as it is in the Summer time, so plenty of room to breathe without all the tourist hassle...

Haarlem is also nice. Don't know if you've ever been there, but I went to school there, so I know my way around there pretty well.

@ThanosReXXX The new update automatically installs the Microsoft Rewards app.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I know what you mean. Let's Plays, or trailers are fine for a first impression, or a partial idea of what to expect, but they can never relay the actual feeling that a game could give you. And besides that, YouTube still uses horrible compression methods, so even 1080p/60fps and above videos will always look inferior compared to seeing them running first hand on actual hardware.

As for what sets Black apart, say vs the other first person shooter franchises we know and love/hate, is that it's more of an arcade shooter. The Forza Horizon of shooters, if you will. The only other game I know that comes close to transferring that same feeling is Bulletstorm, another over the top shooter, which even goes several steps further. But that's an Xbox 360 title, and it's clear to see that more was possible by that time. Anyway, moving on to trying to explain Black...

I suppose it's a bit difficult to put your finger on exactly, but it really has that Criterion feel, if that makes any sense to you. And to be more specific: it is as if they took the feel you'll get from their early Burnout games on GameCube/PS2 to this shooter, and managed to give it that signature Criterion feel.

They sort of translated that satisfying car crash element into satisfying building destruction and enemy kills. Also, the weapons feel like they have a real weight to them. Not as in them feeling heavy or sluggish, but more like really meaty, both while shooting as well as with reloading and so on. As you can see and hear in the video, some elements have aged a bit, but once you're past that first level, which takes only 6 minutes, perhaps 10 if you're a less skilled player, then it really starts to grow on you.

Almost every building or vehicle you see, can be destroyed, which doesn't only give it the fun side of that Hollywood action-movie feel, but it also means that you can plan your strategy around it: like picking off enemies one by one? Simply sneak up on them and finish them off, or you could just take a sniper rifle or an RPG, and blow up the car or tank they're hiding behind, or crash down a building or a story of a building on top of them, to take them down from a distance...

@Grumblevolcano Ah, okay, didn't know that. I installed it manually, just before the update.
But regardless, I'd still think it's worth a mention, seeing as having it installed automatically, doesn't mean that people will use it, if they don't know what good it'll do them. And it's free store credit, so that alone would be more than enough reason to share that information with other Xbox One owners, right?

Wow Castlevania LOS2 is $40 as a BC game. That's So Konami!

Also, PSA, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a completely broken mess on X1X. I can't get it to start pass "Press A to start". it crashes to the home screen every time. I got it on sale in July, it crashed when I ran it in august. I redownloaded it and I think it worked once....I tried it again yesterday, same thing. Game flat out doesn't start. That may be the first time I've experienced that on a console short of Just Cause 3 pre-patch on PS4 that would crash at the end of the prologue mission reliably. But they patched that. This has no patch.

@NEStalgia I am also a "casual" racing games player and I love Horizon 3 & 4 and all those "under radar" Xbox games. When I bought the console I didn't expect much apart from Rare Replay and now I can't decide what to play when I turn it on, seriously. Online game? Retro stuff? Something on Game Pass? Latest X-enhanced purchase? But it's true, from the outside everybody thinks that Xbox has nothing, myself included.

Like Nintendo before it, Sony is now the prudish company. Since I got the PS4 in 2013 I noticed that Sony doesn't treat European customers as well as North American customers which kind of surprised me after being a bit spoiled by Nintendo with European limited editions for Europe and people complaining about Reggie for good reason. Even Sony's customer service and store is worse here than in US for what I know. I thought it was just me but I read more people were complaining about it too.

EDIT: LOS2? PSA? WT*?

@BlueOcean Just for fun, you should check out the 'free' and 'demo' sections of Xbox Marketplace,
you'll go bananas with what's on offer. With that selection alone, you could keep yourself busy for at least a year, and even longer if you don't play every day or even less, like me.

Mind you, in the 'free' section, there's quite a few games with in-game purchases, but from those, a pretty decent part isn't necessary. Like the by now even on this site infamous Warframe. You can play the entire game without ever spending any real world money on it. It just makes progress go a bit slower than with buying upgrades, but other than that, it plays exactly the same.

@BlueOcean Yeah, it's weird how the access to the older games really changes the whole "feel" of a console. PS4 does have some through the PS Classics re-releases, but that feels more like a Virtual Console than just one unified library. It's a subtle thing but it makes a big difference in how it feels to use it. Maybe because most of those are just emulators and not running with any enhancements. Granted if I were physical-only on both boxes they may feel more samey to me. X1's far superior handling of digital gives it a bigger edge if going digital versus physical.

I know what you mean about not knowing what to play. I have that problem too. I look down the list at all the games and think "I want to play all of them. Right now!" PS4 likes to hide my games from me. I have a group that ends up located behind other apps and things that ran, and I forget the whole category exists on there because it's always off-screen and out of sight. Though, without folders, Switch gets the losers prize here....all my digital games scattered randomly based on the order I last ran them. Not even alphabetical...just scattered in more or less random places. The interface on Switch is better than PS4, but the organization of digital games is even worse. Ok, I take that back. The Switch home screen layout is worse, being random, but at least the "show all" screen cleanly shows me all even if they're randomly sorted. PS4's screen is randomly sorted, split into installed and not installed, and is on a busy background with weird font sizes, and I have to scroll down to "purchased" which is like the 8th option just to see the list of actual purchased games in my library.

LOS2 (that's how it's actually presented on the MS Store.) I don't remember what it actually stands for myself. Lord of Shadows I think?

"PSA" I guess is an American colloquialism, "Public Service Annoucnement" The Internet tells me you may know them as "PIFs", but that doesn't carry quite the same internet relevance as "PSAs" Here, people will use "Just a PSA...." (usually an a passive-aggressive d-bag middle manager sort of way) in verbal speech, not just an internet acronym this time

Well, I play only one adventure-type game at once, it's a rule to get fully immersed in them that I recommend. So right now that adventure is a RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles X, that I love in spite of not explaining me everything, not even the manual. When I beat my final Wii U game I have to decide between the last Kingdom Hearts games on PS4 before playing KH III on Xbox early next year or any existing Xbox One choice like Final Fantasy XIII, Crackdown or the next Halo, Assassin's Creed, Dead Space or Fable in my backlog, a consequence of only having a Wii last generation; or BioShock, Crash Bandicoot (I completed 1), The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy XV, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Ori and the Blind Forest... In between I get distracted by Fortnite, Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 3 and 4, Killer Instinct and Street Fighter and I want to check State of Decay 1 and 2 now that it's fixed. So yeah, nothing to play on Xbox.

@DarthNocturnal https://www.dlcompare.com/games/100000138/buy-no-mans-sky-key

It's a price comparison site for ALL digital downloads for all platforms, so I'm pretty sure you'll also find the other games you want. (provided they are available of course)

@DarthNocturnal Ah, okay. I always thought US codes or worldwide codes are also valid in Canada, much like NTSC format.

@DarthNocturnal No problem, man. You're welcome. But that's a shame indeed. Guess that leaves you with the official roads as your only option:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/p/no-mans-sky/bqvqtl3pch05?ac...

And of course, you could always hunt for discounted Xbox Gift Cards, seeing as you could then use the digital points to buy the games from the Marketplace on your console.

Stores like EB Games also sell these cards, although not often at a discount:
https://www.ebgames.ca/SearchResult/QuickSearch?productType=4...

For gift cards, I'd keep an eye on sites like cdkeys.com and the like.

@DarthNocturnal Why do you want a code? You can tell them that there is an option which is "buy as a gift" on the console and on the website. They pay and send the code by email. I mean, it's not romantic but unless they give you a physical game it's not romantic either way.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, I still am, born and raised. If I'm ever in the area I'll let you know. Beaches are miserable over here though. I prefer the Mediterranean

@DarthNocturnal They can always use for account and buy games. Least romantic thing ever. Where have the Nintendo 64 boxes and wrapping paper gone?

Get 3 months of Gold for 10 bucks!

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-live-gold/CFQ7TTC0K5DJ...