Xbox Series S/X: Thread 03

[fishbowlhead]

So 3rd person adventure, action then. Wont be groundbreaking but should be a good quality solid game at least.

[Lebowski]

Crystal Dynamics have been drafted in to aid development of Perfect Dark III according to Eurogamer

Oh dear, this is gonna be using the same engine as Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy isnt it, so we're gonna get a third person action adventure from a franchise that really shouldn't exsist and that nobody is really that bothered about these days.

[nonny]

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/24/22691196/xbox-new-edge-browser-chromium-release

New Edge browser update is now rolling out officially.

[Neon Ignition]

Halo Infinite test gameplay:

[wheelaa]

Just had a couple of hours on this.

First impression...dog****.

[nonny]

Just had a couple of hours on this.

First impression...dog****.

What don't you like about it? I only managed to install it last night but from what I've seen on YouTube overnight it looks great.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I've hopped around the tinterweb to gauge opinions. From what I gather, if you are an Xbox fan or a Halo fan, you love it. If you are customed to playing faster paced FPS online, it's a bit stiff.

[nonny]

Yeah I think that's fair, personally I love Halo big team battle (less so the 4v4 arena stuff) so this looks right up my alley.

They're clearly going for a nostalgic reimagining here so I doubt it'll convert people if you don't like the previous sandbox and style.

I'll hopefully get to play it myself later though I'm currently dealing with a sick toddler so it's not looking great at the moment.

[wheelaa]

Looks poor.

Sounds awful. Gun sounds wtf...

Gameplay is woeful. Movement is ok, that's it. Gunplay is poor, no weight to it, no impact, no meat, no oomph.

(I'll concede my Halo PvP tastes are slighty unusual eg I really hate 3 PvP, whereas Reach is in my top 2 FPS PvP.)

Less to do with the gameplay, and more on the dress sim garbage that games have become...

Battle pass - I think these are dog**** by nature. Only being able to progress it through challenges is poor.

And hand in hand with BP dress sim dross...the usual MT route...buy a BP, pay to progress the BP, pay for XP boosts, pay to reroll objectives, buy dresses direct etc. Sure, all optional, but this already seems like another half baked game, gameplay wise, but fully baked greed wise.

Edit - I guess I could touch on the mm...but that might be rather unfair given this is just a tech test or whatever, but it did feel like a constant sweatfest against no lifes, and tbh I had quite a few 'what killed me and how' deaths.

[nonny]

Looks poor.

Sounds awful. Gun sounds wtf...

Gameplay is woeful. Movement is ok, that's it. Gunplay is poor, no weight to it, no impact, no meat, no oomph.

(I'll concede my Halo PvP tastes are slighty unusual eg I really hate 3 PvP, whereas Reach is in my top 2 FPS PvP.)

Less to do with the gameplay, and more on the dress sim garbage that games have become...

Battle pass - I think these are dog**** by nature. Only being able to progress it through challenges is poor.

And hand in hand with BP dress sim dross...the usual MT route...buy a BP, pay to progress the BP, pay for XP boosts, pay to reroll objectives, buy dresses direct etc. Sure, all optional, but this already seems like another half baked game, gameplay wise, but fully baked greed wise.

Edit - I guess I could touch on the mm...but that might be rather unfair given this is just a tech test or whatever, but it did feel like a constant sweatfest against no lifes, and tbh I had quite a few 'what killed me and how' deaths.

Fair enough. I've only just scratched the surface, I managed 3x rounds one on each of the training grounds maps against bots whilst my daughter was in bed.

I think the graphics and audio are decent and inline with the series this far. All of the weapons feel familiar enough but have noticed some have alternate fire modes?

Biggest challenge I've had is getting used to the equipment, in particular the grapple hook. You can now traverse the map just using that and it makes it feel almost like Titanfall in some cases. That for me is no bad thing, I was all over Titanfall back in the day.

Bots seem really good from my initial play. Smart enough to be a decent challenge for me anyway.

Don't really have an opinion on the battle pass and rewards but it was expected given this is free to play when it hits. At least the battle passes have no expiry and you can unlock everything from general play and challenges.

I don't know what else to say. I'm enjoying it from my limited playing time but I really want to try big team battle, specifically the vehicles and open sandbox... That's just my thing with Halo as the 4on4 modes are more for sweaty elitist skills I don't own myself.

[nonny]

https://xboxclips.co/nonny-gb/719893cf-ec8f-4610-9dd1-3c6f85453d12

Me faffing around like a noob with the grapple hook.

[wheelaa]

Interesting. I found the bots to be a walkover. Slayer matches won 50-0, 50-1, with 50-2 being the worst (I was one of the deaths haha).

I'm going to try and approach this with a more open mind today. It will be hard. I've really not followed HI at all. This is my first flight. Prior to yesterday I'd probably only seen 10 mins of PvP video (2-3 mins of which was some of NI's video above). I had thought, to my delight, that this was looking like Reach 2.0. Instead, so far, I'm feeling Halo 3 1.5. (That's on me, but it was still crushing.)

Grapple hook is fun. Shame it seems to be a limited use pick up item though, but again, that's on me for thinking otherwise haha.

The BP / dress sim. It's just gaming these days. I dislike all that crap but understand others don't / the need for the revenue it creates. I just view the dress sim side as a great idiot indicator. ('When people say "What's up" ' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyPa40__F_w)

[nonny]

Yeah the grapple is a pickup so if you select the overshield you're basically trading up your default loadout and dropping that grapple hook on the map.

I've not played in the previous flight either. I got selected but I was away on holidays. You're right though this sits somewhere closer to Halo 3 with elements of 4/5 mixed in with some new pieces for good measure.

I think the bots are giving me a hard time because it's literally all new to me. I do know from the initial test flight they ramped up the bot skills over the weekend and they get pretty seriously smart at the top tier.

As I said, I'm enjoying it but I really want to play big team battle with 24 players.

[nonny]

Also according to Eurogamer the repluser looks like the current favourite equipment item. You can time it to raise your arm and essentially counter/deflect incoming fire, even grenades.

Players have found you can also use it to jump higher, push players off the map etc...

So the equipment looks pretty wild this far in terms of learning the meta and expanded uses.

[wheelaa]

Sure, the repulser is fun to mess around with (I had an objective to push a player off a map - after several failed attempts I rerolled haha).

Anyway, played some more yesterday, without the mindset of this was going to be Reach 2.0. Also had a read around progression in the game - https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/n...september-2021 - informative, weak system.

Overall, had fun. I don't think this is great (yet) by any stretch, but not the floater my first spin led me to believe it was, and while I feel it does lean heavily on Bungie non-Reach Halo, it is more than just Halo 3 1.5.

I don't know what, if any, skill based mm is in place...Friday all PvP matches I played were horribly one-sided, yesterday much more balanced in nearly every match with players generally around my (very modest) skill level. Balanced enough for the matches to be exciting(ish) with some tense finishes, 1v1s weren't the potato / sweat encounters of Friday, there seemed to be a better focus on team play by the players (myself included as I'm more a lone wolf, well lone potato).

I feel much more at ease with the movement, equipment, weapons currently on offer (save the needler...I swear I unload full clips into people at close range to no effect, yet I explode from one brief cross map spray...). Getting a better feel for the maps, positioning, better understanding of when / how to engage, when to retreat, when to press, when to hold a position. Sort of.

Graphics have grown on me a little more. As I am able to spend less time learning the maps / wondering how on earth I died, I am starting to see the little touches here and there. Not as drab as I first thought, and entirely serviceable for a Halo game.

However...some of my initial gripes remain.

It is almost completely devoid of weight, impact, meat, and oomph...gunplay, gunsounds, gun impacts, general movement, jumping, running (which just feels a bit weird), melee.

Gun sounds are so bad they get this second mention. Pathetic. Utterly so. Shockingly bad.

Overall a much better experience yesterday. Will see what today brings, and will certainly dip into BTB which I think is next weekend. I'm certainly a long way from thinking this will be a game I sink a lot of hours into, but the possibility is there, and it is not the abominable turd I first thought.

(Battlepasses / MTs / dress sim dross can still go f themselves, even though I like how that's just fleecing morons who are so stupid they happily display their stupidity in-game.)