Xbox Series S/X: Thread 04

[Lebowski]

Redfall Reviews coming in not great, Microsoft cant seem to get a break its problems seem to be that its had things imposed on it that sound like meddling form above, (Enforced multiplayer and loot) from a studio that thrives with single player story based content.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-series-x/redfall/critic-reviews

theirs a spark of hope though as Eurogamer gave it a postive write up and is holding off till they have played it properly, and are being quite positive about it so far, with the caveat that it dose feel like a game you should be playing with others. Arkane make some of my fave games so I'm sure their will be enough for me here, i also like loot in my games too so dont mind the loot grind.

[nonny]

I think all the design decisions such as making it an open world looter shooter... that's all Bethesda. Remember this game was in development before Xbox took over.

The release schedule though and releasing in the current state is probably a mixture of both companies pushing for release... Or it's squarely on Xbox. Without knowing the background management decisions it's impossible to say for sure.

[nonny]

FWIW there appears to be a 1.1gb day one patch for Redfall... just downloading it now.

I'm curious to see how bad it really is, already had it pre-installed.

[teddymeow]

So Redfall isn't the Arkane take on L4D / B4B people had hoped for?

[Lebowski]

So Redfall isn't the Arkane take on L4D / B4B people had hoped for?

its a lot more open form than L4D or B4B so more about exploration and upgrading guns than just a wave based FPS. Ive never really got on with that sort of game as its all very one note so the open world style shooter is more my thing.

The thing to bear in mind here is everyone that's put up reviews so far hasn't had access to the full retail game and its caught out games like this before where reviewers are reviewing a game and judging the final product on old code so id take most reviews out today with a pinch of salt and a lot of the more reliable review sites are holding back their reviews. Polygon and Eurogamer have both said its a decent shooter with nice elements, but nothing revolutionary.

[nonny]

Had a quick go at lunch time on Series S.

The default controls are absolute trash. Had to turn down the "responsive" option to low and then ramp up the sensitivity to get anywhere near it feeling smooth in terms of turning and aiming.

Not a good start.

Graphically it's ok. I know it's stylised similar to Dishonored and that's fine... some texture work just looks rough which is quite obvious as well.

The 30fps is very noticeable but it didn't feel terrible once I'd sorted out the controls and turned off motion blur.

That said... it just has that distinct feeling that it's unfinished and should never have gone out.

I've played my fair share of pre-release games before now and that's what this feels like. Not good, at all... I would think someone who gave the green light on that is going to need to step down on this one.

[hudson]

I think scrap that one guys. Starfield is the one. Was playing Fallout 4 over the weekend and I'm loving getting lost in the setting, the exploration etc. If Starfield can bring that and then some (I think it will), then the Xbox has its purpose. Hopefully it can come to the table without performance issues for DF and the like to already put the dampers on. Hopefully it runs at a smooth 60fps on launch.

[teddymeow]

What if, and bear with me, Starfield turns out to be ****? What then? I mean, it isn't like Bethesda don't have form for janky products at release. Will it encourage an increase in console sales? You'd have to think that most people who are interested in it already subscribe to GamePass so how many new members will it add?

What's the next great hope that Xbox fans pin their hopes on to prove that the great games are coming if it is disappointing?

I'm honestly not sure that I'll resubscribe to GamePass when my existing deal runs out at the end of June.

The way I buy and play games has changed (only buying one, if that, a month. Making a conscious effort to clear my backlog) so if Microsoft aren't seemingly in the position of releasing first party stuff I don't get it.

They've acquired so many developers but the product doesn't seem to have materialised. They've announced some big titles - Forza, Perfect Dark, there'll be another Gears / Halo etc it's just they seem so far out.

I get some don't like the "dad 'em up" but Sony will have released two massive AAA this year in God of War Ragnarok & Spider-Man 2 from internal studios and also have FFXVI coming from Sqeenix which, if mainly in Japan, will sell some consoles. Microsoft don't have anything like that in the chamber to compete.

They'll need a decent "not E3" to salvage anything from the rest of the generation.

[hudson]

Well if Starfield is plop we got CoD, right?

New Elder Scrolls at some point (in time).

[Cassius_Smoke]

Thing is, with 27 studios and infinite money the law of averages says they'll land a big game at some point. But it's possible by then they'll have burned through all the good will of the Xbox owners.
Ill get Starfield on PC because at least Bethesda does actually optimise games for PC, plus I'll mod it. Some people might buy a console for it. I have no doubt it'll be a broken mess, but Bethesda do make good games, and I've no doubt it'll good, I just think people need to temper their expectations a bit. It's not going to be 'No Man Sky' in scale.

[hudson]

Played some more Redfall. I want to like it. I do like an open world looter shooter. The gunplay is actually pretty decent (after a bit of sensitivity teaking. Moved mine down to 1.5).
Then there's the presentation and it's really not pretty. Honestly looking like a poor PS3 port. It just has that look. Textures not loaded in...or are they? Blurry textures, ah man it's a shame and running at 30 FPS really disappoints.
Then there's the bugs. Uh.

[Tobal]

Went with my XSX over my PC after hearing about unstable it is. Played up to the 2nd mission to get to the 2 choppers, played solo as the engineer like character. It is just modern farcry, framerate is terrible which makes aiming down sights worthless so i played it like doom, so many things about the crap UI annoy me and long walks from bench to bench in the safehouse. The graphics look really good at night time and in dark places with plenty of light sources, its just when it daytime you can see alot of flat textures in the background and alot of the time textures loading in late or not at all...

Anyway i turned off on getting to the 2nd chopper up a large hill, couldn't find whatever the mission objective wanted me to get after picking up the files inside the chopper, to point i feel it definitely failed to load the next objective in, shortly after night time hit and fog rolled in which got me jumped on by 6 vampires and died, restarted me back at the safe house... right off it goes not to played anytime soon on solo.

Like always co-op makes all games better, i'll go back it to try it out once more when my mate downloads it.

[fishbowlhead]

What if, and bear with me, Starfield turns out to be ****? What then?

It, probably will be, i mean it certainly will be a technical heap of crap bags.

[nonny]

I played Redfall for a couple more hours last night and I'm up to mission 3... gotta say, I had a really good time.

There is a decent game hiding in there somewhere, muddied by poor performance and bugs. It's actually a huge shame it shipped in this condition as a bit more polish would go a long way to salvage it.

It's basically Far Cry with 4p co-op and Vampires. Which isn't a bad template for a game, but it's been poorly executed in some places.

What I will say is the audio work is great. I had headphones on last night and hearing the vampire chatter was awesome.

If they can fix to the myriad glitches, bugs and performance... get the enemy AI working better as well it'll be worth a look for most.

Still shouldn't have shipped like this. I saw someone say it should have been delayed and released on Halloween... and yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

[Lebowski]

I played Redfall for a couple more hours last night and I'm up to mission 3... gotta say, I had a really good time.

There is a decent game hiding in there somewhere, muddied by poor performance and bugs. It's actually a huge shame it shipped in this condition as a bit more polish would go a long way to salvage it.

It's basically Far Cry with 4p co-op and Vampires. Which isn't a bad template for a game, but it's been poorly executed in some places.

What I will say is the audio work is great. I had headphones on last night and hearing the vampire chatter was awesome.

If they can fix to the myriad glitches, bugs and performance... get the enemy AI working better as well it'll be worth a look for most.

Still shouldn't have shipped like this. I saw someone say it should have been delayed and released on Halloween... and yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

it gets to the point where you go how long do you keep a game in development as it was supposed to land last year same as Starfeild ( it made for a very barren year of xbox exclusive releases), Yet another 6 months would have probably done wonders to this with the 60fps mode we where promised and all the bug fixes in place i bet it would have reviewed a lot better.

One good thing is I don't think Microsoft will abandon they kept the devs working on State of decay and even relaunched it when they fixed a lot of the bugs and performance stuff so hopefully this will keep getting tweaked and a few months from now it may be a very different play experience.