Xbox Series S/X: Thread 04

[dataDave]

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.

Are you sure about that? Out of morbid curiosity and a mid-afternoon dose of LoLz I watched a few reviews.



That fetch-quest mission structure that's repeated ad-infinitum. I don't think 120FPS, path-tracing, and free blowjobs could fix this utter train wreck.

I have no idea why anyone would want to waste any minutes on this when, by this point, most gamers have stacks of 10s in their backlogs.

Then they go and drop it a week or two before Breath of the Wild 2. Nice plan!

[nonny]

I mean nothing beats free blowjobs except maybe Zelda ToTk ...

I'm not that far enough to comment on the mission structure but yeah, it's not a terrible game... more an average game that's shipped in poor state.

[Neon Ignition]

Putting Redfall aside as like has been said, I don't think it's issues are necessarily Xbox related

I think MS needs to let pursuing the Sony tier AAA standard go. Set clear, achievable deadlines for projects and get a decent game ship. Let the system appeal on regular releases, solid line up, sequels that iterate and work their way up to higher standards where the audience clearly wants more of those experiences etc. Hellblade feels like the showcase title for this. It's been in development for years and is aiming to deliver an absolute AAAA experience.

But we've still not seen it in action properly and even more critically... who the **** was even asking for a AAAA sequel to the intentionally AA original? We could be on an expanding scope Hellblade 3 or 4 by now at a fraction of the cost.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I think this is were they've got themselves tied up in knots. Most people would be happy to have them release good AA games, there's a gap in the market. HIFi rush was a great example. More of that please.
They don't always have to be chasing the mega AAA games.
They've got ties with PC. Port across some pc only games, like phasmophobia. Build up from there. The key is consistency. Get the development train rolling.

[Lebowski]

Are you sure about that? Out of morbid curiosity and a mid-afternoon dose of LoLz I watched a few reviews.



That fetch-quest mission structure that's repeated ad-infinitum. I don't think 120FPS, path-tracing, and free blowjobs could fix this utter train wreck.

I have no idea why anyone would want to waste any minutes on this when, by this point, most gamers have stacks of 10s in their backlogs.

Then they go and drop it a week or two before Breath of the Wild 2. Nice plan!

What I'm getting is that if you wanna play this it will be a couple of evenings play as its only 12 hours even if you do everything, and that i should go play Prey. Prey is a game ive been meaning to play for a long time and ive always heard good things about it and its DLC and its on gamepass.

[nonny]

Yeah it's a fair call... To keep a cadence up everything doesn't have to be AAA. Especially considering costs on top.

What I'd consider AAA right now looking at what has been announced:

Starfield
Forza Motorsport
Hellblade II
Perfect Dark
Fable

What is more than likely AA:

Avowed
The Outer Worlds 2
Contraband
Indiana Jones

But there's plenty we don't know yet as well... like what the hell id Software are sitting on and what the Coalition is doing with UE5.

Some of those titles listed as AA may in fact be bigger than that but we know too little to understand the size and cost of the project.

[Tobal]

What I'm getting is that if you wanna play this it will be a couple of evenings play as its only 12 hours even if you do everything, and that i should go play Prey. Prey is a game ive been meaning to play for a long time and ive always heard good things about it and its DLC and its on gamepass.

I really enjoyed Prey, Arkane best work but like all Arkane games, the shooting feels wonky but you could always spec into powers/tech or melee. DLC is fun but hard, gives you a roguelite structure on the moon (new map) and getting key missions done carries over stuff to future runs.

[hudson]

Big Phil

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[wakka]

I do enjoy the bizarre corporate self flagellation aspect of the whole merger campaigning process. Sony declaring they're basically just still an electronics shop in Nihonbashi riding a wave of good luck to this point, Phil Spencer tearfully expressing his undying commitment to third place in the console race. It's really quite delightful.

[teddymeow]

Laying on the "poor little Xbox" schtick a bit thick there...

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's what I said ages ago. Sure people jumped from 360 to PS4, but there was a very specific Xbox event that turned everyone off them. And at that point neither console had backwards compatibility, making it an easy no brainer; Trade in your games and get a PlayStation.
Since then digital games have taken off, and people will stick with the console that they can carry their games across. 120m PlayStation players aren't dropping their games collection to jump to Xbox.
Also, saying that Xbox is fighting on a different level with GP is nonsense. If GP was a huge success, Steam wouldn't be around and Sony wouldn't be doing so well. It still boils down to one thing... Games.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Also Phil can **** off with that 'I'm sorry we disappointed the Xbox community' bull**** about Redfall. They knew exactly what that game was like, which is why the review embargo was AFTER it released. They knew it was a beta game and released it anyway.
Ill say again, has Sony or Nintendo had pants first party games launches? Did Mario need 'Weeks of patches' to get it working?
I don't even own an Xbox and I'm pissed off.

[Neon Ignition]

There's so much coloured in what they do and say lately due to the merger attempt, where what they're saying is there to re-enforce the cases they've made behind closed doors in talks but to do this in this manner is just... stupid

You can grow the Xbox business just fine, it will take time etc but that's exactly how it works and 100% games are center most to that. It's a really dumb thing to make the case to the contrary when your platform is so well known for not delivering on content as you're basically making the public statement that it never will. If it never will then what is the point in even being in the market? Let alone owning one.

Bemoaning the lack of a magic bullet to market share just makes them sound defeatist and lazy. Release the games, price competitively, stop making bad calls, market well and react well to your opponents mistakes and whilst it may take years you'll rebuild it. I don't believe people value their digital collections that preciously that it prohibits them from considering another system and also one of the reasons both Nintendo and Sony are able to maintain high success at the same time is because they don't overlap too much. Xbox has always mirrored PlayStation too closely, use your content to build your own appeal and direction.

I dunno. I think they've done a lot to improve things since the XBO launched but the vibe is there that Spencer has taken it as far as he can and it's getting time for someone with the right drive and project management skills to take over

[nonny]

Also Phil can **** off with that 'I'm sorry we disappointed the Xbox community' bull**** about Redfall. They knew exactly what that game was like, which is why the review embargo was AFTER it released. They knew it was a beta game and released it anyway.
Ill say again, has Sony or Nintendo had pants first party games launches? Did Mario need 'Weeks of patches' to get it working?
I don't even own an Xbox and I'm pissed off.

Just having a quick scan brings up Pokemon and The Last of Us PC port... They're not immune, but agree Redfall is a real black mark against Xbox.

[MartyG]

Are you sure about that? Out of morbid curiosity and a mid-afternoon dose of LoLz I watched a few reviews.
!

The reviews are making it out to be a 2/10 game, it isn't. It's average, perhaps poor compared to Arkane's other work, but it's not completely dreadful.

I do think you need to play this game co-op though and on PC - I wouldn't not want to play this at 30 FPS on console because the controls would feel slow and laggy. I can get this running VSync at 120 at 1440P Ultra and it feels pretty fluid. I played for a couple of hours co-op last night and had some fun with it, discovering caves with some metrovania element to them.

It has some weird shadow rendering, and the textures are variable quality (definitely not as good as they could be, depth mapping is a little odd) and I did check to make sure there wasn't a higher quality setting as I wouldn't say ultra looks that ultra

I didn't mind the hub structure and missions too much. It does feel a bit barren, and I have to wonder if that's because the engine can't cope with such a massive open world (it is big) and putting lots of enemies on screen at once. I did see a couple of occasions where the AI didn't initially "see" me even though I was in vision cone, and enemies are not hard to kill (but then a headshot with a sniper rifle should one-shot kill). The vampires don't feel particularly threatening, but they take a few more shots and I quite like the staking animations on them.

It feels like it's suffered a bit from being pulled in different directions design-wise, without properly nailing the game loop. Is it open world? Is it Left4Dead? Is it a looter-shooter? Is it an RPG? It has elements of all these things but never quite gels fully together.

It's not a game I'd pay AAA money for (£69? Yeah, no) - it's on Game Pass so I don't have to, but I want to play some more of it, co-op at least.