Xbox Game Pass

Found a quote for the back of the box, if it ever gets a physical release.

Oh god. Please tell me that's a spoof.

That's ridiculous. Untitled Goose Game is absolutely a AAA game.

I've just seen a game called Chained Echoes being reviewed really well (mostly 9-10s) and thought I'll give it a go. I'm differently not far at all, but from what I played so far it seems awesome. Same type of graphics as games like Triangle Strategy which looks gorgeous, but the battle system is what's doing it for me. It's a turn base JRPG with a cool gimmick. You have a bar on the top left and you want to keep it in the green middle part of it as it halfs all cost of specials, increases damage and defense. Every action you do will push it more to the right into the red which isn't what you want. You can pull it back to the left again by using the right type of attacks at the time. I'm not doing it any justice, but it adds a lot more depth to one of my favorite battle systems, old school turn base. It's came out today and on game pass, give it a go if that's your type of game.

I played through the prologue of Chained Echoes and really enjoyed it. AC: Odyssey on the other hand is messy and confusing and told me that I need to level up if I want to wear sandals.

I really like Odyssey, despite it being a shining example of all that's wrong with gaming in many ways. It looks lovely, and I've always loved the Greek myths, so the world is really appealing to me in a way that, say, Witcher 3 isn't. The gameplay is simple enough to pick it up casually, rather than demanding focus like, say, Elden Ring. The map is ridiculously enormous and icon fatigue is a problem, but I go into it as a "pick a quest" thing rather than a "clear the map!" or "I must finish this story!" thing. I know I'll never get to the end, if there even is such a thing, but I've reached a point where I can dip in every now and then to clear a fort, bump off a cultist, or hunt the Erymanthian Boar, and have some fun while I'm doing it. Admittedly it's taken me 4 years of sporadic play to get to this point…

If you're going to play one Assassin's Creed then Odyssey is definitely the one.

I actually tried out Odyssey this week, having bought it for a fiver ages ago. There's an option at the start to have the map icons or not have them and find the stuff to do through exploration, and it says that the way the game is intended to be played is without the icons. Has anyone got any experience of playing the two versions and knows which works better? I kind of hate the icon fatigue of these games, but at the same time I can't really imagine Ass Creed without them. I get the feeling that finding the content within the filler would be a pain, and I suspect that they only put this option in because of the critical success of Breath of the Wild. What's the feeling? Icons or no icons?

Definitely go with no icons. It doesn't completely remove them or anything, it just means that if you get a quest to go find something then it will often give you a vague description ("it's north of the city, where the river meets the sea") rather than slapping a big Go Here icon on the map. It's just a bit more involving.

It'll still shit icons absolutely everywhere for other stuff so you won't be missing out! This is an Assassin's Creed game after all.

Also, this needs to be said every time anyone starts Odyssey, but play as the female character Kassandra. She's awesome, and the bloke is a plank.

Oh yeah, I immediately chose the female option, simply because the guy looked like a prat.

I left the icons on but it didn't do much because the icons are all tiny and I can barely see them.

Fans of classic RPGs with Game Pass owe Chained Echoes at least a try in my opinion, if you like it, beat it then you can play the Lunar games and talk to me about them. Those are not on Game Pass though sadly…

Is anyone else finding Game Pass just a little underwhelming at the moment?

It seems like ages since any "must plays" popped up on the service. I know it's always had a strong indie slant and I'm generally fine with that, it gives me access to stuff that would otherwise have passed me by, but lately it seems that's all there's been and there's been so little chatter around any of the games that I don't know where to start.

Usually there are a couple of things that people start talking about and then you go and check them out but it just seems at the moment that there's stuff landing on the service each week and everyone's just ignoring it. It seems like ages since we had an Immortality or a Pentiment to check out.

Meanwhile the supply of larger games has pretty much dried up (there doesn't seem to have been much since the Persona games that's really caught my eye) and all MS seem to want to talk about is Starfield. I'm sure that will be good but it's only one game, I hope they are not too dependent on it because it won't drive long-term engagement.

Maybe I'm just being a moaning minnie / grumpy old git but Game Pass has given me the majority of my gaming for the past few years yet lately I've really struggled to find stuff. What am I missing?

I guess it depends on a) what you're looking for and b) whether you're really only focused on new stuff. Agreed that big new additions have been quite scant lately but to say finding something to play is a struggle seems odd, given how much there is on it.

Right now, I'm loving Broforce with the update and have my eye on Venba (story-driven Cooking Mama set in southern India), as well as Marquette but I'm guessing none of those are up your street. Scrolling further down the list, Toem is a delight, I'm even tempted to play Quake 2 since I last had that when I was at uni. Arcade Paradise, Citizen Sleeper, Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells, Eastward, Dordogne… these are all good.

Citizen Sleeper is excellent, though struggling to eke out survival in an unfeeling capitalist panopticon, while trying to maintain a failing body maybe isn't the escapist fantasy you're looking for. (I'm still very much looking forward to the second one, though.)

I've also really enjoyed what I've played of The Wandering Village (it's a little more at home on PC than Xbox, though; I'm keen to try out the similar-looking Airborne Kingdom, too) and both Minx and the kid have been loving Slime Rancher 2. It's nice to see A Short Hike get another lease of life and a new audience on Xbox as well.

Personally, I'm a lot more interested in it as a source of quirky, interesting smaller-scale games than big-name AAA titles so this trend is fine by me. Starfield will be along soon enough, and there are plenty of more traditional games available, even if they are on the older side.

I’m happy with the indie games, it just seems that there’s very little buzz around any of them any more. I know nothing about Venba, Marquette, Eastward, Dordogne or Toem. Slime Rancher 2 and Wandering Village are both Game Preview and I don’t want to sink time into unfinished games.

I did enjoy Citizen Sleeper though. That one broke through. Maybe it’s just that it had a more interesting name? It’s notable that most of the games Mart quoted had single-word names that don’t tell you anything about the game in isolation.

I think PS Plus has quietly replaced Game Pass as the best sub. In the last 12 months it's added:

FF7 Remake
Metro Exodus
Deathloop
Judgement
Lost Judgement
Horizon Forbidden West
Borderlands 3
Dreams
Uncharted Collection
Sackboy Big Adventure
Doom Eternal
Watch Dogs Legion
Tomb Raider Definitive
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Far Cry 6
Destiny expansion
And presumably God of War 2 is coming next month

And that's just the big AAA stuff (whether you think it's quality or not). It also has all of the quirky indie stuff that makes Game Pass appealing. PLUS it has an insane amount of PS1/2/3/4 games, so it's even taken the shine off Xbox's commitment to backwards compatibility.

We're certainly not struggling for games generally. I was only thinking last night how incredible 2023 has been so far; with TotK and Baldur's Gate 3 we've had two of the best games of the last ten years drop within a couple months of each other. And Starfield is right around the corner.

You forgot about Dre(ablo 4).

I'd say they're pretty similar, Gamepass still has some interesting mid-tier stuff like that Vampire shooter (which was terrible, but nice to have access to) and the odd game with mechs in you'll never play but are glad to know exists. The core library of MS IP, Forzas, Gears and Halos is still good. PS+ has certainly improved a lot in the last 12 months to the point where I also don't bother buying new games on the PS5 now.

Either way, they're both a firehose of games, and as MPH says, we're not short of things to play from any angle so I think I'm happy to drop 15 quid a month for both with the knowledge that there's a pile of stuff there should I ever fancy it.

I know nothing about Venba, Marquette, Eastward, Dordogne or Toem.

Do you need to know though? Surely it's on the list of available titles - you click it, watch a trailer and then try or not. Knowing too much about these things kind of ruins the mystery. Outside of knowing what genre something might be (I'll never play a tower defense game, for instance), I'd just dive in. Stick to the hour rule and you're fine… in most cases, you'll know in the first 15 minutes.

That probably is the answer - the onus is on me to find this stuff - though it does feel that previously a couple of games would kind of rise to the surface each month in terms of the level of chatter they generated, and that doesn't really happen so much any more. Ah well. It probably is due to the "firehose of games" as cav puts it, everyone is playing different stuff most of the time.

Anyway! Maybe we just need to talk about the games here a bit more, even just in passing. I tried Arcade Paradise a couple of days ago, in which you play someone who just wants to play videogames but has to keep doing laundry instead. That's far too much like my actual life so I binned it off pretty quick. But I checked out Toem tonight and it looks like a lovely, chilled little puzzle game that reminds me very much of The Touryst, so that's a keeper for now.

I think the difference might be that everyone was playing Xbox for a while but now there's some games to play on the Switch and there's stock of PS5s.

I still love it. As a parent it's been great over the summer or the horrible weather days, we have played Viva Pinata, the wandering village and a couple of others after doing what Mart said.

Was very impressed that my 6 yer old has enjoyed both those strategy orientated titles and got a lot from them.

I try not to moan about changes to dashboards etc, but we habe gotten the new Xbox dash update now and I really dislike it. The fact there are tabs/rows showing games I dont own in the "most popular" section or just rows and rows of gta points etc.

I actually really like the new dashboard! The icons are smaller and everything seems to make more sense.

The ads are always going to be annoying though, agree on that.

It took me longer than I should admit to find where they'd put my full library.

It’s nice having more icons in the “recently used” section and having game art in the background, but you can’t pin more than two groups to your dashboard any more, and all the guff when you scroll down is essentially irrelevant. Overall it’s probably the worst Xbox dash apart from all the others they’ve tried.

I had to use it for five minutes this morning. I must have moved the cursor to the wrong things at least three times in that short period.

/Puts on Mr Horse voice

No sir, I don't like it.

But it's a menu. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Just seen the email that Microsoft are going to stop supporting the Xbox 360 store from July 2024. I still occasionally go on my 360 for a small handful of games that you can't play elsewhere, and was always surprised the store was still functioning.

The Xbox One coming out in 2013 but supporting the previous hardware till 2024 feels pretty generous. Even before you factor in what is backwards compatible.

The Xbox One coming out in 2013 but supporting the previous hardware till 2024 feels pretty generous. Even before you factor in what is backwards compatible.

3DS came out in 2011, Wii U in 2012. We shut down the eShops there earlier this year, still got shit for it. 🫤

3DS came out in 2011, Wii U in 2012. We shut down the eShops there earlier this year, still got shit for it. 🫤

Major 3DS games were still being released up to 2019 and there were lots of unique digital-only titles on that platform that now can't be (legally) obtained anywhere. That one still feels like a real loss.

At least with Xbox 360, a huge chunk of the library can still be downloaded and played on current consoles.

I do feel for Nintendo getting the flack, as whilst I imagine the amount of people using the 3ds is still probably higher than anyone expects, I can't imagine the store sales were that high surely?

Anyone else feeling overwhelmed from game pass lately? I'm normally pretty good at spacing out the games I want to play, but it's been crazy the last few weeks. I've completed Starfield and currently playing Lies of P with Party animals on the side, but the amount of games I've had to put into my backlog is insane. Sea of Stars was a game I was waiting to play day one but it's somehow been pushed to the side. My wife and I are pretty hyped for the Phoenix Wright Collection too. Hopefully she'll have time to play them, but now I'm hearing about a little gem called Cocoon which is out tomorrow. It's a puzzle game with some high reviews backing it up. Dose look interesting from the clips I've been watching earlier today. That's just from the day one releases. Gotham knights is pretty old ish now and it didn't do too well from what I remember but I've always thought it looks fun. I almost paid for it a few weeks ago but luckily I didn't now that it's coming next week. I can't even imagine the rest of the year with the Like a Dragon and persona games. 😕

I've certainly found that my Game Pass time has been dominated by a couple of big games this year. Persona 5 Royal and now Starfield have occupied a lot of my gaming time (along with Midnight Suns and Jedi Survivor which weren't Game Pass but surely both will be soon…)

I'm keen to try Lies of P but unsure when I'll get the time to do so. Cities Skylines II, Like a Dragon Gaiden and Person 5 Tactica are all must-plays hitting the service in the next couple of months. Big games, not enough time, very much first world problems. And now you've got me looking at Cocoon and that DOES look good. It was only a month ago that I was moaning that Game Pass had been a bit flat lately.

Forza is out now.

If anyone wants to know which graphics mode to use, Digital Foundry have this super helpful comparison.

Tried Steamworld Build as I’ve enjoyed a lot of games in this series before and I love city-builders.

The text is ludicrously small, I can’t believe they released it like this. I’ll have to put it on hold and hope they patch it, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It might be a good game but I’m not giving myself eye strain to find out.

Sounds like you need a bigger TV

Yeah, the "accessibility" menu is a bit of a joke.

They've also got some text "highlighted" by making it dark blue on a medium blue background. I think it's supposed to be for tooltips, but there's no way to hover over them on Xbox that I can tell.

Same with the alert popups in the top left; I'm pretty sure that in the PC demo you could click on them to jump to the place on the map where the thing happened, but that doesn't appear to be an option on console.

That said, I've been playing out all evening and it's just gone 1am. If I actually ever play it again then it'll be a strong sign that it's doing something right.

Tales of Arse, sorry Tales of Arise has landed on Game Pass. I’m shining the Alastor light into the night sky to summon him so he can remind us if it’s any good or not.

I really liked it a lot, combat is mostly fun and characters feel different from each other which for a Tales game is mostly what you want. Only issue is sometimes enemies are too tanky and bosses especially barely stagger. I would say 'story starts off great but then gets kinda bad halfway' but honestly I think most people feel that way about most of the series, even everyone's baby, Tales of Vesperia has that.

Also it's a visual treat at times, it's the most high budget this series has ever looked or felt by far.

The only other Tales game I've played is Vesperia, but I really didn't like what Arise did with the talking-head party chats. It was all a bit too po-faced for me.

It is pretty though.

Arise changed the skits which you just mentioned and as a consequence of the faster 'enter battle, leave battle' thing removed the post battle victory quotes which honestly were a sad loss because they were great in some of the old games…but it is smoother. :(

EDIT - like, even if you think these fall flat or aren't funny, there's a lot of characterisation in here. Like there's a whole group of Estelle high fiving people, when she high fives Rita who is a bit of a recluse she's like 'what's that?'. Later on she changes to be more enthusiastic. Also Estelle trying to build a rapport with the Dog, Repede, which she eventually does as seen entirelythrough these animations.

Anyone tried little Kitty bit City? A delightful Untitled Goose game like, my daughter is obsessed with it and it's very charming to watch her just moping about in the game not completing any objections, but just enjoying being a cat and stealing people's phones and sandwiches.

I had a very brief look at it and found the graphics to be absolutely charming. It looks a bit like a Ghibli movie. If it's like Untitled Goose Game, I'll definitely go back for another look.

Immortals is on Gamepass this month. I'd recommend it as it's a bit different. Absolute jankfest on consoles with a 60fps mode about as stable as our current government, but it's vaguely creative with at least some world building effort. Lead is a dick. But it has the cool woman from Firefly in it.

Immortals was going to get an FSR patch to improve the framerate. I assume that's dead now that the studio is gone.

It had a couple of minor patches on PS5, which improved it a tiny bit. Still a bit janky though (more of a frame timing issue and lurching drops rather than generically bad performance, which means if the studio was there it could likely be fixed). Maybe it's better on the 1X.

I think its only hope is to be brute forced on a high performance rig, or community intervention at this stage.

Shame. As while the lead, plot and many aspects of the plot are a bit tired and hackneyed, it was at least a unique new IP and had some creative stuff going on.