I, on the other hand, am bloody loving it.
Gears 1-4 are feeling dated, and 5 has done so much to make the series likeable. It's also a prime showcase for why next-gen should be all about framerate. 60fps makes such a difference to how enjoyable the gunplay is.
Yeah, I'm not so sure. 60fps for race games - coolbeans. Here, I dunno. Something about it feels off. I think the strongest thing about it is some of the lighting FX which is very impressive. I think the toning down of the brodude neck shooter aspect is commendable. I'd like a better plot. I also think the core shooting things is good, but every time it tries to innovate the game suffers. The entire series has been like this. Let me shoot things from behind blocks and then show me cool graphical FMV stuff to fill in gaps. Dont make me do it.
And Gears 1 was probably a GTA3 level gamechanger. I don't think we can retrospectively say it was anything less than an absolute nuclear bomb into the heart of the gaming world. It invented a language for third person cover shooters (and yes, kill.switch and others had dabbled, but this nailed it). You see its influences everywhere today. Incredibly important title, for the 360 and gaming in general.
I wonder what happened to CliffyB.
I wonder what happened to CliffyB.
If memory serves, he disappeared right up his own fundament in an implosion of ill-advised social media posts.
Online Co-op in 2 was really good though. Not sure if others had done that first but it was the first time playing it with a friend truly felt great to me.
Online coop for the first Gears was a huge deal at the time. It was a lot of fun too. Me and cavalcade played through almost the whole game together on the second difficulty.
Didn't Gears 1 have the first high profile horde mode too?
#memories
Bloodstained is an October game. Glad I saved my money on that one now.
I remember the mine cart bit in Gears co-op being flipping horrible. It was the only bit of the game where you could be Insta-killed, and your partner couldn't revive you.
Crazy that was 13 years ago. It feels like we haven't advanced that much since.
Active Reloading!
Couple more random GamePass tryouts.
Dirt Rally 2.0 isn't for me. I quite fancied a nice little arcade racer. This isn't it. It seems pretty hardcore, and right from the off I had to complete a whole sequence of four fairly long races before I could even save my progress. By halfway through race two my car was a mangled mess and by the end it wouldn't even steer in a straight line. I'll stick to OutRun.
Elder Scrolls Online which I played a fair bit on PS4 a while back - it looks a lot better on the X and I could see myself getting back into this. It's a bit clunky but it's unfairly overlooked by a lot of people I think because it scratches that Skyrim itch very nicely, is eminently solo-able and is absolutely vast even without any of the extra content they've released over the years. The monthly subscription is completely optional, you can play loads of it for free, but if you do pony up then you get access to all the DLC apart from the latest expansion (that's a LOT, including the whole of the Morrowind and Summerset expansions) plus a load of other extras. I don't have the time for this, but I might end up playing it anyway.
I quite like the look of that mountain biking game that's hitting the service today.
I quite like the look of that mountain biking game that's hitting the service today.
I worked on that, briefly. Never got the point, thought it was shit. But don't take my word for it. 
Dirt Rally 2.0 isn't for me. I quite fancied a nice little arcade racer.
From what I've read an anecdotal evidence from a guy at work the new Grid game is pretty good and not hardcore.
I worked on that, briefly. Never got the point, thought it was shit. But don't take my word for it.
Silly Mart. I think it's great. Like a cross between Trials and Super Sprint.
I worked on that, briefly. Never got the point, thought it was shit. But don't take my word for it.
Silly Mart. I think it's great. Like a cross between Trials and Super Sprint.
I despise Trials.
Oh man, thought I was the only one.
Every Final Fantasy game from 7 to 15, plus Yakuza 0, Kiwami and Kiwami 2, all coming to GamePass early next year. Plus a bazillion other games. They’re not messing about.
RAGE 2 today, it seems. I'm sorely tempted, I need a brainless shooter for zero money.
Praise be to Game Pass!
Riverbond - Yawn. So dull and by the numbers, despite being very pretty. Don't bother. I was going to buy this, glad I didn't.
DEMONSTilt is coming soon. Looks loads like Devil Crash. Really looking forward to trying it.
I played a bit of Minit, which is notable for having the worst graphics I’ve seen in any game for perhaps the last 35 years. Would have been an ugly game on the Spectrum. Spectacular low effort “this’ll do” nonsense. Game itself is a simple Zelda 1 style top down explorathon but I’m not sure my eyes can take it.
I played a bit of Minit, which is notable for having the worst graphics I’ve seen in any game for perhaps the last 35 years. Would have been an ugly game on the Spectrum. Spectacular low effort “this’ll do” nonsense. Game itself is a simple Zelda 1 style top down explorathon but I’m not sure my eyes can take it.
Minit is lovely and quite clever. More than you're giving it credit for.
Had a weird one playing Alien Isolation last night. The game would regularly slow to an absolute unplayable crawl, a few frames per second. This would happen randomly, even at one point on the title screen. I read somewhere that it doesn’t like being installed on a nearly-full HDD so I transferred it to my internal drive which has plenty of space and now it runs fine. Guess it must be using some sort of paging file while it’s running and needs available space on the disk to do that.
Anyone need a 14-day trial for Game Pass Ultimate? Won’t work if you already have Gold or Game Pass or if you’ve used a previous trial, so suspect it’s pretty much useless for most people, but send me a message if you’d like it.
Final Fantasy XV has now landed on GamePass - it’s the Royal Edition with almost all the DLC.
I played this at launch and although it had some really strong aspects I was overall disappointed with it and it felt severely unfinished. Ran like shit on the PS4 Pro too. I’m actually tempted to replay it to see if the DLC episodes and a couple of years worth of patches ever managed to turn it into something worthy of the Final Fantasy name.
I'm now the only person posting in this thread, so I'll use it to highlight some of the terrible games on GamePass I've been playing that you shouldn't waste your time with.
Dead Rising 4 is, appropriately, the twitching undead corpse of the Dead Rising family. Over the last couple of instalments the developers have progressively stripped out everything that made the games interesting - the timed mechanics, the survivors, the psychopaths, the social commentary, the whole roguelike structure - and now all you have is a game where you walk slowly through a shopping mall tapping x to kill zombies. It's really very dull.
Borderlands 2 - well I've never understood the appeal of the Borderlands games. Don't like the aesthetics, don't like the gameplay. I followed a really annoying robot around for half an hour and shot a few things then ran out of ammo and uninstalled it.
Tekken 7 was a terrible Xbox conversion that was never updated for the One X so it has god-awful loading times and runs at 720p. Other than that it seems pretty much the same as every other Tekken game. Half the characters are locked off as paid DLC and it's all very underwhelming. Out of curiosity I stuck on the 360 version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (which must have been given away on Games with Gold at some point as it was right there on my list next to Tekken 7) and not only does it look nearly as good but it's immediately more interesting with more characters, no paid DLC, slightly snappier combat and the whole tag mechanic thing going on. I think I'll play that one instead.
I have two Gamepass subs. It's all good.
Tried Phoenix Point on PC. It's XCOM with crabs.
The rat game you were talking about is fine. A bit videogamey. I'm sure I've tried other things recently bit I can't remember what.
Kingdom Hearts 3 added today. I'm tempted to give it a go.
Borderlands 2 - well I've never understood the appeal of the Borderlands games. Don't like the aesthetics, don't like the gameplay. I followed a really annoying robot around for half an hour and shot a few things then ran out of ammo and uninstalled it.
This from the man who was willing to spend 30 hours waiting for Final Fantasy XIII to get good.
It's fun but I'm starting to think after playing B3 the class builds need to kick in a little sooner than they do.
It's fun but I'm starting to think after playing B3 the class builds need to kick in a little sooner than they do.
I haven't played in a couple of weeks, but I think my Zane is about level 17-18 now and has started to be really entertaining (for more than his dialogue - if he's not the most amusing Vault Hunter in B3 I'll be amazed). He has one relatively levelled hero power and a second one that I've started levelling (and using instead of grenades), and there's so much more to do and factor in now that the game is much more interesting and involving.
I think that feeling varies from Vault Hunter to Vault Hunter though, across the series - as I've said before, part of my issue with B2 was that Zer0 took forever to really get going (despite being amazing once he did), whereas some characters are already fun and interesting by about level 15.
I hope B3 eventually introduces a similar feature to what B2 did in the final DLC (if it hasn't already), and lets you start a semi-levelled VH in NG+ instead of making you level up everyone from scratch.
Borderlands 2 - well I've never understood the appeal of the Borderlands games. Don't like the aesthetics, don't like the gameplay. I followed a really annoying robot around for half an hour and shot a few things then ran out of ammo and uninstalled it.
This from the man who was willing to spend 30 hours waiting for Final Fantasy XIII to get good.
I don't see how Borderlands 2 is anything other than near instant gratification. There's about 10 minutes of Claptrap then it's like - "here's a world, go shoot stuff in it".
I hope B3 eventually introduces a similar feature to what B2 did in the final DLC (if it hasn't already), and lets you start a semi-levelled VH in NG+ instead of making you level up everyone from scratch.
Same, the one reason I'm not starting a new character is I just can't be bothered to go through the early part to level up again (even though shooting feels nie and solid now). Also fuck that fucking forest planet.
I quite like Demon's Tilt, a Satanic-themed pinball game (of course). The graphics are a bit 8-bit and the black and purple colour scheme is very 12-year-old edgelord, but it's a fun pinball game and while there's only one table, it's a three-story monstrosity with a lot of different stuff to do so it'll keep me going for a while. Not sure I'd have paid any money for it in a world where Zen Pinball exists, but as a freebie it's a fun take on an established genre.
I quite like Demon's Tilt, a Satanic-themed pinball game (of course). The graphics are a bit 8-bit and the black and purple colour scheme is very 12-year-old edgelord, but it's a fun pinball game and while there's only one table, it's a three-story monstrosity with a lot of different stuff to do so it'll keep me going for a while. Not sure I'd have paid any money for it in a world where Zen Pinball exists, but as a freebie it's a fun take on an established genre.
It's full-on old school Devil Crash. I love it. Hard though.
Lego Worlds is atrocious. Fiddly, complex and full of unskippable cutscenes, it doesn't seem to understand its target audience at all. Play Minecraft instead.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps looks absolutely stunning. I mean, seriously beautiful. And I loved the first game. However it seems to have a 50% chance of completely shutting down my Xbox every time I start it up, which cannot be good - others are reporting the same thing so I'm going to wait for a patch or two before I get really stuck into this.
Streets of Rage 4 today.
So that's nice.
Pillars of Eternity: apparently has "Xbox Play Anywhere" compatibility (so saves are shared between Xbox and PC) but they've managed to put two different versions on Xbox and PC Game Pass so that doesn't actually work…
Also Gears of War Ultimate Edition on Windows is currently completely broken as a recent Windows update broke the licensing. You just get an error when starting it now and it kicks you back to desktop. Been like that for a few weeks.
They really are a bit shit at this stuff. PC Game Pass is still the wild frontier.
Game Pass' personal vendetta against Garwoofoo continues….
Gears Ultimate has never worked properly (I think I originally owned it on DVD). Which is a shame, as it's the definitive version with the additional level stripped from the 360 release.
I can't remember if I mentioned it, but I tried Savage Planet (the Metroid Prime clone crossed with Banjo Kazooie), and it seems promising. The controls are odd on pad (I think it's missing autoaim or any form of acceleration) and the "humour" makes me want to put out my own ears, but it looks nice and I can imagine it being a lot of fun in coop.
Savage Planet (the Metroid Prime clone crossed with Banjo Kazooie)
What the what now? I'd assumed this was some sort of open-ended survival game, maybe I've completely misjudged it.
Yep, Metroid Prime (scanning, level design), Fallout/Borderlands ("wacky" humour, "wacky" robots), Rareware (googly eyes, Banjo Kazooieish/Conkerish vibe in places) and maybe a little tinge of Sega in the colour schemes and weapons.
Only obvious problems I can see are the pad controls which feel wonky and I suspect it might have an element of tiresome backtracking, but if you liked Metroid Prime I'd say it's worth a look.
Minecraft Dungeons is Kiddy Diablo. Perfect.
It's quite satisfying to play, I thought it was decent, but my Minecraft obsessed youngest child was not impressed.
Probably because it's not Minecraft, I expect.
EA Access was 79p for the month, so I gave it a go.
I know 'EA lol' has been the Internet's opinion forever, but it really is slim pickings. With the exception of Titanfall 2 (which is incredible) they don't seem to have published a single good single player game this generation.
Unless EA Access isn't their whole portfolio?
I didn't even know that was still going. I've just checked and yes you're right, it's piss-poor. Even the decent games (Titanfall 2, Battlefront 2) have been given away with PS+ over the last year or two. You'd need to be really heavily into American sports titles to get any value out of that service.
We had a bit of value out of Plants vs Zombies, but yes, it's not great.
Carrion is out today and on Game Pass.
That is all.
Oh look, it’s a pixel-art Metroidvania! How novel.
Oh look, it’s a pixel-art Metroidvania! How novel.
Shush you.
Oh look, it’s a pixel-art Metroidvania! How novel.
Glad its not just me. Does it have Souls-like or Rogue-like mechanics too?