Gave up on getting the last two achievements in Outer Wilds. "You'll Never Take Me Alive," was buggy to start (people reported it activated just by entering the Dream State and never meeting one of the "chasers", or failing to register entirely); following an early patch, it apparently only works in one spot. Sometimes. The game already had two particularly shitty achievements back-to-back, at this point I don't actually like it enough to do a third. Kind of sad to end Outer Wilds on a sour note like that, but it was probably my fault for trying to find more gameplay in what is a fairly short game.
In less tediously depressing news, for the sale I picked up Devil May Cry 5 (the correct, updated version), Fatal Frame and Ace Attorney, the later largely for the novelty of playing one of those games on Xbox.
The microtransactions are realy bad though. Like 100 bucks for a a bunch of cosmetics( ypu can unlock) premium currency( that uh buy cosmetics )and character unlocks ( tnat are essentially free normally) and 3 free battle passes
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
Was playing Far Cry 5 on game pass PC so I don't see any sale on the Xbox app but the Far Cry series is on sale on Epic Games. Picked up Far Cry 6 gold edition for $40, getting gold or above version also gets you Blood Dragon for free on Epic so that's neat.
What wasn't neat was me having problems liking my Epic and Ubisoft accounts to actually start installing the game. Had to switch my default browser to edge for the linking to not give me errors.
So, I started and completed Shadowrun Returns, a game that I also found to be enjoyable overall. The final battle mechanic got to be tedious really quick, but beyond that mechanics wise it was engaging. The one thing that kind of was a massive drag was a random issue with the game freezing up on one of the maps you visit/fight at multiple times. Happened on two characters, one where I was a rigger (drone user), and on another character when they had a rigger in their crew. So if you play this, you may want to watch out for that. Going to save the second and third games of the series for later. It looks like you can xfer characters between the games? Not really sure.
From Shadowrun Returns I turned my attention to Darker Skies, this is the sequel to the game Grey Skies that I played and talked about a while ago. In this game you play Jack, who has decided to repair a heat ray or w/e (his voice actor is... pretty chill about this being the end of the world though) While the first game was pretty linear, this one has taken something of an "open world" approach, in that there is a hub and you have several different areas to visit as you progress. I'm opting to use the achievement order of the areas as a guide of sorts?
Sadly, this game didn't have a full-on intro theme walk to start it off, and another difference from the first game is you get a force multiplier. I would imagine this is because in the first game you spent a lot of time hiding/crawling and avoiding combat until you get enough resources to learn how to OWA everything with homemade IEDs. The gunplay is rather clunky, though being that you're a civilian with no real training I guess it works out. Also the enemies will still dogpile you and beat you down pretty quickly, have what can best be described as armored skulls (3 Headshots to kill)... and... so the gun is kind of... just there. Maybe there's upgrades to increase the damage dealt, but idk. We'll see how it goes. First game was pretty short so I'll probably be able to wrap this one up quickly too? There's some graphical jank too, but eh. i
Will probably grab some other random cheap titles from this sale, or poke around Game Pass after this. I am kind of happy I didn't buy The Quarry for the stack, seeing as it is part of the Ultimate Games sale, lol.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I don't think you can save transfer between the HBS Shadowrun games, no. I think someone around PA has talked about doing that for their playthroughs, but they were using a mod or trainer or such, iirc.
Shadowrun Returns is an excellent intro to the setting/game mechanics.
Dragonfall is absolutely better in every way, but only if you like the game's style/gameplay. I always recommend Shadowrun Returns, because if you like it (and I did) you'll fucking love Dragonfall.
Started Pooped Pooches yesterday. Looks good, surprised at the level of VO talent, controls seem stiff. Controls during fighting feel sluggish. Movement is fine, but the button inputs seemingly have a delay. I keep getting punched when trying to counter even though I've pressed the button. Which kind of gets in the way of larger melees as the system takes on elements of the Arkham fighting where you can sort of flow from one move to the next. But, again, everything feels on a delay. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think I saw that some upgrades might speed this up, so we'll see. Not a real negative, yet.
One thing where it is kind of silly is that in Wei's apartment there is a Wing Chung dummy. Successfully completing the 'practice' gets you a temporary boost to fight damage. It plays out with a button prompt that flashes on screen. However, due to the apparent delay, you'll break the streak and stop practicing. But it turns out that all you have to do is mash the one button over and over until he completes the motions. I'm not feeling like much of a martial arts badass if all I have to do is button mash.
Get ready to connect with your Discord friends and communities on Xbox! Discord Voice chat is coming to your Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles. You will be able to chat with anyone on Discord via voice channels or group calls directly from your console making it easy to connect with friends across mobile, Xbox, and PC. The update will start rolling out to Xbox Insiders today and will be available soon for everyone.
I will say that XBL chat has been very disappointing to me lately. My buddies and I all hop on every Thursday for the past 8 months now to discuss movies and stuff... And every single time at LEAST 3 of us have issues connecting or get disconnected and get dropped. I remember when XBL was the gold standard for voice chatting with your buddies.
Maybe this integration will finally get them to join Discord so we can chat using that instead.
I'm definitely glad to see it as an option, but as someone who uses Discord chat twice a week--I stream ~2 hours of video programming Thursday and Saturday night, from a home with AT&T Fiber--I'm definitely not going to use it if I have any alternative.
"Beggars can't be choosers." As such, I'm glad that Discord has exponentially improved the quality of the free tier of video streaming compared to two years ago (when it was frankly abysmal) as well as the reliability of their software (on the PC side, the crashes are much less frequent, as is the dreaded "Discord boot-up loop"). But the voicechat quality is still halfway between mediocre and trash, with regular disconnections (with or without streaming, to my surprise); I can't see that being much better on console.
Ironically, this is why having the choice is good: at least we have alternatives.
I've never known Discord to have anything short of abysmal voice quality (and frequent skipping/breakups) in the length of time I use it. Frankly, I assume that's just the nature of the free tier of service.
This isn't praise of the actual bitrate or voice quality of Xbox Live. It just happens Discord has quality comparable to Skype from a decade ago, and I've assumed this is normal.
Shadowrun Returns is a tricky one to recommend simply because someone who's only lukewarm on it might skip the other two games, which are so drastically better that the same person might enjoy them. On the other hand, if you play one of the later games first, then SR will seem quite clunky and off-putting.
Anyway. Highly recommend the other two, big big improvements for both mechanics and story. If you're only doing one, my rec is Hong Kong, but I think the community is split or even leans toward Dragonfall. Maybe if you like fantasy a good bit, go Dragonfall, but HK if you like your cyberpunk a little more raw? Or maybe just whether you want to play a game set in Europe vs Asia.
Powerwashing Simulator is... You should play it. I lost hours to that damn thing. I don't even understand, but by god did that patio get clean.
i unlocked the last achievement earlier, the one for getting Gold in 5 Challenges, and felt absolutely euphoric! installed it just to check it out when it became available and have poured over 50 hours into it since. it does not take long for it to gets it hooks in. and god does that campaign go places, its wild. definitely second the recommendation.
So... Darker Skies is actually not as good as Grey Skies. Story-wise there's little to no narrative drive (you're just making a gun)... But the biggest issues are things that I'm certain I didn't run into with the previous game. The checkpoint system doesn't really let you know when you've crossed a checkpoint, and I don't think there are even that many of them, tbh.
There's a lot of blurry texture pop-in in bits for some reason (Series X internal install though), and the checkpoint issue is exacerbated by the fact that if your controller turns off, instead of checking to confirm that the signed on user has changed, etc. like almost every game does... it simply returns you to the main menu, which can mean a bit of a rollback depending on the checkpoints. At the very least it's somewhat short.
But it really almost feels like the "sequel" is a tech demo for the first game. o_O
edit: apparently Grey Skies also returns to the main menu on a controller disconnect, not really sure why they wouldn't have fixed that though. Weird.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
It seems almost too obvious, but Doom Eternal is, in fact, at least marginally easier on a PC courtesy of Game Pass with a KBAM setup than it was on a gamepad on my Xbox Series X on "Hurt Me Plenty."
Considering I beat all of 2016 Doom on Ultra-Violence on my Xbox One X, I'm still somewhat inclined to blame the game's perverse sense of difficulty. Like if Team Ninja looked at Ninja Gaiden Black and decided NG2 should be an order of magnitude more difficult.
EDIT: If you run into crashing, be sure to reverify the game files. Apparently this is a known issue?
At least they had the time to add these Easter eggs to their tech demo/sequel:
why are those shots so dark, you ask? That's how dark the game is if you do not explicitly turn on your flashlight.
What they did not have time to do though was add cutscenes of any substantial fashion including a proper intro/outro, other NPCs, special effects on enemies to denote their types, and a lot of other things... like... I am not exaggerating when I say the first game was way better. IDK what happened assuming this game was developed after the first... maybe it was Covid issues or something but... o_O
Wondering if anyone has any insight into this as it has me bewildered. Bought a series S, don't have any subscriptions yet and..
It's letting me download and play gamepass games? Checking my subscriptions on the Xbox itself confirms I have no active subscription but I've downloaded and played a bunch of games no problem...?
Wondering if anyone has any insight into this as it has me bewildered. Bought a series S, don't have any subscriptions yet and..
It's letting me download and play gamepass games? Checking my subscriptions on the Xbox itself confirms I have no active subscription but I've downloaded and played a bunch of games no problem...?
The consoles themselves have preview time baked in, but that should still show under your subscription plans. You can see those under your user information in the console, or on the website, instructions here. The preview time should still show up under those, as far as I know.
follow up on the Discord announcement, here's a look at how it get it working courtesy of Windows Central. its a bit convoluted, but probably the best we'll get short of an actual Discord app on the console. and its still a great addition for those who lack a headset that can connect to multiple devices at once.
I'm surprised they're going to with UI integration, rather than the separate app (not that the Discord app hasn't been, historically, terrible on PC, but it is better now).
It’s not great, but it’s an improvement of what I do now when I play with PC people, which is use my mediocre bluetooth buds connected to the iPhone app while I get game audio through the TV.
Hopefully this is just a first step and we get an app later.
I've been using the Xbox Live integration in Windows 10/11 for voice comms, assuming it isn't baked into the game itself; it's definitely not perfect, but it doesn't regularly swing back and forth between a dial up-level bitrate and disconnections at random; we just have to disconnect and rejoin at the very start of a party if we can't hear someone.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I've been using the Xbox Live integration in Windows 10/11 for voice comms, assuming it isn't baked into the game itself; it's definitely not perfect, but it doesn't regularly swing back and forth between a dial up-level bitrate and disconnections at random; we just have to disconnect and rejoin at the very start of a party if we can't hear someone.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I have the opposite experience. I don't think we've ever been able to have a full conversation in XBL (I'm on Windows the others are on their Series X) in the past 8 months.
I've been using the Xbox Live integration in Windows 10/11 for voice comms, assuming it isn't baked into the game itself; it's definitely not perfect, but it doesn't regularly swing back and forth between a dial up-level bitrate and disconnections at random; we just have to disconnect and rejoin at the very start of a party if we can't hear someone.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I have the opposite experience. I don't think we've ever been able to have a full conversation in XBL (I'm on Windows the others are on their Series X) in the past 8 months.
As noted, I spend two hours hosting a video stream on Discord, twice a week. I've been doing that for more than two years now (it started, unsurprisingly, during the general shutdown); I'm just glad that Discord doesn't get stuck in its damn startup loop; reinstalling the program every other time you need to use it fucking sucked. I've learned to live with its abysmal audio quality.
It's probably not a surprise that no one in my social acquaintance actually uses it in game anymore--it's the worse of the options after Xbox Live and Playstation Network voice coms. We just exclusively use it for meetings...on Discord. In my case, video streaming, since I don't intend to install Zoom on my home PC.
I've been using the Xbox Live integration in Windows 10/11 for voice comms, assuming it isn't baked into the game itself; it's definitely not perfect, but it doesn't regularly swing back and forth between a dial up-level bitrate and disconnections at random; we just have to disconnect and rejoin at the very start of a party if we can't hear someone.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I’m not a huge fan of its voice quality, but I never pick it for its quality, I use it when it’s what most of the group I happen to be playing with at that moment wants to use. And with a bit group of PC/Steam users, it’s just going to be Discord. Anytime I’m using Discord Discord is the only plausible option available.
Given how I use it, though, I’m never sure if the culprit of poor quality is Discord or my equipment. Now I’ll get to compare them on the same system and headphones
I've been using the Xbox Live integration in Windows 10/11 for voice comms, assuming it isn't baked into the game itself; it's definitely not perfect, but it doesn't regularly swing back and forth between a dial up-level bitrate and disconnections at random; we just have to disconnect and rejoin at the very start of a party if we can't hear someone.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I’m not a huge fan of its voice quality, but I never pick it for its quality, I use it when it’s what most of the group I happen to be playing with at that moment wants to use. And with a bit group of PC/Steam users, it’s just going to be Discord. Anytime I’m using Discord Discord is the only plausible option available.
Given how I use it, though, I’m never sure if the culprit of poor quality is Discord or my equipment. Now I’ll get to compare them on the same system and headphones
I chose it (Discord) because it was free. Again, "beggars can't be choosers," and god knows I've gotten enough of those free Nitro coupons that I could probably get several months of improved video streaming (and who knows if that would mean better voice chat audio; it couldn't be worse), I just don't want to give Discord any payment information.
Really, I only started using Discord because many friends from a university club (that I still attend after graduating, because god knows I need some sort of outside-circle social contact and I don't belong to a church, which limits my options where I live) switched over to it, so I accommodated them. Two years ago, people did use it for playing games socially (especially on the Switch, since there was no voice comms system from Nintendo's online service then); eventually they stopped, and we've only been using it because...we have no other choice but to meet on Discord. It's an effective feedback loop, which is the point. I assume Discord has this in mind as part of their business model (they are letting me use it for free after all).
Even through high-end wireless headphones (in the same room as my PC), the quality is either average or just bad. It doesn't stay at either for long. But it's not like I have a better way to stream two hours of video tonight.
Harkening back to a few days ago--there was an appreciably positive response to Mojang's (and by extension, Microsoft's) formal declaration rejecting the implementation of an NFT marketplace within Minecraft, as being contrary to their gameplay model and course of development. Youtube personality Alanah Pierce (who praised the move) did what I thought was a pretty good layperson's explanation as to the potential conflict of design between the NFT commerce model and Minecraft as a game, which I appreciated.
(For those who are unfamiliar, Alanah was associated for many years with the Roosterteeth-owned channel Funhaus. She's probably one of my favorite members, or at least rated among the least likely to rely on channel's usual smug sarcasm combined with acceptably xenophobic jokes about foreigners, seeing how she's Australian herself.)
I use Discord when I'm playing games with my friends on PC, like Destiny or Among Us or Jackbox, but when some of us are playing Halo or Fall Guys one of our group only has an Xbox, so we use Xbox party chat when we do crossplay stuff. However, we always have disconnect issues with party chat, and we never have problems with Discord, so I'm excited for this to come out so we can go back to a service we all like.
Powerwashing Simulator is... You should play it. I lost hours to that damn thing. I don't even understand, but by god did that patio get clean.
i unlocked the last achievement earlier, the one for getting Gold in 5 Challenges, and felt absolutely euphoric! installed it just to check it out when it became available and have poured over 50 hours into it since. it does not take long for it to gets it hooks in. and god does that campaign go places, its wild. definitely second the recommendation.
I hadn't realised that it was on the Xbox. It'll be a get at some point. I really enjoy games that are just chill stuff. Put some thing on in the background to listen to and just do whatever. Car Mechanic Simulator is highly recommended for that, though I don't know how well it would play on the console. For Steam I have the steam controller in one hand and my mouse in the other. Not sure it would be as chill if I had to hold a controller in both hands. But the basic part of the game is still just pure time waster without needing any serious thought.
Powerwashing Simulator is... You should play it. I lost hours to that damn thing. I don't even understand, but by god did that patio get clean.
i unlocked the last achievement earlier, the one for getting Gold in 5 Challenges, and felt absolutely euphoric! installed it just to check it out when it became available and have poured over 50 hours into it since. it does not take long for it to gets it hooks in. and god does that campaign go places, its wild. definitely second the recommendation.
I hadn't realised that it was on the Xbox. It'll be a get at some point. I really enjoy games that are just chill stuff. Put some thing on in the background to listen to and just do whatever. Car Mechanic Simulator is highly recommended for that, though I don't know how well it would play on the console. For Steam I have the steam controller in one hand and my mouse in the other. Not sure it would be as chill if I had to hold a controller in both hands. But the basic part of the game is still just pure time waster without needing any serious thought.
The response to Powerwash Simulator is like....near-universally positive. It's one of those games that, like House Flipper, I've thought of trying but never did. I'm not really playing many "chill" games simply for want of time.
Powerwashing Simulator is... You should play it. I lost hours to that damn thing. I don't even understand, but by god did that patio get clean.
i unlocked the last achievement earlier, the one for getting Gold in 5 Challenges, and felt absolutely euphoric! installed it just to check it out when it became available and have poured over 50 hours into it since. it does not take long for it to gets it hooks in. and god does that campaign go places, its wild. definitely second the recommendation.
I hadn't realised that it was on the Xbox. It'll be a get at some point. I really enjoy games that are just chill stuff. Put some thing on in the background to listen to and just do whatever. Car Mechanic Simulator is highly recommended for that, though I don't know how well it would play on the console. For Steam I have the steam controller in one hand and my mouse in the other. Not sure it would be as chill if I had to hold a controller in both hands. But the basic part of the game is still just pure time waster without needing any serious thought.
The response to Powerwash Simulator is like....near-universally positive. It's one of those games that, like House Flipper, I've thought of trying but never did. I'm not really playing many "chill" games simply for want of time.
It's a game that provides instantaneous feedback that shit's getting done. Plus, it taps into that need/compulsion to scan back and forth on a map in a game to reveal everything. I've only seen videos to know that it can be very satisfying indeed.
House Flipper is a game I'm not entirely satisfied with. Doing the 'missions' is fine, but once I finished those, it's now up to me to flip a house and I'm kind of lost for what I should be doing or not doing. (I understand I'm supposed to so stuff that appeals to a buyer. I just feel it would be better to have the buyer specifically 'hire' me to do the stuff rather than just do the stuff and the buyer decides they like it.) I'm on the fence on that one.
If Drug Dealer Simulator came to Xbox I'd probably get it. As it is, I'd want a bluetooth keyboard to make playing on Steam a better experience. It's too annoying to try and do a split controller/mouse setup for it because both 'E' and the LMB do different functions and you can't remap the mouse without a third party program and I'm just lazy.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Finally got back to finishing Halo 4, that was anticlimactic for a final level even by Halo standards. Started playing 5 and shit, now we’re back to splitting game time with some not-MC loser with tryhard loser armor. Old Cortana with the not uncanny valley face, play Linkin Park for me mixed with Evanescence.
Ended up enjoying the Osiris parts of 5 more than the Blue team parts of 5, myself. The parts of the story on Sanghelios were the one part of the plot that felt fun.
If they went for it instead of being wishy washy, it may have worked. But you could tell they didn't have confidence in Sargent Blueface or whatever (who I guess got killed off between games) so unlike the masterful bait and switch of Raiden in MGS2, we got... Whatever that was
If they went for it instead of being wishy washy, it may have worked. But you could tell they didn't have confidence in Sargent Blueface or whatever (who I guess got killed off between games) so unlike the masterful bait and switch of Raiden in MGS2, we got... Whatever that was
343 is in a frustrating pattern. 4 expands the lore of Master Chief and focuses on his characterization. Okay, so I guess developing his character and putting him in unusual situations will be a priority from now on, huh? Oh, nope, 4's Spartan Ops and 5's campaign are mostly about the expanded universe and characters other than Chief. Okay, so I guess a more complicated world situation that isn't just trying to capture the marketing hype of the original trilogy is what they're going to focus on from here out, huh? Halo Infinite... deletes the world situation and puts every non-Chief character on an express bus out of the storyline. So what ACTUALLY are you guys doing over there? Seems like a whole lot of nothing!
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In less tediously depressing news, for the sale I picked up Devil May Cry 5 (the correct, updated version), Fatal Frame and Ace Attorney, the later largely for the novelty of playing one of those games on Xbox.
The microtransactions are realy bad though. Like 100 bucks for a a bunch of cosmetics( ypu can unlock) premium currency( that uh buy cosmetics )and character unlocks ( tnat are essentially free normally) and 3 free battle passes
What wasn't neat was me having problems liking my Epic and Ubisoft accounts to actually start installing the game. Had to switch my default browser to edge for the linking to not give me errors.
From Shadowrun Returns I turned my attention to Darker Skies, this is the sequel to the game Grey Skies that I played and talked about a while ago. In this game you play Jack, who has decided to repair a heat ray or w/e (his voice actor is... pretty chill about this being the end of the world though) While the first game was pretty linear, this one has taken something of an "open world" approach, in that there is a hub and you have several different areas to visit as you progress. I'm opting to use the achievement order of the areas as a guide of sorts?
Sadly, this game didn't have a full-on intro theme walk to start it off, and another difference from the first game is you get a force multiplier. I would imagine this is because in the first game you spent a lot of time hiding/crawling and avoiding combat until you get enough resources to learn how to OWA everything with homemade IEDs. The gunplay is rather clunky, though being that you're a civilian with no real training I guess it works out. Also the enemies will still dogpile you and beat you down pretty quickly, have what can best be described as armored skulls (3 Headshots to kill)... and... so the gun is kind of... just there. Maybe there's upgrades to increase the damage dealt, but idk. We'll see how it goes. First game was pretty short so I'll probably be able to wrap this one up quickly too? There's some graphical jank too, but eh. i
Will probably grab some other random cheap titles from this sale, or poke around Game Pass after this. I am kind of happy I didn't buy The Quarry for the stack, seeing as it is part of the Ultimate Games sale, lol.
Dragonfall is absolutely better in every way, but only if you like the game's style/gameplay. I always recommend Shadowrun Returns, because if you like it (and I did) you'll fucking love Dragonfall.
Hong Kong is on the backlog
One thing where it is kind of silly is that in Wei's apartment there is a Wing Chung dummy. Successfully completing the 'practice' gets you a temporary boost to fight damage. It plays out with a button prompt that flashes on screen. However, due to the apparent delay, you'll break the streak and stop practicing. But it turns out that all you have to do is mash the one button over and over until he completes the motions. I'm not feeling like much of a martial arts badass if all I have to do is button mash.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/07/20/discord-voice-chat-for-xbox-insiders/
Maybe this integration will finally get them to join Discord so we can chat using that instead.
"Beggars can't be choosers." As such, I'm glad that Discord has exponentially improved the quality of the free tier of video streaming compared to two years ago (when it was frankly abysmal) as well as the reliability of their software (on the PC side, the crashes are much less frequent, as is the dreaded "Discord boot-up loop"). But the voicechat quality is still halfway between mediocre and trash, with regular disconnections (with or without streaming, to my surprise); I can't see that being much better on console.
Ironically, this is why having the choice is good: at least we have alternatives.
XBL chat has been flaky as of late, so it'll be helpful for friends I play with who get dropped from time to time.
This isn't praise of the actual bitrate or voice quality of Xbox Live. It just happens Discord has quality comparable to Skype from a decade ago, and I've assumed this is normal.
Anyway. Highly recommend the other two, big big improvements for both mechanics and story. If you're only doing one, my rec is Hong Kong, but I think the community is split or even leans toward Dragonfall. Maybe if you like fantasy a good bit, go Dragonfall, but HK if you like your cyberpunk a little more raw? Or maybe just whether you want to play a game set in Europe vs Asia.
i unlocked the last achievement earlier, the one for getting Gold in 5 Challenges, and felt absolutely euphoric! installed it just to check it out when it became available and have poured over 50 hours into it since. it does not take long for it to gets it hooks in. and god does that campaign go places, its wild. definitely second the recommendation.
There's a lot of blurry texture pop-in in bits for some reason (Series X internal install though), and the checkpoint issue is exacerbated by the fact that if your controller turns off, instead of checking to confirm that the signed on user has changed, etc. like almost every game does... it simply returns you to the main menu, which can mean a bit of a rollback depending on the checkpoints. At the very least it's somewhat short.
But it really almost feels like the "sequel" is a tech demo for the first game. o_O
edit: apparently Grey Skies also returns to the main menu on a controller disconnect, not really sure why they wouldn't have fixed that though. Weird.
Considering I beat all of 2016 Doom on Ultra-Violence on my Xbox One X, I'm still somewhat inclined to blame the game's perverse sense of difficulty. Like if Team Ninja looked at Ninja Gaiden Black and decided NG2 should be an order of magnitude more difficult.
EDIT: If you run into crashing, be sure to reverify the game files. Apparently this is a known issue?
why are those shots so dark, you ask? That's how dark the game is if you do not explicitly turn on your flashlight.
What they did not have time to do though was add cutscenes of any substantial fashion including a proper intro/outro, other NPCs, special effects on enemies to denote their types, and a lot of other things... like... I am not exaggerating when I say the first game was way better. IDK what happened assuming this game was developed after the first... maybe it was Covid issues or something but... o_O
The credits music they licensed is pretty neat:
even though it doesn't really fit the theme. and... the ending kind of ... defeats the whole point of it all too. o_o
It's letting me download and play gamepass games? Checking my subscriptions on the Xbox itself confirms I have no active subscription but I've downloaded and played a bunch of games no problem...?
The consoles themselves have preview time baked in, but that should still show under your subscription plans. You can see those under your user information in the console, or on the website, instructions here. The preview time should still show up under those, as far as I know.
Hopefully this is just a first step and we get an app later.
I know one person who swears by Skype (I don't understand why, he's not making an international call, it feels like me insisting we all use LINE).
I have the opposite experience. I don't think we've ever been able to have a full conversation in XBL (I'm on Windows the others are on their Series X) in the past 8 months.
As noted, I spend two hours hosting a video stream on Discord, twice a week. I've been doing that for more than two years now (it started, unsurprisingly, during the general shutdown); I'm just glad that Discord doesn't get stuck in its damn startup loop; reinstalling the program every other time you need to use it fucking sucked. I've learned to live with its abysmal audio quality.
It's probably not a surprise that no one in my social acquaintance actually uses it in game anymore--it's the worse of the options after Xbox Live and Playstation Network voice coms. We just exclusively use it for meetings...on Discord. In my case, video streaming, since I don't intend to install Zoom on my home PC.
I’m not a huge fan of its voice quality, but I never pick it for its quality, I use it when it’s what most of the group I happen to be playing with at that moment wants to use. And with a bit group of PC/Steam users, it’s just going to be Discord. Anytime I’m using Discord Discord is the only plausible option available.
Given how I use it, though, I’m never sure if the culprit of poor quality is Discord or my equipment. Now I’ll get to compare them on the same system and headphones
I chose it (Discord) because it was free. Again, "beggars can't be choosers," and god knows I've gotten enough of those free Nitro coupons that I could probably get several months of improved video streaming (and who knows if that would mean better voice chat audio; it couldn't be worse), I just don't want to give Discord any payment information.
Really, I only started using Discord because many friends from a university club (that I still attend after graduating, because god knows I need some sort of outside-circle social contact and I don't belong to a church, which limits my options where I live) switched over to it, so I accommodated them. Two years ago, people did use it for playing games socially (especially on the Switch, since there was no voice comms system from Nintendo's online service then); eventually they stopped, and we've only been using it because...we have no other choice but to meet on Discord. It's an effective feedback loop, which is the point. I assume Discord has this in mind as part of their business model (they are letting me use it for free after all).
Even through high-end wireless headphones (in the same room as my PC), the quality is either average or just bad. It doesn't stay at either for long. But it's not like I have a better way to stream two hours of video tonight.
(For those who are unfamiliar, Alanah was associated for many years with the Roosterteeth-owned channel Funhaus. She's probably one of my favorite members, or at least rated among the least likely to rely on channel's usual smug sarcasm combined with acceptably xenophobic jokes about foreigners, seeing how she's Australian herself.)
I hadn't realised that it was on the Xbox. It'll be a get at some point. I really enjoy games that are just chill stuff. Put some thing on in the background to listen to and just do whatever. Car Mechanic Simulator is highly recommended for that, though I don't know how well it would play on the console. For Steam I have the steam controller in one hand and my mouse in the other. Not sure it would be as chill if I had to hold a controller in both hands. But the basic part of the game is still just pure time waster without needing any serious thought.
The response to Powerwash Simulator is like....near-universally positive. It's one of those games that, like House Flipper, I've thought of trying but never did. I'm not really playing many "chill" games simply for want of time.
It's a game that provides instantaneous feedback that shit's getting done. Plus, it taps into that need/compulsion to scan back and forth on a map in a game to reveal everything. I've only seen videos to know that it can be very satisfying indeed.
House Flipper is a game I'm not entirely satisfied with. Doing the 'missions' is fine, but once I finished those, it's now up to me to flip a house and I'm kind of lost for what I should be doing or not doing. (I understand I'm supposed to so stuff that appeals to a buyer. I just feel it would be better to have the buyer specifically 'hire' me to do the stuff rather than just do the stuff and the buyer decides they like it.) I'm on the fence on that one.
If Drug Dealer Simulator came to Xbox I'd probably get it. As it is, I'd want a bluetooth keyboard to make playing on Steam a better experience. It's too annoying to try and do a split controller/mouse setup for it because both 'E' and the LMB do different functions and you can't remap the mouse without a third party program and I'm just lazy.
A poor one.
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343 is in a frustrating pattern. 4 expands the lore of Master Chief and focuses on his characterization. Okay, so I guess developing his character and putting him in unusual situations will be a priority from now on, huh? Oh, nope, 4's Spartan Ops and 5's campaign are mostly about the expanded universe and characters other than Chief. Okay, so I guess a more complicated world situation that isn't just trying to capture the marketing hype of the original trilogy is what they're going to focus on from here out, huh? Halo Infinite... deletes the world situation and puts every non-Chief character on an express bus out of the storyline. So what ACTUALLY are you guys doing over there? Seems like a whole lot of nothing!