Idk maybe I'd be down for some PC games but yeah, given how mediocre most GWG are, increasing the number of underwhelming games doesn't do it for me I I guess
Idk maybe I'd be down for some PC games but yeah, given how mediocre most GWG are, increasing the number of underwhelming games doesn't do it for me I I guess
My preferred option is to add expired Game pass games as GWG's down the line.
I have played the scariest fucking game out there. God damn grounded. Now I know why Rico said kill'em all.
I've been thinking about checking this out but I'm not sure if it's an online multiplayer/co-op or not....or more-so the achievements. nothing is clear yet... it also releases with 2400 gamerscore so it's like... what's the time commitment?
It's also terribly amusing that even with the broad net they're casting with GWG now, they still manage to include games I already own. Bomber Crew is the prequel to Space Crew, both of which are games that could be grouped in the same types of games like FTL and uh... honestly can't think of any other similar games.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Grounded has a single player campaign, or a multiplayer one. I believe its the same campaign for either but it appears separated by what you choose. I don't know if your single player character can go to multiplayer or not. I know in single player when you unlock "advancement" you have one that effects only you, and one that affects your friends. but I don't know if that singleplayer char can join someones multi map.
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I have played the scariest fucking game out there. God damn grounded. Now I know why Rico said kill'em all.
I've been thinking about checking this out but I'm not sure if it's an online multiplayer/co-op or not....or more-so the achievements. nothing is clear yet... it also releases with 2400 gamerscore so it's like... what's the time commitment?
It's also terribly amusing that even with the broad net they're casting with GWG now, they still manage to include games I already own. Bomber Crew is the prequel to Space Crew, both of which are games that could be grouped in the same types of games like FTL and uh... honestly can't think of any other similar games.
TA (with a whopping 53,000+ score!) has its user suggestions likely range in the ~25hr area with some activity around 40-50. Of course, trolls are largely claiming ~1hr so, yeah. I'd go with 20-50 hours and probably on the upper end due to an abundance of 'do X thing Y amount of times' stuff.
I have Bomber Crew for Steam, but was thinking about getting it for Xbox. I can at least tag it like I have a bunch of other stuff I may or may not get around to playing.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
This could be a hot take but I'm finally playing Elden Ring, and all I have to say is how is it the game feels clunkier than Dark Souls 3. I know it's more open world and that was the big selling point here but I never questioned deaths in DS3, here it feels more like deliberately bad controls and delays to make you a sitting duck for the generic enemies. Margit? I don't feel anything cheap about it. The armored knights in Stormveil? Oh that's a new attack of bullshit you pulled out of your ass, how quaint.
Idk maybe I'd be down for some PC games but yeah, given how mediocre most GWG are, increasing the number of underwhelming games doesn't do it for me I I guess
My preferred option is to add expired Game pass games as GWG's down the line.
It'd be a problem for games that left Game Pass, only to come back (like Yakuza 0), but maybe preventing that from happening would be a good thing in its own right.
I think what sells me on playing Grounded is its basically monster hunter the survival game. You hunt creatures to hunt bigger creatures and wear their skin as proof of your strength!
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
True story, I still use a Zune as my primary way of listening to music.
I went through multiple ipods back in the day and decided to try a Zune... still going strong and I use it every day to listen to music in my car.
As long as you don't need to play FLAC files or similar extremely high quality audio files, and you don't need to transmit over bluetooth (without using an adapter), it'll do the same things a modern MP3 player would do.
So I 100% cleared AI: The Somnium Files the day before they pulled it from Gamepass. In spoilers because it turned out to be mucho texto.
The Good:
-It's twisty. Full of many, many, many ridiculous twists, and unlike a lot of games of this style, they're by and large NOT mind breakingly stupid. More on that later.
-It's funny. There are SO MANY incidental lines and sarcastic remarks in this game during dialogue and investigation. The game goes with the shotgun approach, but hits the mark a surprising amount of times. My favorite thing about it is the demented amount of running jokes, same format with a twist jokes, and even brick jokes that appear on one route early on and then pay off WAY later on a different route.
-It's meaty, but not exhaustingly long. My gold standard for "why is it this long??" is Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton, this is maybe half that long.
-The dub is very, very good imo. The dub actors sound natural in their roles, nail it when an emotional moment is called for, and the script does not overly suffer from "this is a VERY DIRECT translation-itis".
-The game risks biting the hand that feeds it and has some pretty, pretty direct shots fired at otaku culture, maid culture, anime culture, etc.
-It's not the most well executed element in the writing, but there is unarguably a bit of "The police are... bad at their jobs, untrustworthy, perhaps... bad in general actually?" to this story.
-The flowchart system that you start to use to progress through different routes is basically flawless, save some longer loading times.
-The fast forward button is a godsend when you're after just one thing on a repeated play of a section.
The Iffy:
-This team moved from well drawn visual novel style graphics in 999 to slightly dodgy 3D models as of Zero Time Dilemma. They have improved in this one to where I would say "Yeah, this is an anime video game" and leave it at that... except for one thing. See the bad section.
-The game makes you click every conversation option to proceed, which can even be a bit confusing when the solution to "how do I move on" is "hit talk to the first person you talked to in this scene and say you're going to leave." But then it also has trap conversation options that will instantly progress past other lines you may have been interested in, there is no way to tell that these options exist until you trip over them.
-The marquee feature of the game, the puzzle solving dream sequences called Somniums are only... kind of successful in my mind. You basically wander an area taking... actions of some kind to do... something. I'm being vague because the sequences themselves are extremely vague and the characters are often not very successful coaching you what you're even trying to accomplish. For example, an early sequence has you sort of... re-enacting murders, but in sort of a dreamlike fashion. Even with that being the known goal, there's still tons of actions that you can take that amount to "try to save the dream person" and you aren't coached not to do those things, that doing them won't advance anything. In a different sequence, you ARE trying to prevent a murder instead. What frustrated me is that the game is loaded with wacky or strange options to try, which you want to do because the results are often quite funny, but ALSO you're strictly timed and receive bonuses for completing things correctly and within the time limit. I guess maybe the idea is to provide replayability, but to me that doesn't really work. I want to see the funny stuff when I'm engaged with what's going on, I don't remember the funny options I didn't try later on when I'm replaying stuff. One possible fix would be that you could unlock a no timer mode to try out everything once you've successfully completed it once, that would encourage everyone to go back and see all the very silly stuff that CAN happen in these.
-While it is by far not the worst offender of this, the flashbacking can get rather intense in this game. Not like "plot relevant flashbacks that help the plot move forward" (although there are plenty of those). No, I mean sequences that go like this:
The Boss "Remember, people lie to protect those they love."
Suspect "Well, I have to admit, I love her."
Main character "That reminds me of what the Boss said..." *flashback sepia tone* The Boss "Remember, people lie to protect those they love."
This is in the same chapter, not separated by large amounts of time, btw. It becomes very bad when various investigations can only progress when you choose the "Summarize that" option, where your character and AI rephrase everything that was just said with ZERO new insight. This is a standard issue thing that happens perhaps 50-60 times across different chapters in the game.
-Various plot turns only happen because the characters do things that are almost impossibly naive or sloppy. It somehow becomes standard procedure throughout the entire story for physically dangerous characters to not be restrained in any way when they are being handled by captors, this results in about 5 escape or ambush sequences. Watching literally one episode of Law & Order would have allowed the writing to correct for this.
-Your friend AI character, AIBA, is: delightful, a valuable element of the story to make the dialogue work, and... a massive Narc. Like, the world's biggest rat, why did they think this element was funny? It can be justified that she was programmed to do this, but that takes a hammer to the "You are close friends with her, she is a real person" element of the plot.
-The non-binary character Mama who serves as the stereotypical bartender with good information in a detective story is handled... shakily. It seems like the game writers really, really wanted to write anti-fat and anti-LGBT jokes... but also they kind of didn't want to do that and wanted to be accepting of this character. At one point, a different character is clearly having a sort of fear reaction to Mama... and then gives a speech directly to the player about how acceptable and honestly admirable LGBT is as a community. It comes off super divided and confused, the character themself is actually very pleasant though.
The Bad:
-The QTE action sequences are just pretty, pretty bad and to my mind, maybe they shouldn't have done them at all. It's like if Until Dawn was done two generations ago, that level of bad idea. The choreography makes absolutely no sense (literally standing on open ground with no cover being shot at being dozens of people with machine guns and taking no hits at all), the action isn't exciting, there's massive pauses every time it's setting up an action for you to do or immediately after it... it's bad. Like a visual novel, they have a fairly limited amount of character models that they need to get a lot of use out of. During investigations and conversations, that's totally fine. The action sequences make this limitation a BIG problem because... you're faced down by 9-12 of the exact same character model. EXACTLY the same, not like with small variations. The game awkwardly tries joking about this at one point by saying the bodyguards who you run afoul of in several scenes "are forced to wear masks." Ah yes, love to wear facemasks that make our faces and also heights, weights, and body types the same.
-The morality of the writing is... suspect. The main character being a rather pathetically desperate pervert is one thing, but you soon realize this trickles down to the setting at large. The guards are distracted by the slightest hint of erotica like this is MGS all over again. Literally every time you cross paths with a female character the game might as well start flashing a neon sign that says "SEX maybe???" Yes, this applies to the non-adult characters as well. There are sections where this works, like when the adult in the room is not nearly adult enough and they have to scramble to avoid a bad scene with their younger charge. But then there are also scenes where an adult man conspires to get a much younger girl (the game is... a bit shy about a certain character's age and incidental side dialogue nervously waves towards a higher age to cover themselves) to say penis or wants to motorboat her.
In depth plot comments, avoid if spoilers are a problem for you
-The big twist regarding the main character is far too heavily foreshadowed to be surprising, yet it also makes very little sense and seems to have not been planned out very well. To recap, the police conspired to steal a person's body and thought that was no big deal for some reason? They then, as complained about earlier, took no security at all regarding a dangerous criminal's ability to move freely so that person escapes and causes a gun fight in public. Immediately following that major foul up, they decide to send in an undercover person to a dangerous location. This person is immediately captured and then tortured for a long period of time, the police apparently had NO contingency planning in place to rescue this person and literally provide no assistance to them ever. The bad guy decides swapping bodies with this undercover person would be cool for... reasons that are literally NEVER mentioned in the game. It's probably the most important decision that character (the villain of the entire game!) makes and yet there is no logic or reasoning stated for it at all. The undercover person who was also not restrained in any way (both sides are doing this now!!) manages to escape from an enemy location full of the enemy's people. The main bad guy also had no contingency plans and suffers massive, unexplained trauma that happens to no other character in the game, under similar circumstances. So basically, that sequence of plot is the key to the entire scenario, the motive for the murder mystery, and it is the worst written thing in the game. It's near total nonsense. A massive hole the bulk of the writing has to try to dig out of, it's really really bad.
-And along those lines, the main character is incoherent. He's like three or four different characters in a trench coat. A cold blooded murderer who believes in justice so much, he starts just executing criminals, who then stops caring about right and wrong, but still has close police friends? Why does Boss like this serial killer so much? It calls her character into question, BIG time. Then, detective mob serial killer falls in love and starts regrowing his heart, only to lose his love and then his memories. So naturally... he becomes a weird tryhard pervert/ caring adoptive father to a girl he has no family ties to. I guess you could say that both versions of this character feel strongly about being paternal to young women, but where did all the justice/bloodthirsty traits disappear to and where did all the pervert/horndog/sex pest characteristics come from??
-This game has the same style as the Zero Escape games where you have to try a bunch of routes, including dead ends to get the full information. In the context of this game, I don't really like the different world lines though. It really has zero to do with the theme and just makes everything MUCH more confusing, while the added complexity does not make the story any better. I hear the sequel does more with this, but it just feels in this one that they replicated the style of Zero Escape without the theme or plot elements to make that appropriate.
-I don't like that one route is "focus on your adopted daughter, she is really important to you", while the other routes are like "lol, you did that already, forget about her!" You're even criticized for ignoring her on the other routes, feels bad man.
-I super don't like that the other main route is "this young girl is crushing on you, let's make every sex joke we can possibly imagine about this situation" when the endgame is she thinks of you as a father figure, you just both don't know that for the duration. The brush off of that in the epilogue just is not enough.
tl;dr The game was surprisingly funny, a tad too dark and morbid imo, engaging throughout, and the performance aspect is up there with some of the best VA in gaming, for certain characters. Cautiously recommended, with some hard outs based on your tolerance for certain kinds of content.
I'm sorry that I didn't go into the series much beyond PGR3, which I used to show off to my friends a stunningly beautiful Xbox 360 game (just marveling at the reflected lighting in the hood of a red Ferrari, etc.). Also pretending to headbang on the side of the arcade cabinet in the garage.
So, another nostalgic blast from the past from MVG.
Mostly this reminded me of what was for a me, a somewhat brief moment of time where I really fell in love with Titanfall, something that didn't quite translate to the sequel (despite its obvious superiority in many ways) for a few reasons. I'll restart the Titanfall 2 singleplayer campaign again one day, I swear.
I skipped Titanfall because I'd become very wary of full-price multiplayer-only games by then, especially ones with mechs (see: Steel Battalion: Line of Contact, and Chromehounds, both of which were shut down far too soon making the discs merely attractive - and expensive - coasters), and not having a group to play with so it would've been all randos.
Recently I picked up a disc copy for like £1, after it went bye-bye from digital services, but in those last days of it being there I did fire it up... and couldn't find a single match. Oh well.
So really my whole experience with that franchise was Titanfall 2, which is a damn solid game I'd recommend to anyone.
Also, further to Project Gotham, it's criminal that those games aren't BC on Xbox One/Series at all (although, you know, real-world car licensing and probably lots of other licensing too with the cities and advertisers and whatnot). And that PGR2 has a near-game-killing bug on the Xbox 360 so really needs an OG Xbox. Basically those games are less accessible than they should be and deserve NFS:HP-style remasters/re-releases.
It drives me a special kind of crazy that the house of the dead remake is on the Xbox console but not the pc game store. Is it even playable with a controller/can you just plug a mouse and keyboard into the series x if not?
It drives me a special kind of crazy that the house of the dead remake is on the Xbox console but not the pc game store. Is it even playable with a controller/can you just plug a mouse and keyboard into the series x if not?
It's on Steam? Or do you mean the windows store?
I'm not surprised that 3rd parties would be mostly avoiding that sans a gamepass deal....
It drives me a special kind of crazy that the house of the dead remake is on the Xbox console but not the pc game store. Is it even playable with a controller/can you just plug a mouse and keyboard into the series x if not?
It's on Steam? Or do you mean the windows store?
I'm not surprised that 3rd parties would be mostly avoiding that sans a gamepass deal....
I mean it’s more money for them if they did! Like unless it’s a massive hurdle to release it on the store.
It’s on steam but I like my Xbox and the shared ecosystem and achievements it has with the windows store. It’s silly I know but I’m comfortable with my mania
heya
anyone in here have experience with refurbished xboxes? i just missed out on a deal on amazon where they basically had series s for ~200€. I know it can't do 4k or whatever, but man, that'd be a juicy pricepoint for a Gamepass machine
e: welp, just bought one. If I can sell the FIFA code, I effectively paid like 160€, that seems like a solid deal to me
It drives me nuts that sometimes the gamepass page has a section called “recent releases” and then other times that section just isn’t there. It’s like just keep it permanently in the page, it’s how I check what’s new.
It drives me nuts that sometimes the gamepass page has a section called “recent releases” and then other times that section just isn’t there. It’s like just keep it permanently in the page, it’s how I check what’s new.
I hate that. If you have the game tile pass pinned in the home screen it always gives you a direct link to browse recently added. I have it pinned exactly for that reason, the game pass itself is algorithmic and I got annoyed with constantly trying to hunt for recently added.
So did anyone else notice it took MS until the 4th to populate the console GWG screen? Usually the first day of the switch it doesn't work, this was really taking the piss. The "sales with Gold" button has not worked for months. The sales are still there each week, it's just the link from the Gold games section does not work. Their priorities are really quite blatant.
So did anyone else notice it took MS until the 4th to populate the console GWG screen? Usually the first day of the switch it doesn't work, this was really taking the piss. The "sales with Gold" button has not worked for months. The sales are still there each week, it's just the link from the Gold games section does not work. Their priorities are really quite blatant.
Wait, I think I'm misunderstanding you.
The "Sales with Gold" button works; it brings up a different sales page then, for example, discounted Game Pass games, or named event sales (as defined by different games on sale--usually a much smaller list than either).
So did anyone else notice it took MS until the 4th to populate the console GWG screen? Usually the first day of the switch it doesn't work, this was really taking the piss. The "sales with Gold" button has not worked for months. The sales are still there each week, it's just the link from the Gold games section does not work. Their priorities are really quite blatant.
Wait, I think I'm misunderstanding you.
The "Sales with Gold" button works; it brings up a different sales page then, for example, discounted Game Pass games, or named event sales (as defined by different games on sale--usually a much smaller list than either).
If you go to your Full Library, Games With Gold, Deals With Gold, that button (for me, at least) has brought up a screen with only the ability to buy more time for Xbox Live Gold (and nothing else) for months now. It previously correctly displayed the weekly sale exclusive to Gold members. The only way I can get to that sale now is by going Store, Deals, and then finding Deals With Gold. It's not that that path is tremendously difficult to navigate, just that they broke the interface MONTHS ago and never changed or fixed it.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Games With Gold has historically been deeply, deeply buried in UI both on console and in browser lmao
So did anyone else notice it took MS until the 4th to populate the console GWG screen? Usually the first day of the switch it doesn't work, this was really taking the piss. The "sales with Gold" button has not worked for months. The sales are still there each week, it's just the link from the Gold games section does not work. Their priorities are really quite blatant.
Wait, I think I'm misunderstanding you.
The "Sales with Gold" button works; it brings up a different sales page then, for example, discounted Game Pass games, or named event sales (as defined by different games on sale--usually a much smaller list than either).
If you go to your Full Library, Games With Gold, Deals With Gold, that button (for me, at least) has brought up a screen with only the ability to buy more time for Xbox Live Gold (and nothing else) for months now. It previously correctly displayed the weekly sale exclusive to Gold members. The only way I can get to that sale now is by going Store, Deals, and then finding Deals With Gold. It's not that that path is tremendously difficult to navigate, just that they broke the interface MONTHS ago and never changed or fixed it.
I didn't even know that was an option.
Back before the Xbox Series X launch, I added "Xbox Live Gold" as a home menu option; that group automatically ads a "Deals with Gold" button, that I've been using. You don't need to open the store that way; I'm not sure if that's would save you time, but it's an option. EDIT: It's my third line on the home screen, after Pins, Store, and before Game Pass, which is probably a funny reflection of my priorities.
Posts
+1 Xbox One games, obviously.
Steam ID: Good Life
My preferred option is to add expired Game pass games as GWG's down the line.
I've been thinking about checking this out but I'm not sure if it's an online multiplayer/co-op or not....or more-so the achievements. nothing is clear yet... it also releases with 2400 gamerscore so it's like... what's the time commitment?
It's also terribly amusing that even with the broad net they're casting with GWG now, they still manage to include games I already own. Bomber Crew is the prequel to Space Crew, both of which are games that could be grouped in the same types of games like FTL and uh... honestly can't think of any other similar games.
pleasepaypreacher.net
TA (with a whopping 53,000+ score!) has its user suggestions likely range in the ~25hr area with some activity around 40-50. Of course, trolls are largely claiming ~1hr so, yeah. I'd go with 20-50 hours and probably on the upper end due to an abundance of 'do X thing Y amount of times' stuff.
I have Bomber Crew for Steam, but was thinking about getting it for Xbox. I can at least tag it like I have a bunch of other stuff I may or may not get around to playing.
GWG getting a "must do better" on the ol' school report.
Steam | XBL
It'd be a problem for games that left Game Pass, only to come back (like Yakuza 0), but maybe preventing that from happening would be a good thing in its own right.
pleasepaypreacher.net
True story, I still use a Zune as my primary way of listening to music.
I went through multiple ipods back in the day and decided to try a Zune... still going strong and I use it every day to listen to music in my car.
As long as you don't need to play FLAC files or similar extremely high quality audio files, and you don't need to transmit over bluetooth (without using an adapter), it'll do the same things a modern MP3 player would do.
The Good:
-It's funny. There are SO MANY incidental lines and sarcastic remarks in this game during dialogue and investigation. The game goes with the shotgun approach, but hits the mark a surprising amount of times. My favorite thing about it is the demented amount of running jokes, same format with a twist jokes, and even brick jokes that appear on one route early on and then pay off WAY later on a different route.
-It's meaty, but not exhaustingly long. My gold standard for "why is it this long??" is Phoenix Wright vs Professor Layton, this is maybe half that long.
-The dub is very, very good imo. The dub actors sound natural in their roles, nail it when an emotional moment is called for, and the script does not overly suffer from "this is a VERY DIRECT translation-itis".
-The game risks biting the hand that feeds it and has some pretty, pretty direct shots fired at otaku culture, maid culture, anime culture, etc.
-It's not the most well executed element in the writing, but there is unarguably a bit of "The police are... bad at their jobs, untrustworthy, perhaps... bad in general actually?" to this story.
-The flowchart system that you start to use to progress through different routes is basically flawless, save some longer loading times.
-The fast forward button is a godsend when you're after just one thing on a repeated play of a section.
The Iffy:
-The game makes you click every conversation option to proceed, which can even be a bit confusing when the solution to "how do I move on" is "hit talk to the first person you talked to in this scene and say you're going to leave." But then it also has trap conversation options that will instantly progress past other lines you may have been interested in, there is no way to tell that these options exist until you trip over them.
-The marquee feature of the game, the puzzle solving dream sequences called Somniums are only... kind of successful in my mind. You basically wander an area taking... actions of some kind to do... something. I'm being vague because the sequences themselves are extremely vague and the characters are often not very successful coaching you what you're even trying to accomplish. For example, an early sequence has you sort of... re-enacting murders, but in sort of a dreamlike fashion. Even with that being the known goal, there's still tons of actions that you can take that amount to "try to save the dream person" and you aren't coached not to do those things, that doing them won't advance anything. In a different sequence, you ARE trying to prevent a murder instead. What frustrated me is that the game is loaded with wacky or strange options to try, which you want to do because the results are often quite funny, but ALSO you're strictly timed and receive bonuses for completing things correctly and within the time limit. I guess maybe the idea is to provide replayability, but to me that doesn't really work. I want to see the funny stuff when I'm engaged with what's going on, I don't remember the funny options I didn't try later on when I'm replaying stuff. One possible fix would be that you could unlock a no timer mode to try out everything once you've successfully completed it once, that would encourage everyone to go back and see all the very silly stuff that CAN happen in these.
-While it is by far not the worst offender of this, the flashbacking can get rather intense in this game. Not like "plot relevant flashbacks that help the plot move forward" (although there are plenty of those). No, I mean sequences that go like this:
The Boss "Remember, people lie to protect those they love."
Suspect "Well, I have to admit, I love her."
Main character "That reminds me of what the Boss said..." *flashback sepia tone* The Boss "Remember, people lie to protect those they love."
This is in the same chapter, not separated by large amounts of time, btw. It becomes very bad when various investigations can only progress when you choose the "Summarize that" option, where your character and AI rephrase everything that was just said with ZERO new insight. This is a standard issue thing that happens perhaps 50-60 times across different chapters in the game.
-Various plot turns only happen because the characters do things that are almost impossibly naive or sloppy. It somehow becomes standard procedure throughout the entire story for physically dangerous characters to not be restrained in any way when they are being handled by captors, this results in about 5 escape or ambush sequences. Watching literally one episode of Law & Order would have allowed the writing to correct for this.
-Your friend AI character, AIBA, is: delightful, a valuable element of the story to make the dialogue work, and... a massive Narc. Like, the world's biggest rat, why did they think this element was funny? It can be justified that she was programmed to do this, but that takes a hammer to the "You are close friends with her, she is a real person" element of the plot.
-The non-binary character Mama who serves as the stereotypical bartender with good information in a detective story is handled... shakily. It seems like the game writers really, really wanted to write anti-fat and anti-LGBT jokes... but also they kind of didn't want to do that and wanted to be accepting of this character. At one point, a different character is clearly having a sort of fear reaction to Mama... and then gives a speech directly to the player about how acceptable and honestly admirable LGBT is as a community. It comes off super divided and confused, the character themself is actually very pleasant though.
The Bad:
-The morality of the writing is... suspect. The main character being a rather pathetically desperate pervert is one thing, but you soon realize this trickles down to the setting at large. The guards are distracted by the slightest hint of erotica like this is MGS all over again. Literally every time you cross paths with a female character the game might as well start flashing a neon sign that says "SEX maybe???" Yes, this applies to the non-adult characters as well. There are sections where this works, like when the adult in the room is not nearly adult enough and they have to scramble to avoid a bad scene with their younger charge. But then there are also scenes where an adult man conspires to get a much younger girl (the game is... a bit shy about a certain character's age and incidental side dialogue nervously waves towards a higher age to cover themselves) to say penis or wants to motorboat her.
In depth plot comments, avoid if spoilers are a problem for you
-And along those lines, the main character is incoherent. He's like three or four different characters in a trench coat. A cold blooded murderer who believes in justice so much, he starts just executing criminals, who then stops caring about right and wrong, but still has close police friends? Why does Boss like this serial killer so much? It calls her character into question, BIG time. Then, detective mob serial killer falls in love and starts regrowing his heart, only to lose his love and then his memories. So naturally... he becomes a weird tryhard pervert/ caring adoptive father to a girl he has no family ties to. I guess you could say that both versions of this character feel strongly about being paternal to young women, but where did all the justice/bloodthirsty traits disappear to and where did all the pervert/horndog/sex pest characteristics come from??
-This game has the same style as the Zero Escape games where you have to try a bunch of routes, including dead ends to get the full information. In the context of this game, I don't really like the different world lines though. It really has zero to do with the theme and just makes everything MUCH more confusing, while the added complexity does not make the story any better. I hear the sequel does more with this, but it just feels in this one that they replicated the style of Zero Escape without the theme or plot elements to make that appropriate.
-I don't like that one route is "focus on your adopted daughter, she is really important to you", while the other routes are like "lol, you did that already, forget about her!" You're even criticized for ignoring her on the other routes, feels bad man.
-I super don't like that the other main route is "this young girl is crushing on you, let's make every sex joke we can possibly imagine about this situation" when the endgame is she thinks of you as a father figure, you just both don't know that for the duration. The brush off of that in the epilogue just is not enough.
tl;dr The game was surprisingly funny, a tad too dark and morbid imo, engaging throughout, and the performance aspect is up there with some of the best VA in gaming, for certain characters. Cautiously recommended, with some hard outs based on your tolerance for certain kinds of content.
Good news. The developers say it won't. In somewhat nonspecific terms. So that's something.
https://www.purexbox.com/features/project-gotham-racing-4-is-now-15-years-old-and-its-still-an-incredible-xbox-racer
PGR2 is still my fave. But they're all good. Forza Horizon just doesn't scratch the same itch.
Steam | XBL
So, another nostalgic blast from the past from MVG.
Mostly this reminded me of what was for a me, a somewhat brief moment of time where I really fell in love with Titanfall, something that didn't quite translate to the sequel (despite its obvious superiority in many ways) for a few reasons. I'll restart the Titanfall 2 singleplayer campaign again one day, I swear.
Recently I picked up a disc copy for like £1, after it went bye-bye from digital services, but in those last days of it being there I did fire it up... and couldn't find a single match. Oh well.
So really my whole experience with that franchise was Titanfall 2, which is a damn solid game I'd recommend to anyone.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
It's on Steam? Or do you mean the windows store?
I'm not surprised that 3rd parties would be mostly avoiding that sans a gamepass deal....
I mean it’s more money for them if they did! Like unless it’s a massive hurdle to release it on the store.
It’s on steam but I like my Xbox and the shared ecosystem and achievements it has with the windows store. It’s silly I know but I’m comfortable with my mania
anyone in here have experience with refurbished xboxes? i just missed out on a deal on amazon where they basically had series s for ~200€. I know it can't do 4k or whatever, but man, that'd be a juicy pricepoint for a Gamepass machine
e: welp, just bought one. If I can sell the FIFA code, I effectively paid like 160€, that seems like a solid deal to me
Yeah, this is for games dropping from today until the 17th. Hopefully I’ll have some free time to play a 100 (?) hour JRPG by then.
Video montage of the upcoming fifteen games (yes, including Persona 5).
Clearly, Sony wasn't listening the first time.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
I hate that. If you have the game tile pass pinned in the home screen it always gives you a direct link to browse recently added. I have it pinned exactly for that reason, the game pass itself is algorithmic and I got annoyed with constantly trying to hunt for recently added.
Wait, I think I'm misunderstanding you.
The "Sales with Gold" button works; it brings up a different sales page then, for example, discounted Game Pass games, or named event sales (as defined by different games on sale--usually a much smaller list than either).
If you go to your Full Library, Games With Gold, Deals With Gold, that button (for me, at least) has brought up a screen with only the ability to buy more time for Xbox Live Gold (and nothing else) for months now. It previously correctly displayed the weekly sale exclusive to Gold members. The only way I can get to that sale now is by going Store, Deals, and then finding Deals With Gold. It's not that that path is tremendously difficult to navigate, just that they broke the interface MONTHS ago and never changed or fixed it.
I didn't even know that was an option.
Back before the Xbox Series X launch, I added "Xbox Live Gold" as a home menu option; that group automatically ads a "Deals with Gold" button, that I've been using. You don't need to open the store that way; I'm not sure if that's would save you time, but it's an option. EDIT: It's my third line on the home screen, after Pins, Store, and before Game Pass, which is probably a funny reflection of my priorities.