Topic: Xbox Games You've Recently Beat

Halo Wars 2. Solid enough RTS. Nothing spectacular, as I liked the first one and Gears Tactics more, but borderline required playing before Halo Infinite comes out. They really did a good job with the cinematics though, which isn't surprising since it's a Halo game. Overall, I'd say a solid 7/10 sounds about right.

Far cry 6

The most recent I've beat was Gears Tactics last week.
I'm currently playing Forza Horizon 5 and Banjo-Kazooie.

I played Twelve Minutes on Game Pass. Actually, I got all the achievements and it's not as easy as you might think because there are tons of little details involved in getting them and the game is so repetitive that you might forget one detail and have to restart everything.

I was surprised to know the relatively high price and the "Series X" tag because the game it's technically very simple. Animations are clunky although they did motion capture and it affects gameplay a little bit. Also, I found a glitch where the present (in the inventory) was stuck on the middle of the screen and I couldn't present it as "evidence" and had to restart that part. The controls and the inventory are clunky, too. It's a very rough game, technically. The story is all about the twists, the voice acting is good. There's barely any music, not that it's needed, just a fact. The gameplay loop is addictive but frustrating. It's not a game that I would recommend buying because I don't really liked it but worth trying on Game Pass.

@eduscxbox Enjoy!

Just finished Call of Duty: Black Ops on 360. Absolutely phenomenal campaign! I think it's my favourite one thus far as it was a very trippy experience set during the Cold War (Vietnam, Cuba, etc.), which is a setting we haven't seen much of in video games. Lots of varied missions and fun vehicle sections, I highly enjoyed my time with it.

I can't say this enough but the older CoD games seriously have some of the coolest campaigns I've seen in an FPS. Really glad that I've now finally experienced Black Ops.

Just finished Halo 5 and i gotta say it was actually a great game. Wasn't expecting it due to the comments I've heard about the game. Definitely recommend it to everyone who hasn't played it and especially new folks to Xbox. The home stretch of Halo infinite preparation sees me just having to finish Halo Wars 1&2. I'll likely be holding out for the infinite campaign untill I'm done with them.

@Krzzystuff I downloaded it several weeks ago, but haven't played it yet. I'm not planning on playing Halo Infinite's campaign right away, so I have time asI plan on playing it last since Infinite picks up after it.

I beat Scarlet Nexus playthrough 1 as Yuito a week or so ago and really loved it, so I am now deep into Tales of Arise (similar to SN in many ways!) and what an amazing games this is! I do wanna return to SN because I need to see all those bond episodes! I feel this internal desire to just learn as much as I can about those characters. Anyone here have experience with the bond episode pack for SN? I'm looking forward to that.

@MasterkillerX I didn't even know the bond enhancement DLC was coming for Scarlet Nexus. I had deleted it due to space even though I loved the game outside of a couple of really frustrating battles near the end (played as Kasane), but I'd considering getting the DLC if there's enough there for the $7.99 price.

beat Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep yesterday and I can see why everyone says this was the best DLC for Borderlands 2. It was a joy to play and it wrapped up the story of BL2 beautifully.

It is basically more Borderlands 2 but the added Dungeon and Dragons flavor to it did make it unique and refreshing and it's easy to see why Gearbox decided to sell this one as a standalone for Tiny Tina's Wonderland but if you are expecting this one to be drastically different then Borderlands 2 it isn't. It will be interesting to see what they take from this game and incorporate It into Tiny Tina's Wonderland.

As for difficulty it's not to hard enemies are scaled down for the stand alone so if you never got around to playing the game on BL2 due to not being high enough level or never playing BL2 but are Intrested in Dragon's Keep this is a perfect way to play it.

If you do everything the first play through takes about 30 hours or so and once you finish it the first time you unlock the next level of difficulty which gives you better loot drops as in the case with games like this. There is a raid boss too if you are interested in grabbing some friends for that as well.

In the end this game isn't to much of a departure from BL2 but it is unique to stand on its own and as a setup to Tiny Tina's Wonderland.

I just finished up Halo Wars 2 last night. Really enjoyed it and highly recommended folks to give the Halo Wars games a go if they haven't. I'm finally ready to play the Infinite campaign!!!!

I did find that the story about the Banished wasn't as deep as I was expecting so playing the first few levels tells you enough about them to prep for Infinite. I'll have to see how the Infinite campaign goes to to see if there's anything further tie one from Halo Wars 2.

Just finished Forza Horizon 5 story mode and got into the Hall of Fame. Absolutely phenomenal game! I played through it from beginning to end, which took about 15 hours, on Xbox Cloud Gaming and it was such a smooth experience. When it comes to first-party games, I tend to buy them physically but this time I decided to just play it on Game Pass and it was so worth it. Being able to play through the entire game for only €15 is just amazing.

Anyway, this is definitely one of the best Forza Horizon games that I've played. I loved the way they did story mode this time around by having expeditions where you could actually explore the environments instead of just drive by them in races. I wish there would've been more of these though because as you get deeper into the story, a lot of the events are just regular races.

I do have to say though that the cars felt easier to handle this time around and I don't know if it were just me. Like I had a much easier time pulling off drifts compared to past Forza Horizon games. It definitely feels like the developer has improved upon the mechanics and that's great!

Another thing that I really liked about this game is the sheer variety of biomes. There are deserts, volcanic areas, woods, jungles, urban areas, plains and so on. Being able to drive through all of them was really nice, this definitely felt like the most varied Forza Horizon in terms of environments.

The overall progression was great, but one gripe I had with it was the cars. Throughout my 15 hours with the game, I never felt like changing the two cars I primarily used: one for off-road racing and one for regular racing. I feel like there should've been a better focus on making the player receive constantly better cars over time, but maybe that's not what people want? I can totally understand most people wanting to just have the best cars right from the get-go, but considering how there are over 500 different cars in the game, it felt kinda wasteful to only use two throughout the entire campaign.

All in all though, this was such a fun experience and I'm going to keep playing it and do more races until I feel like I'm done with it. It's such a good game and easily one of the best titles I've played this year.

I posted elsewhere but I should have posted it here. I recently beat Doom Eternal and this is what I wrote about it.

Because it takes a lot of current-gen storage and because I had planned it after beating all Gears of War campaigns and Doom 2016 recently, I have beaten Doom Eternal. At first, I thought I wouldn't want to replay it because of its intensity but after beating the final boss, I just went back to the game and get 100% (normal difficulty).

Doom Eternal is not perfect. For instance, the final boss relies once again on multiple encounters to raise the difficulty but this is one of the best shooters I've ever played. It's an evolution of previous Doom games but it's also an evolution of things I loved in the past like Metroid Prime. It has exploration, platforming that works like a charm with an Elite controller and, most of all, the gameplay is brilliant as long as you've played long enough to know all your weapons. Acrobatic fighting moving throughout the available space is something that usually doesn't work in games but here it just works and it makes the gameplay more engaging, more challenging and more rewarding than your average linear action game.

I went back to Doom 2016 that I had completed not 100%, trying to understand why I didn't like it that much and planning to get the missing collectibles but I realised that Doom 2016 is more boring and it's more a chore. It was well received, probably as well as Doom Eternal and some people prefer Doom 2016 but I can't bother anymore. I just don't like Doom 2016 but Doom Eternal is fantastic. I wonder if anyone else feels the same.

Actually, the platforming in Doom 2016 is worse. For instance, the level where you climb a structure round a nuclear reactor is awful. The collectibles are annoying to find in Doom 2016 in spite of being more sparse, partly because in Doom Eternal you can upgrade the map features easily and it's a bit of a puzzle to get them once you reach the spot. It's fun. The platforming in Doom Eternal is more integrated in the exploration and gameplay, it's a bit more complicated because of the new dash move but it became one of my favourite features. Dash becomes also another strategy element in Doom Eternal, especially in battles. Because of all this, the gameplay and the exploration is better in Doom Eternal even if the controls and platforming are a bit more complex because of the additional control that the player has.

With a regular controller is a bit more challenging but if you use an Elite controller is a piece of cake because you can map the dash, jump and melee action to the paddles, the latter move also used for holding on to surfaces. You can play with a regular controller, too. If you dash, you hold onto surfaces automatically. You also hold onto edges automatically. The way that the platformer elements are integrated into the game is better than in Doom 2016 and it reminds me of Metroid Prime but backtracking is more fun than in Metroid Prime. Doom Eternal integrates platformer gameplay elements more successfully than both Doom 2016 and any Metroid Prime game where you usually look down while jumping because Samus can't hold onto edges. Last but not least, the level design and the battle design are better.

Just finished Halo Infinite after about 19 hours of playtime. Absolutely phenomenal game, easily the best Halo game I've ever played and definitely my GOTY of 2021. Holy crap what a ride! At first I thought this was a pretty good Halo game, but when the world opened up and you could explore for the first time, I immediately got hooked. It was so much fun exploring the world thanks to the introduction of the grappling hook, which made traversal much easier and more fun. You can climb walls if you manage to time your shots well and due to Master Chief not being able to take fall damage, it felt pretty easy to get around. In all honesty, I just can't imagine going back and playing the older Halo games now due to how slow they would feel without the grappling hook. It's such a simple addition but it makes the game so much more fun, especially when you use it on enemies as you're able to strike enemies from above with a ground smash with the help of the hook. I would constantly do that once I upgraded Master Chief and it just felt so badass to play as him now with all these new abilities.

As you explore the world, you'll find Spartan Cores to upgrade Master Chief's equipment, save marines to help you out in battle and take out targets that have been a threat to the UNSC for a long time. The last part was actually pretty cool as your AI friend would give you backstory on each target, so it felt rather satisfying and meaningful when you defeated them.

You would also unlock new weapons that you can call in at FOBs after defeating the targets and the progression system was overall great! I liked that you would continuously unlock new vehicles throughout the story and the thing is that this part of the Halo series has translated very well into the open world aspect. It's never felt this good to use the classic Halo vehicles before, such as Warthog, Mongoose, Ghost, Banshee and so on. Discovering the enemy vehicles for the first time was brilliantly done. Once you've gotten to a new area, you'd randomly stumble upon an enemy with a vehicle, such as a Ghost and your first thought would be to board it with the grappling hook and then you get it. The game doesn't tell you this, it just felt natural and I love that. The same can be said about the Banshee that you'll find later on in the game, which allows you to fly around the world and it's such a great feeling when you finally unlock the aircrafts.

The story was genuinely very interesting as a lot has happened in between the story since the last mainline game. So naturally, you'd want to know what has transpired and the game does a great job of slowly unraveling that throughout the campaign. Furthermore, I really like that the game focused on a couple of characters this time around as it made them more memorable and likeable as you follow their character development. The villains were great as well, I highly enjoyed the battles against them, which were really intense.

I also have to mention that this game is incredibly detailed. I mentioned before how it would naturally introduce new vehicles to you as you progressed, but another thing I really liked is the chatter from the NPCs. As you rescue marines or attack enemies, you'll hear them talk about you. The marines will speak highly of you and praise you when you've defeated the enemies, like they're acknowledging what a legend the Chief is. And then you have the Grunts who'll say stuff like "Master Chief's name is John. John? Seriously? We're afraid of a guy named JOHN?" and it's just hilarious. Subsequently, there would also be times where you're up on a hill looking over the horizon and all of a sudden, the main theme of Halo would play to make the moment more special. The attention to detail is just impeccable, it truly makes the world feel like a living place.

My two main gripes with the game are the repetitive level design for the linear levels and a lot of the equipment not being that useful in combat. So first off, and this was a huge issue with the first Halo game as well, the linear levels reuse the same level design over and over again numerous times throughout the campaign. And it would honestly get annoying after a while. It was never as bad as the first Halo, but this is definitely one of the worst parts of the game. Second, a lot of the equipment didn't feel all that useful. You have four equipment, your grappling hook, dropwall (a shield that you deploy), thruster (in order to boost) and a sensor for detecting enemies. The last two were absolutely worthless because the thruster barely takes you anywhere and it's much better to use the grappling hook if you want to escape from enemies. And the sensor was pointless because enemies show up on your main radar anyway. Grappling hook was easily the best one to upgrade as you'd be able to do a ground smash on enemies once fully upgraded, and the dropwall was pretty good for surviving intense situations. It's definitely saved me a good amount of times. But yeah, I just wish they could've added more useful equipment or at least better upgrades for the thruster.

All in all though, this was an absolutely fantastic game and I highly enjoyed my time with it.

Finished Shadows awakening and it is a fun enough Diablo clone with the twist that you have up to four different characters at the same time so you can be allways changing the playstyle on the fly.
However the movement is fairly slow and the teletransportation points can be quite far apart which gets to be frustrating after a while and on top of it some side quests are very criptic and even by googling it I could not get straight answers. Overall I would give it a 6/10

Dragon Age 2. Beat it several days ago, but never posted. Even though it would be considered the weak link of the series and a disappointment 10 years ago, I highly enjoyed it. I didn't mind most of the criticisms, like how most of the time enemies just came in waves and that the environments were recycled. Unlike in Halo CE, which I've stopped playing for the most part because it's ridiculously repetitive, I'm fine with it in an RPG because there's more to it.

I'm not going to say I think it's better than Origins, but I did find some things I liked better. I liked the faster combat (Origins is a bit slow and simple in that regard now), and I'd consider the companions better and deeper this time around. Obviously Morrigan was great and Liliana was fine, but I'd say otherwise this group of companions ended up being more memorable as a whole and more fleshed out.

Praising Xbox and not the game, but it was also amazing being able to play a 10 year old game in 60 FPS. There were a couple minor glitches, and maybe an random stutter a few times, but overall it was nice playing it at 60 FPS. It made having to walk to an exit point to travel every time faster obviously since the FPS Boost meant you walked pretty fast.

Just finished The Gunk on Xbox One after 6 hours of playtime. What a great game! I've been looking forward to playing it all year and it was definitely worth the wait. This is basically a 3D platformer with puzzle elements and a vacuum mechanic (like in Luigi's Mansion) where you go around sucking up gunk in order to clean areas. It's a fun gameplay loop but sadly the game doesn't really introduce many new mechanics throughout the story. Thankfully though, it doesn't overstay its welcome and is fairly short. So if you're looking for an indie game 3D platformer that's around 5 hours long, then you're definitely going to like The Gunk. Not to mention that it was made by the SteamWorld Dig developer and I absolutely love those games, so I highly recommend checking out this one!

Just finished Control on XSX. Gotta say that i love the combat in a lot of Remedy games. Some of the weapons and abilities just work so well together to give an enjoyable gameplay loop and a nice sense of character progression in terms of ability

Not sure what i'll pick from my backlog next, probably a palette cleanser before heading into something similar

Randomly finished up Streets of Rage 4 last night with a buddy on couch co-op. Turns out I was on the last three levels when I parked the game many months ago. The game is great and was a nostalgic throwback, especially playing it with a buddy. Only bad part was he kept skipping the cutscenes so now i have to see if I can rewatch them or I'm looking them up online

Just finished Lake on Xbox One. What a wonderful game! I definitely did not expect it to turn out to be as fun and interesting as I thought. It's like a game that grows on you over time because you're meeting all these people, you hang out with them, form relationships and it's just great fun. Luckily, the game was fairly short (around six hours long) so the gameplay of delivering mail didn't become boring and it was quite relaxing. I had such a great time with this game and it's one of the biggest surprises for me this year. I'm going to miss playing it but I'm definitely going to miss the protagonist the most, who I absolutely adored playing as. Really hope they'll release a sequel.

Anyway, fantastic game and if you get a chance to play it, then I highly recommend checking it out!