RBRTMNZ

I'm going to try to only join the discussions around games I love. No one needs to hear my critique of a game that I didn't enjoy.

@nomither6 You don't think Marcus is mean? Would you let your boss or friends and family talk to you the way he does to his subordinates because I would not. He is consistently belittling and dismissive towards them. He doesn't just reject their ideas, he is a d*** about doing so. If other people are treating you like that, especially your boss, then you need to learn to stand up for yourself and stop it. If you're treating other people like that then you're a mean person and should stop.

@LX_FENIX Haha, sorry about that. I was just surprised because I played GoW 1 over the holidays and the whole time I was shocked by how mean Marcus is to everyone. I didn't remember it being so bad.

@LX_FENIX Jesus Christ, she is having horrifying visions that are preventing her from sleeping and you’re reaction is ugh typical angry female meanwhile Marcus is a giant ***** to everyone at all times for no reason but you like him enough to use his name as your handle. That’s a bit of a double standard for women.

I love Gears 4/5. They’re mine and my wife’s favorite games to play together. They would probably be top 10 games for me based on the split screen gameplay but I don’t like the world and characters. There are too many awful nouns to remember.

@WOBNIARP You know you're right. It is none of my business so even if I am right, that the value of rewards does not justify making an effort to earn them, I am wrong to chastise others for participating. My heart is in the right place, I really want to be helpful by pointing out that this program does not offer much value, but it doesn't make any sense to argue with people over it when they want to participate.

@WOBNIARP You’ve missed my point entirely. I’m not dense, I know it’s not a job, my point is that it is way more labor than an actual job so it’s a waste of time.

@WOBNIARP When I’m sleeping I’m earning rest and that is extremely important to me, perhaps more so than money because I do my best work when well rested.

When people are playing games specifically to earn rewards they are earning rewards and those are worth less than a pence. Let’s be generous and say it takes 10 minutes/day to earn the 1000 points. That’s roughly 166 points per an hour. Game pass costs 12000 points so earning a single month requires 72 hours to earn £13 worth of value for an hourly rate of 18 pence per hour. That is worse than prisoners earn. Actively trying to earn rewards is an incredibly bad use of time.

Do people not realize that the old system was also terrible? It's like literally the lowest paying job you can give yourself. If you really need the money to support your gaming get a retail job for literally one or two days and make the same amount you'll make all year through rewards. You will absolutely have more time for playing games you actually like by doing so.

@jedinite Fine you didn’t literally say it’s bad but you essentially said it’s not good. You disagreed that it is one of the best games of the year and the reason you gave is that it is not your kind of game. I on the other hand think AW2 is one of the best games of the year even though it is not my kind of game.

There is a huge difference in our stances. I don’t think that my personal preferences disqualify a game from any top 10 lists besides my own and despite your reading comprehension might have you believe I never said anything remotely close to that about AW2. I said it deserves the praise it is receiving.

@jedinite I didn’t say that at all. I specifically described AW2 as praise worthy so I’m really not sure why you think I said you shouldn’t like it. What I actually said is that my lack of interest in AW2 does not make it bad. I did so to try to get you to see what you’re doing in saying that HiFi is bad because it’s not your kid of game.

@BaldBelper78 Ain’t nothing wrong with that. I’m glad you enjoy it. Jedi Survivor was my favorite game of the year despite its ample flaws. All I’m trying to say is the reason this game gets so much hate is that it’s fans can’t seem to acknowledge or even discern that it is extremely flawed and then go online proclaiming it one of the best games in years.

@BaldBelper78 It’s not space though. It’s a video game. Sometimes realism and fun are not compatible. This was one of those times. The game would be better with less planets. Fun games make up some reason that others cannot be visited like they were rendered uninhabitable by past wars.

@BaldBelper78 To name a few, fast Travel, exploration, animation, performance, inventory management, boring tasks to apply skill points, terrible way finding, empty planets. It’s great that some people can still find fun with the game but that some fans won’t admit or acknowledge the flaws, and think it is a GOTY, is the reason everyone keeps making fun of the game.

Starfield is the new Days Gone. The extremely vocal minority who love it keep it in the news giving everyone else the opportunity to continually point out it’s ample flaws.

I find it very concerning that Starfield, Forza, and Redfall were all among the worst performing games of the year. Software development is Microsoft's core competency so their games should at least run well.

@Dan1283 It would be nice to have an exclusive win it, unfortunately Microsoft did not release a GOTY contender let alone a winner. I loved Hi-Fi Rush but there were a lot of better games this year and while Forza had top notch racing, it performs like crap and felt soulless.

@jedinite A game does not need to be "my kinda game" for me to understand that it is still high quality and a great game for people who do like that type of game. For example, I have zero interest in Alan Wake 2 because it does not look like my kind game but I can see why it is receiving praise. If you cannot see that Hi-Fi Rush is great it says a lot more about you than it does Hi-Fi Rush.

@Dan1283 I thought Forza was good thanks to the racing but agree it doesn’t belong in a top 10 list due to the performance issues, bland presentation, and insane car progression system. Hi-Fi Rush on the other hand is an absolute gem and one of the best games of the year.

I shouldn't be but I am a bit shocked at the winner. That game is so bad.

This is genius! I'm doing it. I was just thinking that I should wait for a sale on PoP even though I am super hyped and now I don't need to. Plus I can play AC Mirage and Crew Motorfest for $18. Sign me up!

I love my Series X and a bunch of Microsoft's back catalog of games and even I am concerned after the last couple of years. I find this year's slate of bug riddled and boring games to be much more concerning than even last year's dry spell.

It’s shocking how willing people are to dunk on themselves online.

I’m happy they finally made a good end of the year wrap. Lasts year’s sucked but this is better than the one I got from Sony today.

744 hours! And I have a Switch and PS5. I might have a bit of a problem but it’s a great problem to have.

The best part about waiting and watching the trailers after the show is that I can just skip over all the pointless cinematic trailers. They're a complete waste of time. I'm annoyed that the marketing BS works on enough people that we will never stop getting them.

@FraserG Good looking out! For some reason I thought this was the Countdown sale. I will see what happens next week before making my purchase.

Well I guess then its time for me to pay full price for Armored Core 6.

I would bet money that even though it reviewed as mid, a year from now there will be weirdos claiming it was snubbed from the Game Awards because it came out in December.

@Banjo- That's perfectly fine but there are better ways to handle that confusion. I don't go around calling all Asian people Chinese when I am unable to discern their ethnicity.

@fraserg How is reptillos comment still up? I come to this site for the well moderated community more than anything else. Allowing this type of pointless ***** comment does not make for a good well moderated community.

@Banjo- No, he implied that there is a problem with the protagonist being Latina and showed his ignorance by labeling this almost certainly not Mexican woman as Mexican.

@darkswabber My initial point was that games falling outside the top 40% percent of reviewed games are not great but to extend this to games scoring 5-6 meaning they’re not even in the top 50% of reviewed games, I don’t disagree, they might be good/average, but my point remains, there are literally thousands of games that review above good/average. With thousands of 7-10 games I’m probably only playing a 6 in some very rare cases like if it’s my favorite genre and I’ve already played everything better.

To put it in context, you’re right that Atomic Heart(56th percentile) is not bad, I played a couple of hours and it was fine, but I dropped off because like other games in its review range it has glaring weaknesses (combat, puzzles, dialogue) that make it clear there are hundreds of better games I could be playing. I would only play it if the setting had drawn me in more or if I was really into first person melee. It’s quality makes it niche and the scores reflect that.

Wo Long. It's ugly and the story is bad but the combat is so so so good. I thought Lies of P was the best soulsike this year but Wo Long had better combat.

@darkswabber Is a 70-75 great? Opencritic breaks the games into tiers. The top two tiers account for the best 40% of all games being reviewed and currently the dividing line for tier 3 is 74 so if a game receives a score below 74 it is at best a 59th percentile game which to me is not great. I have enjoyed games that have scored below 74 but I can always see the glaring issues keeping those games from being great.

I voted Remnant 2 but also wanted to shout out Thirsty Suitors. It’s a great little turn based rpg where the “combat” is in the form of emotional conversations in which your dialogue choices have a real impact on the battle and you need to listen to the opponent to figure out their weaknesses.

I'm 0/12 on the games I have my eye on going on sale. Hopefully Nintendo and Sony have better sales.

@iplaygamesnstuff So you believe the store you worked at sold spots on the best seller list so naturally everyone must do it? That’s a really big jump to your conclusion especially considering that the Game Awards has an independent voting process and almost certainly uses an independent third party to tabulate votes as all big awards shows do. Plus even your conclusion about your employer is probably wrong. A lot of products debut as best sellers thanks to pre-orders. A much easier conclusion would be that you have basic taste in media. I’m not saying that’s the case but it’s much less of a jump than you’re making.

@iplaygamesnstuff It sounds like you’re confusing popularity and sales for quality. Thing an are not popular because they’re good. They’re popular because of a combination of marketing and conforming to things that are already popular. That’s not to say popular things cannot still be good but when you make a product like that it’s nearly impossible to make something special that stands out or pushes the industry forward.

It's not a surprise at all that it wasn't nominated so why bring it up and give the haters one more chance to dunk on the game?

@Decimateh You compelled me to look through the ratings on the xbox store and you are right that exclusives do have a lot of bad reviews but after reading through them I still don't think they are review bombing.

I think it's more just the place people tend to express their frustration when an exclusive game doesn't work right. Metacritic review bombs tend to regurgitate bad faith talking points whereas a huge portion of the bad reviews on the xbox store are describing very specific technical issues. I would not personally give a game a 1/5 due to a technical issue but I also don't think it's illegitimate.

Additionally, whereas most 1 star reviews on other exclusives are almost entirely focused on technical issues, Starfield does have a lot of thoughtful 1 star reviews from people simply disappointed by the game. They're much more substantive and unique than typical review bombs and seem like criticisms from people who actually played.

And I am not saying review bombs do not happen when games hit Game Pass. I just thinks its more likely to happen to indie games like Thirsty Suitors with queer themes and interesting art. Rather than some concerted effort by weirdos who like xbox enough to spend money on owning one but somehow still hate it enough to waste their time review bombing.

@Decimateh I don't know about that man. It seems super unlikely that Xbox players review bombed an Xbox game. 3.4/5 is very high compared to my completely legitimate review.

Hi-Fi Rush was robbed

This is so hard for me to decide. It’s not my type of game but it’s supposed to be a masterpiece so why not? I’m concerned about console UI but people I trust love it. The world and lore look amazing but that’s true of Divinity 2 and I’ve owned that for years without bothering to play it.

@robe That's a good point. I'm not a big RPG person, and don't personally get much satisfaction from building up a character, so CaRPG mechanics might be especially lost on me while fun and enjoyable for others.

@robe People should be constantly complaining about the car leveling feature at every opportunity. I just did my first my first showcase which should be a big moment but a lot of the excitement is diminished by having to use basically the stock version of the car. This is the experience most people will have... driving stock versions of cars in career mode. It's silly that they were so dogmatic about "earned not bought" or whatever their dumb marketing phrase was.

@Fenbops I felt like they were much easier but they are not easy. Their attacks are super fast and relentless. It often felt like I was just trying to hang on as they did never ending combos with very small punish windows but they don't hit as hard as earlier bosses and seem to have less health.

One small caveat is that I understand these bosses to be especially hard for people who had been relying on dodging rather than parrying.

This game is amazing. I hope they drop some tough new bosses. After getting my ass kicked by the mid game bosses, I was a bit disappointed in the challenge of the bosses in chapter 11, though they were still super fun, so I am hoping they provide some final challenge bosses in DLC.

This is perfect for their hardcore fans who love to be dismissive of other games. As of now their fans can only arrogantly dismiss soulslikes as derivative and failing to match FS quality but in they future they will also get to be dismissive of new FS games and talk about how they prefer the games that came before FS watered down its staff.

FM has so many problems but I think the biggest issue is it’s just so bland. Nothing feels exciting. F1 which is a similarly dry racing game makes each race feel like an event thanks to the commentary and much better pre race shots of the track.