RazputinAquato

I am nostalgic about Pitfall: a Mayan Adventure on the SNES. Hopefully it will be released on Xbox, as well as the classic Atari one. This franchise should be revived, could be Xbox's Uncharted.

I'm sure Redfall and Starfield are not the only triple-A titles Xbox Game Studios had planned for 2022. I guess either Forza Motorsport, Hellblade 2 or both might release this year.

Wendy's completed the challenge of getting 10 kills with the ravager with that burn.

@gollumb82 let me help you with that:
1. SileNFT Hill
2. Cryptovania (I stole this one from Jim Sterling)
3. Blocky Chain Solid

@GuyinPA75 I'm aware of that, and now there are rumors that SoD 3 will finally be an MMO or become some sort of live service. I hope they aren't true, it would completely alienate the current fanbase.

Once Undead Labs releases a few more big updates I'll be ready to drop a hundred more hours on this gem.

As a matter of fact, I seriously doubt that State of Decay 3 will be better than SoD 2. Not because UL is not talented enough to make an even better game, but because SoD 3 probably will be filled with modern triple-A bull$hit, like microtransactions, season passes...

Right now SoD 2 is just perfect. No in-game purchases, everything is unlockable through playing, all updates are free. Sadly that most likely won't be the case for #3.

Only 4h long? That's exactly what I need while I wait for Spelunky 2 next Thursday. Thanks for the tip, Mrs. Bond!

Dead Space's remake, since that's one of my favorite games of all time.

@LtSarge not to mention that they shipped way fewer ps5 units to Japan in Holiday season in order to prioritize sales in the west.

But @Snake_V5 is right. Sony "turning its back" to Japan is still much more attractive to Japanese gamers than Xbox giving its full attention to that market. In the end of the day it's all about games and Xbox has no exclusive Japanese games.

@pip_muzz even with Sony turning its back to Japan, it offers much more Japanese games than Xbox. Xbox will not be a competitor to Playstation there without games tuned to their tastes.

@Ocat by the time they completely fix Battlefield 2042 it will be on EA Play...

@themightyant while I do agree with you that the main course of a Mass Effect game is the story, the dialogue and the relationships you build, you spend an awful lot of time shooting things in narrow corridors while taking cover in those games. And the combat is not great for some games that have so much combat.

Mass Effect would be better as a Telltale episodic adventure

@Quaali Hot take: the story is so talked about because the gameplay and level design in Mass Effect are below average.

@Trmn8r probably the data shows that Games as a Service like Outriders and Destiny 2 are doing well on Game Pass. It most likely gives a big boost to day one population.

They should renome it to Ubisoft Hard Pass.

I think Xbox will eventually get into the VR game, but not the same way as Sony. It would make much more sense for Xbox to leverage its cloud gaming infrastructure for that. Instead of releasing an expensive, heavy, clumsy headset with its own GPU in order to output cutting edge graphics, they would release a cheap, streamlined hardware ready for streaming VR games on Xbox Game Pass.

@FraserG wait, wasn't this game scheduled for next Thursday, the 13th of January?

@Bartig as a matter of fact, I did. Granted that it did not age nearly as gracefully as Halo Combat Evolved, I still had a good time and managed to get all the way to Area 51 (level 7). Sadly I found a huge difficulty spike and got stuck there. Might give it another go eventually.

@UltimateOtaku91 Starfield has been in development since late 2015. It's been six years. Okay, two of those were effected by the pandemics, but they had at least four good years plus most of 2022 ahead.

I can see BGS releasing Starfield in the date they promised. Maybe that game would be ready for release last year if it weren't for covid-19 and it was indeed delayed already.

@BAMozzy we did see in-game models and environments. The teaser they showed at E3 2021 was all in-game. https://gamerant.com/starfield-e3-trailer-in-game/

But I believe Bethesda is saving the really meaty stuff for E3 2022. Rembemer that Fallout 4 was officially announced in E3 2015, in June and it released only five months later in November. And that was very much intentional. Todd Howard himself stated that they planned to keep the period between reveals and releases short. In his words: "If you're talking about that too early, people aren't getting excited, they're getting anxious." https://gamerant.com/fallout-4-director-release-time-314/

Obviously that didn't really happen with Starfield. Nor The Elder Scrolls 6, for that matter. Maybe they announced those games early because they were already in talks with Microsoft and they wanted to raise their price. But anyway, I think they want to partially repeat their strategy with Fallout 4 by concentrating all their marketing efforts in a short amount of time.

In the end of 2020 we didn't have a release date for Psychonauts 2 and Forza Horizon 5 was nothing more than rumors. I'm sure we will get a couple of surprises in 2022 as well. At least one game that we know is in development will release next year, and I bet it's either Forza Motorsport, Hellblade 2 or both.

@Banjo- 😆
Just don't expect me to change my username to Raz!

@BlueOcean @Akimi it's nice to see State of Decay 2 getting some love, it certainly deserves it!

I agree with Banjo, the first one runs poorly and you'd better jump straight to the sequel.

My personal top 10 would be:

10. Unpacking
9. Hitman 3
8. Death's Door
7. Resident Evil Village
6. Blasphemous: Wounds of Eventide
5. Psychonauts 2
4. Hades
3. Forza Horizon 5
2. Halo Infinite
1. State of Decay 2.

Yes, I chose State of Decay 2 as my 2021 Game of the Year. I am aware that it was released on 2018, but this game has received so many major upgrades ever since - specially THIS YEAR - that now it is a completely new game. Call it State of Decay 2.5 if you will, but the fact is that no other game in 2021 has sucked more of my time and brought me as much joy as this game.

I like the cat ears and I'm okay with silly looking Spartans. As long as they kind of resemble Spartans, though. I think snowman heads or having Superman as a playable character would be crossing a line.

@MaccaMUFC you know what? Maybe your son is right. I bought Far Cry 6 in this sale and I already regret it. It's an aggressively mediocre game. I'd rather replay Halo's campaign over and over again than beat FC6 once. So maybe I'd be more satisfied if I had spent my money on cat ears rather than a game I'm not enjoying and probably will never finish.

@AFCC there are 10 ranks in the event and 14 days from Dec 21st to Jan 3rd, hence I think you'll be fine.

Tough choice... Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5 and Psychonauts 2 are all brilliant. Flight Sim was a nice distraction, but ultimately that's not really my cup of tea. I haven't played AoE and Deathloop either. Can't wait to check out Arkane's latest masterpiece when it arrives at Xbox next year, though.

My votes were for:
1. Halo Infinite
2. Forza Horizon 5
3. Hades
4. Psychonauts 2
5. Death's Door

Honorable mentions for:

• Resident Evil Village
• Hitman 3
• Knockout City

I haven't watched. I knew it would be boring as f**k, so I just waited to see all the game trailers this morning.

Don't care at all for what is Keighley & friends favorite game of the year. Or all that e-sports BS for that matter.

@Grumblevolcano my thoughts exactly. The gameplay is awesome, it really feels like Halo, which obviously is a good thing. But until now I'm finding the open world kind of... meh. Maybe it will get better once I unlock more toys at the FOB's.

Actually you can preload the campaign, but only if you can get 10 kills with the ravager in PvP 😆

I suppose God-of-War-style means supernatural. Either that or you'll baby-sit a boy throughout the campaign. "Boi!!!"

I liked the Skill Up review a lot. It's on YouTube. It's fairly critical about many points, like lack of variety in the environments and open world activities, lack of unique set-pieces, the story and characters are generic... well, they're critical about a lot of things, but they also praise how fun is the gameplay, how well polished are the encounters, how the game doesn't overstay its welcome or feel repetitive and exhausting like Ubisoft games. Overall it's still a great Halo game that pushes the franchise forward.

@Bartig Some outlets gave separate review scores for MP and campaign, some issued one single review, but Metacritic and Opencritic have only one single page for Halo Infinite, so I suppose they're averaging the scores of publications that issued separate reviews.

How many metascore points this game lost due to its bad progression system? I bet it would be slightly above 90 if it weren't for greed.

@Dezzy70 they left because they didn't want to keep working on Halo.

Maybe, after a ten year break, they would be releasing Halo 4 now.

@StylesT Halo always had a player base big enough to guarantee that we could find matches online even when it was sold at $60, so I really don't see how f2p is any beneficial to me or any Game Pass subscriber for that matter.

Forza Horizon 5 is not f2p and it was not unpopulated by any metric, on the contrary. Why would it be any different with Halo Infinite? I'm sure its campaign will still be in the list of Steam top sellers anyway, so I completely fail to see any advantage on going f2p.

@BrilliantBill there are no pros about going f2p, only cons. At least for Game Pass subscribers. We are already paying for XGP and we would get Halo Infinite's MP 'freeish' anyway, hence the f2p model seems like just a poor excuse for filling the game with awful monetization.

@themightyant December 6th, according to leaks. But I suppose FraserG cannot confirm that due to NDA.

We'll know for sure at December 6th, that's the day the review embargo ends.

It's an Xbox game, hence it's not allowed to have 90+ in Metacritic. Unless it's Forza Horizon, since it's automatically disqualified for winning GOTY anyway...

That's great, I'm almost out of challenge swaps after using them on game specific challenges where the game type I need never procs in their completely "fair" RNG matchmaking.

@JimmyRowe1994 Fiesta is a playlist that has been around in Halo for a long time. Tenrai is a limited time event that was linked to a Fiesta playlist.

I suppose that other past Halo game modes, like SWAT and grifball could be tied to limited events as well.

@Chaudy that's Fiesta, which should be a permanent playlist, not a recurring event.

Microsoft might as well rename it to Xbox Series $, because it's printing money 😆

@Liam_Doolan you missed the word 'million' in the last paragraph.

I've played a lot of Knockout City this year, for me it's hands down the best game from EA in 2021.

That's my most anticipated new Xbox game. I've put over 200 hours on SoD 2.

@stinkyx I did. I've beaten both ME 1 & ME 2 in insanity difficulty. I haven't beaten ME 3 at all, because as you certainly can tell by now, I did not really fall in love with this franchise.

I know most people like it, more power for them, but it's not for me sadly. I think it has a good story and setting, though, it could be a great show if adapted properly.