RazputinAquato

Hot take: Mass Effect should have been a TV show all along. It has a brilliant story sullied by boring corridor shooter gameplay. It's not that the gameplay aged poorly, it was already below average back in the naughties, when Gears of War did it much better.

@SpaceSamurai if you think this is bad, avoid Halo Waypoint by any means 😆

@oconnoclast that's for strongholds and/or total control modes, not CTF.

But good luck finding a match of the game type you need in order to clean a challenge, 343 is rigging the game to make sure you won't. There are several posts complaining about it in Halo Waypoint, and I noticed it myself too.

That's just one of the dirty tricks 343 is using in order to make you frustrated and just buy stuff.

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/t/4-or-5-hours-of-playtime-in-quick-play-to-get-no-stronghold/28187

Another complaint is that the helmet attachments that make it actually look like a Samurai and is featured in all the promotional materials is not in the list of rewards of the free Battlepass.

Is it going to be sold separately in the store? Is it coming as a reward for completing all the weekly challenges in a future date? No one knows. All I know is that everybody sporting the Yoroi armour core right now is either looking very dumb and lame OR they spent some money in order to look good.

@themightyant I think "the power of the cloud" ten years from now means not needing to own a console to have its power increased by the cloud.

In ten years I should be able to play Xbox games from my Kindle through 5g.

As long as it's not Kinect... 😆
Seriously though, I know people who usually do not game but purchased an Xbox 360 just to play Dance Central.
Maybe they should bring Kinect back with a batch of back-compat titles, just not as a mandatory peripheral. And keep Rare away from it!

@XionV you can't get those cosmetics on the store for free by playing the game.

@Carck of course cosmetics matter. They're part of the experience. They've always been, but it was taken away to be sold separately.

Imagine FIFA went free to play. At first all licensed teams and players would be replaced by non-copyrighted generic teams. Liverpool would be called Poolliver, have a chicken as and emblem, and instead of Mo Salah, #11 would be a random guy called Jeff.

In time you could unlock real players and real teams, but that would be an excruciating experience. Or you could pay like 20 quid per team you want to unlock.

But hey, the gameplay would still be the same and that's all that matters, right? Who cares for playing with the real Liverpool with real Mo Salah? That's just cosmetic!

@John117 no, I don't. But I can see how they made design choices specifically to make progression feel like a pain in the bottom.

@WILLBACRIMP do they choose the ultimate game of all time every year? 😆

Well, maybe if they hadn't released a predatory, maliciously frustrating progression system in order to entice consumers to buy mtx, they wouldn't be getting all that flack right now and take a well deserved break. Whoever came up with this system deserves a very permanent break.

@Generik buying the Premium pass is like paying more in order to not play the game.

The progression system in Halo Infinite is awful. It sours an otherwise brilliant experience. And cosmetics are too expensive, no way I'll buy any of them. I'd rather support an indie developper than pay for a shiny outfit that I won't even be able to see in game because that's FIRST PERSON shooter!

That said, if you feel the urge to buy every single cosmetic item in the store, you might have some mental health issues and should seek help.

But I'm not trying to shift the blame away from greedy devs preying on people with issues — whales, that's how they call them, in order to not feel bad for exploiting the vulnerable.

@JetmanUK you forgot Game Pass

I like the Platinum trophies as a badge for completing a game. But I much prefer Xbox Rewards, who actually give us money

I wonder why we don't see Playstation fans asking for anything similar to that on their platform.

Why not credits for Halo Infinite's overpriced cosmetics?

Of course it's five. The only other Forza Horizon game I played as much as 5 was FH2. So 5 is #1 and 2 is #2 😃

The gameplay loop is what matters the most, of course. And Halo Infinite absolutely nailed it. But it really sucks that if I want to make my character look cool I need to pay as much as the cost of the whole Battle Pass or grind for weeks just to have the privilege of choosing between a handful of helmets.

Halo Infinite had no reason to be f2p. I thought the point of those big games was selling Game Pass subscriptions. Just make a full experience without all that trendy cattle manure of multiplayer games these days.

Halo infinite until it's dry season in Forza Horizon 5 again, so that I can get that last XP board in the middle of the dam. 😆

I would hand a Halo horror game to Undead Labs. Let then make a State of Decay 3 DLC where we control ordinary people in a colony on the verge of being overrun by The Flood.

Halo Wars is not really my cup of tea. I wish they'd try something new. I'd love a Halo flavoured metroidvania.

@KilloWertz @OldgamerDave absolutely not! One's first Halo campaign cannot be effing Halo 5!

@OldgamerDave the original trilogy has aged very well for the most part and is worth playing on its own, regardless of whether you plan to play Infinite or not. But Infinite was made to be an entry point for newcomers, so you don't absolutely need to have played previous games in order to enjoy it.

And every one of them feels unique!
The mangler is a favourite of mine. At close range it's a two hit kill. One shot and one pistol whip at whatever order will do the job.

@PJOReilly, it would be nice if you guys made a piece about the different ammunition types (kinetic, plasma, electric...), I'm still a bit clueless on each one's pros and cons.

@Tharsman yes, it did. For a few years the Xbox 360 was produced in Brazil. That was the only country in the world other than China to manufacture that console. But when the Xbox One was released they didn't find it cost effective to update the factory, so they halted production.

Brazil has some archaic laws regarding videogames. They used to be taxed as highly as gambling machines. Ironically, the current president, which I find despicable in every single way, did make some revisions in those laws and managed to slightly reduce the taxes. One of his sons is a gamer and his family is very active in Brazilian politics, for the better or the worse. Usually the worse — sorry for getting political 😆

@OldgamerDave welcome to Pure Xbox, then! 😃

I bought it for my PS4. Got a refund. Never again, that's a hard pass for me.

Let's not forget Ubisoft. I hope this kind of thing is not too prevalent in the industry. It would break my heart if Xbox had such a toxic environment. Hopefully that's not just PR and Phil Spencer is really ensuring that Xbox is a safe place for their workers.

@Ramb I believe Brazil and Argentina have the most expensive consoles in the world. Sadly gaming has always been a luxury for the upper middle-class in South America. Fortunately Microsoft is doing a lot to make it more affordable, with the Series S and cloud gaming.

In Brazil an Xbox Series X costs £630 at the minimum. The Series S is a more reasonable £320, making a direct conversion. And let's not forget that's a developing nation where people have a much lower income compared to UK.

The Series S is a godsend for emergent countries.

Well, I went to Halo Waypoint in order to post about my issue of weekly challenges not recording my progress and it seems like I am not the only one. So, in addition to being awful in general, the challenges are not even working properly and you may end up wasting your time by chasing them.

The weekly challenge counter is broken. I was lucky enough to have two challenges involving CTF at the same time. One for killing enemies carrying my flag and another for returning my flag.

Earlier today I played one of the most exciting matches I've ever had in Halo. A CTF game that was tied 1x1 until the very last second when sadly the enemy team managed to score 2x1.

But in that game I managed to both kill enemy carriers and return my flag many, many, times. I only received credit for one of those challenges, though. I cleared the 'kill 3 enemy carriers' challenge in that one single game, but I didn't get any progress for returning the flag.

And I think the game also did not count kills with weapons for some challenges as well. I'm under the impression that I don't make any progress in the first game where I'm doing a new challenge, only from the second one forward.

@BBB Does the banshee get a plasma attack as well, like it did in past Halos?

@BBB I'm guilty of not pursuing the objectives in a few games, and I am really sorry. But I blame that terrible progression system for that. In some games I'm more worried about completing those damn weekly challanges than actually winning.

I've been on the other side as well, playing Oddball and none of my teammates were trying to give me any support when I was carrying the ball. That was really frustrating.

What's the button to drop the flag in CTF?

Cheesy dialogue has always been a problem in Forza Horizon. I think it's not as bad as FH4, but yeah, I'd rather not have people calling me superstar every 10 minutes.

Good to know Xbox is not getting on board with this scam.

@BlueOcean to be fair, Xbox themselves are keeping XGS and Bethesda as two separate publishers.

Apparently racing games are not games, that's the only explanation for FH5 not being nominated for GOTY.

@UltimateOtaku91 it was nominated for indie game of the year. It's not on the list because it wasn't t published by XGS. It's a Devolver Digital game.

How many of those games do hold up, as opposed to 'they were great in the naughties'?

@UltimateOtaku91 I wouldn't pay a dime for Ubisoft games. At this point I'd rather have Microsoft selling 'add-ons' to Game Pass, so that we could choose whether we would like to pay a little more for EA, Ubisoft or other company's own services.

I agree with the general consensus. The game is fantastic, but the progression doesn't feel good.

It seems like Max Payne 3 is not available for digital downloading, at least in my country 😞

@Chaudy me too. And I can't find any of the new BC in the store either.

@Zag_Man and to think that Starfield already has a release date...

I finally got the board on the hotel roof. It turns out I was jumping from the wrong hill! Now that damn board in the dam...

@RadioHedgeFund maybe you're not old enough to remember that, but the SNES launched with Super Mario World, F-zero and Sim City along others. That's certainly one of the best console launch line-ups ever.

I use rewind all the time for those challenges, it surely spares a lot of time. But I still didn't manage to get the board on top of the hotel. I'm trying to propell myself from a hill nearby, but I always fall short.

Oblivion is not available for download in Brazil. Hopefully it's finally available in all territories.