Xeno_Aura

Xeno_Aura

Ex-moderator, we don't talk of that

Comments 127

Re: Reminder: A Bunch Of Great Games Are Leaving Xbox Game Pass Soon

Xeno_Aura

@Arcticpandapopz Think it still retained some of the things people didn't like about it. But I can't really remember what that was, if it was the card system or something else.

Regardless, I played a little bit of it in 2023 and it's not up to the level of L4D or L4D2, but it's like a 6/10 solo and possibly reaches a 7.5/10 if you have a squad of friends playing.

Re: Ubisoft's XDefiant Prepares For Major Server Test Ahead Of Full Release

Xeno_Aura

@abe_hikura A dev confirmed that once they expanded the game to have larger player counts on the servers, there was severe network issues. Players disappearing, massive lag spikes, essentially rendering the game unplayable.

He said that the past 7-8 months have been spent entirely on reworking the net code for the game to fix the errors, and they have not worked on new content since the beta.

I presume that's why both Sony and MS rejected the game when it was submitted for release.

Re: Two Major Third-Party Accessory Makers Merge In Another Gaming Acquisition

Xeno_Aura

@NEStalgia Turtlebeach makes some really crap stuff. They do sell nicer stuff around the $80-100 mark, but they also have headsets that are like $30 that are far far worse than the official offerings from say Sony or Microsoft. Turtlebeach aren't really on-par with companies like Steelseries or even HyperX I'd say.

Possible that the cheaper Turtlebeach products will end up with PDP branding though, seeing as customers on that budget are probably more familiar with PDP than Turtlebeach.

Re: Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Resolution & FPS Revealed For Xbox Series X|S

Xeno_Aura

@Llamageddon In a side-view platformer, yes, the Xbox One X can handle 60. Even the Switch can, which is remarkably slower than any Xbox.

However in open world games, no, the Xbox One X cannot handle 60 FPS.

Forza Horizon 5 for example. The Xbox Series S has 1440p 30 FPS or 1080p 60 FPS options. The Xbox One X only has 4k 30 FPS. Obviously in this case, the XBO X GPU can handle 4k 30, which realistically means it could handle 1080p 60 as well, but the CPU must prevent it from reaching 60 FPS, which is why the Xbox One X has no 60 FPS option for FH5.

Re: Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Resolution & FPS Revealed For Xbox Series X|S

Xeno_Aura

@ZuneTattooGuy XSS can output in 4k just fine and some games do run at 4k on it, however, the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro both have superior GPUs to the XSS in terms of raw power.

The XSS has a better CPU than an Xbox One X/PS4 Pro.

This is why some Xbox One X games run at 4k 30, whereas on the XSS they run at 1080p 60.

In those games, the XBO X can handle 4k, but its CPU can't handle 60 FPS, whereas the XSS CPU can handle 60 FPS, but its GPU can't handle 4k.

Re: Starfield's Recent Review Rating Has Dropped To 'Mostly Negative' On Steam

Xeno_Aura

It's an okay game, but personally, I think it's probably Bethesda's worst RPG yet. It's a "massive universe" they gave you to explore... except you do it almost entirely through menus to just skip to points of interest immediately and bypass any form of traversal, meaning they could have just cut 90% of the game and it'd play entirely the same.

I don't 100% agree with No Man's Sky procedural generation, as it can seem repetitive, but repetitive content is better than no content. They need to seriously revamp Starfield if they want a lot of their playerbase to want to return to it.

Re: Ark: Survival Ascended's Performance Is Getting Mixed Feedback On Xbox Series X|S

Xeno_Aura

I think those saying Survival Evolved looked better are probably mis-remembering SE.

SA for sure looks better than SE, the performance isn't 60FPS which is a shame, but it never was going to be. When new PC's are struggling to run this at 60, an Xbox Series X isn't going to be hitting 60FPS or even running close to it.

Bit misleading to say that Survival Evolved was enhanced for next-gen, it wasn't. The Xbox Series X simply got the Xbox One X version of the game which could scale higher. The Series S got the base Xbox One version of the game and it was awful.

SA is the first ARK game to actually have any improvement on Series S, and it definitely is better than SE was for S owners.

Re: Ubisoft CEO Explains Decision To Buy ActiBlizz Cloud Rights From Xbox

Xeno_Aura

@MasterPlayerOne @AlwaysPlaying They probably need to be acquired by someone soon. Ubisoft is not doing well financially. Tencent gave them hundreds of millions to keep afloat last year, but they'll likely need another injection like that from another investor soon, as they've lost more money since last year.

Most likely Tencent will buy them out though, seeing as Tencent already owns a significant amount of Ubisoft.

Re: Review: Party Animals - Cuddly Carnage Brings Fun And Laughter To Xbox Game Pass

Xeno_Aura

It is also worth noting that even though the game has split-screen/local play, you still need to host an online lobby to play, the game does not work without an internet connection.

There's only 2 buttons on the main menu, either to quickly join an online match or to host/join a custom match, matches are preset to be public rather than private, so you'll need to quickly lock your game with a 4-digit PIN and then you can add local players.

The game is pretty fun, but definitely designed from the ground up to be played online.

Do find it strange that they went to the trouble of programming AI for this kind of game and have no single-player content whatsoever in over 3 years of development :/

Re: Bethesda Fires Back At Legendary DOOM Composer Mick Gordon, Rejects Accusations

Xeno_Aura

@Tharsman Really depends on if Marty was acting on behalf of Bethesda there or not. I reckon if he had spoken to Bethesda, they almost certainly would have told him not to go to Reddit, because I'm sure there was a smart person at Bethesda somewhere.

Marty works for id Software, not Bethesda directly, he just works for one of their studios. That would be like saying an Obsidian staff member speaks on behalf of Microsoft, or Bethesda speak on behalf of Microsoft, they do not. Bethesda are likely stepping in and taking over Marty's side of the argument because it's escalating, probably giving him the backseat from now on, especially if there is a legal challenge. But yes, I imagine Bethesda is annoyed that Marty went Reddit and gave them a headache.

Re: Paradox Cancels Xbox Game Pass Launch 'After Discussion With Partners'

Xeno_Aura

@SplooshDmg UWP is already gone. It only gets security updates now, the SDK is no longer updated with new features. And Game Engines such as Game Maker have now removed the ability to export in the UWP format.

You use the Windows App SDK to create games for the MS Store and Xbox now, not UWP. Xbox also has the GDK which most developers use, and physical games must use.

UWP apps are still accepted, but support for it is poor when developing, as 3rd-parties are starting to pull it out of their catalogues.

Either way I doubt that's a reason, as Paradox has many many games on MS Store, such as EU4, CK3, Stellaris, Cities Skylines, Hearts of Iron. Likely they didn't get what they wanted from MS in terms of the lump sum GP titles get offered, so they just pulled it entirely.

Re: Talking Point: Xbox Series S Owners, Are You Happy You Skipped Series X?

Xeno_Aura

I'm not a huge gamer these days, I only do about 5 hours a week. So the XSS was perfect for me. Not having to invest in an expensive system, but still able to play all the latest games at a reasonable quality.

Storage is an issue as mentioned above, I mainly get around it by having a 320GB USB 3.0 HDD that I had laying around, so I store all my XBO games on that, and keep the internal purely for next-gen and next-gen enhanced games.

Re: Xbox Dev Teases 'Really Exciting' Future For Discord Partnership

Xeno_Aura

@Kaloudz It's the most used voice chat platform on PC.

Basically anyone can create a server where people can join and chat. And they can have text or voice channels in. This integration allows Xbox's to join the voice channels of a server.

If PS also integrates it, it means easy voice chat between Xbox, Playstation and PC players in cross-platform games. Without using Xbox Party Chat, which isn't very good against Discord. Even if you weren't playing together, it means you could just hang out with your PC and PS friends while they play other games and just chill out.

If you're familiar with the old days of IRC, Discord functions somewhat similarly, at least on the frontend.

Re: Xbox Live 1.0 Is Getting A Replacement, And It'll Support 13 Games At Launch

Xeno_Aura

@InterceptorAlpha Xlink Kai I believe needs a PC, you connect your Xbox to your PC and it uses the PC's internet connection to connect to other PC's that have Xbox's attached to them. It also only works for games which supported System Link/LAN, it doesn't work with Xbox Live games. It essentially creates an LAN between PC's that the Xbox's can use, like Hamachi or other private networks I guess.

This connects your Xbox directly to a server which all Xbox's will connect to, like how XBox LIVE works now.

Re: RimWorld Console Edition Officially Arrives On Xbox Next Month

Xeno_Aura

@OskarRex Yeah, it's about £10 ($15) more than the PC version is, and likely with less functionality.

And I'm not sure about sales, the developers don't seem to really agree with sales, and the most they've ever discounted the game is 10% off. Despite it being years old on PC at this point. Even now in the Steam Summer sale they only have it set to 10% off.

Re: Multiple Xbox 360 Games Suffer Stealth Server Shutdowns

Xeno_Aura

@LP09 Yeah, any achievements requiring online multiplayer are just poor design. If the game doesn't sell well, within a few months those achievements become unobtainable.

Even for a popular game like Burnout Paradise, a couple of achievements required 8 player free-roam lobbies and they were just hard to come by.

Re: Multiple Games Reduced By 85-95% In The Xbox Spring Sale 2022

Xeno_Aura

@Kooky_Daisuke It's up to the developers rather than MS to decide if they will be in a sale. MS/Sony/Nintendo/Valve have no control over what games go on sale on their storefronts. As obviously they can't reduce the price of a developers game without the developers permission.

If a game isn't on sale, it's because the developer has chosen not to put their game on sale. You can go into your development dashboard and start a sale on your game whenever you feel like it.