hallower1980

Film grain is enabled by default. Disabling that and motion blur improve the look.

The Xbox One X version is not as pretty as the Series X version, but it's not bad. It's as good as Deus Ex, but in this case you get a much larger and more dynamic world.

2 or 3 hours in so far and the only major bug was when the game crashed. I was just walking around when it happened. I've seen a handful of minor bugs, like a brief pause in quest dialogue and not being able to pick up a lootable gun. There are also polish issues, like the same NPC walking by on three consecutive streets and another NPC barely pausing before repeating a line to call me over.

Overall, I'm happy with it so far, if a bit disillusioned.

The shooting is better than some made it sound. The RPG elements throw off your aim rather than your accuracy, meaning bullets seem to go where you aim but aiming can be challenging early on. Headshots are rewarded, though not instant kills.

I thought the game would already be unlocked. But the console unlock time is later than the PC unlock time.

Games have warned about the potential to trigger seizures for decades. Movies also commonly have strobe effects, yet they don't have such warnings. People who have this problem know to watch it for. There's no simple solution for developers other to drastically change their games, removing dramatic effects that 99% of players handle okay. To change for this would be like eliminating a color for all because a few people can't see it. CDPR bears no responsibility for this.

Thanks for the roundup. A couple other reviews I've read are less complimentary. Bugs seem to be the main issue. Some hoped for less repetition of NPC models, though I bet that becomes more noticeable the more immersive a setting.

In every case, the reviewers aren't playing slow and focused on exploration like I will play it. They rushed through the main storyline to get a review out as quickly as possible. Imagine being tasked to review Skyrim or The Witcher 3 in only a week. Early reviews are useful, even so.

It would be nice to know what kind of changes are being made to Halo: Infinite, even if it won't be ready anytime soon.

I normally prefer visual details to smoothness. But since they needed an extra month to get the game ready for current-gen consoles, I might start with Performance to avoid possible crashes. It will be weeks yet, at least, before my Series X arrives.

Here are the launch times. It's unusually early for me: 6pm on December 9th instead of the typical 11pm or midnight.

https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/1334548241459933188

Blur and The Saboteur are great Xbox 360 games by now-defunct studios.

NCAA Football games were fun, but I assume they could only be resurrected if the NCAA cleared the way for new games as well. There was a dispute over licensing of player faces and names. That's for EA to sort out.

I bought a digital copy of RISK: Factions, published by EA, on Xbox 360. It was later removed both from the Xbox Store and from my Xbox digital game library. Neither EA nor Microsoft notified me, explained the removal, or responded to inquiries. The game was still available on Steam. Maybe now that Microsoft and EA are partnering for Game Pass they can give me my game back.

Congratulations to any new gamers who could take advantage of bundles. AC Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla for just 80$?

I picked up Maneater, but might wait to play it since I'm still working my way through Planet Coaster's career mode.

The combat doesn't look fun to me. It looks like a series of boss fights with attacks that whittle down health bars without seeing much physical impact. If it has a free trial at some point, I will give it a shot.

Still playing the waiting game. But Planet Coaster is fun while I wait for the console to be in stock again.

That could be interesting. Draw distance is the mod or upgrade I most hope for. Skyrim already benefits from being able to see landmarks on the horizon, so there is always a point of interest beckoning. If vegetation and NPC/beast populating stretched much farther, the world would feel more alive.

I had that problem once on Xbox One X and reported it. I had to re-recruit a couple characters.

Auto-saving is fine, but there should be a manual save option. I don't think the game even notifies you when it's saving. I just assume it happens when I exit to the main menu before exiting.

I was a little concerned watching the beginning when they pan the camera so slowly and drive slow during XB1 X footage. Driving at full speed through the city would have demonstrated the limits of performance.

But by the end of the video I was comfortable with the XB1 X version. The framerate doesn't seem as smooth in open environments. But it's probably no worse than other open world games. I can generally forget about framerate if it stays near 30fps.

I don't expect the full next-gen upgrade before March. The Series X will help before then.

I don't often play narrative-focused games. But this is among the prettier games advertised for the Series X. If it's with Game Pass, I will give it a go.

I'll have to wait on my Series X. But it sounds like open worlds benefit more than most. That's my favorite genre, so I'm looking forward to it.

I don't hold the limited stock against them. It's not like they are deliberately reducing supply to increase demand, ala Disney's vault system.

What bothered me was less that I have to wait 6 weeks for delivery than that Microsoft showed the estimated delivery time as only a week until they sent the receipt.

Also, the Xbox store didn't start selling the Series X until 10 minutes after the Microsoft store (which I assumed were linked). Since I tried the Xbox store, that's probably why I wasn't able to secure a console from the first batch. By the time Xbox was selling them, the Microsoft had probably already committed its entire supply.

Yeah, I think the 360 died on me twice. But it was a fun console. There are still a handful of 360 ganes I wish had been made backward compatible: Blur, The Saboteur, NCAA Football, even LOTR: Conquest.

Tough question. I haven't tried Valhalla. My top 3 are probably Black Flag, Odyssey, and Origins.

I wish Ubisoft would abandon the Assassins/Templars sci-fi story arc altogether and just focus on making historical playgrounds.

$50 is near what a replacement controller would cost. If you can't wear out a controller in 3 years, you're not playing enough!

Even if the game isn't stellar, I appreciate that Ubisoft tried a new concept and pushed dynamic world simulation to a new level with the Play As Anyone system. Like the Nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor/War, it's a big step for open world games toward gameplay systems offering content unique to each player and with a lot of replay value.

Legion also continues Ubisoft's work from The Division series to recreate real places with vivid detail. Can you imagine what game worlds will be like 10 years from now? Maybe in another decade we will get a city this big and be able to enter every building. No more impassable doors.

What platform other than those you own now would you most like to get?

I'm itching to try open worlds in VR — Skyrim, Fallout 4, No Man's Sky, etc. But either a gaming PC + VR or a PS4/5 + PSVR is more than I can afford right now (on top of my core gaming on Xbox).

If I could afford it and had the time to enjoy them, I would definitely own both a Series X and PS5 (and Switch and gaming PC and...).

Agreed. It gets redundant. But it's a decent playground. I'm playing stealthy the first time through and there is respectable variety in how you can approach things. But nothing works better than simply sneaking around with the spiderbot. It needs incentives to use other skills.

The best thing Ubisoft could do now is continually update the game with new, free operative skills and tech to be found randomly in the world. They have 8 operatives coming with the season pass and more available as microtransactions. That's fine. But the basic world needs more variety too.

Typo: "Xbox Series X will run this at 2688x1512 resolution (70% of full 4K), while Xbox Series X will drop the resolution to 1344x756 (70% of Full 1080p)."

It's a dumb naming scheme.

@IsThatATitleist3 Fair enough. But the principle is the same. During the checkout process in the Xbox store, Microsoft showed 5-7 days as the delivery time. Then they charged my credit card and suddenly delivery was set for late December.

@RedShirtRod I was signed into NewEgg when I gave the Xbox store another try. It went live about 12:10am.

I'm glad I didn't give up and glad I secured a Series X. I know Microsoft would like any who wants one to get it immediately. But I'm still pretty bummed about the delivery delay.

Microsoft claimed they would have more stock on launch day. If that proves to be an empty promise, then the late December delivery date could be as well. Their reasons might be understandable. But sympathy and trust aren't the same.

I was just able to order a Series X via the Xbox store (meaning on my Xbox One). After some hiccups, the order processed.

"Estimated Delivery Date: Dec 23, 2020"

The problem isn't Amazon.

@Deadcow Oh yeah. I look forward to seeing improved draw distance and lusher worlds in No Man's Sky.

Watch Dogs: Legion to check out the ray tracing. On a rainy night in London, it should be a significant change.

Maybe Forza Horizon 4 after that. And even though I'm not a big fan of the game, I'm curious how ARK Survival Evolved looks with the dinosaurs and everything.

I wonder how long we will have to wait for the Flight Simulator port.

I thought he was basically a teenager in the 2nd season. No?

@AJDarkstar Same here. I'm not even that interested in a 2nd season. Yoda grew up too fast.

Maybe they will announce a Mandalorian game or game add-on. Or maybe Game Pass members will get access to that TV show alone, separate from Disney+. I doubt it's a complementary Disney+ subscription, unless Disney is hurting for customers.

Mass Effect 2 was the best campaign. But Mass Effect 3 had that awesome co-op multiplayer mode. They were all fun.

I'm content with 30fps in almost any open world game, unless it involves blistering fast action like Forza Horizon.

I wonder which loading times they are referring to. Launching the game, probably. But the timing of loading back into the world after death must be balanced for PvP.

Maybe the framerate will make it feel better. But I'd like to see an upgrade to light and shadows to make the water look even better.

I'm happy for those who receive one. I'm not optimistic about beating the rush to secure a Series X on the 10th.

Meh. I watched that earlier on my 4K TV. The differences are minor in many scene comparisons. If DF must zoom in for you to notice something, it's an insignificant difference. Shadows are slightly improved. Smooth framerates will be the biggest upgrads.

That seals it: I have to play Skyrim one more time.

Bethesda hasn't announced upgrades for any of their old open worlds. I expect there will be upgrades for Skyrim and Fallout 4, but not anytime soon. If the acquisition by Microsoft is approved, at least the upgrades will be free.

In the meantime, there are mods. Even my Xbox One X struggled with some of the PC-oriented graphics mods for Skyrim. Series should handle them fine and spark a wave of new ones. The main difference I want is improved draw distances. But minimized load screens is a great improvement.

The first had the best story. The second went a long way to building a living world. The third takes world simulation to a new level.

The first might have had the best fast action. But I'd give the edge to Legion. It's cool happening across a team member or someone threatening a team member. The couple times I used my Albion recruit to infiltrate a police or military building felt like Hitman when using a disguise.

I'm playing it stealthy and non-lethal the first time. If I can get a Series X, I will start again and go lethal.

Watch Dogs: Legion. Last night, I used a porn star to recruit a hypnotist, which I thought was pretty funny.

That's the best ad for Series X I've seen yet. It's an ideal game to show off ray tracing.

I'm enjoying Watch Dogs: Legion so far on Xbox One X. But I'm mostly ignoring the campaign and focused on wandering around London recruiting.

Despite having permadeath enabled, I haven't lost a character yet on Normal difficulty. Combat is easier than I expected in the early game.

Eurogamer says the bug has been fixed. Play on.

Making games is something lots of people want to do, so the market is flooded with interns and passionate people willing to work for little pay. The supply of workers is greater than the demand.

Maybe that will change slightly if leaps in processing power slow down and the industry needs more veteran programmers who know how to optimize their code.

It sounds basically like a Twitch stream to watch people play games. Maybe it will be accompanied by a great Free-to-Play weekend or something.

It will be cool to see more footage of ganes running on the Series X. But you won't really get that level of graphical fidelity in a livestream.

I wanted to like the LOTR card game, but didn't.

Culdcept Saga (Xbox 360) is the only card game I've enjoyed on Xbox. Even that was delisted. And it was never as fun as Hearthstone. A console card game needs to take advantage of the hardware for presentation (animations and such).

@deadcow Does it strike you as poor management that the team did not learn they had another 3 weeks of crunch time until the last minute (and via a public announcement)?

Crunch time is common in many industries. But moving the goalposts on employees when they look forward to "completion" seems likely to promkte burnout. That said, maybe game developers don't expect the post-launch polish phase to be any more relaxed than pre-launch optimization.

@krzzystuff It's more tedious survival (food, water, resource gathering) than action and exploration. Taming takes forever unless you use a cheat command on a private server. It's probably more fun with friends. I didn't care for it, but might use cheats to explore more of it on Series X.

I'm enjoying it so far. No overheating yet on Xbox One X. The only bug has been bad lip-synching in one conversation. I don't drive most of the time because the world is so detailed and the NPC recruiting keeps me interested in the world around me. I was a bit disappointed that my first additional character was assigned, rather than chosen. But then I immediately recruited a character who turned out to be an alien conspiracy theorist!

The main problem is bots and scalpers. I don't know how console makers can address that, but I'm glad they recognize the frustration of so many customers as a problem.

It's just the nature of open world games to be full of little bugs because there are so many interacting dynamics, so many overlapping systems. There is a growing problem of publishers launching games in an unfinished state because they can patch it. But I'll forgive a huge game like this a bunch of little bugs if they don't commonly interrupt the experience. I never had to reboot The Witcher 3 or restart a mission because of a bug.