pip_muzz

FM6 was the last super proper Forza game. I love Horizon, but see it as a different series (though it's obviously much more commercial than the original series). As for it being the best series of all time, there's a valid argument but FM7 was a LONG time ago and so if Forza is to retain its crown this new entry better be good.

@Moonglow couldn't agree more. Feels like a large group of gamers have become so used to corridor shooters and cinematic games that when a game comes along that lets you use your imagination as your enjoyment's limit they seem unable to find any 😅

The matchmaking was poor. Having to wait 5mins and if even one of the 7 players pulls out in the lobby you have to wait again was a foolish idea. As was no bots, no single player tutorial...
They absolutely nailed the atmosphere of the film spot on! Fantastic job there, but the game to go with it in my view was just an unfun broken mess I wonder how many others felts that way of the 4 million.

Fantastic news. The trouble with some of the tall tales is they can take 2 hours to do, and being a live service game you can't pause. Being in a "safe sea" means I can essentially leave for a short time when life calls and not have wasted my time.
May have to redownload and give this another go in December then.

@johnK glad to hear. Let me know if you have any issues. My favourite campaign was the Hundred Years War one. Very enjoyable.

@Tomato_Goose AOE4 on console is easier than AOE2 I find. There's a lot of holding down shoulder buttons and selecting with the control stick, but I find it works very intuitively. Easy to have groups like PC hot keys even. The game pace depends upon the difficulty you select, I'd recommend easy when learning the controls and increase to a harder one once you get the hang of it. I've put around 30+ hours into AOE4 on Xbox and haven't had one grumble about the control system yet.

@johnK The game autosaves after every objective mid mission, and keeps them all. You can easily reinstall and continue if you wanted.

@johnK if I remember, it's just right trigger and the menu button, then press Y (or something similar) to either pay tribute or buy the settlement. The game does tell you to be fair so reload a save if you've gotten yourself confused.

Fantastic game! Biggest shame is it was released on Xbox during a crowded schedule. The campaign is absolutely brilliant, so I'm really up for this DLC.

More Starfield for me, in-between short bouts of Quake 2's included expansions.

Eat button for food! Yes please! I've been avoiding picking food items up for a quick heal simply because it clogs my inventory.

That VG247 summary reads like the ramblings of a bafoon. I'm becoming more and more convinced sites are "clickbaiting" their reviews by outsourcing them to reviewers they know won't like the game, then disguise the backlash as "just an opinion"

@Kilamanjaro no way! I'm a space scoundrel too! The Han Solo link was too hard for me to pass up.

10/10 and an astonishing achievement. From wandering around New Atlantis I realised that Earth was in the game. Flew there to it being a desert wasteland (very astute) and then landed on the moon, seeing the moon landing flag and all. Decided to visit Mars and was welcomed by an entire underground mining city and community!
If this game isn't a 10/10 because it's overwhelming or not signposted properly, it's because quite simply you're not playing it properly! Treat it like a role playing experience and not a video game with objectives! The difference you'll find is insurmountable.

I'm absolutely loving it so far. A real RPG gamers experience. Haven't got this lost/immersed in a world since The Witcher 3.

Age of Empires 4 is most definitely missing from this list!

Sounds amazing! Can't wait to get stuck in. Any game that gets 10's unanimously isn't going to he groundbreaking/creative enough anyway. And I'm old enough to remember IGN's Alien Isolation 5/10 so no surprises there.

@BeerIsAwesome That's Daikatana
This is a much older one running off pre Doom Wolfenstein 3D engine.

Pre ordering as soon as possible. Lovely to see studios like Nightdive and Digital Eclipse give old games the treatment they deserve.

@GeeEssEff but it's not removed from gaming, it's removed from the messages people send/receive. I can deal with harsh language, but I don't want to receive messages from strangers with swear words and other things. I couldn't personally care less about receiving "wtf" but I have received grief messages from players in the past, and am personally happy that MS are clamping down on it

Shame the mode encourages spawn killing... If someone gets to your side with a gravity hammer it's genuinely not just round, but game over. Needs quick fixing.

Considering the "f" in "wtf" is genuinely a swear word when typed out in full, I have no issue with a very soft hour ban for this. In fact, if I replied to someone's comment on this site itself with a "wtf?!?!" I wouldn't be surprised if that comment got removed here...
Maybe people shouldn't swear online in games at all. And if you really want to swear, create a private lobby game

Fair decision as far as I'm concerned!

Fantastic news! Straight off the back of their glorious Quake 2 port as well! I'm buying Day 1 for both. Very happy to be paying a little more to support a developer taking such care with classic titles.

Have to say it's a been a miss for me. Waiting to start a game takes faaaaar too long and you can be kicked having already waited close to 10mins with zero game time.
The world design and attention to detail from the film is amazing! But the gameplay is average and it's so multiplayer focused it encourages Microphone usage (something I always stay clear of)
I'm sure a select few fans will find lots of joy in this title, but despite going in with relatively low expectations it still feels underwhelming.

@darkswabber Red Dead Revolver comes from my favourite rockstar timeline. Manhunt, Warriors, Max Payne... They used to make so many good games.

GTA for me. From the top down originals to GTA3 being one of the most important games of all time and GTA4+5 awesome fun too.
Red Dead is amazing as well. But it's X2 classics and X1 solid entry with Red Dead against x6 classics and x3 solid entries with GTA.

I'll be giving this a whirl when I get back from work tonight 👍

In other news the sky is blue 😂 But thanks for the heads up anyhow, although I tend to avoid large sections of the internet due to the pervasiveness of toxicity that is out there.

Not a fan either. The larger background image is ok, but not being able to customise things as easily like I could before is a problem. Feels like something has been taken away rather then added!

The amount of times I receive a nasty message in my chat box from someone losing a game is crazy. If it helps to silence and block those idiots then I'm all for it!

Coccon's release date totally passed me by. That looks amazing fun as well!
Obviously Starfield being the big hitter of September! Bring it on!
That said I'm still working through August's Game Pass Games. Just finished Siberian Mayhem, halfway through Broforce with Quake 2, Sea of Stars and Texas Chainsaw Massacre to come.

Performance mode all the way for me. Hope this is good, although I'm going in with low expectations due to it being a multiplayer only game.

@GeeEssEff Very fair comment! Without GT there'd also be no Forza and I'm definitely a fan of both series as well.
Maybe I went a bit overboard, but with people commenting saying the game is "releasing unfinished" it does feel like it's less of an opinion and more of a trolling.
Whereas your opinion was well worth reading 👍 I'm hoping FM will be better than GT7 but GT7 got the handling and core gameplay pretty perfect.
I'm hoping it's like the 360/PS3 days where both Forza and GT push the other series to be better again.

@Sol4ris 😂🤣 Of course not...😆

This game just seems to be causing negativity with a certain group of people and I've no idea why?

The only negative thing about the game is it's Single Player always online. The fact that the people being negative about the game don't point out that fact is because GT7 does the same.

It just seems people hold Xbox games to ridiculous standards these days
*Hi-fi Rush is great, but it's not AAA (Who cares when it's this good)
*20 tracks aren't enough for Forza (Essentially as many in an F1 game)
*Starfield isn't 60FPS (despite it being the biggest RPG yet and Zelda is 30FPS)
*Games with Gold was amazing (really, who's missing those games?!)

Forza Motorsport could be the best driving game of all time and these people would still find a way to put the game down.

@Dan1283 Then please do explain what about this game is unfinished? If it's the fact that they're planning to continually update it with cars then that just seems factually incorrect.

@Dan1283 They're not!
Horizon 5 has new cars added to the game every month for example. They've already said that this game is going to get new cars and content on a regular basis.
Some people just seem to want to hate on Xbox games for the sake of it... I wonder why that is... 🤔

I'll be downloading it later and playing it once I finish Serious Sam 👍

Yep! Backwards compatibility on Xbox really is the best in the business. Games run better than on their native consoles a lot of the time as well.
I'm sure a few people will find their way here to criticise something about Xbox's backwards compatibility program (ahem, PS) but in my view it's the best in the industry.

20 tracks at launch is fine. It's a simulation game, so 20 fully realised real world circuits with all their layouts actually gives quite a large chunk of racing content.
As for Paid DLC, that is currently for cars only. Nowhere does it state that new tracks will be paid for (and what it would do to splinter the multiplayer, highly unlikely)
FM5 added free tracks after launch and I fully expect the new FM to do the same as well. Forza Motorsport & Horizon offer a huge amount through free updates. Not sure why people suddenly think that's going to change.

Good month! Broforce, Texas Chainsaw & Sea of Stars for me. Another month well worth it.
Great to see Texas Chainsaw coming to Game Pass too. As a multiplayer only game I'd never purchase it due to the servers being switched off one day, but on Game Pass I'm all for it.

Playing Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem and Quake (in anticipation of Quake 2 hopefully in a couple of weeks).
FPS mayhem on my TV this weekend!

@Cashews good point 👍

Can't help but feel this game is coming out one week too late. A long old school RPG is awesome but a week after launch Starfield comes out and I just know this is going to get left half finished in my backlog club

Carnage in game form. I love this series so much!

What are these Xbox Live Gold Members you speak of? 🤣😂 I thought they went the way of the Dodo years ago

I tried the Pirates of the Carribbean story ahead of this and I have to say, Sea of Thieves takes soooooo damn long to do anything.
Takes around 15minutes to sail to the event, and god forbid you save the game mid adventure with a checkpoint then it's another 15min sail plus a dive and further adventure just to get back to where you were.
Monkey Island is one of my favourite game series but Sea of Thieves just feels like a game for the unemployed who can afford to spend all day playing a game without needing to pause and take a real life break.

@InterceptorAlpha Not sure about the US but Xbox Live Gold is £6.99 a month and this new Xbox Game Pass Core is also £6.99 a month. It's so similar they're just automatically switching all Gold Accounts to Game Pass Core due to the price being the same with online gaming included.

@Lup how many of the Games with Gold have us Game Pass Ultimate gamers actually played? Outside of Episode 1 Racer I can't think of a single game they've given away that's been relevant because Game Pass is updated so much more regularly instead.
The real draw is if you don't have Xbox Live Gold or Game Pass at all. If you don't have a subscription, the Xbox Game Pass Core is certainly a more attractive proposition to the new unsubscribed Xbox gamer compared to the current Live Gold option.

@InterceptorAlpha ummmm, it's costing the same as Games with Gold does. Not to mention that you'd end up on Game Pass Core which still gives you access to your claimed GwG games from the years. Literally nothing is changing apart from a rebrand where the monthly free games are instead a library of games. If you didn't read this article you'd not even notice the difference. Same Price, Same online stuff.
Cancelling over this just reeks of a nonsense excuse.