somnambulance

1. Indy
2. Nine Sols
3. Kunitsugami
4. Hauntii
5. Metal Slug

Not sure I’ll be doing much gaming this weekend. My wife was in a car accident two days ago, so, while she’s physically fine, she’s feeling emotional shock. I had plans to play games with friends, but cancelled. I suppose I’ll be playing Santa Claus Simulator Real Edition, if that counts. I would like to maybe try that Slitterhead demo, but realistically, maybe I’ll do a round or so of Puyo Puyo Tetris with the wife to help get her mind off the stress.

Xbox decided to release a full generation worth of games next year.

@sixrings I mean, he’s also not wrong about people having console libraries now, so software does keep people in an ecosystem, which is basically what I believe Gamepass started as: an alternate and large platform of rentals to compete against a likely smaller digital owned gaming library on a competing platform. Most people don’t have gaming libraries of digital content to compete with GP (I do lol)), so there is logic there. The misfire was in believing that the platform had a value proposition to beat purchasing games while offering Day 1 titles without there being many of them people actually wanted. The first window of opportunity to seize success has passed fo sure, and that’s why I believe Xbox was adamant about acquiring Activision, as much as the charade was frustrating to watch. Xbox, from a business perspective, is a stronger and more profitable brand, so it seems Xbox is attempting a second window to capitalize on the brand, this time with a software release strategy. I think the spin on Xbox will shift over the course of 2025, and I say this as someone that has been largely disappointed in Xbox for a generation and a half.

Hey now, everyone, don’t forget that it leaked that Valve will soon be joining the console space, so, if you’re not a PlayStation or PC gamer, it looks like there will be some viable console competition soon enough, regardless of what Xbox does.

It is ironic that Xbox made this pivot when they finally got it together with making software though. They wouldn’t have needed the rebrand if the last few years looked like next year.

Wouldn’t mind if it’s Perfect Dark since I never expected to play it next year anyway. They can delay Gears of War since I have no interest in it, but please keep the rest of 2025’s release schedule. Looking forward to Avowed, South of Midnight, Outer Worlds 2, Doom, and Fable (and I’m sure CoD). Imo, that’s the best looking line-up Xbox has had in over a decade.

Balatro deserves that crown. Although… now that it’s mobile, I’m seriously struggling with addiction with it.

@cragis0001 Could be that too. It didn’t exactly light the charts on fire when it launched.

I wonder if the delay for announcement was more due to development time taking longer on Xbox due to the now age old X/S parity development, and Sony said to the developers, “This launches for the holiday for at least PlayStation or else! Other platforms are secondary.”

Although, by most accounts Lego Horizon is a flop…

@K1LLEGAL Road 96 for sure is. It’s one of those games that Phil and Aaron were gushing about for being a great grab on Gamepass during its original run.

Road 96 is basically a perfect Gamepass game. It’s a 7/10-ish short narrative roguelike-ish. It’s really unique and memorable, but not exactly GotY tier, but it’s the type of game that’ll hit personal year end top 20 lists for people that enjoy it, for perspective. I love when games like this come to the service because it gives them a lot of exposure that they likely wouldn’t have otherwise. The game’s so quick that I wouldn’t sleep on it unless you’re averse to its politics. It’s definitely a political game. I’m a non-political person, myself, but I enjoyed it. It’s a roguelike in the choices you make rather than the gameplay you do, which is certainly different from most other games.

1. Balatro (custom answer)
2. Indiana Jones
3. Prince of Persia
4. Would be Nine Sols, but you can’t vote two custom answers, so instead 4th place goes to Banishers
5. Life is Strange

@K1LLEGAL honestly, this looks like the year Xbox finally completes the turn around. Xbox is making up for years of having a barren wasteland of a release schedule perhaps. Something I kept thinking at The Game Awards was, “What will I be playing in 2025?” Witcher, Ueda’s game, and Intergalactic were my favorite announcements, but I didn’t see 2025 tacked onto them. The answer I came back to is, “2025 is finally the year that I’ll be playing Gamepass.”

I’ll take this. We aren’t getting much of a road map anymore, so, provided there’s a release date, I’d like things to look forward to. I miss the old cycle of knowing games are coming rather than “this releases in three months, save your money quick.”

I honestly have no idea what to expect with TGA currently. The release slate is basically empty, even though we know some games are coming next year, but there’s no release dates for anything. As of right now, I hope there’s some surprises with concrete release dates, so I can hopefully plan out my purchases for next year.

Xbox and Activision are going to use their marketing budget on some vintages for TGA, perhaps.

Wasn’t this sort of hinted at in that South of Midnight documentary that came out last month, just without a concrete date? I’m excited for this one either way, one of my most anticipated games next year.

I’ll be enjoying it as soon as the regular launch and am planning to promptly drop every other game I was playing

Overall, it looks pretty solid on the S. Happy with what I’m seeing.

Going to try to blast through Nine Sols before Indy comes out, but let’s be real: Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic is out on the Switch and I’m there for that. I’ve still yet to beat Dragon Quest 3’s Remake as well. I did download Infinite Nikki and played a whopping 15 minutes of that so far. And there’s the shadow of Stalker 2 in the background as well, I suppose. Jeez, too many games in a short period of time, been a while since I had to juggle like this.

I’ll be dropping all other games for Indy next week though.

Largely, Game Pass was rough this year until Black Ops 6 launched. Hauntii and Kinutsugami were early favorites, but neither was a true hit. I’ve yet to play Still Wakes the Deep and I probably should jump on it, but I just don’t know if I will as I started it and the wife wasn’t interested… and then I just went on to other games. However…

Once Black Ops dropped, and I’m not even much a Black Ops player though I’ve dabbled, the lineup got considerably stronger. I’ve liked practically everything that released in November and Indy looks fantastic.

@dskatter I’m going to put DQ3 and Stalker 2 on hiatus, possibly Nine Sols, depending on if I get through it this weekend. I’m going to be trying. Game Pass has hit me hard the last three weeks. Glad I came back for the November line-up. Still can’t believe my most played game on Xbox this year was Guitar Hero 3!

@dskatter Oh man, I’m about ready to drop all my other games I’m playing currently to go all-in on Indy after watching the Electric Playground review. I’m so glad Xbox finally has a first party game that’s probably for me this generation! I haven’t been so excited to own an Xbox since Halo Infinite. This reviewing so well beats the Hi-Fi Rush shadow drop for me.

@BeyondKnight Most reviews are looking like Xbox finally has a critical hit on their hand, baffling that Xbox waited til after GotY candidates could be announced to release the game.

I hope there’s some big reveals because next year’s release slate is basically just a Gamepass calendar with Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei at an unknown time for me (oh, and Lost Records… I’m definitely getting that one). I’m trying to reduce my purchases down to 15 games next year, but right now I’m only at 3. Lol. Five if Metroid Prime 4 and GTA6 actually happen.

@Major_Player You quoted the wrong person. @dsksatter is the person you’re quoting and I see that kindly a response has been given.

For the record, I’ve had an Xbox account since the OG Xbox and have been with the company through the generations, by the way. Call me a PS fanboy if you like, but I’m console agnostic. Xbox was my primary platform in gaming for the 360 era and first half of the Xbox One era. I’ve been primarily PlayStation since maybe 2020, and would say I shifted there with the current generation as Switch exclusives have tapered out. I play on all 3 ecosystems when the console exclusives are there. I have been critical of Xbox this generation, sure, but that’s because I know their ecosystem could appeal to me more, as it once did in the past. If you want to shoot shots, you should know who you’re firing at. I’m pretty transparent about being a software instead of hardware person.

PureXbox has the lowest review currently. Sort of crazy, considering the used to review higher than average for Xbox games.

As much as I like Shawn Layden, just remember that he works for Tencent now, so he wants what’s going to serve his current employer best, I’m sure.

If I toss out my son’s 86 hours of Minecraft from the top spot, my top 3 this year on Xbox is…

1. Guitar Hero 3
2. MLB the Show 2024
3. Palworld

Man, that’s… weird… I played like 4 games in MLB the Show and that’s it, so it feels weird to see it in the rankings.

I wonder if it’s not counting my Nine Sols time since I know it’s higher than Stalker 2 and my hour of Stalker 2 was in my top 20. Just mostly playing this week.

Looks like I’ll be streaming this one on xCloud then. I like that Xbox is finally starting to pick up with the releases, but, man, the S must stand for streaming with Series S because there’s just no space on the console storage.

I’m at 96% full with three games installed… and ironically am not playing those games, but rather streaming the wonderful but brutal Nine Sols.

This is a Game Pass A. Stalker, Nine Sols, Flight Sim, Metal Slug, and Spyro are all fantastic additions, high quality, and then StarCraft for PC. There’s really no misses here. Best month on Game Pass since potentially those early launch months for me. I went back to Game Pass after not having it for most of the year too, so I’m typically harsh on the value of the service.

For me, I’ve yet to invest much time in either of them, but Nine Sols and Stalker are both highly interesting games. I think Nine Sols will get my vote though.

I just hope the review embargo lifts before the early access…

Sort of a bizarre year for Booty to win the award when this year was marked by studio closures and Xbox hasn’t had a big success story this year for a game release, outside Black Ops 6. Looking at next year’s schedule, next year might make more sense, but the biggest stories in Xbox this year were largely panic-inducing for segments of the fanbase. Not trying to be negative, just saying that this year seemed like a rougher year for Xbox from a PR perspective.

I sort of agree. Stalker is an ambitious game and I’m still not sure if it’s for me, but there’s definitely a case where some ambitious and unique games get trampled. Meanwhile, inoffensive and dull games that run well typically hit that 7/10, 8/10 spread, so their scores make them look like a better game. If a game gets some good and some bad reviews, that often looks worse than a game that gets uniformly decent reviews.

@kevinm360 Yes! This is exactly it!

I’m just glad it was announced. I will take waiting five years for something that looks cool over announcing games two months in advance of release like the industry is trending. Let me look forward to games, darn it!

I wish him luck. He’s starting at a good pivot point in the generation, it seems. Hope he does a good job making Xbox a better platform.

@Bigmanfan Shadows I had originally preordered, but I cancelled my preorder when Yotei was announced… and then the game got delayed! Yotei sort of knocked out all the wind Shadows had for me, but I could be wrong. If it reviews decently and the year is otherwise quiet, I could be interested.

I’m hoping next year is the year I make the most out of Gamepass, as I plan on reducing my gaming spend next year someway somehow.

@Bigmanfan I’ll be honest, I outright disliked the beta. Next year’s looking sort of sparse to me at the moment, so I was contemplating getting it, but nah, the beta unsold me completely. AC Shadows… unless it reviews really well, I’ll probably stick to Ghost of Yotei

I just hope it’s good. I don’t care how long it is. In fact, I prefer my games on the shorter side, so I hope this one isn’t TOO long. Give me a nice 10-20 hour game and that’s the sweet spot.

@Bigmanfan Oh yeah, you’re right! Jeez, that’s personal bias on my part!

Avowed IS practically the only big game releasing around its release window, so they’ve got a real shot to make it stand out, for sure (unless TGA has some big surprises incoming).

@kevinm360 Unless we’re getting CoD Kidz. Lol.

That’s a joke, but I’m sort of surprised we haven’t gotten some goofy thing like that by now.

I want to see Xbox deliver with a solid line-up of games. Plain and simple. I want to use my Xbox more next year than any other year.

It would be funny if Xbox signed the contract to work with Toys for Bob, so they could put out CoD2025. I mean, they did turn into a Warzone support studio for a while. It’s certainly interesting how Activision is basically a CoD factory as @GamingFan4Lyf put it. Does Activision actually make other games at this point? (And I’m not talking about the “other half” in Blizzard, which basically operates like Blizzard, same as it ever was).

It worked fine for me the day I tried. I think that was Friday or Saturday. I’ve not been back to it since though. Like all Flight Sims for me, it’s fine, but a very, very casual game. Flight Sim ever being GotY sounds sort of strange to me, but I like it

@Batesy125s Yeah, I’m grateful that the grand majority of my personal friends are Kojima fans, and the best of them are sailing on the Ruse Cruise, if you know what I mean. Lol

Totally not sure. The game is designed to be basically the most divisive game it can be. I’ve got about an hour in and I have no idea what to think yet. It runs better than Cyberjunk 2077 did at launch though.

I just hope that it’s really solid. I hope it’s finally the big first party Xbox game in a long while that really hits the spot.

I imagine this weekend it’ll be a casual mix of Flight Sim, Stalker 2, and DQ3 with some multiplayer games with the family perhaps.

I’m not sure how I feel about Stalker 2 yet, but it’s definitely hardcore. Not sure if I’ve had issues or if it’s just merciless. Don’t have any concrete thoughts about it yet.

I tried it earlier and it played well for me. I rather liked it, honestly. Feels almost like the THPS Underground moment for the series. Looking forward to the reviews now that it’s got the server issues sorted out.