stinkyx

"Take it or leave it...it's free, so you're getting what you paid for!" That's the way all Game Pass games come off to me. I know there are other factors contributing to a rocky development cycle, but still...Microsoft's quality control for its exclusives is severely lacking.

Phil is the smartest, most handsome, tallest man alive. Xbox doesn't need things like games or consoles...they have Phil!

My god, they have no good reason not to have made Gears 6 next. There are a million ways to easily stitch together a story about the Gears 5 "choice", play levels taking place during an E-Day via flashback, and go to space.

Game Pass is just paying to have a backlog. Well, with the new tier, maybe that means MS is ready to start making more than 1 AAA game per year again?

In addition to difficulty levels, they should also have a setting called "Respect For Your Time" that changes the game's length to ~20 hours. Just like Dragon Age 2 Still never beat Inquisition, due to the typical RPG padding.

@Fiendish-Beaver Yep. I think they should've made Gears 6 and started the game with E-Day (to please nostalgic fans), and then did a story act before Gears 4 with Marcus and younger JD where something happens to JD like he inhales a Locust spore or something (alternate chapter for Del where something similar happens, maybe he is exposed to spore while dying?).

Then it fast forwards to after Gears 5 and the spore causes JD/Del to survive his death by crystallizing. Then someone figures out a way to reverse Locust back to humans, but it requires a super rare mineral (maybe a scientist in act 1 was working on something?) , and so Kait has to decide whether to reverse JD/Del or her mother.

@JokerBoy422 Halo Reach at least came out after Halo's 1-3 story arch, just like Gears of War Judgement came out after the OG trilogy. The E-Day story has already been told via books too. IDK, I always make the mistake of taking the story seriously in games and getting personally invested, so I was really expecting Gears 6. Anyway, I'll get over it. Multiplayer is what I like best anyway.

This is just like the next Mass Effect game. The old story is OVER. IDK why we need to go back. I loved it too but it's time to move on. The Coalition could take the Gears 6 story into whatever direction they want...they could have another "war" easily. They can have flashbacks where you play as old characters. There's no excuse for this laziness. Ugh.

Annoyed it's not Gears 6. Giving up on a story that we've spent the last 8 years following via books and games really grinds my gears. Laaaaaame.

I'm still reeeeally hoping it releases a month early on Xbox to get back at PlayStation for pulling that same kinda garbage on past CODs.

Surprised Phil hasn't popped up to congratulate Sony on the success of Stallar Blade.

Gamers need Xbox and Playstation to compete with each other. If there's only one console (Playstation), Sony has no reason to make any first party IP games and can just rely on 3rd party support.

Case in-point: Steam. Valve stopped making games long ago.

The opposite would be Nintendo, who's console is so weak that third party support is horrendous and they NEED to crank out high quality first party games on a consistent basis to maintain business.

@abe_hikura The original Perfect Dark was just a reskin of GoldenEye with futuristic weapons and gadgets, so a reskin of the Tomb Raider games with some fun spy tech would be a simple and effective concept, IMHO (and was what I was hoping for).

@GamingFan4Lyf Whatever they're doing, they need to try something different. With the money and talent at Xbox's studios, the fact they can't get anything right is just sad and embarrassing.

Dang, how did I not hear about Off the Grid???

Dang I just wanted to say Judas looks cool. More of the same Bioshock gameplay, which I believe hasn't been replicated once over the last 12 years.

@rustyduck Probably because of the game selection? It's definitely not for everyone.

I only have Ultimate to play Gears and Guilty Gear on my phone. Otherwise, I'd rather just buy the games I really want to play instead of feeling like I need to play all the third-party mid-tier titles we seem to get every month just to feel like I didn't waste my money.

MS needs more first party games BADLY, IMHO.

Just finished 4's campaign after owning it since launch. Loved the gameplay, but didn't connect with the new characters (I couldn't tell you anything about them other than they live outside the COG settlements).

Hopefully 5 won't take me 8 years too. I already know about "the choice" at the end, and I'd like to think The Coalition wouldn't have done that without an idea for the sequel. Good or bad, I think they need to execute on their vision and not cater to the section of the fanbase that probably wouldn't like the story regardless (and would probably love scrapping all the new characters and focusing on the old ones). It's too late for them to back out now.

Cliff as a consultant would be amazing. Living legend.

Is it bad that I've been boycotting this game? I wanted The Evil Within 3, and I know that most studios nowadays hardly ever work on more than one IP every console generation, let alone release more than one game every ~5 years.

Well, with Shinji Mikami gone and Hi-Fi Rush erasing The Evil Within in terms of acclaim, I guess all hope for me is lost!

@Kienda Yessss, exactly. People forget that corporations are beholden to their shareholders, aka if you own stock, you only care about how much more money the company can make you.

If replacing everyone with AI and leaning on subscriptions instead of new products is the easiest, fastest path forward, of course the shareholders will want that.

The question is....what do we do? It affects me because I want new games (Gears, Halo, all the Rare IPs and all the studios bought up by MS) instead of Game Pass with 1 new first-party game every 5 years and 1 Forza game every other year. I guess all I can do is buy premium titles to support new content.

GeForce Now, hahahaha...now matter how late at night I try to get on their servers, there's at least 200 people queued in front of me (and ticks down like one person every 5 minutes), and the $10 monthly premium subs are sold out. Not to mention you have to own the games you want to play, and despite the hundreds and hundreds of games they support, they still somehow manage to NOT have any of the main games I want to play. And when an update rolls out, games sometimes just won't work because the host computer didn't download the update yet.

Game Pass Ultimate is a miracle by comparison.

One problem with Limited Run is that, for new releases (or new re-releases) you get the game months after it actually comes out.

Then again, I'm more into playing games than collecting them.

Finally finishing Gears 4 after giving up on "At the Door" like 3 years ago since it was too hard (on Insane, being able to be downed just makes it too easy otherwise).

This was before the Gears 6 production rumors, so it's like it was meant to be...

I get 3points per day searching for "Pure Xbox" in Bing!

@Gamer83 I totally get that...writers that come into established stories sometimes like tearing down what came before in order to make their mark. The only way we'll find out is when they decide to release Gears 6. I'm guessing 6/6/2026 at this point?

@Gamer83 Hmmm, you think they wrote themselves into a corner and that's what's causing the delay? God, I hope this isn't one of those trilogies that's just made-up as it goes along.

Cliffy B recently tweeted on 11/28/2023 for Microsoft to call him about Gears 6, along with a pretty unique idea he had. Cliff seems to be doing just a bunch of random small non-gaming projects recently, so a design consultant for Gears 6 would be a nice return to bookend the second trilogy.

The article says it all: kind of hard to stay positive as a fan these days when the Microsoft itself doesn't seem to care at all about the franchise.

Good year, good times.

Now that I think about it, I didn't actually like nor care to finish almost all of the games on this list, but nostalgia is raisin' them rose-tinted glasses high.

What about a co-op puzzle-platformer (like It Takes Two or Unravel 2) where one person is Banjo and the other is Kazooie? And Mumbo can have a son who rides around in Banjo's backpack and learns spells to transform each of them at-will into different things to solve puzzles? It can be called Banjo-Threeie since there's 3 characters palling around.

Actions speak louder than words. With a resume like Phil's, we'll be lucky to get more than a few first party AAA exclusives each year, let alone good ones.

Where's Gears 6 and Perfect Dark?

Wow, what a novel idea...keep the same gameplay of the previous games that made the series so successful, instead of chasing trends?

@Reptilio IKR? Guess I'll buy this next October for $20 now?

Personally I had less than zero interest in all the other games coming out in October, so dang it.

Xbox One for Killer Instinct 2013! Everything else I wanted to play was on PC at the time.

The one that lets me break away from a boring mission when I see something more interesting going on in the distance and NOT stop the entire game with "Mission Failed" and teleport me all the way back to where the mission began.

Protip: I called my ISP asking for a new modem and router and they sent me one for free (well, $20 service fee). Ever since then, ALL game stream services and in-home streaming have been working soooo good.

It's not perfect, but definitely stable, consistent, and more than suitable for everything short of super-sweaty-zero-ping-tryharding. Highly recommended. Makes Xcloud amazing since you don't have to actually install anything, just boot up games instantly.

I'm surprised he wasn't wearing a PlayStation shirt

Got SF6 and the Battle Hub menu music marks the first time in my life I've ever had to turn the sound completely off in a game from sheer annoyance.

The characters also look off somehow. They're all really ugly to me, which is what also killed Killer Instinct 2013 and BlazBlue for me, so hopefully I can get over it (but then there's always Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 1).

Dunno what it is, but so far it's been super disappointing!

@Cherip-the-Ripper I like the IDEAS of all their games, but the art style and final execution just isn't endearing or much fun for me in the end. I don't think they're bad games, it's just not for me.

Meanwhile, Redfall sounded horrendously boring on paper (IMHO) but it's my favorite by far, primarily due to co-op. The gameplay loop is beyond derivative, but the setting is unique enough that the whole game has become enjoyable.

If they want to go cloud-based (as in people without and Xbox paying $15/mo to stream), they need better exclusives.

IMHO, it seems like 75% of Game Pass games are half the games they could've been. They take soooo long in development, and then just end up sucking.

@Lup Say what you will about Sony's games, but at least they don't make players wait over half a decade between iterations in major franchises. Gears 6 should be out by now, and the next Halo should be confirmed in-development, and all those IPs that MS bought should have something, ANYTHING in development, ffs.

If Dead Island 2 had crossplay, it'd be day one. They waited this long to release it, and they still can't check the basic co-op box for multiplats.

Good lord. I bet 50 years from now we'll still have 30 FPS games. No matter how much horsepower you give devs, they can't seem to work within their means.

One of my favorite games of all time. You guys missed out. I think about it every time I play Overwatch...that game feels like I'm walking in molasses compared to Lawbreakers. Only D.Va can remotely, REMOTELY emulate the freedom of movement Lawbreakers had. Not even to mention the map design and class balance. Man that was fun.

It can look as shiny as it wants, but the illusion shatters the second you interact with the world. Still waiting for a dev to have enough gall to make a fully interactive world and AI that isn't braindead.

@themightyant @TJ81 I put 6 way up there! Once you get the controls down, it's a really fun (and hilarious) co-op game. That might not be the best criteria to judge a survival horror series, but I think RE6 does a great job of keeping the hammy campiness of the originals alive against the horror.

I mean...did you even play the snow mobile level? Running over zombies (and your partner), blowing-up your partner's snowmobile with C4, driving off the cliff, and sliding down a ridiculously long slope with almost no control over your own character are highlights.

Plus there's a boss fight where player 2 basically doesn't have to do anything, which is hilarious on the hardest difficulty as your partner swears and screams while you eat food IRL. And nothing beats roundhouse kicking your partner in the back of the head.

Good times...

@Tharsman Exactly! I get that games are more complicated than ever to make, but good lord do we have to wait F-O-R-E-V-E-R IN-between iterations. Games now are 1 entry per generation, 2 at best. You think with the manpower and budget of these bigger studios they'd be faster.

The only exception is COD. Say what you will, but for 3-year cycles per studio, they make top-notch, polished games. I guess From Software does too. But MS and Sony are so slow it's infuriating.

@grumpypotato The Nina gameplay looks like an RE Engine game, but I think the gameplay breakdown with Law and King looks sooo good. The muscles and animation are on another level. I especially like how the ground seems to deform more naturally. Doesn't blow me away, but it's a noticeable improvement over 7, imho.

@CaptainCluck Whaaaat? Didn't know that. Yet another reason to hate PETA (coming from me, who loves animals and is vegan for morality issues only).

Dave as Marcus, Scar Jo as Anya, and their boots by Uggs