Xbox One

[Late]

Yeah, Thief is a decent game at that price - just don't expect it to be as good as the old Thief games, if you ever played them, back in the day. This one's way too linear.

Haven't bought anything physical in the Black Friday sales this year, but I did add a few games to my xbox library. Picked up The Escapists last week, and also got Rare Replay this weekend. RR has been as cheap as £9.99 for a physical copy, but I was holding out for a decent price on digital - so was happy to pay £12.99 for it.

Haven't played them, yet - nor have I played any of the last few months' GWGs - I've been busy playing COD Blops 3. Pretty good fun, though as always I'm not very good at it and my K/D ratio is appalling. It's getting a bit better now that I'm at a high level - so have access to better weapons and equipment. I was always a fan of the claymores and bouncing betties in the earlier instalments, and the futuristic variant "trip mines" are keeping my stats reasonable now - I get more kills with them than with my guns (I'm mainly sprinting around dual-wielding pistols). With the trip mines it's all about the positioning. In Search & Destroy (the only game mode I ever play) you soon know good places to put them, but there's always new places to learn.

Sent you a message on the xbox yesterday, btw, Kieron - not sure if you've seen it.

[jman]

Must of missed it bud.. Rare Replay is brilliant, definitely a bargain at that price.. I will go back to mine after Christmas probably and try and do a bit more.. I want to play Kameo and finish off Viva Pinata 2... cant see myself getting all the stamps in it though - just don't think I have the patience for some of it.

Finished Fallout 4 now and all of the separate paths you can go down.. I've played it way too quickly lol.. there is one really annoying slightly buggy achievement though.. that's getting a settlement up to 100% happiness - that could take a while to get and there are a few more achievements I've still to get.. so there is still a bit of life left in it..

[jman]

Not much for me there... own KI and owned and completed Dirt + Deus Ex... great games if you haven't played them..  Zheros looks like a side-scrolling beat-em-up version of the film Incredibles..

[Late]

Not too shabby.
Never really played KI (if memory serves I got one or two characters when I got the console, but I only played one game). Love DX:HR, but tbh I doubt I'll play it again - I played it on the 360 when it came out, and I played it again on Steam a couple of months ago.
ZHeros and Dirt definitely to try out.

[jman]

Killer Instinct is a bit crap.. or rather.. I'm bloody awful at it, and I don't like getting my arse handed to me... lol.

Dirt Showdown is probably the worst of the Dirt games, but it is still worth a go regardless of if you have played any of the others.

[jman]

Hmmm.. not great..

I played ZHeroes the other day from last months GWG - I started playing on the hardest mode... and it is quite tough... but more importantly - it is utterly shit!

Downloaded a game called Sparkle 2 last night (never heard of Sparkle 1) - just released.. its a Zuma clone.. (which itself is a clone but that's by-the-by) - and it lacks any kind of charm or imagination that Zuma has..... BUT.. it is a puzzle match-3-marble type game.. which I do enjoy playing from time-to-time.. so fulfilling that itch.. and it only cost a fiver... and I'll probably waste 8+ hours time on it for the achievements... gotta have something to play before Far Cry Primal at the end of the month anyway 

[harv]

Looks like Microsoft are knocking the Hololens on the head. They say it's not going to be released for 'the foreseeable future'. Probably down to a couple of competitors showing AR devices with a MUCH better FOV recently.

[Late]

You're talking bollocks, mate.
They've said they won't release it until they think the time is right - which is pretty much how all technology is released.

Given a choice between buying a hololens now for £1000 with three games supported and a limited field of vision, or buying one in two years' time for £300 with improved sensors and field, and scores of games supported I'd much rather the second option.
Still wouldn't buy it, mind. Not until I'm certain the tech works well and is likely to be supported long-term.

I'll say it again, for emphasis, though. I've seen zero indication Microsoft are "knocking the hololens on the head".

[jman]

When does he ever NOT talk bollocks?

Microsoft just revealed the other day that they will be sending hololens dev kits out on March 30th for $3000 

[harv]

Got it from here.

Yes, they're letting developers for 3 grand, but what developer in their right mind would start working on a HoloLens game..?

It's not quite as bad as the Kinect, the FOV problem won't make mainstream game development impossible the way that Kinect's lag did but I don't think it's a coincidence that they've put what could be a very long hold on releasing it when there are two superior alternative headsets on the horizon.

I also think that Room Scale VR is going to go the same way as the Kinect because, again, it's going to be virtually impossible to develop mainstream games for it. The vast majority of mainstream games involve exploration or movement from one area to another. So let's say that your playable area is your living room. The southern edge is your sofa, the northern edge is your telly and the eastern and western edges are your walls either side.

You walk from the southern edge to your northern edge. You use the teleportation mechanic to move to the next area (which only contextually makes sense in sci-fi games and breaks immersion anyway) and you have to turn around. It's ridiculous tbh.

The games that work with Room Scale VR are games like Space Pirates Training, Hover Junkers, Job Simulator, Surgeon Simulator, Fantastic Contraption and Tilt Brush where all of the gameplay is in one area. And all of these games are going to get old fast, just as the Kinect games did. Game designers just ran out of ideas for the thing, and the same is going to happen with Room Scale VR.

[harv]

And Meta 2 devkits, one of the two superior alternatives I mentioned earlier, have just become available for developers for $949.

Just with Kinect they've come up with a great idea on paper but when they actually start developing the idea it's fundamentally flawed.

[harv]

Fucking hell, just heard that one of the Project Designers of HoloLens has been killed by a drunk driver. 100mph collision apparently

A bit of a weird coincidence, because one of the co-founders of Oculus was killed in a similar way not so long ago.

Drunk drivers need to be skinned alive imo. Fuckers.

[Late]

April's Games with Gold The Wolf Among Us & Sunset Overdrive / Dead Space & Saints Row IV.


Fantastic selection - though I already own them all.
MS are showing up PlayStation with their free games lately.

[stupac]

Definitely. I've had PS+ for about a year and a half now, and can probably count on one hand the amount of games I've downloaded and actually liked.

I keep meaning to start The Wolf Among Us but still haven't got round to it since buying it in November lol.

[harv]

Yup, like stupac has said it isn't just lately, it's been going on for quite a while.

Now that I'm joining the PC Master Race (well I'm nearly there, just got my monster graphics card to go!) and will be doing all of my gaming in VR ALL consoles are going to be dead to me from November onwards. I already didn't buy a PS4 or Xbox One this generation because I'm refusing to pay a yearly tax to play online, but my Wii U will also start to gather dust...although I'll still use it to watch Netflix in bed!

Not getting any consoles at all next generation, once you go VR you never go back lol

Mind you, I will be tempted to play PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U emulators in VR using Virtual Desktop, but that's because I'll be playing games on a 150" screen lmfao