Xbox One

[jman]

I read a few of the many Oculus reviews that have been posted in the last couple of days... to summarise them all = Hardware - great.  Games - crap - don't bother wasting your money now.  Yep, enjoy wasting your money on PC gaming harv... hopefully it means we won't have to listen to your Nintendo biased tripe in the console threads any more?  One can hope...

Back to Xbox gaming...
So made a start on the backlog of GWG - played and finished Sherlock Holmes : Crimes & Punishment... it was a bit shit to be honest.. and I've never liked Sherlock.. which was compounded even further by the films because I think Robert Downey Jnr is a bit of a smarmy prick. but that's by-the-by.   The game has you collecting evidence/clues in 6 different cases to solve murders basically... not a bad premise.. and it would of been a bit better had it been a bit more open-ended, but it is so linear and the general gameplay is just shite.  It took about an hour just to get used to moving around because of all the invisible walls that box your character in and ultimately funnel you into finding every single bit of evidence/clue - it felt impossible to miss anything in each case.   Playing the cases once was more than enough.. and I collared the correct killer in 5 of the 6 cases on the first go... the fact I was paying very little attention to any of the clues or evidence I picked up just goes to show how easy the game was too.  The case I got wrong was probably the best case.. but to replay the case afterwards meant starting it from the beginning.. which meant collecting every single piece of evidence/clue again.  One annoying niggle with the game was that about 75% of the dialogue was skippable.. but a random 25% of the dialogue made you read/watch all of it before it got onto the next piece of dialogue.. which might or might not be skippable.. made replaying that one case a chore.. the load times for each section in a case aren't exactly quick either.
3/10

So I started another one that was on GWG a few months back.. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - I don't know why I picked this game.. I hated the Van Helsing film when it first came out.. but I thought I'd give this a few hours and call it a day.. I ended up completing it over the last week.. and probably sunk about 13-15 hours into it in total... so its not a complete shower of shit...but its far from an "Incredible Adventure".   So its a Baldurs Gate type of game.. which was a welcome surprise actually... I haven't played anything like that for a while (unless you count Dragon Age - but I didn't really get on with that).. I really should of knocked Van Helsing on the head after the first hour or two.. because the game is so repetitive and annoying.. I was getting very bored/frustrated towards the end of it... the game consisted mainly of exploring a tiny bit of the map until you hit a set of monsters.. retreating whilst killing the monsters.. and then rinse and repeat.... one of the major headaches in the game was the information overload... it took me about 5-6 hours to work out which buttons were the shortcut buttons for healing potions/mana potions.. (despite those buttons being displayed on the screen at the bottom left for the entire game - my excuse is that the graphics are utter wank.. so those buttons aren't very clear!  The cutscene graphics are hilariously bad)... Anyway sorting out the inventory was the worst though.. and to make matters worse, you have a ghost companion who also has her own set of inventory items - at times I just couldn't be bothered to change my weapons/armor because I knew it would take about an hour to do it properly!  Ok maybe a slight over-exaggeration, but I ended up using a perk so I could carry more items.. just so I didn't have to sort out my inventory when it came to selling stuff so often.  Another annoying issue were the ridiculously long load-times.. so that carry perk came in handy again because if I wanted to go back to my base to sell stuff... it meant having to endure two long loading times.. one to get to the base and one back out again.  I would probably go back to this game and mop some of the achievements up.. there's a decent little tower defense part in the middle of the game which was by far the highlight of the game for me... but there's no way to replay certain sections within the game and there's zero chance I'm replaying the game from the start again so I'm probably done with this now.
4.5/10

[Late]

Currently thoroughly enjoying Fallout 4 and Plague Inc.
I bought Plague Inc and Witcher 3 in the marketplace sale - but doubt I'll get around to Witcher any time soon. Fallout will keep me busy for a while, and I need to get back to Rare Replay some time soon (not to mention Halo).

Also bought a Rabbids game on the One. Don't know anything about it but it was cheap and I enjoyed some of the Rabbids games on the Wii.

Have also been playing Remember Me and Speedball 2 on Steam.

[harv]

The Lucky's Tale game reviews have been a bit odd so far. Lucky's Tale has had 3 mixed reviews, but all of the hardware reviews have mentioned the games and praised Lucky's Tale in particular. I'm expecting Lucky's Tale to get mostly positive reviews, Chronos and Adr1ft to get mixed ones and the rest of them to get mostly positive reviews. The standout game is going to be Technolust I think, it's going to be right up there with Project CARS and Elite Dangerous.

One thing that does concern me is how the comfort level is going to affect reviews. Reviewers reviewing 'Intense' level games MUST have steady 'VR legs' for the reviews to remain fair. Oculus have come up with these comfort levels for a reason

[jman]

Currently thoroughly enjoying Fallout 4 and Plague Inc.
I bought Plague Inc and Witcher 3 in the marketplace sale - but doubt I'll get around to Witcher any time soon. Fallout will keep me busy for a while, and I need to get back to Rare Replay some time soon (not to mention Halo).

Also bought a Rabbids game on the One. Don't know anything about it but it was cheap and I enjoyed some of the Rabbids games on the Wii.

Have also been playing Remember Me and Speedball 2 on Steam.

Plague is a nice little time-waster.. although the random nature of the game can be a bit of an enjoyment killer... after I finished it on normal mode.. I enjoyed using a few guides to get some of the achievements.

I bought Fruit Ninja Kinect 2 last week.. have to say.. the Kinect integration is about a hundred times better than the original game on the 360.. it is so fluid - it makes a massive difference and improves the game a lot.. the "sequel" is pretty much exactly the same as the original.. a few game-modes have been tacked on.. but I kinda knew that when I bought it.. haven't tried side-by-side multiplayer yet.. that could be good fun though.

That's an absolute shit load of games coming through the indie/ID channels at the moment.. I downloaded a game about 3 or 4 weeks ago.. and its miles down the list on the recent releases.. quite impressive.. some of the games are really appealing aswell.. Prison Architect, Active Soccer 2 DX, Trackmania Turbo, Shadow Complex Remastered, Ori & The Blind Forest.. plus a few others too.

[Late]

Got sent a Doom Beta key today (valid 31/03 - 03/04 if memory serves). Let me know if you don't have one, Kieron, and I'll send you mine. Never used the one they gave us a couple of months ago, and doubt I'll get a chance to try it this weekend either.

[jman]

That's cool bud, I got a code myself yesterday too... I think it runs from today to Sunday.. but I'm away most of the weekend on a booze-up, so I've decided not to bother using the code.. I've already decided I'm going to pre-order the game based on what I saw in the previous beta anyway.  I'd recommend giving it a go if you're undecided about buying it.. I know its only the multi-player portion of the game.. and I'm not one to typically delve into online multiplayer - but its great fun.. it harks back to the older Doom/Quake games in terms of its pace and gameplay.

[Late]

EA Access will be free for a week and a half next month:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/ea-access-xbox-one-will-free-for-xbl-gold-members-june-12-22-via-xbox-live-2449214

Probably not a coincidence that it coincides with E3 - no doubt there'll be something new in the EA Vault (the smart money's on a Beta for Battlefield 1).

[jman]

Free Joy Ride Turbo game.. instructions here : Link

Think its the 360 game that now works on X1 - I downloaded it last night.. dunno if its gonna be worth the hassle though - 67 on metacritic.

If you have trouble getting it to work, just change the last 3 digits a few times, or change the postal code.. it works after a while.

[Late]

majornelson

[harv]

Beyond Good & Evil is an amazing game!

[Late]

I know it's a classic, but I tried it out on the 360 a while back and couldn't get into it.

[jman]

Never played any of them.. looking forward to Spelunky though.

I was trying to play The Crew last night.. fucking stupid idea to have a constant internet connection - I know it wasn't my connection, but every 5-10 minutes I was being dumped out of the game saying the Xbox Live Services were unavailable.. and then I tried later again that night and couldn't even get into the game because the Ubisoft servers were down...  I would be fucking furious if I paid any money for this.  Its a shame because the basic concept for The Crew isn't bad.. its probably got the best open-world design in a racing game too...I just love the fact you can drive everywhere in the states - took me the best part of an hour to drive from Detroit to Miami.. I wanted to check out South Beach - as I have driven around there.. and its spot on - even the place we ate for dinner one night is a restaurant in the game - Washington and New York are pretty spot on too - driving over Brooklyn Bridge and being able to take in all the sights took me back to when we did it.

My online participation has mainly been about seeing people nearby and crashing into their cars... sounds lame, but its actually been quite fun.. some guy was trying to grief me the other night when I was wanted by the police by trying to stop me driving off... took about 20 minutes to lose the cops.. and kudos to him, he kept up with me all the time.. when I finally did lose the cops.. I just rammed my car into his, blocked him into a corner and he couldn't escape lol.  After a couple of minutes his car just faded away - he must of fast travelled somewhere lol - I didn't see him again after that.   I felt quite sorry for someone I was pestering a few days back.. poor guy was just trying to play the game and I kept ramming his car off the road and driving off.. then 5 minutes later, catching up with him and doing it again.. he tried to catch me once and I went off-road and he ended up flying off a cliff lolol.

[Late]

This doesn't bode well.
I've had to factory reset my xb1 twice in the last month. Definitely looks like it's on its way out

[harv]

This doesn't bode well.
I've had to factory reset my xb1 twice in the last month. Definitely looks like it's on its way out

If your Xbox is dying you should use this opportunity to get yourself an Oculus Rift while the price is still cheap and join the VR revolution. It's £400 for another 3 weeks and after that the price is coming down from the pre-sale £600 to £500.

No online tax to pay and the ONLY way to play any sort of cockpit game. The first time you see the inside of a Coriolis space station and the first time you come out of hyperspace in Elite Dangerous will absolutely blow your mind

And it's looking like VR has it's very first 'killer apps' in Lone Echo and Echo Arena too (although imo there have been several since both headsets launched, particularly Elite Dangerous!).

[Late]

Yeah, no.

(Didn't read it, tbh. Saw "VR" in your post and decided it's not worth the few seconds to read it.)