Gaming Xbox Series X|S

Which of these do you prefer

  • Microsoft Game Pass

  • Xbox Game Pass

Results are only viewable after voting.
I think the skin is there to make the environments a little more grim.

Been playing it in small parts at night and have enjoyed it for the most. The setting and its' fixed camera angles are great imo, the 'puzzles' ain't bad though the gameplay can feel a little tedious at times but you're going to get that in this sort of game where it's mostly about exploring the environment and taking in the creepy vibes. I'm in the last hour of it and the story has developed pretty good.
 
Bojan11 said:
Haha, so you got bored.

You paid 40 smackers for that. That’s four months of boring gamepass you missed out on. Even worse, I gave you a better recommendation in Yakuza 0, which conveniently along with all the other Yakuza games is available on gamepass.
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I paid £15 for it.
 
esmufc07 said:
I paid £15 for it.
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You paid £40 and that's the end of the matter. No more further discussion especially in this beautiful thread.

Imagine liking something and then after one day, you stop playing it for something else. Seems weird.
 
Those who have finished it:

if I’ve freed Richard, how long is left?
 
For anyone contemplating a Series S, I've had mine for just over a month now and think it's a cracking little console.

Went for the Series S as I'd describe myself as a casual gamer - the console is used mostly for video (Netflix, Prime, Plex, Kodi etc) with the occasional bit of gaming thrown in. Didn't want to spend too much and the Series S ticked most of the right boxes. The biggest draw, for me personally, is the considerably faster CPU and solid-state storage. Previous-generation consoles were behind the times in those regards (even the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X resorted to hard disks) and I found the ridiculously long load times off-putting.

With Series S a lot of those admittedly first-world problems are alleviated. Find myself able to have a quick game of something during the half time break, because games load so fast, or even instantly in the case of Quick Resume. I like the fact that the console doesn't consume that much more power, it is practically silent all the time, and it's so small it fits into the media unit with no hassle. I did wonder if the 500GB storage capacity would be a problem, but that isn't the case yet; I've already got more games downloaded than I'm likely to play in a year and there's still a good amount of space left. The console turns on really quickly even from a cold boot (no need to waste power on standby), downloads ought to be smaller and faster without the need for 4K textures, and the new joypad is really nice to handle.

In terms of downsides, I'm not overly keen on the new USB-C charging cable as it doesn't have a light to tell you when the battery is full, and I reckon the Xbox OS could do with sprucing up. Though the UI is familiar and easy to get around, it's starting to look and feel a bit boring.

As for the games, I'm quite enjoying playing older titles that I missed on the last-gen due to a lack of patience. Couldn't abide the load times so it's nice to be able to revisit games and not have to sit around waiting for what feels like an eternity. Managed to get a really good deal on Game Pass and finished Ori and the Blind Forest last weekend. Tremendous game with an incredible visual style and a truly beautiful soundtrack.
 
Parma Dewol said:
In terms of downsides, I'm not overly keen on the new USB-C charging cable as it doesn't have a light to tell you when the battery is full, and I reckon the Xbox OS could do with sprucing up. Though the UI is familiar and easy to get around, it's starting to look and feel a bit boring.
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Not sure the UI will change much as they’ve been adding and tweaking quite a few little bits regularly for a while now. I’d be happy with them just giving us more customisation options to be honest. They need to get rid of the avatars or do more with them as well, in my opinion. I hate those smarmy little cnuts.
 
Parma Dewol said:
For anyone contemplating a Series S, I've had mine for just over a month now and think it's a cracking little console.

Went for the Series S as I'd describe myself as a casual gamer - the console is used mostly for video (Netflix, Prime, Plex, Kodi etc) with the occasional bit of gaming thrown in. Didn't want to spend too much and the Series S ticked most of the right boxes. The biggest draw, for me personally, is the considerably faster CPU and solid-state storage. Previous-generation consoles were behind the times in those regards (even the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X resorted to hard disks) and I found the ridiculously long load times off-putting.

With Series S a lot of those admittedly first-world problems are alleviated. Find myself able to have a quick game of something during the half time break, because games load so fast, or even instantly in the case of Quick Resume. I like the fact that the console doesn't consume that much more power, it is practically silent all the time, and it's so small it fits into the media unit with no hassle. I did wonder if the 500GB storage capacity would be a problem, but that isn't the case yet; I've already got more games downloaded than I'm likely to play in a year and there's still a good amount of space left. The console turns on really quickly even from a cold boot (no need to waste power on standby), downloads ought to be smaller and faster without the need for 4K textures, and the new joypad is really nice to handle.

In terms of downsides, I'm not overly keen on the new USB-C charging cable as it doesn't have a light to tell you when the battery is full, and I reckon the Xbox OS could do with sprucing up. Though the UI is familiar and easy to get around, it's starting to look and feel a bit boring.

As for the games, I'm quite enjoying playing older titles that I missed on the last-gen due to a lack of patience. Couldn't abide the load times so it's nice to be able to revisit games and not have to sit around waiting for what feels like an eternity. Managed to get a really good deal on Game Pass and finished Ori and the Blind Forest last weekend. Tremendous game with an incredible visual style and a truly beautiful soundtrack.
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Good post. It's an excellent console for gamepass and a solid emulator for older titles too.

Tell the truth, I wasn't planning on buying any of the new consoles until I saw it in action. Very glad I did.
 
Vidyoyo said:
Good post. It's an excellent console for gamepass and a solid emulator for older titles too.

Tell the truth, I wasn't planning on buying any of the new consoles until I saw it in action. Very glad I did.
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Thanks, the other thing I forgot to mention is that what surprised me most is how small the Series S actually is. I'd read about it and heard people mention it, yet when I removed the console from the box I didn't expect it to be that small. Reminiscent of a Super Nintendo in that it's tiny, silent and loads games with hardly any wait.
 
Parma Dewol said:
Thanks, the other thing I forgot to mention is that what surprised me most is how small the Series S actually is. I'd read about it and heard people mention it, yet when I removed the console from the box I didn't expect it to be that small. Reminiscent of a Super Nintendo in that it's tiny, silent and loads games with hardly any wait.
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It's a fantastic size really. It's really portable and I have no trouble packing it and taking it to friends places for a night of gaming.
 
I was even surprised by the size of the Series X, so the S must be tiny.
 
Stepson had to send his Series S back to Amazon yesterday.

The UI would load up and everything looks fine but when a game is launched the system would crash or freeze. Multiple re-installs and fresh starts after wiping the console and it was still doing the same, I’m guessing it’s a hard drive failure or something.

It starting going a bit slow last week, games we’re randomly crashing with the console turning off but now it won’t even launch anything, he’s gutted as there aren’t any available to buy.

He’s decided to upgrade to the Series X when he can get one.
 
Vidyoyo said:
Oh yeah - Lost Odyssey is £5 atm. Haven't played it but it's good by all accounts.
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Great game. Not sure how well it holds up but I would suspect it's still really worthwhile for anybody into JRPGs (I'm not particularly big on them either but thought LO was great)
 
I especially loved those little animated text stories in Lost Odyssey. I thought it was a great game with very traditional JRPG gameplay. One of the few JRPGs I played that generation.
 
BristolRuss said:
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/02/16/xbox-wireless-headset-announcement/

New wireless headset announced.
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They look pretty nice and a decent price.

Not sure I could go wireless again now I’ve experienced the difference with a mixamp. I tried plugging my Arctis Pro into the controller again and the stereo field was way too small - sounds clashing too much, especially annoying with voice chat and loads of shooting going on.

But then wireless is a big plus. Although charging is a big negative.


Shamwow said:
It's got Jeff goldblum in it!
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:drool:
 


Good month, if you love racing games. Dirt 5 is only a few months old, so it’s a very good addition.
 
Supposedly PGR4 back-compat was hinted in a recent video. That would be great.
 
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I think I'll have to give Game Pass on PC a go after all. I'm now wondering why on earth I spent €45 on a game like The Medium when I could've just signed up and try it out. Just seems daft in hindsight.
 
Ainu said:
I think I'll have to give Game Pass on PC a go after all. I'm now wondering why on earth I spent €45 on a game like The Medium when I could've just signed up and try it out. Just seems daft in hindsight.
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Yeah, it's great for stuff like that. I'm sort of enjoying The Medium but glad I didn't buy it, to be honest
 
I have to say it was a bit of a struggle to even sign in to my old Xbox Live account (that I used back on the 360) on the PC Xbox app. It kept asking me for a pin code which I obviously never set and it turns out you can only set it from inside Windows 10. Problem is I'm not using that account on Windows 10 at all, so I actually had to add this as an additional Microsoft account on my local Windows 10, just so I could set a pin code to use in the Xbox app. It's all so dreadfully counter-intuitive. Anyway it's all set up now. I haven't used this account in close to a decade, I'm almost feeling nostalgic.

On a side note, I know this technically isn't console stuff but this thread still seems like the best place to discuss anything Game Pass or Xbox related on PC. I'll take it to another thread if people aren't okay with it.
 
My latest GamePass recommendation is Sniper Elite 4. It plays a lot like the new Hitman games and I've been having a lot of fun with it.

As a bonus, on the Series X/S it now runs at 60 FPS thanks to the new feature added yesterday by MS.
 
Wreckfest is great fun but it's a crime that a game like that doesn't have splitscreen.
 
DixieDean said:
My latest GamePass recommendation is Sniper Elite 4. It plays a lot like the new Hitman games and I've been having a lot of fun with it.

As a bonus, on the Series X/S it now runs at 60 FPS thanks to the new feature added yesterday by MS.
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Yeah, second this. It's nice and satisfying.
Shamwow said:
Wreckfest is great fun but it's a crime that a game like that doesn't have splitscreen.
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Can't wait to get stuck in.
 
Just finished The Medium. I enjoyed it at first, but by the end I was looking forward to it being over. It's more like a fancy interative story with minimal actual game play elements, apart from the 'puzzles', which are mostly very straight forward, almost on rails, apart from the damn door code, which stumped me because I wasn't expecting it to require that much thought.

It did look pretty at times. Enjoyed the Resident Evil style fixed camera, apart from when it changed and you end up running in to a wall. Voice acting was superb. The sound is good, and it's certainly atmospheric, especially earlier on. After that it becomes less spooky and more demon worldy

Main issue was I just didn't really get in to the story that much. It was kinda confusing. It is actually pretty interesting, especially when you read in to it more and things click better, but it didn't engross me while playing. Also baffled at the end where you didn't get to choose who to shoot after all that build up. Surely they should've let you? That would've made the ending had much more of an effect. Guessing it's setting up for a sequel, but it's a shit way to end it, I thought.

Basically, I'm glad to have played it, but also glad it was on Game Pass and I didn't buy it.
 
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DixieDean said:
My latest GamePass recommendation is Sniper Elite 4. It plays a lot like the new Hitman games and I've been having a lot of fun with it.

As a bonus, on the Series X/S it now runs at 60 FPS thanks to the new feature added yesterday by MS.
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Amazing game tbh, it's better when you go coop!
 
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