You’ve just reminded me that I’ve wanted to try both ghostwire and lies of P on gamepass! I’m always so terrible and managing my time lol. I wish there was a calendar so we could see months in advance when a game will leave the service. It’s not so bad with short games. But the longer RPG’s are tough to finish in a month if you discover they’re leaving!
I’m getting super close to finishing cyberpunk 2077. I said that last week when I was at like 80 or so hours. But uhh 100 hours in now and I swear I’m really close this time lol.
I really wish they hadn’t released the game so early and hadn’t released so much advertising hype about the game. If the game released in a functional state I think it would have had the complete opposite reception.
If they were to have released the game this January or something and only advertised what is actually in the game, people would likely be praising it left and right. I thought the writing and quest design was a breath of fresh air. I loved how the game gave you agency to make your own decisions and made you think about the implications of all of your actions. Even if many of the decisions didn’t directly matter in the grand scheme of things, it allowed you to roleplay and at least feel like you were staying true to how your character would react in different situations.
I liked how there were so many twists and turns during the quests. Overall it felt like I was playing a completely different game compared to the couple hours I had tried at launch.
Edit: side note, Outer wilds is so good. Give it 5 years and maybe you’ll forget some of it lol!
And we thought identity theft was shitty before. I hope that we’ll have better tools to identify AI voices in the future. In some cases right now I have a hard time telling between an actual person and a faked voice.
On the switch you have Skyrim (but I’m assuming you’ve played that)
But also there’s a couple games that could be worth looking into. I have no idea how well they play on the switch or if they would even be your cup of tea, but there’s Dragons Dogma(the first one) and also Outward. Again no idea how they play on switch but they’re both open world rpg type games.
If you’re up for something that is specifically all about exploring, you could try Outer wilds on the switch(this does not have combat FYI) but you get to explore a solar system and unravel a mystery.
The 100% emoji is the only thing I thought was weird. I can understand why they might think that way given that the developers went through weeks dealing with what seemed like internal sabotage. Given the context, it makes sense, but it might also be an overreaction.
I use the 100% emoji to show agreement sometimes. I certainly hope people don’t think I’m trying to use it as a dog whistle. Kinda sucks because we’re running out of agreement emojis at this point lol.
My biggest gripe is that fortnite(along with a lot of games that feature battlepasses and rotating stores) preys on FOMO. If they didn’t do that, I probably wouldn’t mind nearly as much
I’ve been playing cyberpunk2077 for the past month and a half straight. I was worried going into it because I thought it was going to still be bad. There’s still some minor bugs, but overall I’ve had an enjoyable experience. The only downside is that it’s eaten up so much of my time lol
The only xbox exclusive(s) that I can think of that I have enjoyed and come back to in the past decade are the forza horizon games. I’ve had more enjoyment from backwards compatibility and 3rd party titles on my Xbox.
Halo should have been good. But something happened to both bungie and 343 during that split. Bungie had some kind of magic with their specific group from halo CE to reach. They knew what they were making, and they knew exactly how to bring their vision to life.
After the split, it felt like both company’s were limping their releases to the finish line.
To be fair, I think a good portion of the issues are that Microsoft seems to be treating everything like a financial decision and not a creative one. I know this might not be the most popular opinion, but shit I would be happy if they scaled back their games a bit and just made something solid for once on a cheaper budget. I think we’ve seen that people don’t need these massive projects to have fun. If you look at what some of the most popular games have been the past while, a lot are indie games.
I think the saddest part is that the xbox ecosystem during the xbox 360 was so good when it came to community features. Party chat was a game changer, and it made the system feel like a hub to gather friends. A lot of the games available were perfect for groups. Now because the games have been suffering, a lot of my friends have moved to various platforms. It’s become less social and a lot less fun. Of course this is anecdotal and less of a tangible issue for Microsoft. But it’s these long term issues that have cause a cascading effect of corroding their brand.
Super Mario world is a classic! I haven’t tried any romhacks for it, that sounds like fun!
Oh man Diablo 2. I’ve attempted to play it so many times, but I’ve yet to finish it yet. Not because I don’t want to, but it’s like every time I start up a fresh game, something happens to my game or save. I’ve lost a save twice now(this is over the course of 15 years) and the last time I tried to get it to run, it didn’t want to cooperate on my windows 10 install. It’s oddly cursed lol. I’ll finish it one day. I have to haha
Mirror’s Edge, Jet set radio future (and now bomb rush cyberfunk)
The 3D Mario’s (I haven’t gotten around to playing galaxy 2 yet and it’s eating me up inside lol)
Skyrim, Minecraft, stardew Valley
Ocarina of time and majoras mask.
Animal crossing (usually whatever latest entry, but I liked new leaf the best so far)
Lumines has become an addiction
Forza Horizon (similar to animal crossing, usually the latest entry, but surprisingly I enjoyed 1 and 4 the most. I was surprised about 4 because I didn’t think I really cared too much about the location, but I liked the seasons a lot. It kept everything feeling new)
I’ve never been able to wrap my head around T spins. High level tetris play is absurd to me. I have no idea how people can make sense of it. Watching it makes sense, but playing it is entirely a whole other ballpark.
I think my favorite versions of tetris are a homebrew version made for the gba called apotris and the newest tetris effect because it has pretty colors lol. Oh actually I also like tetris 99. The concept is really neat. I also like the themes available in that one. You can probably see a trend here. I like the pretty colors lol
I’m glad they keep iterating on it though. I think there’s a lot of “classic” games that don’t really need to be…revamped or changed. They’re good the way they are, but people just want more of what made the existing games good. So many timed companies try to reinvent the wheel when it didn’t really need to be remade (the halo series comes to mind. RIP)
At the risk of going slightly off topic, one puzzle type game similar to tetris that I got completely absorbed into is lumines. Have any of you played that title? I’m curious how tetris experts would compare the two. In my eyes lumines seemed a lot more simple in design compared to tetris. But I have no idea. I sunk 60 hours so far into lumines which is probably rookie numbers, but I’ve never gotten so into a puzzle game like this before.
Reading your post and then reading the replies made my chest hurt lol.
Bungies halo campaigns were just something special. I don’t know when we’ll see a co-op fps at that level of quality again. Those titles have lived rent free in my brain for the past decade
One thing you could do, depending on how much you and your friends enjoy a challenge. Is to do the halo 3/ODST Vidmaster challenge. My friends and I did it together twice when it was first released and those are some of my fondest gaming memories