“Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to stay connected; it’s called Xbox 360” - Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s President of Interactive Entertainment Business
Yep my first thought of this is as a technicality. One day every pixel displayed on your monitor has passed through some sort of upscaling or frame generation.
Don’t forget the mods! You didn’t have to download anything, it was all server side. I forgot which mod I played most but you could set up all sorts of sensors, automated turrets, forcefields, etc using models and textures already in the game but repurposed.
Also, the net code was extremely good, it was very playable even on my 33.6k modem.
It’s way better than any of the prior games were years after release. Granted, I do have a powerful computer (3090/5800X3D) but I haven’t had any significant performance issues nor crashes. A mild bit of jank but nothing that’s totally broken, just some occasional glitching corpses or debris.
Really, really enjoying it so far. Had a classic STALKER experience while exploring, got ambushed, found some really cool mega-anomaly, thought I was safe and got owned. 10/10 would die again
According to Asobo, this issue was caused by a cache that was overloaded and constantly restarting. This was used in part of the authentication process, I believe when they check what content you have. This explains why people had missing content if they were lucky enough to get in. This was my experience - got in after a very long load time and then couldn’t really do anything due to missing content.
This doesn’t seem like it’s a Microsoft cloud issue per se, it seems like Asobo had a single point of failure in the design that didn’t scale well. Today seems like the CDN limits are finally being reached, as it took a while to load up new areas. Getting into the game was no issue, though.
I had this on my “to play” list for years and finally did a full play through as the first game on my new OLED monitor. It holds up incredibly well so many years later. The AI, sound design, and lighting really carry the game, and when I went back to watch Alien I realized how true to the source material it was. 9/10 game for me, had my heart racing numerous times but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I could only do an hour or two a day but wow, very glad I pushed myself to finish it. Probably the most fun I’ve had with a game’s AI since STALKER’s A-Life or FEAR’s AI.
Still Wakes the Deep. Shit goes wrong on a Scottish oil rig in the 70s, it’s sorta like dead space mixed with alien isolation and a walking simulator. Stealth gameplay with some puzzles and a decent emotional narrative. I had a good time playing it and it’s on gamepass. Short and sweet.