I don't really care about RAGE, Pokemon or Fallout, but are these publishers trying to make me not care about e3? Why are these announcements coming now?

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - the gameplay is extremely satisfying. Shredding people with Schockhammer never gets old, but the story... What happened? This story is absolute gar-bitch. Nazis have taken over the world -> go stop them is just about unfuckable premise, and they did it. Bravo.

I'm not gonna lie, pre-gameplay RAGE 2 has gotta be one of the most unappealing things I've ever seen. The amount of cringe is unbelievable.

I think the metacritic score reflects this game pretty well, but I don't get the lack of criticism towards it. If you cannot find single criticism towards a product, it's way more likely that you are a shitty critic than that the product you are reviewing is perfect. I'm no critic but here's couple of things I found annoying:

Number of bosses - The actual fights were really awesome but the number of bosses was a disappointment. I finished the game 10 minutes ago and cannot for the life of me recall more than three good bosses. (one of which is fought twice) Also, the first mini boss is repeated many times, only with a slightly different skin/element variation. Even in crucial point of the story when you need to hunt down a specific monster, it turns out that the monster is the same mini boss with a couple of new attacks. Maybe the sidequests offer more?

Too much upgrading - Gear crafting, gear shopping, runes for weapons, gems for armor sockets, something like six different skill trees... It's just way too much. Towards the end of the game you start to get so much XP you can unlock five different skills at a time so the whole upgrading becomes redundant.

Sequel bait - Self explanatory.

Overall, mid to high 9 (or even 10) for this game is justifiable, but if I can spot this stuff, then surely some of the professionals can too. Loved the game by the way.

I'd say 'game passing' Sea of Thieves would be a safe bet if you're on the fence.

I have only played solo so far but I'm enjoying the game very much. Water is hands down the best water in any game to date, and the sailing is very relaxing. (water is also cloud powered, whatever that means) Because of the water effects this might be the only game I prefer playing 30 fps with higher fidelity visuals, the better looking water just adds so much to the overall experience.

I haven't seen any other ships yet, probably because all of the early voyages are so close proximity to the outpost they are given out of.

With the price of $10, you really can't go wrong.

• Mario has slippery controls -> 2D Mario games just aren't that fun to play
• Dualshock's 1-3 are among the worst controllers ever made (4 is among the best tho)
• Final Fantasy X is by far the worst in the series and one of the biggest disappointments of my life
• I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to magic, but even the thought of Cloud lifting the buster sword is so ridiculous I can't take FFVII seriously
• Castlevania IV is the best Castlevania game
• Hollow Knight is best metroidvania game
• Story of Metal Gear is so complicated it resembles more of a parody of a video game story than an actual video game story
• Video game writing as a whole is sub par compared to other mediums
• On higher difficulties Witcher 3 combat is far better than people give it credit for
• The Last Guardian winning the EZA GOTY was among the worst things I have ever seen
• Uncharted 1 & 2 have aged horribly and the combat in those games is laughable
• Uncharted is wildly inconsistent with whimsical adventure and straight up murder fest
• Compared to any PC FPS, Goldeneye was trash
• Duke Nukem 3D is the best FPS, and Duke is genuinely funny as a parody of 80's action heroes turned up to 11
• PUBG is not that good of a game, (6/10 barely) but it's still consistently fun to play
• Games media/reviewers know so little about tech and care so little about performance it's insulting

And the big one:

• Western D&D style RPG's (like Divinity II or Pillars of Eternity) are better designed games than JRPG's

Xbox One controller is by far the best one ever made. DS4 is really good too tho, especially compared to the previous Playstation controllers. DS 1-3 are among the worst controllers imo.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Positive

• Ranged combat is fun as hell
• Enemies react when you shoot at them
• Decent variety of different weapons
• Surprisingly unique and interesting story, (when it gets going) despite being post apocalyptic
• Extremely fluid controls for a 30fps game
• Interesting world over all
• 'Forced' exploration -> collecting medicinal herbs

Negative

• Hold triangle to loot, loot and loot some more, loot doesn't translate to meaningful gear
• Sidequests are trash, Witcher sense/detective vision is getting old (although well contextualized)
• Melee combat is so basic it's basically non existent
• No different melee weapons
• Compared to the amount of actual activities, the map clutter is insane (can be turned off, thankfully)
• Caves filled with literally 15-20 pieces of expositional holograms/data logs/audio logs
• Climbing only allowed at very strict spots
• Invisible walls
• Couple of crashes

In conclusion, I liked it a lot but the RPG elements were clearly an afterthought. Fun game to play, fun world to explore, can't really ask much more.

@El-Shmiablo said in That's News!:

@Marketplace_DC Yes, Horizon and those three other incredibly niche games haven't sold as well as a hypothetical unreleased platform exclusive MMO.

I was talking about 'reach' not sales. (because who would buy a game for $60 when it's on the pass for $10) Those 'incredibly niche' games might have 'reached' way more people if they sold for $10.

@El-Shmiablo said in That's News!:

You're making some pretty big leaps here. First, you are assuming the Game Pass is very succesful, when there have been no numbers released on it to date. For all we know, only .5% of Xbox users use the service, like backwards compatibility.

I'm assuming it will become successful once the first party games roll out.

@El-Shmiablo said in That's News!:

You are also assuming Sea of Thieves will be a success, when it's reception so far hasn't been much more than "Its neat.". I'm highly doubtful that a game exclusive to two of the least popular platforms this gen is going to reach runaway success.

For the price of $10 it very well might be. Sea of Thieves being on the game pass is almost guaranteed to reach as much users as HZD, possibly more if it goes on/improves.

I want to point out that I'm not bashing PS exclusives for 'poor sales'. (although they sold less than I assumed, but what do I know anyways) I just think potential for $10 AAA games is vast, and the business model is extremely consumer friendly.

@El-Shmiablo said in That's News!:

Cool, but this honestly smells a bit of desperation.

If desperation get's me all of MS first party titles on release plus 150 other games for $10/month, desperation is exactly what I want to see. This is great way for exclusives to reach wider audience. For example Persona 5, Nioh, Nier Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn combined have barely reached 15 million users out of a possible 75 million. Sea of thieves alone will now (probably) come close to that.