General gaming discussion

JimBurnley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121966910#Comment_121966910

Tuesday

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121965915#Comment_121965915

16th of April.

More info about the game here:

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/04/02/dave-the-diver-plunges-into-playstation-plus-game-catalog-april-16/

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121965037#Comment_121965037

Combat is the only thing keeping me going with it. Look like a ps3 game in parts. How far into it are you? I'm still in chapter 1.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121968636#Comment_121968636

Also still in Chapter 1. I'm really not that far at all, every time I stop playing there hasn't really been much to pull me back in. Just kinda forcing myself to play a bit here and there now.

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121968812#Comment_121968812

I'm the same, I play little bits here and there, dragons dogma has totally sucked me in.

Luna84

I started Cocoon a few weeks ago and got stuck not long into it. Came back today just to see and figured out what to do within seconds of booting up the game. It's a good game but like I said on here before I keep thinking I am missing something. Because as you wander about the world you either get tossed to another place or a wall would come up where you just walked so cannot go back and explore each area fully and there is a few pathways and you take one next thing you were locked out of where the others went. It goes totally against how I normally play these types of game as in I would usually walk around each area fully just so I know I didn't miss anything.

PixelPlayer

Me: Ray Tracing is not worth the fps hit.

RTX4090: What fps hit, choom?

https://youtu.be/_toA8lErAHg?feature=shared

Grumpypants

That looks more realistic than real life 😂

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121971489#Comment_121971489

Literally just finished Cocoon in the last ten minutes. You get to explore those pathways eventually. It's a relatively linear game and eventually you return to some places. It's not the type of game where you finish and explore the "worlds" in one go.

And having just completed it...what an incredible game it is. The sense of satisfaction on competing the puzzles is immense. One of the best games I've played in the last few years and at around 5 hours, it was a joy that never outstayed its welcome.

Jordan 199

https://youtube.com/shorts/3q1fj5rQe0Y?si=tfenhYCMKT8AP1wF

….

PixelPlayer

Having so much fun playing "A Little to the Left" on xcloud on a Surface Pro. It works very well with the touch screen, allowing you to drag and drop.

I could see myself doing a few puzzles on my phone on the bus.

I would love to see more streamable games like this. Hopefully the ABK acquisition will help.

But it would probably make more sense to allow games like this to be downloadable and cut out tbe need for a decebt signal and data plan. Maybe with some sort of Gane Pass sandboxed emulator or even take the netflix approach and access them via the apple/Google stores.

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121972346#Comment_121972346

Playing this now on your recommendation. I must say I already love it. Perfect for a Saturday morning.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121983768#Comment_121983768

Ah excellent. Glad you're enjoying it! It's magical.

Jordan 199

I am looking through all the games in the Xbox 360 store and spotted this:

My Xbox 360S is over 12 years old, and is still a great console.

Luna84

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121984461#Comment_121984461

I thought they had closed the Xbox 360 Store?

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121984609#Comment_121984609

It will remain open until the end of July.

I was looking at games I was interested in that weren't made backwards compatible.

Retr0gamer

Bangai-O is exclusive. It's incredibly difficult just to understand how that game works but once you do it's incredible.

SuperBowserWorld

So, the PS5 is being hogged by my daughter to play The Sims 4. 😔

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121984066#Comment_121984066

And wrapped it just now. Great way to spend a Saturday. Loved it. Good to be able to start and finish a game in a day.

I won't lie, I did need a YouTube guide for some of the puzzles at the end with the world's within worlds and teleporting between them.

Luna84

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121985764#Comment_121985764

I won't lie, I did need a YouTube guide for some of the puzzles at the end with the world's within worlds and teleporting between them.

Really I'm probably a small bit further than half way. I think anyway and haven't needed a guide yet. Though I did get stuck a few weeks ago when I was playing it and left it and only came back to the game a few days ago. I got stuck on the first part where you walk over the six rods with different symbols. As I said I got stuck and left it but came back to it and figured it out within seconds. I don't want to mention exactly how you do it as I might spoil it for someone but everything is there you just have to look around.

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121985817#Comment_121985817

It was going fine up to about 70% mark then they ramp up. It's not necessarily the puzzles are hard, but more that you need to solve it across 3-4 different worlds.

Luna84

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121985888#Comment_121985888

I actually know what you mean as I was playing it since after my post above and yes I hear you as I'm currently stuck. I do not want to look up a guide, yet anyway. I will keep wandering around and hopefully figure it out.

CatInABox

I see that MS has set up a new team working on game preservation, building on their Backwards Compatibility success. They make a big deal about how they remain committed to bringing games forward onto the next generation.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/exclusive-xbox-president-sarah-bond-has-set-up-a-new-team-dedicated-to-game-preservation-and-forward-compatibility

Somewhat odd, in my opinion, as they didn't need one going from the One generation to the Series generation, which makes me think that they've actually gone and switched to ARM for their next CPU, and require a team to work on getting the emulation right. It'd tie in with their talk about making the "largest technological leap ever for consoles."

Be mad if they do.

A more worrying take (for some) is that they're trying to figure out what to do with all the people that bought physical games when the next consoles probably aren't going to have a disk drive.

Zero-Cool

Meanwhile at Sony "WTF is a PS3??"

johnny_ultimate

I remain extremely skeptical about Microsoft’s claims of the ‘biggest generational leap’. Even with a welcome switch to Nvidia, I just struggle to see what it could be (other than something using a lot of cloud and AI buzzwords) that’d be affordable and desirable in the way Microsoft needs it to be. Generational leaps are fairly stagnant at the moment, and AAA games are reaching major challenges in terms of how much is actually possible from simple resource, financial and labour perspectives (though of course there’ll always be teams who successfully test the limits). I think all console manufacturers are going to struggle to deliver major generational leaps at the type of console price points the market demands. I’m also not convinced the mass market cares too much about the cutting edge graphics, specs and horsepower in the way enthusiasts do - I expect the PS5 Pro to be met with a shrug by all but the most committed.

Lots of talk about them going a different, more open route which is very much to be welcomed - but at some point an open platform just becomes a PC, and Microsoft’s track record with gaming apps does not immediately instill confidence that they’ll overcome that and produce something that can rival, say, Steam OS as a gaming-centric open platform.

I’m always open to being pleasantly surprised and Microsoft do have all the resources. But the Xbox execs are throwing around so many ideas and initiatives at the moment a lot of it reeks of throwing **** at a wall and hoping something sticks.

Jordan 199

I was watching TheProfessional on YouTube, and he visited Chicago where the first Watch_Dogs game was based.

https://youtu.be/XrLvaVC8iDU?si=xrIh_b052t9EvmlL

SuperBowserWorld

The seamless backwards compatibility, auto HDR, is a credit to the Microsoft engineers. The Series X is also a great console that is super quiet and in theory should give much better performance than PS5, but they just didn't get the software out on launch, or really since, to demonstrate this. And 30 FPS , and lacklustre Starfield was a nail in the coffin, especially since people had been waiting so long for it.

Also, and Nintendo knows this, supporting old games is a a goldmine Either emulation, remakes or remasters.

However, you need to have truly great games for this to succeed. You can just call every game on previous generations a "classic" and hope people will bite for emulation/remaster/remake.

Companies like Capcom and Sega have a wealth of actual classics in this respect.

PixelPlayer

Wouldn't going with Arm contradict their comments about becoming more open and possibly allowing more stores on the console? Unless they are talking about mobile. An Arm xbox handheld with netflix games, apple arcade, Google play etc.

Unfortunately anything they say is going to be met with a lot of scepticism from any gamer who has invested in xbox post the xbox360 era. Talk of the 3rd gen post 360 has started and fans are still asking for games, games, games. Nothing else matters without them.

Luna84

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121988311#Comment_121988311

And 30 FPS , and lacklustre Starfield was a nail in the coffin

I played Starfield on Xbox and thought it was a brilliant game. I put well over 100 hours into it.(I forget the exact time but as said it was well over 100 hours maybe even 120 but I'm not 100% on that)

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121987497#Comment_121987497

I doubt that they are switching to Nvidia, that wasn't mentioned in the leaked roadmap. The ARM/X64 decision was though, and between that and a custom ML chip design (MS brought a team in-house for chip design, like Apple with their M chips), that may account for their confidence in "biggest".

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121988388#Comment_121988388

No, that's two different issues really, but I can see where you are coming from though. A switch to ARM will mean that any software that runs on it needs to be recompiled, unless they have an emulation/compatibility layer to do it for the developer (hence my speculation that they've gone down this route, why else would you need a new team for compatibility). Steam already runs on the ARM macs through compatibility.

If Valve want to bring Steam to XBox, then a switch to ARM won't stop them.

Thinking about it further now though, it is possible that the compatibility team is actually about opening up to other stores, creating a hypervisor wrapper for Steam/Epic games, as there's zero chance that MS would allow them to just whack their store onto the xbox with zero control, every game would still have to run through the Xbox Hypervisor for security.