General gaming discussion

Possibly the most disappointing sequel I've played. Gameplay is still good, although worse than the first game, but my God, the characters are absolute cack. The late Lance Reddick being the only exception and he's not in it much, unfortunately.

It their effort to make it accesibile to anyone they are ruining it for everyone.

I just finished System Shock remake, well, there is no hand holding, no objective marker, no active and side missions. And it was the best game I've played since Elden Ring.

All it takes is an accessibility option, its so easy to solve so it's infuriating when it's locked in.

Am playing Jedi Survivor (and absolutely loving it) and at the first puzzle there's a prompt on whether you want BD-1 to help you. I selected no and since then I've had to figure everything out on my own. Much preferable.

I'm pretty sure they're not changing controls. It's the games as is, graphics, controls and all.

You are missing a Nintendo one.

After my recent Resident Evil franchise run I was in the mood to start another one so while looking through xcloud for something I decided on Gears of War.

Playing the remastered version of the first one on xcloud. Swapping between the Xbox and the steam deck. Plays really well.

I was looking through game stats on the Xbox app, and it tells you how much pork buns you consumed in Sleeping Dogs.

I thought I ate more pork buns than that.

I wonder what the reason was for it? Was it a technical issue or purely the "style at the time" where they tried to be more "real and gritty".

But it was very noticeable. I even had the Decky Vibrant Deck boosting the saturation to help it out a little. I think the later titles 4&5 were much more colourful. But it's been a while since I've played them.

Getting through Gears 2 now, it never got a remaster so it's the 360 version. So on top of the brown you also have lots of jittering in the background. But still fun. Think I'll play most of it on the Steam Deck as it looks better on the tiny screen.

You've had more than me anyway!

Tbh, I first played SD on the PlayStation, my Xbox stats are for a quick replay 👍

I notice a lot of "first party" stuff on XBox to be piss filtery. And things are hard to discern. Even something like Super Lucky Tales is muted. The Forza games pop, and Ori maybe, but that's all I can think of ..Flight Sim pops Psychonauts 2, Sea of thieves .. just don't pop.

Whereas as AC Odyssey/Origins do on Xbox ...

PS games first party games are vibrant and pop ... E.g. Spiderman, Rachet and clank, God of war, Uncharted 4, Astros playroom

And of course Nintendo is king of vibrant colourful games.

Just wondering ...

Or am I imagining this ?

Piss on the Piss Filter would be a fine name for a video game.

MAybe it's not a piss filter and it's just that all the games are set in Mexico.

I've boosted the saturation on the steam deck way up and now it's all blue skies and daisies and it looks way better.

Until you close the game and everything in the steam library is glowing 🤣

It's colourful but kinda ugly. And hi fi rush felt flat to me. Great games but they have limited appeal and don't sell consoles.

The stuff that sells consoles are the more universal appeal and eye candy games like Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, God of War, SpiderMan remastered, Uncharted 4. And if you have amazing developers like Nintendo you get eye candy games and incredible gameplay in 1080p and no HDR or RT. BOTW, Super Mario Odyssey/Kart, Animal Crossing ...

I would say the Forza games are the only XBox exclusive games that can compete here.

Ori and the will of the wisps was special on XBox, but that's not an exclusive anymore and that team are no longer XBox only developers. They have a Zelda like game on the way, which I bet will look and play great, but it won't be an Xbox exclusive.

In the near future, I do think Starfield has a fighting chance. It does look incredible in places. If the gameplay holds up there will be a load of Series S at least sold as second consoles.