Tag Archives: Xbox Game Pass

The Spotlight – 01

Before we dive into the meat of this post, I feel that a little housekeeping and contextualization couldn’t hurt. This is the Spotlight, a new feature I’m launching here on The Bonus World. It used to be that whenever I’d do anything tangentially related to my hobbies I’d find a way to turn it into a piece of content for this website. As time wore on however, I felt that impulse to transcribe any meandering thought into an article diminish significantly.

The Spotlight is effectively part newsletter and part blog post. It’s meant to encapsulate what’s been going on in the TBW orbit for the past month. Games played, articles read, movies watched, an so on and so forth, The Spotlight is intended to be the big bucket that everything falls into. So here’s the bucket, hopefully you enjoy digging through it.

Welcome to the Spotlight, a monthly recap of what’s been going on in my particular corner of nerdiness. Whether it’s a rundown of great or miserable gaming experiences I’ve had, movies or television shows that I found engrossing, books, albums — truly anything I can recommend, it’ll be here in the Spotlight. With this being the first one of these, I’m going to cover both January and February of 2024, mostly because at this point I can’t differentiate between the events of each respective month.

Let’s dive in.

Games

Baldur’s Gate 3

Starting with a big one, Baldur’s Gate 3 continues to be an obsession of mine, although I can feel its grip on me starting to loosen. I thought I did a pretty good job of combing through everything during my first playthrough of the game, but surprising no one else but me, it turns out there’s a lot of hidden goodies left to find and experience.

I will say though, I’m finding it a little hard to muster up the enthusiasm to progress the story forward. Knowing what the main beats are already and being overly familiar with the fights and locations I’ll have to trudge through doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement to experience that stuff again. It’s a tremendous game with great story, but I have so little interest in emptying the Goblin Camp or navigating the Shadowlands ever again.

What I am curious to see is how long until the Baldur’s Gate 3 community goes all Skyrim on me, and creates total conversion mods that reshape the bones of this spectacular game into a completely different experience altogether. It’s bound to happen at some point, especially considering that official mod support is on the way. I think putting BG3 on the shelf for now makes sense, even midway through my current playthrough, that way I won’t burn out on it completely and never return to it.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Back in the middle of January, I was looking for something I could really sink some time into that wasn’t Baldur’s Gate 3. Coincidentally, I had heard pretty phenomenal things about Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a search-action game that, by all accounts, was a “must play” for 2024. If you’re deeply into the search-action genre of games then there’s definitely something here for you, but I was left feeling a little cold from the whole experience.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn’t a bad game, it just never clicked with me. I found it overly punishing to a degree that really thwarted my willingness to explore and go off the beaten path. In some of the tighter platforming sections, I had a lot of difficulty getting the controls to feel responsive. I know I’m getting older, but I’m not ready to blame my failures at safely navigating enemy-free areas on my old bones and wavering reflexes.

I’m sure that I’m in the minority on this, but I just didn’t have a ton of fun with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. It’s also worth mentioning, it’s basically a full priced game, retailing for 50 bucks which might be a little steep for what you’re getting, but that’s an entirely subjective matter and I get that, so your mileage may vary.

Fall of Porcupine

Fall of Porcupine is the most Night in the Woods-ass looking game since Night in the Woods. Talking animals? Check. An fun art style that makes you think that the subject matter couldn’t possibly be that dark? Check. A lot of talking to seemingly depressed anthropomorphic animals who seem to be trapped in the day-to-day drudgery of modern life? Yeah, that’s there too. It’s eerily similar to Night in the Woods, one of my favorite video games ever, except for that Fall of Porcupine isn’t very good.

Truly heartbreaking for me, but this game doesn’t hold a candle to Night in the Woods. But I can’t just keep comparing it to that game, so here’s what’s up with Fall of Porcupine. You play as a pigeon named Finley who recently moved into a small town named Porcupine where you just started your residency at the local hospital. The game is supposed to shed light on the mental, emotional, and sometimes physical turmoil our healthcare workers experience, which is absolutely a story I’d like to play through. But from the jump, the game exposes itself to be this overly verbose, meandering and listless experience, where nothing makes sense and everyone talks way too much about nothing.

I know that’s a weird criticism to drop on an adventure game, but everyone, especially your main character, talks way too much about everything. Not one ounce of subtext remains as Finley will tell you in excruciating detail his conflicted feelings about the offerings in a vending machine. It’s brutal and the game isn’t great about letting you quickly breeze through dialogue. Everyone pontificates about nothing for so much longer than they need to, and it’s such a slog.

I can’t even tell you if it gets better though, because after about an hour of playing Fall of Porcupine, I’ve reached a point in the game where I need to go to a certain part of the hospital, and every time I reach the first floor, the game crashes. I would love to know if Fall of Porcupine gets any better, and I would probably see it through regardless if it just could hold together long enough for me to do so. I guess I’ll never know.

A Little to the Left

To me, there’s nothing like a good “vibes” game. That doesn’t necessarily mean it makes you feel good, but the overall atmosphere and gameplay are just really pleasant. A Little to the Left is absolutely one of these games, even if it occasionally veers off into obtuse puzzle territory from time to time.

A Little to the Left is a puzzle game about organizing household items, sometimes to an excessive degree. The game starts simple enough, having you adjust some crooked picture frames and put some cat toys back into the wicker basket they came from. Several puzzles even have numerous ways to complete them, reflecting different organizational impulses, one of which involves a shelf of multicolored books of varying sizes. The game accounts for several gut reactions for organizing, and will accept organizing them by color or size. Once you complete the level it’ll let you know that there was another way to do it, so you can go back and tackle it again.

Things get a little weirder later into the game, where the granularity of the items you’re organizing is kind of odd — at least to me. Several levels involve you finding room for single thumbtacks, a gold tooth, and a handful of bent nails. That last one strikes me more as an opportunity for throwing it away rather than finding a way to fit it into your life. Like, when am I going to need a bent nail? A lot of the later levels feel nonsensical in relation to the overall organizing theme, because more often than not it’s a smokescreen for a pattern recognition puzzle dressed up as tidying your home.

All things considered, A Little to the Left is a chill puzzle game that isn’t too taxing. Despite being available on the Xbox, I’d suggest doing this one either on PC or mobile purely because interacting with this game via a controller isn’t spectacular.

Brotato

The first time I booted up Brotato I thought it was a stupid game with bad art. While my opinion of the art hasn’t really changed, I was eventually won over and pleasantly surprised to find a game that played into my love for Vampire Survivors without being a carbon copy. Just like Vampire Survivors, Brotato is an auto-shooter that’s focused on random drops that upgrade weapons and stats that you can then use to make your potato person more deadly and effective against the ever growing onslaught of weird alien enemies.

In Brotato, you start a run by picking a particular potato character from a list of well over 20 potatoes. Each of these guys has stat bonuses, specialties and in some cases, significant drawbacks. You’ll get guys with no armor but incredible health regeneration rates, or classes that can only use melee or explosive items. You pick your opening weapon and difficulty, and square off against your first wave of enemies. Once the wave ends you can buy new or upgrade weapons or bump up your stats if you’ve leveled up during the wave. That’s kind of it, really.

While Brotato can be tough, I found it to be an overall kinder and gentler game than Vampire Survivors is. While the art never won me over, the gameplay certainly did. If you like auto-shooters, maybe give this one a whirl.

Enshrouded

Enshrouded is a game that by all accounts I should not enjoy, but I really do. It’s one of those stick and rock games that has you punching trees to collect resources and what have you, but it quickly reveals itself to be something much different than your run-of-the-mill survival game.

The core conceit of Enshrouded is that the world is covered in these pockets of “shroud,” which is basically an area where zombies and other baddies are spawned from and hang out. These zones range in deadliness, with the earlier and easier versions just slowly ticking away at your health, while the worse ones will just insta-kill you the moment you step inside of it. How do you avoid that? Unsurprisingly, the answer is crafting. But in a shocking twist, it isn’t just crafting.

Enshrouded is a very lightweight survival game, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. The core idea is that if you engage with the survival mechanics, you’ll find it to be exclusively additive rather than punitive. For instance, drinking water just makes your stamina meter bigger, and food makes your health bar larger and helps with regeneration. Not engaging with that stuff isn’t a death sentence like it is in other survival games, it’s just something that only helps you.

Aside from the light survival mechanics it’s also a decently fun action game. Fighting enemies in these kinds of games is usually a slog, rewarding the items you bring into a fight more than your ability to fight. So if you crafted a better sword than your enemy, you can just hold the attack button and whittle away more of their health than they can of yours. Enshrouded is not like that. Combat feels good and weapons have some weight to them. There’s also a good dodge roll that allows you to tumble around your enemies like some sort of bootleg Dark Souls game.

I haven’t dug too deeply into Enshrouded just yet, but I’ve really enjoyed what little I’ve played of it thus far. It’s a game that’s interested in letting you explore the world and spec out your character however you want with a wide variety of skill upgrade paths for you to explore. A lot of survival games I’ve played in the past felt like they were more interested in me building a safe zone where I could be sustainable, whereas Enshrouded feels more about exploring and fighting bad guys.

Ultimately I think Enshrouded is great and I can’t wait to see how it evolves over the course of its early access period.

Warioware: Move It!

I don’t know about you, but I love myself a good Warioware game, and Warioware: Move It! is a very good one of those. There isn’t a ton to say about this one other than it’s got a lot of fun and sometimes inscrutable micro-games that come at you fast and furious.

My partner and I played the hell out of Warioware: Move It! for the few sessions it took us to completely annihilate it, save for a handful of micro-games that are, in my professional opinion, absolute poppycock. The fidelity of the Joy-Con motion controls aren’t great which led to a lot of my frustration, but they were good enough to get us through 90% of the game without issue.

Warioware: Move It! is great and if you’ve liked those games in the past, you’ll enjoy this one too. Oh, also I should mention, if your body is like mine and is constantly betraying you and making new and horrifying noises everyday, try to remember that the game is tracking the movement of the controllers and not your actual human bodies. There is a particular micro-game that was responsible for me throwing out my back, twice, because it encouraged me to dodge something as if I were Neo in the Matrix. So look out for that one.

Return to Grace

Return to Grace is a first-person adventure game that tells the story of a space traveling archaeologist named Adie as she goes out in search of the titular Grace, an AI god who went mysteriously went dormant centuries ago. In the most reductive terms, Return to Grace is a walking simulator that, for better or worse, has a lot to say.

That isn’t a knock on the actual content of the story of Return to Grace, which I think is pretty decent for what it’s worth, but quite literally, this 2 to 3 hour adventure game is mostly about listening to dialogue, whether it be in the form of the many bickering AI fragments of Grace you meet along the way, or the dozen or so audio logs you find throughout the retro-futurist facility you’re exploring.

Exploring the abandoned facility in Return to Grace feels a lot like how I would imagine it would feel to wander through a long abandoned Rapture from Bioshock. It’s unnerving being the only living soul walking around this gigantic (for lack of a better term), space station. This place served as the holy site for all of Grace’s followers from across the galaxy, but there isn’t a body or skeleton to be found. It’s the visual presentation of Return to Grace that really does a great job of engaging you with its mystery and really goes a long way to keeping you on the narrative hook.

But for all of my praise for Return to Grace, it has one massive shortcoming: it’s an absolute slog to play. You’d think that the story wasn’t well written or paced or something to that effect, but it’s none of those things that ultimately slow Return to Grace to a crawl, it’s outrageously stupid gameplay decisions that kill any momentum you start to build. In a game about walking, talking and inspecting things, you would expect to be able to do some of those actions simultaneously.

Truly the cardinal sin of Return to Grace is how often it stops you from doing anything until dialogue is over, and like I said earlier, this game is 99% talking. Those AI fragments of Grace have a lot to say, and bicker constantly. Should they be doing that while you want to open a door, that’s too bad for you. Even worse, if you decide to listen to an audio log, you’re not even allowed to move at all. You just have to stare at your fancy wristwatch as an audio file plays at you. It feels like the developers didn’t want you to miss any dialogue, so they ensured that you couldn’t by stifling your ability to move forward.

Return to Grace‘s biggest strength is in its storytelling, but it suffers dramatically in the act of telling you that story. Because of this weird limitation in your actions, this 2 hour game effectively doubles because your character is incapable of listening and opening a door at the same time. Even with that though, I still think Return to Grace is worth playing or at least watching a playthrough of. Sure, the story it’s telling walks through some well-worn territory, but it’s still effective in how it does it. Just know that this is a game that you cannot rush, no matter how hard you might try.

Role for Initiative

Updates from the Campaign

A little while back, my TTRPG group and I finally wrapped up our 2+ year long Eberron campaign that much to my dismay, didn’t have the narrative payoff I was hoping for. We were pressed for time and at a weird spot, so I had to basically cut a boss fight in half and rush through a lot of stuff — but we had fun nonetheless. Shortly after that campaign ended we pivoted into our latest one, took a long break because someone (me) had to move, and eventually picked back up.

I found that between moving and job searching, having to write an entire campaign from scratch was going to be a nonstarter, so I opted to run the very well-received anthology book, Keys From the Golden Vault, as a campaign. Me being me, however, I decided to write a whole-ass story to exist in parallel to the missions in the book. Honestly though, I’m finding this story to be infinitely more coherent and engaging than my previous one.

Additionally, I feel as if I’m doing a much better job of taking my hands off the wheel in this campaign than I did in our last one. At some point in our last campaign, I kind of wanted the story to end and was maybe a bit more obvious about which thing they could do would advance the story. I’m sure I’ll get around to telling some of the weird stories about our current campaign, like the time one our characters used a dead body to mulch their garden, or how one of my players is 2 for 2 on ending up in a jail during a mission, but now isn’t that time.

Watch List

Modern Family

At the time of writing this, I think my partner and I are pretty close to rounding the corner on the tenth season of Modern Family and begin its eleventh and final one. Despite being around for 11 seasons, this is the first time I’ve ever watched any of it, and to be honest, I think it’s a pretty funny yet flawed show that’s just endearing enough to keep me from tuning out completely.

My chief complaint lies in the fact that while there’s a lot of character growth that’s implied to be happening at the end of just about every episode, none of the characters ever seem to stop engaging in the toxic behaviors that we’ve just spent an entire episode witnessing. From season to season the characters never actually learn the lessons of their past and continue to act like caricatures of themselves, continuously neglecting and manipulating one another. Most of the conflicts in these episodes could simply be resolved with marginally better communication, and it’s very frustrating to watch that theme be so pervasive throughout the dozens and dozens of episodes we’ve watched.

That kind of lack of growth normally bothers me in long-running shows. I tuned out of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia a few seasons in because I found none of the main characters redeeming at all. No one grew or learned a lesson, they were consistently shitty to each other and everyone they met, and I felt like I could never root for these people, because they’re ultimately bad people. Modern Family does just about everything I didn’t like about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, except I think it has a lot of heart that makes it incredibly endearing. At the end of the day, they prioritize their family and make the right decision, even if by the next episode they’re just pulling the same shit again.

The other real sticking point for me is how haphazardly the show adopts and abandons plot points and characters. Maybe it’s intentional, but it feels hilariously sitcom-esque in how new characters and plot devices are constantly rotating in and out. For example, there’s an episode about a character having a job interview that goes hilariously badly, but in the end they still get the position. It’s been like 15 episodes and that has not been addressed again. Does that person have a job? It sure seemed like it, but I’ve yet to see that come back into play.

For all of my kibitzing though, it has proven to be a consistently enjoyable show for my partner and I to veg out on the couch and watch, even if it does mostly serve as background noise these days. The jokes still land and we still laugh. I am scared for what we’ll do once we exhaust all 11 seasons though, because we have a tough time agreeing on things to watch.

Trial By Fieri: An Ill-Advised LTTP Randomized Run

This is probably going to be a theme in these Spotlights going forward, but I’m a big fan of the McElroy Family and a lot of their content, including the very funny Trial By Fieri: An Ill-Advised LTTP Randomized Run. To break the title down for those who just see a jumble of nonsensical words, Trial By Fieri: An Ill-Advised LTTP Randomized Run, is a randomized playthrough of the Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, where all of the items and enemies have been jumbled up, and Link has been replaced with an excellent Guy Fieri sprite that dies in one hit.

If any of what I’ve said sounds remotely interesting to you, then I heartily encourage you to check it out. Despite having watched it before, I find it to be excellent background noise for when I’m playing a game or half-focusing on something else.

The Daily Show

Not since Jon Stewart retired back in 2015 have I watched an iota of The Daily Show, not because I doubted it was still a decent show, but because I couldn’t really imagine anyone but Jon Stewart behind that desk. That was then and this is now. Jon Stewart is back, only if it’s just on Mondays, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve always liked Jon Stewart and his interpretation of current events, and it’s good to see him back in the saddle. Here’s hoping that he does more than just Mondays at some point.

Listening Party

The Artist in the Ambulance – Revisited

If you ask me, 2003 was an excellent year for music. I twas jam-packed with some of my favorite albums of all time, from Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, The Postal Service’s Give Up, Fall Out Boy’s Take this to your Grave, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Take Them On, On Your Own, Brand New’s Deja Entendu, and of course, The Artist in the Ambulance by Thrice.

Twenty years later, Thrice decided it would be super cool to remind every fan of that album about the passage of time and our mortality by rerecording and releasing the whole dang thing with some help from some other musicians. Wouldn’t you know it, these 40+ year old men still have got it. This album has always ripped and continues to do so even in its rerecorded state.

Not many things from 2003 have aged particularly well. The Artist in the Ambulance – Revisited is certainly one of the more pleasant time capsules you could open up, granted you’re into that kind of music. Regardless though, 2003 was crazy good for music. Seriously, look at this list, I’m sure you’ll find something excellent.

The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula

I told you that this McElroy Family stuff was probably going to be a consistent theme throughout a lot of these posts, so here we are again. The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula is the latest D&D 5e campaign that the McElroy Family is running, and it’s an absolute laugh-riot.

For the uninitiated, The Adventure Zone is a podcast where the three McElroy brothers and their father play role-playing games together, the first arc of which, called “Balance,” being my favorite campaign by far. It’s ebbed in quality and won’t gel with everyone, especially considering the group’s, “rules-light”, approach to playing games. The priority is telling a fun story over stringently adhering to the rules, which I find to be a great on-ramp for TTRPG-curious folks.

I’ve had a pretty complicated history with The Adventure Zone and a lot of the campaigns they’ve run, often times feeling a lack of grounding or sense of place. In the past I’ve felt that some of the game systems they’ve used in the past weren’t particularly interesting to listen to people play or weren’t conducive to the kind of story they were trying to tell, which is why the return to 5e was somewhat comforting.

I approached this campaign with cautious optimism, but was immediately won over within minutes of the first episode. Not only is it hysterical, but the players have excellent chemistry with each other and just enough familiarity with the game that they’re playing that keeps the pace of play and jokes nice and quick without letting the show from getting bogged down in rule clarifications. The setting and story are fantastic, and I’ve yet to feel overwhelmed by the information that DM Griffin McElroy has doled out thus far.

As of writing this, only a handful of episodes are out, so maybe the quality falls off a cliff or something. But as it stands, I think I’ve listened to that first episode about a half a dozen times, and it still hasn’t gotten old. If you’re looking for a D&D flavored way to kill an hour, I’d give the first episode of The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula a listen.

My Horrible Upstairs Neighbors

If you’re a fan of silence and quiet contemplation, then I’d recommend you don’t actually listen to my horrible upstairs neighbors. I’ve never met these people, which is honestly a good thing cause I don’t think I’d have anything nice to say, but they seem like some of the most inconsiderate folks around.

I’ve identified two of them based on the noises they make. There’s what I presume to be a teenager in school, because the noise they make tends to stop occurring during school days from like 7am to 3pm, and another who doesn’t show up until later in the day, who apparently does everything in their apartment in the clackiest heels you’ve ever heard. Together I think they have bowling ball dropping competitions or practice juggling hammers, and we get front row seats to that every night.

They drop a lot of stuff, they have either one or seventy small yappy dogs, the teenage one may or may not be a streamer because they play video games in the most over-the-top fashion I’ve ever heard of, ever. I legitimately thought there was an actual problem at first cause all I would hear through the ceiling was someone shouting, “Help me. Save me. Stay away,” and other things of that ilk. Soon it was followed by taunting other players or screaming for revives in a way that let me know that they were just a HARDCORE GAMER who occasionally uses some pretty miserable language.

If you’re wondering why I’m writing about this at all, let me just provide some context here and say that my office is directly underneath where the uber-gamer does their thing, and they may or may not be doing it right now. Ultimately, the saddest part about this whole experience is that they aren’t the worst neighbors we’ve had.

The Rest

Piranesi

Turns out that they make books that aren’t just reference materials for running TTRPGs. I know that because I’m actively reading one of these books, and there isn’t even a single goblin in it — yet. Piranesi is a very tough book to describe, but at its basest form, it’s a fantasy novel unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

The titular Piranesi is an inhabitant of this massive, seemingly endless 3 story mansion boasting decadent halls filled with marble statues and little else. It is written as a series of diary entries that this man is making as he chronicles his days and expeditions into more unknown sections of this endless mansion.

It’s been a while since I’ve engaged with a piece of media that’s hooked me in purely on my curiosity alone, but Piranesi truly has me in its clutches. I want to know more about literally everything that’s happening in this world, which may or may not be a bad thing to some extent. The early portions of this book are a bit of a tough read purely because of how ephemeral everything feels. There’s very little to ground yourself with because everything is being described by someone who may or may not have any understanding of the real world, if there even is one in the fiction of this book.

While I’m still not done with it, I’ve heard it eventually gets to the, “I can’t stop going,” point and really pays off. A few chapters in though, and I’d gladly recommend the one fiction book I’ve read in the past 5 years to anyone who would ask. Although I guess technically my many TTRPG books are fiction.

A+ Certification

CompTIA is the voice of the world’s information technology industry. (PRNewsFoto/CompTIA) (PRNewsFoto/)

I’ve been studying up for my A+ certification test for a few weeks now and boy let me tell you, there is no more miserable feeling than voluntarily watching the rug be pulled out from underneath you. I thought I had a decent grasp on technology, not an extensive or particularly great one, but a decent one. I’ve built computers, I’ve troubleshooted lots of hardware, software and network issues in the past, so I thought I wouldn’t be too far behind when it came to pivoting onto this career path.

It turns out that I knew absolute bupkis before and somehow know less now. Despite hours of reading and researching, tutorials and study guides, the internet to me is basically invisible magic what sometimes makes pornography appear. Seriously, 75% percent of what I’ve learned so far has been jumbled mess of letters and numbers. LDAP, 802.11, 802.3, TELNET, SCADA, DMARC, plenum-rated cables, subnets, octets — there’s so much of this that it feels borderline impossible to learn.

It’s overwhelming and time consuming but it’s also what I want to do professionally. I’ve spent a lot of my life meandering and not committing to anything career-wise, but this is the first time in a while that I’ve felt consistently motivated to fight through those instincts that are shouting at me to “just quit.” It isn’t just about getting my career going so I can maybe be in a better financial situation, but it’s about proving to myself that I’m capable and smart. So it’s back to the IT mines for me.

News

The Riffmaster

They’re making a new plastic guitar for Fortnite. While not a player of Fortnite, I do play a lot of Clone Hero, and my Guitar Hero 3 Les Paul guitar finally stopped working, so I think I’m legally required to buy this thing whenever it comes out.

Xbox, Everywhere

What’s that behind you? It’s an Xbox. Making a sandwich? That’s not ham, that’s an Xbox. Getting frisky with your partner? That’s actually them, but there will be an Xbox in the corner, watching. There will be an Xbox everywhere, even if it’s on a PlayStation.

Baldur’s Gate 3: The Toxic Community

Oh look, another story about a fan base harboring some truly repugnant figures who just can’t seem to not harass the developers of a game they claim to love because a feature isn’t in the game yet. Seriously, what’s wrong with these folks?

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’ll be back at the end of March with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Disney Dreamlight Valley has Taken Over my Home

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I showed a real lack of willpower recently when I casually Googled and shortly after ordered an Xbox Series X despite having a Series S in my possession. I could give all manner of excuses for why I actually bought the dang thing, but the real answer is that I wanted one and it was available. With a massive new console in my possession I had to figure out what to do with the Series S that served as my primary console for the past two years, so I went ahead and plopped it in our living room, set up an account for my partner, installed some titles off of Game Pass I thought they’d enjoy and went on my merry way. Little did I know that I had just taken the first steps towards allowing a Disney-themed game monopolize all of their free time.

At first they just wanted to continue playing our cooperative game of the month, Battleblock Theater, but eventually curiosity got the better of them when I booted up Disney Dreamlight Valley, a game I promptly decided was not gonna be the next ‘big thing’ for me. But their affinity for Disney characters mixed with the slightly more mechanically rich Animal Crossing-esque gameplay loop must have resonated with them because all they wanna do now is hang out with Goofy, Elsa and a horrifying dead-eyed version of Mickey who never seems to close his mouth.

What first started as a vague curiosity has turned into something that resembles an addiction, but in a good way. When I first asked them about their feelings on the game I was met with a lot of, “it’s okay,” and “I just wanna see where it goes.” Recently however they’ve approached me with a gleeful sense of pride while asking, “do you wanna see what I’ve done with my town in that game?” I’ve even checked the Xbox app while I was on my lunchbreak and caught a certain someone tending to their village while ‘working’ from home.

I tease them about their newfound addiction but it genuinely makes me happy to see that they’re having fun with this console that I basically replaced with a bigger, stronger version. They’re a fairly casual gamer and to see them get hooked on a game the way I can sometimes get sucked into games makes me weirdly happy. I don’t know how to exactly explain it but it’s kind of vindicating in a weird way. It isn’t as if they judge me for spending time playing games or anything, if anything they’re incredibly supportive of my gaming hobby and the time and energy I spend on it.

Knowing how bored of the game I would get within a few hours, I’ve already prepped them for the burnout by just installing a bunch of other games I thought they might enjoy on the console, just hoping curiosity will take hold and lead them into something newer and more visually exciting to watch. As of writing this however, that has not been the case as we’re both ‘hotly anticipating’ the Toy Story update for the game, which I think we can all agree is really gonna shake things up.

How I feel about Disney Dreamlight Valley is irrelevant though, because all that matters is that they’re having a good time with it and getting that feeling of satisfaction that a good game can provide. While I wouldn’t mind seeing something different on our TV, or more specifically, hear something other than the same 3 bars of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, I’m just happy that my partner is happy. What more can you really ask for?

Blog: Still Waters – 07/21/21

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It used to be that the summertime was infamous for its lack of new game releases, but that’s no longer the case these days. Games are being made by all sorts of folks in all sorts of different circumstances, most of which are not beholden to the fiscal calendar that demands the biggest releases congregate at the end of a given year. It means that at any point during a year, your personal game of the year could blindside you and just release on Steam on a Wednesday. Well I’m here to tell you that I have not had that experience yet this year, and I’m bored out of my mind.

So far, 2021 hasn’t really dazzled me in terms of game releases. Actually, the whole year is questionable at best, but I won’t get into that. My point is that it’s been a really slow year for me when it comes to actually playing new games. I think I can count on one hand the amount of 2021 games I’ve really liked, let alone finished. Part of me worries that this is all just a sign that as we get older we’ll end up treating video games like albums, and only play the things we liked because nothing new resonates with us. That might just be me though.

My gaming habits are starting to feel more like a stringent diet these days, where I stick with what I know and occasionally have a cheat day with a new release or something. It hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing however, because I’m actually trying more games without having to shell out 60 to 70 dollars for it thanks to Game Pass. I just blasted through a cute, albeit unremarkable 3D platformer called New Super Lucky’s Tale, which is an updated and more accessible version of Super Lucky’s Tale, which was an Oculus Rift exclusive for a while. I didn’t know this game finally made it to consoles and was playable, but once I discovered that I basically spent 4 days just blazing through it. I hadn’t played a game that obsessively in quite some time, and who would have guessed that New Super Lucky’s Tale would be the game to do it.

Aside from that, I started a new Skyrim save with the intention of making myself an un-killable demigod who can leap from mountain top to mountain top in a single bound. I feel like I’ve done this exact thing before. But the reason I’ve dived back into the game is because not only is it on both PC and Xbox Game Pass and I can snag some sweet achievements for my time spent in this dreary world, but because it’s super fucking fun to kill a boss so good and so quickly that the game literally can’t progress any further. It’s been this wonderful experiment of “how quickly can I break Skyrim,” that’s quite frankly been one of the most fulfilling game experiences I’ve had this year. It turns out that you just kind of have to cough in the direction Skyrim for it to just implode in on itself. Really a bummer that the Game Pass version of Skyrim doesn’t have cloud saves though.

But yeah, at the risk of sounding like an ad for Game Pass, the last thing I will say about it is that it’s led to me spending a lot less on video games lately. It’s not like they’re out there grabbing the hottest new releases or anything, but they are regularly putting up either new and unknown indie games, or just these titles that I’ve been curious about for a while that I’d never actually pull the trigger on and buy. The service isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s one of those “untouchable” subscriptions that I will gladly continue paying for. Unlike Apple TV, who only remains because of how good Ted Lasso is and how badly I want to watch the second season.

E3 2021: What’s Looking Good, Microsoft?

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We should begin by laying out some facts right off the bat and acknowledge a few truths about the current situation as it applies to the video game industry, but more specifically E3 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic really hampered so much development by forcing it out of the collaborative spaces of offices and into peoples homes. It also severely disrupted supply lines and manufacturing pipelines to such a degree that every electronics company is grappling with component shortages. Also worth considering is the fact that E3 is a show that’s been desperately searching for an identity for quite some time now, only to really feel the pressure after not having a conference at all last year. Knowing all of that led me to believe that I should temper my expectations for this year, but despite the middling status of E3 as a show, some of the presenters brought some really interesting stuff that I’m actually pretty excited for.

Keep in mind, I don’t really have much of a structure or rule set in mind for how I’m picking these, but I’m going to try and focus on games that were more than a cinematic trailer. No offense to cinematic trailers, but there isn’t really much to talk about with those when compared to games that showed off some actual gameplay footage. So don’t get weird about it when I don’t mention Starfield or whatever. But anyway, here’s what I saw at the Microsoft press conference (are we still calling them that?) from E3 2021 that really piqued my interest.

BATTLEFIELD 2042

It’s been a while since I’ve actually enjoyed a Battlefield game, with Battlefield 3 being the last one that really resonated with me. But before my decline in interest with the series really took hold, I thoroughly enjoyed games like Battlefied 2, Battlefield 2142, and even Battlefield 1943, which doesn’t even mention my fondness for the Bad Company spin-offs. But here we are, staring down the barrel of the Battlefield gun once again, and while I don’t recall anything demonstrably new or revolutionary about this latest entry, I’m intrigued by the footage that seemed to focus in on map hazards like snowstorms, dust storms, and tornadoes. It looks like it could be a cool inclusion in these massive battles, granted it doesn’t become overly tedious after encountering these events a couple of times.

I don’t really know what to expect from Battlefield 2042 except for the fact that there will not be a single player component, which might make it a tricky sell for some folks. Hopefully this Battlefield entry is more welcoming to new and lapsed players, and not just be a cool training exercise for snipers who want to see how quickly they can snipe me after I spawn.

PSYCHONAUTS 2

Man, I loved the original Psychonauts and have been so very excited for the follow up to finally come out. Luckily, I won’t have to wait much longer because it’s coming out at the end of August this year, and will be on Xbox Game Pass. Judging solely off of the trailer shown at the briefing it doesn’t look like Psychonauts 2 is straying too far from the path, vis-à-vis the things that made the original so successful and beloved. The humor seems on point, the art looks just as weird and flamboyant as I remember, and the gameplay looks just as good as I remember the original did (hopefully it’s less cumbersome this time though). The only real difference that I could see was that the levels look a bit larger and more mechanically diverse than in the original, which is a welcome change.

I don’t know what you’re supposed to do to revitalize a long dormant franchise of a cult classic to make it appeal to modern gamers, but I do know that I’m totally on the hook for this psychedelic platformer. And hey, it’s only been like 16 years since the original released, so I’m sure it’ll live up to everyone’s totally reasonable expectations and no one will be upset about anything.

PARTY ANIMALS

Man, I don’t know who’s out there developing games with me explicitly in mind, but I want to thank them so much. Party Animals looks like one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time, Gang Beasts, but like, if Gang Beasts was a bit more polished than it is. I don’t know what else to really say that can entice you more than the trailer can, but if you like silly ragdoll-centric mayhem where everyone is dressed as (or is?) an adorable animal, then we have nothing more to discuss. It’s just a shame that Party Animals isn’t going to be with us until sometime in 2022.

HALO INFINITE

Maybe I’m a fool, but I still want a good Halo game to come out. I’ve enjoyed parts of the past two Halo games, namely some of the single player campaign from 4, and most of the multiplayer from 5, but I would just love to see Halo be the tour de force it used to be once more. Despite the misguided story stuff from 5 though, I’m still kind of invested in these characters and this story that’s spanned more than half of my life at this point.

So later this year we’ll see if all of the complaints and delays really made Halo Infinite a better product than its initial reveal led us to believe. The most exciting developments from the trailer this year easily include the versatility of the grappling hook, which allows you hook onto not only surfaces, but you can pick up weapons and equipment with it and jack vehicles as well. The story bits in the trailer were also real intriguing, with this fake-ass non-Cortana hanging out with my good buddy, Master Chief, as well as the usual haunting occasional narration from Cortana herself. I haven’t checked in on the multiplayer presentation as of writing this, but apparently it is going to be free-to-play, which seems like a smart move to me.

We’ll see if it lives up to expectations when it drops on Game Pass and in retail this holiday season. Because of course they didn’t give it a firm date.

SHREDDERS

Despite having arguably one of the stupidest names for a game, Shredders looks like an extremely chill snowboarding game that I might be into. I’m not a big snowboarder or even a big fan of the outdoors in general, but even I can admit that Shredders looks super fun in a low stakes kind of way. Whereas something like Steep was a little too annoying in that classic Ubisoft way, where like, everyone was making terrible jokes and quipping at you constantly, Shredders seems like it’s going for a more relaxed vibe, trading out chatty NPCs with abject silence, while focusing on a more realistic representation of what it’s like to “shred that gnar.”

Like most of what was shown at the Microsoft event, it too will be coming to Game Pass when it releases later this year on December 12th, just in time for me to be utterly sick of the snow.

REPLACED

I don’t quite know what happened to The Last Night, but if it never comes out which is looking more and more to be the case, at least we can look forward to something like Replaced which might actually come out. Listen, I’m always gonna be here for a cyberpunk-themed side-scroller, but man am I excited for this one. First and foremost, it just looks fucking incredible which would be reason alone for me to try it out, but from what little combat and platforming that was shown, it looks like it won’t just be all flash and no substance.

There isn’t much else to really glean from the trailer itself, but that hasn’t done anything to dampen my excitement or anticipation. And like I said, considering Replaced is slated for release next year and is a day one Game Pass game, I think I can more safely assume it might actually come out. So that’s something.

XBOX GAME PASS

Out of the 30 or so games that were announced and discussed at the Microsoft presentation, I think only like 4 of them aren’t going to be on the Game Pass service, which is really quite impressive. I don’t know that anyone who owns an Xbox would have a tough time justifying signing up for Game Pass before this presentation, but after what was shown, it kind of seems essential to the whole Xbox ecosystem. Obviously that’s the point of what Microsoft has been doing, but they really made a strong case for it the other day. With games like the new Dark Alliance dropping day one later this month, to Microsoft Flight Simulator dropping in July, Psychonauts 2 in August, and plenty of other big name titles headlining each month for the remainder of 2021, I just don’t know how you can resist hopping onboard the Game Pass train.

Microsoft did a big dump of games, and while not everything resonated with me, I was genuinely impressed with how stacked their lineup is, especially considering the kind of year the developers making these games had to endure. Consider me impressed Microsoft. Now if only you could provide some sort of expandable memory for the Xbox Series consoles that didn’t cost $220, that would be just delightful.

Blog: Achievements & Site Updates – 06/02/21

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There was a period of time, specifically before 2016 when I built my gaming computer, that I was deeply invested in the concept of Gamerscore and the achievement hunting that came along with it. I primarily played on Xbox and the Pavlovian response of hearing that delightful chime and getting a functionally useless reward that indicated I had unlocked an achievement was very exciting and fulfilling for me. But once I gravitated away from consoles and onto PC, I had to shake that particular monkey off of my back. Unfortunately for me and my sanity, I now own a modern Xbox console and have their subscription service which essentially just blasts me with new games every few weeks to play, keeping me planted squarely back on the achievement treadmill whether I like it or not.

My strategy at the time was to just play as many games as possible and just get whatever achievements I could without too much effort or time sunk into any single particular game. I didn’t approach achievement hunting from that angle nor would I actually ever call myself an achievement hunter, because I just like to bounce from game to game and that’s how I racked up several thousand points without actually trying that hard. That approach probably still would work, but I’m just a hair more discerning about how I spend my money these days and won’t just buy every game that stumbles onto the storefront. Besides, I gotta save that money to invest in more TTRPGs that I won’t ever play.

But now that I have an Xbox again and have set it up in a way that makes it easier and more accessible to use than launching a game through Steam, I’ve found that my achievement itches are starting back up. My current setup involves two different HDMI switches that gather all of my various console inputs into one output, and have that go through another switch that indicates which monitor it’ll display on. While I’m fairly certain that neither of these switches will pass through a 4K signal, making my television functionally useless, the convenience of being able to just hit a button on my second monitor and be instantly at my Xbox dashboard has really been the catalyst for why I’m primarily playing on console these days.

Even better is how inclusive the Xbox ecosystem has become, providing seamless integration between console and PC players which has meant that I’ve been able to play a lot more multiplayer games with people, regardless of where they’re actually playing. I’ve taken to testing that cross-play system a lot too by expressly playing on console while my friends are on PC, and I gotta give it up to Xbox for making the process as painless as possible. I’m certain that it’s only that easy because we’re all still utilizing parts of the Xbox ecosystem, something that undoubtedly has made things smoother than if I was trying to play with someone from a PS5 or something.

Regardless of the ease of use it really has been a lot of fun to casually chase achievements again, although I don’t appreciate how Xbox likes to rub it in your face about how much better your friends are at achievement hunting than you are. It makes me want to be way more competitive than I actually am, which is usually always cancelled out by my inherent laziness. But aside from the stupid achievement rat race, I’m surprisingly really enjoying playing on a console again for reasons that I don’t quite fully understand.

While we’re on the topic of laziness, I want to mention the lack of diverse content on the site recently. It’s kind of just been blogs for the past few weeks, and I’m sorry for that. Honestly, I’ve just kind of found it hard to be motivated to do anything, let alone this site, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. I have some ideas for new Master of Disasters and Gut Checks, so those should be materializing soon enough.

But as for things like my annual coverage of E3 or whatever the fuck is going on this summer, I do not know what it’s going to look like this year or even if something will come to fruition in terms of coverage. Much like last year, it’s still very weird out there, and the concept of covering E3 is both an exciting and confusing challenge to me. We’ll see what comes of it all, but I’ve got the wheels in the ol’ noggin spinning in the hopes something actionable and interesting will come out. That rarely works out for me, but maybe this time it’ll be different. Only time will tell.

Blog: Knockout City – 05/26/21

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It’s no secret that I’ve lost my passion for online competitive games as I’ve gotten older, but that doesn’t mean this old man isn’t still capable of stepping into the virtual ring and wreaking some havoc from time to time. While most people are playing those gun-shooting games I’ve opted to spend my time with EA’s newly released competitive dodge ball game, Knockout City, as opposed to the more murder-centric games people usually play. Much to my surprise, Knockout City is actually a pretty fun, albeit slim offering that was well worth the price of “free with Game Pass.”

Knockout City is a free-to-play game that hasn’t realized it’s a free-to-play game just yet, as it’s currently retailing at $20 on just about every modern platform. I’m sure in a few months we’ll get a full “announcement” about how EA is making the game more accessible or something by offering it for free, but we’re not there just yet. Rest assured though, with the amount of free-to-play trappings that are already in Knockout City, I can’t foresee a future where it doesn’t go free-to-play eventually.

But hey, this one’s different, because you’ll be hurling cosmic dodge balls at your opponents instead of bullets, which somehow doesn’t make eliminating an opponent any less grizzly as they ragdoll off the side of a skyscraper. You and your team of two other folks will face off in a best of three, round-based death-match, where the first team to score ten eliminations wins the round. These rounds go pretty quickly, which is exactly long enough for me to almost get sick of playing Knockout City, but instead stick around for another match.

Balls spawn in various spots around the map, with special themed ones randomly selected before you start a match that will also spawn in some of these locations. For instance, one of my matches had explosive balls that are pretty devastating no matter which team you’re on, a fact that I learned the hard way. You basically race to these locations to grab a ball, then sprint on into the location of the map that has turned into an impromptu killing field, where you will either become a dodge ball god or immediately get knocked unconscious.

What’s neat about the game is how deceptively simple it is. What sucks about it is how little you’re told about what everything does. There’s a tutorial that I suggest everyone play, but even that doesn’t cover some of the more advanced maneuvers that you’ll need to use in any given match. For instance, you can turn yourself into a ball that your teammates can throw. How you do this is never spelled out to you nor why you would do this, but I assure you that functionality exists. The same goes for passing the ball to teammates, which seems like a pretty important thing for me to know how to do, but alas, that also wasn’t covered in the tutorial.

It’s probably super simple like the rest of the controls in Knockout City though. When you have a ball, you can hold the right trigger to simultaneously automatically lock on to an opponent and charge up your shot, followed by releasing the trigger to heave the ball. But locking onto an enemy alerts them that they’re being locked onto, so you have to basically mess with them by playing with the timing of your release. Sure a fully charged shot would be devastating but that’s what they’re expecting, maybe an early release will throw them off enough that they mistime their catch attempt. It’s a fun little meta-layer that involves you playing mind games with your opponent, and I appreciated that.

Your enemies aren’t just helpless however, because by timing a grab with the left trigger you can catch the ball and immediately fire it back at an opponent. When that happens, it leads to a lot of Dragon Ball Z styled air battles where two people are just bouncing this dodge ball off of each other in midair until someone’s timing falters. It’s always really cool when you get into one of these back and forth battles because these were easily the most tense moments I experienced while playing. You can also tackle an opponent which will cause them to lose control of the ball, popping it into the air for all of the other anime dodge-ballers to have a chance at holding. That tackle is one of three different dodge actions you can take, all of which probably do something different that I just couldn’t decipher before writing this.

Knockout City is actually a lot of fun, but I just don’t know how long the legs on this thing are. It feels more substantial than something like a Fall Guys, but it also lacks any of the personality Fall Guys had as well. The game has this weird retro-futurism vibe to it that really does nothing for the experience as a whole, but it doesn’t detract from it either, so there’s that I suppose. If you’ve got Game Pass and want to check out Knockout City, I’d fully endorse that decision. However, if you’re asking if you should pay $20 bucks for it, I don’t know that I could stand by that decision, especially when we all know and have agreed that it’ll be free-to-play in a few months anyway.

Blog: Dinoslayers – 05/12/21

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When I think about horde modes in video games, things like Call of Duty’s zombies modes and the aptly named horde mode from the Gears of War series spring to mind. While I’ve never really resonated with them at all, it’s impossible to deny how popular and successful these modes have been, so much so that there are games that are completely built around the concept itself like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Back 4 Blood. These games are not my jam at all, but somehow I’ve managed to spend a couple of hours with one of these styled games this past week. If you haven’t heard about Second Extinction yet, prepare to be informed by someone with a middling at best level of interest in the genre and an even shoddier level of knowledge about dinosaurs.

As the name might imply, Second Extinction is an objective-based horde-styled game where you and two of your buddies wander around a miserable planet, gunning down all sorts of mutated dinosaurs. In the early portions of the game you’ll mostly be shooting at raptors with a penchant for spin-kicking you, spitting poison at you, and turning invisible, just like I remember learning about in school. There are other, more interesting dinosaurs that will need a good bullet-ing as well, but the majority of what I faced early on were these shitty mutated raptors.

You choose a character to play as, each of which comes with their own suggested loadout of weapons and abilities but you can pretty much just make any character use any weapon you want, which is good considering you could end up like me and get fooled into using what can only be described as the “World’s Most Useless Sniper Rifle”. Not only is it hilariously inaccurate and ineffective, but the scope itself is fogged over and impossible to see through, making aiming through it bizarrely impractical. If you’re looking to play Second Extinction, do not use the sniper rifle.

My biggest complaint with Second Extinction was just how meandering the entire thing felt. I never quite knew what we were doing or why we were doing it, and some of the missions and objectives were either unclear, tedious as hell, or some combination of the two. But despite that we still had a pretty good time traipsing through the snowy landscape towards our next inscrutable goal, all the while utilizing our abilities and various equipment in something that resembled synergy. One friend would call in some ammo, while I would call in equipment or use a stun grenade or satchel charge to really stop a charging dino in its tracks. But it’s hard to tell if that’s something I can credit to the game or just to the fact that I like playing games with my friends.

I don’t think Second Extinction is a bad video game by any metric, and considering that it’s still in early access it certainly has a good foundation to build upon. My biggest hope is that the rough edges and bugs get taken care of, because the game is currently pretty buggy and crashy. Things like dead dinosaurs getting launched into the stratosphere can stay in the game, but the lack of any voice chat control in the game is wild. It must’ve taken us about an hour for us to figure out how to mute each other in the game so we could continue using Discord without hearing our voices doubled. Eventually we managed to mute ourselves through the Xbox app, but boy-howdy did that take way longer than it needed to. And maybe fixing that miserable sniper rifle could be something worth investing some time into.

But if you have Game Pass and two friends who are looking to do what the owners of Jurassic Park didn’t have the guts to, vis-à-vis just gunning down those rogue dinos, then I think Second Extinction might be worth checking out.

Blog: A Game of Chicken – 05/05/21

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There are moments in life when you’re absolutely positive that one thing will happen, yet against all odds, something entirely unexpected occurs. That’s basically the story of how I ended up purchasing an Xbox Series S in a nutshell. I recall months of following various Twitter accounts to clue me into stock drops at various retailers, only to see the “Out of Stock” message appear within seconds of clicking the link. I would have never expected to be able to purchase a next-generation console on a whim, but here we are, $325 later, and a new Xbox is on its way to me.

There was a few months where I was pursuing one of these plastic monoliths in a pretty obsessive way, but every time a notification would pop up on my phone and I clicked it, all I’d end up securing was a vast amount of disappointment. So one day I decided to scale back and just stop trying so hard. I stopped following every stock-checking Twitter account I had latched onto, turned off all notifications and moved on with my life. But I did continue to follow one account that posts deals from all across the gaming landscape and not just consoles. Turns out, that was right move.

I woke up the other morning and eventually got around to checking up on social media to see what horrors occurred in the world in the past 7 hours or so that was unconscious. I came across a post from this Twitter account that just indicated that Microsoft was selling the Xbox Series S on their site. Unfortunately that post was from 9 hours ago, so I probably missed out on it, but I figured I’d click anyway just to confirm it for myself.

The weirdest thing happened: The site didn’t say “Out of Stock” like it usually did, instead it just read, “Add to Cart,” which I earnestly assumed to be a glitch or something. Jokingly, I clicked it, all the while knowing that this would error out and show me the way out. But gosh dang-it, the site just sent me to the cart where one of these elusive consoles was just chilling and waiting for me. “This can’t happen,” I thought. “The listing went up last night, there’s just no way,” I continued to say as I signed into my PayPal account to finalize the purchase.

So I filled out all the information and pressed the final confirmation button, still fully expecting for this to not work. But lo-and-behold the transaction went through, and I was left sitting there, slack-jawed at the concept that I could, nine hours later, just purchase this console I wasn’t really looking to ever buy so easily. Surely an email would come in and say that my order couldn’t be completed or something, right? Nope, I have a tracking number and everything now and I still don’t believe that this actually happened.

*Finally, a “best value” option that’s actually the best value*

As of writing this, I don’t have the console just yet. It’ll allegedly arrive on the day this blog goes up, but that remains to be seen. This may not seem as buck-wild of a story as I think it is, but it’s important to contextualize it all with just how fanatical about finding a next-generation console I was. Maybe I just got lucky because no one is really frothing at the mouth for a Series S, but I literally don’t know if that’s even true or not, that’s just me spouting conjecture at this point. All I know is that I’m surprisingly excited to receive this thing, and terrified of the idea that it’s being shipped as is and not in a discreet box.

In preparation for my new toy, I’ve reorganized my entertainment center which was basically me unplugging the dust-covered Xbox 360 that was on it and chucking it into storage, as well as giving that severely neglected piece of furniture a good cleaning. I also decided to upgrade my Game Pass subscription from the overpriced PC only version, to the slightly more expensive Game Pass Ultimate, which upon further reflection, is an incredible deal. So yeah, that’s the story of how I played chicken with a website and lost so badly that I ended up $325 dollars poorer, but I do get one of them new-fangled viddy-James boxes out of it. Well, allegedly, I’m still not convinced it’s actually on its way to me. I’ll update this post either way when the time comes.

UPDATE: It’s actually here. Weird.

Blog: Windows is the Worst Part of Game Pass – 08/26/20

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I want to get out ahead of this blog and say that I believe that Xbox Game Pass is a fantastic service that people should look into if they have the extra cash and a desire to play more games. That being said, the PC experience for the service isn’t great and I think that Windows is mostly to blame for that. This isn’t me complaining about the games or the value of the service itself, instead this focuses solely on how ironically miserable the PC launcher integrates with Windows.

To its credit, the Xbox app on PC is constantly being updated which is very reassuring but there are still so many things about the application that either don’t work or don’t integrate well with the rest of Windows for one reason or another.

Let’s start with achievements. One of the more endorphin-releasing things that the Xbox ecosystem has provided to us has to be the noise and animation that play out whenever you get an achievement. I don’t give a shit about the achievement itself, but it just feels nice to get them thanks to the way they’re presented. However you don’t get any of that on PC, or if you do I certainly haven’t found a way to enable it. There’s probably something I could to with my notification settings on Windows, but I fear that messing with those might invite every other app to send me notifications about their garbage.

But those are just achievements and their absence doesn’t actively prevent me from playing my games. Updates however, they’ll stop you dead in your tracks. There was a night that some friends and I wanted to play Halo together via Halo: The Master Chief Collection, something I’ve had installed on my computer since it was released on PC through the Xbox app at the end of last year.

I went to launch the game and join my friends but was stopped by a “version mismatch” error. It seemed that there was an update that just never happened for some reason which in all fairness isn’t a glitch exclusive to Game Pass. All I’d have to do would be to launch the Xbox app and update it, right? The app opened, I went to the Halo: The Master Chief Collection page where no notice of an update existed which made me assume that all I needed was to reboot the Game Pass app itself to clear things up.

After relaunching the application, I found that it kept getting locked up on a blank black screen right after the Xbox logo appeared. Not great, but I could probably go to the Windows Store app to check for updates, right? Turns out, the Windows Store app didn’t want to fetch my updates and instead felt like force-quitting whenever I clicked the downloads page. Maybe I can reinstall the Xbox app and it’ll finally work? Nope, the installer breaks every time I hit install ultimately requiring me to force quit the installer all together. This whole situation sucks.

*Halo: The Master Chief Collection – 343 Industries*

After two days of frantic Googling, the suggestion to check for Windows updates was floated by me and seemed like the last option before reluctantly calling customer service. That actually did the trick. Now I did in fact check my automatic update settings and although they were enabled they just never happened, so thanks again Windows. That update fixed everything, but the fact that everything broke because I was running a version of Windows that was a few months old is insane.

But fine, whatever, I can play my damn games now. There is one last thing that drives me utterly mad with Game Pass though, and that’s how every single time I launch a game for the first time, this slow and laggy dialogue box pops up asking if I authorize the app to use my information. I appreciate that I’m being asked about this stuff, but it really seems redundant when I’m actively paying for this service. I’d honestly prefer some filters to select what I want to be notified about would be better than just throwing a pop-up at me for everything. Also, I don’t need two fucking emails to be sent to me about it when I hit accept on a new game.

A lot of this sounds like nitpicking which it most definitely is, but if the ultimate goal of Xbox Game Pass on PC is to bring the console experience to the PC, then it’s failing. The whole allure of a console is that everything is self contained and just works without much issue, but the fact that Game Pass feels haphazardly bolted onto the rest of Windows makes its integration far less seamless. I love Game Pass as a service but it’s just not fully there on PC yet, and Windows is mostly to blame.

Blog: Launcher Hell – 11/13/19

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A lot of PC players tend to get pretty uppity about the fact that companies are trying to maximize their profits and keep closer control over their games by requiring the use of an exclusive launcher. For the most part, I don’t mind having to open a different executable to play my games, but some recent developments have made me shift my stance a little.

Looking at my desktop I have six different launchers for my various games. Steam, Origin, Uplay, Epic, Xbox, and the latest addition, Rockstar. But that isn’t even half of the available ways to buy and launch my games. It seems like it would be a lot to manage, but it really never presented itself as much of an issue to me. That is, until Red Dead Redemption 2 launched and required authentication through their launcher.

Here’s the series of events that transpires when I try to launch Red Dead Redemption 2, a game I know isn’t going to work properly:

I’ll click the desktop shortcut, only to be met with a fatal error because I had the audacity to try and use said shortcut. I’ll then open up the Rockstar Launcher and log in because it never remembers my credentials. I’ll click the big, “Play on Epic” button that appears, because I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 through the Epic Games Store. The focus shifts to Epic for a moment, then back to Rockstar, then a windows notification asking me if I’m truly certain I want to play the game.

Finally the game will launch, I’ll play for 5 minutes before the frame rate hitching becomes enough of a burden, and quit.

It’s like a 5 minute wind up to play a game that doesn’t work. These are two separate issues admittedly, but its enough to make me rethink this whole “everyone has a launcher business”.

I’m also not saying that Steam should be the de facto launcher and be the only player in town. Every publisher wants control over their product, and wants the biggest slice of profits they can get. Sure Epic is doing an 88/12 split on revenue, but if I bought a game available on the Epic store on the publisher’s storefront, that’s 100% of the take right there. The business behind launchers makes sense.

There are two main categories of launcher in my eyes. The first is the publisher specific ones like Uplay or Origin. Then the second are the storefronts like Steam and Epic. I know those last two make their own games, but the volume of third party games on them warrants the separation. So I decided it would be fun to list off every launcher I can think of, just to give you a visual idea of how many of these damn things there are.

PUBLISHER SPECIFIC

Uplay (Ubisoft)
Origin (EA)
Blizzard.net (Blizzard)
Rockstar (Rockstar)
Xbox Game Pass (Microsoft)
Bethesda (Bethesda)

There’s definitely more of these that I can’t think of at the moment.

STOREFRONTS/ LIBRARIES

Steam (Valve)
Epic Games Store (Epic)
Discord (Discord)
Itch.io (Itch.io)
GOG Galaxy (GOG)
Windows Store (Microsoft)
Twitch (Twitch)

Once again, there are more that I can’t think of at this moment.

But take a moment to consider the fact that there are now several different launchers for organizing your various games spread out across different launchers. Seriously, check out this list.

I’m not complaining about having to use different launchers to play different games. It usually requires me to click a different icon and nothing more. But in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Rockstar, all it seems to have done is add more points of failure to the experience, and that’s my biggest fear with this stuff.

If I buy a game on Steam that needs to authorize through Uplay, but Uplay’s authentication servers are down, that’s a hassle. That’s my biggest issue with all of this. I just want to play my games as obstacle free as I can, but with this endless fragmentation of storefronts and publishers, I think we’re just going to have to get used to these hurdles for a while.