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Summer is almost over and we all know that Xbox has an Xbox End of Summer sale each year around this time and the end of summer sale is live now! I as of yet have not checked out the end of summer sale but will do in a little bit. Have you picked up anything from the Xbox end of summer sale? Do you plan on picking anything up during the sale?

Important Announcement As has been previously stated in the final post of this thread, Microsoft announced that on September 1st 2023 Xbox Games with Gold is coming to an end and will be dissolved into Xbox Gamepass as a new, starter tier called Xbox Gamepass Core. Current Xbox Live Gold members will be added to this new tier of Gamepass automatically. Find more details on this at this link. As I edit this, it is now September 1st 2023, so this thread meant to keep VGR members up to date with the latest offerings through Games with Gold has become obsolete. There was really two options to choose from when it comes to moving forward. Reorganise this thread into a Gamepass Update thread. Retire and lock the thread. Having considered these options and consulted with my fellow staff members, I have decided to retire and lock this thread once this new service goes live. Trying maintain this thread as a Gamepass thread in such a way that is is useful would be laborious and time consuming. Xbox Gamepass user's receive updates on what is happening with the service that I don't think that a Gamepass Update thread would be worth the considerable effort that it would take to keep it up to date. I would be willing to keep this thread active as a Gampepass update thread if the idea received enough support from VGR members. However, as I type this on September 1st, such a motion has received no support. If there is enough support from VGR members to have a Gamepass thread, I will of course make it so. Anyone who does want to see a Gampepass thread to replace this, please send me a PM. As it stands, this thread is now retired and locked. Updated: September 1st 2023

Remember when everyone was crying out for somebody take Alice in Wonderland, Minecraft and the Legend of Zelda and throw them all in together? OK, I don't remember that either, but the independent game studio Cococucumber based out of Toronto have answered the call anyway with this interesting little ditty that just launched on PC and the Xbox brand. Could have been better timing though, releasing this game to a world seething at Xbox over the disaster that is Redfall, but that's kind of why I wanted to both play and review this. I'm not particularly interested in stoking an already raging fire, what's the point? So I decided instead to have a conversation about a game likely to fall under the radar in the hope we might find a little gem here. And do we? Well, in all honesty, it's difficult to say. For £20, which is not exactly cheap for a game of this caliber, it is not a simple choice to buy this; Thanks to Gamepass, I paid no extra, but that's beside the point. There are things this game does very well, but also things, and major things, it gets a bit wrong. Ravenlok is a beautiful game, one of the most beautiful I've ever played, and I'm not exaggerating, just check this out: There are stylishly pixilated textures and blocky models mixed in with these smooth lines and vibrant colours that, frankly, should be a horrible contrast, but somehow it works, and I mean really works. The design is very creative, it literally looks like a dream. The detail is there as well, there is something to notice and admire on every part of the screen at any moment. There has also been no graphical anomalies or glitches of any kind that I noticed. There are obvious inspirations here, just take one look at this screenshot and tell me you don't recognise this immediately; But this game doesn't feel like a rip off, it feels like an homage and a joint understanding of what makes great creative design. The unique perspective the game helps give this game a visual identity all of it's own. The game runs great even on my mediocre hardware. Frame rates well into the 100's consistently. Sadly, at least on the Xbox Gamepass for PC version I played, there is no real graphics options. You can toggle V-sync on and off, set a maximum frame rate, switch between windowed and full screen, set the resolution and that's about it. Not that I consider this a bad port, far from it, like I said it runs beautifully and I really do not see anyone having trouble running this unless they get way too ambitious with very low end hardware. Here are the PC specs as listed buy Xbox. The spec's EGS list are less detailed, but pretty much the same. And by they, the game is not available on Playstation 4/5, Nintendo Switch nor any other PC store other the EGS, Just in case anyone was wondering. This game is on Xbox consoles, Xbox on PC and EGS. So, it's a great looking game ad you don't need a supercomputer to get best out of it, but that matters little if the isn't fun to play. and is it? Well, yes it is, but it's not without problems. The good stuff first. There is something unique in terms of how the came is presented. The best I can do to describe this game is call it a 3D side scroller. You view the game prom a perpendicular perspective, like a side scroller, but you the character through a 3D environment. You also have some limited ability to turn the camera around in any direction. The video below should help show you what I mean. EDIT: I apologise the audio quality in some of the videos. It appears my microphone picked up a load of background noise on some of them for some reason. This sounds like it should be a mess, but the developers knew what they were doing. This actually feels great to control and gives you a clear perspective of the environment. There are one or two areas with more depth where I did miss being able to turn the camera all the way round, but this is not a huge issue. I was using a controller and the default bottom mapping is well feels intuitive and makes the game easy to play. There may be one control there that looks a little odd, because it is: And yes, you can dance! Believe it of not, this actually works its way into the game mechanics. You use the dance to pick up specific collectables. This might be weak excuse to include this, but it's not worth questioning either. In the end, it's harmless, so I say just go with it. Anyway, the combat is simplistic, but satisfying. An attack, a block, a dash/dodge and special abilities you unlock through the game mapped to the shoulders and triggers. Not much more to say, what you see, is what you get: There is also options available to use potions and bombs from a menu accessed by pressing down on the d-pad, although this felt a little weird as you pressed down again to switch between bombs and potions. I think they set it up like this to minimise the chance of players using a bomb when you wanted a potion by mistake and vice versa, and that's fair enough, but it does take a little getting used to. However, it's also in combat that game starts to run into problems. I called the combat simplistic, but satisfying, and it is, but it's also far too easy. Normally, I wouldn't complain about a game's difficulty, but I do this time because this game does not have a way to change the difficulty. And I promise, I'm not being stupid, I looked everywhere. You can't set it at the start of the game and there is nothing in the options menu. Normal enemies are almost no threat outside of a select few times in the game whare they spawn in waves and in large numbers. Your attack speed and movement is significantly faster that anything else and your attacks interrupt enemy actions, so you can basically just attack constantly and never get hit so long as there is never more that one or two enemies targeting you. As you can see below, it's a joke: And no, the "It's for kids" defence is not going to fly with me here. Being a kid doesn't make one stupid nor an invalid. The game is rated 7+ by PEGI, so this isn't a toddlers game. The youngest audience this aims for are old enough to have thier cognitive functions at least adequately developed to play a video game and want some challenge out of it. I've played games like Ori and the Blind Forest and Child of Light that are rated for a similar audience and can be challenging games if you want them to be. When I was 7, I was playing games like Golden Axe, a game that doesn't exactly pull it's punches. And did I complain? Yes! Of course I did, I was a kid, but that doesn't change the fact that was exactly how it was supposed to be. Besides, there's a difference between combat that's meant to not be too difficult and combat that's broken. This is the later. Thankfully, the boss fights do fair a lot better; You will be avoiding AOE attacks as they can do a lot of damage, blocking and tactical use of specials will be necessary at times, but I never really felt in great need of the bombs, but did use potions on occasion. The attack spamming that disables normal enemies doesn't work and they employ a variety of patterns, but they're still not exactly hard. I don't think I took more than 3 tries to bead any boss. This is made worse by the fact the game, even with me searching around and exploiting a lot, doesn't even stretch to 7 hours. There's another thing that annoyed me straight away, and that's was how sporadic the achievements were. There's an achievement for almost everything, including the most trivial things like wearing a hat, levelling up and even imputing your name. I'm not joking, the character in this game you name yourself, and you get an achievement for naming right at the start of the game. I have a habit of naming my save files and characters after my gamertag or something similar, which made the dialogue a bit awkward in the game when talking to my mum... So I decided to start again with something else... Poodle, yes, that'll do. Getting back to the point. You might look at those ridiculously easy achievements, the game's short length and the lack of difficulty and think, "Well this is a game for casuals, right?", and whilst I detest that term, you would have point. People who game more seriously might be put of by this and it would be hard to blame them. The quest system isn't perfect either. The quests themselves are pretty good, a good mix of puzzles, collecting/fetching and combat. The usual stuff, but the way they are organised is underdeveloped and impractical. There is no defined parameters for quest types, so you can't list side quests apart from main quests. Worse, you can pick up quests that are gated behind other quests with little to no clue what quests you can and can't do until you completed others. Take this screenshot, for example: The coloured boxes I added as an aid to make explaining this a little easier, they are not in the game. The Blue quest is gated behind the Red quest The Red quest is gated behind the Purple quest The Purple quest is gated behind the Green quest And the Green quest is gated behind the "Exotic Confectionery" quest selected here. And you have to figure that out on your own. It's possible to do so, the game isn't that cryptic or misleading, but it's an unnecessary frustration that could have been solved with better quest management menus and tools. Tagging an active quest is all but useless as well as the game has no map feature and nor hud indicators to tell you whare to go. The only thing the quest tag is good for is to keep track of quest objectives, and the quest menu is good enough for that. Without some kind of objective marker on the hud and no map, quest tagging is pointless. Just set the quest display on the hud to auto-hide, you don't need it. Music? Yes it's nice and suits the ambiance and atmosphere well enough. It's not the most memorable nor striking soundtrack, it's a more humble score. The music just went in there with a job to do and it did it well, there isn't much more to say. There's no voice acting, but sound design itself is solid with nice audio feedback in combat and well distinct sounds for actions performed in the game that feel appropriate and make sense. Again, not much to say, it's done well. That's what happens when sound design is done well, you don't really notice it. Now, I suspect at least some of the people who read this might be on the fence. The game looks great with fun controls, but has issues with difficulty and some inconveniences. So the swing vote might come down to the story. As you may guessed, this is very Alice in Wonderland. Our hero, who I named Poodle, has just move to this farm with the mother, father and dog. Whilst exploring her new home, she finds a mysterious mirror that transports her to a mystical land. Upon arrival, she meets a local named Finn who believes she is a hero of prophesy named Ravenlok (Everyone then just calls her that throughout almost the entire game, making me wonder why one had to name the character in the first place.) designed to save this last from the tyrannical and destructive rule of an evil queen. Poodle (yes, I'm sticking with it), with the help of many friends she meets along the way, sets off on her adventure to cure the land of the destruction the queen has wrought, end her reign and find a way back home. Yes, the narrative ain't exactly original or unique, but without spoiling it, it gets stronger that it first sounds as the game progresses. There's no voice acting, the narrative is all told through text boxes, but the way it's written makes it easy to digest and absorb with the dialogue happening in short, but effective bursts. It's paced brilliantly, not so slow that the story feels padded out, but fast enough to keep you invested without overwhelming you. There's an interesting enough cast of characters that help flesh out the world and make it feel real, although I think some of the backstories and motivations of these characters could have fleshed out a little more. The basic narrative is clichéd, but the story they end up with is stronger than I expected it to turn out and does keep you playing. If the game had been longer, this story might have suffered for it, so the game's short length is something of a double edged sword. Conclusion Hold on! Just one last thing before you go;

So next year both 2 and 4 of the RTS series Age Of Empires will release on Xbox Series S and X. It will also release on Cloud. They're be on Game Pass of course. Just as exciting, and because I'm trying to combine all the news together. They are bring Age Of Mythology back. There is also going to be a Age Of Empire mobile game, but I didn't ask and didn't care. There's also some new Age Of Empire 4 content. But most of us here have never played the games, so I won't really mention them.

Ubisoft has announced that their service Ubisoft+ is coming to Game Pass, it will be a separate service, and no date has been announced yet. But Rainbow Six Extraction was also announced to be a day one game. Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2022/1/5/22868704/ubisoft-plus-xbox-launch-rainbow-six-extraction-xbox-game-pass

https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/09/21/microsoft-bethesda-xbox-exclusive-doom-starfield-fallout-elder-scrolls/ Many of us have been saying that Microsoft needs more exclusives for the XBox platform, and they seem to agree. They have acquired a number of studios over the past few years announcing many acquisitions during their 2018 E3 conference like Ninja Theory and Undead Labs. This time however, they are REALLY throwing their money around by acquiring Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 Billion. This has given Microsoft a big bin of IP's to rummage around in that include The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, Wolfenstein and more. If you're wondering how this affects Bethesda's releases on other platforms like Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4/5, Bethesda has assured that current plans for releases will go ahead as scheduled such as Deathloop remaining a PS5 timed exclusive. Ather that though it is likely that future releases like Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 may not come out on PlayStation or Nintendo systems. It's clearly no coincidence that they have announced this right before XBox Series S/X pre-orders become available. So how do you feel about this? With this new information are you considering the XBox Series X? Were you thinking of getting a PS5 but are now having second thoughts?

BioShock+Dead Space+ Metro 2033+Half-Life+Left 4 Dead/Operation Raccoon City+Half-Life+The Last of Us=Third Person Shooter Cooperative Science Fiction Survival Horror with shooter looter system like similar mechanics to The Division and environmental puzzles and have RE6/Uncharted Style multiplayer! Story Game set in an alternate history (which Eisenhower's didn't suspend U.S. nuclear testing and soviet union won the cold war) not too distant post-apocalyptic war. After the nuclear pandemic exchange known as " Armageddon Day " left devastated three quarter of world. Half of humanity live in under new national " Defense of United Treaty Government (DOUTG)", those who isn't living under United Government laws, rest of the survivors are to live in underground knowns as "CAVERS". The game following 4 players members of M.O.D.I.N.S (Mobile Officers Division Infectionist Nation and Search) Delta Ops Crews heading to Their mission in one of "Ashes City's." Ashes City's are abandonment city's once population by those once live here now left to fall. Reasoing why team arrives at Ashes City 13. They gotten repeatedly emergency reporting message from Commander of Central Division told ops about. One of their United Treaty Government research and defense facility base want silent under 24 hours so they need go in facility seem what happens then something started attacking chopper that caused malfunction crashes landing into the City 13. Their awakening in central of city, Delta Ops started ahead towards United Treaty Government research and defense facility. Off started their journey through city 13. Gameplay Players take on the role of M.O.D.I.N.S with each his or she different classes (Recon Commander,Medic,Breacher,Sniper,Gunner,Rifleman,Demolitions,Field Scientist and Engineer) and peaks with each have their own backstories. When the player earns enough experience points to gain a new level, they unlock an ability. When the player allocates more points to a statistic, more abilities can be unlocked. These perks can be upgraded to improve the protagonist's efficiency and to further unlock abilities. Controlling through "over-the-shoulder" third-person perspective which uses tank controls and fixed camera angles. The player traverses post-apocalyptic environments such as city, buildings, labs, and underground to advance the story, completing objectives given to players hands during the narrative, solving physics-based puzzles within the environment, and fighting monsters dubbed ”Vombie” and “Hynfecting“, play through the levels fighting off the infected—living genetici creatures who have been infected also dealing with cannabis gangs call “Eaters”. In the beginning of the game, players create their own agent by customizing the characters uniforms (unlocks them). In the game, players are equipped with different firearms, including assault rifles, sniper riflesand Submachine guns, and explosives like grenades to defeat enemies. The player's gear is categorized into seven levels: worn, standard, specialized, superior, high-end, gear set items or the rarer exotic items, each with a specific color code. Gear can be either bought, or found as in-game loot, or crafted from gathered materials. They have an opportunity for an "active reload", shown by a small cursor moving over a line with a marked section on the player's heads-up display(HUD). If the player hits a control button when the cursor is in the marked section. Focuses on cooperation and teamwork. If a survivor falls off a ledge, then they may automatically hang onto it and can only be helped up by another survivor. If a survivor's health) is depleted, then they become incapacitated and can only be revived by another survivor, at which point they continue playing with a low amount of health that decreases over time. If a survivor has been incapacitated and revived twice without tending to their wounds, then they will experience distorted black-and-white vision, and the next incapacitation will kill the character. If a survivor takes enough damage while incapacitated, or is not eventually helped up by teammates, then the incapacitated character will die. During "Campaign" mode, if a survivor is killed, then they will respawn) in a closet or other enclosed space after a period of time (except during key points in the scenario), but must be freed by another survivor to rejoin the team. Otherwise, the player must wait until the next level. The AI is incapable of accessing the "respawn closets", so if all human player survivors are killed or incapacitated, players will have to restart from the last checkpoint. Survivors can share first-aid kits and pain pills and help each other heal. The survivors communicate by voice commands that are accessed by quick menus, and some may sound off automatically when performing actions such as reloading or spotting infected. Regularly integrates puzzles, such as navigating a maze of conveyor belts or using nearby boxes to build a small staircase to the next area the player must travel to. Some puzzles involve using the environment to kill an enemy, like turning a valve to spray hot steam at their enemies. There are few bosses) in the conventional sense, where the player defeats a superior opponent by direct confrontation. The game provides several options for players to face challenges. In addition to direct combat, the player can use plasmids to lure enemies into traps or to turn enemies against each other, or employ stealth tactics to avoid detection by hostiles including the gangs, monsters and turrets. The player can hack) into any of Rapture's automated systems; the hacking process is done via a mini-game similar to Galaga,Space Invaders,Centipede,Crisis Force and M.U.S.H.A. With failure each time to complete in time costing XP for them. In combat, the player can use long-range weapons, such as rifles, shotguns, and bows, and short-range weapons such as handguns and short-barreled shotguns. The player is able to scavenge limited-use melee weapons, such as pipes and baseball bats, and throw bottles and bricks to distract, stun, or attack enemies. Multiplayer The game includes 5 regular game modes: The competitive multiplayers allows a maximum of twelve players. Ranks (or levels) are the visual representation of a player's experience earned. Being promoted to higher ranks will earn you more customizations and weapons. As ranks become higher, so does the amount of experience needed to be promoted to the next. There are a total of 60 ranks. Players can purchase different armor from The Armory, which also includes wrist armor, knee guards, utilities, visor colors, shoulder armor and armor effects. The Contractors: It is available by default. The main goal of the game is to accumulate a high score within a limited time without dying. However, players can now equip skills to their advantage. Killing an enemy with a melee attack will add 5 seconds to the timer. Killing an enemy with a Coup de grâce will add 7 seconds to the timer. Killing an enemy with a counter-attack will add 10 seconds to the timer instead. Killing multiple enemies with a single melee attack simply adds together the time gained for each kill. In this mode, up to four players can join together online and customize characters to fight. Team Deathmatch: Team Deathmatches feature two opposing teams: Modins vs Eaters. The goal is to score the most kills. The first team to reach a set number of kills wins the match, otherwise the team with more kills after the time runs out wins, meaning the match could end as a tie. The ideal goal of deathmatch matchmaking is five players per team. This will give a goal of 50 kills to win. Horde: That features arcade style combat with waves of enemies. Up to five players can join together to fight against 30 waves of the enemies. The difficulty increases as the players advance through the waves. Horde can be played on any multiplayer map, although players cannot play alongside bots. Higher difficulties feature stronger and more numerous enemies, as well as difficult enemy types in earlier waves and in larger numbers, but will also reward more XP and more bonus experience for successful completion. Capture The Flag: When playing with a Team of at least 5 people, a bit more strategy is required to play the game effectively. Capture the flag is an objective-based gametype, where teams compete to bring a flag, often taken from the opposing teams base, to a predetermined area, often your team's flag or base. flag cannot be returned if one's own flag is stolen. If the flag carrier dies or translocates, the flag is dropped. Dropped flags can be picked up by the team of the opposite color, and they are reset if touched by the team of the same color as the flag or if left untouched for 15 seconds. The first team to reach the game limit wins the match. Slayershooter: Features up to Ten players without teams who's only goal is to get the most amount of kills. The winners are placed in a list at the end of the match in the order of highest kills. After a character dies they will spawn randomly somewhere on the map.

This is a random topis that everyone want to share their own opinion on their favorite game. We are talking like the recent old consoles like wii u to oldies like NES, xbox, and PS1. All opinion are welcome, keep your judgement to yourself.

Yesterday Austin Evans (who I hadn't actully heard of untill now) posted an video where he got hands on with and did an analysis of the XBox Series X. I give Microsoft some credit they really did alow this guy to "bare it all" with the release still months away. It's a lot of information that you should see for yourselves but here is some of the points I found interesting: As we already knew the CPU is an 8 Core AMD ZEN 2 but what I don't think I knew before is that developers have an option to either enable the SMT treading for more threading for more threads or they can disable and get faster clock speeds which should help with optimization. The CPU is an AMD RDNA 2.0 with around 12 TFLOP's of performance, about what we expected. There is a 1TB custom SSD onboard and also as it turns out that port in the back is for is a proprietary external SSD that slot's in a bit like a PlayStation 2 memory card for storage expansion, my spider-sense tells me they will be quite expensive though. The new controllers aren’t much different, a few small ergonomic changes here and there but they are fully back-compatible with the XBox One Controllers (which are also forward compatible) and you can even use the same rechargeable battery packs so that's a plus. Like many, I was a little concerned about the shape but he shows in the video how it all fits together and cools and it actually makes sense. There are some other things about Ray-Tracing and HDR but it’s better explained visually. It's also interesting to note that today Sony announced that they will be doing a "Deep Dive" presentation into the system architecture of the PS5 so it will be interesting to see how the two stack up when put against each other. So what are your thoughts on Next Gen?

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