nofriendo

Don't sleep on Lil Gator Game! It's a recent favorite of mine, wholesome, well-designed, and loaded with charm.

It's gonna be a scary-ass October with Dead Space and Alan Wake 2. Survival horror fans are eatin' good this month!

Never tried a GTA game but curious what all the fuss is about. GTAV current gen sounds like a nice treat.

Written and voiced by AI? Easy way to collect some money for these celebs, methinks.

@AFCC I must say that Direct has me pretty excited to jump into Starfield. My main concern is will I personally find the gameplay engaging enough to make me want to explore the galaxy they've created. I enjoy No Man's Sky quite a bit, but the whole experience is pretty hollow due to the procedural generation. There needs to be enough "intelligent design" (LOL) in the landscapes and environments for me. I don't project that much imagination onto computer-generated surfaces. I need a strong narrative and genuine discovery. I have enough algorithms in my life and they all leave me cold or creep me out. And pointing a gun at things and shooting just ain't enough to keep me interested. I do have much higher hopes for the game after the Direct, though. How about you?

I am intrigued. Meanwhile, if you've an itch for solid first-person fantasy, try the criminally overlooked Blacktail.

Visually impressive, wonderful atmosphere, distractingly flawed writing and voice acting, and too glitchy at present to keep me immersed. Sigh.

Just picked up Sable at a cool $10! Now I can continue where I left of from my Game Pass save. God I love this game!

I played the demo and was genuinely delighted and terrified by it. Hope this comes to Gamepass!

Can't believe it beat out the game about a dad realizing his child is growing up too fast and becoming hard to connect with, developed and played mostly by dads who should be spending more time with their children!

Just buy Immortals: Fenyx Rising and Rayman Legends and you'll have the only two good Ubisoft games and can call it a day.

Chinatown Detective Agency is a good time if you like mystery adventure games.

Maybe one day, and I know this is a ridiculous thought, games won't be announced until they are FINISHED, allowing for a three to six month marketing cycle leading up to release. Hey, I can dream!

Thank you for inserting your bread. Your toast has been delayed into 2024.

@Jenkinss Yeah, I still don't see it. One company is behaving in a way that is proven to be bad for consumers, so if another company starts doing it, it's wonderful news. Just doesn't make sense. In the context of the console wars, another thing that is horrible for everybody but the giant corporations trying to gobble up more and more resources and market share, parity across monopolies seems like a kind of fairness. But again, the gamers lose. The ecosystem loses. Maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the long term. It's not opinion, there's precedent across almost every industry.

@J_Mo_Money I'm afraid I don't see the logic here. Decent AA games or just AA games in general are quite few and far between, where once the scene was dominated by fantastic mid-tier games. When companies consolidate under giant corporate umbrellas, fewer risks are taken on non-tentpole IPs. Just look at the movie industry and the MCU-ification of American cinema. And the indie scene is flourishing, yes, and I would argue that it DOES have something to do with corporate consolidation but not for the reason you do. The AAA scene has grown increasingly homogenized and bland, so gamers are more and more seeking out unique experiences that large studios so rarely offer these days. That's my take, anyway.

@Kaloudz I guess what I'm saying is it's more than selfish, it's short-sighted. What happens in boardrooms has an impact on a lot of people and could eventually make gaming a lot worse for everyone. "I love playing games now and I'll sacrifice the future of gaming to save a few bucks" isn't a sustainable worldview, imo. But I get what you're saying about playing big games day one without shelling out cash. Microsoft is counting on this mentality to overshadow the bleak future that's in store for us when just a tiny handful of companies control all of gaming media. We want to PLAY Cyberpunk, not live it.

So disheartening to read so many people cheering on a massive corporation as it continues to monopolize the videogame landscape. You'd think everyone here were business bros rather than gamers, who will surely be the losers in any consolidation scenario, be it Sony or Microsoft. Maybe not immediately - a few more games on game pass! yay! - but certainly down the road.

@Titntin Was meant as a joke as I'm 100 hours in and still discovering new areas. You're right enough, it's massive!

Thank God. The Lands Between were paltry and frankly felt claustrophobic. A little more terrain to cover would be nice!

Certainly not Atomic Shart! I'm very close to picking up the Hot Wheels FH5 expansion and just want it to dip a little lower on sale before doing so, but it really looks like a blast. I had a lot of fun with the Hot Wheels game, but I want my Hot Wheels with AAA graphics, too, ya know? That and Kirby's Return to DreamLand Deluxe over on the Switch. Keeping it light this weekend. Cheers to all!

I'm in the US, eastern time zone, and not seeing the free trial after following the instructions above. Any tips?

Edit: Found it! They really couldn't have made it less clear. If you scroll down on the product page, the cover image appears again, with no text but the title of the game, and selecting it brings up the free trial screen. It's a 72 GB installation.

I'm playing it now. It's fantastic. It's really, really good. And it's a video game ass video game. Music, animation, writing and voice acting are all phenomenal. Gameplay is varied and compelling and beautifully paced. What a gem to drop out of the sky!

I can't believe we're not getting this game where you walk around a post-apocalyptic landscape shooting things!

@fbnaulin Welcome in, buddy. I'm going to have to ask you to wait right there a moment. It's one in, one out. Don't worry, someone will be along shortly going the other direction. You won't be waiting long. Till then, enjoy this complimentary Switch Lite loaded with Indie gems.

I think it's in Microsoft's best interest to make sure this game releases in as healthy and finished a state as possible. It'd be a nice little advertisement for consolidation if it can be shown that acquisition by Microsoft will give a studio the breathing room it needs to ship a game when it's done, and without crushing the developers and QA staff in the process.

Love Street Fighter 30th over on my Switch. Fantastic collection that hits all the notes of my youthful obsession with Street Fighter. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is the first arcade game I ever played, down at Lamppost Pizza.

I can't imagine a less appealing game! This one is absolutely not for me.

Monster Hunter Rise will make mine a very happy January indeed.

I'll be trying all of them! Love it when they do this.

An hour in and I hit a game-breaking bug. Will have to start over unless they patch in a way to reset your character to a checkpoint, because I clipped behind a staircase and now can't escape. My save file loads me right back into the glitch. A real shame because I was utterly charmed by what I'd experienced so far.

@Somebody Well said. I'm glad Somebody spoke up!

What a treat getting a couple free indie games tossed my way every month. I'm all for it.

Bladed Fury looks fantastic, actually. Will definitely give that a go.

I found this amusing for a while but ultimately lacking in any kind of motivating narrative and the "rules" or "physics" felt a little inconsistent. I do think it should be experienced because the opening hour or two are indeed mind-bending.

This sounds about right for Xbox.

Any chance this headline is a reference to a Benny Hill sketch? Or is it just a common Britishism?

@Kaloudz So you can deal some damage to a bad actor in an industry known for being exploitative, and so you can warn other people not to do business with them. Especially if you STILL haven't gotten paid for work done years ago and you hope to put shame or pressure them into doing the right thing.

I will buy this and play this before God of War Ragnarok, even though I do want to experience that game. Sonic just gets me in the feels. I'm elated it's not terrible and I feel confident this adventure will be well worth the price of embarking on it. To be honest I'm a bit exhausted from all the grim violence of the AAA scene and could really use a new... frontier... at the moment. It's a good day to be a Sonic fan!

Will jump back into Supraland. Really enjoyed the few hours I spent with it a while back, just got swept aside for bigger, flashier releases.

@Titntin Cheers to that and the same to you! Nice to see folks expressing this kind of sentiment on this kind of forum.

@Titntin Same. I can appreciate the accomplishment and the advent of something new and unique on the scene, but this is just the sort of thing I don't need knocking around my head at the moment. I'm closer to the Banjo Kazooie end of the spectrum mentally just now

I second this take. Play a boomer shooter how you WANT it to play, not how it used to play back in the day. This is the experience I've been looking for. Well done!

@gollumb82 I'm playing through GRID: Legends now and enjoying it immensely. The racing is top-notch but honestly the campy AF live-action narrative stitching everything together is wonderful and welcome. Don't remember ever getting into a racing game's story before - maybe Megarace from back in the day! Shout out Lance Boyle.

This game looks so dang crunchy I want to put it in a bowl and eat it with milk like it's Grape Nuts.

I tried it and found it a disappointing experience. Certainly very slick, beautifully designed, well-acted and well-written. It's a pleasure to be roaming around such an expertly crafted world in the grip of a cinematic plot. But the environmental storytelling and mandatory menu drudgery completely overwhelmed the gameplay experience for me. I didn't care to continue and uninstalled.

Everything Sony are doing now to expand revenue into other spaces, including film, PC and mobile, is in preparation for the blow of losing CoD. I could see them gathering the best talent from their incredible studios and creating a serious CoD contender and be happy with that going forward. If CoD suddenly loses a sizeable portion of its players, which exclusivity would doubtless do immediately and in the long run, its dominance of the market may dissolve, or lessen to an extent that allows a healthier competitive scene - surely a win for gamers?

Dang. Must finish Flynn: Son of Crimson before then. Enjoying that one quite a bit.

This is one of the biggest releases of the year. It's gotten a ton of press given how amazing it looks and the pedigree of the developers. It would be a huge get for Game Pass but it doesn't make sense for the developers. My thought is that the game will sell very well on its own right out the gate. It doesn't have a visibility problem therefore it doesn't need Game Pass.

@Banjo- Certainly can't argue with that trio. Ocarina of Time... I'll remember what it felt like to play that game for all my living days. I rate Breath of the Wild higher because it is the only other game that's managed to recreate that feeling for me, only stretched out to 550 hours and counting. Is it a much different game? Absolutely. Does it feel like the reincarnation of the soul of Ocarina of Time, just in a different body? It does to this gamer.