R(ob)’s Comments (group member since Jun 21, 2021)

R(ob)’s comments from the The Video Game Forum group.

Error wrote: "When we get near the end of the gen I'd love to just swap someone for a couple of months. I would like to try out those PS exclusives I've missed out on. Horizon, Last of Us, Days Gone. I don't kno..."

I have no trouble with my next games from games pass. FH5 currently and then Halo infinite in a few weeks time. Of late though to play Back4Blood, The Ascent, Maneater, Quake remaster, Control, MS Flight Simulator, Destroy All Humans, Psychonauts 2, Doom Eternal, Zombie Army 4, Prey, Destiny 2 all on games pass has been a massive saving. And to think Metro Exodus, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and A Plague Tale have all been on there too. I know it sounds like I'm justifying it but honestly I love games pass - so much that I've played for free. And next year Mass Effect Trilogy will be on there too no doubt as EA put all of there titles on there eventually. Such good value.

Yea I agree at least until now little reason to go dual console. Last gen I was mainly ps4 for years for obvious reasons. I wouldn’t be without games pass now though so I think I’m defo more Xbox focussed for the future. I’d say 80% of the games I want to play end up on games pass and then some that i wouldn’t normally play that turn out to be games I enjoy but didn’t know it. I think I’m waiting on the PS5 slim before I go dual console again.

Morning all. Started playing Forza Horizon 5 last night. Yet another new game in my current play list lol. I planned to play it for an hour just to see what it's like and found myself hooked and played it for almost 4 hours. It's definitely the best FH of the series and that's saying something as they've all been excellent games. The graphics are amazing - think I'm decided to stick with performance mode as it's still 4k albeit slightly less detailed than quality mode. The world is varied and detailed. I think the main difference they've nailed this time is the constant lure to move you on to the next thing, the next race, the next area, the next challenge - seems they've sussed how to keep up the momentum of keeping you hooked. I like the way the campaign, story, the season are all rolled into one. In FH4 it was all very much seperate and it kinda made the game disjointed. I think it deffo deserves 10/10 on what I've played so far. Only issue is there is far too much to play at the moment - not had this "issue" in a long time :-).

Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "I used to watch Quantum Leap. Sad news.

Glass. The Series S/X expansion card 1TB costs approx £200 and approx £400 for the 2..."

Yes looks good.

Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "I used to watch Quantum Leap. Sad news.

Glass. The Series S/X expansion card 1TB costs approx £200 and approx £400 for the 2TB (whatever the equivalent is in Euros). Without them you..."

If you’re not going for the Xbox expansion card I would go for an external SSD rather than external HDD. The speed improvement is definitely worth it in terms of load times for Xbox one games and transfer times between internal and external for series s game transfers. Remember you can’t play series S games from external drives except the official expansion card.

I got the 1TB expansion card for £180 and it behaves exactly the same as the internal drive. Pricey but it was a present to myself after a good yearly bonus.

One thing I forgot to mention is if you do get an external SSD it’s best to get one with USB 3.1 Gen 2 as this will give you the highest speeds. You can buy an SSD and put it in a caddy enclosure which is sometimes the cheaper option. E.g.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...

I used to watch Quantum Leap. Sad news.

Glass. The Series S/X expansion card 1TB costs approx £200 and approx £400 for the 2TB (whatever the equivalent is in Euros). Without them you could only play XBox One games from an external drive - as in a standard HDD (disk or solid state). Although if you buy a standard external solid state drive transferring Series S games between internal and external is very quick.

Also before subscribing to games pass check to see if MS still convert xbox gold to games pass for a £1. Gold is cheaper and you'd get games pass/ultimate for the price of a gold sub. And, if they still do it, you can stack it for a max of 3 years. Looking at the following reddit thread (most recent posts) they still do it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comm...

Plus over time if you collect MS points (from the rewards section of your MS account and in the rewards Xbox app) you can get a free month of ultimate for 12000 MS points. In the last few weeks I've manged to get three months for free just through collecting MS points.

Hi all. Been playing COD Vanguard. Completed six of the nine missions. The campaign is OK, not one of COD's best. It has some good levels and some bad ones - the Battle of Midway flying level IMO is awful. And it has some strange gameplay moments - a bad boss fight in one level. The graphics are amazing though on Series X. Looks to be a really short campaign even for COD. Also played around 8 hours of the multiplayer. I like the MP - I think they've done a lot of good maps that nail the WW2 feel - much better than the COD WW2 a few years ago. It also uses the modern warfare engine which means it has a quick time to kill, really good movement and some cracking graphics. And there is a really good selection of 20 maps. Some issues with spawn points but I'm sure they'll be fixed. Also plays well and has better graphics than Black Ops Cold War. Although I really like the Cold War MP. Enjoying it a lot on the whole - but I tend to like WW2 games. This week I'll be switching to Battleffield 2042 and then be dipping in and out of both.

I finally completed Back4Blood. 15 attempts in the end. Managed with three other randoms but I think what clinched it was maxing out cards with increased bullet damage so the bosses health bar went down faster, using an LMG to keep up sustained firing on the boss and razor wire (x3 with equipment slot card increase from 1 to 3) to slow down the horde overwhelming us in the boss fight second phase. Cracking game though, really enjoyed it.

Next COD Vanguard all day this coming Friday 😝.

Another several attempts at the final mission in Back4Blood and not even close. Must be on attempt 13 now. For recruit difficulty it really shouldn’t be this hard.

Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "Personally i'd go with the X. The S looks OK but it's really a 1080p 60fps machine (or 4k 30fps) with not a lot of internal s..."

Looks like an X for you then if you don't go PS5. ;-)

I love my X - but so far just for games pass and the better load times and visuals.

Glassmoon - The Benny Hill of Plats wrote: "R(ob) wrote: "Personally i'd go with the X. The S looks OK but it's really a 1080p 60fps machine (or 4k 30fps) with not a lot of internal storage and external storage (for S games) is expensive - y..."

For me to date there haven't been any games on either system that get me excited to buy a next gen console. PS5 can wait for me - not interested in it at all at the moment, but I expect that will change in the coming years with new games. However, this winter Halo Infinite and Fora Horizon 5 both come out and those both look amazing and right up my street. It's all about games pass ultimate at the moment - it is such good value - I won't have to pay for either FH5 or Halo Infinate. Plus the main thing is the crisper smoother visuals (on both machines) and most importantly load times. Otherwise I think next gen you can wait - nothing really that amazing available to date.

Personally i'd go with the X. The S looks OK but it's really a 1080p 60fps machine (or 4k 30fps) with not a lot of internal storage and external storage (for S games) is expensive - you'll effectively be paying for an X if you get an S with an expansion card. I'd say the Pro and S are similar it terms of graphical output except the S has the much faster load times. If you go for the X it's a 4k 60fps console with more than twice the storage of the S. Although I expect X games have bigger file sizes than S games.

Equinox80 wrote: "How do you accumulate MS points if you're not buying them?

Glad you're feeling better."

Thanks. It was scary and thankfully and hopefully it wasn't as serious as it first seemed.

MS points are like a loyality scheme - so you don't buy them. There are two main ways to earn them through your MS account (if you have one). Go to the MS rewards web page and each day complete some simple tasks (complete a quiz, take part in a vote, visit web pages) which takes me all of 5 mins each day. Switching your browser to Microsoft Edge/Bing on your devices earns you points each time you search for something - not missed google at all. And then the other main way is through gaming - there is a MS rewards app on the xbox so you can activate cards to complete a challenge such as earning achievements. And then quite a few you just get automatically by using the games pass app or playing a game pass game. For 10 mins of effort a day I get hundereds of points per day. Over the year I've worked out it will be well over 100,000 points - and a month of games pass ultimate is 12,000 points. 35,000 for three months. For the sake of 10 mins a day to do the various tasks (some of which I find interesting) it's a pretty good reward scheme. Plus with some games you get reward points - for example the new COD you get 6000 points.

Hi all. Been off ill last couple of weeks. However, I got to the final mission of Back4Blood and failed it six times now. I've tried with randoms and on my own and it's proving a tough one even on recruit. Got close once but got an insta death. Also completed Titanfall 2 for the second time and enjoyed it a lot. I've also been rinsing microsoft points and got two free months of game pass ultimate for free - so extended my sub to the end of next year now. I reckon I can can get ultimate for free just with MS points - I may never need to pay for it again. Free gaming :-).

DeckardCain's Sandals wrote: "Back 4 Blood is on my radar as I did like Left4Dead, but I'll wait till it's nearer the £20 mark. Good to hear it's not a disappointment though, there was always a chance it wouldn't match up to th..."

Of course better with friends but with randoms I'm having fun. Yea I think £20 is probably the biting point. Not that it's not great just that it's probably only an 8 hour campaign and depends on whether you'll play through it again on harder difficulties. It can be tricky even on recruit difficultly, although not always. If you guys get it on here I'll surely help you out if you want ;-). I'm playing with PC, PS and Xbox players - cross-platform play suits this game as opposed to COD or Battlefield where you feel PC players have the upper hand.

DeckardCain's Sandals wrote: "I was semi-tempted to push through to the end of Far Cry 6 but it seems like it's never ending. As open worlds go, there's definitely bigger out there but it's just quest after quest after sub-ques..."

This is what's putting me off it. I saw the size of the map and it looks huge and no doubt an opportunity to fill it full of map markers for pointless quests. That's why I gave up on AC Valhalla - after 30+ hours it felt like I was getting nowhere and just repeating the same mission structure which is OK for a reasonably length campaign but for after 30 hours I was barely half-way through the Valhalla campaign. From what I see Far Cry 6 is only 20ish hours campared to AC Valhalla which is at least 60+. Although I'm hearing Far Cry 6 is chilled out fun so that gives me hope.

Hi all. Been playing a load of Back 4 Blood in the last week. Not sure anyone is playing it here as it's cross-platform and a cracking co-op game - if anyone ever gets it here I'd be happy to play it again, even months down the line assuming it's still on games pass or cheap to buy. I've been playing it with randoms and still had a blast with it. It's left4dead with better shooting mechanics, cracking levels, lots of special zombies and the card system really adds something new to make you both more powerful but at the same time makes levels harder (sometimes) with the corruption cards (spawning more special, armoured specials or different behaviours). The dark tone of the game is spot on. Anyway probaly one of the best if not the best game I've played this gen so far. I don't like the PvP but the campaign is superb. There are I think 34 levels and I've got five left to do. I think generally it's been getting 8/10 review scores but for me it's better than that - it's the best of its genre (co-op zombie FPS campaign).

Hi all. I'm playing games at the mo you guys are probably not that interested in. Progressed further on my replay of Titanfall 2. Enjoying it a lot. And I played a good 10 hours of the Battlefield 2042 beta. I think I'm the only Battlefield player on the forum. Anyway other than the numerous glitches and bugs it's kinda good fun but at the same time they've changed quite a bit that will take away from team play. No classes, you can equip anything which means a medic might not have a medic load-out. So that's just confusing and the worse thing is that every player looks the same - the characters are exactly the same on both sides which means only a coloured dot identifies the enemy. Previously it was the dot and the character skin. So that's shit. I guess it's done to sell characters that can be used on any side. However, even with this I still enjoyed it enough but see how it pans out in the full release. And the other thing is no auto-aim - this makes the shooting mechanics feel a little clunky. Nearly every console FPS has auto-aim - a must really for controller input - so I hope they change that.

Hi all. Been floating around games a bit of late. Still haven't completed Destroy all Humans and now I've started a replay of Titanfall 2 - which is still an amazing campaign. Next week though it's Back4Blood time so looking forward to that.

Also put my orders in for christmas and birthday games - Far Cry 6 and Alan Wake Remastered. So they'll be christmas or early next year games.

I know most people don't play Xbox on here but I've recently discovered (or paid attention to) Microsoft Rewards. Basically for just doing stuff on my Xbox - playing games, earning achievements, the occasional quiz I'm earning a massive £5 per month for doing what I mostly do normally. Got £5 to spend on the XBox store in each of the last three months. It's become a bit of an obsession for £5 lol.

Hi all. Not much from me recently gaming wise. I have been continuing with Destroy All Humans and got to the final mission which so far is a ball ache. It's a boss fight where it throws everything at you at once. And then you have to repeat it three times the same format. I'm half considering giving up as at this point as I'm not enjoying it and it was only a game to fill some time (up until this point the game has been decent enough nothing special). I'll see next weekend if I can be bothered to finish it. Otherwise just lots of multiplayer for me. I did however find a setting on my TV (that I got for next gen) that I've never touched before. I've always thought my TV displayed quite soft (not very sharp) looking images and then boom turn this feature on and the image is super sharp and seemingly with no downsides. Doh (slaps forehead).