Xbox Game Pass for Console, PC, and Android

ClockworkHouse wrote:

The first hour or two of Rage 2 is garbage. Once you get a few of your powers, though, it's a blast.

I loved Mad Max so, SO much, and I want to believe this because it's from the same folks.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

The first hour or two of Rage 2 is garbage. Once you get a few of your powers, though, it's a blast.

It's a good bad game.

If what you're looking for is super tight gun play with a flabby open world and an entirely superfluous and forgettable narrative, it's great.

I’m not really familiar with Hellblade. Will my wife, who is looking for something in the Tomb Raider-Zelda-HZD vane, like this. Am I right in thinking this Hellblade is like those in Having exploration, puzzles, and some combat?

Those aren't great comparisons. Hellblade is uber linear.

However, you should definitely get her to play it. The comparison to those games works in terms of taste more than actual game.

Jonman wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

The first hour or two of Rage 2 is garbage. Once you get a few of your powers, though, it's a blast.

It's a good bad game.

If what you're looking for is super tight gun play with a flabby open world and an entirely superfluous and forgettable narrative, it's great.

That's a good way to put it.

You have to cut through some crap to get there, but there are few things I've done in gaming recently that were more fun than plowing into an enemy outpost in Rage 2 and wrecking shit with the different powers and weapons (one of the best shotguns in gaming, for real).

But the only reason I stuck through that opening hour was the faith I have in id as a developer after the new Doom. I very nearly didn't go back after my first play session.

I did my first play session of Rage 2 a couple days ago and I was wondering if I was going to ever play more or if it would collect dust. I saw hints of something fun in there I just wasn't convinced by the first hour or so that I would hang around long enough to find it. Your comments have made me think I really should give it more time as I do like over the top action and good bad games.

I gave Mad Max a couple sessions and never went back....

I've played Riverbond a few times with my kids and we've been having a lot of fun. It's a very light action dungeon crawler with kid friendly voxel graphics. It is not a loot game like Diablo. The fact that it has no real persistence between game sessions (other than character skins) makes it as lot nicer for drop in sessions with my kids without setup time and the short levels are good for quick low commitment sessions. We'll likely try Minecraft Dungeons when it comes to game pass in 2020.

pandasuit wrote:

I did my first play session of Rage 2 a couple days ago and I was wondering if I was going to ever play more or if it would collect dust. I saw hints of something fun in there I just wasn't convinced by the first hour or so that I would hang around long enough to find it. Your comments have made me think I really should give it more time as I do like over the top action and good bad games.

I gave Mad Max a couple sessions and never went back....

I've played Riverbond a few times with my kids and we've been having a lot of fun. It's a very light action dungeon crawler with kid friendly voxel graphics. It is not a loot game like Diablo. The fact that it has no real persistence between game sessions (other than character skins) makes it as lot nicer for drop in sessions with my kids without setup time and the short levels are good for quick low commitment sessions. We'll likely try Minecraft Dungeons when it comes to game pass in 2020.

1) Give Mad Max another session, it's wonderful!

2) I thought Riverbond was perfect for co-oping with the kids, but they actually said it was too easy! I loved the silly skins.

3) CANNOT WAIT for Minecraft Dungeons! Hopefully that will be the next great co-op game to play with my kids. There aren't enough good co-ops for all ages. Super Mario 3D World is our all-time favorite, but I feel like there must be more great stuff out there. Sadly, Lego Harry Potter only supports two players.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

I did my first play session of Rage 2 a couple days ago and I was wondering if I was going to ever play more or if it would collect dust. I saw hints of something fun in there I just wasn't convinced by the first hour or so that I would hang around long enough to find it. Your comments have made me think I really should give it more time as I do like over the top action and good bad games.

I gave Mad Max a couple sessions and never went back....

I've played Riverbond a few times with my kids and we've been having a lot of fun. It's a very light action dungeon crawler with kid friendly voxel graphics. It is not a loot game like Diablo. The fact that it has no real persistence between game sessions (other than character skins) makes it as lot nicer for drop in sessions with my kids without setup time and the short levels are good for quick low commitment sessions. We'll likely try Minecraft Dungeons when it comes to game pass in 2020.

1) Give Mad Max another session, it's wonderful!

2) I thought Riverbond was perfect for co-oping with the kids, but they actually said it was too easy! I loved the silly skins.

3) CANNOT WAIT for Minecraft Dungeons! Hopefully that will be the next great co-op game to play with my kids. There aren't enough good co-ops for all ages. Super Mario 3D World is our all-time favorite, but I feel like there must be more great stuff out there. Sadly, Lego Harry Potter only supports two players.

1) I should but probably won’t. Too much great single player stuff I still haven’t got back to and now The Witcher 3 is on game pass it’s top of my list for single player time.

2) Sounds right. Yeah we blast through easily but my kids aren’t yet looking for challenge. For my 5yo it’s about perfect.

3) So much this. We don’t have a Wii U or we would have tried Super Mario 3D World by now. I’m hoping it comes to Switch. We tried the LEGO games but my 5yo struggles with them a lot. Too bad too because both my kids love legos.

I am always looking for coop games that appeal to kids and adults. We mostly play Minecraft together but I’m looking for more variety. I showed them Adventure Pals and they are really into it but we haven’t played a ton yet as I only have it on PC. I’ve been setting up a desktop PC in our family room to expand which games we can play together.

The Lego games can be frustrating as you constantly hunt for the unintuitive thing they want you to do next. Still, we've enjoyed them. My kids are 10 and nearly 8.

GTA V just added to Game Pass. I'll probably download this and poke around. I played it at launch on PS3 but have always been curious about the Online stuff, but not curious enough to pay money for a current gen copy of it.

Now that Humble Bundle has switched their delivery methodology, I’ve been thinking of switching over to Game Pass as my game subscription service. I saw upthread there’s some ways of getting a lengthy subscription for less than list price. Is this still possible? And if so what are the steps?

staygold wrote:

Now that Humble Bundle has switched their delivery methodology, I’ve been thinking of switching over to Game Pass as my game subscription service. I saw upthread there’s some ways of getting a lengthy subscription for less than list price. Is this still possible? And if so what are the steps?

There has been a deal where your buy a bunch of Xbox Live Gold, max 3 years, then pay a dollar to convert it all to Gamepass.

I finished all of the quests in the app. Subnautica took the longest. I kind of floundered (intended) for a long time.

My kids spent a good chunk of the weekend building increasingly elaborate tracks (and environments) in the game Tracks. Worth a download if you have younger kids but be warned that the interface is very un-user friendly. My 8 year old was determined enough to learn it but her younger brother mostly just drives the train and directs her how to build.

Evo wrote:

My kids spent a good chunk of the weekend building increasingly elaborate tracks (and environments) in the game Tracks. Worth a download if you have younger kids but be warned that the interface is very un-user friendly. My 8 year old was determined enough to learn it but her younger brother mostly just drives the train and directs her how to build.

This lines up with my experience - my 5 year old wasn't interested in fighting the UI.

I tinkered with it. *no wait* I toyed with it for a short time but the interface got the best of me. My 11yo messed with it for about 3 minutes and then switched to Minecraft.

I had a fun few hours with Tracks as an adult too. Can confirm that the UI is bad (not just a little bad, but not epic levels of bad either), but it is possible to acclimate to it.

Children of Morta was added on both Xbox and PC. I've read elsewhere on the forum that it is really good. Definitely going to give it a try.

pandasuit wrote:

Children of Morta was added on both Xbox and PC. I've read elsewhere on the forum that it is really good. Definitely going to give it a try.

Cool, that's one I definitely want to play. Frostpunk was added last week, which I've played for a few hours so far. It's as unrelentingly bleak as I'd heard it was!

Its a wonderful game (Frostpunk), but man its a downer. I can't play for more than an hour or two, until the bleakness gets me. It was the same with their previous game though - This War of Mine. And of course, when I saw their DLC for This War of Mine - The Little ones, I noped the heck out of there. SO harsh.

Still - they make excellent games!

Yeah, I've been wanting to play Frostpunk for a while, so installed it as soon as I could. Good lord, I am not in the headspace for that game. I'll give it some time until I'm doing better, I think. From what I played, it's clearly a good game and worth playing, but yeah, not so good for the mental health.

pandasuit wrote:

Children of Morta was added on both Xbox and PC. I've read elsewhere on the forum that it is really good. Definitely going to give it a try.

Sweet!

My plan of not buying games I want and just waiting for them to hit Game Pass is working out!

Next up for my plan - GWJ GOTY 2019: Control!

EDIT - except of course, it's throwing errors at me when I try and install. I've had this happen a few times with Game Pass games when they first hit the service. Don't ever change, Microsoft!

Gris and A Plague Tale: Innocence also coming to PC Game Pass "soon". I hope those also come to console.

Announced this morning on the Game Pass IG story as "coming soon"

Console:
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Indivisible
Fishing Sim World Pro Tour
Sea Salt

PC:
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Gris
Scourge Bringer
Sea Salt

Game Pass for PT:I could give me the motivation I need to finish that game that I purchased on disc (what, I'm supposed to get up and put it in the drive?!?!), and I've heard good things about Indivisible. From what I've heard, I'm not interested in Gris. No idea what Sea Salt and Scourge Bringer are. I could end up installing the Fishing game if it's a small enough download to make it worth poking at for 5 minutes (or if the achievements are super easy).

(and yes, ClockworkHouse already ID'ed a couple of these, I'm just reporting what's on the instagram!)

I feel like there needs to be some whiskey before playing the fishing game. There will be.

I would so much rather have had Gris on console than a fishing sim.

There are at least 5-6 games that all came to GamePass within a week or two after I decided to pull the trigger on buying them. Children of Morta was the last, and now I just grabbed Plague Tale and..... there it is.

Apparently my purchasing habits are one of Microsoft's decision points. I didn't realize I had such power

Phades wrote:

There are at least 5-6 games that all came to GamePass within a week or two after I decided to pull the trigger on buying them. Children of Morta was the last, and now I just grabbed Plague Tale and..... there it is.

Apparently my purchasing habits are one of Microsoft's decision points. I didn't realize I had such power ;)

Can you buy Control please?!?

There's been some interesting research recently into algorithmically identifying customers who tend to buy products that will go on to be successful. Not influencers in a social group who can start trends, but simply people who have a tendency toward buying things other people will like. Maybe you're one of those!

There's also some really fascinating research into people who are the opposite: products they buy tend to fail and so they're predictors of products that won't be successful. I forget the term for them. Internally, Nintendo calls them Wii U owners.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

There's been some interesting research recently into algorithmically identifying customers who tend to buy products that will go on to be successful. Not influencers in a social group who can start trends, but simply people who have a tendency toward buying things other people will like. Maybe you're one of those!

There's also some really fascinating research into people who are the opposite: products they buy tend to fail and so they're predictors of products that won't be successful. I forget the term for them. Internally, Nintendo calls them Wii U owners.

My friends used to say that any TV show I told them to watch was likely to get cancelled after 1 season. The evidence supports it.