T w e n t y S i d e d
Let’s see what Microsoft has for us this year. My hot takes:
Xbox One S: The Xbox One-and-a-half. It’s smaller and has more oomph to make hitting 60fps more do-able. I feel strongly It should have been called the Xbone Extended Release, because “XBonER” is the only thing more fun to say than “Xbone”.
I spent the entire time snarking my way through Gears of Whatever and dumb crap about controllers, but then We Happy Few showed up and I basically stopped being able to think about anything else.
Minecraft: I don’t remember anything about the Minecraft presentation because they brought out John Carmack wearing a VR headset and had him say just 2 lines of dialog.
Scalebound looks like Marlow Briggs crossed with Final Fantasy.
Sea of Thieves: This looks like streamer fodder for the Yogscasts of the world.
State of Decay 2: I have no idea.
Halo Wars 2: RTS on a controller didn’t work last time, but… we’re trying again anyway.
Xbox Scorpio: Wait. You already announced the Xbox One S! Now you’re announcing the next gen console? What?
Final Thoughts:
Mixing “You have the Freedom to choose!” with “Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive!” was pretty hilariously dissonant.
Spoiler Warning
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
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My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.
I’ve only played the very early pre-release We Happy Few, like, months ago… But it’s amazing. As good as advertised. With clearly more coming. The videos of Uncle Jack on YouTube will convince you to go buy it instantly… At least, if you’re anything like me.
(I was on the Kickstarter, but can only play via Boot Camp on my Mac.)
I really wanted to back We Happy Few on Kickstarter, but I can’t actually remember if I did. I’ll have to check when I get home!
I really like the vibe, which strongly reminds me of the original The Prisoner BBC series with Patrick McGoohan.
Scorpio?
Man, all I can think of is Simpsons references now.
I saw lots of folks upset/teasing about the “only one XBox One or Windows 10!” stuff, and I just kept thinking to myself “This is the Microsoft presentation – did you really expect them to announce a bunch of stuff for Sony?”
Pretty sure people are upset because of the Windows 10 bit, not the xbox bit. It either forces people to upgrade to Win 10, or miss out on the stuff.
Windows 10 works fine. The issue is the pushy upgrade rollout, not the OS. Microsoft is keeping with their “every other one” hit parade.
Depends what you use. I know for a fact a few programs we use at work won’t work with Win 10, so we cannot upgrade anyway.
But yes, that pushy upgrade approach isn’t doing them any favour either.
Halo Wars was actually pretty fun. The only reason we didn’t get a sequel sooner was because the studio was apparently a complete mess and had to be shut down.
I guess MS is trying to one-up Sony. “They’ve got two versions of their console? Fuck them, we’ll do three!”
State of Decay is a wonderful RPG/strategy zombie-basher. There’s still time to play it before the sequel comes out.
The trailer focuses on the updated art and graphics, as they do, but I’m hopeful that the gameplay is as good as the original. It looks like the same folks are making the sequel, which is a good sign.
I agree with Josh.
State of decay is a very cool survival with zombies. You control one group of survivors looking for food, medicine, ammo, etc while dealing with external and internal threats.
It’s basically a strategy game, but with people and permanent death.
Characters are auto generated aside from characters introduced via the story.
Halo Wars “worked” and sold pretty well actually. I wonder if the new dev team will make something even more impressive or if it’ll be more of the same.
Agreed. Halo Wars worked just fine. Yes, not as good as it would have with a mouse, but hey, guess what? Halo Wars 2 is on PC as well and they’re bringing over Halo Wars 1 too.
Scalebound: Mechanically, it looks decent enough for what it probably is, (A potential inoffensive selling point to convince Sega that maybe Bayonetta 3 should go back to cross-platform or exclusive to an adult console) but unless they re-record a lot of stuff and this isn’t representative of the final voice acting/writing? This is NOT going to be a fanboy darling in the way Bayonetta became, especially since they have a lot of obnoxious, Sonic Boom-esque, voice stabs in their demo.