Dexterryu

For the first part, I kind of feel like they are the same game play loop (across several genre's)... big open map with lots of things to collect. Scattered "strongholds" for you to take down and claim territory, specific NPCs with quests in each area... one of which will betray you at some point, wrapping up with one "charismatic" bad guy that everyone teams up to bring down at the end. FC3 was the best of the FCs for me. It had characters that found a way to make you care about them. They were your characters friends, not random people your character gets to know and become trusted buddies with the second they meet (basically why FC4-6 feel hollow to me). It's the only thing that didn't feel like it was trying to copy something going on in pop culture. Odyssey and Valhalla were close for me. The #1 thing that turned me off on Odyssey is the quest design that seemed to want to send me as far away as possible and make me steer a ship for 15-20 minutes at a time if I wasn't fortunate enough the have a fast travel unlocked.

I'm not saying that they are bad. They are just the EA sports of their genre's. You're buying the same game reskinned, which is why they catch flack. I really tried to like Far Cry 6, but didn't find story or characters to pull me in... which is why the same gameplay loop since FC3 got boring for me and I ended up quitting. As for AC, I played and liked all of them... but with each one I was ready to be done with before the stories finished because they just got a little too repetitive.

Hard to disagree with the OP. Pretty much all Ubi games are the same: Big open maps that act as a checklist and usually get boring way before their narrative wraps up... Far Cry 3 created the mold and was the last truly good Far Cry game. AC rebooted itself and is the same game re-skinned since origins. Watch Dogs hasn't ever really been good. Their 1 unique(ish) game has been Fenyx.

No One Lives Forever Command and Conquer Titanfall Oregon Trail

Definitely on my list, but knowing how much it will also piss me off I'm going to wait for the sale.

Finished the game yesterday. Comparing to Fallen Order, the narrative and level design were better in the first, IMHO. I'd rate the combat in Survivor better, but mostly because of the added variety in stances. Overall I'd rate the first one better, though both are really good. Survivor feels a little bloated and less creative (especially at the end where it's often just room after room/wave after wave of enemies. I also felt the boss fights in the first one were better... Survivor falls into the very untrue trope of opponents getting better/stronger the more the player kicks their butt. I'm also not a big fan of the "red" unblockable attacks. Having played a ton of souls games, the way this worked reminded me a lot of DS2 where the enemies would often "lock on" and hit me regardless of dodging. I don't remember that happening at all in the first game.

Agree to disagree. I'm not going to play "who's dick is bigger" with you. CEOs at companies just can't get involved with smallish individual products. Flagship products like the Xbox itself, sure... but a release from a subsidiary of a subsidiary, no. It doesn't scale. The lone exception is Elon.

His official title is CEO of Xbox Game Studios. This is not the way a leader of leaders work in a company as large as MS. He more than likely has subordinates that are responsible for various areas that he trusts to inform him. Obviously someone within that chain of command screwed up badly in this case and is likely going to pay the price. It's ultimately on him that this happened and on him to see that it's both fixed and doesn't happen again... but to think he's directly playing, reviewing, etc every game (even big ones) is just not how things work. What he was likely shown was the good stuff by his team because they want to look good to their CEO. He probably saw the sugar coated highlights. That's realistically all CEOs have the time for.

What Phil said about Redfall is god awful, but overall he's been good for Xbox and gaming in general. He corrected the Xbox One as a media center and has evangelized cross play console / PC play. As a CEO, he probably didn't have direct hands on to the launch of this game and just looked at the data his teams were giving him.

How exactly is he taking responsibility? Just saying something doesn't mean anything. Is he refunding everyone their $$? Giving the game away free? Fixing it?

Really nothing special here.

I think we're aligned. I contrasted Sekiro as difficult where DS2 as punishing. DS2 IMHO was an entire game modeled after Sen's Fortress.

I also agree on this too. I think it also makes sense now that the game is not randomized. Eventually players will memorize the world and not even need the map. I know I had a pretty good feel for the areas just in the 2 beta weekends.

And I think this is the difference between difficult and punishing. Let's look at DS2 vs Sekiro. I'm chosing these because these are the only two FromSoftware games that I personally put down. Sekiro is very difficult and I wouldn't want it changed to be easier. It's difficulty is very high, but fair. DS2 is punishing. The Devs overly leaned into the popularity of DS1's difficulty and made it punishing. I put Sekiro down because it demanded a skillset that I felt was beyond me. I put DS2 down because it punished me by making itself more difficult after every death... IMHO there is a reason why this mechanic hasn't returned in any other FromSoftware game. Difficult is fine and fun. Punishing turns most people away.

It really depends on why parts of them are difficult. When I look at Elden Ring, BB, DS1 / DS3, and DeS I feel like the difficulty is fair. On the other hand DS2 went overboard and over indexed on the difficulty. For example most of the games had ambushes that punished you for rushing ahead too quickly, not watching corners, or other silly things like getting greedy. DS2 on the other hand had coordinated ambushes from multiple angles that would kill you in seconds even if you were prepared and knew they were coming. Combine that to the fact that dying slowly reduced your health made it punishing to explore and diminished what is a cool part of all of the souls games. Sekiro is the game that I haven't listed because it IS more of the type of game that's either for you or it's not since there is really just 1 build and no way to take a different approach.

Melenia so far is the 1 thing in Elden Ring that I cannot kill either. I've gotten close several times but 1 mistake on her waterfowl dance in you lose. That said, I've only tried it far below her recommended level of like 180.

I got into the Souls Genre late with Elden Ring and after I "Got it" I bought and started playing through them all. Here is how I rank them in terms of difficulty: 1. Sekiro - I didn't get passed Genshiro. Had a vacation and then played something else and never went back to it. 2. DS2 - Just didn't feel right for me. Controls felt off and the ambushes a were too much. 3. DS1 - Mostly just the older controls. 4. Bloodborne 5. DeS Remake 6. Elden Ring - Melenia is still the hardest boss I've faced (not counting the ones I missed in Sekiro). 7. Dark Souls 3 As for my favorites... that's a pretty even tie between Elden Ring and BloodBorne.

Honestly even that reset was annoying. On the Barb I was trying out I hit level 10 while almost at the boss of a dungeon. I fought him and was getting him to like 5% and dying. At which point I remembered at L10 you can get a potion upgrade so I left, upgraded, come back and the whole thing was reset.

For the most part this is accurate except that it's not a full MMO. More of a live service game in the vein of Destiny 2. Which I think is actually great. It's missing the Massively in MMO in that it doesn't have 100's or 1000's of people sharing the same world instance. Really the only part of the multiplayer part that doesn't really seem to fit is that the games narrative & general vibe is more that of a single player game.

I planned for and played a ton this weekend. Mostly because I know my gaming buddies are going to be all in on this and between the two betas I wanted to get time in on each class. Got Sorcerer to 25, Rogue to 20, and Barb to 15. All 3 were fun, but I'd say that the Barb has some problems at the moment. They really struggle with Bosses because they need to be up close with the bosses, mitigation abilities have long cooldowns, and feel very gear dependent. Bosses basically need to be kited by all 3 classes and Barbarians aren't really built with that in mind. That being said, who knows what things will look like past the early stages of the game but at the moment the early game bosses for Barbarians is not so great. Outside of that: 1. Graphics are great, though the in engine cutscenes look very dated as they zoom in and details don't look so great up close. 2. Gameplay and moment to moment combat is really fun. Especially once you have your ability bar full of cool abilities. 3. Dungeons are mixed. They're fun but have a lot of backtracking as they all have the same sort of mechanism of find 1-3 keys to proceed. Could be fixed with some shortcuts back to the main corridor. 4. Open world is mostly good. Events are fun, but in general those are really the only times I want to see other players that aren't in my party. There are some weird things that happen with the auto leveling of mobs when a low level and high level player are nearby. 5. The aspects for each class plus the ability to craft legendaries with them in combination with a nice Rare item is really cool. Should be able to make a lot of builds be specialized on that which hopefully also allows for a lot of build variety. Looking forward to this coming weekend to try out the Necro and Druid.

Completely valid. As I mentioned I really enjoyed the game, but as someone that is a little older and limitted on time, the stuff that I listed mostly was just padding which I really don't like over a much more tightly focused narrative. I had similar problems with Forbidden West and Ragnarok compared to their first entries. In those cases I felt like sometimes games added too much. I tend to roll my eyes when a dev says main story is 30-40 hours but there's 100+ hours of content. That means that up to 60% of the game is padding. So far for the games that I've played the only time I found that to be true where a very high percentage of that content felt unique was Witcher 3. Mass Effect is a great example - Trilogy was generally very focused. Almost everything you did in it had a high impact on the story and narrative. Then you have Andromeda which had you driving to remote locations of planets to scan a plant for 2 seconds. Likewise with Elden Ring... Tons of stuff to do in that world and each dungeon could contain an item or something that greatly effected the way you played vs having a +1 stat point upgrade on something you already have. At any rate... I'm way off topic but Hogwarts felt like it could have been true GOTY with some restraint and focus.

I'm just about to finish the game. Literally on the last fight before I had to stop for my buddy arriving to lift. The game is really good with high production values but I don't think it'll be anywhere near GOTY contention. It's a solid "Ubisoft"-like open world RPG but does a lot of things that really started to nag me as I approached the end. 1. I HATE collectathon maps. Especially ones that have you do the same 3-4 tasks over and over again. Pages, Merlin Trials, Astronomy, Ancient Magic spots... Fun once or twice but I don't need to do them 100x. 2. Side Quests are mostly - Do this really basic thing for some random person. 3. Combat - Generally really good... but some fights had endlessly spawning adds which is just something I really dislike (Spiderman did this too much too). Outside of that Enemy Variety was a lacking and the targeting system was a little unreliable. Because enemies would often spawn behind you, it was sometimes difficult to have tactics. Those three issues aside... the main quest and 3 main companion quest lines were all very entertaining and interesting. For a first entry into what is likely going to be a series it is very good. Hopefully Expansions/Sequels are a bit more focused.

Gunstocks are decent, but games aren't designed around them so it's no super intuitive.

There are some gunstocks where you can mount the controllers that work pretty decent for Index/Vive. That said they aren't cheap and they're still also light (compared to an actual rifle). Handguns still feel better.

Shooting in VR is kinda mixed IMHO. Here is my experience: Any longer/larger gun that requires 2 hands and precise aiming is very weird in VR without a "gunstock" to properly use 2 hands with. Even still, they miss out on a lot of the feel of actually firing a rifle or shotgun due to the lack of weight and physical recoil. This is similar issue I have with most sword fighting games. The lack of physical weight to weapons is very immersion breaking if you've ever used any of them in real life (also why Beat Saber feels really nice). Hand guns work and feel generally really good, so long as the devs don't try to get too detailed and realistic with reloading (looking at H3). Bow & Arrow games are also good and work surprisingly well. Half Life: Alyx is by far the best (IMHO). It makes the wise choice of making the guns mostly 1 handed for aiming and has the best movement options depending on your tolerance for getting nautious.