Xbox Game Pass - GUIDE TO BEST DEAL IN FIRST POST

[mogawoods]

The only Microsoft console I've ever owned is a 360. I have no particular interest in Halo, Gears, Crackdown, Dead Rising - any of the typical Microsoft stuff. Although there were games I wanted to try - Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, Sunset Overdrive - there was never a bona fide 'killer app' game that meant I absolutely had to bother with another Xbox. The brilliance of Game Pass, I guess, is that is becomes that killer app - not a single game, but all of its games. A killer service.

 

Try each Xbox exclusive game I'm not entirely sure about for £50 each? Er, no. Try each Xbox exclusive over a three year period for £3.30 a month, along with a bunch of thirty party games I intended to buy anyway? Uh, hell yes?

 

First to download will be Outer Wilds, Slay the Spire, Frostpunk, Devil May Cry 5 and What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as the aforementioned Sea of Thieves, Forza and Sunset Overdrive. Then about 20 others I've got earmarked. Might even give the likes of Master Chief Collection a half-hearted bash, just to see if the original Halo was ever worth the hype!

[Majora]

Abandoned AfterParty after about 3-4 hours. I liked the look of it but it's actually really boring to 'play'. I didn't care about the characters or anything that happened, mainly because no-one feels like a real person. Everyone speaks ultra-fast via a non-stop barrage of witty comments, zingers, pop-culture references and retorts and it just gets tiresome and artificial after a while. I can't get interested in the narrative when I feel like I'm in the middle of a writer's room where everyone is straining to outdo each other, especially when there's fuck all other interaction to speak of.

 

Some of the lines are funny but I honestly simply do not give a fuck if the 2 protagonists ever manage to outdrink Satan and get back to earth or not.

[moosegrinder]

19 minutes ago, ann coulter said:

The only Microsoft console I've ever owned is a 360. I have no particular interest in Halo, Gears, Crackdown, Dead Rising - any of the typical Microsoft stuff. Although there were games I wanted to try - Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, Sunset Overdrive - there was never a bona fide 'killer app' game that meant I absolutely had to bother with another Xbox. The brilliance of Game Pass, I guess, is that is becomes that killer app - not a single game, but all of its games. A killer service.

 

Try each Xbox exclusive game I'm not entirely sure about for £50 each? Er, no. Try each Xbox exclusive over a three year period for £3.30 a month, along with a bunch of thirty party games I intended to buy anyway? Uh, hell yes?

 

First to download will be Outer Wilds, Slay the Spire, Frostpunk, Devil May Cry 5 and What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as the aforementioned Sea of Thieves, Forza and Sunset Overdrive. Then about 20 others I've got earmarked. Might even give the likes of Master Chief Collection a half-hearted bash, just to see if the original Halo was ever worth the hype!

Narrator: "Not any more."

[mdn2]

39 minutes ago, Majora said:

Abandoned AfterParty after about 3-4 hours. I liked the look of it but it's actually really boring to 'play'. I didn't care about the characters or anything that happened, mainly because no-one feels like a real person. Everyone speaks ultra-fast via a non-stop barrage of witty comments, zingers, pop-culture references and retorts and it just gets tiresome and artificial after a while. I can't get interested in the narrative when I feel like I'm in the middle of a writer's room where everyone is straining to outdo each other, especially when there's fuck all other interaction to speak of.

 

Some of the lines are funny but I honestly simply do not give a fuck if the 2 protagonists ever manage to outdrink Satan and get back to earth or not.

I finished it - it wasn't worth it. A real disappointment after Oxenfree. 

[Mr Do 71]

 

[Mr. Gerbik]

Control to start with plz

 

Edit: oh maybe Yakuza and one of the Final Fantasies?

[Mr Do 71]

Plus The Division 2, so I can continue to play it completely for free. 

[johnj]

3 hours ago, ann coulter said:

The only Microsoft console I've ever owned is a 360. I have no particular interest in Halo, Gears, Crackdown, Dead Rising - any of the typical Microsoft stuff. Although there were games I wanted to try - Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4, Sunset Overdrive - there was never a bona fide 'killer app' game that meant I absolutely had to bother with another Xbox. The brilliance of Game Pass, I guess, is that is becomes that killer app - not a single game, but all of its games. A killer service.

 

Try each Xbox exclusive game I'm not entirely sure about for £50 each? Er, no. Try each Xbox exclusive over a three year period for £3.30 a month, along with a bunch of thirty party games I intended to buy anyway? Uh, hell yes?

 

First to download will be Outer Wilds, Slay the Spire, Frostpunk, Devil May Cry 5 and What Remains of Edith Finch, as well as the aforementioned Sea of Thieves, Forza and Sunset Overdrive. Then about 20 others I've got earmarked. Might even give the likes of Master Chief Collection a half-hearted bash, just to see if the original Halo was ever worth the hype!

Oi if you're doing sea of thieves call me

[mogawoods]

13 minutes ago, johnj said:

Oi if you're doing sea of thieves call me

 

Ooh, good idea. Will do.

[Ketchup]

4 hours ago, mdn2 said:

I finished it - it wasn't worth it. A real disappointment after Oxenfree. 

Agree. Oxenfree was clever, intriguing and had interesting characters. This felt quite half baked, the story just wasn’t interesting, the deeper lore about friendship felt rushed at the end and a lot of stuff just didn’t feel like it made sense. A huge disappointment for me after the excellent Oxenfree came out of no where.

[Quest]

I was surprised by how buggy Afterparty is. Aside from general stuttering and dialogue triggering over other dialogue, my playthrough had entire, unskippable, minutes-long conversations between the protagonists just repeat themselves, as if the game had forgotten they'd already had them.

 

I pushed myself to the end but it wasn't really worth it. I was bored by the half way mark.

[T Pot]

18 hours ago, ann coulter said:

Ok, I think I've done that all right. My account is now showing:

 

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

£10.99 every month, next charge on 26/01/2023

 

Am I ok to turn off recurring billing now?

 

Sorry for the spam posts. Now I have to buy an Xbox!

 

Yep. And if you want to keep it topped up, you can buy a 3 month Game Pass code for £8 from CDKeys. When you apply it to your account it will convert to 2 months Game Pass Ultimate, saving about £16 per 2 month.

[Eighthours]

50 minutes ago, Mr Tony said:

 

Yep. And if you want to keep it topped up, you can buy a 3 month Game Pass code for £8 from CDKeys. When you apply it to your account it will convert to 2 months Game Pass Ultimate, saving about £16 per 2 month.

 

Can you stack those, or only use one?

[AlanT]

6 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

 

Can you stack those, or only use one?

you can stack them.  Order 2 then another.  I literally did this last week under Tony's guidance and now im set until end of 2021

[mogawoods]

36 months is the maximum, right? I'm on 36 months at the moment so I should wait three months and then top up with the cdkeys code?

[T Pot]

5 minutes ago, ann coulter said:

36 months is the maximum, right? I'm on 36 months at the moment so I should wait three months and then top up with the cdkeys code?

 

36 is the max. The codes won't let you apply them if it takes you over the limit. I top up every few months. 

[womblingfree]

I think Game Pass is such a step in the right direction that MS have almost nailed the future of game delivery. Sony need to follow suit or risk losing significant market share IMO.

 

I’ve gone from being a PS4 exclusive nut to being locked into the MS ecosystem for three years overnight and loving it.

 

I felt the same way about PS+ until now, but this blows it out the water. Maybe Sony can amalgamate and streamline + and Now?

 

Now generational consoles are basically a black box with differing levels of power, even among the same brand, how long before the box disappears and it’s literally just streaming/download services on your TV?

[deerokus]

Now is the same concept as game pass, just shitter because they don't put the effort into it. Maybe they will next gen. 

[fattakin]

21 hours ago, Ketchup said:

Agree. Oxenfree was clever, intriguing and had interesting characters. This felt quite half baked, the story just wasn’t interesting, the deeper lore about friendship felt rushed at the end and a lot of stuff just didn’t feel like it made sense. A huge disappointment for me after the excellent Oxenfree came out of no where.

 

im about 2/3rds in and feeling deflated about it. There is zero game or puzzles which I enjoyed in oxenfree. I do like the dialog and characters but I just feel like it would have been a better movie, clerks style full of dialog and funny lines. Which I could watch while getting in with some actual gaming. 

[Majora]

I don't have anything against purely narrative driven games at all but AfterParty is just so dull about it. The quests you have to complete to get closer to Satan sound potentially fun initially but they're massive drags in practice. The whole drinking unlocking various options feels completely underdeveloped as well. There's an interesting mechanic in there somewhere where you have to drink the right drinks to have the right status effects to unlock the right speech options for certain situations or characters but it's implemented in the most mundane way possible.

 

I haven't played Oxenfree but I'll still give it a shot at some point I think. Very disappointed in AfterParty though, I had it on my to-do list for about 3 months and was really forward to it.

[Pelekophoros]

On 26/01/2020 at 17:33, moosegrinder said:

Narrator: "Not any more."

 

I've never played Halo 2 before bar the opening couple of levels, as I got caught in the great bannening that came against chipped consoles just after it was released.

 

Playing through it now and I'm in the middle of a...uh...civil war, I think? A bug daft slime monster grabbed me from some water and because I'd forgotten what happened to Chief while I played as an Elite, i dunno what's going on any more.

 

But, more to the point, Bungie really didn't listen to any of the feedback about the Halo CE level design, did they?

 

I always thought maybe there was an unfair backlash against #2 but, woah, it's fucking awful. 

[deerokus]

Halo 2 is much worse than the first and third. 

[JPL]

I recently played through Halo 2 Anniversary (on Heroic - so what?) and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. It's been so long since I've played it and with all the grief it gets, I think I'd built it up in my head to be totally shit, but it's actually really good. Obviously not as good at the first (what is?), but a solid entry in the series.

 

On 26/01/2020 at 17:33, moosegrinder said:

Narrator: "Not any more."

You what mate? It's still the best FPS.

[womblingfree]

17 hours ago, deerokus said:

Now is the same concept as game pass, just shitter because they don't put the effort into it. Maybe they will next gen. 

To be fair, PS+ blew anything MS were offering out the water for quite a while. Now just seems to be a load of old games I’ve already played or never wanted to play. They’re currently pushing Horizon which everyone played donkeys years ago.

[Mr. Gerbik]

And you can't get 3 years PS Now for a quid either! That's a power move by Microsoft, they obviously found out about that loophole around the same time every one else did (last E3 iirc) and apparently just decided to leave it open. Get people into that ecosystem. And it works going by how many mentions of "topping up" you on gaming forums and Reddit and the like. Pretty soon we'll all be topped up for the entire lifespan of the series X

 

To be honest, as much as I love Game Pass and how it made me switch primary platforms to the Xbox, I'm not sure Sony even needs to react. Who knows how it will play out, but I can see them 'winning' the next generation on brand recognition alone, with their strong (no matter your personal tastes, it is strong) first-party software lineup as a bonus on top of that. We shall see.

 

Also, the first Halo plays as well as it ever did. Who's the lunatic who claims otherwise?? 2 is very much inferior to 1 and 3, even if it's not crap.

 

Also:

CE>>Reach>>3>ODST>>>2>>>5>>>>>>>>>>>4

[Dudley]

Yeah, numbers are good but money matters and MS might not actually make us much from a bunch of people paying a tenner a month to play everything as Sony will from a slightly smaller number of people still paying a fiver a month (and some on PS Now) but also buying games with £15 licence fees.

 

And developers might consider that being railroaded into accepting MS' offers for their games or trying to compete with "free" might not be preferable to being on a format where buying is still the norm.

 

Depending on how successful gamepass eventually is of course.

 

I quite like that when the hardware of our two main consoles is near identical, there's still going to be choice.

[moosegrinder]

The thing is what they're doing now is bring people into the Xbox ecosystem when it's the cheapest it's been, and getting them invested in GamePass.

 

They're actually making people switch from PlayStation.

 

Of course the PS4 had outsold the Xbox one by some considerable way, but they've made sure they've got a good foothold in the next console arms race.

 

It'll not be enough on its own, but it's a good start.

 

 

[Revival]

I don't think it'll change a thing to be honest. The people that buy Playstation will continue to do so and the industry goal posts will move again to suit. I don't see Sony changing PS Now because it's not in their interest to do so.

 

I just hope all of this is profitable and the Xbox team can continue in this direction periodically adding new studios and making a nice diverse range of exclusives. It's such a positive ecosystem always making pro gamer moves I don't see any reason to switch at all.

 

 

[moosegrinder]

In this thread alone people have admitted to ditching their Playstation 4s for an Xbox because of this. It's ridiculous to think it'll have the effect to sell tens of millions more consoles but it's also a bit silly to discount it. 

 

What will be interesting to see is how many people feel the need to upgrade to the next generation immediately, what with backwards compatibility being promised across the board. And it also depends if that BC takes advantage of the extra power, like the X does with some 360 and Xbox One games.

 

And Game Pass must be profitable to Devs and Microsoft because would they really lean into like they have if it wasn't? Actual question, because I genuinely don't know.

[Mr. Gerbik]

14 minutes ago, moosegrinder said:

 

And Game Pass must be profitable to Devs and Microsoft because would they really lean into like they have if it wasn't? Actual question, because I genuinely don't know

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that devs at least are very happy with Game Pass. Which suggests, like with the Epic store buying exclusives, that they're happy to recoup a significant portion or even more (would love to know the details on this!) of the costs outright, outside of any actual sales. Unlike the Epic  store, however, there's no forced exclusivity or negative pr attached to it. And they get more people playing their games.

 

Microsoft? Who knows. We're all assuming they want people subscribed to their ecosystem. Even the 1 quid thing is positive if you realize that it's one time only. You get people topping up their 3 years, or regretting that they didn't do 3 years and therefore topping up. But we're in a certain kind of special bubble on this forum of course, if our tastes were any indication then Dark Souls would be as big as FIFA and FIFA would be niche.