Tag: Xbox One

Weekend Recap: The New Year

1. In case you missed it, I wrote up some quick off-the-cuff thoughts about Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night.  Now that I’ve slept on it, I can say with confidence that I still feel the same; it’s a very good Star Wars movie, and as far as rankings go I’d put it in my top 2 along with Empire.  In fairness, that isn’t necessarily saying all that much; the prequels are garbage, and both New Hope and RotJ have moments that we’d all rather forget.  Even if Episode 7 is simply a reboot of Episode 4, it’s really well done, and I feel like it’s OK to be excited for Episode 8 now.

2. My wife had attempted to buy me the Xbox One Elite Controller via Amazon, but even 3 weeks later there was no sign of it shipping any time soon.  As it happens, though, I was running some errands over the weekend and happened to be in a Best Buy and – lo and behold – there were three (3) Elite Controllers just hanging out, ready to be bought.  I bought one.  I had a tough time justifying the expense, especially since the XB1 isn’t my primary console, but.. I mean.. goddamn, once you hold this thing in your hands it makes as strong a case for itself as you can imagine.  It’s pleasantly heavy, the buttons and triggers have a remarkably more pleasing feel, and even if I never use the alternate buttons and back-panel triggers, I’m happy to know they’re there if I change my mind.

2a.  On a related note, I now feel contractually obligated to get back into Halo 5.

3.  I also bought Rock Band 4 for the XB1, and my old drumset and 1 of my 2 guitars still work, so there’s that.  I’m happy to have Rock Band back in my life, but HOLY SHIT the game feels barely half-built at this point.  How is it that in 2016, I can’t program my own setlist?  And the process of re-downloading songs I already own is beyond tedious; thankfully, I only have to do it once.

4.  I’ve read all the David Mitchell novels now, and so I’m back to re-reading Cloud Atlas, which was the first one of his that I’d read.  I didn’t necessarily see what all the fuss was about the first time out; I could certainly recognize his talent as a writer, and I appreciated how each story tied into the next one, but I didn’t really understand the point.  (I also felt similarly about Ghostwritten, his first novel, although the interconnected stories in that novel at least have a vague sort of butterfly-effect thing happening.)  This second time through, however, I’m feeling much more at home with it – and I also recognize many more of the characters from other novels, so that stuff makes it a bit more interesting.  All that aside, I feel like I need to read Bone Clocks again, and immediately.  I know I’m one of the few people on Earth who prefers Bone Clocks to Cloud Atlas, but what can I say?  That book affected me in a deeply profound way that few books ever have before.

5.  I’d been meaning to put up a Music of 2015 post – I even have a draft here, but I’m not particularly happy about it, and in any event all the navel-gazing I was doing about it is probably less interesting than all the other navel-gazing I do here as it is.  So, instead, I’ll cut to the chase and post two Spotify playlists:

 

 

2015: My Year in Games

It’s December 28 as I write these particular words, which means I’m beyond late in terms of getting this thing out the door.  And if I’m being honest, I should admit that I’ve barely started it.  Usually at this point I at least have my GoogleDoc template filled out with rough ideas of what I want to say, nominees for categories, etc., but it’s practically empty.  Indeed, it’s only because I’ve had to make some Top 10 lists for other people that I have even the slightest idea of what I might write here at all.

It’s hard for me to come to grips with this, but here it is:  my apathy towards games is starting to become less of an abstract threat and more like a very real thing.  I feel like I have more or less checked out in terms of keeping tabs on the “scene” as far as things like Twitter.  Nothing in my to-play pile is holding my interest.  I look at what I played this year and can only identify one true masterpiece, two better-than-expected games, two out-of-nowhere surprises, and the rest of my Top 10 is really just me scraping the barrel.  I look ahead to 2016 and while there’s certainly more than a few games I’m looking forward to, I can’t necessarily pick any that would cause me to call in sick.*

* For the record, the announced-for-2016 games that I’m looking forward to are as follows:

  • The Witness
  • XCOM 2 (especially if it eventually comes to consoles, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t)
  • Far Cry Primal (maybe?)
  • Uncharted 4 (though I worry that this game’s emphasis will be far more focused on action than exploration)
  • Mirror’s Edge Catalyst
  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
  • No Man’s Sky
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda (50/50 this comes out in 2016)
  • Crackdown 3 (see ME:A)
  • Dishonored 2
  • FF15 (50/50 for a 2016 release is very optimistic, I think)
  • Gears of War 4 (if only to give my Xbox One something to do)

What would I like to see in 2016?  I don’t even know.  I’d love to hear something about Red Dead Redemption 2, if only that it exists.  I’d obviously love to hear something about Portal 3, though that seems even less likely than Half Life 3.  I’m curious to know if the new Mass Effect will incorporate any save data from the original trilogy – if only in terms of the end-of-game state.  (This would also impact what platform I play it on, as I played the original trilogy twice on Xbox 360.)

In previous editions of this post, this would be the point where I’d spend a few thousand words recapping all the games I didn’t finish, all the games I barely started, all the games I consciously ignored; my favorite gameplay mechanic, my most irksome glitch.  But it’s too depressing to revisit some of that stuff, and in any event if I went through all the disappointments this post would be 10,000 words long, and not even I can bother with that sort of nonsense.  So I’m cutting to the chase.

I give 2015 a big fat “meh”, but – as with many things these days – I don’t know if that “meh” is directed at the games I played, or at myself for not getting into them.   In any event,  I humbly present my Top 10 Games of 2015.

10.  You Must Build A Boat (iOS)
An expansion on, and an excellent refinement of, the sliding-tile-based 10000000 from a few years back.  The recent addition of a new daily dungeon has brought this one back into my daily rotation.

9.  Alto’s Adventure (iOS)
I can’t speak for anyone else’s apathy as far as endless runners/scrollers go, but I’m still a fan of ’em; there’s a bunch more that came out this year that I still play regularly that didn’t make this list, actually.  Alto’s Adventure is a side-scrolling skiing game with an absolutely gorgeous graphical style and atmosphere, and I only wish I hadn’t gotten so terribly stuck on two of the three level goals at level 38; there’s still more to see and do, and I simply never got there.

8.  The Room Three (iOS)
I love the Room games; they’re magnificent showpieces for what mobile games are capable of.  More to the point, though, the puzzles are almost always fair; they might be tricky and obscure, but they ultimately make logical sense in order to proceed.  This edition is bigger and more complex than the previous two combined; I’ve only been able to solve one of the four endings, and the only reason why I’ve not been able to continue is that my iPhone’s low on available hard drive space.

7.  Lara Croft GO (iOS)
Yes, you read that correctly; this is the 4th iPhone game to appear in my top 10.  This is a puzzle game in the vein of Hitman GO, except that it’s a bit less frustrating to solve, and the art style is actually quite complementary to the Tomb Raider aesthetic.  I’m currently picking my way through the recently released DLC episode; it’s much trickier, but no less fun to work through.

6.  Batman: Arkham Knight (PS4)
If this is the end of Rocksteady’s Batman run, they certainly did a bang-up job.  I’m not sure that anything will ever top their first one (Asylum), but I still had a great deal of fun with this one; I certainly enjoyed it a lot more than I recall the common critical consensus indicated I would.  The introduction of the Batmobile was surprisingly great, even if I still preferred to grapple/wingsuit my way around the city.  And it looked absolutely stunning; the decision to stay current-gen only was clearly a good one.  (Well, maybe not as far as the PC was concerned, but that’s a different story.)  It was exhausting, eventually – I can’t claim to have come anywhere close to solving all of Riddler’s challenges, nor did I feel any desire to try – but everything else was quite satisfying.

5.  Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (PS4)
Here’s maybe the feel-good story of the year, as far as AAA development goes; fresh off the utter disaster of last year’s Unity, Syndicate turned out to be one of the best games in the whole franchise – and starred my favorite protagonist yet.  Evie Frye is a bad-ass, and more than redeemed her douchebag of a brother.  I should probably go back and check out that newly released Jack the Ripper DLC, actually…

4.  The Beginner’s Guide (PC)
I absolutely adored Davey Wedren’s Stanley Parable, and found this a uniquely compelling and emotionally involving follow-up.  To say more would spoil it; the game itself only takes about an hour or so to experience, and so I’d simply suggest you run out and pick it up.  (I’d also very strongly recommend picking up “Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger And The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist“, which is free and 20-minutes long and works as a very interesting companion piece to Beginner’s Guide, as it was created by one of the Stanley Parable’s other developers.  It too has quite a lot to say about game development, but from a much different angle.  Literally.)

3.  Rise of the Tomb Raider (Xbox One)
Like a lot of people I was initially irked that this was an Xbox-only release, especially since at the time of that announcement I hadn’t yet bought one.  All that said, I’ve grown to appreciate that the decision to concentrate development on one console was the correct decision; this game looks fantastic and runs incredibly smooth, and is an excellent showcase for what the Xbox One is capable of… even if I have no doubts that the eventual PS4 release will look even better.  Deeper analyses of the game’s narrative might reveal some unfortunate developments in terms of Lara’s character arc, but as far as the moment-to-moment experience of playing it I found it quite wonderful.  It’s got everything I like in these sorts of 3rd person action/adventure/exploration games, especially with regards to the exploration/combat ratio; I spent far more time exploring than killing, which is exactly how I like it.  (And which, as noted earlier, is why I’m more than a little nervous about Uncharted 4.)

2.  Rocket League (PS4)
The feel-good story of the year, bar none; this little indie game came out of nowhere and became one of the most addictive multiplayer experiences I’ve had since the days of Burnout 3.  There was a stretch earlier this summer when I could do nothing but play Rocket League; it didn’t matter whether I was good or not, even just touching the ball was fun in and of itself.  It’s been so long since I picked it up that I’m probably too rusty to be an effective teammate… but a lack of skill didn’t stop me from having a blast earlier this summer, either, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go back as soon as possible.

1.  The Witcher 3 (PS4)
This was hands down the best game I played in 2015, and maybe one of the best games I’ve played in years.  Hell, I should probably revisit my all-time top 10 and see if I can’t fit this one in somewhere.  I’d dallied about in the first two Witchers but wasn’t at all familiar with the world or the lore, and it hardly mattered; each and every character was incredibly well-written and presented, and nearly every mission and side-quest was interesting, no matter how small or trivial; the attention to detail is second to none.  This game scratched all the itches I had from Red Dead Redemption, and so if we’re not getting Red Dead Redemption 2 any time soon, this is as worthy a substitute as we’re likely to get; and if anything I might’ve enjoyed this one even more.  An absolute masterpiece, and without a doubt my favorite game of 2015.

 

Some quick Battlefront Beta impressions

I am lucky enough to have both a PS4 and an Xbox One, which means I got to try out the Star Wars Battlefront Beta twice last night.  I didn’t have a ton of time last night to devote to it, so I just did the single-player mission on Tattooine.  My intention had always been to get this game for the Xbox One, since I know more people on that system who might potentially play it, but I figured I might as well compare the two systems just to see what’s what.

And, um.  The PS4 version kicks the shit out of the Xbox One version.  It’s a direct hit from a laser blaster to the nuts.  Digital Foundry will give you a more thorough examination of this if you’d like the hard data, but even my untrained eye could see drastic differences in image quality; the XB1 is jaggy all over the place, has an inconsistent frame rate, and makes far-off enemies much harder to spot since everything that’s far-off is somewhat jumbled together.  The PS4, on the other hand, is buttery smooth and looks absolutely gorgeous.  And I think I actually prefer the PS4’s controller over the XB1, which is not something I’m used to saying out loud.  So, there it is.  I’ll be playing Battlefront on the PS4.

I also got the new Xbox One dashboard last night, and, well… I kinda hate it?  It took me several minutes to figure out where my actual games are located, which is the whole point of the device – and when I finally found their location (which is below the main homepage stuff), I felt a bit stupid.  The rest of the redesign just seems unnecessary.  I’ve never really minded previous Xbox dashboard updates, because they at least made some sense.  This one seems to be there for the sake of being there, and it doesn’t have any coherent purpose as far as I can tell.  It’s also a bit sluggish, especially if you click the left menu from the main homepage; hopefully that will get fixed soon.

In other news, I’ve completed my 2015 Goodreads challenge, which was to read 30 books.  And it’s only the beginning of October!  Hell, at this rate, I might very well get past 40, unless I decide to only read gigantic stuff (like the forthcoming City on Fire and any further volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard’s My Struggle memoirs).  I finished Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman, which I liked very much; he’s a hell of a writer, and his dialogue is so good it makes me want to start acting again just so that I can adapt his books into screenplays and then say this stuff out loud.  I’m now about halfway through Daniel O’Malley’s The Rook, which I can’t recall buying, but which is pretty good – sort of a supernatural James Bond sort of thing.  Apparently it’s book one of a larger series; the second one comes out in January, I think.

This weekend is primarily about recuperating from this relentless headcold/stomach thing I’ve had all week.  There may be some Uncharted, and there really ought to be some serious music stuff happening; I’ve got 5 songs that are, like, this close to being finished, and my buddy and I really want to get this stuff out before too long.  So that’s the plan.  Lay low, get healthy, get busy.

The (Obligatory) 2015 Fall Release Calendar Review

Today is Madden Day, which also generally marks my obligatory annual looking-over of the fall release schedule.  I’m not feeling as gung-ho about it as I usually am, however, and I suppose there are several reasons why.

1. I’m looking over the upcoming releases and there’s not a whole hell of a lot that I’m terribly excited about.  We’ll get to that in a bit, of course, when I run over the list in detail, but here’s the larger point:  of the 14 games that are in my upcoming rental queue, 3 of them are remasters of last-gen games, and 9 of them are sequels.  One of the remaining two is a movie spin-off, and the other is a port of a PC RPG (which I also apparently already own on PC, though I don’t remember buying it – my PC appears to be dying, however, and so if I’m ever going to play it, the console seems like the only place to do it).  There are surely some indie/downloadable games that I’m forgetting about – No Man’s Sky comes to mind, though I can’t recall off the top of my head if that was ever guaranteed a 2015 release date – but that’s neither here nor there.

2. Being a homeowner means paying a mortgage, and even though the house is wonderful and the new town is lovely and we’re all very happy, I’m now – more than ever – very aware of my financial flexibility (or lack thereof), and so when I look at this list, there’s not really all that much that I feel that I can commit to, financially.  (Nor am I certain that I will have 400 spare hours to play Fallout 4 – I would like to spend some time with my wife and child, after all, and I also need to get back to work on the album.)

3. None of these upcoming games are doing anything to cure my general malaise towards gaming in general.  Even my current NG+ playthrough of Witcher 3 is being done in a very half-hearted manner; that game is still my current pick for Game of the Year, but I’m not sure I have the energy to do everything again for another 80 hours, especially since it’s hard for me to make different choices.  There are certain large-scale events that I know I’m going to handle differently, but the smaller conversational stuff… I always feel like I need to answer truthfully, especially when the writing is so good, and so I find myself saying the same things a second time.

It’s strange; I’ve got my gaming situation all hooked up, with a new TV and a new entertainment center and a couch and a table and I’m free to play whatever I want without worrying about making too much noise, and this is a welcome return to all that I’ve ever wanted since I was playing my Atari 2600 (and my brother’s Genesis) in my mom’s basement as a kid, and yet… I kinda don’t really give a shit anymore.  I’d like to think that some of these games are going to be fun to play, but I’m not really feeling pulled towards any one of them in particular, and that’s an awfully strange feeling to have after all this time.

Before I get into this thing, here’s a general question – should I even bother holding on to my 3DS anymore?  I recently plugged it in for the first time in maybe a year, and I was unable to get it to properly update on my home wi-fi (which doesn’t make any sense, but then again, I’ve never had much luck getting a reliable internet connection on that thing ever since I bought it).  In any event, the only thing that interests me on the 3DS’s horizon is Picross 3D 2, but according to this article there’s no North American release date scheduled, and I’ve been so out of the loop as far as Nintendo is concerned that anything involving Amiibos makes me nervous; I don’t know what they are, but neither do I want my 2.5 year old kid to suddenly want them, because I literally can’t afford to get sucked into a toy ecosystem vortex right now.

Anyway, here we go – all titles and release dates via Game Informer.

August 25

  • Calvino Noir (PS4) – I’ll need to read some reviews before I download this one, but it definitely seems up my alley.
  • Dishonored: Definitive Edition – I’ve rented this for the Xbox One, mostly because I guess I’m more of an Achievement Whore than I care to admit.  I’ve already played it on PC, but I never did finish the DLC.  This is more of a curiosity about the graphical upgrade than a sincere attempt at a playthrough, even if I like the game a lot.
  • Gears of War Ultimate Edition – I did pre-order this, for some reason, and it’s sitting on my XB1’s hard drive right now.  I don’t know that I need to play this, but – again – I’m curious to see the graphical upgrades.  And I wouldn’t mind having access to the backwards compatible Gears 2 and 3, either, especially as I’m not sure I still have those 360 discs anymore.
  • Madden NFL 16 – the reviews seem pretty positive for this one, surprisingly enough.  I haven’t really cared about Madden since my brother and I played together – and even then, our sports games of choice were NHL and/or NBA Jam.  [This might be as good a time as any to admit that I joined EA Access on the XB1 a few weeks ago, if only to have a free copy of Dragon Age Inquisition to play (and get Achievements for).  I’ve played maybe the first hour or so, and while it’s still a good game, it made me want to play Witcher 3 again instead.]  Anyway, so – as an EA Access member I was able to download a trial version of Madden, and… I still kinda don’t give a shit.  It’s not bad, per se, but rather – I don’t know enough about how football is played to be able to learn how to play Madden well anymore, and I’m never going to start caring enough to bother to try.

September

  • Mad Max – I’d like this game to be good.  I loved the movie, and the little I’ve seen of this one makes me think that there’s some genuine ambition behind it – that it’s not just a simple, easy cash-in.  But I’m certainly not pre-ordering this one – or anything, actually – and I’m not necessarily keeping my fingers crossed.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain – There is no other game on this year’s calendar that’s causing me so much agita.  On the one hand, I think the Metal Gear franchise is the most comically overrated franchise in all of videogames; I think Kojima is the sort of dude who thinks there’s something profound about the smell of his own farts; and for every genuinely thrilling moment I had with MGS4, there was at least an hour’s worth of the most gawdawful cutscenes that would follow.  I also played Ground Zeroes once or twice and found it technologically impressive but also impenetrably dense and ridiculous and not necessarily all that much fun.  On the other hand, it’s being called a genuine masterpiece, far and away the best game in the series, and would appear to be the consensus frontrunner for Game of the Year by everybody who’s played it, even more so than the aforementioned Witcher 3.  With hyperbole like that surrounding this game, it’s going to be impossible for me to not play it.  I will do my best to keep an open mind.  But I’m very skeptical.
  • Tearaway Unfolded – I played about the first third/half on Vita and found it rather delightful, but after putting it down for a while I think I ended up deleting it in order to make room for other stuff.  I wouldn’t mind seeing if it translates to a big TV, but I’m not sure it’ll work in the same way – that game was very specifically designed to show off what the Vita could do, and the PS4 is a completely different animal altogether.
  • Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime – I’m curious about this if only because I love that title.  I don’t know anything about it.  (quickly finds a YouTube trailer) Well, it certainly looks charming, but it also looks like it needs a good couch co-op partner, and I don’t think my wife’s gonna care about it.
  • Destiny: The Taken King – I deleted Destiny off my PS4’s hard drive at least 6 months ago; I’m so far behind in terms of levelling that I can’t possibly see myself going back.
  • Forza Motorsport 6 – I think I prefer the Horizon side of the Forza franchise, but I’ve always enjoyed the Forza games in general (even though I skipped F5).  I can see myself playing this for a few days, but I’m not sure it’s going to capture my heart enough to warrant a purchase.
  • Lego Dimensions – Ordinarily this is a no-brainer- I like the Lego games a lot, and I’m sure my kid would love this, and the mish-mash of licenses is super-appealing.  But if I’m not mistaken, isn’t this game going to be coming with physical toys and such?  I’m looking at GI’s “4 Reasons to Get Excited” and they have this pricing breakdown that makes my stomach hurt just from looking at it:
  • Starter Packs: $99.99, contains Batman, Wyldstyle, Gandalf, Batmobile, and Lego Gateway
  • Level Packs: $29.99, contains an additional new mission-based game level along with a minifigure, a vehicle, and a weapon.
  • Team Packs: $24.99, provide two minifigures and two vehicles or weapons, all with their own unique abilities.
  • Fun Packs: $14.99, provide a new minifigure and a vehicle or weapon.
  • Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 – obviously I’d be lying if I said I felt confident that this wasn’t going to be a huge steaming piece of shit.  But a boy can dream.

October

  • Rock Band 4 – I’m a little annoyed that the Xbox One version will cost a bit extra if I want to be able to use my Xbox 360 instruments (which I still have), but can you really put a price on family fun?  Especially if I can still have access to my gigantic 360 DLC library of songs?
  • Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection – my PS3 is currently set up in the living room – not the man-cave – and I recently tossed in Uncharted 3 just to see if it still looked good, especially on my new TV.  And yeah, it still does!  It’s still also jam-packed with bullet-sponge enemies, and I still hate the PS3 controller with a fiery passion.  I was excited to see that Digital Foundry’s recent analysis seems to indicate that this collection is the real deal, though, and Uncharted is one of the few franchises that I’d gladly buy again on better hardware.  I thought The Last of Us was a vastly better experience on the PS4 if only because the PS4’s controller is so much better to use, and I’d like to think that the same will apply to making Uncharted’s endless combat sections much less annoying to deal with.
  • Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – As much as I enjoyed Black Flag, I actively loathed Unity, and I don’t know why I should keep any hopes up for this one.  This franchise, which I used to adore, positively exhausts me now.
  • Halo 5 – It’s on the list almost purely out of obligation; I own an Xbox One, I should play this.  I haven’t cared about Halo at all since maybe 2 or 3, and unless this wows me from the get-go (and most Halo games take a while to really get going), I can’t see myself finishing it.
  • Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition – this is the aforementioned port of a PC game that I don’t remember buying.  I’ve heard too much good stuff about this to ignore a console version, even though I don’t know if it’ll translate all that well – but, again, my PC is dying and if I’m ever going to play it, this is the only real way I can do it.

November

  • Fallout 4 – I was going to violate my “no more pre-ordering” rule for this one, specifically for that Pip-Boy thing, but because Bethesda wasn’t entirely forthcoming about whether mod support was going to be available for both PS4 and XB1, I didn’t know which system to get it for – in my experience, most multi-platform games run a lot better on the PS4, but the XB1 having PC mod support felt like a strong reason to lean in that direction.  I’m still not sure where I’m going to play this; I will probably wait for Digital Foundry’s analysis.  I’m more concerned about how to play this while still having a job and a family.  I’m also concerned about whether or not I’m going to enjoy this game the way i did with Fallout 3 and Oblivion and Skyrim; Bethesda’s made some great open-world games, to be sure, but those games are hard for me to go back to after spending hundreds of hours with more recent games like Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption – which is to say, Bethesda games can get janky sometimes, and their specific jankiness has become somewhat irritating to me.  I’d love to be proven wrong on this one.
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider – honestly, this is the game I’m really looking forward to more than anything else this year.  I adored the last one, so much so that I ended up playing it on 360, PC, PS4 and XB1.  And I had a great time with it each and every time.  And while I was among the many super-pissed-off fans that reacted poorly when the game was announced as a timed Xbox One exclusive, I’ve come around to appreciate the idea that it’s almost certainly in the game’s best interest to have only one console system to design for.  I’m sure the PS4 port will be worth playing – and I suspect I’ll play it again there, too, because I am a whore – but in the meantime, this is how I plan on spending my November.
  • Star Wars Battlefront – Let’s hope this isn’t terrible!
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III – I’m including this only so that nobody thinks I forgot about it.  I don’t see myself playing it unless it reviews extraordinarily well, and even then, I’m not gonna do much of the multiplayer, which probably begs the question:  why even bother?

December

  • Just Cause 3 – Because why not.

E3 2015: What Are We Excited About, Really?

I’ve always wondered who cheers and claps their hands and loudly yells “WOO!!!” during E3 keynote presentations; I’d been under the impression that they were press-only events, and even if “common folk” were allowed entry due to winning a contest, they’d still be outnumbered by the press by a wide margin.

But, then again, here are some of my Tweets during the Microsoft and Sony press conferences the other day:

in response to Microsoft announcing backwards compatibility:

in response to a Cuphead trailer:

in response to the Minecraft/HoloLens demonstration:

in response to the beginning of Sony’s press conference, before we realized we were seeing Last Guardian footage:

in response to the No Man’s Sky demo:

in response to FFVII Remake:

in response to Shenmue III:

So, yes, in the heat of the moment, I was very much jumping up and down and hooting and hollering, and if I’d been in the actual room surrounded by actual journalists, I probably would’ve forgotten myself and jumped up and down and hooted and hollered.   GUILTY AS CHARGED.

But now that it’s been a few days, and I’ve had some distance and some time to process everything we all saw, I’m feeling… well, maybe I’m still a bit pessimistic.

For starters:  almost all of Sony’s announcements, as dramatic and breath-taking as they were, did not contain any release dates – and when they did, almost none of them were for this year.

For another:  almost everything I hooted and hollered about above involved a known quantity.  I’ve already played Final Fantasy VII (well, the first 8-10 hours of it, I suppose); I’ve played ICO and at least half of Shadow of the Colossus and so while Last Guardian is technically “new”, it’s certainly somewhat familiar; I’ve played Shenmue 1 and 2 (and I have more to say on that in a bit); my primary reason for being excited for Xbox 360 compatibility (and cross-save support) is only because I love Red Dead Redemption too much to let it die (as do a lot of other people, too, apparently).

I’m very excited about what we saw of the new Tomb Raider; I’m hoping that Uncharted 4 doesn’t disappoint me the way that U3 did.  (The gameplay shown of each game at their respective presentations goes a long way towards explaining why I feel the way I do; both were exciting, but in very different ways – Tomb Raider’s slice was a very exciting and tense environmental gauntlet, whereas Uncharted 4’s slice began with gunfire and a car chase.  My favorite parts of both of these franchises are the non-combat environmental platforming, and Uncharted seems to be putting more emphasis on shooting people, and this is disappointing for reasons I’ve already talked about.)

I suppose I’m excited about Fallout 4, but when push comes to shove, I gotta say:  The Witcher 3 has raised the bar so fantastically high in terms of open-world RPGs that I’m not really 100% sure that Fallout 4 can hack it.  (And this is coming from someone who has devoured all of Bethesda’s big games, at least since Oblivion; the first time you play them, they’re quite stunning, but when you come back to them later they feel awfully stiff and archaic and janky as hell.)

I was impressed that Sony followed the Last Guardian reveal with a brand-new IP from the makers of Killzone, and which stars a female protagonist; I’ve already forgotten the name, and I don’t really know what it actually is.  I’m still really anxious to get my hands on No Man’s Sky, though even after the presser’s demo I’m still not 100% sure I know what that game is, and/or how I won’t eventually get bored with it.

And Shenmue… yeah.  We should probably talk about that.  I feel more than a little weird about the Kickstarter, as do a lot of people; on the one hand, I’m glad that people are giving it record-setting amounts of money, and I’m glad to know that I’ll eventually be able to play it, but it seems more than a bit strange that Sony would announce it in the form of a Kickstarter without also disclosing that they were going to contribute to its development.  I don’t pretend to know anything about Yu Suzuki or what he’s been up to for the last however many years, but up on that stage he looked like a man who’s been through hell, and the Kickstarter felt like some sort of strange attempt at maintaining pride and dignity.

And when I think about Shenmue 3…. do I even know what it is that I’m hoping for?  I finished the first game and got a few hours into the second one before getting incredibly frustrated by the controls and putting it down; I have no idea how the story ended.  Did I love the first game?  No, not particularly – I bought it because I owned a Dreamcast and I was contractually obligated to buy it, especially since its pre-release hype was breathtaking and deafening and I wasn’t yet properly cynical of these sorts of things (I have a memory of reading about its development – probably in the Official Dreamcast Magazine – and read something about how the game was so detailed that when Ryo went to drink a can of soda, the soda itself was motion captured), and yet it’s stuck with me in ways that many other, better games haven’t.  Something about it deeply resonated with me, even as I’m at a loss to explain what it was.  I remember it being somewhat stiff and clunky (especially Ryo’s voice acting), and I remember wanting to explore the city but always feeling pressured by the real-time clock and my in-game curfew; I remember the combat being better than expected, and the QTEs being interesting and innovative (Shenmue might’ve been the first game on that sort of grand scale to use them to their greatest effect), but also some ridiculously absurd forklift business towards the back third.  (Which, in a way, reminded me a little bit of GTA V‘s big heist, wherein part of Michael’s subterfuge involves literally mopping the floor.)   Above all else, I recall that Shenmue felt very honest and sincere about its intentions; it wasn’t being clever with its technology, but rather tried to be generous and inviting.  It had a story to tell and a world that the story inhabited, and the game very much wanted you to live that story in a way that no other game I’d played to that point had ever tried.

Time and technology have changed rather dramatically since those first two games, of course; I was 24 when I last played the first Shenmue, and when Shenmue 3 comes out – which, if it holds to its Kickstarter promise and is released in December 2017 – I’ll be 42.  I am curious; that’s about as optimistic as I can allow myself to be.

Invisible Ink

I’m in something of a holding pattern right now with respect to the new album; well, maybe “holding pattern” isn’t the correct phrase.  What’s the best way to say “I’m starting to work on lyrics and I’m incredibly intimidated because I’m not as good a writer as I’d like to be and I really want these lyrics to matter“?  There’s one song in particular – it’s been one of the stronger songs right from the beginning – and I think I’ve come up with a chorus for it, but now I need to find a verse.

As I said the other day, writing lyrics is really, really difficult for me.  It’s particularly difficult this time around, though, because I’m not just writing one song; I’m writing an album, mostly from scratch, and while I’d hesitate to call it a “concept album” (because ugh) there’s definitely a thing that spurred this whole project on, and that thing is where all of this music is coming from.

I’ve never been a lyrics-oriented listener.  With a few notable exceptions, when I sit down with an album I almost never pay attention to the words; I’ll listen to the voice, but I’m almost always focused on everything else.  And when I was in my songwriting heyday (1993-1999, back when I was in bands and thinking about music 24/7), I almost always wrote lyrics only because I needed something to sing, rather than because I had something I needed to say.  I dearly wish I could simply be abstract the way Beck and Stephen Malkmus are, but I can’t (and believe me, I’ve tried, and it’s awful).  More often than not, I’m painfully and awkwardly sincere, and to my eyes and ears the words I come up with are cliched and lack any poetry.

I’m trying my best, is all I can say.  In the absence of a lyric-writing partner, that’s about all I can do.  And I’m hoping that with a little creative focus, the words can come a bit easier.

In the meantime, I’m also trying to keep myself distracted, because nothing impedes lyric creativity more effectively than me staring at a blank page for hours at a time.  So I’m getting back into my gaming backlog.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I bought a bunch of indie games; now I’m starting to play them.

I remain frustrated by the Xbox One’s apparent inability to download stuff while in a powered-down state, which was a feature I heartily enjoyed on the 360 and which I still enjoy on the PS4.  It means that I had to leave it powered on all night in order to finish downloading Ori and the Blind Forest, which I’m hoping to get my hands on this evening.  (It doesn’t help matters much that my apartment’s internet is spotty at best, which makes a 7GB download take that much longer.)

I am currently mostly enjoying Never Alone, which is absolutely gorgeous and fascinating and charming and adorable, but marred very occasionally by frustrating controls and unclear platforming puzzles.  Be that as it may, when it works, it’s wonderful.

I’m a little frustrated with Pneuma: Breath of Life; like I said the other day, its over-the-top self-awareness can get exasperating, and not all of its puzzles are fun to solve; it doesn’t do the greatest job of teaching you its rules, and while I certainly don’t need my hand held at all times, I’d appreciate some sort of guidance, however opaque it might be.  Still, though, Achievements!

I was tempted to buy Hotline Miami 2, but then I remembered that I’d never gotten terribly far in the first one on the PC, and that I’d maybe want to replay the first one to make sure I’d even be interested in the sequel, and you know what?  I don’t really like that game.  The controls make no sense to me at all, and one-hit-kills make the learning process incredibly frustrating.  It’s got style out the wazoo, but as a game it makes a rough first impression.

I’m also dabbling in Munin on the PC, which is a puzzle game I bought during the most recent Steam sale.  I forget why it was on my wishlist, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless; it’s a 2D platformer where you progress through each level by rotating each area on the screen in order to move; it has some sort of mythical Nordic art style, and it’s rather beautiful.

Revisiting the Exclusivity Argument

It was revealed today that Rise of the Tomb Raider is not only coming to the Xbox One first, but is in fact being published by Microsoft outright, which more than likely precludes it from ever coming to the PS4 (though PC is not out of the question).

I went on a big rant about this earlier this year, long before I decided to buy an Xbox One – though if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that this forthcoming Tomb Raider game was definitely part of my decision to finally get one, even if it’s not coming out until next year.

Of course, Sony went ahead and made Street Fighter 5 a PS4 exclusive just this past weekend, thereby raising the ire of many Xbox One fans who were expecting to play it.

I’m not sure why this needs explaining, but I was misunderstood on Twitter, so I figure I might as well give it a shot:

Every console needs exclusives; otherwise there’s no point in having different machines.  I don’t own a Wii U, nor do I ever intend to (regardless of what others might say), but man – people keep talking about how amazing Bayonetta 2 is, and if I’m ever going to play it, that’s the only place to do it.

Still:  there’s a fundamental difference between first- and second-party exclusives, and third-party games which become exclusive.

Brianna Wu – who is much smarter than me – tweeted this:

The problem is that all the games she cited – GOW (whether you’re talking Gears of War or God of War), Titanfall, Forza or Halo – these are known quantities as console exclusives.  Uncharted has always been a Sony exclusive; Forza will always be a Microsoft exclusive.  I was pissed when Tomb Raider 2 was announced as an Xbox One timed exclusive because I didn’t own or plan on owning an Xbox One at the time, but more to the point – I was expecting it to appear on the PS4.  Tomb Raider HD came out on the PS4 earlier this year, and it was fantastic, and no less an authority than Digital Foundry proclaimed the PS4 version to be superior in terms of performance to the Xbox One version.

I don’t have a dog in the Street Fighter 5 fight; I’m not a big fighting game fan, and in any event I own both consoles now, so it doesn’t directly affect me.  But I can guarantee that if I were a big fighting game fan, and I only owned an Xbox One, I’d be just as pissed about this news as I was about Tomb Raider.

Imagine, if you will, that next year’s Batman Arkham Knight – possibly my most heavily anticipated game of 2015 – was suddenly announced as an Xbox One console exclusive.  Or if part of the delay in developing The Witcher 3 was because it was now coming out as a PS4 exclusive.

Your skin is crawling right now because if you only own one console, you were probably expecting to play at least one of those games next year.  And if it came out on the one you didn’t own, you’d feel cheated.

Third-party exclusives feel like a cheat because, well, they’re bought; they weren’t nurtured in-house, but rather procured to fill a competitive need.  Microsoft came out and said they went after Tomb Raider because they didn’t have a first-party response to Uncharted; so rather than taking the time to develop a response, they simply bought the only available competition.  I don’t see consumers winning in that equation.  If anything, consumers lose the possibility of brand-new IP.

All we can realistically hope for, then, is that by focusing Rise of the Tomb Raider’s development specifically for the Xbox One’s architecture – and by Microsoft giving the developers anything and everything they could possibly need – that the best version of that game gets made.  Swap out Street Fighter 5 and Sony in that sentence and the same sentiment is shared.  I’m not happy about this development, but it seems it’s going to become a bigger issue as the console war continues to heat up.

In Which A Whole Bunch of Navel-Gazing Ensues

1.  My rental copy of Assassin’s Creed Unity has not yet arrived – it might come tonight, it might come tomorrow – and yet considering the spectacular number of glitches and game-crashing bugs that are dominating my Twitter feed, I’m not sure I want to start it until the first wave of patches arrive (and that those patches don’t further break the game).  And by that point, when enough patches have come out so that the game is in a playable state, I could very well be knee-deep in Dragon Age Inquisition and might not want to bother.  The larger problem is that the code isn’t the only thing that appears to be half-baked; Assassin’s Creed games have always been tough nuts to crack from a narrative point of view, and I keep hearing that Unity’s story is bland, boring and nonsensically enigmatic, the way it’s always been.  No amount of patching can fix a busted story.  Do I want to spend 40+ hours of my life wrestling with something this problematic?  I mean, I’ve played pretty much every AC game there is (except the Vita game and Rogue) but I haven’t been afraid to leave them unfinished (i.e., Revelations, AC3).

Furthermore, regarding Ubisoft’s actions with respect to Unity’s release – specifically, the bizarre 12-hour post-release review embargo – well, it smacks of bullshit and corporate shenanigans, a desperate flailing to reduce the number of cancelled pre-orders once the word got out that Unity was straight-up broken.  And considering how the pre-release hype failed to live up to the post-release reality of Watch Dogs, I can’t help but feel very nervous about Far Cry 4.

2.  And speaking of broken stuff, I must admit that I’ve stalled a bit on my NaNo project.  Honestly?  The subject matter started sending me into a very inward-facing, navel-gazing spiral of depression – which was exacerbated by re-reading my college diary – and so I’ve been mired in this weird melancholic funk of nostalgia and regret for the last week (which itself has been exacerbated by a nasty cold that my family has been passing around to each other for the last month or so, as well as some day-job-related stress that I can’t talk about here).  Indeed, this morning I listened to the first half of Marc Maron’s WTF interview with Allie Brosh (of Hyperbole and a Half fame) and what I heard hit me square in the face.  I go through these depressive cycles every once in a while, and they’re a real pain in the ass; I get apathetic, and then I get mad at myself for being apathetic, and then I get mad that I’d rather get mad at myself than stop being apathetic, and so on and so forth.  So, yeah – writing about one of my college friends and collaborators has turned into something a bit uglier.  That doesn’t mean I intend to give up on it, though; it means that I need to approach it in a different way.

3.  Switching back over to games: I beg your forgiveness for all the Xbox One bashing I’ve done this year.  I’ve been playing Sunset Overdrive and Forza Horizon 2 just about every night since I bought the damned thing, and I’ve become rather enamored with it.  So much so that I haven’t decided which platform to play Dragon Age on; frankly, I’m waiting for the Digital Foundry people to get their hands on it (especially once the PS4 patch is in place that supposedly fixes a lot of what was broken during the review period).  Because unless the PS4 version is noticeably and markedly better-looking and performing, I might just stick with the XB1 – even though I have a $15 credit on the PSN store.

4.  And now switching back to books:  I’m trying to keep my good-book-reading streak alive, and so I’m still trying to figure out what to read next.  In addition to the list of 10 as-yet-unpurchased books I put up the other day (as well as the countless already-purchased-and-still-unread books on my Kindle), I’m now tremendously intrigued by Michel Faber, who I’d never heard of until yesterday, when I flipped through this week’s New Yorker and saw his newest book mentioned in their Briefly Noted section.  David Mitchell, writer of this year’s “Bone Clocks” (which is my personal Book of the Year and might end up in my all-time Top 10), calls Faber’s new book “his second masterpiece”, and so I had to find out what the first masterpiece was, which is “The Crimson Petal and the White”, which a few Facebook friends also raved about; and it turns out that he also wrote “Under the Skin”, which is also a movie I’ve been wanting to see all year.  So, then:  if you’ve got anything to say about him, please let me know.

Adventures in Excessive Hyperbole: Forza Horizon 2

Actually, before we get to Forza Horizon 2, there’s three things on my mind that I should get out of the way first:

1.  I’m currently at just under 7400 words for NaNoWriMo.  As I’d mentioned last week, the topic that I eventually wound my way towards is somewhat emotionally charged, and at this point I really don’t care about hitting 50,000 words; I’m mostly just heavily invested in figuring the thing out.  And it’s hard to carve out time to sit and write about stuff that keeps hitting me harder than I expect it to; it’s tough to come home from work and do that when I’m already exhausted, and it’s even more difficult to find time during the day to do it, when I’m expected to be professional and not, say, an emotional wreck (as was the case last Friday).

2.  I tried giving it the benefit of the doubt, but after wading through 2 1/2 missions of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, I realized I’d had enough.  Because I don’t care about, and totally suck at, the multiplayer side of things, I was only ever going to play their campaigns.  And the campaigns have always been a bit silly and convoluted and contrived (and I’m not even talking about “Press X to Pay Your Respects”, although that’s a perfect example of something silly and convoluted and contrived).  As far as CoD:AW goes, I appreciate that it’s going for this sci-fi not-quite-near-future vibe, giving me quasi-superpowers and such… but at the end of the day it still feels like it’s always felt, which is a very tightly scripted shoot-em-up gauntlet running through blandly pretty corridors.   I don’t play enough Call of Duty to have an already-intuitive grasp of the controls, which makes the campaign trickier than it should be; I try to melee someone and end up throwing a grenade.  There is clearly an audience for Call of Duty, and I might as well come to grips with the fact that I am clearly not it, and haven’t been it for quite a long time now.  (For the record: my 2014 shooter of the year is still Wolfenstein, and that means Far Cry 4 has a very high bar to meet.)

3.  I finished Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Slow Regard of Silent Things“, a slim side-story to the Kingkiller Chronicles.  As Rothfuss himself says, it’s not the book you should start with if you’re new to his work.  I enjoyed it; it’s a bit of an experiment for him, which he fully acknowledges in his afterword, and I think he succeeded rather well.  The book features no dialogue, and only one character, and it does not explain itself – and yet, at the book’s end, you know this character incredibly well, and you’re given a very interesting, very specific slice of the world of the larger two books that you’d never see otherwise, and it gives him an opportunity to be more playful with language than he usually gets.  I’d recommend it – but, again, only if you’ve read the first two books, and only if you’re aware that you’re not reading a “traditional” story.  To say any more would ruin the book’s magical, ethereal quality; that’s something you should experience as nakedly as possible.

Long-time readers of this site (the number of which can probably be counted on one hand) will know that I am prone to excessive use of hyperbole.  I make no apologies for this tic; it is what it is.  When I feel inclined to write about something, it’s most likely because I’m already fired up about it.

So take this with a grain of salt, if you must, but I think I’m ready to say something ridiculous:  I’m starting to think that Forza Horizon 2 very well might be my favorite driving game of all time.*  The only real thing it’s missing is some sort of crash/stunt mode, which is a feature so closely associated with Burnout that it would be damn near impossible to implement without being charged with plagiarism.

Actually, here’s three more minor knocks that keep it from being a perfect game:  (1) the game looks absolutely gorgeous, but it also suffers from pop-in from time to time and it can be somewhat distracting at times, especially when trees are popping up along the suggested driving line.  (2) I don’t give a shit about car culture, and while I appreciate that the “Horizon Festival” is as good a justification as any for why you’re doing what you’re doing, I don’t really need a narrative justification for driving anywhere, especially if it involves something as contrived as the Horizon Festival – though at least the main guy isn’t that annoying.  (3) But if you are going to go through the trouble of having a narrative justification for doing all this stuff, then why not let me create my own character?  True, you’re behind the wheel of a car for 99% of the game, but I’m there in that other 1%, and while I might be a white guy with brown hair, not everybody who plays this game is also a white guy with brown hair.

Those three knocks aside, I’m loving the hell out of it.  It’s everything I loved about the first game, but better and larger and more beautiful, and I genuinely feel bad that my gaming schedule is about to get crowded, because I’d be happy to keep playing this and only this for the next few months.

More to the point:  it’s a fantastic showcase for the Xbox One, and the more time I spend with the Xbox One, the more I really, really like it.  I took a few minutes during the weekend to load up Ubisoft’s The Crew beta on the PS4, and the PS4’s interface is so bland and dumb.  (Also, The Crew is bland and dumb, and I’m glad I saw the beta if only so that I know to take it off of my GameFly queue.)

 

* I’ve been thinking about what my Top 10 list of driving games might look like, and the list is tricky because while there’s no shortage of driving games out there, there’s only a few franchises that really moved me in any specific way:

  • I’m certainly a big fan of the Forza series in general – and I like it more than I ever liked any of the Gran Turismo games I played – but to be honest, Forza 1-4 all kinda bleed together for me; there’s not one particular title that stands out in my memory.  (As I only just bought my Xbox One last week, I have not yet played Forza 5, though considering the scuttlebutt that surrounded it, I’m not sure I ever will.)
  • Certainly I’d put both Burnout 3 and Burnout Paradise near the very top of the list.
  • I’m a big fan of both DiRT and DiRT 2 – the latter is the better looking of the two, but the former had the best replay system (which was inexplicably changed) and had some of the best UI in any driving game, ever.
  • I loved the first two Rallisport Challenge games on the original Xbox.
  • It’s a bit of a lost gem, but does anybody else remember Midtown Madness 3 on the original Xbox?  That game was awesome.  That was the first real experience I had with online free-roam driving, and to this day I still remember all sorts of silly stuff we used to do – like trying to jump as many trucks as we could fit onto the roofs of various buildings.
  • I was also especially fond of both Project Gotham Racing 2 and 3 (4 was the one where they introduced motorcycles, I think, and that’s also where it fell off the rails for me).
  • Split/Second was terrific and criminally overlooked…
  • I will always have a soft spot for OutRun…
  • My loathing of The Offspring is the main reason why I try not to think about Crazy Taxi, even if the game itself is pretty great.
  • I always enjoyed the Midnight Club games, though I never stuck with them that long.
  • I’m conflicted about the Need for Speed franchise, because (a) the driving is fine, but the cutscenes and the “car culture” is just flat-out ridiculous, and (b) while I really enjoyed Criterion’s two Need for Speed titles, it also meant that we weren’t getting any more Burnout games, which is a supreme bummer.
  • Speaking of “flat-out”, I also have a weird soft spot for that first Flat-Out game, especially on PC, because the physics were completely insane.
  • Could I include Night Driver from the Atari 2600?
  • Or Pole Position?
  • Could I get away with not including any Mario Kart games, because I don’t give a shit about Mario Kart?  or Ridge Racer, for that matter?  or Wipeout, or F-Zero?  or F1 on the PC?

Am I missing any?  Feel free to call me an idiot in the comments.

The First Few Hours (for real): Xbox One, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2

1.  Before I get into the topic at hand, a confession:  I haven’t written for NaNo in 2 days.  Nor am I sure I’m going to pick up where I left off, if in fact I do decide to keep going; the subject matter is a bit more emotionally loaded and intense than I’d thought.  If I’m going to successfully fictionalize it, I need to understand it first, and boy oh boy am I not emotionally prepared to do that at this present moment in time.

2.  And in keeping with things that make me feel depressed, I can’t help but notice that my writing just sucks these days.  Even just emails to friends, FB status updates, and twitter replies – they all feel like they’re coming out wrong.  I’m feeling very much like Salieri; I have a tremendous passion for writing, but I feel that I lack the natural ability to do it as well as I’d like.  I may very well end up taking more classes.

This is all to say that trying to write a novel about super-intense emotional stuff when I’m feeling like I can’t even write a simple declarative sentence that’s enjoyable to read is discouraging, and depressing, and ugh.

3.  It’s November, which means that it’s time to start getting to work on year-end Top 10 lists.  To that end, I’ve been making it a priority to listen to all the 2014 albums I’ve saved on Spotify that I’ve never actually got around to listening to.  I’ll be putting out a playlist of my favorite songs soon enough; but there are also some albums that I’m loving the hell out of that don’t necessarily have one stand-out song.  Case in point:  Adult Jazz, “Gist Is”, which is (to me) a beautiful, melodic mixture of the avant-garde songwriting structures of Dirty Projectors and the latent melancholy that dwells within certain Vampire Weekend songs.  I can see why some listeners might find it incredibly pretentious and off-putting, but it’s been hitting me really deep of late.  Another case in point: the new Deerhoof album, “La Isla Bonita”, which might be the best (and most accessible) album they’ve put out since “The Runners Four.”  Likewise, Run The Jewels 2 and Flying Lotus’ “You’re Dead” are both utterly amazing headtrips, and near-impossible to pick just one or two tracks that stand out from the rest.

4.  So:  when I got home last night, both Sunset Overdrive and Forza Horizon 2 had finished downloading.  I’m enjoying both of them, but it’s also entirely possible that my current weird, depressive mind-state is making it difficult for me to fully engage with either game.

I appreciate Sunset Overdrive’s over-the-top lunacy, it’s vibrant color palette, and that it’s breaking the fourth wall at every possible opportunity, just to show you that it’s not taking itself too seriously.  To that end, it’s also possible that being self-aware of how un-self-aware you are is also a form of overt self-awareness, and so the more bananas it tries to be, the more silly and toy-like it becomes.   It reminds me a great deal of Crackdown – it’s similarly graphically vibrant, non-linear, and you basically jump and soar and fly and blow shit up, but I don’t feel like I’m moving as quickly as I’d like (I suppose that’s something I’ll be leveling up at some point); it also reminds me a great deal of Sony’s Infamous games (especially the grinding and other traversal maneuvers), except that the traversal in Sunset Overdrive feels a bit more convoluted and non-intuitive – two button presses to grind, plus shooting?  I get the hang of it, but I don’t feel like I’ve mastered the controls as quickly as I should.

I’ve only dabbled with one or two events in Forza Horizon 2.  It’s astonishingly gorgeous – far better-looking than I expected – and I’m also really happy with how the Xbox One controller feels while driving.  The rumble is pleasingly intense, the buttons are well-placed, the triggers feel responsive; unlike in Sunset, I felt in control the entire time.  I may end up spending more time with this one, which is fine with me; I loved the first game, and this one looks like a bigger and better model.

As for the Xbox One itself?  I like it.  I like the system.  The dashboard is overwhelming at first but it does make sense, and it’s fun to engage with in ways that the PS4 isn’t.  My wife and I got rid of cable and we have a Roku3, so I don’t think I’ll be using the TV functionality all that much, but that’s fine.  I will still more than likely continue to use the PS4 as my primary console (especially as long as multi-platform releases continue to perform better on it), but I’m glad to be back in Xbox land, and I kinda forgot how much I liked earning Achievements.  (Sorry, Sony – trophies just aren’t the same.)