Next Gen Thread (Xbox Series X & PS5)

[Dazey]

Watched the Halo: Infinite gameplay trailer today and I don't know if it's just because Halo is Halo but it didn't look any better than the last entry in the series.  I'm not really sure that we're going to see anything miraculous from this new gen of consoles any time soon if I'm honest. I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) and Ghost of Tsushima (PS4 Pro) and both of them blow the new Halo out of the water graphically. Assuming that PS5 is a similar leap forward (or not) then I'm not sure why it's worth bothering with this new gen of consoles just yet.

[Jakey Styley]

58 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Watched the Halo: Infinite gameplay trailer today and I don't know if it's just because Halo is Halo but it didn't look any better than the last entry in the series.  I'm not really sure that we're going to see anything miraculous from this new gen of consoles any time soon if I'm honest. I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) and Ghost of Tsushima (PS4 Pro) and both of them blow the new Halo out of the water graphically. Assuming that PS5 is a similar leap forward (or not) then I'm not sure why it's worth bothering with this new gen of consoles just yet.

The graphics were actually terrible, comparable to Halo Reach. There's no way that this is the finished product, the textures were just not there.

[Jakey Styley]

1 hour ago, Oldest Goat said:

 

Nerdy rage is flowing through my veins. It looks like a mediocre Xbox One game ffs.

Other than MC's armour graphics look janky and fucked. CoD weapons. Sprint returns and with it's awkward animation too. My nickname for the Grapplehook will probably be 'The Stupid Rope' as it makes no sense since Spartans weigh tons. Certain assets like the warthog and some grunts look ripped from Halo 5. Graphics pop-ins. Many textures notably the weapons are fucked with no detail. Shadows are fucked and lighting in general is weird. Brute guy at the end is extremely cringe and looks weird af. Don't like hitmarkers. AI seemed haphazard. Brutes need hair. Certain sound effects like the warthog aren't right. Just read this is open world and a game as a service ever expanding aka cobbled together. 343i are a bunch of no talent clowns who don't know Halo. It's too early to completely write it off but err this is not good.

They're dedicated to doing what Disney is doing to Star Wars and GNR is doing to GNR; Fuck the old fans, rape the nostalgia/legacy and cater to kids/lowest common denominator. Honestly, if they have emotes in the game I will vomit blood.

Tetris and the Fable teaser looked great. Thank God for CD-Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077.

I was recently reading reviews of what it's like to work at 343 on Glassdoor (halo nerd here, lol) - 70% of reviews complain of 1) old outdated tech 2) slow management/poor communication and 3) a studio made up of like 50% contract workers who aren't invested in the project for the whole development span. When you're hired, you're working on a former employee's janky code that you cant ask anyone about because the programmers aren't there anymore. When I realized that Infinite will have been in development for 5 years and will supposedly be the most expensive game of all time (500mil is what is being reported), I thought this was what 343 needed to get it right. I really did!

The video I saw today, while not conclusive, has shot my hopes down to what it should be for a game produced by this company. 

But again, the graphics were so fucking bad that it HAS to be better. It is common for developers to scale down graphics for a gameplay demo to ensure performance consistency, but man...this was the first unveiling of a Halo game in so fucking long, you need to wow people. There should have been multiplayer footage. It should have looked better. 

[ZoSoRose]

Massive Halo fan

I am in shock by how bad infinite looks. I am cautiously excited for an open world Halo but everything else looked terrible. I cannot believe how bad the graphics, textures, and art direction is. They took the worst from 5 and ran with it while promoting a "return to form". I say this as an open minded fan. I loved 4 and did not like 5, so I am not totally against 343. At this point, though, if this is a failure, 343 will be 1-3 for me. 4 was great even though lots of fans hate it, MCC was a mess that wasn't fixed until half a decade later, 5 is far and away the worst Halo, and now this looks like a mess. By that score, their one and only win for me was 8 years ago 

I despised the textures in 5. The plastic and glossy sheen on everything turned me off and was amplified by their hideous forge maps. It looks like they took 5's forge assets, and pasted them all over Infinite's world and it looks terrible. The textureless pillars, metal surfaces, structures, etc are actual eye sores. Graphics are vital to an open world game so you can marvel at the environment.

What. The. Hell.

Edited July 24, 2020 by ZoSoRose

[ZoSoRose]

The delay is good news but also representative of a bigger issue. They blame it on the pandemic, but it's clear that isn't the real reason why. They have had half a decade to put out a decent product. New engine or not (which looks horrendous, anyways), they could not even put out a presentable gameplay showcase in all these years. This has been one of the most disasterous reveals in recent memory, even the story looks uninteresting. The Brute monologue at the end was overlong, hard to understand, and cheesy. It does nothing to get you excited.

I welcome a delay if it helps, but I fear it is too late. Either way, 343 squandered a 5 year development time and is missing launch. Now Microsoft has a totally empty launch surrounding their new console and will potentially lose millions of dollars.

Definitely getting PS5

[ZoSoRose]

1 hour ago, Oldest Goat said:

I love people who understand Halo and that 343i are shit. Makes me sick seeing the forced positivity and absolute ignorance.

You'd probably hate then me because I absolutely love 4 (I know, I'm crazy). Even the multiplayer! I've been with the series since Combat Evolved, too! However, that was 8 years ago and 343 have completely dropped the ball since. 5 was far and away my least favorite Halo. It was a good game, but a bad Halo game. Story direction, new mechanics, maps, art and graphics, etc all were a let down for Halo

[downzy]

Meh, I was never a huge Halo fan to begin with.

The only Halo game I played was Halo 3.  Thought it was fun and decent, but nothing that made me want to play it again (in fairness, I never played multiplayer).

I do agree that this is pretty bad for Microsoft and Xbox, even if it makes Halo Infinite a better game.

The only way I'm buying an XSX at launch is if Cyberpunk 2077 looks and plays dramatically better than on my Xbox One X.  

Otherwise I'll wait to upgrade until GTA 6. 

In terms of whether I get a PS5 or XSX, I'm still leaning towards XSX.  My unplayed Xbox game library is growing and I'd like to play them on the new system since most games XBO games will be backward.   I know Sony has supposedly better first-party games, but none of them really interest me.  I tried the Uncharted series but couldn't get more than twenty minutes into them.  The Last of Us bored the shit out of me.  Tried three times to play through the end and couldn't do it.  Horizon Zero Dawn looks interesting but doesn't seem to offer much that I can't get with the Tomb Raider series.  Spider-Man looks cool though.  

I'm curious to see and feel how the new PS5 controllers will turn out.  I've always hated Sony's controllers going back to the PS1 and gave up on Sony after the PS3 when I bought an Xbox 360 and its controller just felt right.  If the PS5 feels more like Xbox's I might consider it.  

[ZoSoRose]

3 hours ago, downzy said:

Meh, I was never a huge Halo fan to begin with.

The only Halo game I played was Halo 3.  Thought it was fun and decent, but nothing that made me want to play it again (in fairness, I never played multiplayer).

I do agree that this is pretty bad for Microsoft and Xbox, even if it makes Halo Infinite a better game.

The only way I'm buying an XSX at launch is if Cyberpunk 2077 looks and plays dramatically better than on my Xbox One X.  

Otherwise I'll wait to upgrade until GTA 6. 

In terms of whether I get a PS5 or XSX, I'm still leaning towards XSX.  My unplayed Xbox game library is growing and I'd like to play them on the new system since most games XBO games will be backward.   I know Sony has supposedly better first-party games, but none of them really interest me.  I tried the Uncharted series but couldn't get more than twenty minutes into them.  The Last of Us bored the shit out of me.  Tried three times to play through the end and couldn't do it.  Horizon Zero Dawn looks interesting but doesn't seem to offer much that I can't get with the Tomb Raider series.  Spider-Man looks cool though.  

I'm curious to see and feel how the new PS5 controllers will turn out.  I've always hated Sony's controllers going back to the PS1 and gave up on Sony after the PS3 when I bought an Xbox 360 and its controller just felt right.  If the PS5 feels more like Xbox's I might consider it.  

I'm hoping I'll just get used to the PS's controller when I make the switch. I do think you can buy Xbox style controllers for Playstation though. As a long time Xbox user, I wish I made the jump this past generation. The 360 was great, especially for Halo, but Microsoft simply does not have the exclusives Sony does. It isn't even close, anymore.

With Halo, I think it's kind of like Star Wars and you had to sort of grow up with it. Nostalgia is a huge factor with the older games. As a kid I loved SW for sci-fi and then in middle school, Halo was my jam. The hype waiting for 2 and 3 was insane. I even read some of the books back then. 

Like all series, there comes a time when the magic lessons and the new content doesn't have the same magic, and Halo has long passed that point. Still, I was excited for the prospect of something new for the series with Infinite and a quasi open world coop enabled Halo would normally interest the hell out of me. I had a feeling Microsoft and 343 fucked up royally going back as far as 2018. When a developer is too secretive about their project, it usually spells disaster because they don't have something to present. Even with the delay, Infinite is in trouble and Microsoft has an empty launch. I am sure some people's jobs at 343 are in danger over this.

 

[Dazey]

7 hours ago, downzy said:

Meh, I was never a huge Halo fan to begin with.

The only Halo game I played was Halo 3.  Thought it was fun and decent, but nothing that made me want to play it again (in fairness, I never played multiplayer).

I do agree that this is pretty bad for Microsoft and Xbox, even if it makes Halo Infinite a better game.

The only way I'm buying an XSX at launch is if Cyberpunk 2077 looks and plays dramatically better than on my Xbox One X.  

Otherwise I'll wait to upgrade until GTA 6. 

In terms of whether I get a PS5 or XSX, I'm still leaning towards XSX.  My unplayed Xbox game library is growing and I'd like to play them on the new system since most games XBO games will be backward.   I know Sony has supposedly better first-party games, but none of them really interest me.  I tried the Uncharted series but couldn't get more than twenty minutes into them.  The Last of Us bored the shit out of me.  Tried three times to play through the end and couldn't do it.  Horizon Zero Dawn looks interesting but doesn't seem to offer much that I can't get with the Tomb Raider series.  Spider-Man looks cool though.  

I'm curious to see and feel how the new PS5 controllers will turn out.  I've always hated Sony's controllers going back to the PS1 and gave up on Sony after the PS3 when I bought an Xbox 360 and its controller just felt right.  If the PS5 feels more like Xbox's I might consider it.  

I fell in love with Halo first playing it on the Original XBox back in 2001. It was so far ahead of everything else that was available at the time and the split screen co-op multiplayer was amazing. If I'm honest it's been downhill all the way from there. I bought Halo 2 on day one, dashed around to my buddy's house to "finish the fight" and it was shite!  I mean I know it may sound like a minor thing but whoever decided to change from horizontal to vertical split screen for the local co-op on Halo 2 needs a good fucking kicking. It was just unplayable and the campaign was a load of shit too.

Halo 3 was a step in the right direction but by then it was all about the online mulit-player and I'm just not interested in that due to the amount of time and practice required to be competitive. I could never get into ODST or Reach and 4 was okay but you could see they were running out of ideas at that point. I've got 5 and I've played about 20 minutes of it but got bored pretty quickly.

As for PS vs XBox, I've had every XBox since the original and every PS barring the original and the XBox has always been my console of choice for multi-plats mainly due to the controller whereas I'd tend to only buy platform exclusives on the PS2/PS3. Having recently bought a PS4 the exclusives are worth the expense. Spiderman is really great and I've loved the Uncharted games since the original but for me the best game I've played on it is Bloodborne. It's a bit of a buggy mess technically but it's a hell of a game if (and this is a big if) you're up for a challenge. 

One thing I would add however is that I've fucking hated the PS controllers from the start. Fucking tiny little child hand having pieces of crap with shitty little convex thumbsticks making any fine control in 3D games and FPS a fucking nightmare. Bizarrely enough I think that the PS4 controller goes a long way to solve most of the issues I've had with earlier Sony controllers. It's bigger, fits much better in the hands and the thumbsticks (though still not ideally positioned if you're a fan of the XBox layout) are a MASSIVE improvement. It's not perfect by any stretch. The start/select or whatever the fuck they've called them are tiny, awkward and an absolute pain in the arse to use but all in all it's a huge improvement. The bumper buttons on the shoulders are also much better than the XBox pad which may sound trivial but I've found myself using it in preference to my XBox controller for PC games such as Sekiro where the bumpers are your main attack buttons.

As for which next gen machine I'm going for. I'm going to wait a while and see what looks the best in a year or so. I've just bought the PS4 Pro and upgraded my PC with RTX graphics so I've got a lot to keep me occupied for a while yet. Plus I've not played about 14,990 of the 15,000 games on my arcade cab yet.  Also I don't even have a 4K TV yet so I really don't see the benefit of getting one of these monster machines if I can't let it do it's thing.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Dazey

[downzy]

The problem Microsoft has it has run its three main properties somewhat into the ground.  Halo, Gears, Forza.  Outside of those three franchises, none of their other first-party franchises have done much.  It kind of blows my mind why Microsoft has not many efforts in the one area that Sony seems to dominate: single-player narrative driven games.  How is there not an Xbox version of Uncharted?  They did make a play with Tomb Raider, but that's a tough transition to make for an established franchise that had previously been open to all platforms.

For a guy who just turned 40, the only games I'll make time for these days are GTA, RDR, and Forza Horizon.  If XSX proves to be more powerful than the PS5 and GTA and RDR looks and plays better on Xbox, then I'll stick with Xbox.  Sony has nothing to compete with Forza Horizon and I think the entire Forza series has long eclipsed Gran Turismo.  

[Dazey]

Just tried playing Doom: Eternal on PC using my PS4 pad and went back to my XBox pad after a couple of minutes. I'd say for 3rd person action games the PS4 pad nudges it but the XBox controller kicks the shit out of it for FPS. I'm just glad I've got both.  

[downzy]

4 hours ago, Dazey said:

Just tried playing Doom: Eternal on PC using my PS4 pad and went back to my XBox pad after a couple of minutes. I'd say for 3rd person action games the PS4 pad nudges it but the XBox controller kicks the shit out of it for FPS. I'm just glad I've got both.  

I’ve never understood why Sony keeps the left joystick where it is. It makes no fucking sense. Most games use the left joystick to control action or character. You would think placing it in the most comfortable and convenient place on the controller would be a no brainer. Yet Sony somehow feels having it almost in the middle of the controller requiring a fucked up thumb position. I don’t get it and it makes we want to throw a brick through my tv if i think about it for more than ten seconds!!!

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

On 14-8-2020 at 5:01 AM, downzy said:

I’ve never understood why Sony keeps the left joystick where it is. It makes no fucking sense. Most games use the left joystick to control action or character. You would think placing it in the most comfortable and convenient place on the controller would be a no brainer. Yet Sony somehow feels having it almost in the middle of the controller requiring a fucked up thumb position. I don’t get it and it makes we want to throw a brick through my tv if i think about it for more than ten seconds!!!

I have always owned Playstations, and while I'm used to their controllers I do notice the more natural feel of Xbox' left joystick.

There are shooters I pick up faster on Xbox than on the PS just because of that joystick.

 

 

Nothing beats N64's joystick tho 

[Dazey]

4 hours ago, YOUCOULDBEMINE. said:

I have always owned Playstations, and while I'm used to their controllers I do notice the more natural feel of Xbox' left joystick.

There are shooters I pick up faster on Xbox than on the PS just because of that joystick.

Nothing beats N64's joystick tho 

I used to love the N64 joystick. What controls did you use for Goldeneye? I always used to use the yellow buttons to move and the stick to aim. It worked great back in the day. 

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

4 hours ago, Dazey said:

I used to love the N64 joystick. What controls did you use for Goldeneye? I always used to use the yellow buttons to move and the stick to aim. It worked great back in the day. 

Ahhh yes Goldeneye! Loved that clunky multiplayer mode where you could hit someone because their arm was sticking through the wall.

I used the same buttons if I recall. But my problem was with the stick, I played a lot of Mario Party with my younger sister. And some of those minigames required a lot of twists and turns of the joystick.

After a while the stick started drifting, which fucks up your aiming in other games. I had this with most of my N64 controllers eventually. 

Man I have to play Goldeneye again now. I played the remaster for the PS3 but it's nothing like the original game. I used to love Goldeneye's simple sound effects.

[downzy]

I never could get into Goldeneye.  Back in the late 90s I had an N64 and PS1, but limited by FPS gaming to PC.  I never understood the hype around Goldeneye considering it was substantially inferior to FPSs on PCs.  When you're using to playing Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Descent, and other FPSs with a mouse and keyboard while playing multiplayer using the entire screen, going back to four player split screen with wonky controls made zero sense to me.  

And yes, the N64 controller is absurd looking back at it today.  At the time I thought it was revolutionary (and to a certain extent it was since it was one of, if not the, first to include a joystick).  It's amazing it would take controller ten years to get it right (Xbox 360).  

[MillionsOfSpiders]

I loved Golden Eye. I spent so many hours playing the man with the golden gun against my stepbrother. My favourite gaming memory comes from this when he had hardly any health left but he found the golden gun , so he came after me (laughing) - I had no gun, so I hid behind a door and waited for him, he burst through and I slapped him and he died and I got the golden gun. Classic! 

[Dazey]

20 hours ago, downzy said:

I never could get into Goldeneye.  Back in the late 90s I had an N64 and PS1, but limited by FPS gaming to PC.  I never understood the hype around Goldeneye considering it was substantially inferior to FPSs on PCs.  When you're using to playing Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Descent, and other FPSs with a mouse and keyboard while playing multiplayer using the entire screen, going back to four player split screen with wonky controls made zero sense to me.  

And yes, the N64 controller is absurd looking back at it today.  At the time I thought it was revolutionary (and to a certain extent it was since it was one of, if not the, first to include a joystick).  It's amazing it would take controller ten years to get it right (Xbox 360).  

I think that the Saturn was the first to include an analogue stick but it wasn't bundled with the machine if I recall correctly.

[James Bond]

I want to get a Brawler 64 controller. The controller that it always should have been!

[Dazey]

48 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

Any mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre has been censored from the upcoming 'Call of Duty: Cold War', globally not just in China, at the demand of the Chinese Communist Party.

Not buying it now.

Have you got Mortal Kombat 11 Goaty?

[Dazey]

32 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

Nah mate I should probably get that though it looks cool and you should get MCC. Not sure about RDR2 anymore the multiplayer looks very sparse, they should do an Undead Nightmare 2.

Have you tried googling for Steam codes vs actually buying games via Steam? So much cheaper.  

[alfierose]

I see an Xbox series S is being released as well as the X. I watched a video about it but am not much the wiser.

I was going to preorder the X (not for me) but I see the S is much cheaper. It's to replace a fairly old Xbox One as a xmas present.

Is the main difference that the S has no disc drive so online purchased games only?

Obviously cheaper price point is appealing but is it one of those false economy things?

 

[Dazey]

47 minutes ago, alfierose said:

I see an Xbox series S is being released as well as the X. I watched a video about it but am not much the wiser.

I was going to preorder the X (not for me) but I see the S is much cheaper. It's to replace a fairly old Xbox One as a xmas present.

Is the main difference that the S has no disc drive so online purchased games only?

Obviously cheaper price point is appealing but is it one of those false economy things?

 

The S is much less powerful. It will still play the same games but they won't look as good or play as well.

[downzy]

1 hour ago, alfierose said:

I see an Xbox series S is being released as well as the X. I watched a video about it but am not much the wiser.

I was going to preorder the X (not for me) but I see the S is much cheaper. It's to replace a fairly old Xbox One as a xmas present.

Is the main difference that the S has no disc drive so online purchased games only?

Obviously cheaper price point is appealing but is it one of those false economy things?

 

I would bet that for most players the S will be enough.  The only draw back is its limited hard drive space.  This is only an issue if you have a slow internet connection or your son uses discs rather than digital downloads to play games.

In terms of performance, it is less powerful than the X, but you have to put things in perspective.  I currently own the Xbox One X, which produces amazing 4K visuals at a decent frame rate.  It's not going to compete against what PCs can do, but for consoles it does produce visuals that I would say are impressive.  While the new Xbox Series S won't produce 4K visuals, it will be similar in power and produce similar or faster frame rates.  Plus it comes with the benefit of a SSD hard drive for faster load times.   According to the press release it will be able to pull off all the cool visual effects of its more powerful cousin (the X), but just at a lower resolution.  If you don't have the most cutting edge tv, the likelihood that your son will be able to see the difference is unlikely.  The price difference is $200, which could buy a year of Game Pass or three AAA games. 

As it is a gift I think you're going to be fine with the Xbox Series S.  The X strikes me as the console geared towards the upper elite players who need every bell and whistle. 

We'll know more in the coming months how drastic the visual differences will be.  My guess is it won't be worth the extra $200 for most players but time will tell.  

Here's a good article that breaks down the difference:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/9/21428792/microsoft-xbox-series-s-specs-cpu-teraflops-performance-gpu

Unless you have a top of the line 4K set, you're fine with the Series S.  

[downzy]

That said, the Xbox Series S really strikes me as the console for people who will definitely be buying a PS5 but also want an Xbox.