The touch controls thing, specifically, has to do with playing xCloud games.
If games have touch controls, you can play them on Android devices without needing a Bluetooth controller.
If they don’t have touch controls, you can still play on Android, but you need to have a controller device connected.
But the touch controls are just an on-screen overlay that map areas of and screen to Xbox gamepad buttons, so they’re a terrible way to play anything, and you’re really better off with mobile-native games. They do not adapt the game to touch controls the way good ports do. For example running the PC native version of Nowhere Prophet on a Surface is a great experience, as the game plays perfectly with taps and drags.
Well, I now have 3 years of Game Pass thanks to Turkey. I haven’t really looked at the selection before and wasn’t expecting to be so many games that I’d want to play. Wow.
I still like the idea of owning the games that I like, so most likely I’ll use this service as a way to demo new things and buy whatever I want to play more seriously on Steam or whatever. One nice thing is that I can try out all the shiny new FPS games. I’ve always wanted to play FPS games, but sadly most of them give me motion sickness, so at least this way I can play them for a couple of minutes.
This is one of the huge benefits for Game Pass to me. It gives me access to games I’d never otherwise try as well as some games that I’d definitely buy (and still do occasionally).
Yeah, this is specifically what I was talking about up there. Contrast with something like Cultist Simulator on Steam- it should play well with touch on Windows, and it actually does on the more touch-native platforms (IOS/Android), but they never added that functionality to the Windows version, so it’s super crappy to play on my Surface.
That said, some games with the touch overlay on Android/xCloud are fine. Turn-based stuff, line Octopath Traveller was fun.
Windjammers is one of my favorite arcade games, I wonder if Windjammers 2 will be any good. Gotta try it out.
That’s actually what I did too. I knew from past experience that FPS makes me sick, so I never buy them anymore. But with GamePass I decided to give “The Outer Worlds” a try and found it was pretty tolerable, which gave me the confidence to buy Cyberpunk 2077, which I found I could also tolerate.
Using GamePass, I decided to try something more twitchy and tried Vermintide. That unfortunately set off my FPS nausea big-time. I couldn’t get through the tutorial. But hey, no money lost, since it was on GamePass.
Overall GamePass is a big win for those of us with these sorts of issues. I understand it’s a really bigger win for people with more serious physical access issues — allowing them to determine if they can actually use control schemes for different games given their individual limitation, without having to spend $50-70 on a game they may find they can’t play at all.
Not entirely. Some games like Minecraft Dungeons and Football Simulator use more natural touch, where the game was updated to accept direct touch input.
In Minecraft Dungeons, you can directly touch buttons and drag/drop stuff in your inventory, for example. In Football Simulator, the entire game is direct touch enabled, so you’re not using overlays at all.
For the games which do use overlays, they’re usually pretty thoughtful. I tried Hades and Dead Cells, and while I’d not play those games just with touch, the designs make sense and fit the game well.
Even Psychonauts 2 works well. I would never want to play the game exclusively using touch, but I checked it out while on vacation and was able to clean up some achievements. The touch overlay does some smart things like enabling you to tap and drag a single button to let you aim and shoot at the same time. It’s hard to explain but makes sense while playing it.
As is always the case, how good it is varies by game. But they seem to have done a good job customizing things to be as good as possible for each game.
Ah that gives me hope. Outer Wilds is definitely one of the first person games that I want to try out first and am really hoping I am able to play.
Also crossing my fingers for Cyberpunk, so hopefully that works out too. Maybe later on by the time I try it out (after it is dirt cheap for PC), there will be a working third person mod for it. I was able to play Skyrim just fine in third person.
I already went through all the current games and picked out the ones I wanted to try. It’s a pretty big list.
That list of games leaving is nice this time around. All short stuff we can quickly decide if we like or not. I didn’t even come close to finishing Yakuza 0 & KH3 last month. :/
I fired up Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator on my phone and ended up playing it for a few hours instead of sleeping. Highly recommend just for the weirdness.
I think Outer Wilds might be more challenging for motion sickness sufferers. Lots of spinning round in your little space ship :)
Yeah, Toms review of Codevein had me interested so I fired it up on Gamepass and realized very quickly that it wasn’t for me.
That’s the beauty of the service: whether I play some thing for 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 50, it’s all good. And I had the same reaction to Code Vein.
This place still has 3 months ultimate for under 18, about 6.33/month. Topped off until the end of 2022 recently.
See, that’s how they get you as well.
Free game to play, score, consumer!
With the inability to stick to one game at a time (thank you Massive Backlog plus GP (my God, it’s full of games!), set game aside for “later”.
Later comes and that game is gone from GP. Purchase game. Point, MS.
Oh my gosh. I am an idiot.
I thought Game Pass was Xbox exclusive, and I don’t have one.
Game Pass is also ON PC. GAME PASS IS ALSO ON PC!
Somehow this totally eluded me until today. Why am I even dinking around pausing Humble every month? GAME PASS IS ON PC!
Haha, welcome aboard!
The thread title once mentioned PC, but no longer does.
For two years and a half, this thread was called Game Pass PC thread, because it was done in the time the pc version was created, to annouce it. More exaclty, they put Metro Exodus on it, so you could play a recent and desired $60 game for $1 (with the trial month), which at the time it was pretty big news, that’s why the thread was done, so people wouldn’t miss it.
But after 2.5 years, I thought everyone should know it’s on PC
:P
Hahaha, yes, as noted, the evidence clearly indicates I am an idiot.