It’s the only Minecraft-alike I’ve been able to get into, but it does have some very annoying quirks, in particular making you sit through certain messages and things over and over. I also wish there were more of the big builds that transition you between levels, but if you’re into more free-form building then that won’t be an issue - what will be an issue is that it takes a very long time to unlock all the building materials and blueprints.
No idea what Knockout City is, but apparently EA wants to get in on that day one EA Play/GPU release action.
This is something I’ve been thinking about. Companies having an incentive to release their MP-focused games on day-1 via GP. Thinking Outriders, Dirt 5, that dodgeball thing, the dinosaur shooter mentioned upthread. It gets their initial numbers way, way up, for games that might otherwise struggle to find a playerbase. Is day-1 GP going to be the new FTP in this realm?
rei
2892
Bleeding Edge is not doing well.
Heh, hadn’t considered that one. Is it any good?
Funny you mention that since I just reinstalled that to check it out again this week. Bleeding Edge suffered a little from being tough to new players. A cohesive team with good communication could easily dominate a team of randoms with little communication that didn’t understand you needed to group up and stay close to your teammates to survive. That’s true with a lot MP games, but it was especially the case here. It was a brutal experience as you watched your teammates wander off alone only to be quickly slaughtered by an even slightly coordinated enemy team. Bleeding Edge could be a demoralizing experience if one is just queueing solo without friends or a team.
That said I recently reinstalled (haven’t had a chance to play again yet) Bleeding Edge to test a theory that the game might be better now if the playerbase have settled into players that mostly understand the game and mechanics. I want to see if the experience is more even now with a core group of experienced players.
So I think Bleeding Edge is a type of multiplayer game that didn’t benefit from just throwing tons of players into it due to its design philosophy of rewarding very tight cooperation where a lot of other MP-leaning games will easily benefit from Game Pass support.
Crackdown 3’s multiplayer also died immediately, but I think that one had a messy launch.
Why is viewing all games available in PC gamepass app so god damn difficult?
I click “all games” and only few load, I have to scroll down and wait ages for every new “page” to load, sometimes it doesn’t so I have to scroll up and down again, and again, and again, and again…
One would think loading items and scrolling would be, much like downloading videogames, a solved problem, but not for Microsoft.
I mean, yeah. It just boggles my mind that it’s still trash after so many years in existence, with such utterly basic problems that should be banal to solve (and everyone except MS solved them, even Epic).
Thraeg
2899
Oddly enough, the mobile app is now a more convenient way to browse the catalog, as it has no issue just pulling up a list of the 300-odd games that you can scroll through freely.
Encountered another brilliant bit of UX this morning when trying Phogs with my daughter. The game started to the main menu and both controllers worked fine. Then when trying to get into the actual game, it suddenly minimized itself, and then ignored all input. It turned out to be due to the permissions popup to make sure I wanted to grant “unverified” access to my account, which for some reason didn’t foreground itself the way it usually does.
Game Pass is a great service, but the app is terrible.
PC Gamer has the current list of PC Game Pass games:
Eurogamer maintains an extensive list of console Game Pass games and adds/removes:
Might be helpful for those interested in browsing a full list outside of the app (though you lose some of the context and screenshots that the app provides).
The PC GP app definitely still needs work but it has already come a long way such as easy drive selection for installs (which solved some of my pain points) and with the upcoming Windows store changes it may benefit even further in the near future. Still a work in progress, but miles ahead of the Sony and Nintendo dedicated PC apps.
I just installed Pathways on my aging, low-end Surface Pro5. The game is a pixel-art tactics thing, with a 1940’s Pulp aesthetic. It works reasonable well with touch, and when actually playing, it runs fine. But whenever you transition between game functions- exploring a new space on the map, or going from combat to the loot screen, for example, it takes forever to load. Anyone else notice this, or is it just my shitty computer? Might try a reboot…
This list is phenomenal - maintained by some reddit folks I think
The Xbox.com website list works fine, I think I linked it somewhere upthread. Though obviously a spreadsheet would be more flexible.
Timex
2904
Shooting dinosaurs today!
My first thought was, why are the dinosaurs warping around instead of moving smoothly? Then I realized it’s an online only game. I see. That looks very jarring. It seems to happen all the time too.
