I’ve mentioned this before, but that’s why I like to add tiles for every game I install to my Windows Start menu. Helps me keep track of the games I’m interested in. I barely used the Start menu until Game Pass came along.
Here’s how it looked a while back. Sometimes I rearrange the tiles by color or genre or whatever else I can think of.
I just put shortcuts at the bottom of my desktop, but I also don’t have nearly as many games installed as you do.
You could also use something like Playnite to keep track of all the installed games to.
Don’t listen to them rrmorton. That start menu is beautiful. I need to figure out how to do that. And how to get rid of the junk that’s currently in my start menu.
No wait, my wife uses the computer too. Maybe it wouldn’t be good to flaunt it as a games machine. Nevermind. I can just admire yours.
GoG’s client does this. And will even keep track of your console games.
That’s true! Though the Galaxy client seems to think that I own all the GamePass games I have access to, which is a bit distracting.
I’ve tried both out and found I preferred playnite. With that said it’s been long enough that I can’t remember why that is anymore.
Really? I just see the ones I’ve downloaded at some point.
Also a good answer to ‘is this worth it.’ For some clicks I played about about two thirds of these through and tried the rest. Doesn’t seem like bad value. Having said that, not sure I’ll continue the sub, just from the general niggling dislike of subs vs ownership.
Actually digging into the settings a little, I see there is an option to check for ‘Owned’ or ‘Subscriptions’ or both, and unchecking Subscriptions does remove unplayed stuff.
If you were impatient waiting for Tainted Grail to drop tomorrow, it’s live now (I found it via the search bar, but it’s also on the “recently added” listing next to sable and subnautica below zero).
Sable is out. Although I’m reading it has lots of technical issues :/
By the way, there was an xbox app update, and it seems to finally have fixed my previous problems (up to now I only had a workaround).
I installed it. I ran it. Half the menu items were empty and controller did not work in menus. I had to shut it down via ctrlaltdel.
I ran it again. This time, interface worked correctly, however to get DSR to work (to run in 4K on my 1080p plasma) I had to set my desktop to 4K before starting the game, because the exclusive fullscreen option does nothing.
And then I finally got in the game. It looks nice. Even in 4K, it uses only 50% of my GPU. It runs 60fps…except it stutters every few seconds by dropping frames. It plays like shit.
I uninstalled it.
Re: Sable, I had this issue too. So weird they released it in this state. Clearly reviewers were able to play it.
76 on OpenCritic
RPS review is near 80% about the quirks, oversights and bugs.
So with the release of Tainted Grail on Game Pass, I’m wondering if I should give another look at deck builders. They already have Slay the Spire, Nowhere Prophet and Monster Train so I guess I’m wondering if I were starting at zero, which would be my best choice to give me a good basic experience and possibly suck me down this rabbit hole of a genre?
Slay the Spire successfully sucked in cohorts of card-curious customers. It’s pretty much the inflection point that solidified the genre, so would make a really safe entry into it, and a good baseline to understand before seeing how other games mix up that template.
That said, if it doesn’t click with you for whatever reason, you can’t go far wrong with any of those four.
Nowhere Prophet is the one I’ve played the most (actually just about to wrap up the last achievement in it), and it’s got a really compelling system of tactics and attrition, where your cards are units that can be wounded or permanently killed, so you’re often making choices between short and long-term values. But it’s kind of a genre outlier in that you’re not drawing a new hand every turn and cycling through the deck multiple times in a battle.
Tainted Grail and Monster Train both have pretty extensive threads here, and there’s also the catch-all Deckbuilder thread
Slay is a tough game and is stingy with unlocks compared to those that have come after, but I have never found another deckbuilder that comes close to it in terms of atmosphere, so that might similarly suck you in.
Tainted Grail has a ton of atmosphere! It’s also a very good game.
I’d recommend Monster Train. It’s a super-polished, engaging, and addictive gateway drug.
I got sucked into StS when it out on Xbox, and then again when it hit android. It’s got that perfect mix of elements to give it ‘just one more run’.
I played a bunch of Nowhere Prophet both on my Xbox and my Surface (the touch controls are really good, and progress carried over from the console version), and liked it well enough, but the tactical battles are just a little too long, and the various events a little too repetitive. The game also takes a long time- even a bad run- to make me want to play out more often. I only got to the final area twice - once when was completely unprepared and died quickly, and another when I almost made it through. The second was the last time I played the game. It was just kind of soul-crushing to have spent that much time for it all to come crashing down.
I may load up TG at some point.
I’ve definitely had that experience with various other run-based games. I feel like ~1 hour is pretty close to the ideal length to make death sting without feeling too overwhelming.
