XBOX One

[Abraham Smashington]

just did the home xbox license trick with my little bro. Currently have Halo 5, Battlefront, Black Ops III and AC Unity downloading to my xbox

[Abraham Smashington]

orange box is now on the backwards compatible list. wooooo

[gravedigger]

Maybe I will attempt to slog through Half Life 2 for the 47th time.

[BillyG]

I haven't started on AC Origins yet because I am waiting on my One X to show up so I can play in 4K/HDR. But the threads I've seen on twitter going over some of the detail and tiny things in the world make me so excited to get into it. I am actually really excited for the education mode patch they're going to put in too.

[Abraham Smashington]

Origins isn't bad but it hasn't sucked me in yet.

[BillyG]

Origins isn't bad but it hasn't sucked me in yet.

Yeah, another reason I was happy to wait to begin was I knew if I had Wolfenstein and Mario sitting there I'd probably not be nearly as prone to letting it pull me in. But I beat Wolfenstein, and Mario at this point is a pick up, hunt some moons, put it down couch game while watching TV. So I want to give AC all my attention.

[BillyG]

Found how you activate the 4K downloads on the Xbox One, so I got those downloading now. The bummer though seems to be that transferring all your shit takes a couple hours. So I moved the 4K stuff to my external drive, and I think tomorrow night I will just set it to transfer the rest over while I am asleep.

[BillyG]

Really digging AC Origins. The combat is like a more forgiving Dark Souls now. Still not sure how I like the combat, but it is for sure much more engaging than previous AC games. I am still finding new weapon types, so I think I will really dig the combat once I have had the opportunity to try out new stuff. I just found a big fucking 2h axe!

The world is incredible though. It's massive, filled with things to do, and even the side missions are well written and interesting. The stealth isn't as forgiving as previous AC games, but not a total joke either. Like, if you call over an enemy by whistling and hide in the brush if you don't move he will come right to your spot and find you...and you have like one second to hit takedown or he will scream and alert other people...or you move after whistling and when they come to your spot you take him out. I've been doing lots of side stuff just for the writing. One funny quest was a guy's wife looking for him after he went missing, turns out she got him shit faced, had a Vegas wedding, and her brothers are shaking him down.

It's also way more of an RPG. There's loot, levels, skill trees, light crafting. And the main character might be as charming as Ezio.

[Abraham Smashington]

I agree with all of that except for the combat. I fucking hate it. I thought it was better in the past games.

[BillyG]

I always felt like combat was a chore in the previous games, with no thought put into it at all. This at least feels like someone thought "maybe we should make an actual combat system?" Don't love it, but I think it might be an improvement. Learning how to read heavy attacks has made a big difference.

[Anderson]

I'm considering picking it up during Black Friday. 25-30 bucks sounds about the right price.

[Fil]

Really digging AC Origins. The combat is like a more forgiving Dark Souls now. Still not sure how I like the combat, but it is for sure much more engaging than previous AC games. I am still finding new weapon types, so I think I will really dig the combat once I have had the opportunity to try out new stuff. I just found a big fucking 2h axe!

The world is incredible though. It's massive, filled with things to do, and even the side missions are well written and interesting. The stealth isn't as forgiving as previous AC games, but not a total joke either. Like, if you call over an enemy by whistling and hide in the brush if you don't move he will come right to your spot and find you...and you have like one second to hit takedown or he will scream and alert other people...or you move after whistling and when they come to your spot you take him out. I've been doing lots of side stuff just for the writing. One funny quest was a guy's wife looking for him after he went missing, turns out she got him shit faced, had a Vegas wedding, and her brothers are shaking him down.

It's also way more of an RPG. There's loot, levels, skill trees, light crafting. And the main character might be as charming as Ezio.

So is stealth actually a viable way to play this game? I tried to mostly play stealthy in the previous games, and while I wasn't always successful, I could at least assassinate anyone if I was able to sneak up on them. The RPG nature of this game has me worried I probably can't do that here, I'll just do damage, or I'll have to be over leveled to be able to assassinate.

Anyway, still looking forward to playing it. Probably going to pick it up soonish.

[BillyG]

You can definitely play stealth, but it will take more work. I've missed enemies when sneaking, causing me to go into full on combat. And if you assassinate then it is a one hit kill. I finally got the hidden blade (used to kill Xerxes!) about 6 hours in.

[BillyG]

Hit level 25 last night. Decided to start hunting the pythakes that start looking for you. They're all unique, and have legendary weapons on them. I was able to take 2 down. The others are still way too high of level. They do some huge patrol paths, and it's best to plan where you want to take them, because they make a point to go by garrisons and outposts. I got a lot of fucking adds taking them down. I also finally saw some of the crazy alien/precursor shit, and the game didn't even prompt me to find it. I just went over to an oddball column and got a crazy message.

The dream sequence when going after The Lizard is incredible. The game blocked photo mode, which sucks because it is beautiful.

[BillyG]

Finished AC Origins after a marathon 8 hour session today. Aside from the pacing, I love this game. By far the best AC game. But it never knows when to end. It felt like it had a real ending four or five times, but keeps going. I liked everything it did, but I was like come the fuck onnnnnnnnnn now. it goes to some wild places, and you see EVERYTHING behind the Assassin's creation. I think what bugged me most was sometimes the story missions get ahead of your level, even if you're doing the odd side missions so you're forced into more side stuff. it's all very good, but I wanted to mainline the story at some point and couldn't.