henke on 10/10/2018 at 16:01
I've never played any of the Forza games, but I've been hearing good things about this Horizon 4 thingy, so I did something no PC gamer has every done, I booted up the Microsoft Store. The FH4 page told me I could be playing this wonderful cargame RIGHT NOW if I just signed up for a free 14-day trial of XBox Game Pass. So I signed up, canceled the auto-renewal, and am currently downloading Forza. Finding out what other PC games are included in this service was a bit tricky, the Store doesn't seem to offer a section for this, but if you go via the website and sort by "XBox Play Anywhere" you'll see (
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/xbox-game-pass/games) what's available. Slim pickings, with only 14 titles, but it
is a pretty good selection. I might also check out Recore and State of Decay 2, maybe even Gears of War 4 if I have time before the trial ends. I'd also be up for some Sea of Thieves, if anyone wants to co-op.
I'm curious to hear what other game subscription services TTLGers have been using. I'm sure plenty subscribe to PS+ or XBox Game Pass if they own the respective consoles, but what else is out there? Anything good?
Sulphur on 10/10/2018 at 16:11
Beat you to the punch months ago, and tried it out for Gears of War 4. Didn't see any value in sticking around for it after completing the SP campaign, which was by and large a pretty competently made thing with AAA values and setpiece design from the Uncharted school of thought. Got the GoW remake, tried out ReCore. Didn't regret it, but didn't see any reason to do a long-term sub because there's really not much in there for PC gaming - yet. Now that MS owns Ninja Theory and is apparently in the process of buying Obsidian (RIP, oldschool), we might see interesting things happening in the next 3-4 years apart from a new Halo on PC, and that's when this will get interesting for me again.
henke on 11/10/2018 at 06:17
What did you think of Recore? Also haven't you been subscribing to Humble Monthly? Was hoping to hear some thoughts on that. Personally I just got one month of Humble, when they had Rise of the Tomb Raider and Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy as the early unlocks. Good value. Almost got a second month when they had Sniper Elite 4 recently, but then ended up buying it on the PS4 instead.
Thirith on 11/10/2018 at 06:45
I wasn't really interested in subscription services - it doesn't fit the way I play games - but I am interested in Forza Horizon 4 (mainly because I want to check out its version of Edinburgh) while also thinking that I'd probably love the game for a week and then lose interest... so this comes in very handy. Thanks, henke!
Sulphur on 11/10/2018 at 07:07
Quote Posted by henke
What did you think of Recore? Also haven't you been subscribing to Humble Monthly? Was hoping to hear some thoughts on that. Personally I just got one month of Humble, when they had Rise of the Tomb Raider and Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy as the early unlocks. Good value. Almost got a second month when they had Sniper Elite 4 recently, but then ended up buying it on the PS4 instead.
ReCore is interesting in terms of mechanics and design, but the overall amount of repetitive stuff and padding is what tempers my enthusiasm for it. There's a decent sort of Metroidvania-ness to it, but the setting's a lot of desert, which I'm getting my fill from in ME:A anyway, so I'm getting back to it sometime further on in the future, most likely (I bought it when it was one sale). Impressions from the few hours I've played tell me that it's never going to rise beyond a 6.5/7.5 out of 10 game, though.
Humble's an interesting prospect. I got plenty of value out of it early on, but I've skipped the last four months in a row because they've been pushing titles I already had, or titles I didn't want. There's a Pause-a-month feature if you don't like the marquee titles for a particular month's bundle, which is what I do since I'm subscribed on a per-month basis anyway. They've been trying to deal with the penalty of not knowing what you're getting until after the bundle is sent to you by doing a limited 'early reveal' thing for the past two months, where you get to see a few more titles that are included in the bundle around the end of the month. Outside of that, they've been adding to the free 'Trove' where you got Ben Foddy's title with more stuff - Limbo, SOMA, Orwell, Gemini Rue, and a bunch of others stand out apart from the usual smaller indie offerings. I'd say it's pretty compelling if you don't buy games very often. If you've got an itchy trigger finger though, it's a crap shoot because you might end up with a bunch of titles that you already have, and you can't do much about that.
The fact remains, however, that the quality of the bundles in the past four months has been very mixed - you get a month where Styx, Yooka-Laylee, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and Cook Serve Delicious 2 are the
surprise titles, but the following month has comparatively uninteresting picks like Portal Knights and Serial Cleaner. I wouldn't say they're going down the crapper yet, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on if you intend to subscribe.
Malf on 14/10/2018 at 22:36
Yeah, thanks for pointing out Forza. Downloaded it and tried it earlier, and it's very pretty and very smooth. Definitely got something of the Burnout Paradise vibe going too. I've also downloaded Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2, so would be willing to give those a shot in the co-op slot.
Dunno if I'm sold on the service compared to other subs. At least what I get with Humble Monthly is mine permanently.
McTaffer on 14/10/2018 at 23:02
On the topic of Humble Monthly, I've been subscribed continuously for almost three years. It is, as has been said often, kind of mixed. I wouldn't say it's ever been outright bad or given me any reason to unsubscribe yet, but I have no idea where it's headed. I've gotten some great indie and AAA stuff out of it, but on the flipside I've gotten more anime stuff than I would've liked (well... no anime would have been the ideal option, but here we are). The main criticism that I have with it is actually just that I'm becoming buried in a backlog that I can't possibly keep up with. Since it's something like 10-12 new games every month, I just don't have the time to finish all of those, especially since I usually pick something else to play. It's very rare for me to immediately play a game in the month I got it. In some ways, it's nice to have essentially unlimited choice of what to play (for my intents and purposes), but in others, it's kind of overwhelming. On the plus side, the avalanche of games has made me try a lot of new things. Instead of looking at the store page and going "hmm, do I want to spend this much?", it's more a case of looking at the store page and going "I already have this, so I might as well try it."
One of the things I'd note about it that a lot of people around here would probably appreciate is that the Trove is all DRM free stuff, so it's for the most part more permanently yours than what you actually get per month. That is, assuming you have the space and bandwidth to download anything you want during your subscription period.
henke on 17/5/2019 at 16:38
As Malf pointed out in another thread the XBox Game Pass is currenly 1€ for 3 months! Pretty good deal.
MS makes it very hard to figure out what games you can actually play on Win 10 with this thing, nor does any completely up-to-date list seem to exist anywhere online, but as far as I can tell these 21 titles are what's currently available:
ARK: Survival Evolved
Crackdown 3
Disneyland Adventures
Forza Horizon 4
Gears of War 4
Halo Wars
Halo Wars 2
Hello Neighbor
Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite
Operencia: The Stolen Sun
ReCore
Ruiner
Rush: A DisneyPixar Adventure
Sea of Thieves
Snake Pass
State of Decay 2
Super Lucky’s Tale
Tacoma
Wargroove
We Happy Few
Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection
reizak on 17/5/2019 at 16:57
That's an amazing deal, definitely signing up (for the 3 months, and then never again). My version of Windows is way out of date though; I'm still on 1709 because the big updates kept bricking my system and after the fifth or so system restore I just disabled all updates, but I reckon their DRM requires you to be up to date. The N version of Windows 10 seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's given me no end of problems of which I'm pretty sure this is one. Time to see if the updates work yet I guess!
Sulphur on 18/5/2019 at 05:54
Thanks for the list, henke! And yeah, it's not tuned to let PC users find out what they get very easily. Essentially, any Xbox Play Anywhere titles that are part of the game pass are the ones you can play on PC.