Years ago, Game Pass was considered to be the best deal in gaming. Now many including myself are pressing the cancel button.
Haha sike! Why would I cancel the best deal in gaming?
Tag: Xbox
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CrossfireX Campaign Review
An utterly shameful display
Thank you to Smilegate for providing us with a review copy.
When CrossfireX’s campaign was officially revealed, I and many others were ecstatic. It was announced that Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind masterpieces such as “Alan Wake” and “Control”, signed on to help Smilegate develop the single player component of the title: so expectations were set accordingly. To know this brilliant, talented team was creating an FPS made me realize this was something I never even knew I wanted, but now coveted more than anything. However, signs causing concern began to swiftly show. After the initial reveal, the game essentially went dark. There were barely any public progress updates, and as the release drew nearer there was little to no marketing in sight. And when we here at TGP received our code mere hours before release, alongside other, more prominent review outlets: we knew something had gone terribly awry. But nothing could have prepared me for the absolutely pitiful disaster that is CrossfireX’s campaign; and it truly makes me question just how much Remedy was actually involved in the story’s development.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Narrative
The narrative of “CrossfireX” has all the complexity of a doorknob. It’s not just painfully boring and generic with nothing unique in the mixture, but predictable too. Ten minutes into the first campaign, “Operation Catalyst”, I instantly knew one of my allies would later betray me after only one line of dialogue. Surely enough, an hour later, he followed through. Speaking of dialogue, the writing is atrocious, and is on par with if not worse than a third grader’s book report. The characters are all typical soldier clichés that we’ve seen time and time again, with no standouts in terms of personality. Some of the voice actors try their best with the material given, but it’s in vain. Others, though, offer middle-shelf performances at best; and karaoke night acts at worst. Considering this combination of detriments, it comes as no surprise that none of the characters are memorable in the slightest. So, if you’re looking to play “CrossfireX” for a quality story, you’re better off finding one in “Pong”.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Gameplay and Visuals
If I had to sum up the gameplay of CrossfireX’s campaign, I would use the words “frighteningly basic”. There is not a single element in this game that cries originality. The gunplay is generic, and nothing we haven’t seen before. There is a special ability called a “Combat Breaker” that slows down time and allows for precise aiming, but that is far from anything new or imaginative. Even with this added buff, though, hit registration is still largely inconsistent; especially when firing at a ranged target. This isn’t really an issue, however, as the game is ridiculously easy. I played on the “Recommended” (normal) difficulty , and only died twice during each campaign. This was due to me rushing through dragged out areas without fighting back, not the cleverness of the enemy AI: which is nonexistent. Enemies will line up for you like a marching band, and hardly ever adapt to your attack strategy. It’s not just those aforementioned areas that feel dragged out, though; the entirety of both campaigns do. The feeling isn’t due to length, that reasoning isn’t valid considering “Operation Catalyst” took me an hour and forty one minutes to beat and “Operation Spectre” only required one hour and twenty two minutes of gameplay to complete. Even with a total completion time of three hours and three minutes (without skipping cutscenes), the campaign was so insufferable I wished it was shorter; and a wave of pure euphoria rushed over me when I realized I never had to play this title again for the rest of my life. Other gameplay/visual elements capable of providing even the most miniscule modicum of excitement failed as well. Set pieces are cliché and lazily integrated, and at times are straight up rip-offs of those in several “Call of Duty” titles, “Battlefield 4”, and even the “Crysis” series. Level environments are bland and uninspired, with the title’s graphical quality ranging from last-gen at best to 360/PS3 era at worst. These levels are littered with an abundance of collectibles as well, which are meaningless to gather since they provide hardly any worthwhile world exposition and offer no reward: that’s right, no achievements. As a matter of fact, the campaign has zero achievements to earn, with all of them being relegated to the multiplayer mode. The gameplay and visuals of CrossfireX’s campaign are so dull and monotonous that they couldn’t even impress an Amish farmer being introduced to modern technology for the first time.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Verdict
Growing up, my mother burned the adage “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it.” into me. And I have abided by that for the majority of my life. But apart from my obligations as a reviewer, I wouldn’t be able to stay quiet about the abhorrent quality of “CrossfireX”. Even at ten dollars a piece, both operations aren’t worth the smallest amount of any sane individual’s time. The story is forgettable and insufferable, and seemed to have no effort or passion put into it whatsoever. The gameplay/visuals were undistinguished and pedestrian, a true blight to the brain. I know this review may come across as harsh and a bit cruel, but “CrossfireX” is an absolute embarrassment of an Xbox exclusive, and should be forgotten until the day it is nothing but dust and echoes.
Final Score:
3.5/10
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Could Modern Warfare 3 Remastered Be Releasing Next Year?
Last year, the most significant leak came from Nvidia themselves, when GeForce Now’s database leaked a list of games that were on their servers. Over the last few months, almost twenty of those games have been confirmed to be real projects. That obviously doesn’t mean everything will actually come to fruition, but one of those games was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered. Now, this would make sense considering we have already seen the first two games in that trilogy release.
Today, we got even more evidence that it could be real. Infamous Call of Duty leaker, Tom Henderson, went to Twitter to say the following: “To heal the pain due to my lack of timezone knowledge… There’s technically a 4th Call of Duty title releasing by the end of 2023. Modern Warfare II Warzone II COD 2023 and something else.” Tom followed up with a tweet confirming that he was referring to Warzone Mobile, but there is still reason to believe that it could be the 5th Call of Duty title released by the end of 2023. If I was a betting man, I would say that we will see Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered by the start of 2023’s summer season. There is no reason to hold on to it if it has already been made.
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Call of Duty Vanguard Campaign Review
Disclaimer: Activision provided us with an early copy of Call of Duty: Vanguard Ultimate Edition on PC for review purposes.
Introduction
Call of Duty: Vanguard had me worried from the get-go. At first, there was a dreadful wait for any official updates on the game. The community heard whispers through leakers such as Tom Henderson, but Activision continued to withhold updates from the community for months on end. It was the middle of August which was usually the time we would all be checking out the beta and we still had no updates. Obviously, it eventually got announced later that month and by October we all were diving into the beta. My second concern with the game was that I didn’t enjoy the beta. The gunplay and mechanics felt rough and it was clear that it needed more time in the oven to cook. I was one of the many people calling for a delay which never got granted. However, I have now beaten the campaign, enjoyed the surprisingly content-filled multiplayer, and dabbled with the disappointing zombies mode. In this review, I am only going to be talking about my time with the campaign. Which was better than expected.
Narrative and Gameplay
Six specialists from six different backgrounds join the first Task Force to take on a threat from the Nazi Army during World War II. In the first mission of the campaign, your team hops back and forth between two trains as they push through countless enemies. They even go as far as jumping off the train, onto the roof of a truck and shooting everyone inside of it, and then jumping back onto the train at the last second before it blows up. I was pretty disappointed by this because I wanted a more grounded experience similar to Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: WWII, rather than getting something that feels like it was taken out of a Michael Bay movie. Thankfully, my wish was granted because everything after this point in the game has a much more realistic vibe to it, even though it still pushes the gas pedal to its max. Throughout the next couple of missions, we get flashbacks that give much-needed bonding time to our cast of characters on an individual level. Four different fronts throughout the war are explored ranging from the jungles of Midway to the rooftops of Stalingrad. These four storylines are the best moments of Call of Duty: Vanguard and give distinct experiences that were top of the line. Each storyline introduces new side characters to care about (and in classic Call of Duty fashion, a lot of them unfortunately die). Each character you play unlocks new abilities. Crack locks and safes as Novak, command troops as Kingsley, climb walls and bait snipers with the reflection of your knife as Petrova, take over the sky as Jackson, and blow everything up as Riggs. Some of these are more lackluster than others (I am looking at you Novak). When the flashbacks are over, it brings us back to where the first mission ended, for an exciting conclusion to the story. I still wish the main cast got more bonding time together as a squad because eighty percent of the game is flashbacks before they all met (excluding Kingsley and Webb). It would be tough to believe that Task Force 141 were able to take down Makarov in essentially their first two missions together. The main villains of this game also are very forgettable. To the point where I was almost ready to publish the article, and then I realized that I forgot to mention the villains. Their only traits are that they are ruthless Nazi leaders which aren’t really enough for me when I compare them to some of the previous main villains.
Credit: Activision Call of Duty: Vanguard from a gameplay perspective feels like a mixture of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Call of Duty: WWII. With forty-plus different weapons, there are plenty of ways to deal with enemies. Blowing through the wooden planks of a train with a machine gun feels as good as anyone would expect it to. The destructible environments have always and continue to be one of the most satisfying parts of playing through the campaign. I played through the campaign on the default difficulty due to being strapped for time and not wanting to have to spend time replaying sections which led to me seeing one flaw that I probably would not have seen on the higher difficulties. The AI can be very rough at times. Like standing in front of an enemy and them taking ten seconds to open fire level of bad. This only happened on a handful of occasions, but I guess that is what I get for being a coward and not playing on veteran.
Bugs
I am happy to announce that my experience had no major bugs and ran incredibly well on my PC. The only bug that I can remember running into in-game was a dead body having a spasm after dying which caused a trash can to start making a ton of noise. Obviously, your miles may vary depending on what platform you are playing on because my friend Mike ran into quite a few bugs on his Xbox Series X including having his achievements glitched. It is also nice to report that Activision may have found out how to compress their files because my game only takes up 77 gigabytes, which is incredible compared to the mess that was last year. One gripe that I had with previous games that somehow continues to happen is this bug (I think it’s a bug, maybe it’s intended, and I am just stupid) where shaders download every time I open the game. The message doesn’t stop me from starting a campaign mission or joining a multiplayer match, but it is still at the top of the screen constantly as I go through the menu. Also be prepared to see advertisements for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty: Warzone every time you launch the game. Activision had the idea to have the Vanguard launcher act as a launcher for the previous iterations of Call of Duty meaning you can select their campaigns or multiplayer (which will prompt you to a screen to purchase them). Warzone being there makes sense considering it will have Vanguard content in it, but the other two really have no business being there.
Credit: Activision Conclusion
In the end, I was satisfied with the campaign experience that Sledgehammer Games provided. My main gripe comes back to the main cast not getting enough bonding time with each other before the flashbacks started to roll. I really feel like having a mission or two occur before the train mission could have done some good for the story. As an overall game, I would say Call of Duty: Vanguard is better than Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Even though the following review score will JUST be for the campaign, I do want to note that Vanguard has so much more content on the multiplayer side compared to last year’s entry. If you even remotely enjoy playing zombies, I highly recommend you check out a review covering exclusively that, because there are some serious issues with Vanguard’s zombies mode. However, I am only focusing on the campaign here so I am not going to let that change the score for the review.
Final Score: 8.5/10
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Madden 22 Review
Thank you to Electronic Arts for providing the early review copy for Xbox Series X.
Last week, I got my hands on Madden 22 and I am finally able to share my thoughts. Anyone who read my review of Madden 21 last year, would know that I wasn’t that happy with the state of the game, especially with franchise mode. Electronic Arts promised that new changes would come next year, and I am happy to report that they did deliver. However, there were still a lot of shortcomings that I will discuss below.
Game Modes:
Lets start off with the two game modes that will require just a short response. The Yard and Superstar KO have returned, but both of them feel the same as they did last year. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, because both game modes are fun. Considering that they are obviously more of a side activity rather then a main focus game mode like MUT or Franchise, makes me feel that big changes aren’t really needed. On top of that, Electronic Arts has promised that more big content will be arriving to Superstar KO early in the season, so maybe twists and changes are around the corner.
Franchise returns with a bunch of cool changes. Franchise now includes staff management which means you can manage your individual coordinators using skill progression like an RPG. There is now an evolved mechanic for preparing for your next game with new drills for practice. Electronic Arts also has said that there is a brand new scouting system in development that will come later in the year. Its nothing super crazy, but seeing even a bit of effort being put into franchise mode is very nice to see.
Ultimate Team is the game mode that usually interests me the least. The “thrill” for getting new cards and packs haven’t interested me since my days in high school where I would grind Madden Mobile. On top of that, buying packs to make my team the best it can be is not interesting to me what so ever. However, Ultimate Team made $1.5 billion in revenue for Electronic Arts last year, so there will always be a huge audience for that part of the game which will continued to be supported.
Face of the Franchise was the absolute most disappointing part of Madden 22 for me. It still feels like such a downgrade compared to Longshot. The story is very minimal and showcases a star college player who is going to be a top three pick in the upcoming draft. It has your character going to a six week long Nike training camp with a bunch of other NFL stars. I am not even gonna focus on how unrealistic that ever happening is, because I have a list of other more pressing matters to complain about. Face of the Franchise is supposed to be focusing on your player, yet when you play in your two college games, for some reason you are forced to play both sides of the ball. On top of that, they removed the quick simulation feature so you are forced to play through it. The quick simulation tool comes back once you make it to the NFL which makes things seem even weirder. Its just a minor gripe, but it is something I needed to mention. The thing that irks me the most is how bad the cutscenes look. The first couple cutscenes feel similar to how longshot cutscenes felt a few years ago (which is bad enough because I expect enhancements over the last three years). However, things somehow get worse just two hours into the “story.” I have attached some videos below, and I think that most people will agree that they look nothing like how a “next generation” game should look. There is also the problem that characters who were voiced, ARE NO LONGER VOICED during some conversations. Could Electronic Arts really not afford to spend the extra money to record these side activity lines for Face of the Franchise? It breaks the immersion to have one cutscene be voiced, and then the next to just have textboxes. Something like this is completely fine for an indie team, but this is Electronic Arts. They make billions of dollars each year. Having cutscenes remain consistent in quality should be something that comes without asking.
The last thing that bothered me with Face of the Franchise is a small thing that isn’t game breaking, but it is immersion breaking. My player was drafted #1 overall by the Jaguars. However, the Jaguars also draft Trevor Lawrence with their second pick in the draft and he shows up in the background at practice. How and why?
Gameplay Changes:
There are quite a few new mechanics added to Madden 22, but none of them are game changing. They are nice improvements, but I don’t think they are going to convince anyone who didn’t enjoy Madden 21 to want to buy Madden 22.
- Gameday Momentum adds a new momentum meter and unlockable perks called momentum factors that give different advantages to all 32 home teams, unique to each stadium. Some of the perks include causing the screen to shake for your opponent or the routes to get swapped up during the pre snap.
- Gameday Atmosphere adds new crowd animations, super fans, and remastered audio that makes the stadiums feel more lively.
- Star Driven A.I makes teams use more realistic play calls and causes players to adjust at halftime.
- Catching Control has been improved so it is more responsive with its foot detection by sidelines and player reaction when turning up field after the catch.
- Tackling animations have improved to truly represent size and weight mismatches between players.
- Blocking has been improved to be more organic and dynamic in the pocket
Bugs:
- One crash that turned off my Xbox Series X while playing Face of the Franchise.
- The announcers are still really glitchy. I said this in my review last year and I noticed multiple announcer errors in the first game that I played (Super Bowl LV rematch). For example, they might say that it is a players first completion of the game, when in reality they have had multiple. It is really just a lot of stuff similar to that. Nothing game breaking, but it still kills immersion which is important to me when gaming.
- Plenty of minor visual glitches including my light skinned Face of the Franchise player having dark skinned legs.
- Trevor Lawrence still getting drafted to the Jaguars after me in Face of the Franchise.
Madden 22 is not a great game, but it is a step in the right direction compared to Madden 21. For someone who doesn’t love Madden Ultimate Team, I don’t think I can recommend it for $70. I think those people should just play it through EA Play Pro or should just rent it for two months and then pick it up on sale when it is in the $20-30 range. However, if you have the money to spend, and you enjoy playing online, then you probably aren’t even reading this anymore and have already started downloading Madden 22.
Final Score: 7/10
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Biomutant Review
Thanks To THQ Nordic for Providing An Early Review Copy
What is better than becoming a ninja racoon who fights a bunch of other mutant animals in a post apocalyptic world? Biomutant was a really unique idea that unfortunately didn’t pan out the way I hoped for. Before we dive into specifics, lets start with the basics. Biomutant is being developed by Experiment 101 which is a new team with less than 30 members that is owned by THQ Nordic/Embracer Group. Biomutant will be releasing on May 25th, costing $59.99 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC. Biomutant can also be played on an Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5 through backwards compatibility and next generation versions at a later date. Biomutant will also be available through EA Play Pro which costs $15 a month. Experiment 101 has a really small team, but I can’t give them much leeway due to the fact that they are still charging sixty dollars for Biomutant. I understand that they probably had little to do with that decision, but a sixty dollar game has to be reviewed like a sixty dollar game, regardless of the size of the team that made it.
Narrative
I will be as vague as I can be here to avoid spoiling stuff, but to be completely honest, there isn’t much narrative stuff that I can spoil. This was one of my biggest concerns going into this game and it unfortunately came true. The narrative is really weak. The main story telling element is through a narrator essentially reading the story of you. The best comparison I can make to this would be Immortals Fenyx Rising. You are either going to love it or hate it, and I can say that I was not a fan. The NPCs in the game talk in their own gibberish language and then the narrators translates and tells the story. The downside to this is that you never get to actually connect with the characters or get a real feel for their personality. Dialogue itself also gets pretty repetitive when talking to some characters. For example, the tribe leaders have identical dialogue options. Now as far as the main story itself goes, there is a tree of life in the center of the map and there are these monsters that want to destroy it. If the tree gets destroyed, all life will die. There are different tribes that want to protect the tree, and there are others that want to see it get destroyed. You will pick a side and then you will fight anything opposing your goal. Throughout your journey, you will have flashbacks where you will see events from your childhood, but those moments are short lived and still don’t add enough. I would like to note that I haven’t completed all of the side quests so I am not sure if they cause any changes to the ending (I doubt it).
Exploration and Combat (listen to those melee sounds!) Gameplay
The combat is the most enjoyable part of the game, but even that falls short at times. It starts off on a high note during the opening boss fight, where it teaches you a bunch of moves and combos. You have different classes, mutations, perks, and a ton of different weapon options which add new moves to combat encounters. One tiny issue that I have with the combat is the lack of a lock on system. If it had one, combat encounters with multiple enemies would feel a lot more fluid. Biomutant has crafting and weapon customization which is done pretty well, but it was something that I didn’t use that much besides during required sections. The biggest problem with the combat is that there is zero feedback when you are hitting enemies with a melee weapon. It feels like you are swinging at ghosts with a sword made out of napkins. Things get even worse when you hear the weak sounds that some of the melee weapons make. I wish I was kidding, but Biomutant has some of the worst sounds I have ever heard in a sixty dollar game.
Quests are a key part of any single player game and Biomutant has a lot fetch quests. For example, going for a ride on a catapult (needed to start certain outpost missions) requires you to go across the map to get a helmet, even though you have plenty of helmets in your inventory. A ton of the side missions are checklist type quests which just end up being time fillers. I am fine with side objectives being there to pad for extra content, but the main story should not consist of a ton of fetch quests. Something that pops up through out your quests is a morality system based off light vs dark, but its end up becoming forgotten due to how easy you can max out your mortality meter.
Taking over outposts is a main part of the tribe war part of Biomutant, and some of them make little sense. Obviously, I mentioned the helmet example before, but there were quite a few other things that stuck out to be just as odd. An example is one of the outposts that you see relatively early in the game. There is a cave full of moth nests next to the outpost, and a friendly NPC recommends you to destroy the nests so that the moths will move into the outpost. That is a unique way to clear an outpost so I was initially digging it until I saw that there were a ton of soldiers in the caves. These caves were completely empty, (besides the three moth nests) so there would be zero reason to have soldiers chilling in there. Like these caves were pitch black and didn’t have tents or anything. This quest could have been so much cooler if you had to fight mutated moths or some other insect in the caves, but the developers just copy and pasted soldiers into there even though it made zero sense for them to be there. I attached a video of the last part of that fight below.
Moth Nest Cave Fight Biomutant has puzzles that come up quite often, but they are all practically the same. They may be different in the sense that one may be a breaker box and the other may on a door, but the puzzle itself is just an easy color matching game that is super simple to complete once you have done the first one in the tutorial. This is a minor issue which will probably not bother most people, but some of the HUD markers feel misplaced. You can change the scale or could just turn it off all together, but you can’t actually move stuff to the corners of your screen which is where you would traditionally expect it to be. Another minor gripe that I have is the menu itself. Its colorful, fortnite inspired menu just feels out of place in a post apocalyptic game. One thing that I loved and needed to mention was the fact that you urinate on a flag post to unlock a new fast travel location.
Source: My PS5 To cap off the gameplay section, I would like to discuss how Biomutant doesn’t really respect your time which is something that quite a few open world games love to do. It forces you to go thousands of meters away just so you can hear the narrator translate dialogue from a new NPC which will lead to you having a checklist worth of tasks to fulfil. One objective has you saving twenty plus NPCs which leads to nothing. There are so many other objectives that just don’t have satisfying conclusions and makes you second guess if that was really the end of a side story. Biomutant could have had a fantastic gameplay loop if things were done on a smaller scale (meaning a smaller world that is filled with more detail, less mechanics that are more ironed out, etc). Mechanics like the mech or boat could have been more impactful on the game if they were used in a smaller but more refined area. I have seen other critics talk about how Biomutant was a success for such a small team’s first game and they aren’t wrong. Experiment 101 did a good job for what they were working with, but THQ Nordic/Embracer Group should have given them more support and a bigger team. They continue to acquire more and more studios and could have had some of them help Experiment 101 bring the true vision of Biomutant out.
Graphics
I played Biomutant on my Playstation 5 and the game didn’t look as pretty as the gameplay that I saw on PC and Xbox Series X. The main reason behind this is because the next generation version of Biomutant has not released yet. But the game looked even worse on PS5 compared to XSX due to some technical issues that the developers had which required them to keep things at 1080p upscaling to 4K. Upscaling can be hit or miss (TLOU2 did a fantastic job), but Biomutant was a miss, especially when viewing the game up close on a monitor. Biomutant ran mostly at 60 frames per second, but there were areas where it dropped below it. Some of the areas with a ton going on ran fine, but then there would be weird areas where it lags. One example was an indoor subway when I was fighting just four enemies. Outside sections look good besides some pop in, but indoor locations look like they didn’t get much time spent on their attention to detail. Another delay really should have happened to put some extra work into the next generation versions of the game.
Conclusion
Biomutant was a super ambitious game that I really wanted to love, but I could not. Experiment 101 wanted to do so much and ended up falling short in a lot of areas. It is almost impossible to make a huge open world game with tons of different mechanics while keeping everything at a high quality. THQ Nordic/Embracer Group really should have staffed up Experiment 101 with a 100+ person team, because there is such an interesting premise behind all of the jank in the world of Biomutant. At this point, I can’t recommend Biomutant at full price. I would highly recommend waiting a few months and picking up the game at a sale price. If you really need to play Biomutant now, then I would recommend either picking up a month of EA Play Pro and essentially renting it, or just buying a physical copy so you have the option to sell it if your not enjoying it.
Final Score: 6.5/10
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Microsoft Leaks Yakuza Like A Dragon Release Date
Years ago, gamers saw the biggest wave of leaks through Walmart Canada. It now seems like there is a new champion in town. The Microsoft Store has already leaked screenshots, trailers, and release dates for multiple new games including Crysis Remake, Mafia Remake Trilogy, Star Wars Squadrons and more. Just an hour ago, Microsoft made another leak come true.
We now know that Yakuza Like A Dragon will be releasing on November 12/13th, depending on your region. Multiple users on twitter pointed out that Microsoft accidentally put up a store page for Yakuza Like A Dragon which included the unannounced release date. You can press HERE to directly go to the page.
Source: Microsoft Yakuza Like A Dragon did put out a trailer earlier in the day. (This one was on purpose, not accidental).
This next part is speculation of course, but is it crazy to believe that the Xbox Series X will be releasing at sometime between November 11th-19th? Xbox has the marketing rights to Assassins Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, and Yakuza Like A Dragon which all come out during that time frame. Throw in Halo Infinite and another smaller exclusive and you have a pretty solid group of games to play at launch.
The Game Preview 