Xbox One Reviews

Nice to see the games i was interested in from this lineup being received well, and even a couple that I wasn't interested in but might take a look at now. Shame about Lococycle and Crimson Dragon tho.

Very excited to see how Forza and Ryse turned out. I cant imagine they held back Forza reviews cause they're worried about it, probably the opposite if anything.

Forza and Ryse still to be reviewed, for what that's worth. One of those I think is a lock for like 9's and 10's and Ryse is still a mystery.

Digital Foundry's piece is what it is (like I said before, a lesson to them to not cover pre-release games) but I think the way people ran with it is definitely worth bashing. Look at the thread that was put up after the piece and the amount of people that buried the game and the Xbox One in one grave because of that DF piece. That was console warz garbage.

As I said in that thread, this is a good "I told you so!" because there is no one I trust more than Giant Bomb and they all did a 180 on this game after seeing it recently and saying it ran way better. When I mentioned that, and others did too, they were told "well it was a tiny demo area" or that response was just ignored.

If you can't see all the console warz responses there and on sites like NeoGAF than I don't know what to tell you. Seriously, go into the Dead Rising 3 review thread on GAF and admire the salt, it's glorious.

because no game has ever had a review embargo until one day before release (Halo4, GTA 5, etc) and was good....

Do yourself a favor and don't respond to self proclaimed Sony fanboys in a Xbox One thread. Save yourself time and effort.

@artisanbreads: Yeah, it was really strange that people blew up the DF coverage of DR3 as a pretty bad sign and dismiss the game to be complete shit because of graphical and technical flaws (e.g. frame rate. resolution) and then associated it with the overall quality of the game. DF wasn't even completely scathing or damning when they write those articles, they just report the data they have gathered in a very neutral, objective language since they are not necessarily reviewing the game and DF doesn't even review games, they just delve into the technical aspects.

"Hey, Dead Rising 3 has got lots of graphical, open-world jank, which is unfortunate, but you know what, it won't stop you from having fun with" is the vibe that I'm getting from the reviews.

With 4-5 very solid exclusives, the Xbone has definitely won the launch-line-up war it seems.

@artisanbreads: I'm in the GAF thread now. Priceless reading. My favorite sentiment many express is how it's impossible for the game to be higher than a 7, impossible. Everyone reviewing it is has a wrong opinion.

I'm actually really thinking about picking up DR3 at launch now. I still want to see the patched version in action though. Here's hoping GB hooks us up.

@bigjeffrey: welcome to the no-fun flyzone, adjust your fun-titude accordingly.

I've heard Zoo Tycoon is the secret best game on either console. After how disappointing sim city was, I'm ready for an awesome building sim.

They are going to do that stream and I'm sure DR3 is gonna be on there. Maybe they can do a quicklook early too? That'd be nice.

And the GAF thread is great reading. The predictable amounts of Polygon bashing, questioning if everyone was paid off, "oh this didn't get all 9's, sounds awful" etc., etc.

DR3 sounds really cool. I'll probably end up getting it when I pick up my XONE a few years down the line.

@artisanbreads: It's the same thing in the Kotaku comment section, and I honestly can't tell if some of them are being serious or sarcastic when they say that there's no way a 720p/30fps game should ever be recommended, especially after Kotaku didn't recommend a 1080p/60fps game on PS4.

sounds like xboner has the best launch lineup, even if PS4 may ultimately become the best system overall.

Reminds me of this weeks 8-4 Play podcast discussion where they were talking about how widespread technical talk is right now and if that is going to die down. It's pretty bizarre. Even as someone who plays PC games and enjoys how pretty they are, if the game isn't fun I just don't care and even if the game is ugly, if it's fun I'm still in there.

I don't know how to judge Kotaku's review section but the GAF comments are very par for the course of this whole run up to console release. Not surprising at all.

Again, if people are this into the resolution and technical aspects of their games they should be playing on PC.

y is games press paid off dis cant be real ps4lyfe

Wow, generally pretty positive, nice to see.

Man, remember like a week ago when everybody was like DEAD RISING 3 RUNS AT 720P AND -35 FPS, THE SKY IS FALLING. Turns out the sky wasn't actually falling.

Very interesting. I remember Kevin basically despising it a few months ago. I really hope that Ryse can turn some heads.

Watching the Forza part on Gamespot's live stream and it doesn't look much different than the last one. Strange. I expected it to look better.

I learned from this first day that Destructoids reviewer is not to be trusted because he's an Xbox One fan forumposter that was made a reviewer when two normal reviewers were let go, DR3 judging by Gamespots live stream is super nice and playable, and KI for the majority of the reviews was played against AI and never in local versus.

I think the delay of all those Ubi games really hurt the PS4. I know Watch_Dogs wasn't an exclusive, but it certainly seemed like PS4 was the lead platform for that game. While we have no idea about the quality of Drive Club, having another game would have given the system another chance to have a must-play.

@subyman: Wait...but Forza 5 is 1080p/60fps, so isn't the prior game literally unbearable to look at now? NeoGAF told me that 720p is unplayable garbage.

Sony better rebound next year with infamous and deep down.

The thing with Dead Rising 3 that people are up in arms about is the lack of technical fidelity for game that supposedly was a last-gen game ported to the "next-gen"....

How is the performance so abysmal? Why should one shell out $500+ $60 for an experience one arguably could get on current gen platforms (Dead Rising 2,OTR,CW)?

Also nothing says confidence like holding the reviews back until night of launch of a system...

@artisanbreads: yup, this whole technical aspect talk is actually pretty surprising to me as a pc guy but consumers are more well informed than ever these days. I mean my gf don't really know why her 32g tablet is better than a 16g one but you bet your ass she was not having any of that 16g stuff. I think it is the same here. People think (and rightly so most of the time) bigger number = better so they run with it.

The X1 launch games was always going to review better (I mean come on sony got Knack and KZ), but does it even matter at this point outside of gamers? Now that the message is out in the mind share of the general public that X1 = more expensive/evil. Microsoft need to drop kinect and check that price asap in my opinion. Go on Jimmy Fellon again and play up the 180 or whatever. Casual still think X1 can't play used games for god's sake.

without a launch game like fantavision these console launches are bound to fail unfortunately

How could they not get DR3 to even 900p? When did production begin? Because scaling up from 900 would make a nice and clear image on a 1080p panel rather than looking the way it does in proper direct feed material, which is terrible.

The problem with DR3 being 720p30 is that those are last-generation specs. It's shit. Ryse has really good looking models to make up for 900p30. I'm not all about resolutions but 1080p30 needs to become the minimum this generation. I enjoyed a lot of 1080p on the PS3 from start to finish, if 720-900 keeps up on the Xbone for the next year I'm going to call it a disaster.

@shinjin977: Yeah, it is going to be interesting to see the extent to which Microsoft poisoned the well with the huge reaction to their original policies.

I also don't totally dismiss the technical arguments. I understand that people have high expectations for the performance when they're paying $500 for a new console, and I would say rightfully so. However, the way some people have completely dismissed the notion of enjoying any game at less than 1080p/60fps remains pretty ridiculous.

I don't think any rebounding is necessary. They're doing just fine.

@somejerk said:

Supposedly the development story of DR3 is that it started life as a 360 game, which is sort of the story for most of these XB1 launch games, actually. It's disappointing, but I imagine the amount of zombies on screen and the no-loading nature of the open world is very demanding for the CPU to keep up with.

And yet that may not matter to a lot of people. That's okay if it does to you. And there are 1080p 60 fps games on Xbox One. Not everything on PS3 was 1080p so not sure what you're even talking about.

Dead Rising 3's number of zombies on screen was simply not possible last generation. DR 1 and 2 already chugged throughout with a lot fewer zombies on screen.

There is no same thinking casual market so I don't know what we can really say about how the two systems will be received until they are out there in the wild for a while.

All I can say is that from my experience, my casual gamer friends are all getting Xbox Ones without a thought. They only care that the games will look better (don't care about specific resolutions) and they think the extra features of Xbox One look great. They also preferred Xbox 360 to PS3 so they feel comfortable making that jump.

None of them still think you can't play used or anything. None of them would get that invested in marketing so far before the consoles would come out.

I think the Xbox One's extra Kinect features, TV features, and all that will really appeal to a wide audience so I think some people may be surprised at how well it does. Interested to see how this goes going forward.

I am not sure the TV features are going to matter since TV habits have changed dramatically in just a few years but no one should thumb their noses at them either.

Man all the tutorial stuff people have been saying about KI is making me wish I wasnt waiting to get an Xbox One. Been trying to get into fighting games but fell off SF IV and Mortal Kombat when I was no longer improving beyond basic combos. And I'm always up for some more Top Gear in my Forza.

This wait might be tougher than I suspected.

We will see how that goes but I just have to say that when the video game forum type audience hears and says this, they have to keep in mind they are in a specific niche that is the part that is moving away from TV. A lot of people still love and watch TV like crazy.

I don't watch TV like at all myself besides sports, but just look at ratings for big sports events, shows like Big Bang Theory, Breaking Bad's last season, The Walking Dead, etc for a good reminder that tons of people still do.

I didn't say they stopped watching TV but that their habits have changed. They aren't watching HBO or Showtime or sports or whatever from mini-sat or cable but from the Internet. The issue isn't that XBox One tried to integrate these because it isn't that hard to get HBO Go on the platform as an app but putting the emphasis on the source is the problem.

Or in other words, the HBO Go app actually offers a realistic use case where you'd be watching a specific Game of Thrones episode while waiting for friends to get on TitanFall than having the tuner on HBO channel watching Game of Thrones but also waiting to play TitanFall at the same time.

Ratings records keep being set and broken this year and in recent history so I don't think that's actually true. A lot of people continue to watch TV through regular ass cable.

I don't disagree with what you're saying being a trend at all because again I am part of that trend (I just moved to a new place and didn't get cable) but I think it is way overstated by people who happen to be doing that. Regular cable TV and satellite are still a very big deal.

LocoCycle got slammed, but hooray for Zoo Tycoon!

Thats not true at all. The Walkinjg Dead and Breaking Bad are both shows with huge ratings that people watch(ed) live on their TV while talking about it on Twitter and Facebook. And as for sports Sunday Night Football (and all football really) is getting higher TV ratings than ever before.

Viewing habits might be different in the US, but in Canada watching TV is still a thing in most households. I know a lot of people here are leaning towards Xbox One because of that (probably a 60-40 split for xbox one). I do agree with you that the kinect and tv stuff will give xbox a wider audience (specially if those features work well). I can really see Xbox One picking up a huge amount of momentum if the features of the system work well and the games keep reviewing decently. Titanfall might just be the turning point where everyone forgets about Microsoft's terrible PR strategy and the general sentiment towards Xbox changes.

Can't wait till tomorrow to see how the hardware and the OS is.

Dead Rising seems like a lot of fun, especially for a launch game. Anyone wanna donate $499 so I can play Dead Rising 3?

Of course they have but Ryse is not a Game like GTA for example that can gain hype from these late reviews. Normally you do it either with AAA highly anticipated games or with bad games and my GUESS is that it is a bad game. But yeah we will see on Thursday i guess.

You realize "huge rankings" on cable are only millions. That doesn't discredit how popular these shows but that the reality is many are:

- A small amount are actually watching it "live" at the moment. The comments you see on FB and Twitter are actually only thousands out of millions who watched.

- A huge amount are actually watching it "time shifted" or "archived" or streamed at some later date and often times include the others. These are actually in the tens of millions views.

Sports are another beast but bringing this back to XBox One, who is going to watch a football game with others while trying to play something at the same time? You would have to be alone and have the game on as "background noise" even in PIP mode.

But whatever, this is a feature that I suspect many can't or won't be able to use on the XBox One. Like the Kinect, there are going to be a few who can figure out something really useful for it but for many others it will be an ignored because they can't use it or have no use for it let alone easier to accomplish in software as an app instead of multiple interconnected devices.

First of all: "only millions" made me laugh. As opposed to the trillions that watch HBO GO or something? Most people still watch stuff live and when records are being broken they are counting live viewers on all this stuff, not archived or on demand views. Records are being broken in live viewers over and over again now. What else could we compare live viewing numbers to but previous live viewing numbers? It's the reality that these numbers are being broken.

The features aren't just Picture in Picture. Just being able to have a voice controlled way to navigate your TV watching is big for a lot of people. Hell, just having a interface that looks remotely modern over your cable is a big deal.

Still a small shift away from TV. All the stats back this up so you don't have much to go on.

And besides, stuff like HBO GO, Netflix, Hulu are going to be available right there on your Xbox One too. It'll be a one stop device for all of that and that will be appealing to people I think.

Don't really understand the scores for Crimson Dragon. Everything I've watched on those livestreams makes the game look awesome. Good thing I don't listen to reviews anyways. I expected the Polygon score to be low since Justin was reviewing it though, and that's not his type of game at all.

Everything else has scored about expected. The XB1 launch lineup seems much more solid then the PS4's and Forza and Ryse are still to come. Curious how the UI ends up in reviews/impressions also.

Oh man, the comments on the DR3 review over at Kotaku... I love that gameplay is so far down the list of reasons to play a game that even resolution is more important now.

I could make a killing selling 4K res photos of dog shit with a "Shit of the Year Edition" logo stamped on the top.

"Only millions" You say that as if its one or two million. This seasons Walking Dead premiere pulled in over 16 million not including time shifted views. Last season it averaged over 11 million an episode, a number this season is going to destroy. And its just the most watched show on cable.

Link - this also includes Twitter and Facebook numbers.

No joke, that's the one thing drawing me to the X1 right now

Kind of sad to see Lococycle turn out this way.

Damn, the two games I wanted to play are the ones that reviewed badly. Oh well, I wasn't planning on buying a One for quite a while anyways.

Twisted Pixel seems to be getting less proficient at making games and more proficient at making great/horrible/dumb FMV.