Last night I celebrated the return of the SWAT playlist to the Master Chief Collection with a ‘Halo and Brews’ Twitch Broadcast where I enjoyed a couple Square Mile Ciders and saw my performance get worse and worse through the night. Enjoy!
(Apparently Twitch muted the second video due to copyright, so there’s that. I guess I’ll throw some YouTube music into it or something in a bit)
I really wanted to like Destiny, and to an extent I do enjoy parts of it (the shooting is solid and quite satisfying) but the game has way too many downfalls for it to be enjoyable. I could go into extensive detail, but I’ll just list off a few of Destiny’s shortcomings: Story (there is none), mission variety (you literally do the same mission over and over), the loot (nothing ever feels special), the lack of voice communication (so much for being a multiplayer game) and the lack of matchmaking in raids.
If you expected Destiny’s first expansion, The Dark Below, to make the game more enjoyable you’re probably in for a disappointment. The $20 expansion (which released this week) brings barely any new content to the game which was already lacking in content from the start. For $20 all you get are three new missions, a single strike and a single raid (and a few Crucible maps if that’s your thing). Heck, there aren’t even any new achievements added. It’s really hard to justify coughing up $20 just to breeze through a few new missions before heading into another grind where you’ll repeat the same strikes over and over again just to gain access to a single raid.
Maybe you enjoy Destiny enough to put up with all the repetitiveness, but personally I think it would take two or three more expansions just for there to be a reasonable amount of content in the game. And even then a $120 investment will get you much less bang for your buck than the $60 you could spend on an Dragon Age: Inquisition or the Master Chief Collection. If I were you I’d save your money and skip The Dark Below.
So I just ran into my first major glitch in Dragon Age Inquisition. I was in a dialogue situation but could not select any options. Moving the analog stick did nothing and I couldn’t back out of the conversation. Luckily I discovered (by accident) that if I held LB it would bring up the action wheel and then while that was open I could move the stick and select an dialogue option from there. Weird, but just figured I’d share in case this happened to anyone else and you don’t want to load a save.
Best of luck!
Yesterday I rented Fantasia: Music Evolved (Xbox One) with very little in mind other than to use it as a background activity while having some beers. It turns out to be more fun than I initially expected, which is a pleasant surprise. Coming from Harmonix (of Rock Band fame) I guess I should’ve known up front it would be a quality experience, but Fantasia never really ended up on my radar.
The first thing I noticed about Fantasia is that it seems quite responsive and not at all unpleasant to play (something the 360’s Kinect was somewhat notorious for). Performing the motions feels smooth and enjoyable, and I can’t get enough sweep cues and punch cues. I just enjoy doing the hand motions. The visuals are also pretty superb, and I absolutely love the effects on screen as you perform.
I’m quite early in the game and it’s not overly challenging, but I assume the performances can be made to be more complex as you progress further into the game. I haven’t yet been able to check out the multiplayer mode and I haven’t unlocked composition spells yet, but I’m excited to dive deeper into the Fantasia experience. I’m just hoping we’ll continue to see some quality Kinect games now that Microsoft has unbundled the Kinect.
If you’re looking for a fun family friendly Kinect experience this holiday season, I highly recommend checking out Fantasia: Music Evolved. If you want some more great Kinect experiences, both Just Dance 2015 and Dance Central Spotlight make for an enjoyable time.
So after yet another patch this week, Master Chief Collection’s matchmaking issues have still not been eradicated. It’s been slightly better than it was launch week (nearly a month ago), but not by much. I’ve managed to get into 3 matches today, but the latest patch now forces you to back out and search for a match again after every match. You cannot stay in the same lobby after a match. Not only does this slow down the matchmaking process further, it also harms the multiplayer experience.
If you have a close match or a good team you’re out of luck after the end of the match. You’re forced to press B backing you out to the matchmaking menu where you’ll have to start the search for a match all over again. This is severely disappointing. It can be quite difficult to group up with a good group of players and to be forced to disband the lobby after every match is just ridiculous.
Also waiting two or more minutes for a match only to have it spontaneously end after the loading screen is not cool. You can see my latest attempt to get into a match below.
I guess I should just play more Advanced Warfare…
If you’re an Xbox One owner and were looking forward to checking out episode one of Telltale’s Game of Thrones adventure game today, you might be slightly disappointed. Although it’s been released on PC and PS4 today, it won’t make it to the Xbox One until tomorrow, December 3rd. It’s not too long to wait, but it’s unfortunate that we have to wait awhile longer to play the highly anticipated game.
Game of Thrones will also be released on iOS on Thursday, the fourth.
I have many fond memories of spending Thanksgiving nights playing Halo with family members, and if you were hoping to relive your own Halo festivities this Thanksgiving with Master Chief Collection you’ll probably be disappointed.
Despite yet another patch getting released yesterday, I am STILL unable to get into any Master Chief Collection matches. I’ve been trying for the last ten minutes (entirely too long) and have gotten nowhere.
I did however get stuck with the Connection Failed message that is now appearing behind all of the menus and won’t go away, so there’s that.
Searching for players…
I’m so sick of seeing that every time I boot up the Master Chief Collection and try to get into a multiplayer match. I’ve tried on and off for the last two weeks and still have not been able to reliably find matches. This weekend there has been some improvement, but the matchmaking process is still not flawless. 343 put out a patch last week that seemed to improve the matchmaking process for most people, yet I’ve found the matchmaking process still to be slower than it should be. Also, they have yet to add all of the other playlists they removed (such as Team SWAT) which is disappointing.
I’ve been able to find a few matches this evening with wait times as low as a minute (a massive improvement over launch week where I’d have to continuously back out of matchmaking and retry for 15 minutes or longer just to get into a single match).
I should be excited that I can finally play some Halo multiplayer, however with Dragon Age, GTA V and Farcry 4 now out, Halo is probably going to take a backseat for awhile. The Master Chief Collection was one of my most anticipated games of the year, but its rocky launch has soured my attitude toward the collection right now and I’m having too great a time with Dragon Age and GTA to even think very much about Halo right now.
I’ve read that Microsoft has been honoring requests for refunds for those who own digital copies of the Master Chief Collection, however I think in the long run once everything is working smoothly I’ll still be happy to own the collection. One thing I can say is I probably won’t be buying Halo 5 during launch week now.
Has the Master Chief Collection’s launch affected your excitement for Halo 5 or future Microsoft games? Are you going to be sticking with Master Chief Collection or are you have you already given up hope?
I believe I’m about 5 or 6 hours into Dragon Age: Inquisition and I’ve been having a blast. I’m enjoying the characters, gameplay and exploring the world. What’s especially fun are all the weird little things that pop up in RPG’s. For example in the video above I send an enemy flying off a cliff and to his death which is always amusing.
Also it’s fun to be able to ‘jump climb’ up mountains, something I learned from Elder Scrolls games which can make getting around the world just a bit quicker than taking the long way around.
I look forward to advancing further into Dragon Age: Inquisition and exploring the insanely huge world. I definitely recommend checking out the third Dragon Age game if you haven’t done so already. It’s a blast!
Yesterday I got an e-mail from Microsoft celebrating one year of the Xbox One and it included some pretty interesting stats about my year. It pointed out that I’m in the top 5% of Xbox One gamers with 6650 gamerscore earned on the Xbox One. I’ve also spent 371 hours gaming on Xbox Live on the Xbox One which places me in the top 25% of gamers. It’s kind of cool to learn about these stats and see where you fit in with the rest of the Xbox One community.
If you’re interested in seeing some more stats you can check out rewards.xbox.com/myrewards and see what you’ve done over the last 30 days.
In other Xbox news, the long awaited HBO GO app has finally arrived on the Xbox One. I’m glad to have the app because the interface is nicer looking and easier to use than my Dish On Demand interface.
Gumballs Plays Games 