Xbox One | Gumballs Plays Games

DOOM is a darn good game. Unfortunately I kept getting lost

Posted on May 21, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

I don’t think anyone expected much from the new DOOM game that released last week. For starters Bethesda didn’t send copies out to reviewers, which is usually a surefire sign that a game is either going to be outright bad or perform below expectations. Yet once DOOM went live almost everyone reacted with pure joy. “DOOM is back!” people were saying.

I’ve never been really into DOOM, but I recognize its importance and its impact on the modern FPS genre. I could never bring myself to play the game back in mid nineties, but I did enjoy watching others play and it was a stressful experience watching them try to survive through each level.

I was able to get a copy of DOOM for the Xbox One on release day from Redbox, and after it installed I jumped in, still not knowing quite what to expect. I was impressed by how quickly the game gets you going, and I’m glad there’s no tutorial or slow start that most games feature these days. The game basically throws you into the thick of it while offering helpful information via tips that pop up on screen in the early moments. Hopefully this is something more developers will replicate as I had more enjoyment during the first few minutes of the game than I have just about any shooter in the last ten years.

The shooting and non-stop action of DOOM are incredibly solid and it was a joy to mow down enemies while keeping in constant motion, grabbing health packs and armor as quickly as possible. You won’t get very far trying to take cover and play it safe in DOOM, you need to run in head first and be moving constantly if you want to succeed. DOOM plays differently from most modern shooters in this way and it’s actually quite refreshing (despite it being a throwback to how FPS’s played 20 years ago).

The music and environments in DOOM are exceptionally well done and help continue the throwback to classic shooters. You won’t find lengthy dialogue or cut scenes while you’re playing and the game is divided into actual levels with entrances and exits (and also plenty of secrets to find in between).

This brings me to the one thing that kept me from truly enjoying DOOM, and that’s the puzzle nature of its maps. Quite a few times during the first three levels that I played I found myself lost and going in circles again and again trying to figure out where I needed to go next. True there’s an objective indicator, but I still couldn’t figure out how to progress in the direction I needed to more often than I should have. Even looking at the map didn’t seem to help, as the 3D overlapping maps made it hard to figure out how I could get to where I needed to be.

I got so lost on Foundry that I ultimately decided to give the game a rest for now. I had killed all the enemies I could find, and yet couldn’t figure out how to get to where I needed to be. I went in circles at least seven or eight times before I decided to end it all by jumping into the lava and taking the game back to Redbox.

DOOM is definitely a great game, I’m not trying to say it isn’t. If I didn’t have the issue of getting lost I probably would have finished it in one sitting and would be telling you that it’s one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in years. Unfortunately, I can’t sit here and say that just yet. I get frustrated easily with games, and after having so much fun shooting and tearing apart enemies, the lull of trying to figure out the puzzle of the map just took the joy out of the game for me.

I’ll probably end up giving DOOM another shot in the near future (probably on PC this time), but for now I think I’ve had my fill.

My continuing adventure in Fallout 4

Posted on May 10, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’m still slowly working my way through Fallout 4, and every venture out into the wasteland continues to surprise me. I’ve come across several things in my travels that made me stop and scratch my head, laugh or simply smile, and it’s crazy to think these are things that people could entirely miss if they’re not keeping their eyes peeled. These little things have no impact on the gameplay, but they certainly make me appreciate the world of Fallout 4 even more.

I came across the scene above after accidentally strolling into a subway station. I didn’t intend to enter the station at all, I just got too close to the entrance and the game automatically transitioned me into the station. At first I was a little annoyed, knowing I’d have to face additional loading time to get back into the Commonwealth, however once inside I figured I’d at least see if there was anything worth grabbing. I didn’t find much, and the skeleton and teddy bear above didn’t even catch my eye at first. I just saw another dead body as I looked around for any interesting loot. As I was preparing to leave the area I just happened to glance down at the two and could not help but laugh out loud once I saw them sitting there. I could just imagine the man saying “screw it”, throwing shades and a hat on himself and the bear and lighting a cigar as the world collapsed around him. What a way to go. I couldn’t even bring myself to loot their sunglasses, I had to leave them be.

It wouldn’t be a day of Fallout if I didn’t die in some stupid way. Today’s silly death came via the forge. I had read the terminal inside that featured a list of names, most of which met their fate by being fed to the forge, but when I saw got outside and saw the forge the fact that I was looking at a stairway to death didn’t even cross my mind. I figured there had to be loot up there, and even though I looked right at it, I failed to notice that the gap in the floor that would lead to my agonizing death. As I fell into the forge I couldn’t even be mad.

Just before I finished playing for the day I finally came across the railroad, and the characters that I’ve met so far are some of the most interesting I’ve come across recently. I’m excited to dive into the quest line and see what adventure awaits me next.

What platform will you get Battlefield 1 on?

Posted on May 7, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

So EA released the first trailer revealing their next Battlefield game yesterday, and the internet exploded with excitement. The video shot to the top of the list of YouTube trending videos, and already has over 9 million views and 600,000 likes. This positive reaction interestingly contrasts with the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Activision’s Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare trailer (the five day old trailer has 10 million views and over 700,000 dislikes which led to Activision’s CEO having to address the negativity with a statement ).

EA’s Battlefield 1 trailer is a home run by many accounts, and I’m one of the millions awe struck by the incredible trailer. I practically got chills while watching it over and over yesterday! So the decision is not whether I’m going to pre-order Battlefield 1 (I most certainly am), but for which platform.

I recently got my first gaming PC, and I’ve been enjoying the better graphics and performance that comes along with joining the infamous “PC master race” (a silly term I don’t necessarily enjoy seeing), however I’m not certain if I can get used to Battlefield on PC. I signed up for EA’s Origin Access yesterday (I’ve been an EA Access subscriber on the Xbox One since its start) so that I could get access to Battlefield 4 and all of its DLC on PC for just $5 a month (it also includes access to a ton of other games I’ll enjoy playing).

I’ve tried playing a few matches of Battlefield 4 on PC, and although it looks great running on high settings, I can’t quite get used to the gameplay. I find trying to play with a mouse and keyboard a bit overwhelming. There’s just too much going on, and I’m not figuring it out as easily as I did the first time I picked up a controller. The mouse certainly feels good for aiming, however I’m finding it difficult to perform multiple actions at once, such as trying to tag enemies while lining up my shots. I’m sure I could get used to it if I keep playing, but I’m finding it’s just driving me to want to switch over to my Xbox One and play Battlefield 4 on there.

It’s also worth considering which platform my friends will be getting Battlefield 1 on. I have more friends that are console gamers, however a few of my friends have also built their first gaming PC’s as well. It would be nice if cross platform play would progress by the time the game releases, but I’m not confident that that will happen. It’s nice to play Rocket League cross platform, but without any sort of party system in which I can join my friends in matchmaking it’s not really useful.

It’ll probably be a few months before I ultimately decide on either the PC or Xbox version, but I’m curious, which platform will you be playing on? Which would you recommend to me, or others in my situation?

Lesson of the day: Save often in Fallout 4

Posted on May 6, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

While playing Bethesda RPG’s most people know you should be saving often. You never know what will confront you around the next turn or anytime you enter a building or new area. Everyone knows this. Right?

Unfortunately, too many times I’ve found myself becoming complacent while playing Fallout 4. I’m currently working on my Xbox One playthrough (I’ve started on PC, but would prefer to finish it on Xbox first) and I learned a lesson the hard way today.

I was exploring the satellite array, as part of the ‘Lost Patrol’ questline and I struggled several times to clear the area. There are quite a few difficult enemies in the area, and I kept getting overwhelmed. I didn’t have any artillery in range, so I called in a vertibird hoping to use the minigun to my advantage. Unfortunately, I got myself killed again and again, usually by an exploding vertibird as I tried to take down some of the brutes.

Eventually I got the area clear and took down the legendary super mutant with the help of all three of my mini nukes and several missiles. I was working on checking out the area and gathering up all of the useful loot when I eyed a set of steep stairs that seemed to be hiding something good!

As I approached the stairs I thought to myself maybe I should save, but figured I’d wait until I got to the top. Well it turns out I’m quite terrible at walking up narrow stairs, as I plunged to my agonizing death seconds later. What a terrible feeling! The worst part was that my most recent save was before I took on the legendary mutant, and I failed three more times before I finally downed him again. As I approached the deadly stairs again I made sure to save before I took the above screenshot, and then I carefully crawled up the stairs to see what awaited above. Would it be worth the horrific death?

As it turns out, what lied above wasn’t really worth it. There was some ammo and some power armor, but I never even use power armor. I find it too much of a hassle to track it down and equip it, even though wearing a suit probably would have made clearing out the satellite arrays much easier.

I learned a hard lesson today, and with that I sort of lost the desire to play more Fallout today. Dying over and over again got a little frustrating, so I’m putting Fallout aside in favor of some more Rocket League, a game that’s much easier on my blood pressure!

Thoughts on Battleborn so far

Posted on May 5, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

I didn’t know a lot about Battleborn going into its release, other than it was a colorful first person shooter with a MOBA mode. The game’s prologue didn’t offer a promising start. The first time you play the game you’re forced into watching some a sort of hyper energetic anime sequence that is unskippable and entirely boring. Some people certainly seemed to love the opening sequence, but I was not into it at all. I had to put the controller down and leave the room until it was finished.

Once you get to the playable portion of the prologue things don’t get much better. Sure the game needs to introduce you to the mechanics, but I found the opening story mission to be boring and incredibly long. I just wanted to jump into the MOBA mode (Incursion). Instead I had to play through an unappealing mission that serves little purpose.

Once I got past all the roadblocks and finally launched into the Incursion mode I started to begin regretting purchasing Battleborn. My original plan was to try to rent it from Redbox, however it wasn’t in stock anywhere nearby on the morning of its launch. I figured Battleborn might make for a nice ‘pick up and play’ game where I could play a match anytime I find myself with nothing better to do. I would have been better served to continue to play Rocket League during those times.

The idea of the Incursion mode seemed like it should be enjoyable, but there are quite a few things that stop it from being fun. First of all, I have yet to play a game in which anyone on my team was using a microphone. The Xbox One has already proven to be a place where very little communication takes place, especially when compared to the days of the 360, but in games where communication and planning is a necessity the lack of players using mics ruins the experience.

So far it seems like the general populace playing Battleborn is just running around trying to shoot at anything that moves without any particular strategy. This isn’t how a MOBA should be played, and every game of Incursion I’ve played so far has been a landslide one way or the other. No one wants to wait for minions to make a push, everyone just seems to congregate around the middle trying to shoot everything.

Now I can’t sit here and say I’ve done particularly well in Battleborn. I’ve died…. a lot. Another problem that I have with Battleborn is that it feels like there’s too much going on at once. There’s so much flash and color on the screen half the time I can’t figure out what I’m shooting at. And when I am trying to shoot at an enemy player, I can’t really tell if my attacks are effective. Sure there are numbers all over the screen (like in Borderlands), however I can never tell if my abilities are even hitting the targets I’m trying to hit. I’ve found myself frustrated more often than I’ve had any fun with Battleborn, and since no one else is communicating I just end up joining everyone in the middle repeatedly dying.

The story missions in Battleborn aren’t anymore enjoyable than the Incursion mode. You can matchmake with four other players, but I have yet to encounter anyone with a mic in those missions either. Everyone just runs around doing their own thing, and it just feels chaotic. So far I haven’t encountered any particularly difficult missions, but shooting at everything that moves with no real purpose alongside four other players isn’t exactly entertaining. Borderlands at least gave you a purpose, with its interesting loot drops and sense of progress. Battleborn hasn’t given me any sense of accomplishment or desire to do more. You can get gear as you accomplish things in the game, but I honestly haven’t found any of the gear I’ve received so far to make any sort of difference in game.

If you’ve been on the fence on whether to buy Battleborn, I’d have to recommend passing on it for now. Unless you have a group of players you intend to play with, I don’t think very many people will find much to enjoy in Battleborn. A team based game in which no one cooperates is makes every match nothing more than a coin flip. I’m not having fun, and I probably won’t play much longer. Too bad I bought the digital version and can’t recoup any of my $60.

First week home

Posted on May 3, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

Hey there, I’ve been home for just over a week and it’s been great, but it’s time I stop ignoring my blog! There’s so much I should be writing about, so I need to make myself sit down and start writing again. I figured I’d start with a brief check in, but I’ll write about much more in the weeks to come.

Since being home I’ve enjoyed all the great food I’ve missed out on, especially my first trip to Boise Fry Company, which I intend to write about over at ABoiseLife.com.

The food was great, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Boise!

I picked up a Samsung Gear VR which has been a pretty cool experience. One of the first things I did was boot up Minecraft VR and it’s a mind-blowing experience for sure!

I’ve enjoyed messing around with my new gaming PC, and tried my hand at Dark Souls III. It took a few days but I finally beat the first boss (technically just the tutorial boss) but am once again finding it difficult to progress past the very first section of the game.

I’m contemplating downloading Battleborn today (for the Xbox One), because I’ve been wanting a shooter I can fire up when I just want to play something casually. Rocket League is a great game to fire up and waste some time with, but I just want to shoot things!

Thanks, as always, for reading what I have to say, and I hope to bring some significant content back to the blog within a day or two! Until then I’m going to keep relaxing and enjoying America!

R.B.I. Baseball 16 on the Xbox One

Posted on April 4, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

Opening day is here, and for those of you looking to get a baseball fix on the Xbox One you have but one choice: R.B.I. Baseball 16.

There hasn’t been a ‘true’ baseball game on an Xbox platform since 2013’s MLB 2k13 on the Xbox 360. Therefore, for those of us who don’t own Playstation platforms, we haven’t been able to scratch our baseball video game itch for over four years. R.B.I. Baseball 16 is the third game in the revived series that originally debuted on the NES in 1988 and returned to modern consoles in 2014.

If you’re looking for a realistic baseball experience, don’t expect to find it in R.B.I. Baseball 16. The R.B.I. series has always offered more of an arcade style experience and that’s still true in the 2016 version. The gameplay is incredibly simplified, in that at any given time you only need two buttons and the D-pad to play it. Pitching consists of pressing ‘A’ and using the D-pad or analog stick to either pitch a fastball (hold down), slow-ball (hold up), or curve (hold left or right). That’s it. Hitting and fielding are no more complicated.

On the plus side, R.B.I. Baseball 16 presents the game of baseball with a pretty realistic looking presentation. The stadiums look great and the players don’t look entirely cartoony. Unfortunately there is no audio commentary which would make for a nice addition.

For $20 R.B.I. Baseball 16 is better than having no baseball at all on the Xbox One, however I’m left wanting the simulation experience that the MLB 2K series offered.

Rocket League on the Xbox One is not very playable outside the U.S.

Posted on February 18, 2016 by GumballsPlaysGames

I was incredibly excited for Rocket League’s arrival on the Xbox One this week. I had played it previously on my MacBook’s Windows 10 partition, but it never ran quite well. I figured I’d wait to enjoy the game when it released on Xbox. Last night after work, however, I was met with disappointment. Every game I played was unbearably laggy. So laggy that the game was unplayable. My car would constantly stutter and reverse direction over and over again and would randomly transport around the arena. I stuck the matches out, hoping it would get better, but it never did. I rarely came into contact with the ball, and by some miracle I managed to accidentally score a goal, brushing past the ball just before the opposing player knocked it into his own goal.

At the end of each match my ping was shown as being anywhere from 50 to 300, but even at 50 the game was unplayable. I’m currently deployed which is likely the reason for the lag as the only servers are in the U.S. and Europe, but I have no issues with games such as Destiny or Battlefield on the same Internet. A quick search on Google revealed that I was not alone, as many Australian players have reported lag making the game unplayable for them as well.

Hopefully the server issues are worked out in the near future, otherwise I’ll be waiting even longer to finally enjoy Rocket League.

Just Cause 3 (Xbox One) is not playable

Posted on December 14, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Last week I wrote about how against better judgement, I ended up purchasing Just Cause 3 on the Xbox One. It didn’t take long to discover that my instincts were right, and I should have delayed the purchases until the game had received a patch or two. My experience with Just Cause 3 so far has been everything but enjoyable.

The horror stories about load times are true, and I haven’t even experienced the worst of it yet. The initial load seems excessively long, but if that’s not bad enough there are constant long pauses that disrupt the gameplay and make the game almost entirely unenjoyable. For example, once you gain control of Rico you might spend two or three minutes in the game world before the game cuts to a black screen and loads into a cut scene. After the scene you’ll see another black screen before you regain control of your character. Each time this happens the load is anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds long, an absolute eternity that takes you out of the world.

It’s insane that the game has to stop and load as often as it does, especially when compared to the much smoother experience of games such as GTA V. The long loads between mission objectives and completions totally disrupt the flow of the game, and it feels like you’re playing a series of individual levels as opposed to a truly open world. If these loads weren’t bad enough, there are awkward long pauses in conversation during missions that seem as if the game is having trouble loading in the dialogue. A character will ask a question or make a statement and it can be as long as ten seconds before Rico will respond and another ten seconds before the next sentence is spoken.

Just Cause 3’s load times might be bearable if the game actually worked correctly. Unfortunately, on the Xbox One it doesn’t. Explosions cause the game to lag uncontrollably for several seconds, again taking you out of the game experience. I’m only 45 minutes or so into the game and I’ve already experienced a game breaking glitch. I started the third mission of the game, ‘Mario’s Rebel Drops’, however the game will not let me complete the mission. I get the mission complete screen, however the game acts as if I’m still in the mission. There are no objectives on the screen, nothing on the map, and yet if I press pause I have the option to ‘quit mission.’ If I die I’m greeted with a ‘mission failed’, even though I’ve already gotten the ‘mission complete’ prompt. I quit the mission and started over and yet it still does the same thing. I can’t start any challenges because the game thinks I’m still on a mission, and there are no more missions available either. I can’t progress any further in the game without starting over, and I certainly don’t want to replay the incredibly terrible opening that’s made worse by excessive loading.

Right now I’m stuck with a game I can’t play. Even if I could progress further into the story, it wouldn’t be enjoyable. I do not want to wait 30 seconds after completing a mission just to see a corny cut scene and wait another 30 seconds to get back into the world. That’s entirely unacceptable.

If you haven’t purchased Just Cause 3 yet I have to insist you do not purchase it. It is unplayable.

Taking a risk with Just Cause 3

Posted on December 7, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

The last two years have been rocky for blockbuster video game releases. Just about every major title released throughout the year has had a rocky start. The trend of “broken” games slipping past QA testers and onto store shelves (or digital marketplaces) seemingly started with the releases of Assassin’s Creed Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection in November 2014. Both games were horrendously bug ridden, and in the case of Halo, partially unplayable. The Master Chief Collection’s multiplayer portion, arguably its biggest draw, barely worked at launch. It would take anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour for players to be matched into a game, and even then things didn’t run smoothly. To make matters worse, 343 Industries was unable to make the game run smoothly until many months after its initial release. This angered consumers, as they were sold a product that obviously wasn’t ready to be released until much later.

The PC version of this year’s Batman: Arkham Knight was so miserably broken that after a slew of negative reviews and refund requests it was removed from sale soon after its release in order to be “fixed”. How the game was approved for sale in the first place is remarkable, as it took several months after its initial release for it to be deemed worthy for sale again.

It has become the new norm for developers to release games ‘on time’ only to require gamers to download bulky patches on release day. Halo 5, which released last month, required an additional 9GB download on its release day for gamers to be able to access the multiplayer portion of the game. Patches have gone from a legitimate means to fix issues with a game to an excuse to release shoddily crafted games in exchange for $60 from consumers with the promise to finish a games development by the time the game actually reaches store shelves. There are several problems with this. As apparent with the release of The Master Chief Collection, developers can seriously underestimate how long it will take to get a working version of a game to consumers. It can take days, weeks or months before you finally get exactly what you paid for. Imagine buying a car at a dealership for full price and only receiving the frame, with a vague promise that you’ll receive the engine and tires and an undetermined future time. Who in their right mind would do this?

The requirement for a patch to complete a game especially punishes those without access to broadband internet. Many games are incredibly inferior without their day one patches. The Evil Within, for example, ran at a lower framerate and at a lower resolution without its day one patch, as Kotaku reported. Someone who bought the disc version of the game without internet access would be stuck playing a version of the game unfit for release.

This week’s release of Just Cause 3 proves that developers are not going to change their ways anytime soon. The console version of the game is apparently plagued with issues causing the game to perform worse than one would expect of a AAA title. One of the draws of Just Cause is the ability to trigger extreme explosions during chaotic firefights, yet these trademark explosions are apparently causing extreme dips in framerate on the console versions of the games (as low as 20fps on the Xbox One according to VG247). Not only that, but gamers are reporting load times anywhere from two to five minutes, which in modern gaming is an eternity. Having to wait as long as five minutes to respawn after a death is not enjoyable, and gamers are rightfully expressing their annoyances on Reddit.

The general consensus on how to express that gamers are fed up with sub-par releases is to speak with our wallets. Don’t pre-order games, and don’t buy them on day one. Gamers are often excited for new releases in their favorite franchise years prior to a game’s release, and we often can’t wait to get our hands on these games. Yet buying these unfinished products without even thinking just encourages developers to release games as soon as they can, whether it’s ready to be played or not. Their goal is to generate buzz and make as much money as quickly as possible. It isn’t until the buzz has died down that problems with the games start to become apparent, but by then the developers and publishers have made most of their money already.

With all this in mind, I should know better than to purchase Just Cause 3 the week of its release, right? In theory…and yet, I still couldn’t resist. All of the videos I’ve seen of people playing the game made it look too fun to miss out on. I’ve read about all of the issues, and I kept telling myself not to part with $60 for a product that is going to underperform until it’s fixed at some point in the future. IGN gave the PC version of Just Cause 3 a respectable 8/10, while the console versions earned a bleak 5.9/10 due to the various performance issues. Very few games earn such low scores these days, especially AAA titles. Even the recent Mad Max game, generally considered well made but rather boring, earned an 8.4.

I don’t often base purchasing decisions on review scores, but for such a highly buzzed about AAA game to be rated so poorly says that the performance issues are significant. All intuition and research were telling me not to buy Just Cause 3, not yet at least. Just Cause 2 is backward compatible on the Xbox One, I should just play that until Just Cause 3 is fixed.

In the end, I ended up purchasing Just Cause 3 last night. I’m a part of the problem. I can’t help it. I’m sorry! Maybe I’ll be able to enjoy the game, despite the performance issues. We’ll see. Worst case scenario I’ll just play more Fallout and dabble with Just Cause 2 (I never played it) until some more patches release. It’ll be fixed, I’m sure. I hope.