Pheran

PSA to those concerned about the 1-point achievement at the beginning of Moving Out.  If you are willing to spend a little time playing the game, this is easily correctable.  You must complete the first 13 levels (maybe 90 minutes of gameplay).  After the first 10 levels, there is a sequence of 3 levels with ghosts.  Just don't slap any ghosts (easy since you have to intentionally do this), and you'll get a 69-point achievement (yeah baby!) that evens things out.

So if you are interested in a family-friendly couch co-op game in the vein of Overcooked but you want to preserve your multiple of 5 gamerscore, it's not difficult to do.

I'll probably get the XSX close to launch just to play my existing library better, and also because I have no illusions about the pandemic stuff being over by then, despite what everyone wants to think.

I'll hold off on the PS5 for a while.  The most likely thing to force me to buy one would be Horizon Zero Dawn 2.

I wonder how home consoles will work with the XSX - will I be able to have both a home X1X and home XSX?  That would be nice.

It better be - it's literally double the price.

A lot of us on CAG paid $1 for 3 years of Game Pass.  One of the best deals ever.  It might even still be working, I'm not certain.

I'm finally playing through Assassin's Creed 1 right now (backlog!) and I have to say I am super impressed with the game. It's repetitive for sure, but it looks amazing (on Xbox One X) and it feels great to play. Some early 360 games just feel so OLD when you play them now, but AC1 still feels modern. I totally get why it was such a monster hit back in the day.

I think AC1 gets maligned too much.  Yes, the side quests are repetitive and that was much improved in AC2, but the core story is very good.  Also, the AC2 trilogy has lots of callbacks to AC1, so it definitely helps to play it first.

There are alot of repeats but at least stuff like Earth's Dawn finally went on sale.

 

Also out of morbid curisouty, is anyone actually interested in buying the DOA6 season passes now they are on sale?

I'm interested in the base game being on sale, but DoA season passes have always been laughable, I would never buy one of those unless they put a huge discount on it (like 90%).
 

I am realizing what I’m missing by being stuck to Apex Legends now. I’m finally about halfway through the Call of Duty Modern Warfare campaign from 2019 and dang it’s so good. The things that they make you watch and go through in that campaign are messed up. It feels like messed up stuff that would happen in real life and combat. After I finish this Campaign I think I might go over to the Jedi game from 2019.

If you like shooter campaigns that are "messed up" and haven't already played it, I highly recommend "Spec Ops: The Line".

Anyone getting Midway Arcade Origins for $5?  Definitely tempted for some nostalgia.

and everyone should admit that PS3 triggers were trash.

So much this.  I'm amazed that anyone likes the DS3 controller; the triggers are so bad.

People said the exact same thing about 4K, and now everything is 4K. They've actually been filming movies in 4K for the longest time, and Japan has had the technology since the 1990s. And, both the Xbox and PlayStation are going to support 8K. So, there are already two things that will support 8K, and it's content by the end of the year. Obviously major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime will jump on board. And, we will start seeing 8K Anime series and other things as well. 8KTVs have been on sale since 2018. The technology is already two years old.

I never said that about 4K, but you are missing the point.  On consumer-sized TV displays (<=65") it is literally impossible to see the difference between 4K and 8K at normal viewing distances.  Even if every single show on Netflix was in 8K, it wouldn't do you a damn bit of good unless you are planning on sitting 3 feet from the screen.  If you can afford the bazillion dollars it will cost to get 8K at 85"+ then sure, go for broke, but otherwise 8K is just wasting money.

You're better off waiting to get an 8KTV when those start going down in price. Since the new Xbox and PlayStation will support them. And, you're basically future proofing yourself for a while. The fact that 4KTVs go for $200 during Black Friday kind of shows that they are quickly on the way out. Kind of like how we had 720p and 1080p TVs at the same time, and nobody wanted 720p TVs anymore.

There is no reason that anyone should wait for 8K TVs.  There's no 8K content, and 8K is worthless on consumer-sized TV sets.  This is a case of the industry pushing pointless technology to sell hardware because "bigger numbers must be better".
 

Any thoughts on Assassin's Creed: Origins Gold Edition for $25?

I got a platinum trophy for the base game and was curious if the season pass and DLC content was worth revisiting the game. Thanks!

Both of the AC Origins DLC are pretty good - The Hidden Ones is just like more of the main game, whereas the Curse of the Pharaohs has some really cool environments.  If you enjoyed Origins then I definitely recommend the DLC, though I'm not sure if I'd pay $25 just to get the DLC part.

Everything I’ve heard about the game make it sound like a complete chore to play

Keep in mind that people are mistakenly comparing the released PS5 specs to the XSX which is MS flagship console when in reality people should be comparing the XSX to the PS5 Pro which has not been revealed yet and could likely come out in 2021/22. Let's hope that Xbox didn't blow their load too early as Sony could very well release a PS5 Pro with an upgraded Big Navi GPU in the future.

This makes no sense.  Why would we compare a console releasing this holiday to a vaporware console that might come out in a few years?
 

 

In short, who the knows!

I wouldn't be surprised if MS was originally targeting Thanksgiving but now they are afraid of missing it because of COVID-19 impact on manufacturing.  But they will fight like hell to get it out before Christmas (for obvious reasons), so they are still saying holiday 2020.

m2 is a size or form factor.  m2 drives can be either sata or nvme.  ps5 will use the latter.

 

the sony certification probably means nothing, will just help people more easily identify what they need.

That is absolutely not what was said in the video.  Yes, it's an M.2 drive.  But specifically, it needs to be an M.2 drive that supports PCIe 4.0 and can do transfer rates >5.5GB/sec.  It also has to satisfy certain size requirements that aren't fully standardized.  These drives literally don't exist yet for consumers.  Something like the upcoming Samsung 980 Pro might qualify, but it's not out yet.  This is not an issue right now since the PS5 isn't launching for at least 8 months.  Just don't get the idea that you can slap any old M.2 SSD in there and have it work correctly - there's not a single drive available to consumers today that meets the PS5 requirements.  When the PS5 does launch, only the newest and fastest (and therefore also the priciest) M.2 drives will qualify.

It will be interesting to see how the price of those M.2 drives will compare to the custom SSD card that Microsoft is using.  My bet is initially they will either be similarly priced or that the PS5 drives will be more expensive.  But over time once PCIe 4.0 drives become more common, the PS5 drive pricing will fall below that of the MS ones because they aren't using a proprietary form factor.