Yea the secret is that the original Battlefront games were never very good compared to competitive shooters on the PC, even for the time. Hell as an original Xbox owner I felt they controlled terribly compared to, say, Republic Commando, and certainly to games like Halo, Unreal Championship, and Battlefield 2. But for the tens of millions of gamers who only had a PS2, it was pretty mind blowing. It’s just when compared to cutting edge PC and Xbox shooters it sucked. Every issue described here I had with the games at launch. But the mushy, loose analog sticks and lack of analog triggers on the PS2 controller meant that precision shooting just wasn’t really possible on the platform.

I love Nightdive. I’m sure the 5 people in the world who wanted this are ecstatic. Playing the 3DO version of this on an emulator last month was a real challenge so I’m excited to give it a go with a mouse and keyboard.

Bought Immortals of Avernum a couple months ago when it was like $20. Enjoyed it for what it was. And Minecraft Legends and Skul I believe I have as part of Gamepass so nothing really for me this month.

This seems oddly close to real history without being real history. Like the death of Hideyoshi Toyotomi in 1598 did lead to a succession crisis as his son was only five. And that crisis did reach a boiling point with the death of the most senior of the council of five regents left to rule in Toyotomi's stead named Maeda Toeshii the following year. The council did split into two warring factions with Leyasu Tokugawa leading one and a man named Mitsunari Ishida leading the other, but Ishida was not a reagent, who were all Daiymo, but a career politician. And it is Tokugawa not Toranaga. Strange changes to a story that is close to real life.

Solid list. Good mix of seminal early titles, classics from the 90's and early 00's, and more modern fare. Can't say I can think of any major titles that you missed, save for maybe an entry from the Might and Magic series.

Yea sports games reviews have long been largely irrelevant. Rarely is any one game good or bad enough to shake the needle in a way that would alter a fan's opinion, and changes are so marginal you could often copy and paste entire sections of a previous review and have it remain 100% accurate. Of course the same could be said of the game, so maybe the answer is to not do a full review of each sports game but an update that just mentions the changes and whether they are positive or negative? Hard to say, and of course the issues mention bring up larger questions about the relevancy of a singled written opinion that comes out within days of a game's launch in a live service era. Like if I went back and read the Gamespot Destiny 2 review, would a single thing mentioned in it still be relevant? The systems today are entirely different, as are the economics, the weapons, the characters, the leveling, like everything. It's an interesting question, especially when compared to something like a movie or an album that largely remains static after release.

@afromakka: It's not like Microsoft put a gun to their head and demanded they put Ark 2 on Gamepass or else. If they didn't find the deal to be potentially profitable they wouldn't have made it. You are aware that Microsoft pays big bucks for that type of exclusitivity deal, probably 8 figures in a case like this.

I could also accept if they charged an upgrade fee of, say, $10. But to charge nearly full price and to then also charge to rebuy DLC that customers have already purchased? That is far from industry standard. Look at the recent "upgrade" to Outer Worlds. There was an upgrade fee, but players didn't have to repurchase DLC. And I know this is a much larger update than that, but notably Epic has repeatedly said that transitioning a project from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5 should be largely seamless. It's not like assets had to be rebuilt or scripting rewritten. A major selling point of UE5 is its ease of use, especially in regards to the asset pipeline. This is obviously a major upgrade, but it is not an upgrade that should cost over $100 when everything is repurchased.

At this point if they are able I would hope they would remake the first three games with modern controls and graphics. Maybe an expensive prospect, so maybe only the first game? But making a sequel after 20 years is maybe asking a lot.

The thing not mentioned here is that outside of Sonic, Gotham Knights, and High on Life, virtually all of these games were fully or partially funded by either Tencent(All games with Infinite Level or Krafton logos) or Embracer Group(Deep Silver, Coffee Stain, Gearbox, Prime Matter, etc). Some I’m not sure about. Like I don’t know at this point if CI Games is independent or part of the ever expanding Embracer family, but considering that their THQ division just had a showcase showing off like 20 games, the fact they could pull out another 20 or so games here is both impressive and a little disturbing.

@Setho10: Also why not just do series with the best campaigns? After both original and 2016 Doom probably should be present. Half Life, Half Life 2, and Alyx all should be present. If you are going to put Crysis 2 I would argue strongly for including 1 and 3 as well. Ditto for earlier Metro games, other Deus Ex games, and Bioshock Infinite. The only series I would say is missing entirely is Resistance. The third game in particular is fantastic.