I thought this was an expansion, not a standalone title. I’ll have to check it out when it launches.

It’s too bad to hear you say that of the Outer Wilds - I can’t wait to play it again now that they have released an expansion. If you feel lost, check in with the ship’s space log. The space ship physics are tricky to start with no matter how you slice it, but oddly, after a while, something about it clicks and I was…

Well no. If someone wants to grind to get what they think is a good roll I’m not going to deny them. I just don’t like the idea of them grinding to get what someone else is telling them is a good roll.

Totally agree. And sometimes critical acclaim and power me through until either the gameplay or the narrative hook me (“I heard this was great, so I’ll play a little longer to find the greatness”), and it almost did that with Outer Wilds. But once I took a break, I kind of lost it all.

yeah i never got past first loop, or first 10 mins of outer wilds, i found the lunar lander practice thing after maybe 5 mins of exploring, couldn’t control it, exited, deleted game.

Well, the way God Roll gets thrown around really pisses me off. Sure, some things are pretty useless, but again, the rest mostly just comes down to what mods are you comfortable with and helps your play style. What helps you knock things down in the game, whether its PvP or PvE(what’s good in one may not be good in…

Exactly. The only real loss for me on GamePass is if I let a game fall of it before I get to try it out. Again, why invest my limited amount of time into something that I’m not enjoying when there’s something out there that I might like better.

I think, at least with respect to Destiny, the beauty of raids is less about a place to test your highest level gear, and more in the collaborative nature of the encounter structure. They’re (usually) well designed and fun encounters that require you to work together as a team, no matter how good your gear is (which…

I started the game and bounced off after a couple of hours because I had no idea what I was doing and couldn’t get a handle of the controls of the ship. A few months later I came back and landed in the first planet and followed a strategy guide for the first few steps. It really helped me understand what was going on…

The best/worst part is that Bungie has hilariously, unintentionally implemented better Skill-Based Matchmaking in Dares than they have with their actual PVP modes or other, harder 3-6 man activities (Master Dungeons, Legend Dares, etc.)

It’s not really a grind...basically playing the latest expansion story will get you up to the soft cap. They drop items that up your current weapons/armor that up your power by 10-15 at a time.

Well that’s the thing though, it’s scary easy to hit the hard cap each season. If you want to hit the pinnacle cap you actually have to target your work. As well as do PvP. Granted, for some of that pinnacle gear you might have to win. But most? You just have to play three rounds once a week.

If the game was built solely as a physics showcase with freewheeling, methodical exploration, I’d be down. But it’s a game about a relatively short time loop, meaning you need to get around quickly and intuitively or else you run out of time. It makes absolutely no sense to me that this control scheme seemed like a…

EA is definitely more cryptic about it - they seem to be cautiously reserving the right to keep games off of EA Play forever, but so far they’ve never not put a title on there eventually as far as I’m aware.

The controls are just so bad and I feel like a crazy person when people praise the game.

Same with Outer Wilds. I thought it was just me. I wanted to like it so bad...but I just couldn’t. Even after a couple of hours, I just did not enjoy it.

I’ve said this before about Destiny, and I’ll say it again: even as someone who enjoys the game, I think the worst thing Destiny (and the Destiny fanbase) does is encourage the notion that players have to engage really, really seriously with the grind in order to have fun with Destiny.

For future reference, virtually all EA titles eventually hit EA Play (and by extension, Game Pass PC/Ultimate), so you can always expect to see them there not long after you see them deeply discounted.

At first I was attracted by the grind, but eventually the activities got to too repetitive and I had to ask myself if it was really worth putting the kind of time into the game that it demanded. I’m so glad I stepped away from Barbie Fashion Designer when I did and got my life back.

For a brief moment my brain replaced “Arrival” with “Pinnacle Station” because the latter is the obvious one to skip.