Cookies and exclusives: my fall to the Dark Side (or, First Impressions On The Xbox One S)

My folks say I’m a traitor. Maybe they’re right, but I don’t regret it.

I come from a family of well-established PlayStation allegiance. We’ve owned some of the other platforms here and there, but on the whole, we’ve stuck with our status as a Sony household since before I was born.

My father, proud owner of a PlayStation 4 since its launch (albeit currently using our third PS4; our first went to my brother), was taken aback when I told him I was considering an Xbox for Christmas instead of getting my PS4 (our second) fixed. My reasoning was twofold: buying a One would be more economically reasonable than attempting to upgrade or replace my good-but-aging gaming computer, and it would allow us to play more games by including the stuff Microsoft published in addition to Sony’s.

We’ve done this going as far back as the original Xbox, so it wasn’t out of character, but I guess what made it weird was that I, once an occasional player of our first Xbox but never known for using our 360, was asking to own one this time around instead of just letting us get one down the road. It is a bit strange to think about, but I don’t mind the cognitive dissonance– especially when the games are so damned good. I documented a few of my first thoughts on each of the games I got for it journal-style; here they are, mostly unedited.

(Just warning you now: I curse in these a decent amount. Never said I was a squeaky-clean boy. Also, please don’t take these as reviews– I’ve been jumping between these, so they’re really only representative of the first little bits I’ve gotten to try since Christmas.)

Dec 25, 2016 at 05:01 pm

I looooooooooove Forza Horizon 3

Burnout Paradise it is not (for that I have Burnout Paradise, which I’m downloading again for the Xbox because I have zero chill), but there’s a real purity to the feeling of playing it that I don’t think I’ve felt with any other racing game. You can really tell that they made it out of a genuine love for automobiles and not simply for the sake of keeping a franchise afloat.

I can’t remember if it was the Verge or Polygon that referred to it as “the Fast and the Furious of video games,” but the comparison is apt– like those movies, it eschews realism and narrative depth in favor of showing off its automotive stars in just-beyond-possible situations with style. In the absence of a true successor to Paradise, Horizon 3 has probably gotten the closest to filling those shoes (or tires, if you will).

Dec 26, 2016 at 12:29 am

Sunset Overdrive is batshit nuts and I am enjoying it a great deal.

I’ve always admired Insomniac’s post-Spyro work from afar (one day I’ll play the entire Ratchet series and it will be glorious), but being able to finally play this makes my heart flutter. I was never one for the post-WWII grimdark aesthetic the studio dabbled in with the Resistance series, but the color-drenched “awesomepocalypse” of Sunset lines up impressively with my sensibilities (or lack thereof) in the visuals of a game. It’s pretty great.

I can see why some people aren’t big on breaking the fourth wall due to overexposure in recent media, but I continue to be a fan of self-awareness in things I like because it’s been one of my favorite tropes since my childhood. Sunset is a good example of how to do it right, I’d say– the feel here is vulgar, weird fun, and it fits well with the sense of humor the game’s got. It feels like a game built with my sailor-mouthed PoMo-loving punk side in mind and I’m digging it.

Dec 27, 2016 at 10:12 pm

I played a bit of Watch_Dogs 2 last night in order to get a taste of the game’s vibe and everything for myself. I was already in love with the characters having seen them in gameplay streams and stuff when it first released (Josh is my favorite of the group besides Marcus for obvious reasons, but I enjoy them all), and it feels like a game that knows what it wants to be, something that the first one (which I never played, but did watch a good amount of) struggled with.

I also very quickly found myself charmed by the game’s sense of humor. I was a bit annoyed with one of the first missions that put Marcus behind the wheel of a stolen Knight Rider pastiche because the police AI is almost godlike in its ability to stay on your ass — I only made it through by getting out of the car in a dark field and hoofing it as far away as I could — but I found all of my troubles washed away during the following sequence, where you remotely drive the car through a death-defying stunt run through the heart of San Francisco, hearing incredulous news reports and the cheers of the DedSec crew all the way through.

It’s good shit, and it bodes well for the future of the franchise. Fans of the first game’s attempt to be a cyber film noir might be disappointed, but for people like me who would rather live out their Hackers (or, in my case, Little Brother) fantasies, it’s a damn good way to do so.

Dec 28, 2016 at 11:27 pm

I wasn’t expecting myself to like Battlefield 1. I’m not a Call of Duty kind of guy at all, and I usually just lumped the series in with its competitor because it is, for all intents and purposes, EA’s answer to the phenomenon; beyond finding Battlefield more technically impressive I didn’t have any intent of playing it. I figured it wouldn’t be right to dismiss it given that it was the bundled game with my Xbox and it’s $60-ish on its own at the moment.

After playing the first war story, I’m a believer. The opening of the game is especially effective in making the player feel like the war threw away lives without justification– it outright tells you that you’re not expected to survive, and you see name after name of the soldiers you’re placed in the shoes of during their final moments. It’s heartbreaking, and effective in establishing the tone of the game– showing the human experiences lying under the wider narrative of the conflict without glamorizing it.

Initially, I found myself uncomfortable with the gameplay in the first few levels proper, stumbling through the early tank sequences and getting shot to oblivion, but by the last level I was invested, balancing my roles as the driver/repairman and a scout for my crew like an intricate dance. (The plot wasn’t too shabby either, and I’m digging the episodic structure of the campaign– good for little, self-contained sessions.)

Dec 29, 2016, whenever this post goes up

I said a few weeks back that I was giving up fanboyism, and being able to appreciate the world beyond Sony’s platforms is a key part of that for me. I was unrepentant in my criticisms of the Xbox One before it launched because I felt like the console that Microsoft announced in May 2013 would be too user-hostile for its own good; three years later, I’m finding the opposite to be true, recognizing it as a capable and competitive contemporary of the PS4 with some standout experiences that give it its own unique charm.

Before one accuses me of blindly switching sides without recognizing flaws, I will make it clear that I don’t think the One is perfect. I can’t say that I’d ever want to subscribe to Groove Music when Spotify is available on so many more platforms, has a larger library of tunes and is cheaper; for background music while playing games though, Groove is your only option that doesn’t require setting up a DLNA server or attaching an external device (like a Chromecast or a Fire TV Stick) to your Xbox. Granted, this is more of an exclusivity issue than anything else (Spotify’s deal with Sony prevents it from arriving on the Xbox, and even then, it’d be a hard sell for Microsoft to allow a competitor to Groove on its platform), but it’s still a pain in the ass for a religious Spotify user like me.

The Windows 10 user interface is another thing that I’d probably take steps to try to simplify given the chance. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but coming from the PS4′s iteration of the XMB, MS’s Dashboard is comparatively unintuitive. (The internal consistency of the applications themselves also leaves something to be desired; while the Metro look keeps everything visually tied together, some apps make heavy use of the Menu button while others ignore it completely.)

Also, it’s 2016. Rechargeable batteries for wireless controllers shouldn’t be an accessory for a console controller, they should be a requirement.

Beyond those few gripes, though? I’m enjoying my time with the Xbox One. Time will tell if I end up permanently subscribing to Live, and I’ve only scratched the surface of the games I’ve played and can play on this thing, so it’ll be fun to spend time with it through the rest of this generation. (I’m not really that worried about Project Scorpio– if it’s anything like the PS4 Pro, it won’t be earth-shattering enough to warrant upgrading, and I didn’t feel like waiting.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an installation of Ori and the Blind Forest to check on.

Originally published at tremulousone.tumblr.com.