Higher resolution, ray tracing and 120Hz support is welcome - but what about performance?
Got an Xbox and a Game Pass subscription and want something spooky to play? Here are the best horror games on Xbox Game Pass.
There are many ways that a game developer can choose to raise the difficulty in their games — but which ways are the most effective?
A great example on how to do difficulty in a video game is DOOM ETERNAL. Started playing on ULTRA VIOLENCE but then I started playing on NIGHTMARE after a couple hundred hours of playing on UV . What makes DOOM ETERNAL fun, is on Nightmare, the enemies are very aggressive ,but they give you the tools to defeat difficult enemies , you just have to learn how to use them .
Doom Eternal was so tough, but it felt so amazing to finish that game, even when the enemy feels unfair and gang up/box up into a corner.
Personal dislikes are bullet sponges and bosses with regular enemies thrown in. Just make the boss hit harder if it's too easy.
I think Helldivers 2 really gets it right. If enemies are easy, they swarm. If they're high level, they tend to have good defense and need strategems to take down...or bait.
I never feel too angry if I die by swarm because it is usually my fault for not checking my 6. I don't even mind dying if a teammate drops a bomb on the swarm that is gutting me.
I don't like cheap deaths. When the game allows you to progress only to hit you with an enemy that is suddenly immune to all the things you've unlocked and mastered is just dumb. If the game doesn't do hit boxes right and you get killed in lame ways it is dumb.
The screenshot is from Elden Ring, a game I really enjoyed, but the scaling was silly. I didn't do the Eligtree til late game so it was goofy difficult. I thought the Elden Beast was rather cheap. Not a fun skill based match, but just cheap enemy. There was no sense of, "oh it defeated me because I did this or I did that" like all Souls/Borne games.
1. Intelligent opponents that don't have some set, optional strategy to win and requires more critical thinking.
2. Game provides players with the knowledge and tools about a game world to stand a chance (or at the very least, the opportunity to gain the knowledge and tools).
3. Don't insist on enemies having much more health than the player arbitrarily. Sometimes, you'll have more durable enemies who are armored or inhuman which I would say is fair. The best approach to this I can recall in recent memory is Naughty Dog games: You're extremely vulnerable without armor and can get picked off pretty easily, but your enemies are pretty beatable with the right weapons and strategies where you can't just brute force it. That said, ammo is in short supply, so you engage at your own risk.
4. Depending on the type of games, make resources more scarce without necessarily making enemies bullet sponges. It simply means you'll have to choose your battles carefully and have damn good aim. Like Uncharted. If you're not good at headshots, Crushing is a rough time.
All playable March 19.
It's always the ine they leave out if the headline that interests me most 😅 DBZ Kakarot, been waiting for this to pop up on plus
I completely missed that DBZ Kakarot was in the group, I have midnight sons and RE3 so was kinda disappointed.
Yea, it’s my last chance to play my childhood, now that he is gone. I’m watching way too many good anime at the moment to rewatch the series but this is the perfect excuse to visit that universe.
Never played Midnight Suns and probably won’t anytime soon but maybe someday. Pretty good month not great not horrible. I used to love sports games when I was a kid but that was before the monetization they went through and now I avoid them.
Not all sports games are like that but ea and 2k games are definitely
Heard a lot of good things about Midnight Suns! Also looking forward to Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot and will probably download 2K24 as well.
Not a great month for me. Will give Midnight Suns a go.
I've never played Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier. Might give it a go although it's supposed to just be okay.
Never played a Phoenix Wright game before, so might try Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.
The Lost Frontier isn’t a true Jak and Daxter game. If you haven’t played them before I’d highly advise skipping The Lost Frontier and spending your time on the trilogy. The real Jak games are developed by Naughty Dog
I'm a big Jak & Daxter fan. Just not that into portables so I never picked this one up (didn't know there was a PS2 port when I was younger).
It's disappointing that Capcom prioritized 4K (only slightly dynamic) in the RT mode over a stable framerate and playability.
Plenty of headroom for 60fps in the RT mode. Hope they add an option to lower the resolution to something like 1600p (a drop to 1440p doesn't even seem necessary).
Weird choice not to go with a dynamic resolution. Could squeeze alot of extra performance out of the RT mode. The game is so dark in many places that they could have aggressively cut resolution on areas you're not directly focused on, and no one would hardly notice. That or allow a 30/40 FPS lock to reduce stuttering.