Xbox one TitanFall bundle impressions

[Edward1]

Microsoftstore.com was having a 20% off everything sale, including the Xbox one.  Therefore I bought the Xbox one titanfall bundle for $400.  It arrived yesterday, here are my impressions.

The System -  The is huge. This thing is bigger than the original xbox. It comes with a controller, a the Kinect, a headset, a 1 month xbox live gold subscription card, a code to download titanfall, an HDMI Cable, even an "HDMI in" port to hook up a cable box to for kinect navigation or something. However, thats useless to me, because I canceled cable 3 years ago and went all Roku + antenna. I will never be using that feature.

The controller - The controller is awesome. Its essentially a 360 controller with a better d-pad. This means its essentially perfect.

The Kinect - It comes with an upgraded Kinect. However there are very few games for it. I downloaded the Kinect Sports Jetskiing demo.  It worked great. It can even recognize you moving your fingers.  However, there seems to be a complete lack of kinect games for the system.  Kinect sports 3 is coming out next month, and should be a winner. However, I think it was a mistake to make the system $100 more to make the kinect mandatory, and have no worthwhile kinect games at launch. Microsoft probably should have spent whatever was necessary to get kinect sports 3 done by launch, and it probably should have been a pack in title, to get people interested in Kinect.

The interface - At first it looks a lot like the 360 interface. However, I'm having a harder time using it.  How do I find a alphabetic list of all games at the game store ?  Does anyone know?  I can find lists of "most popular games, recent games etc" but if I just want to look through every single game in the game store alphabetically, like I could do on 360, how do I do that?   Also, it seems like not a lot of games have demos.  Why?  Or am I just not finding them, because of the lacking interface.

The voice recognition seems to be much better now. however simply saying "achievements" appears to not be good enough. You have to say "go to achievements" etc. You have to learn the exact phrases it wants you to say.  However, when you do learn them, its pretty good.

Graphics - It is certainly a jump from the 360. It looks almost as good as my gaming computer with a Radeon HD 7970.  However, it doesn't feel like as big of a jump as last generation is. Maybe graphics have just come too far, and we won't get the major leaps any more.



Titanfall -  The pack in game is amazing. Its an online team shooter involving humans and giant robots fighting on teams against each other.  Both classes are equally fun to play.  The humans have awesome speed jumping abilities etc, and it feels like Mirror's edge with guns.  The Giant robots are very fun and feel a lot like mech assualt.  The robots usually have the edge, but you only get to play them after you've killed X amount of people or waited enough time etc. Therefore, they don't feel unbalanced, and add to the game. The online matches are pure mayhem with giant robots on the streets and ultra quick parkouring military men hoping buildings everywhere. This may be one of my favorite online FPSs ever.

However, this game is online only. There is no single player campaign.  I would not have a problem with that, because its obviously that they wanted it to the best online game possible, and they certainly succedded.  However, what is unacceptable is the lack of split screen.  This would be the perfect game to have a group of buddies over playing as a team against another team online.  I love doing that in halo, but you can't do that here.  That's unacceptable, but maybe I dont have the right to complain considering it came free with the system.  However, the fact that the game itself is of such a high quality makes that even a bigger bummer. Also if you don't have online + xbox live gold subscription, this game is completely useless to you.

One note I want to make is the game is a download code not a disc. And its 16 freaking gigabytes, which means youll have to wait for hours for it to download before you can play it. How hard is it for Microsoft to include a disc?


Overall -  This system does what I thought it would do. Its an evolution, not a revolution. The lack of backward compatibility sucks, which means I will always need to keep the 360 around.  Im glad the "always on" isnt part of the system, or I would have never bought it.  Its a quality system, and Im sure it will be around for another 5-6 years.  I guess whether you get this or the PS4 depends on how much you like Kinect. My wife loves Kinect, so I wanted to get this for Kinect sports when it comes out. I don't know that I would pay $500 for it. However, the fact that I was able to get it for $400 with a free game made it more worthwhile.

[VideoGameCritic]

That's for the detailed review!  It's valuable to know that the pack-in game is really a download code.  I'm sure that's not something widely publicized but I think it's kind of a rip off.

[Tron1]

[QUOTE=videogamecritic]That's for the detailed review!  It's valuable to know that the pack-in game is really a download code.  I'm sure that's not something widely publicized but I think it's kind of a rip off.[/QUOTE]

Since its an online-only game why fret over disc or code. I guess storage space and waiting sucks. I get that, but as far as it having any value or collectability its only as good as the servers last. There's actually collector's editions available for this game so maybe the servers will still be good in 2024.

Great share Edward. I like that the D-pad is fixed. That's totally awesome. I think the online emphasis of the Xbone though is a major turnoff for me. I also TOTALLY agree that they should have developed Kinect Sports at launch. As of now it sounds like the Kinect adds very little. I TOTALLY disagree about settling for minor graphical upgrades. I think the technology is there it just hasn't been utilized.  

[Paul1231]

It's weird to me that you could pay full price for Titanfall and not be able to use it without paying a monthly fee. Seems like a game like that would either have a single player campaign or some kind of free pass that let's you use the servers without paying the monthly fee. Also, I didn't like the D-pad AT ALL. Too clicky.

[m0zart1]

[QUOTE=Tron]Since its an online-only game why fret over disc or code. I guess storage space and waiting sucks. I get that, but as far as it having any value or collectability its only as good as the servers last. There's actually collector's editions available for this game so maybe the servers will still be good in 2024.[/QUOTE]

Resale or trade-in value maybe?  Not everyone is a collector.  If the servers last as long as 2024, then that's a pretty long time in any case to resell a game.

[kew9820001]

[QUOTE=Paul123]It's weird to me that you could pay full price for Titanfall and not be able to use it without paying a monthly fee. Seems like a game like that would either have a single player campaign or some kind of free pass that let's you use the servers without paying the monthly fee. Also, I didn't like the D-pad AT ALL. Too clicky. [/QUOTE]

Actually this is not uncommon. Look at all the online MMORPG games out there that you had to pay full price for and still have to pay monthly fees to play. World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, etc. I do agree that Titanfall should have had at least a single player campaign. But it is what it is. It's just going to suck for collectors in the future though because with it being download only and online only, it will inevitably be just a memory in the future.

[VideoGameCritic]

I heard someone suggest that if the game sells well, there is a chance EA would release a single-player version of the game, which would make sense.

[Segatarious1]

[QUOTE=videogamecritic]I heard someone suggest that if the game sells well, there is a chance EA would release a single-player version of the game, which would make sense.[/QUOTE]

To me, that does not make sense.

If it sells well - why not conintue in that direction - player pays big bucks for an online game, and has to pay an online subscription to play it. Win Win for EA.

Where is the incentive to suddenly tack on single player, when and if game buyers decide to purchase a full priced game without single player?

Make more sense to put the money into the sequel, or make players buy maps or titans or extended online modes through pay DLC.

[Edward1]

Paul, I guess I'm different.  I actually like the clickyness of it. For something with digital inputs, it adds an "exactness" to it. I tried the Killer Instinct demo, and I like using it. Maybe some people will be different.  I think everyone can agree this is a huge improvement over the terrible Xbox 360 pad though.  However the SNES d-pad will always be my favorite.  The X-One D-pad may be my favorite d-Pad ever that isn't on a Nintendo console or handheld though, but that may not be such a high standard. Nintendo seems to hold some important patents on D-Pads that other companies have trouble copying without violating the patents.


Mozart, my guess is the servers will be lasting for a long time. i expect Titanfall to be a new series for Xbox on the level of Gears of War or Halo.  Its that good.


Tron, I don't mean to complain about the graphics. I don't really care that much about graphics, at least on the technical side.  I'd rather the system be like this, then be much more expensive.  Its just not the jump that people would expect.

Videogamecritic, I don't know how well a single player version of this game would work.  This game moves insanely fast.  They would probably have to make some severe adjustments, and have massive levels. It might work like that.


Kew, I know they made a computer version of it.  At the very least, Im sure hackers will hack after that version after EA shuts the servers down on it, and it will be playable on the PC in the future at the very least.  However I agree, it sucks.  I know keeping servers online for years costs the company money. Why cant they run a kickstarter at the very least on old games to aquire funds, instead of shuting down?  Im sure there are many gamers who would pay for that.


One other note I'd like to make.  I downloaded the Dead Rising 3 demo.  It only lets you play 2 times before it stops working which sucks.  However, it is fantastic. This game got mixed reviews for some reason, and I dont know why. Its a huge improvement over the previous games, with MUCH more zombies on screen. i think at some points there may be a thousand or so, and the combat is very fun.  I will be buying this game soon.  Even though this game doesn't look graphically much better than a 360 game, the sheer amount of zombies it handles though may be indicative of its much better processing power though.

[darkrage61]

I think the 360s D-pad is pretty decent,  though the Xbox One's D-pad is definitely an improvement, it's by far the best D-pad i've ever used.

I hope they do release a single-player version of Titanfall.