Obsidian's Entertainment's new Sci-Fi RPG is set for release this week and the critics seem very happy with the game. The game is currently sitting on a very impressive 86% on both Metacritic and Opencritic with 96% of critics on Opencritic recommending the game.
Oh wow, I put this in the back of my mind, waiting for it to be affordable. Then I saw the info here about Game Pass and I went and checked it out. Turns out I have 2 months of free sub on it from some xbox demo code I had used when I got my new GPU a month back, I thought the code failed and moved on.
That’s a really good deal on GamePass, though I’d really prefer to just buy the game outright on Steam. (Actually I’d prefer GOG or Humble, but they don’t localise to ZAR so Steam ends up being significantly cheaper.)
(No, actually I’d prefer to buy a copy at local retail, but alas, digital has killed the PC game retail box.)
If you think about it R69 a month means that you will have to play the game for about 15 months to have paid the full cost and I somehow doubt it will take me 3 months to finish it. R210 for a game is very very cheap.
The thing is how often do you go back to a game? I find I never do that. You keep your achievements and that’s quite nice. Game Pass is one of the best things that’s ever happened to gaming. Especially if you have an XBox and a PC.
I used to go back to Diablo 3 regularly. I go back to Borderlands regularly. I expect I’ll return to No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect at some point, and my friends have just started playing Vermintide 2 again, so I may go back to that.
And then, of course, there’s Warframe and Destiny 2. But that’s another story entirely.
That’s just off the top of my head.
I’d much rather discuss the pros and cons of Game Pass with y’all that have been using it than focus on my consumption habits, though.
Game Pass is one of the best things that’s ever happened to gaming.
Can’t you make the same argument for the hordes of other subscription services available?
What makes it better than say, Humble Monthly, Origin Access (which is also available on consoles), and Uplay+?
The only thing I don’t like about gamepass is that you can’t really set where it installs the games. You can choose the drive but not the folder structure which sucks.
I have a 2TB drive that only has games installed in the root and now there are annoying WindowsApps and WPSystem folders that mess with my organisation.
Good point. I’ll rephrase what I said. Subscription Gaming Services is the best thing that’s ever happened to gaming.
I love it. In the past you couldn’t play Gears 5 or The Outer Worlds or Forza Horizon 4 at launch for so little money. And I can decide if I want to play it on PC or XBox. In the past I always waited for these games to go on special before playing them. I was a real patient gamer.
Now I’m playing Gears 5. Just like that. My Game Pass is paid up for the next couple of years and I can play games from a huge library.
Humble Monthly is better in the sense that you own the games, but worse in the sense that the games are quite a bit older and most of the unlocks are shovelware hidden behind the anticipation of “surprise unlocks”.
For Origin Access you only get EA games, which are mostly yearly iterations of the same set of games (Battlefield, Fifa, Need for Speed and Sims). The rest of the games are quite a bit older as well. The same goes for uPlay+.
XGP has a decent selection of games across a wide variety of genres from different developers and publishers. It also has a good mix of AAA and Indie titles. I do believe it is the current winner in the gaming subscription race.
Ok, so if you stop paying for Gamepass, then obviously you lose your access to the games. If you start paying again a year later, do you have access to the same games again or only the new games? I assume the games on Gamepass rotes from month-to-month?
So to put it another way, do you keep access to your rented games forever whenever your subscription is active? (Like with PS+)
I’ve never looked at any subscription services (UPlay and Origin Access didn’t really appeal to me), but since I’ve “cancelled” Dstv a while ago, I’ve gotten some other paid services like Netflix, Amazon and Youtube, so there is still a whole gap I could fill before reaching the monthly premium that I used to pay for Dstv.