Redfall by Arkane Studios

Just did a main mission that was multi staged and each area was classic arkane level design with many ways to approach and infiltrate the objective. Good stuff.

Yep, other than HiFi rush and Forza Horizon it's been a fairly poor showing in recent years. Bizarre given all the investment they've made.

Getting ready to take in my first Vampire Underboss. Previews made it sound like these guys put up a good fight.

Not in the slightest. Think more Far Cry, but with suspect AI and dodgy visuals. It's by definition a Gamepass game and all that term encompasses.

Were you looking at him via a mirror? Perhaps he's a vampire.  

Oh I'd really recommend starting on hard. I haven't tried normal but haven't died once yet and it's a nice balance in combat. I'm devinder and the skills are fun but my god he is annoying.

I'm on normal. Got to a mission that's kicked my arse several times already.

Was really hoping for big things from this but the reviews have been scathing. I just hope online co-op redeems it somewhat.

For those that have put time into it, is this something that will likely be far better revisting in 6 months or is it fundamentally fucked?

I've only played single player and I'd describe it as something suited for multiplayer above everything else. It's not fucked it's what the kids today call "mid". It's not terrible but it's not good, it's very much Gamepass content.

I played it for a little bit this morning and found it thoroughly enjoyable as a single-player experience, if nothing super-duper special. Too early to really give a verdict but so far it feels like a three-star game, which is totally fine - I don't need everything to be a masterpiece. Maybe if you play every AAA title it's too similar or derivative or something, but I'm having a great time. Fast, fun, cheesy, nice central gameplay loop. Runs great, no bugs yet.

My biggest criticism, really, is that it's not particularly good-looking. It has a nice sense of style and art direction but from a technological perspective it really does look and feel last-gen.

I'm probably alright with that. Steamrolling through it is fine by me as long as the gunplay is mostly satisfying.

Have a day off work so popped to see my brother and we've just spent 4 hours playing it on co-op, me on Series S (couldn't be arsed to drag the X about), him on a 3070/5800X PC.

We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves to be honest. Takes a little while to click but after an hour or two we'd settled into a nice rythym of looting houses, unlocking safehouses, doing side missions and taking down vampire bosses.

I quite like the general aesthetic and the small sleepy US town atmosphere as well.

Most of my complaints are technical in nature to be perfectly honest;

- Deadzone on Xbox is RE4 Remake levels of bad, can be improved somewhat with some settings tweaks.

- Objects are often completely failing to spawn, leaving items floating in mid-air.

- Had a few vampires bug out at the staking stage.

- Game booted us 4 times in as many hours.

- PC version crashed twice.

- PC version generally runs ok on the aforementioned hardware, with 60-100fps on DLSS Performance, but with random inexplicable drops to below even 30fps at points for several seconds.

Lulz, modern gaming. I thought I had preinstalled this on my PC. Went to play, and the game said it needed an update. "That's OK, the Xbox version had to grab an extra 1.5GB". Then it tells me I can launch, so I get the splash screen and then... "Your game needs an update - downloading 94.4GB"

Top tip for Xbox pad users, stick Input Response to Low and up the sensitivity to something like 4 or above. Helped immeasurably with the controls for me. Still not great, but better than the utter dogshit they were before.