XBox One AND PS4 Discussion

[MizzouRah]

For XB1, does MS force you to setup all the non gaming related TV stuff? or can you just hook it up and start playing as only a gaming machine? I am digging PS4, but got to admit, I really am missing XBL and the interface. Maybe I'll pickup XB1 too but only if MS allows me to bypass all the non-gaming stuff. I just don't want the headache. I'm sure in a year or two they'll release a gaming only version of the console without kinect.

No, you can do that. Only if you plug your receiver into your xb1 can you set the TV portion of it up. I'm assuming if you just want to connect it to your TV and game, that would work just fine.

I finally figured out how to add my daughter, created a new MS account with her email and then added that in on the XB1, then made her part of the family and set the parental controls. She walks in the room now and says, "show my stuff" and her profile homepage comes up.

Xbox ON also seems to be working today and when I say Xbox OFF, my receiver and TV both turn off now thanks to TheTruth!

[TCrouch]

I tried to play my 360 on the "HDMI In" on my XB1, and I'm missing something big time. It kept prompting me every few minutes to set up the guide, which I went through. Even though I'm not actually using it. Then it kept prompting me every few minutes to watch something else...all I wanted to do was play my 360 on the In without all the pop ups and stuff...but I couldn't. Those are the things that irritate me about MS' setup. Just give me a button to hit that says "leave me the hell alone and quit prompting me constantly". Instead, I eventually had to just unplug it and run it on the other TV to avoid the headache.

I'm sure there's some buried option to shut it up, but their interface design still irks me. There's a way to do everything--as long as you know where to go to find that hidden option.

[MizzouRah]

I have enough for one more XB1 game.. wondering if I should get Madden or NBA 2k14. I'm a much bigger football fan.. but NBA 2k14 does look awesome in the videos I've seen.

[TCrouch]

If Madden didn't do it for you on 360, it won't wow you on XB1. I would go so far as to say when you put it in, you'd go "it's not any different than 360". In reality, it's sharper and clearer, but to see it on its own without the 360 version running beside it, you wouldn't notice.

NBA, on the other hand, looks a ton better. I personally think Madden is a hell of a lot smarter now, as you can feel like 1 guy in an 11-man cog on defense without guys constantly missing tackles and taking horrible angles. I have a lot more fun every game I play, other than throwing an ungodly number of interceptions the moment I lose focus.

But you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who would look at Madden and go "THAT'S next-gen!!"

[Inuyasha]

I'm in the same boat, looking for another game. Leaning towards NBA 2K. Anyone know where it is cheap?

Tcrouch - I think your post killed my hype for getting a XB1 LOL! Is it really that much of a pain in the A to get it setup? All I want it to do is game and setup my family with their own accounts.

[TCrouch]

No, not if you avoid the TV stuff. You can skip it entirely, it's easy. To play games on the XB1 and do nothing but play games, it's simple. The profiles are a little frustrating to manage if you try to use the auto-kinect sign in as just trying to find out who's using what controller is a fiasco (you have to press the Guide, go up and tell it who you're logged in as, which will kick somebody else out if they don't have a controller assigned, etc. The controllers are detected by infrared or something in the front, not by the little green indicator like on 360). My post above was because I was using the XBox 360 on the XB1's "TV" input, so when I'd say "XBox, Go to TV" it would be my 360. It's not designed for that, so they were trying to force their TV-specific stuff on me. I just wanted to avoid that crap. But for playing XB1 games, you'd have no problems like that.

If you set it up, skip the TV stuff, you'll be good to go in minutes. When you set your family up with their own accounts, if you disable auto kinect sign in for everybody, you won't have massive headaches. All of my early frustrations turned out to be mostly with the kinect integration.

The interface is still sh*t (and I hate it), but you can learn to get around in it. For just playing games exclusively and not using "other" stuff, you won't have any more problems than 360, other than being unable to create an offline profile without using an email address.

[Zeppo]

To be honest, I've never had any of the problems terry has had with his Xbone. Nothing even close. Admittedly, I don't have a household full of people who game, so the auto-sign in works great for me. But as far as using the TV through the Xbone, it's been easy as pie and frankly in many ways makes me feel like I have a truly new, next-gen product in my house. Almost as cool as the first time I used an iPad, for example.

I say "Xbox, watch TV" and it goes full screen into watch TV mode. Or I can say, "Xbox, watch CBS" and not only does it go into full screen watch TV mode, but it changes the channel to CBS right away. Then I say "stop listening" and all the little green words and overlays vanish instantly. I've found it to be pretty damn easy, fluid, and very very cool. I imagine if I wanted to pass my 360 through instead of my dvr box, I could say "Xbox, watch TV. Stop listening" and all would be fine without any green overlays.

Occasionally I will start saying "Xbox watch..." and forget what I wanted and it will tune to E or some random channel I didn't want to watch. Every once in a blue moon it will misunderstand the channel I wanted to watch, which is very annoying. But mostly once I'm in TV mode, I am using my cable remote to change channels and check my dvr list and so on, so it's only when I choose to use "Xbox, watch" whatever that it may very rarely end up hearing me wrong. Almost every time, however, I know what I'm about to say and it hears me correctly. "Xbox, show friends," or "Xbox, go to party," or "Xbox, go to Battlefield 4," and everything works. "Xbox, turn off" and I go to bed.

[TCrouch]

I'm not talking about the Green overlays, Zeppo. I say the same thing. "XBox, watch TV. Stop Listening" and those go away. But then the Xbox starts prompting me to "finish various TV setups", or how to get around the guide and things like that. I don't use it for TV, and never will. I wanted to use my 360 as the input, and there's no way to just allow it to act as a pass through and disable all their pop ups. I tried actually doing what they gave me pop ups for, but since I don't have a TV connected to it, none of it actually works. If I were attempting to watch TV on that input (which is what they designed it for), it would be fine. He mentioned he didn't want to do anything but play games, which is why I was bringing up skipping TV stuff is easy. It's not that it was complicated, it's just not something he's going to use, it sounded like.

Those green overlays telling me what the XBox will recognize weren't the problem for me. It was suppressing their forced-setup pop ups. I'm assuming after you actually finish the setup, those stop showing up, but since my gaming TV is not my "TV" TV, it would require me to move everything over long enough to get it set up, then disconnect all of it just to use my 360 on that port. That's my problem, which you wouldn't have since you watch TV on that, as that's exactly how they designed it. And with a single profile with auto sign-in, it will be smooth as silk. You are the target audience of who they designed the console for, so you're going to have a very simple time with it. A solo gamer that wants to use the extra bells and whistles is not going to have nearly the same problems as a house of 6 all attempting to share log ins and game saves and screen time with the unavoidable background noise of a massive family constantly there.

I guarantee you I have more problems with it than the average gamer purely because of the setup in my house and what I wanted out of it. I can't use Kinect reliaby at any point because my Autistic son comes running through the house screeching at the top of his lungs randomly. My wife may decide to blast the TV which is 3 feet from my Kinect sensor, and we get into a volume war. In the end, I don't want any of the extra crap the XB1 does because it won't work for me anyway. I just want the basic console and to play games, and I've figured out a way to do that (other than the TV input forced setup stuff). You will definitely not have nearly the same problems I have had if you don't have to create 6 profiles and manage all of that, and are using the TV features.

[MizzouRah]

If Madden didn't do it for you on 360, it won't wow you on XB1. I would go so far as to say when you put it in, you'd go "it's not any different than 360". In reality, it's sharper and clearer, but to see it on its own without the 360 version running beside it, you wouldn't notice.

NBA, on the other hand, looks a ton better. I personally think Madden is a hell of a lot smarter now, as you can feel like 1 guy in an 11-man cog on defense without guys constantly missing tackles and taking horrible angles. I have a lot more fun every game I play, other than throwing an ungodly number of interceptions the moment I lose focus.

But you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who would look at Madden and go "THAT'S next-gen!!"

I haven't purchased Madden in a very long time mainly because I play NCAA so much. I'm leaning NBA 2k14 for sure.. but who knows once I head up to Gamestop.

I thought getting the xb1 would be no big deal to me.. but I want to play every game out there now and haven't even thought of playing the x360.

[Danimal]

I haven't purchased Madden in a very long time mainly because I play NCAA so much. I'm leaning NBA 2k14 for sure.. but who knows once I head up to Gamestop.

I'll give you my 2 cents, take it FWIW. I couldn't get through half a season on Madden for the 360 and I'm in the playoffs at 9-7 on the PS4. The game is much harder (keep reading) and at times makes you go "wow, never seen that before"

Having said that I still think NCAA is the better game. Why? For whatever reason it feels more like football to me.

Madden is harder simply because of inflated difficulty in the secondary and the graphics a bit better. However for every moment I mentioned above you see ones that make you go "why is this still in the game"

This all happened in my last game against GB with the division on the line.

- Rodgers breaks the pocket and is running right, defenders are closing on him but still a good 5 yards away and he hurdles. Never mind there was no reason for him to do this but his vertical leap puts him at shoulder level of Lance Briggs. As he is descending a DE hits hit, which immediately puts his animation higher up in the air and the ball comes lose. I get a fumble recovery the other way for the score.

- GB hits Lacy in the flat, he takes off down the sideline and the SS is coming up to him but he is still 10 yards away. Lacy juke moves out of bounds.

Other examples
- There is new audio commentary which is sparse at best but the commentary is still more likely to play a clip that has nothing to do with whats going on. If I never hear Sims tell me my defense stepped up and held them after I just scored it will be a miracle.

- Guys still get suctioned into blocks, I have countless videos to provide this and hopefully one day when the PS4 lets me post to Youtube I can show them.
- DB's react way to quickly to balls in the air, as I said the inflated the AI here to make the game harder
- Sliders still do mostly jack s*** as they have for so long.
- Penalties, yeah still are terrible. Can you believe this game still doesn't have defensive holding?
- I've seen QB's go 20-20 with the AI slider set to ZERO

I'm only continuing to play because I love football and the game is harder. I honestly have no idea how this game got on so many sports game of the year lists. Its this kind of s*** that will ensure it never changes.

[Aristo]

My brother sent me Ryse for Christmas, and holy crap is it a great game. The gameplay is a lot more interesting than I assumed it would be, and it is stunning to look at.

I was finally able to play Ryse a good 1 to 1.5 hours after I put the disk in for the first time and I got 2 hours in. My initial impression is it is an extremely pretty but very average game. It has good combat, but so far the dozens and dozens of people I've killed all look and fight in generally the same manner except for the dude with fire. It's like Batman without any of the stealth or other interesting things to do. The graphics are amazing and certainly a bright glimpse of the future but you never get to venture out of the beaten path into an amazing open world which is the standard in flagship games of the previous generation like AC or GTA. After playing those games it gets frustrating to deal with situations where you run across things you can't climb, walk around, jump over, destroy, etc. The story is a little more interesting so far than I anticipated, but the voice commands are tacked on and my son looked at me like 'WTF are you doing?' So in other words, yeah, this game "looks" next gen but there is nothing about it that "feels" next gen IMO. If they would allow me to explore the world and it still looked this good then, yes, it would be amazing.

Maybe the game will open up. Maybe there are more diverse enemies later. It seems like the game is short...unless things change I imagine that is a good thing as I can't envision mashing buttons against the same enemies for much longer than that. I'm glad I bought it but my initial 2 hour impression is it is going to be something I enjoy for the eye candy, play through once for 6-8 hours, and sell (or trade...in fact if anyone is looking to trade for this next week I'm open to discuss a trade for most XB1 games except Forza and Marvel).

It's a beat-em up. But I find it to be a lot more fun than I had imagined it would be. I didn't expect it to be like Batman with stealth and detective modes. Just like I can spend hours in the Batman challenge rooms, I find the combat fun in Ryse.

[TCrouch]

I do too, actually...just not in three-hour sessions or anything. I actually think it has a bit more depth than most reviews gave it credit for. The enemies all look the same, but your positioning in combat and awareness of who's about to hit you is really important. Unlike Assassin's Creed or Batman, for example, where a guy flashes an icon above his head and you're just on the lookout for the "Counter!" prompt, Ryse forces you to observe animations and see who's swinging at you. I like that.

Plus, having to alternate between sword and shield strikes is a cool touch. You can't just hammer away on the sword button and win, you have to switch it up and some guys have to be shield bashed a few times to create an opening, etc. I think there's enough depth there...I'd love to see a ton more executions on single targets, as I seemed to see the same 5 or 6 the majority of the game, and I'd like to have an open world setup with new armor/weapons. That would be a heck of an RPG in my opinion.

[MizzouRah]

I'll give you my 2 cents, take it FWIW. I couldn't get through half a season on Madden for the 360 and I'm in the playoffs at 9-7 on the PS4. The game is much harder (keep reading) and at times makes you go "wow, never seen that before"

Having said that I still think NCAA is the better game. Why? For whatever reason it feels more like football to me.

Madden is harder simply because of inflated difficulty in the secondary and the graphics a bit better. However for every moment I mentioned above you see ones that make you go "why is this still in the game"

This all happened in my last game against GB with the division on the line.

- Rodgers breaks the pocket and is running right, defenders are closing on him but still a good 5 yards away and he hurdles. Never mind there was no reason for him to do this but his vertical leap puts him at shoulder level of Lance Briggs. As he is descending a DE hits hit, which immediately puts his animation higher up in the air and the ball comes lose. I get a fumble recovery the other way for the score.

- GB hits Lacy in the flat, he takes off down the sideline and the SS is coming up to him but he is still 10 yards away. Lacy juke moves out of bounds.

Other examples
- There is new audio commentary which is sparse at best but the commentary is still more likely to play a clip that has nothing to do with whats going on. If I never hear Sims tell me my defense stepped up and held them after I just scored it will be a miracle.

- Guys still get suctioned into blocks, I have countless videos to provide this and hopefully one day when the PS4 lets me post to Youtube I can show them.
- DB's react way to quickly to balls in the air, as I said the inflated the AI here to make the game harder
- Sliders still do mostly jack s*** as they have for so long.
- Penalties, yeah still are terrible. Can you believe this game still doesn't have defensive holding?
- I've seen QB's go 20-20 with the AI slider set to ZERO

I'm only continuing to play because I love football and the game is harder. I honestly have no idea how this game got on so many sports game of the year lists. Its this kind of s*** that will ensure it never changes.

Thanks.. glad I held off. I picked up NBA 2k14 and so far I'm having a blast. Played my first game, all defaults with Miami and lost to the Spurs by 4. Just an all around great virtual experience.

Now I think I'll dive into a mycareer.

[Aristo]

I do too, actually...just not in three-hour sessions or anything.

That's probably the big difference for me. I don't play anything for three hours. I would say most of my gaming is in 30-90 minute blocks, with sports games getting the longer sessions. I doubt that I ever play more than an hour of Batman, and usually just 30 minutes here or there.

[Inuyasha]

Need some help with PSN downloading games.

So i'm downloading some of the new free games they have to offer and I got a popup saying that the game is ready to install. I click on that and it still shows me it's downloading.

Then what does it mean ready to install? I would think it means it's done downloading and now I can install it and play.

Just need to get use to the whole PSN world I guess.

--

Nevermind I guess I figured it out. The udpate is faster since it's an update but the game still needs to dl the base file. It says it's 3 more hours! wow. I hope that is not true. I never had to wait that long on XBL. But maybe since these are next gen they are bigger files?

[Inuyasha]

sportdan - thanks for telling me about Resogun. Fun and addicting!

[Danimal]

Maybe this has already been posted, this thread is so long.

My XB1 decided to stop working with my TV today. I ended up calling MS support the solution.

1. Turn off everything.
2. Unplug XB power
3. Unplug XB HDMI cable
4. Wait 30 seconds and plug everything back in.

Juts in case it happens to anyone else.

[Rodster]

sportdan - thanks for telling me about Resogun. Fun and addicting!

Download the new Galaga (PS3) from Namco on PSN+ it was free last week. It's a blast no pun intended.

[Inuyasha]

Rodster - thanks but I can't find it. Does it only come up on PS3? PS4 only has maybe 20 games in the games list.

I just downloaded DC UNIVERSE ONLINE and my kids love it. Has stopped them from playing WII U which is a big accomplishment.

I'm beginning to warm up to PSN PLUS now that it's up. I guess it's nice to be part of a whole new experience

[sportdan30]

sportdan - thanks for telling me about Resogun. Fun and addicting!

You're welcome. Unfortunately I can only play a couple games before I start to feel nauseous. Great arcade action though! I'm full on addicted to Zen Pinball 2 right now.

[Rodster]

Rodster - thanks but I can't find it. Does it only come up on PS3? PS4 only has maybe 20 games in the games list.

I just downloaded DC UNIVERSE ONLINE and my kids love it. Has stopped them from playing WII U which is a big accomplishment.

I'm beginning to warm up to PSN PLUS now that it's up. I guess it's nice to be part of a whole new experience

Yeah it's PS3 only, pretty badass game.

[MizzouRah]

So far, everything is working well with our XB1. Said "xbox off" last night half asleep on the couch and everything turned off. I'm such a lazy ass.

Said "xbox on" this morning and then "xbox watch espn" - my daughter who awakens on the other couch says "xbox watch disney" and we start to battle.. LOL!

Impressed to say the least right now with it. I've read you can't see what's on the HD, but once it gets full it will tell you?

[Aristo]

Are you using the XB1 with the DirecTV Genie? I'm using it with the DirecTV Tivo, but I still can't use the Instant On function because it freaks out the DVR. It freezes up, goes black, or just lags horribly to any input from my remote. If I switch to Energy Saver, there is no problem. But that keeps me from using voice control to turn everything on. Of course I can us use my Harmony 650 to do the same thing. But Instant On also saves game states, I beleive.

I might upgrade to a Genie if it plays nicer with the One.

[MizzouRah]

Are you using the XB1 with the DirecTV Genie? I'm using it with the DirecTV Tivo, but I still can't use the Instant On function because it freaks out the DVR. It freezes up, goes black, or just lags horribly to any input from my remote. If I switch to Energy Saver, there is no problem. But that keeps me from using voice control to turn everything on. Of course I can us use my Harmony 650 to do the same thing. But Instant On also saves game states, I beleive.

I might upgrade to a Genie if it plays nicer with the One.

Yes.. the HR44-200 or something like that.

[Danimal]

Played Ryse, it is a visually stunning game. I love the Dynasty Warrior games so this reminds me of them. It's one people should keep any eye out for when it is $30 or less. Forza is just awesome, haven't gotten to BF4 or AC4 just yet.