My top 10 Xbox franchises/single games. My list would be 70% Gears and Halo if I did individual games lol.

1. Halo
2. Gears of War
3. Forza Horizon
4. Fable
5. Alan Wake
6. Titanfall 1
7. Ori
8. Witcher 2
9. Crackdown
10. Sea of Thieves

After playing so many Infinite games this weekend, I'm really happy about what I saw.

Weapons: OMG. They FELT so good. Even the AR felt amazing to use. For me, BR and Commando were the greatest :) Did not like the bulldog but this is my playstyle, I'm not a huge fan of shotgun. I loved the original CE Shotgun, but then meh. The new (not sure about the name) gun that switch between vert. and horiz. configuration was fun but I did not really get the grip of it.

Found that video that shows the commando in action (sound and feel), tell me it is not sounding great?

Halo Infinite | AR vs Commando - What kills faster? - YouTube

Bots: I do not care about bots but I find that it is a super nice addition and I can see how you can use them for so many things. So the fact that they were not so good (and yes, from Marine to Spartan, I barely saw a difference...) is not a bad thing for me, my games will be against real meat at the end :)

Graphics: Tried it on all my devices (Xbox, PC, Series S and Series X). On the Series, the game looks gorgeous and this is an old build... On PC, I had some issues but I don't really care as I'm going to play on consoles mainly. And the Xbox One S, I was SO surprised how good the game still look. This is another demonstration of Microsoft and how you can have a game scale across different devices/configuration. And this is MP graphics, campaign graphics are going to be even better.

Movements: Moving those spartans with a controller never felt better. They did a great job with the sprint. And it really felt super natural to move around, slides, jump, etc. Loved it.

All in one, this felt, smelled, tasted more Halo than a LOT of other games in the series. My favorite Halo MP was (by a mile), Halo 3 and this felt like a better/enhanced version of it. I'm super hyped, starting with Reach, I was always disappointed by the MP but this time, they 343i brought it home :)

So yah, was an amazing weekend :) Hope all of you will have a chance to play in any upcoming flights/betas.

You are correct that if the bots AI is being run on the server then you would need to be connected in order to use them.  This concept is something MS was talking about during the Xbox One and the whole cloud initiative.  Basically they can dynamically update and change the bot AI on the fly without having to download patches or updates.  This also gives them the ability to allow users to also update and save their bot commands on the fly without having to download or update.  Basically if 343 wants to, they could allow the community to script the bots AI and save it in the cloud which could be very powerful if done right.

I actually believe that is a good thing about this test preview.  343 did not cheat the bots AI with perfect auto-aim, increased damage or shields and a few other areas they could have exploited if they wanted.  Instead they seem to be working on how the bots approach each level which is very difficult to master on the AI front and probably going to be an evolving aspect of their AI as they continue to extend how the bots play.

Interesting enough,  was going to play this game with my son as he has my old One X while I have the series X.  After watching the DF article, I think we will just play local co-op because the loading time on the Series X is 30s while its 3 mins on the One X.  I am definitely not waiting that long for the game to load.

Duck Hunt is fun, but I always preferred whatever the vehicle version of it was called.

Everyone except 1 person would ride a mongoose through some kind of obstacle/race course, while one person tried to kill them all with snipers and spartan lasers lol

Very excited for more Outer worlds. Very happy that MS cool with them working on it as well. Definite fixes need to be made to the sequel. I didn't find the companions all too engaging, but there's a lot of promise. I don't even mind the hub worlds too. 

Finished The Falconeer.

Visuals are decent. No showcase for the Series X but they didn't put me off either.

Sadly, the game itself isn't all that great. Controls are probably the biggest issue. There's some lore but I didn't care for it.
Game is also very repetitive. Since it's open world you're spending most time with getting from one place to another, mostly without any enemy encounters.

Once you're getting into a combat section it actually works for the most parts. Dogfighting is decent but when it comes to attacking stationary targets it gets annoying quickly.

The optional races are also pretty frustrating due to the not ideal controls and hitboxes. Having both the boost and dodge on the same button is also a bad decision.

Mission design is poor as well. About half of the time you're supposed to escort a ship. The ship is obviously slower than you so you keep circling it until some enemies appear. Rinse and repeat. The other half is basically the same just without the ship. Move from objective marker to objective marker and fight enemies (or sometimes none at all).

There are also some bugs present. Had to restart two missions because of it. At other times, the objective won't update but I'm not even sure if it's a bug or if it's intentional. I guess the creator just assumed that it was clear what had to be done in order to advance the mission.

6/10

Nice start to the month--I like puzzle games but have never tried Lumines so I'll definitely give that one a look. And we already know of at least Psychonauts 2 and 12 Minutes in the 2nd half of the month so August will have a lot to play. I hope I never take the awesome value of Game Pass for granted.