Wasteland 3 reviews coming in, currently a 86 on PC version. Solid start

It’s nice to see MS games reviewing better than I thought, because the last few years were a big yikes lol. Is the 60 meta-era over? Dont let me down Tell me why!

At an 87 now. 3 points higher than what I expected.

Looking at an average of 80+ across 4 games in a month. What a great month for MS!

Hmm, I ended up being pretty spot on Battletoads, and just underestimated MSFS and W3 a little bit. I just hope to have underestimated Tell Me Why as well.

A game from The Initiative which isn't Perfect Dark

Overall a solid month, not a single flop among them. Battletoads had be worried initially but it came through. Flight Sim simply surprised me with its score. I knew it’s scale would be praised but ultimately didn’t think it would be considered a masterpiece.

With Age of Empires 3 Definitive Edition in October 2020 seems to be the start of Xbox brand ending the game drought, getting quality and quantity. Just gotta get more AAA in there and they set.

Tell Me Why is 3 points lower than expected. Still solid scores all around.

The popular narrative is that MS has had nothing for 2020 but these four games in August are all good/great and they also had Ori earlier this year, and Gears Tactics got an 80 or higher meta IIRC. Plus Minecraft Dungeons was good. Their only real miss was Bleeding Edge. Overall it's been a great 2020 for XGS.

Flight sim is not a masterpiece, it's a pretty rough diamond that is very addictive. It's first major patch should be out in the next 7 days, fixing a lot of installation problems and crash to desktop issues. Meanwhile modders have already started to fix the terrain bugs and import more planes from fsx. It also addresses the huge fps drops from live traffic / multiplayer so I might give that a try aftert the update.

PATCH NOTES

STABILITY ISSUES
The title will no longer crash when different input devices/peripherals are disconnected
The title will no longer crash when the TBM 930 package is deleted

INSTALLATION ISSUES
The install process will no longer be blocked after a partial decompression of a package
The install process will no longer be blocked when a local user account includes non-ASCII characters
The install process will no longer be blocked after a failed connection to servers
The install process will no longer display an empty onboarding screen under certain conditions
The title will download a critical missing/deleted package to access the main menu even if the save data preference is set to offline (when an internet connection is available)

CONTENT MANAGER
The title will no longer automatically download packages that have been deleted through the content manager
The content manager will no longer get stuck in an infinite loading state when checked offline
The Creator name of the packages should now be properly updated

SIMCONNECT
Significant FPS drop when using Simconnect should no longer affect the experience

OPTIMIZATION
The performance of the title has been improved when the Display name plate option is set to active

MARKETPLACE
The correct currency is now properly updated in the marketplace

I've been lucky. Some people are still trying to install the game, trying to start the game or crash to desktop every 10 minutes  The game was not ready for release. After they get the installation process fixed and the game not crashing so easily anymore they can start working on fixing the auto pilot, AI, scenery bugs, flight model bugs, missing rain, fuel consumption bugs, atc bugs, missing airports, broken ils approaches, inoperable switches and optimization of course. Some major airports simply crash your system when you try to start there or try to approach them.

The weather system however is a master piece

When it works that is. Live weather has issues as well. Many people are trying to chase Laura bit only few actually get to see some representation of it in game, and very few actually find rain. I've played for 105 hours already (lot of auto pilot let it go on its own in there), all with live weather with plenty clouds and precipitation according to the in game weather radar, yet haven't seen a single drop on the windshield yet.

Hopefully this rocky launch won't put too many people off from the game. After spending CAD 160 on it, I hope it will get good support for a long time.