Xbox one - intro for an old timer

[Adam B]

So I just bought an Xbox One S 1TB in the prime sale with some supreme man maths, the thing that swung it was MS making the one backward compatible to a lot of my old Xbox and Xbox 360 games

I would appreciate your time for some basic advice. I have not been a complete lazy arse and have googled various topics

I don't play much but have fun playing 2 player with daughter or on my todd for an hour or two a week when the other half is out.
I am not interested in rushing out and buying the latest games for £50, quite happy to buy 2 years later for £20
I am getting to old fart territory so prefer the original simpler Halo and Call of Duty to some of the later, overly complicated versions

So what do I need to be aware of?
I get the disc v download thing - assume all downloads are linked to my Xbox account so I could keep for future Xbox machines if compatible? is this forever or do they expire?
I see a lot of games are much cheaper to download if you have an xbox live gold account, the bundle came with a 1 month free subscription - can I splurge this month on lots of heavily discounted games, and then not renew the Live Gold thing? I still keep the downloads at the much cheaper prices?

[dave_s13]

Sorry, no good advice but be prepared to be utterly useless at fortnight and cod online. The dexterity and deep understanding needed to be good at these things is beyond my comprehension.

And get yourself a wheel, some pedals and project cars 2.

[Adam B]

quite fancy wheel/pedals - bundle came with Forza horizon 3 which I think is decent

would be great to get answers on other questions though....

[Leicester Loyal]

Adam B said:

So I just bought an Xbox One S 1TB in the prime sale with some supreme man maths, the thing that swung it was MS making the one backward compatible to a lot of my old Xbox and Xbox 360 games

I would appreciate your time for some basic advice. I have not been a complete lazy arse and have googled various topics

I don't play much but have fun playing 2 player with daughter or on my todd for an hour or two a week when the other half is out.
I am not interested in rushing out and buying the latest games for £50, quite happy to buy 2 years later for £20
I am getting to old fart territory so prefer the original simpler Halo and Call of Duty to some of the later, overly complicated versions

So what do I need to be aware of?
I get the disc v download thing - assume all downloads are linked to my Xbox account so I could keep for future Xbox machines if compatible? is this forever or do they expire?
I see a lot of games are much cheaper to download if you have an xbox live gold account, the bundle came with a 1 month free subscription - can I splurge this month on lots of heavily discounted games, and then not renew the Live Gold thing? I still keep the downloads at the much cheaper prices?

The downloads are linked to your account, normally if its released on a future console but it's just a port, you'll probably be allowed to play the game again. However, if its a remaster or something has changed, they'll probably charge you again for it/

I'd renew the gold regardless, it's only about £30 for a year and you can get some decent games free every month, as well as discount on the store etc. However, if you don't renew, I think you can still buy all the games at a discount this month. You will keep the downloads regardless of the price you pay.

If you don't ever Xbox Gold, then you can't play games online etc. Which is a big attraction for the majority of us.

Try downloading Fortnite, it's class!

PS. Enjoy the Xbox One!

[simo1863]

how old is your daughter and what do you think you'll play together?

Gold is on offer at the moment so might be worth buying another year on top of your free month: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/xbox-live-gold/c...

You should have gotten some free trials to gamepass in the box too. It's a subscription service to hundreds of games. Usually MS affiliated stuff like Halo and Gears but there are a lot of kids games on there as well. Look at the free trial and see how much you'd use.

[Mr E]

Gold is essential imho.

I’m currently playing MGS - phantom pain which I missed first time around. It was free and it’s bloody good.

Endless Lego games available which my 6 year old enjoys playing with me.

If you like an RPG, pick up Witcher 3 and be prepared to lose north of 100 hours.

[Adam B]

simo1863 said:

how old is your daughter and what do you think you'll play together?

Gold is on offer at the moment so might be worth buying another year on top of your free month:

You should have gotten some free trials to gamepass in the box too. It's a subscription service to hundreds of games. Usually MS affiliated stuff like Halo and Gears but there are a lot of kids games on there as well. Look at the free trial and see how much you'd use.

she is 11, only played the 360 it over a few weekends - burnout racing game, and Halo 1 in co-op mode

I just bought Gold for £26.50, annoyingly it seems to have over-written my free month so I've got 12 months not 13

[bobbo89]

I got back into gaming just over a year ago when I bought a PS4. Initially bought and played all the usual games (Uncharted, Fallout, GTA etc) but now i pretty much just play Rocket League and Fortnite which considering Fortnite is free and Rocket League is about £10 is bargain gaming!

[Russian Troll Bot]

Try the Game Pass as well - a Netflix style subscription with 100+ games, so there is something for everyone. You can download them and play at your leisure, although if you cancel it you will lose access to them

[Chris Type R]

Agreed, look into Game Pass.

[Adam B]

I did look at that but given how little I will play it it probably isn't worth it for me

[vladcjelli]

Be aware when buying games that this generation has almost entirely dropped local multiplayer from big game releases.

I used to love caning my kids on multiscreen stuff, but most games now are only multiplayer over the Internet, even driving games.

There's still a few out there, but don't just pick anything up expecting to be able to both sit on the sofa together and play.

We ended up buying a 2nd Xbox for another room, and the kids crack on at Fortnite together, but I'm left out as I'm way too crap at it.

[Chris Type R]

Adam B said:

I did look at that but given how little I will play it it probably isn't worth it for me

You need to keep an eye out for the discounts - IIRC I bought 7 months for approx £25. This should cover me for Forza Horizon 4.

[Russian Troll Bot]

Chris Type R said:

Adam B said:

I did look at that but given how little I will play it it probably isn't worth it for me

You need to keep an eye out for the discounts - IIRC I bought 7 months for approx £25. This should cover me for Forza Horizon 4.

You can get 3 months for £7.99 at the moment

[Adam B]

vladcjelli said:

There's still a few out there, but don't just pick anything up expecting to be able to both sit on the sofa together and play.

We ended up buying a 2nd Xbox for another room(

how depressing - some of my fondest VG memories are me and 3 mates drinking beers playing 4s on Micro Machines on PS1

[toastyhamster]

Ahh Micro Machines :-)

Bought a One "for the kids" last xmas. They're now football obsessed Fifa addicts (10 and 7), to the extent they smashed the family fantasy league last season.u

I bought GTA V, excellent, Assetto Corsa (and a wheel), excellent but hard, and lately Far Cry 5, which I've completed but I found some parts were very difficult - it did highlight just how much RPGs have come on since I last played on a console (360 ages ago).

Kids will get next Fifa when it's out and I'll probably buy Red Dead Redemption when it's out. It's certainly been good value in terms of hours spent.

Good point on local multiplayer, I think Rocket League has been a no buy because of that.

[IJDW]

Best local multiplayer game for me is Halo - The Master Chief Collection (essentially Halo 1-4 and ODST). Been through them all with a friend on legendary and you can create endless variations of custom games. Incredible value for money, so much content. I'm a big fan of the Halo story.

Rocket League is great. It does have local multiplayer and I imagine it's cheap now. It's pretty much the only game I play right now (on PC).

I believe Borderlands 1 and 2 had local multiplayer. The games are older now but you can still get them and they're good fun.

Forza Motorsport has local multiplayer if you want a racing game. Unsure if Horizon does.

I'm sure there's lots more, but those are the ones that come to mind that I've enjoyed.

I would absolutely get gold, some of the free games each month are great. Not all of them, but some.

[Adam B]

OK so progress to date and a couple of Qs please

Shocked at how quickly the 1TB drive seems to be filling up, I am about 20% full with:

Sea of Thieves - full game stored as box came with a download code
Blazing Angels and Crimson Skies (old 360 games) - I understand the full game is stored and disc is just inserted to prove ownership
Halo 5 - I have physical disc so I think just updates and patches are stored on drive?
Fortnite - free download

what do people do with large collections of downloads only? Constantly remove and add new games? Takes ages as well despite hardwired to router (download speeds about 30-40 Mb/s)

What games do people recommend? I mostly like FPS (or co-op with my daughter) but open to different genres. I dip in and out for an hour or 2 so don;t want anything difficult to understand/control/follow.
Also I am quite happy with version 1 or 2 of a game rather than 5 or 6. Halo 5 is not highly rated but was only £3 on ebay.

Other than the above and my old 360 games I have / ordered / bidding on:

Forza Horizon 3 which came in bundle
Halo Master Chief collection
Call of Duty WWII
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Titanfall 2
Gears of War ultimate
Destiny 2

and considering:
a footy game - FIFA but apparently 18 not much cop?
Forza Motorsport 7 - is this much different from Horizon 3

[aazer89]

Adam B said:

OK so progress to date and a couple of Qs please

Shocked at how quickly the 1TB drive seems to be filling up, I am about 20% full with:

Sea of Thieves - full game stored as box came with a download code
Blazing Angels and Crimson Skies (old 360 games) - I understand the full game is stored and disc is just inserted to prove ownership
Halo 5 - I have physical disc so I think just updates and patches are stored on drive?
Fortnite - free download

what do people do with large collections of downloads only? Constantly remove and add new games? Takes ages as well despite hardwired to router (download speeds about 30-40 Mb/s)

What games do people recommend? I mostly like FPS (or co-op with my daughter) but open to different genres. I dip in and out for an hour or 2 so don;t want anything difficult to understand/control/follow.
Also I am quite happy with version 1 or 2 of a game rather than 5 or 6. Halo 5 is not highly rated but was only £3 on ebay.

Other than the above and my old 360 games I have / ordered / bidding on:

Forza Horizon 3 which came in bundle
Halo Master Chief collection
Call of Duty WWII
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Titanfall 2
Gears of War ultimate
Destiny 2

and considering:
a footy game - FIFA but apparently 18 not much cop?
Forza Motorsport 7 - is this much different from Horizon 3

Forza Horizon 3 is brilliant in my opinion.

Between that and 7 there isnt MUCH difference - Horizon is open world so you can muck about alot more and do things at your own pace. Forza 7 is more like your typical racing game - pick car, pick track and race. There are some difference in the cars but as they came out close together there isnt too many that are different. I have both and prefer Horizon - because I personally like the open world aspect. Forza 7 has local multiplayer so would be good you and your daughter - horizon doesnt have this.

COD WW2 is brilliant, yet to play online but the campaign is vastly improved from recent versions. Advanced Warfare is OK, quite futuristic and abit silly in places but good fun - be prepared to get mutliated online by 10 year olds who spend 999999 hours on there.

I personally like the Assassin's Creed games and the Batman Arkham games (yes bit of a geek). I have heard good things about the latest Tomb Raider - I am sure someone here can confirm or deny this. Fallout 76 comes out soon and is looking good.

As for the space I for now remove games when I dont play them for a while and install a new one, I will be looking at getting an external hard drive so I can just install all my games.

[designforlife]

I've owned my XB1 for about 3 years.

I tend to avoid download only, as the microsoft store is hideously overpriced, and I like having physical copies of games.

I've only got a 500gb HDD, but tend to uninstall and reinstall games as i go through phases of play, deleting an install keeps the save data by default so it's easy to come back to.

Apparently most portable USB HDDs work well enough as extensions to storage, though i've yet to bother.

Forza 7 is a much different (and better IMO) animal to horizon 3. There is room in any collection for both as they play sufficiently differently...and seeing as you can pick up forza 7 for about £20 preowned, there's a lot of play value there.

PUBG is a good crack, graphics are unrefined but it's quite an unusual play experience compared to traditional online FPS.

The wolfenstein games are brilliant, and the new DOOM is well worth a play through.

I'm currently playing No Mans Sky, Okami HD, RES evil 7 biohazard, and got a couple of Dark Souls play files on the go...I tend to go through phases so have a massive stack of games that i revisit at various points.

I don't play online a huge amount, but have Gold for the 3 free games they offer up each month...there is some rubbish but usually one decent game a month, SUPERHOT was ace, and got virtua fighter 5 on the go at the minute.

The two new (and third forthcoming) Tomb Raiders are great, good story and well put together, a really nice reboot to the series...both the wife and I have played all the way through both.

I would also say that GTA V is pretty much a "must play" title, the single player is hours of fun, and multiplayer is a good laugh too.

Edited by designforlife on Wednesday 1st August 13:35

Edited by designforlife on Wednesday 1st August 13:37