u/Born2beSlicker

I finally got an Ally X and it’s my first experience with PC gaming as well as Windows in over a decade. Day one was always going to be downloading and installing updates but I was still surprised at how tedious and frustrating the experience has been.

I have Game Pass, Steam, Ubisoft, EGS installed. Ubisoft Connect seems very inconsistent on Xbox mode. Connecting the extension took a few tries due to errors but now that it’s connected, it takes 3 or more attempts for games to start due to crashing whilst the launcher boots up. EGS crashed the first time I logged in and it doesn’t seem to have controller navigation, which is just funny.

On the Xbox store, loading Halo MCC had it only start in a tiny 640 box until I managed to navigate to the menus to expand the resolution to 1080p. Other games like FH6 boot fine but it doesn’t run the most stable at 1080p so I lower the resolution to run FSR and the window misshapen and the image gets cut off at the edges, and I can’t figure out how to make it fill out the screen again. I’ve also used the touch pad for navigating menus in a game and slightly swiped the screen in the corner and it too made the window shrink to half the screen and I couldn’t fix it until I rebooted the app.

I’m not used to stuff like Adrenaline or Armoury Crate so I see options for things like Chill, Boost, Anti-lag and others and I’m not sure if I should enable them at this end or enable them within a game’s settings if it features them.

I’m very aware that this is my own inexperience with the platform. I’ve been a console guy all my life, I use MacOS and iOS on the daily basis. The Ally device was never going to start as a “it just works” handheld console but I know you can eventually get it to that point. I’m just not sure how to get there. I’ve followed video guides and web guides for a bunch of things but a bunch of other parts are YMMV and don’t get talked about in detail because they assume everybody is already a PC gamer.

If you have any advice on how to make things smoother and more stable, I’d really appreciate the support.

Just weeks after Empulse’s launch into Early Access on Steam, developer 1047 Games has held another round of layoffs. News of the layoffs came from impacted employees on LinkedIn on Monday.

It’s unclear how many people were caught in this latest set of job cuts. One person who was let go was a former principal technical sound designer, who says it was his second layoff in under two years. Another impacted employee, an associate producer, called his time with the company an “incredible four years”. 1047 Games has yet to release a statement on the layoffs.

Content, balance, that’s all big picture things that come in time. Here’s my suggestions for small QOL improvements to sand off some rough edges.

1. When you are building a loadout. The primary gun is one long list of every weapon in seemingly random order. Guns should be categorised by type so we can quickly find the ARs or SMGs or whatever.

2. The synth announcer bleeds too much into the rest of the game audio. It’s hard to hear what they’re saying but also their voice is awful so hearing it sucks. It makes staying fully informed in a match feel like a blur by the end.

3. XP earn is too slow overall. Levelling a gun or your account to unlock upgrades takes a lot of grinding, making it take too long to play with all the toys.

4. Countdown to start a match takes too long. I don’t mean finding a match but when you’re in one. We’re all on SSD machines and the game isn’t intensive. Why do we wait 30 seconds to load everybody in then another 8 seconds to start?

5. A favourites and/or random option for skins in the long term future is always appreciated by me. There’s not many options now but when there’s dozens of skins we like, it would be nice to have them randomly load per match/respawn to add some visual variety and so skins don’t get forgotten in the future.

6. Console only crossplay is likely not viable right now but Input Based Matchmaking would make for less frustrating matches. Nobody likes Pad vs KBM because it’s either “auto aim” or “mouse too fast”. They’re both valid points but balancing between them where people don’t mind is just impossible. Filtering lets people choose to opt into playing mixed inputs or not.

7. I wanted to avoid balance talk but the only way to play is maximum speed with as high a BPM as possible. All the attachments and perks are moot because the only thing you should be doing is an AR with extended mag and minimal recoil with speed paint and extra grapple. Breaking that focus on speed/mobility will ruin the flow so you may as well lean into it because the combat is one dimensional

8. Control can have the attacking team spawning on a hill if the defenders bunch up to defend one hill. It makes defending both very difficult and it always ends up being down to one hill.

9. It’s hard to always keep track of the ball in upload or intel. As well as an icon over the carrier showing possession/progress, there should be a fixed icon on the HUD that shows this too so at a glance you know who has the ball and how far along they are. This HUD element doesn’t need to have directionality. My example would be the Flag icons in the Halo series when playing CTF.

10. Mechs are difficult to get into quickly. On console it’s Hold X/Square to enter but the reliability or the length of time you need to hold doesn’t feel consistent. Press to enter or a shorter hold time to enter would be preferable. That or a visual indicator that your hold is actually triggering the action like a progress metre around the button for a brief second that fills up.

11. Kill streaks is probably a bad idea but power weapons could be beneficial to add variety to matches. Like a rocket launcher, beam rifle, rail gun or a flame thrower type weapon. Something that breaks up the bullet hose monotony of AR/SMGs

12. Levelling up feels bland. There isn’t enough pageantry when filling up the bar to make it feel rewarding/addictive. Titanfall 2 and CoD have always done this well but here it feels like a shrug.

I’m a console player so I didn’t get to do the free week, meaning this is my first time playing Empulse. I have a long history with Halo, Titanfall, CoD and some Splitgate 1/2/AR. I also have a long history of playing smaller niche games that didn’t survive in the end so I’ve seen plenty of attempts at this kind of game.

Positives:

The movement feels really good. It’s not quite as dynamic as Titanfall’s movement. For example: When you wall run it feels like you’re magnetising into position on the wall rather than smoothly running against the wall. It’s very minor and not a big deal but it’s there. However, the movement still feels really fast and fluid without looking like a mess like CoD’s slide cancelling does, which is good. Movement is fast but the character animations are predictable making trying to keep track of enemies manageable.

The shooting also feels solid. It’s definitely coming from Splitgate’s Halo-esque gunplay but I actually like the hip fire and lack of ADS. It makes it feel unique and makes the movement not feel like a compromise to accuracy. Weapons feels generic but they’re reliable which is fine with me.

Maps (so far) and modes are fun. I appreciate the criticism that they’re too condensed for the mechs but even so, the tight nature lends itself to good movement combos and keeps action flowing well. None of the modes are unique either but all seem to complement the mechanics well, which is good as I do like objective modes rather than constant TDM.

Performance is smooth on XSX. At 120fps, I’m not noticing any hitching or lag or any problems at all. Fast loads, small file size, everything does what it should.

Negatives:

I do hate the audio design. The synthetic announcer is grating yet gets drowned out in the noise of the match. I feel like I need to hear what she’s saying to keep track of the situation in the match but I also hate listening to her. It’s harsh on the ears and the gun sounds are too isolated so everything feels hollow.

Aesthetics are near non-existent. An old complaint at this point but visually it’s not interesting at all. There’s no life, atmosphere, culture, style. It’s very sterile and bland. Splash some colour for god’s sake.

These issues combined, it makes paying attention to a match kind of difficult. The HUD doesn’t grab your attention enough when a point is scored, time is running out, 5 kills remaining. I feel that other games can grab your attention better without distracting from the action. Clearer sound cues would help a lot.

The mech is a fine idea but it’s very basic. Movement is slow, weapons are strong, health pool can evaporate quickly. As has been said before, the maps don’t let them breathe either. They’re just kind of there out of obligation because it wants to remind you of Titanfall. Right now, they’re a gimmick and feel like a CoD killstreak that happens to be on a timer.

Progression feels quite slow. Grinding guns and unlocking equipment feels pretty slow and it will take a lot of matches just to get a full load out set up.

Overall:

From a foundational level. The game seems pretty fun. I do like it and I appreciate that you’re making a different experience from the usual live service grind of trying to keep you playing to unlock trinkets. Unlike a lot of gamers today, I don’t need a carrot to chase to have fun. It is definitely a work in progress but I’m enjoying it. Good luck.

Where Winds Meet has finally come to Xbox but you likely have played on PS5/PC/Mobile and don’t want to lose your progress. However, when you first load the game on Xbox there’s no account management page on the main screen and their website doesn’t have Xbox links either. Here’s what to do:

Do NOT start a new character. This will bind your Xbox account to a fresh WWW account and you’ll need to email NetEase support to get it unbound. This sucks so please don’t press start. The tutorial won’t end with it asking you if you want to log in.

DO install and play the game on a platform that’s already linked to your account. On the main log in screen, on the left hand side there’s an account management button. Here you can click Link Account and Xbox is available to be linked.

Once you’ve done this. Logging in on Xbox will show your existing character and account and you’re good to go.

Where Winds Meet has finally come to Xbox but you likely have played on PS5/PC/Mobile and don’t want to lose your progress. However, when you first load the game on Xbox there’s no account management page on the main screen and their website doesn’t have Xbox links either. Here’s what to do:

Do NOT start a new character. This will bind your Xbox account to a fresh WWW account and you’ll need to email NetEase support to get it unbound. This sucks so please don’t press start. The tutorial won’t end with it asking you if you want to log in.

DO install and play the game on a platform that’s already linked to your account. On the main log in screen, on the left hand side there’s an account management button. Here you can click Link Account and Xbox is available to be linked.

Once you’ve done this. Logging in on Xbox will show your existing character and account and you’re good to go.

I’ve been a long time fan of the series and played previous versions of PvZ3 over the years. It’s finally out in the UK and was excited to see what the potentially final version will be and it’s unfortunately very disappointing. It’s the fastest I’ve bounced off a PvZ game.

Plant/Zombie levelling will always be a flawed concept that removes balance and strategy and replaces it with grinding. Needing to grind seeds for every plant, including tier 2/3 plants makes for bad situations where a T1 is stronger than a T2/3 due to levels or zombies can be too strong and there’s nothing you can do but grind. It ruined PvZ2 and it breaks this game too.

Connected to that, the zen garden is incredibly tedious. 3 hearts a day to grow a plant and 3 energy a day to play a mediocre mini game to get an item to grow the plant. All for a tiny amount of seeds anyway, feels deliberately malicious to keep you logging in every day but for a tiny reward.

Maps early on are very boring and the star scoring system doesn’t feel good. When you’re starting out and your strategy works but you get 2.5 stars, it feels like you failed rather than accomplished anything. It’s to encourage replaying old missions with stronger plants but it is quickly exposed as yet another tedious grind for scraps because progression is so slow.

Unlocking new plants is very slow and you’re left worrying about making bad choices because you don’t know what’s ahead of you. Why can’t we just get plants as we beat levels to introduce new mechanics?

I’m still not liking the art style. It’s not awful but it feels cheap and uglier than PvZ2. The style is trying to bring a sense of hand drawn sketch book but it ends up making everything uglier than before with less personality.

Communities and the neighbourhood watch system is actually a clever idea. It could probably be balanced better this early on but the concept is fun enough to encourage clan play and can easily be expanded with server events.

The combining mechanic is not bad but I don’t love it. It does help reduce plant redundancy like being able to equip three separate pea shooters for example. However, remembering combinations is stressful. Meanwhile, planting two pea shooters who then shoot two bullets feels more satisfying than planting two plants, combining them and one shooter fires a slightly stronger bullet. It makes the concept of evolving plants into T2/3 feel flatter than what we had previous.

Fundamentally, the game doesn’t feel fun as long as seeds and levels are in the game. We just want to play PvZ, not grind to reach power levels to scrape by an ever increasing bar. If it must be an F2P game then boosts, cosmetics and conveniences are better than flat out power levels and currencies. PvZ works best as a proper premium game where fun is the central focus, not trying to keep us hooked with daily log ins.

The whole game just feels worse and every decision made in the design makes me not want to play. It doesn’t feel like it respects my time, nor does it feel like a game to “solve” like PvZ1 and early PvZ2 did. It feels like a game where if you play enough, you’ll get enough currency to eventually beat it without learning how the game works because it doesn’t make you care enough to learn.

I know PvZ3 has had a very troubled development it honestly, I’d scrap this one and try again. It’s just not the game I love, sorry.