Thoughts on Halo Infinite and Forza

 Been playing a lot of Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 lately.

For the core part of Halo Infinite that is out right now, the game plays fine. Sure the event RNG might be sketchy at times, but that is RNG in that game mode. I have had no problems playing the game and am having fun in it.

The problem comes with the battle pass. It is such a grindfest to get levels, that it more or less makes you get the paid pass. The event going on right now has pretty short matches - about 10-20 minutes at most, and you get 50xp per match. To level, you need 1000, or 20 matches (not counting weekly challenges). That requires about 200-400 minutes of game time at most, not counting loading, to level up one level - and the pass has 100 levels. The weekly challenges do help - and the event specific ones seem to be really easy, but the event ones are limited, as you can't even max out the event pass in one go since it is divided up into 3 separate week events. The difficulty/RNG on the weekly stuff is varied. You can get one weekly to get 3 wins in a specific game mode in BTB (which is RNG since you can't select the specific game mode to queue). You can also get one weekly to just play 2 BTB matches... for the same xp. Just a small rant, but I feel like the pass needs more fine tuning. Obviously you want to push the paid experience, but it shouldn't negate the free version entirely.

On the Forza side, I have been seeing some posts about players getting banned due to some liveries. Some I can see, but others I hope they are just exaggerating. Other than that, haven't had issues aside from a crash or two. Horizon Arcade needs to be addressed though. It either needs to change how the groups are formed, or have challenges that scale down based on the number of people participating since it is almost impossible to get to and finish the third challenge in my experiences.

More Forza Stuff

 Been having a lot of fun with Forza Horizon 5, so a lot of my videos will be about that. I have also started streaming it, albeit in the wee hours and for not a long period. Hopefully I can change that.

I was going to stream pvp racing in that game, but it seems like there isn't a way in game to turn off the voices of other players. I think there is a setting for it on xbox's website, but that seems so odd. The setting is also grouped with text and invites, which is weird, since I just want to disable the voices, but I don't really mind getting invites. I guess I will just set it to just friends and hopefully that will mute the people in game.

Other than that, there is a ton of stuff that I unlocked and need to get through. That doesn't even count all the community made stuff. No idea how long this will keep me busy for, but hopefully it will be for a while.

On another note, I have been getting good feedback with my community posts on youtube. I just don't know if I should make more or keep it at around one a week because I want to do more but then again it might get too spammy. Hopefully I'll find a good balance.

Forza Horizon 5!

 I have been playing a bit of Forza Horizon 5 this past weekend, and it's been pretty fun. Surprised that there are already pretty good car liveries out there.

I had some issues starting the game, but I was able to fix them. For some reason it would crash on startup, but I found out that exiting Discord fixed it for whatever reason. Then I couldn't log into my Windows account, even though it said I was already logged in. I logged in by going through the use another account option and use the same email. Other than that, there was one more issue, but it seemed minor - that is the game saying I was disconnected, even though I was still connected to the internet. Might be launch issues or whatever. That being said, there seems to be a lot of causes for the startup crash on the forums, and there are a variety of fixes, from disabling antivirus / adding an exception, to exiting programs, to other stuff.

The game technically comes out on November 8, so hopefully there will be more people online, and that they will activate public lobbies, because right now I am just doing solo stuff. I have seen some people on the roads sometimes, but I wonder how much more 'lively' it will be when the game launches. I plan on recording more videos for that game, though I still have other games I want to try out as well.

I also wonder that the future has in store for content updates. I really liked the Lego update in Horizon 4, so hopefully one update will be something like that.