Triple Click - We've Played The Xbox Series X (And Baby Xbox)

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

We've got the new Xboxes! Kirk, Jason, and Maddy dive into the pros and cons of both consoles and discuss the upcoming new generation of video games. Are framerate and resolution enough to make the upgrade? Should you get an adult Xbox, a baby Xbox, or neither? Triple Click answers all your questions!One More Thing:Kirk: Watch Dogs LegionMaddy: Animal Crossing HalloweenJason: The AmericansSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/join Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Here at Triple Click, we've decided to adopt the Electoral College, which means if the three of us disagree on something, I win. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about the Xbox Series X, aka Adult Xbox, and Xbox Series S, aka Baby Xbox. Let's get into the next generation. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.

Hi. Lovely folk. Hey. Welcome back to Triple Click and hey, do you like Triple Click? Because if you like Triple Click, you should become a member and support the show. If you do that, if you do support the show, you will have the gratification of knowing that you are helping a listener-supported show in which we make... So much gratification. It's not a small thing.

I support a lot of things these days and it is kind of a nice feeling. No, it does make you feel good. Yeah, fair enough. All of our money comes from listeners like you all. in addition to that you will get a monthly special episode a beans cast where we spoil different things and in fact hey why don't we announce this month's beans cast while i mention it jason drove hard for this this month so we're going to let you tell the listeners what it is go ahead so at one point a few weeks ago the three of us were just sometimes after we record an episode we just still have things to talk about so we'll just hang out and chat a little bit or chat on g chat and we were talking about mel brooks for some reason i don't remember how it came up and we were all like man mel brooks movie movies. They're amazing. Somebody, oh, Maddie was watching Blazing Saddles. I think that's why. Yeah, Dina and I watched Blazing Saddles recently, and I said it held up.

Right. And one of us had the thought like, hey, why don't we watch some Mel Brooks movies as a Beanscast episode and like figure out how well they hold up today and how good they are and so on and so forth. So this month's Beanscast, we will be watching the following three movies, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and Spaceballs. And we will see how they hold up. we will go in depth on them. We will talk about Mel Brooks in general and how much of a genius he is and celebrate Mel Brooks.

I'm not saying. This is when I reveal that I hate Mel Brooks. You're going to fight. Yes. I think one of the interesting things about revisiting classic movies from like the 70s and 80s is like you kind of get a new perspective

in 2020 where you're like, ooh, I don't know about this thing. Especially classic comedies. Comedy in particular does not age. Especially classic comedies. Yeah. Because of the nature of comedy. Yeah.

So we'll see how well these movies have aged and yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to rewatch them. It'll be a nice sort of change of pace in the middle of console launch extravagance. If you do want to become a member, go to maximum fund.org slash join, and you can help support the show.

One more thing, real quick. We are recording this on Tuesday night, election night. Polls are about to close. We will not be talking about the election because we don't know what's going to happen and we don't want to sit here speculating. So when this episode comes out,

who knows what is going to be happening. All we know is that it's in the future. You know is Xbox here at Triple Click. That's all we know. Exactly. Look, all I know is I'm feeling so chill and normal and fine. I'm having the most normal relaxing day ever. We all are, you know? And if anyone detects any strange energy as we record this podcast, I don't know what it could possibly be.

It's just Xbox energy, really. It's just Microsoft coursing through all of our vines. Yes, we bleed green here on Triple Click. Maddie, Kirk, it is time. We are entering the next generation of video. video game consoles. Here we are. So,

so this week, we will be talking about the Xbox series X and Xbox series S, a.k.a. adult Xbox and baby Xbox. We will not be talking about the PlayStation 5 because I have one,

but I am embargoed to talking, I'm embargoing, I can't talk about it just yet. So we will be doing an episode next week where we dive into the PlayStation 5. This week will be all Xbox all the time. So, a little bit of background.

here. This is the first new console generation since 2013. Microsoft has decided this time around to release two consoles of $500 Xbox Series X, which they are saying is the most powerful console ever and the $300 Xbox series S, aka Baby Xbox, the name that Maddie coined. It's what it's called.

$300. That's what it's called the official name. Less powerful. Doesn't have a disc drive. Smallest Xbox ever in terms of size. Smallest Xbox ever. It is very small. It is like the size of a hardcover book. A lot heavier than a book, but yes. And I have been using both of these consoles. Maddie has been using the Xbox Series S. Kirk does not have either of them, but we'll no doubt have lots of questions. Before we even jump into things,

then we will go in depth on all of this stuff. I want to give just one overall thought and then throw it to Maddie for her overall thought on the Xbox Series S. My overall thought is okay. So we're here. Go on. Nothing has really wowed me about either of these devices. It feels like they're just kind of incremental upgrades that provide technical power and therefore can get a better performance out of games, which is great. But there's nothing new along the lines of previous console innovations like, I don't know, Xbox Live or like the digital stores that consoles had or even last generation when the consoles were doing all these sleek new things with menus and like they looked nothing like we had seen before. Now it just feels like more of the

same. It feels like they really mastered a lot of things, both Sony and Xbox, back in the last generation and they haven't really changed much of that. That said, what's here is pretty cool. The fast loading times are as fast as promised. Playing games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla at 60 frames a second on a console is awesome and really changes the way that it feels to buy these things. Really, I can turn on my Xbox and just like go instantly into Assassin's Creed Vala. It's almost like turning on a switch, which is really, really cool. In 4K too, right? Because you have a 4K TV. I don't, so I can't speak to that side of it. Yeah. I'm not sure. if it is like, I don't even know what native 4K looks like or whatever, but it looks good. It looks

like it's a good looking game. I've been playing mostly on my 1440P monitor, which looks at 144 hertz, which looks really good. So that's my overall thought. Maddie, do you have an overall thought as someone has been using the Xbox Series S for a while? I do. So for some context, I had an Xbox 360. I still own a lot of Xbox 360 games on disk. And I still own my Xbox 360 so I could technically play all of them anytime I wanted. And I did not get an Xbox one. Jason, did you get an Xbox one or no? Yeah, I had one for some time.

It's a long story. I've used it pretty extensively, yes. You've at least used it. I skipped that generation because if you play games on PC, you can get Game Pass still. You can still play any Microsoft game because at this point Microsoft has pivoted to software, which is kind of Microsoft's deal anyway,

so it makes a lot of sense that they would be focusing so much on this. And the operating systems for these new consoles are functionally the same as the one that anyone who uses an Xbox One would be familiar with, from what I understand, just asking my colleagues who have Xbox ones about that. There's not, there's not some huge C change in terms of the operating system in terms of how Xbox GamePass works. All that stuff is the same. So for me, getting the baby Xbox was interesting because I spent a lot of time thinking about who would have wanted a console like this and what that person is like. And I think the answer is me if I were a teenage college student in 2020, which is to say,

a person who could not afford a high-powered gaming PC and also couldn't really afford the $500 Xbox, but could maybe save up for a $300 purchase that includes one controller. Maybe you have a laptop. Maybe you even have a cast off like pretty good monitor from a friend. If that's your setup, this is a pretty cool console, especially if you don't have any other console and this is your main entry point into Xbox because you can play all these Xbox GamePass games. But Jason's making some points here about the 60 frames of second thing

and the 4K TV. And the reason I asked about that is because the baby Xbox can't make that same promise. It can only go up to 1440P, which is sort of nicknamed 2K, but there aren't even 2K TVs, really. Like that's not even a TV that's being sold normally. But there are monitors that are 2K, like the monitor that I bought. last year is a 2K monitor. So that's mostly what I've been testing on

because I just wanted to try to push the baby Xbox to the limit basically, but it's kind of tough. I'll probably have to write some follow-ups about it later because a lot of the games that are available on the Xbox haven't been fully optimized yet within the review

period that Jason and I are in. And so we're still playing versions of games that are like last-gen versions. And then we have some newer games. Like, for example, I have some next-gen games. Like, I've been playing yakuza like a dragon on the baby Xbox, but the version I have isn't actually optimized yet for the baby Xbox. So it doesn't look that great. But in a week, it might look really good. And I played it on my PC as well.

Well, it's a Yakuza game, so it's just going to look like a PlayStation 2 game. It doesn't, though, because I can compare it directly with my high-powered PC. I went ahead and installed it on my PC. No, I know. I've been playing Yakuza also. So I know it runs at 60 frames a second on the series X and it looks good. But it doesn't on the baby. It does not. Well, so the baby one, so to zoom out for a second, the most important innovation here, and we've talked about this before, like, what are you smiling at? You always zoom out. I'm just making fun of you for zooming out. We're zooming out on the baby. I want to zoom out. The large adult on the baby next one of the other. I want to zoom out so we could see all those pixels. I want to just look back. The resolution stuff, at least for me personally,

I mean, other people's mileage may vary, but the resolution is not as significant. And I can barely tell the difference between 1440p and 4K as the frame rate, which I think makes a humongous difference in the way game feels to play. But it's just preference. That's interesting. Well, so, I mean, especially if you, the way that you really notice it is if you switch from playing the same game at 60 to playing the same game at 30. Because that will blow your mind.

It'll just feel impossible to play the 30. It'll feel so sluggish. But I feel that way. about resolution too, where I'm like, oh, I can see all the billboards and street signs in yakuza and, like, crisp detail, even in the background while, you know, Ichibon's walking around town. And then I, like, go back to the baby Xbox and I'm like, everything looks kind of far away and, like, not as crisp. And it looks fine. It's like the difference between a game that looks fine and a game that looks good to me. Interesting. Okay, cool. Well, that is really good to know

because we both have this differing perspective. But for me, that was the coolest innovation of the Xbox Series X is that it can, you can play these games at a high frame rate. So I've been playing Madden 21, 60 frames a second, runs great, fast loading times. Usually Madden games take forever to load on consoles and it does not do that on this. I've also been playing some Yakuza again 60 frames a second looks great, feels like I'm playing it on a PC and Valhalla, which I've been playing the most of. I can't really get into Valhalla because that embargo is for next week also before we can really dive into it. But we will be diving into it on the show

because it is fascinating game. But yeah, that game has been running fantastic. And again, it feels like I'm playing at a PC, which is amazing because my PC costs $2,000 and this thing costs $500. And so that has been the most impressive thing for me is that frame rate difference. And yeah, I mean, the resolution, it looks great and all,

but the frame rate really is what just makes it for me. Just the way that it just feels so much more responsive and it just feels a much more slick and polished. And I don't know, it's really hard to describe them this year. Kirk was comparing it before to the Hobbit movie. Just like imagine watching The Hobbit. Only it's good. Let's get into the Hobbit movie.

Finally. Let's talk about frame rates of the Hobbit movie. That's why we're here. So, Kirk, you haven't played with either of these things. But as someone who has not entered the next generation yet, you must have a lot of questions. Is there anything that comes to mind from you as like, things you would want to know or things

takes that you have or things you're curious about? No, I mean, I'm curious mostly about the sort of outer margin stuff that I think the two of you maybe won't have even tested, like 120 hertz TVs and whether they're really doing variable resolution and the way that variable resolution like DLSS on PC is going to make its way over into PC gaming too. Because a lot of this stuff, and this is something maybe worth explaining to people who might not know about how this all works,

is that a lot of these games do variable, resolution. So we're talking about 4K gaming, which we've been talking about for a few years ever since the PS4 Pro and the Xbox, what, the Xbox 1X. Jesus, the names and this thing. Adult and Baby are really good. We're just going to, let's stick with adult and baby, I think, for this. Why did Microsoft go with that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a whole other podcast conversation. Could you imagine the packaging, like, baby Xbox and it has like a little pacifier? That would have been great there. I would have bought the baby one for sure. Since the days of the Xbox, since those like the sort of mid-consul generation refresh, they're like, these games

can be in 4K. And there are a few games on like PS4 Pro that are in true 4K. And then it gets into this whole thing where it's in 4K sometimes, but they're doing this like kind of goes down at various points when things get really busy to keep the frame right up and you can go to a performance mode that's only in 1440P. So there are actually a lot of games that'll run on 4K TVs in 2K and it just looks better than it would at 1080P. Right, and they're upscaling it. that stuff has been around forever and will continue to be around where the PC games that I'm playing now also do the same thing, where they're like, you can now set it to be like an adaptive frame rate where if it starts tipping below 60, it'll change the graphics of the game on the fly and like get back above it. That stuff is really cool and a lot of it can be pretty amazing. Like when people have seen DLSS, that's Nvidia's proprietary one, work. Like it doesn't always work in games. It actually doesn't really work for me in watchdogs, which I'll talk about it one more thing, but it's really frustrating because it's supposed to, but it doesn't. But when it works, You can turn on cool stuff like ray tracing and all the really performance-heavy business. And then you can get the performance that you would get if it were just like a slightly lower resolution when you need it, but not when you don't need it.

Well, so that depends on the game. I mean, like you were just describing. Like every game is going to be different on this thing and every game is going to offer. Like some games will offer. I mean, you mentioned Watchtons. Watchaws. Watchaws doesn't run in 60 frames a second. I was playing it on the Series X and it was running a third. Yeah, right.

No, I'm just saying, like, most of my questions I think would not be questions for the. the two of you because there are questions about things that will be answered down the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Digital Foundry will no doubt have a ton of videos like explaining all the nitty-gritty-gritty type of stuff. I mean, that's part of why it's good to wait on a new console because even just speaking to the way that games are going to be optimized for the Xbox, again, a lot of those dates are further down the line and we won't even know if those optimizations make it worth it to upgrade it until like a month from now. One that you were saying, Maddie, that I didn't know about was that Ori and the Will of the Whips

is going to run at 120 hertz, which... But it doesn't yet. Right, and most people don't have 120 hertz TVs. You need a lot of stuff to get that working, but I'm sure that'll be pretty nice when that... Well, so, okay, so we're already, like, in the weeds talking about technical specs, and I think... Well, well, what I was going to say was the reason for that

is because nothing else about this thing, like feels next gen or feels like a... Like, the only real upgrade here is technical specs, and so that's all we really can talk about. The loading times, I should say for a second that having the fast loading times, like I mentioned before, like being able to turn on. That's what it's called. Yeah, we'll be able to turn on your Xbox.

The quick resume is cool because you can switch back and forth between games. It's sort of like switching like on Windows. It's like how on your phone you can have multiple games running, right? You can switch between them. Exactly. Exactly like that. If you have a bunch of apps running and, you know, at the iPhone store, they tell you it's fine to have all the apps running. It's like that except it's the baby Xbox.

Right. Which is cool. I mean, in theory, it's cool, but in practice, how often are you switching between two games that you want in. Well, especially when you only have a few games to play, right? That might change if you have a bunch of things that we're playing on. Right. Yeah.

So the other thing worth bringing up is that this console is totally backwards compatible with like pretty much every, most of the 360 and the Xbox One libraries. Well, yours is. So can you put 360 discs into your console? I mean, I cannot. So it turns out, so I wanted to. And then it turns out that I had like packed up all my 360 games to save space. a couple of years ago and I never touched it.

So I couldn't even find them. I was like looking for Lost Odyssey. I was going to be like, oh, I should check this out. So I haven't even, I haven't been able to test that. I did download some 360 games on GamePass and played with them. So like I loaded into Fallout New Vegas and it was super weird and like didn't feel like

it definitely wasn't 60 frames a second. I could have gotten a better performance if I just played it on PC. So it didn't feel it didn't feel like this is the best way to play all these old games because that's still going to be a PC. Like none of these games are that. optimized for the Xbox Series X. I checked out, I also checked out some other random games on GamePass

like Final Fantasy 15 I downloaded. And one thing that is worth noting is that the loading times for all these games is definitely faster. Like they load faster than they would have. Final Fantasy 15 loaded unbelievably fast compared to like the original console versions, which was just like waiting two minutes to get into the game.

So that is like legit the loading times thing. They're promising. That's their big marketing thing is faster loading times and that is they are delivering on that but it is cool to have this and especially for someone like yourself mattie who skipped the last console generation especially someone who didn't have an xbox one or ps4 like if you missed out on that whole generation and like imagine if i didn't have a pc like then it would be amazing right yeah right if you miss out on all the games of the last generation this thing is perfect for you because you can play and a lot of them are boosted in some way or another um especially the ones that are published by microsoft but yeah so you You can't play your 360 games at all because you don't have a different time. Except on my 360. That is still, again, technically an option that is available to me. But there's no way to convert them.

One of our listeners was actually asking about that, there's no way to convert them to digital games. No, I mean, they're on Game Pass, which I also have. So I did the same thing, downloaded some old games, saw how they played. Again, I'm really waiting on these optimizations. And I'll do some follow-ups about them as they come out because I'm curious about how much different they're going to look. I mean, it's one thing to just be like, oh, this is a new small computer that can play all your GamePass games, which, yeah, any computer that can run a video game can play a Game Pass game on Windows.

But how good are these optimizations actually going to be? That matters. And that could be the differentiating factor for somebody who's thinking about, at least getting the baby Xbox, I would imagine. Definitely. So the other part of this whole equation is that the Xbox Series X has a faster GPU than the PlayStation 5. lot of people who might be trying to decide do I want the PS5 or the Xbox, they might be trying to figure out which will run games better, which will run cyberpunk better or like future games down the road, Call of Duty 2022, which is going to run better. And the answer to that is we still don't know.

I've been trying to get codes for as many as possible on both machines and haven't had much luck because a lot of them are like optimized for one right now but not the other or like the next and optimizations aren't coming for a while. So the same problem you were running into, Maddie, where it's just this frustrating world of like, we don't really know because they haven't optimized. Or like I have some of these games, but I don't have the correct version of them.

Like I was playing a version of Watchdogs Legion that doesn't run in the way that it's supposed to run. And they actually... Well, so with the Xbox, it's smart delivery. So it's supposed to know. I think the problem with Watchdogs was that it was the Xbox One version. It hadn't been optimized yet.

and I believe they disabled it for us. They disabled it so we can't play it anymore. It's not ready. So that's still the big question. And we really don't know the answer. Even like some of these games like Destiny 2 Beyond Light comes out next week. But it's not optimized until December 8th. For next-gen consoles until December.

Same goes with a lot of other games. And really, I mean, the big question that we're all going to have is like, are games going to be able to run at 4K 60 frames a second on the Xbox, but not on the PS5? And that'll be useful to know. Kirk, you're shaking your head. You don't think that's ever going to be a game. I'm just shaking my head at the idea that many games are going to be able to run at 4K 60 frames per second at all. Well, that's also, yeah, you've been skeptical of that, seeing as, seeing as,

so right now it seems like some games are struggling to do that. But they are marketing this thing as the most powerful console ever. It's just like a shame we don't know what it is, right? It is, but what does that actually mean? and how does that actually help you? It's the big question. It's like, yes, it's the most powerful computational device ever, but it is also running the most demanding software ever.

And those both things will also always be true. And so, yeah, to me, it's like even the fast loading times thing to me, I know it's like faster hard drives and everything, but I have an SSD in my PC and I still have to wait. And I know that that's not the same as the hard drive in these consoles, but it's just whatever technology comes around, there then comes software that will demand the absolute most out of that technology. and it just seems to be like, I don't know,

soon you're loading in even more 4K textures and the game is just a lot bigger and needs to load more stuff faster and soon you're kind of, well, this game's going to have loading times, but it'll be worth it, trust me, when you see what it looks like. And then next thing you know, there are just loading times again,

and it's 30 frames per second and whatever. Like that's just, it feels like that's likely to me, but it would be cool if that weren't the case. Well, the other thing that consider is that Microsoft is undoubtedly going to put out a new console, like a refresh, like an upgrade, Series X2 or whatever, Series Y in like two years. So that's what I was going to consider as you're trying to decide whether you want a new console.

Should we talk about space, by the way, like hard drive space? Yes, I was about to bring up the exact same thing. Yeah, what's your take with the baby Xbox? So I was kind of mad about the baby Xbox when I first got it because, so it promises 512 gigs. That's the promise on the box. And if you boot it up. Really of storage space? But how much of that is the operating system?

Like a third? Yeah. That's how much it is. It turns out that you only get about 364 gigs free in total. Not much. Because the operating system takes up roughly. So that's like one call of duty. Yeah.

Well, okay, so here was my trajectory. I was really angry about this. Multiple of my coworkers were on the other end of DMs for me being like, I'm not even going to be able to install anything. And everyone's like, okay, whatever, Maddie. But so here's what it does. It was like, get in a. adult Xbox.

Why did you get the baby, you freaking weirdo? But here's the thing. So the baby doesn't actually install all those additional 4K texture packs that are included in the install versions of games on the adult Xbox. It installs baby versions of all of the games

and so they are smaller. Now Destiny 2 is still a big honk and video game that you should probably not put on the baby. I have uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times so I've been testing things. It is a bajillion gigs and you shouldn't even bother. Though isn't the idea with that game that it's about to get a lot smaller because they're taking all this stuff out? It is. And it's also bigger on consoles than it is on PC for a variety of reasons. But yeah, it's going to be 100 gigs pretty much no matter where you go. But a lot of the other games are like 20 to 30 gigs. And so I was able to get several games onto the baby with no problem. And that was pretty nice. So that's my take on that. I could fit more games on there than I thought. And in my review, I'm going to include some comparisons of like how much.

many gigs there are in a game on the baby Xbox as opposed to how many gigs it is on my PC. And those comparisons are pretty different in most cases. Yeah, I have, so one comparison point is that I believe I'm kind of, these numbers are based on memory, so please don't hold me 100% to them. But I believe Assassin's Creed was 49 gigabytes on the series X and 43 on the series S. Both of which are actually pretty reasonable for a new game. on the series X, on the adult Xbox? So the adult Xbox comes with one terabyte of a solid C.

Drive, I believe. Mine filled up pretty quickly, but I was also kind of indiscriminately just downloading things on Xbox GamePath. Whereas I was taking things on and off all the time, which wasn't that hard to do, honestly. I mean, if you have fast enough internet, you can just instantly delete stuff, install something else. And just because if I were listening to this, I would be wondering, can you expand both of these consoles? Yes.

This is a console where you're going to have to buy expandable storage if you're playing digitally for an extended period of time. And that's pretty easy to do. I believe so. I have not tried it, but I believe you just plug something in. It does kind of not make sense with the baby Xbox, though, because that additional storage is so expensive that at that point it's like, why didn't you just get the adult Xbox? But I feel like it kind of depends on what your income situation is. Like maybe you can afford a $300 console now. And then in a few months, you can afford like $100 terabyte expander. and that's fine. And that's just your situation where you're just spending money in that way.

But it just depends on you, really. I can envision someone doing that. Hard drive space is going to be an issue in next gen in general. I'm curious if it's going to affect those much vaunted loading times on the, so are these like branded, like a branded one for Microsoft that you would get? Oh, okay. Okay, okay. Yeah, Xbox said, yeah, they had marketed their own. I'm not sure if you can plug and play like with others, but they had been marketing their own that are. Super expensive. Yeah, looking at the specs sheet, it says you can get either SSD or HDD versions of the expanded hard drives as add-ons. I'm sure the pricing of those is different and so on, but yeah, both are available. On my PC, when I load games on my HDD, they're a lot slower than loading them on my SSD.

But that said, I think because of console wizardry and because the OS is so customized and finally tuned, I'm sure they have some advantages just having all that stuff on the solid Cesar. drive when it comes to loading these games. But who knows? That is not something I've tested. Why don't we take a couple of quick questions? I'm not sure how much we'll actually be able to answer from listeners. Jamie asks, what are the practical differences seeing the Xbox X and S, given the money is tight for people, should the everyday gamer purchase an S? My feeling is that the X is geared towards elite hardcore gamers. Anyway, I think that's a good feeling. I think the best way to think of them is like a mid-n-PC versus a high-end PC.

plus the S, the baby Xbox, does not have a hard drive. I've played them. Does not have an optical drive? You said hard drive. Sorry, does not have a disc drive. Sorry, does not have a disc drive. Yeah, there's no hard drive. It's amazing.

Just a be in the moment, man. A thin air. I've used them both, and I can confirm that they look identical. Their home screens and UI and stuff are totally the same. You can also, you can, if you get them both, which I don't think anyone will, but if you do get them both the way that I have been testing, you can just pretty seamlessly transfer all your games from one to the other using your Microsoft Gamer Tag and such. Maddie, I mean, have you enjoyed it? Do you think you would, would you recommend the S?

I enjoy it, but I also think that if you're in this position, you might want to consider buying a last gen Xbox because they're perfectly fine. And if you're really trying to save money, you could save a lot of money buying one of the last gen consoles right now. Like now's always a good time to be looking at those price drops and just picking up one of those. That's interesting. But are you kind of, are you like hurting yourself for the future? Because part of this is like you're buying, when you buy a next-gen console, especially at launch, you're buying for the, like you're buying potential. You're buying a game system that you hope will still be around in three years and playing the newest games. And if you buy an old one now, you're not going to be able to do that in two years, even one year, you might not be able to play all the new stuff. So are you kind of hurting yourself? Maybe. I don't know. That seems impossible to predict right now. I think the Xbox platform, as compared to some of the other ones, is a lot friendlier to backwards compatibility than pretty much any other console. So I feel like if you're going to make that decision about a console, Xbox is an okay one to do it on. But yeah, I can't promise it's going to work out for you.

Yeah. If you're worried about money, you should just get the baby. Something else to consider, and we haven't really gotten into this, is part of Xbox's whole kind of marketing and selling this generation is that they bought a ton of studios. And they're having all those studios make Xbox games. They bought. Obviously, the biggest one was Xenamax, who are making a ton of games that will now be Xbox-focused, if not actually. Xbox exclusive, Bethesda, Id, Arcane, et cetera, et cetera. But also they bought Double Fine and Obsidian and Exile and tons of more studios.

But the thing I've been thinking about is that already we've seen games get delayed due to the pandemic. There are probably tons more that were scheduled for next year than are now getting delayed even more, especially as the pandemic continues to show no sign of slowing down and people's production are still hampered by it. I think that if you're buying a new Xbox now, hoping to get both third party and first party games, it's probably going to be slim pickings for a while as a result of the pandemic, which really makes for an even more compelling case to wait it out, especially if you can't afford it right now,

save some money, maybe stick with older stuff, maybe get a switch. But it just does not feel like in terms of buying for potential for what could come, it's just such a risk right now and you're going to be waiting so long for that stuff to happen. Why not wait a year and see like, hey, is the Xbox Series X? It's more powerful than the PS5.

Is that making a difference with third party games? Maybe I should go this direction instead of getting a PS5. I don't know. I just see so many compelling reasons to wait and so few compelling reasons to get one now unless you're like the type of gamer who's like, you know what, I have money,

I really want to play. The new Assassin's Creed at 60 frames a second, in which case, great, this is a good investment for you. But that, I think that kind of helps answer Jamie's question and that like, if money is tight for you and you're really thinking, weighing these over, I don't really think either is a good investment right now. I think it's worth waiting a while for a next-gen console. Sure. Maddie, why don't you read this next one? Because this will, this is a question needed answer. So this is from Charlie, who says, how do the games on the Xbox series S,

a.k. A.K.T.V. Look on a 4K TV. Is the lower 1440P resolution noticeable in any of your opinion? In theory, the small Xbox seems like a great bang for the buck. But as a 4K TV owner, I worry that I'll wish I had the full 4K. I appreciate your insight. Jason, I don't know if you're fully qualified to answer this. So I guess I have to buy a 4K TV.

It's the only way. Yeah. I mean, I haven't, I have not yet tested the series S on my TV. I've been doing most of my playing on my monitor because it's so nice to sit right in front of the monitor and play games. I don't know what I've been missing out all these years playing on my TV. It's just so much better. I'm a monitor. But my monitor is 1440P as I mentioned before. So the only thing I've been really paying too much attention to is the frame rate, which I can see very distinctly on the series S. And as soon as I started testing things on the series S and baby, and it was like, oh man, these are running at such a sluggish frame rates. I was like, all right,

I'm going back to the Series X to play to play games. So, yeah, I don't know yet. And also, because so much of it is so dependent on the game and what you've, what all of you have already been hearing me and Maddie talking about with all these different games, each of it's each of them having different optimizations and optimization is not available yet. Yeah. It's just so hard to say like, okay, this thing will get you consistent 1440P or this

thing will get you consistent 4K, 4K games. and so I do see where Kirk's skepticism is coming from in general. I think that's it for as far as I think we've answered a lot of other questions that we've gotten. We're happy to answer more, so just hit us up at triple click at maximum fun.org. And yeah, I mean, my verdict, as I said, wait. Maddie Kirk, do you guys have thoughts on this on whether people should get one now this holiday season? Yeah, I always advise people to wait with new consoles. If you really want to get one now, and especially if you skip the last console generation and this is like when you're jumping in, I think the baby Xbox is good for that, especially if you don't have a PC. I don't have a PS5. So I couldn't weigh in on that even if I weren't under embargo. So I have no, I'm neutral on that. But just speaking in terms of Xbox, I don't know. I kind of like the baby. But I also don't have the series X or a 4K TV.

Yeah. Well, I mean, do you think you're going to use it? That's that's kind of the long running question. It's like, are you going to use it? past the review period, are you just going to go back to your PC? I might. I mean, I do love lying on my couch, so I feel like not having to plug my computer into my TV in the other room is nice. And having my Microsoft account linked to both my PC and the baby Xbox is pretty sweet because I can just decide where I want to install each game and where I want to play each game. The saves all carry over. It's very luxurious. So, yeah, I probably will use it for peak laziness reason. Nice.

What about you, Kirk? What do you think? What's your decision? You're going to, baby or adult? You have to decide. No, my decision is neither. I mean, yeah, I guess my thought is that I am a person who plays a lot of video games and co-hosts a video game podcast and I'm not buying either of these consoles.

Interesting. Interesting. And as someone who has a lot of gaming systems, I'm like, well, no, I'm not going to spend that much money on this thing. So I think that is maybe a helpful perspective. Oh, yeah. And then also I, yeah, I think next week we'll be able to talk about the PS5 as well and I think that that'll just

broaden out the conversation some and we can sort of compare and contrast a little bit more and that'll probably be useful information for anyone who's kind of weighing these as well. Yes, absolutely. Well, that episode will come a day after the Xbox comes out. So definitely wait for that episode at the

very least if you can't wait for our full thoughts. Later. Okay, cool. Why don't we take a break and then we will be back with one more thing. The Beef and Dairy Network is a multi-award winning comedy podcast here on Maximum Fun, and I would recommend you listen to it. But don't just take it from me. What do the listeners have to say? I would rather stick a corkscrew inside my ear, twist it around and pull out my ear canal like a cork, than listen to your stupid podcast ever again.

Please stop contacting me. Hell would freeze over before I recommended this podcast, the Beef and Dairy Network, to anyone. Not in a million years. Actually, start to that. Make it a billion years. No, how long's infinity? That's the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, available at maximum fun.org, and at all good and some bad podcast platforms. Disgusting.

Hi, are you someone who thinks that when one door closes, another one opens? Someone who always sees the light at the end of the tunnel. If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, good for you. We are not those people. Nope, I'm Annabel Gerwitch, and I'm a, you know, that other door opening? It probably leads to a broom closet kind of person. And I'm Laura House. When I see a light at the end of a tunnel, I assume it's a train headed right toward me. Laura and I have created a brand new podcast for people like us. It's called Tiny Victories.

We're sharing personal Tiny Victories or things we've read or seen that inspire resilience. So if you're looking for a tiny reason to get out of bed each week, subscribe to Tiny Victories. Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get Tiny. And we are back. Kirk Maddie at his time. for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you go first?

Because Mandy and I got a lot of time to chat about the Xbox already. Yeah, all right. My one more thing is a little video game called Watch Dogs Legion. Ah, I'm glad you're bringing this up. I'm glad you are bringing this up, yes. Yeah, so I've been playing this game a lot.

I think it's really interesting. I'm having a good time with it. It's got a lot going on. I would call it the most interesting Ubisoft Open World games since Far Cry 2, which I think is fitting. Given that it is directed by Clint Hawking, of course, who I'm a big fan of, who also directed Splinter Cell, which one is it?

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, I believe is the one, which is another great splintercell game, good stealth game. He made Far Cry 2, bounced around the industry for many years after writing Ludonarrative Dissinence in Bioshok, the famous blog post. Most important thing he ever did, really, was that blog post. Just did a mic drop and walked away and didn't make video, well, he worked at various studios, but didn't ship things. I mean, that might be the thing he's the most well-known for. I think it is. I mean, it's his public face, at least.

God, if, if, I'm sure he would, I'm sure he would be very depressed to hear that that's even possible. So, anyways, he was the director of this game. And, you know, when I say most interesting, I just mean, like, it's, this is a really interesting game. It's so much, it's so different from other Ubisoft games, despite also being so similar to other Ubisoft Open World games. And I think that is the thing that I'm really getting out of. it is just how different it is. So let me just explain what it is to people. This is the third watchdogs game.

Watchdogs games are Ubisoft open world games that are typically focused around stealth and kind of their modern day. And hacking. Right. So hacking is the promise of these games, is that you can interact with the environment using your phone because you are an elite hacker. And so you can jump into cameras and trigger security systems and send drones in to scout out ahead of you and do a lot of stuff.

that sort of goes outside of your character. The first Watchdog's game was fascinating for so many reasons, like culturally related to the launch of the new generation of consoles at the time. Announced before the consoles were announced. It was supposed to come out right when this one came out right at the launch, and then it was delayed into early next year. I reviewed that game for Kataku, did not care for it, but there were interesting things in it.

And the thing that I always remember about that game is there's a prison break mission in that game where you go into the prison undercover, and the guy you need to break out is on the roof. He's like up doing like exercise time on the roof. But to get him out, you go down to the basement because that's where the servers are. And then you access the servers, which then lets you get up to the roof in the cameras and you manipulate the environment up there to get him out.

And that to me just that kind of summed up what made watchdogs cool is that this is a game where you don't go up to the roof to break the guy out. You go to the basement. And then you hack up to the roof because it has multiple layers of the world layered on top of each other. And that is a really cool idea for all that game's many, many failings, which I documented in my review at the time. I also reviewed watchdogs too for Kitaku, which I liked a lot more. That game was set in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area. It kind of lampooned big tech.

It was a much goofier game. The tone was not for everybody or even for me a lot of the time. It had this colorful cast of characters who were great. Fantastic lead character, Marcus, much better than Aden. Aidan, is that the guy from the first game? So the second game, like, found a way better groove, but was kind of underappreciated, I think. I think it's kind of an underrated game and was overlooked. and it was pretty uneven and weird in places.

So now we come to Legion. Legion does not have a protagonist, and that's the hook of this game. So this game is set in London. In a kind of near-future dystopia kind of a deal, there's been what looks like staged terrorist attacks or what is clearly staged terrorist attacks to allow the city to be opened up to authoritarian rule, which has been outsourced to this PMC, basically,

like a private military contractor called Albion, who have taken over the whole city and are ruling it with an iron fist. and you are a variety of people. Any of the NPCs in the game can be members of deadsec, your hacking group. And you go around profiling them, and then you recruit them, and they join, and you get, like, different voice acting and different accents for different characters. And you build this team of sort of miscreants, and the idea is, you know,

a bunch of people need to work together to rise up against fascism or whatever, you know, authoritarian rule and rise up and work together. And it's not about any one hero. it's about a group of people. Just a reminder, we are recording this on election night. It is 7 p.m. Eastern right now. Right. This game happened to come out right now.

So there's more to talk about this game than I'm going to have time to get into. I think that it's so mechanically interesting. It's so flawed. Do you like it? Do you want to give like an overall? Yeah. Like I said, I'm having plenty of fun with it. But I'm finding it so exhausting and very difficult to play right now.

I mean, it's like it's not the right time for me to be playing it. And I think that's just a tough thing to judge this game for or to hold it. Because it's just if it were any other week than this week playing a game where I'm in a city that's like dominated by these horrible cops on every corner in this city. There's like cops with literally like holding people's heads on the ground being awful. And you kind of can't. Barricades and stuff. Yeah. It's so it's.

It's yeah. It feels pretty intense to play it right now. So that is kind of clouding some of my enjoyment of it. even though watchdogs gameplay I find very fun. I love the way that you manipulate these multiple layers of any given level. And I think that the setup of the game is ingenious and so cool, partly because it carries on the promise that the first watchdogs made. There was this thing in the first watchdogs where he would walk around with your phone out

and you could profile people and it would give you these very superficial facts about them. Oh, here's their name and here's what they do. But it was, you know, it was fake. It was just on the surface. In this game, each person is a person and they have a simulmonary. life, like life inside this version of London. Yeah, I want to hear a little bit more about that because I was reading a preview. We were talking about this a little bit before the game came out.

That was like, I killed this person, but then his brother remembered it and it was like this whole giant sandbox promise. How deep is that? Does it feel like this kind of cursory shallow thing where it's like, okay, this is clearly procedurally generated stuff? Or like, is it actually interesting? Is it make the game better and stuff like that? I don't know how deep it is just because I've played like seven hours or something.

I'm sure it's not as deep as it seems just because in these kinds of games it never is but characters do have daily schedules that they follow you can look at their schedule with like this deep profiler I just unlocked you can see everywhere they're going to be all day there are things like apparently they'll go grieve lost ones they have relationships to one another which is pretty wild I just profiled a person who is the psychologist

of a person who I had kicked out of DeadSec and the game told me that so I have no idea whether that really means anything but there are relationships between characters and there are like, I would imagine, thousands of characters in this game. So that alone is really cool and really interesting and because it's something that was in the first game

but was totally faked up and has never quite been there, the fact that this game leans into it to the point that there is no protagonist and you just, anyone can be the protagonist in this city is really cool and then leads to, I think, a very endearing thing about the game, which is just you have this team of just wildly different of really diverse, interesting crew of people with different backgrounds and skills.

And that is cool. Like, it's so counter to almost every other video game. And it's something I've thought ever since, I guess, Grand Theft Auto 5, which then Assassin's Creed Syndicate also made me think this, is that open world games just work better with multiple protagonists. Like, it works well to be able to bounce around. I think GTA 5 is still the most ambitious and fully realized, you know, implementation of that idea,

just because you would like warp to Trevor and he'd be doing a whole other thing somewhere else in the city and there was this idea that they were all drunk on a bench like naked and you'd get to get it. And they were all having their own lives. But where in this game it's like you switch to a character and you just stay in place and they just could sort of hand off the baton to the new character.

So it's not as cool. And there aren't, I know there are some maybe near the end of the game but there aren't a lot of missions where you're going in with your whole team. And it's like now the hacker is going to get us in the door. And like, okay, now the brawler guy is going to come beat up the guards and then, you know, the spy is going to sneak in. undercover. That would be sweet. Obviously, this game was really hard to make, and I don't think that's possible yet, but it makes me think that could happen. The downside of that, and I guess

I'll kind of wrap up my thoughts at least on this, is that you don't quite get the XCOM thing of building these narratives around the characters and really falling in love with them and being heartbroken when they die. And I guess I should mention, I am playing with Permodeath-on, which means if one of my characters dies, they die forever. And that's happened to me a couple times and I've lost characters and that is great. That is the way to play this game if you're thinking about playing this game. Do that because that makes it the most different. Like that makes it the most its own thing is if you're losing characters permanently. The thing is when they're not working together, you don't quite get those narratives that you get in Xcom where it's like,

oh man, this sniper who like got wounded but then like got us through it and landed that impossible shot as the other person died to sacrifice themselves to save this one. Like you get this team storytelling dynamic in Xcom that I'm not getting out of this game. And because in this game, every mission can technically be completed by a variety of different gameplay styles and character builds, they're all kind of the same, like they're all pretty similar. So as a result, you don't get distinct stories, and that's too bad. Like, it's something that I don't know how they would solve for making this game, and it's so cool what they've managed to do within the framework of this kind of Ubisoft Open World game,

but it is something where I don't feel an attachment, at least not yet, to my characters as individuals, like I would eventually feel in an excom game. I just want to say, I wish there was a game with that, like, same web of characters and relationships and systems, except it didn't, it wasn't like a shooting and another shooting and driving and the hacking game. Instead, it was like a relationship building game or like a social game or like something else. Well, there's like door fortress, right? Sure. I mean, there are games that do this kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, you can also like avoid a lot of shooting and watchdogs Legion if you want to as well. I mean, you're still like doing some damage. No, but the missions are all driving and hacking and shooting. No, that's not the point I was just making. Yeah, but you can avoid killing people.

I know, I know. But just for me. Yeah, no, and actually, I should say, you can avoid it. I find this game to be much more of a pure stealth game and much less of a shooting game because of permadeath and because of the way it's been designed. And I find it to be a very fun and good stealth game. Just as a pure stealth game, pretty fun game.

Maddie, what's your one more thing? Oh, so you all remember I was going to play Animal Crossing on Halloween. There's a Halloween event, and that's what we did instead of trick. I did not let anyone visit my island. No one gets to see my bachelor's island. Nobody gets to see it. It looks terrible. So that didn't happen. We all went to Dana's island and we trick or treated there. This Halloween event was so fun. I know you two aren't still playing this game. I'm not still playing this game. I didn't even know how cute it was going to be. So I just want to say I think it was adorable. And for the people who had to stay home with their kids

this year and do this, I'm sure they had a good time because it's like this guy with the Jack Lanternhead comes to your island. You have to have collected candy all month long in order to prepare for his arrival. And then when he gets there, you have to give candy to different people to get different certain items. And you get all these Halloween themed items for your house and you can deck out your house Halloween style, which is like, it's, it's perfect. It's the dopamine hit you want. You get candy, you give candy. That's what Halloween is all about. You put up your Halloween rug. It's got a pumpkin on it. You put up your pumpkin walls. It's great. It's great. I think that Halloween might be the best holiday for video games because you put on costumes,

so there's like cosmetic things, and then you go and visit people and like give them things and take things. Which is like so much of video games is just about that. Which you can literally do an animal crossing. Like you can wear your costume, which if you've been playing all month, you have a variety of different costumes that you could have chosen to wear. And then you can visit other people's islands. You can give them candy, take candy from them. I don't know. It's like the closest you can get to Halloween.

party in this day and each. So that's what we did. And it was really fun. And I am an adult. Do you know if Destiny 2 at a Halloween event this year? Almost certainly. They always do. They do. Festival of the lot. Yeah, they always do. The trick or treating was always super fun. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. It's like it's always the most fun thing. Yeah. That's what I was thinking of. Okay. So my one more thing is I've been playing a lot of video games. I can't really talk about a lot of them. But my wife and I, for the best couple of months, I've been watching the Americans, the TV show that is critically acclaimed. We finished it last week. I haven't been talking about it on the show because I wanted

to wait until I was finished. It's really, really good. Very, very good show. Really enjoyed it. Really just great performances, great writing, great all around. Um, some, definitely some downer notes. Season five is particularly boring. Um, but it ended well. Every season. What? That was the one that kind of lost me with season five. Season five was really slow, really, really, boring but season six like picks it up and it ends really really well heartbreaking ending but really good ending really satisfying also it features character actor margot martindale it does she is great and Kirk when I say heartbreaking you have no idea it's going to happen trust me of course it's heartbreaking it's the americans yeah yeah everything about the show is dismal um for those of you

aren't familiar it's said in the 1980s it's about this couple in the u.s who turns out to be russian spies and they are like pretending to be these Americans, that's the name. And the premise of the pilot is that they're living in this house in D.C. where they've been living for a while. And suddenly someone moves in and turns out he's an FBI agent who's living across the street from them. So, uh, hijinks ensue. But the, the plot goes way beyond that and, and delves into their lives. And the lives of some other Russian folks and the FBI agents who are trying to track down.

Because this is all set during the cold. war. So there was a lot of sabotage between Russia and the U.S., but it wasn't outward and out war. It was just kind of like subter food feud. And yeah, really enjoyable show. Fun to watch. I recommend it. I wouldn't say it's like on my personal tier list. It's not quite up there with like Sopranos and The Wire, which recently made it to the list. But it's definitely like a very good show and I recommend it to everyone. Yeah, I want to fit. I've watched so much of it that I should finish it. So I'm planning to finish it one day. I never finished it either.

Yes, you guys should. It's really good. The last season is really good. I've heard that. I've heard the ending is great. Just finishing it just for that. Yeah, I mean. Really satisfying ending.

Okay, cool. Well, so on that note, we will say goodbye. We will go see what happens in this old presidential election. See how it goes tonight. And who knows? Who knows? You, listener, you know so much more than we do right now. Do they?

Do they? Well, even not knowing. Even ambiguity would still be knowing. something. All right, Kirk, it would still have more information than we have now. That is true. Every day we all get more information than we had the day before. Exactly. Kirk, Maddie,

I will see you both next week. Yep, see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you

like our show, we hope you'll head over to maximum fun.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so helps support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple click episode each month. Find us online at triple clickpodcast.com on Twitter at triple clickpod and send email to triple click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience. Audience supported.

So much to say. As Dave Matthews once said. Isn't that a Dave Matthews? I don't know. I don't even know what that is. So much to say. So much to say. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay.

That does sound familiar now. You sing that. You can kind of make a lot of things sound like a Dave Matthews son. Yeah, you just saying any phrase to me in that voice. I'd be like, yeah. Xbox deep dive. Xbox deep dive. Yeah, you know that classic DMV son, Xbox Deep dive.

Yep. I love that one.