Remember when Xbox 360 came out? The saving grace for the xbox was backwards compatibility so you could still play the awesome original xbox games. But there really weren't any great 360 games for YEARS.

I think you're setting the bar for greatness a little too high and I'm sure that bar wasn't really set until September 25th, 2007 for you. I see what you're doing, buddy! :P

I can't tell you how many times my wife will say "pause the movie for a minute? I have to get some food." and I'll just say "Xbox, pause." So good.

Over promise, and under deliver.

Seems the be the mantra for all game advertisers these days.

That being said, Spelunky was procedurally generated and it's one of the finest games in recent memory.

This is where we disagree, because Spelunky was outrageously easy and boring because of that.

I think what would sink No Man's Sky is if it fails to provide an overarching purpose. The scope of the game and the incredible graphics and procedurally generated worlds/creatures/etc. are amazing, but if I feel like I have no real purpose I can see myself getting bored of the game very quickly.

Pure exploration can only take you so far.

Minecraft or 2D minecraft Terraria (I can't believe how blatantly Terraria ripped off Minecraft. Jesus christ designers have some dignity) could get away with not having a real strong sense of purpose because the big draw in those games was you could alter the worlds and build shit. That's really what you do in those games, even if they have enemies and bosses and whatnot.

From all the PR content about NMS I can't really gather any deeper meaning to the game beyond look at all the amazing tech we made and ohhh and ahhh at the pretty graphics. Maybe they're working on it and it will be there but it does give me pause.

After Destiny their is no day one purchase game for me. I will never do that again. But No Man's Sky is on my closely watching list. Hopefully it's a good one, lord knows we need some good new games.

Mostly I'm just frustrated that I have a 400 dollar rhombus sitting on my desk that I basically use to watch Netflix.

I'm looking forward to The Division right now. That might be it for my list. Destiny 2, perhaps, assuming a massive mission selection and implementation overhaul, actually large and explorable worlds, and some AI variance.

Over promise, and under deliver.

Seems the be the mantra for all game advertisers these days.

That being said, Spelunky was procedurally generated and it's one of the finest games in recent memory. And Destiny's levels were crafted by hand, and - aside from the raids - they're pretty stale and repetitive. I goddamn wish Destiny would procedurally generate different enemies in a strike, or different bosses, or map layouts. Grrrrr.

No Man's Sky no doubt is on my list, but I was mostly thinking about console titles. Unless NMS has been announced for console and I just haven't been paying attention?

Over promise, and under deliver. That's my prediction. When your game world is procedurally generated rather than designed by a human hand, that means it's probably going to be shit.

Go play Yoda Stories or Indiana Jones Desktop adventures to see this phenomenon in action. No Man's Sky just dresses it up with pretty graphics.

I did enjoy Tomb Raider a lot. As others have said, you don't have to be on next-gen for that one, but I feel like the next-gen version is the way it was meant to look.

Forza 5 is a great driving sim, now. It had some frustrating issues when it first launched, but I guess we're talking about the current state of things, so it's good. I'm more excited about Forza 6, because I'm convinced that all the areas where 5 lacked at launch (mostly the fact that it had less cars and tracks than 4, the physics were solid) were because they had to make the XBone's launch date, and they don't have that problem this time around.

Forza Horizon 2 is also great, and probably a better bet for most gamers. This one was on last-gen but there's actually gameplay differences between the two, not just graphics, so there's an argument for next-gen here.

I've heard great things about Wolfenstein: The New Order, and actually bought it, I just haven't played it yet. Whoops. If it's as good as people say, though, this will be another vote for next-gen.

And finally... Just Cause 3. JUST CAUSE 3!!!

So far Xbox has had:

Dead Rising 3 (more fun than I expected)
Assassins Creed 4 (cross gen, but WAAAAY better on next gen)
Tomb Raider (another cross gen, but the next gen version is fantastic)
Titanfall (still think this is the best next gen game so far)
Sunset Overdrive (great game that went under most people's radar)
Forza Horizon 2 (not much of a "car" guy, but this game is crazy fun)
CoD Advanced Warfare (not a CoD fan, but AW is fantastic)
Shadow of Mordor (I didn't enjoy this game, but everyone else adores it)
FarCry 4 (I killed a guy while riding an elephant by headbutting a car and pinning him to a wall, what more could you possibly want in a videogame?)

Plus, y'know... Destiny.

For me, even if I played nothing but Destiny (which is kinda true over the past few months) it has been worth getting my PS4 simply for the 400 hours I've akready put into this game. I could have waited for a price drop, but then I wouldn't be playing Destiny :)

I love everything about it "in theory", but actually playing it was very frustrating.

I think I would have liked it a lot more if I had to actually "hunt" the captains. Find them, track them, set up an ambush, etc. But I literally could not avoid them. Every single time I tried to go from point A to B, I would stumble across a captain, get into a fight, 2 more captains would join in, and I'd end up getting crushed.

I almost wonder if I just had bad luck with the open world :-/