I own both a PS4 Pro and an Xbox Series X. It's undeniable that Sony has better exclusive games. Uncharted, God of War, and The Last of Us were all must-plays. At least for me, I wouldn't put Halo/Gears/Sea of Thieves into that same category. What Xbox has going for it is marginally better graphics/performance (this seems to have held through from generation to generation). And Gamepass which lets you play any of the exclusive games you'd want to play on the system in exchange for the monthly fee. We actually end up using that a fair amount, and therefore the Xbox gets more play overall.

I'm just glad Sony is still putting out all of its exclusives on the PS4 so there's no need to consider upgrading to a PS5.

I was late to the table with the original Horizon Zero Dawn, and am experiencing this same thing. I enjoy the gameplay but the cut scenes are crap (and over extremely variable quality) and the discussion-tree setup is so tedious. I'm thinking I'll bail and just move on to another of last generation's AAA games that I never got around to. Or maybe just dive into Elden Ring.

I’m only a couple of hours in but felt like things were dragging. Maybe I’ll give it some more time before I bail. The combat mechanics are cool for sure.

You talking board game era here? People have been excited about advances in graphics ever since there were graphics to get excited about!

My take is that things carry on pretty much as they always have in video games, as in TV, movies, books, music, and any other field of entertainment. 95% of what gets made is mediocre or worse. And what ends up selling well in any given year doesn't correlate that well with the 5% of stuff that's actually worthwhile. Not sure it's any worse today than it was in 1984.

Ouch. "The gameplay equivalent of Limp Bizkit" is not a ringing endorsement.