To say Microsoft has changed gears during the Xbox One's lifespan is a bit of an understatement. At first, their priorities were in shifting consoles and now, it's about shifting subscriptions. Microsoft will happily launch their first party games on PC and Xbox (and in rare occasions, Switch and PlayStation) as long as you play their titles.
Now the Xbox One doesn't have many exclusives to speak about, and notable first-party franchises always get a PC release. So that means, inevitably, some games have been left behind on the Xbox One. So we're going to look back at some Xbox One Exclusive games that you cannot play elsewhere.
This technically makes the list, despite having a port on the Xbox 360. First off, the Xbox 360 version uses the Forza Horizon 1 engine, which means inferior physics, no tuning and no offroad racing. The latter changes the whole feel of the game dramatically, as this is an area where Forza Horizon 2 excels.
Its wide open areas to explore, driving into vineyards and the beautiful setting of Italy and Spain - make for one of my favourite entries in the franchise. It's a little bit barebones compared to the later titles, but I think this is why I like it so much. It's focus is on racing - other activities are there if you wish, but are not needed to progress.
Graphically it's not the show stopper it once was. Before, I remember being blown away at a kiosk in GAME playing this game in the Italian countryside with the sun setting before me. Don't get me wrong, it still looks great, but stuck with a 1080p presentation, no HDR and not including any of the graphical enhancements of later entries (like 3d shops) - means it's not as beautiful as it could be.
Now this looks like It will be a slim chance of being ported over. While the majority of cars got ported over, there's a small handful that I remember not making the transition. It's also not available for purchase either, meaning if you want to play this game, you need a physical copy of the game and an Xbox One console.
I cannot believe this game has not made its way over to PC yet. An absolute love letter to Rare's gaming history with a wide variety of not only genres, but games covering a number of decades from ZX spectrum all the way to the Xbox 360.
The game's existence came about due to the Xbox One and Microsoft's reputation at the time. The Xbox One was in dire need of exclusives and was getting trounced by the PS4 and Rare's reputation was at rock bottom after Kinect Sports. Its release was almost a "hey, you remember Rare!" before they would go onto bigger things.
The game has an absolutely fantastic presentation and the best selection they could get without licences. Despite that however, there's a bit of a negative if you're buying from disc. If you were to play this without any patches, you could only play up to Jet Force Gemini, everything else that came after needs to be downloaded separately utilising the Xbox 360 arcade versions.
That aside, it's an absolutely fantastic package and the emulation is pretty much perfect. Not necessarily a game you can't experience anywhere else, but perfect emulation fantastically presented in one place means it's worth hunting down for either physically or digitally.
Now here's a game you probably forgot existed. Now this game was what Dreams is to PS4, but came out a lot earlier and used a more unique business model that didn't quite pan out. What you end up buying was basically a game development tool to design what you wanted, with a tacked on single player mode acting as a tutorial.
Initially releasing on PC as well, the game was free to play where you could buy additional visual themes. As you can imagine, this caused a bit of a problem. You see, the starting theme was a goblin theme and to play shared creations using other themes, you also had to have that theme purchased too. It meant everyone's creations looked the same, despite some promising developments.
There's no point going into detail about the creation aspect as since shutting the servers down in 2016, that aspect of the game is no longer accessible. So the only way to play this is on an Xbox One disc and what you're left with is a 2 hour very basic single player that shows you the potential the game once had.
So not really work going after, but still in a playable state if you want to check it out. Also, if you were lucky like me, you could also get your hands on a Conker DLC. It's not amazing, but still good 1 hour of fun nevertheless and catches the spirit of what Conker's about.
A divisive entry in the series, Forza Motorsport's first entry on the Xbox One was received with harsh criticism. First off, the game had a very strict microtransaction model, which meant grinding and grinding to get money unless you payed up. Next the car and track selection was shrunk down massively to the previous installment.
In its defence, the cars and tracks had to be remodelled using higher quality 3D scans (much like GT Sport had to do) and the advancements in physics meant the cars felt more lively than ever. In Forza Motorsport 4, I was driving every class of car with all assists off without much hassle, moving over to FM5, the quick weight transfer of left to right movements meant for the first time, I was actually losing control.
Other than that there's not really much else to say. It's your usual Forza experience, buy cars, upgrade and make your way through the single player races. I have to admit that the presentation in this is my favourite in the franchise, it's clean and feels more involved as you've always got your selected car sitting in front of you with narration from Clarkson, Hammond and May
The game and its DLC has now been delisted and saw no PC release. With later games in the franchise taking everything in this game, adding to it and improving it - there's not much point going back, unless you just want more Forza in your life.
The next annual release in the franchise saw further improvements and experimented with a PC release. Dubbed, Forza Motorsport 6 Apex, the game saw a huge cut, featuring only 63 cars and 12 events to race in. Apart from that, it was still the same game, featuring more cars, tracks and tweaks to physics over the previous game.
There's not too much to add about this entry, it saw the number of cars in a race go up to 24 instead of the normal 16 which means more chaos on the roads. Environments were denser with 3d model crowds and more graphic effects which leads to a prettier overall game.
As with all games featuring licences on this list, it has since been delisted alongside all its DLC, and the PC's Apex version is long gone. Once again, physical disc and an Xbox One console is the way to go to experience this one - and this one you might, as FM7 took a huge step back in the sound department and was much buggier overall.
A major entry in the franchise that spawned a huge divide in the gaming community. You were either a Bungie die hard, or a 343i fan who liked the new direction the franchise was taking. Moving away from its military influenced roots, 343i moved the franchise further towards Spartan's being super heros. New advanced movement, meant this was the twitchies and fastest Halo to date.
The story mode was heavily influenced from other Halo related media, and possibly for the worst. Without reading the books, you had no context to who these people were or why they're here. But even if you did know, it was still an extremely shallow story. Despite the story, the game proved a big step up in terms of gameplay over Halo 4. For the first time, Halo was at 60fps and brought back some nice open maps with multiple routes missing from the previous game.
There was some amazing levels too, Fall of the Covenant (later renamed in an update) saw the Covenant on their last legs as you infiltrated one of their last stronghold. There's levels taking place in the desert with stunning backdrops and Sangheili statues looming over you. Basically any level where you play as Master Chief is usually brilliant, as they feature the most varied environments and the least amount of Prometheans.
Oh did I forget to mention Locke? The game was advertised as Locke hunting Chief for going rogue. Locke is as dull as dishwater and the hunt is nothing but a short cutscene. The Prometheans have gone from being unbearable to acceptable, but they're just not fun to fight. Nevertheless the game has some standout missions is also available digitally and has an Xbox One X patch too for 4K/60fps.
Not to make this list any further, I will be making a seperate list for the digital exclusives which will be in part 2 next week. There's not as many as there are physical games, but still some pretty interesting titles nevertheless.
Either way, there's some noteworthy games mentioned that make owning an Xbox One (or Series console) worth it. I can see Rare Replay and Halo 5 moving over at some point down the line, but until then, they're definitely worth experiencing.
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