Some things that got on my nerves in Persona 5 (SPOILERS!)

First things first: This will be me venting some of the major issues I have with persona 5. Yes I know it’s a game, and I’m willing to suspend my disbelief quite a bit, but there are limits. None of these things are major issues, but they do start adding up.
I'm not saying P5 is a bad game, and I'm not saying anything here is the end of the world. These are simply things that bothered me, stood out, or I just consider plain stupid.


This next bit should go without saying but:

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HERE BE PERSONA 5 SPOILERS, SPOILERS, AND EVEN MORE SPOILERS

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Still reading? Alrighty, let’s get this rant going:

• Despite what Morgana thinks most hight school students are capable of deciding when it’s bedtime. No honest spending 15 mins making 1 lockpick, or quickly reading that tourist brochure isn’t going to make a big difference.

Now had someone remarked if you kept pushing your luck, then sure that would have been perfectly fine. You could have even put in your character actually dozing off in class, and because of that missing questions/getting into trouble.

While we’re on the subject: I have this massage skill, so maybe let me use that rather than sending me directly to my bedroom?

Btw, why doesn’t your character turn off their bloody phone after going to bed, or at the very least use silent mode. How come Morgana isn’t nagging him about THAT after the 3^rd or so time being woken up by a non urgent text?

Also what kind of freak sleeps fully clothed with phone still in their pocket? I’d love to find a smartphone capable of surviving that much abuse for months.

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• Just how many times do you have to get in trouble for loudly, and in public talking about the secret illegal activates you undertake? After that first time, maybe, just maybe don’t do it again?

While we’re at it USE A SODDING EARPIECE rather than hands-free mode.
Perhaps also don’t acknowledge your secret identity to any stranger that asks more than once.

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• Why does the ace hacker who hacks into your conversations, and uses those against you not secure your digital communications after joining the group?

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• Why is everyone instantly okay with having the guy who just tried to blackmail your friend into posing nude for him join the party? She wasn’t just personally the victim of sexual harassment by her teacher, but her best friend tried to kill herself after sexual assault, and yet she is perfectly okay with this?

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• What is the deal with almost everyone initially trying to blackmail you. Once maybe, but time and time again? You really want to let that kind of person into your inner circle?

it’s semi understandable in one case, but even that gets silly: At some point this person calls off your deal promising not to expose you. Only to start threatening you again once she feels things aren’t progressing quickly enough.

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• The phantom thieves learn some thug is blackmailing kids into paying him hush money after filming them trafficking in drugs. How do we deal with this? First we send the only kid in our group already on probation to chat up the henchmen recruiting these kids. Ignoring that being seen/caught on camera with criminals will almost certainly get him into huge trouble.

After that things go wrong, and you end up barging in on the big boss who just kidnapped a girl that’s blackmailing you into investigating him, without you even recording the conversation via your phone. Surprise, surprise, he blackmails you with pictures as per his known modus operandi. Who could have seen that one coming?

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• Becky doesn’t want you to call her from your own phone, but she is perfectly fine with texting with your character on that exact same phone as Becky. We won’t go into how you pay for her services from a payphone, or what kind of company would even let you order such services from a payphone. Let’s also completely ignore the fact someone sooner or later would notice the same maid going into a café after closing. (Although the locals even gossip about how much food the boss buys.)

We won’t ask why your guardian doesn’t remark on you regularly calling people on that payphone registered to his business instead of your cell.

He also doesn’t notice those cars regularly dropping off someone at his café after he left even though he basically lives next door.

Becky lives not that far from Leblanc (That’s a partial reason why she offers to come work for you on her days off without going through her maid service), so why is she perfectly fine with standing around in a laundromat in her secret maid outfit not that far from where she lives? The person you are staying with has met her at school, so she’d risk running into him at the very least.

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• The Hermit is a shut in living next door that initially can’t really go anywhere alone, and she doesn’t go to school. So exactly why can’t I go over on rainy days, and ask if she wants to hang out?

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• No matter how you feel about the soundtrack, after 90+ hours hearing the same 3 or so songs I would have killed for some variation. At least offer a music volume slider. Now I ended up muting sound completely until a conversation started.

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• What good is a fast forward if it doesn’t work half the time? Especially if your game makes me do multiple runs let me skip all those bits I’ve seen countless times.

The fact there is very limited replay value from a story perspective just makes this worse. I was actually quite disappointed with how few choices, and optional side conversations there are with your confidants outside the ranking events.

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• Merely based on how Morgana lays on your desk while crafting anyone would know what gender he is. Even with a fixed adult cat there is no guesswork involved.

Using a female voice actor, and calling him Morgana isn’t helping here. I had actually hoped it indeed turned out that the cat was female, but sadly they didn’t go there.

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• If you’re supposed to be dead taking the subway, and slinking around school and other areas that certainly have security cameras might not be the brightest idea around. On the same stupid scale is using your own phone. (We know he isn’t using a burner/other sim because people keep sending the dead person texts checking if he’s really dead.)

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• What kind of lousy family does this guy have? They dump him with the only person who will take him for payment in another city. They don’t take him to that new location and at least check the place out. They don’t call/text, send him a xmas/bday gift, or come get their child after he is proven innocent in court.

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• If Sojiro is your court appointed guardian someone would have come to inspect the living conditions before approving them this. A messy, dusty attic store room would not pass muster. He is being paid to do this, so making you work in his business without pay under the implied threat of being kicked out is at the very absolute least abuse of power, and more than likely against child labour laws.

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• We're supposed to feel sorry for the psychotic mass murdering lunatic, because he is young, and gets betrayed in the end. Even if most of the horrible deeds he does are his ideas, and even quite a few nasty things other people do come from his clearly deranged mind.

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• after the 50^th time or so maybe stop blaming adult? At least half the scum you deal with are other ‘young’ people, and a good chunk of the decent ones you reply on aren’t.

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• Disabling streaming was stupid given the game was already out for a while in japan and there is no shortage of Japanese videos out there, but automatic trophy screenshots? Now every single time it would give me a double ding whining about not being able to take the screenshot.

Maybe this one is entirely on Sony and there is no way for games to suppress these, but it is bloody annoying for me as a consumer.

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• I understand using odd fonts from a style point of view, but as a legally blind gamer those things are a royal pain in the arse.

Also please at the very least include all dialogue in your subtitles. There are chunks in cutscenes that simply have no subtitles at all. Not covering all background chatter is one thing, but this was just sloppy.

On a related note: If you’re going to put text bubbles on screen please put them in a fixed spot, and especially those on static screens should ideally go in the middle of the screen. There is no good reason not to do this since there is nothing else showing on these other than a generic background anyway, so they aren’t obscuring anything.

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• Seriously though, if that bloody cat tells me I cannot do anything other than go to bed one more time he’s sleeping outside from now on.

The anti top five for 2014

Here are what I consider some of the biggest stinkers from 2014. These aren't the worst/most broken games that came out as such, but those that failed to deliver on their promises.

Transformers Rise of the Dark Spark

This is the biggest let down of the year. I really enjoyed War for, and Fall of Cybertron, but this game decided to kill that series. It not only went the bayformers route, but the game itself lacks any flair what so ever. This is a boring, short, and uninspired remix using elements from the first 2 games with a sub par story.

Even previously established characters from the last game get a rewrite so they match up with the bloody awful film versions. What was done to Grimlock is a fine example of how little the publisher/new devs care about the subject matter (Just like Bay). This in stark contrast to the High Moon games that felt like a passion project.

Watch Dogs

I didn't have high expectations for this game, but Ubisoft did a lot worse than i could have expected. A poor pc port, with a lack lustre story, and a protagonist that frankly just isn't very likeable. 

The hacking isn't very good, and most of this game is assassins creed lite with cars. There is a lot more focus on cars, chases, combat and ambushes than actually using information/hacking in a meaningful way to achieve your goals. For me the most interesting parts are the gang hideouts, but even that gets very stale after a few.

Wayward Manor

For a game clearly billing itself as a Neil Gaiman project there was no excuse to half arse the voice overs by same. Instead he only voices a small section of the lines by his own character. This could have been a lot better with full vocals, and a bit more variety.

Assassins Creed Unity

After the rather fun Black Flag There was hope for this series, but with this abysmal instalment it is right back onto meh list. Ironically the more or less ignored Rogue is a good deal more amusing. Even so this year Ubisoft has again proven itself incapable of making good pc versions.

Elder Scrolls Online

Unlike many others I was willing to give this game a real shot. There was, and still is a hint of a decent game in there. It had issues during beta, but that is nothing new. Sadly a great many of these were not fixed by the time it went retail. 

There was no end of downtime (More or less daily), broken quests, and the cooperative play was extremely poorly implemented. No shared objectives, quest markers etc, for normal quests, and even the coop focused dungeons were not that much better.

It did not have personalized loot etc spawns, so you found yourself constantly competing with other players rather than working with them. Standing around looking to talk to an npc that had just walked off with another player for example was not uncommon.

The game also very clearly already has micro transaction hooks built in, and that is just not acceptable for a full price+monthly sub fee game.

I gave this game 3 months after launch to get its act together, but it did not manage to even make a start at doing so. That is a shame, because I like the world, characters, and even the story was actually pretty decent. 

Maybe it will be worth looking at again after going free to play, but that very much depends on how it is implemented. (I'm looking at you TOR.)

My 10 favourite games from 2014

These are the games I had the most fun with this year:

Tex Murphy Tesla Effect.

It has some flaws, but after years of waiting on a cliffhanger finally getting to progress this story I can overlook them. I hope there will be more FMV games in the future. Next time it would be nice if they put characters back into the explorable game world though. Things now felt a bit deadish.

Thief (214)

Perhaps not the sequel everyone wanted, but I had fun with this game. The stealth was pretty strong even if its hub areas, and constant back tracking let it down. (Especially with knocked out guards waking back up every time.)

Wolfenstein The New Order

I did not expect to like this game at all, but I was pleasantly surprised. The shooting is solid, and the level design offered you enough freedom to keep things interesting. You will have fun with this going in guns blazing, sneaky stabby, or a mix of both.

Kirby Triple Deluxe

I spent a lot of time playing this on 3ds xl. My only slight gripe was with their choice in locking levels behind collected sunstones. In every respect this is a good Kirby game with some new touches.

Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze

A very cute looking, but hard as nails platformer that had me cursing at the the TV. This is one of those games where you might die a lot, but you know it was entirely your own fault.

Book of Unwritten tales 2

I loved the original, and the sequel was more of that goodness. If silly point and click adventure games are your thing play these games.

The Wolf Among Us

I know this started in 2013, but the game/season completed this year. It started strong with some of telltales more classic adventure roots showing. Sadly those went overboard in favour of more action/qtes near the end. Even so the story was interesting enough to hold my attention.

Threes!

This simple little puzzle game has earned a permanent spot on my phone. It is great fun, and super addictive.

Bayonetta 2

A worthy successor to the original. Any worries about this releasing on the Wii U are utterly unfounded. In fact the Nintendo touches are nice, and the touch controls are great for novice action game players. This game is an over the top fun as hell action game that you should go buy right now. While you do so be sure to also pick up the wii u version of the first bayonetta

Mario Kart 8

An stellar new entry in a really fun line of games. The new hover sections are a welcome addition to this series. Even the DLC was good value for money, and felt entirely optional. The online is also pretty damn good.

Honourable mentions:

Legend of Grimrock 2

I really liked 1, but just haven't gotten around to seriously playing this one yet.

Hyrule Warriors

I had fun playing this in coop, but would never play it solo.

Tales of Xillia 2

A very direct welcome sequel to the first.

Transformers Rise of the dark spark

This is the 3rd game in a series that started with the surprisingly good Traonsformers: War for Cybertron.

There is some rather poor level design at times with Invisible walls all over the place, and objects you just can't jump over. Most obstacles are there, so that enemies can take cover. Something you still haven't learned to do  properly yourself. You can angle yourself to stand behind an object, but there is no stick to/active cover system like we now see in so many 3rd person shooters.

The fixed camera is a bit on the close side. Even for a 3rd person shooter things feel a tad claustrophobic at times, and it also plays silly buggers with scale. 

Rise's lock/gear box system makes exploring every nook and cranny far less tempting:
There are still audio logs, but more than once I had one of these spawn only after a certain event. You won't be finding any blueprints, since all weapon upgrades/unlocks now are random drops from said boxes. (With a very high duplicate ratio) The same goes for unlocking characters, skins, and consumables.

You get these gear boxes by levelling up via XP, and completing challenges. You can increase gained experience points with consumable temporary multiplier items, or applying a “hack”. These range from enemies that explode upon death to removing the game HUD.

Unlike previous games this does not seem to allow setting classic skins in the campaign, so you are stuck with the film stuff.

The story could have gotten interesting, but sadly never actually goes anywhere. Most of the game takes place in the past. There are no bridging events with the present. The story from the last game isn't expanded. Instead quite a few things are changed in a very poor attempt at cramming the film universe in. 
This results in large gaps/changes without an explanation: Why are we fighting cybertronian Mercenaries, and where did they come from? Where are the decepticons? Why are there no soldiers even inside high security military bases?

Rise of the dark spark screams sequel, but doesn't quite go for that good old “To be continued” text at the end.

Rise of the dark spark is also the shortest game in the series. Total game time clocked in steam is a very meager 6 hours for completing the campaign. That already includes quite a bit of idle time.

The gun play is more or less identical to Fall of Cybertron. I had some issues with triggers: Interacting with a certain object, or helping an npc would require wiggling my character around before the prompt showed up. I also died a few times by falling/clipping through the level.

All in all this is by far the weakest game in this series. It feels rushed, and lacks any passion. Some segments feel like they have been poorly copied from earlier installments. Certainly avoid it at the current price. Even if you are a major fan wait until it is a fiver at most. 

On a more personal note: The changes made to Grimlock are a bloody waste. The character no longer speaks, but just roars/groans. For some obscure reason he has been made a good chunk larger (Actually so has Bumblebee), and they replaced his sword with a glorified club. Now he is nothing more than a overgrown mute brute without any personality what so ever. 
These new designs look wrong to me. Even the T Rex form doesn't actually impose. It has a faux organic look that just detracts from the overall robot aesthetic. Same goes for the new robots forms. With the old models you could clearly see what vehicle each of them transformed into. There was some “logic” to the designs that these new ones miss.

Hey Optimus: Where did your trailer go anyway?

Elder Scrolls Online:Not quite there, but certainly getting closer.

After the last 2 beta weekends before launch I feel comfortable putting my thoughts on Elder Scrolls online out there.

First things first: This is based on the beta events. There is a chance that things might still change before the game goes live. Even after that MMO's often go trough many changes over their lifetime

There is a pretty well worked out Elder Scrolls atmosphere in this title. The world design is decent, and so are the enemies.

Now those are big mushrooms!

The game also looks good. Initial screenshots etc do not really do it justice. It has a proper day/night cycle, and weather effects. (Although ff14 ARR does thunderstorms, and rain better imho.)

Taking my summon for a walk :-)

Even the story/quests are interesting. There are enough varied side quests, and choices offered to you. This ranges from direct dialogue choices, or optional actions, and alternate paths.

The 3 factions have their own starting areas that each have their own quests, look, and feel.
This makes trying alternate characters more interesting, since you won't be doing the exact same thing every time. (Apart from the initial tutorial segment, and the overlap in main story/guilds)

The voice acting is also quite good, and the same goes for the general sound design. As usual a larger voice cast would have been nice, and they probably could have had some interns etc do minor npcs.

Where things start going wrong is with how the MMO aspects are handled. For starters you have shared loot, and quest objectives. For example: There will be quests that have you gathering a specific herb, but so will several other players. As a result everyone will be "fighting" over the same harvesting points. The same will happen with quest vital npcs, and mobs.
 Now this isn't a new problem as such, but given other games have solved this issue with personalized loot/drops there is no good excuse to do it this way anymore.

Everyone waiting on a boss respawn

The party system still needs some serious work. There is no real party based quest progress. In other words every member only tracks their own current objective/progress. In the covenant starting area for example there is a side quest that has players follow directions on a treasure map. This could have been handled a lot better by showing the next objective for everyone in the party once one of us found that spot.

For me random other players aren't really providing that living world feel. Mostly everyone is just doing their own thing, but you aren't working together towards completing common goals.
Maybe I have been spoiled by FF14, Guild Wars 2, and other games with dynamic events/fates etc. 

Another major bugbear for me was no collision with mobs. In other words you'd clip trough enemies, and they went trough you. This made melee combat in first person view tricky, and outright annoying at times.
 Thankfully they seem to be fixing this. You cannot just walk trough enemies anymore, but there is still some clipping.

On a more personal level I feel there are not enough classes. I myself rather missed a ranger/non magic ranged class. Universal quick potion keys would also make things easier. Currently ESO offers just one universal consumable quickbar slot. That interface could have been better as well by simply offering drag&drop functionality. (Now you have to open a special tab in your inventory, but this game already has a context menu that just lacks the quickslot option outside that one specific tab.)

Elder Scrolls Online also suffers from the usual money sinks: Fees for fast travel, degrading gear with high repair costs, even faster gear degradation on death, and absolutely absurdly low returns for selling to npc vendors.
Especially early on your best option is junking any damaged gear, and replacing it with random drops.

Reviving others is also made needlessly annoying. You need specific items to revive, and as such nobody will revive a random stranger in the field. This is a bad system. You want people helping each other out. Apart from everything else this generates a more pleasant atmosphere, and players are more inclined to take a risk helping others.
As it is now random players just get in your way, and are a possible source of annoyance that keep you from finishing your quest.

I'm also not a impressed with the chosen payment model. Between full game price, sub fees, CE/preorder bonuses, AND a rumoured cash shop Bethesda is rather overdoing it on the cashing in front.
Locking an entire race behind a special edition, is also just outright disgusting.

I would have been a lot more tempted by this game had it either gone the GW1/2 route (Base game+cash shop/expansions, but no subs), or the current ff14 ARR model (Game costs little more than a month sub fee).

In the end I had fun playing the beta. It was nice seeing all the fixes, and general improvements between versions. The Elder Scrolls Online is a pretty solid game, but it's current business model very much puts me off. One could also argue that it would make a better sp/coop game, than an mmo.

Windows Phone 8, not quite there yet.

After having used a Windows Phone 8 device for a while, there are a few things that should be pointed out. Please note that these are my observations based on personal use. They have a focus on using the built in magnifier since that was one of the main reasons for trying the platform. For more general information, benchmarks and so on there are several other/better sources.

The magnifier works quite well, and so far has not had any real negative impact on device performance. It's system level, and I haven't found any apps so far where it will not work.

There are however some issues, and a few are pretty annoying.
Turning zoom on requires a double tap with 2 fingers, and you move the zoomed in view by 2 finger scrolling. This works in empty spaces, but is a real pain on clickable areas such as web pages, live tiles or icons.. (Not unlike scrolling trough a zoomed in website on your phone/tablet can result in unwanted clicks.)

Scrolling trough the onscreen keyboard looking for a special character for example can be quite frustrating.

Trying to scroll trough the address book or call history can result in unwanted "clicks'. Call history has several instant call icons on the left hand side that are easy to hit by accident while scrolling trough the list zoomed in. I've already made several ghost calls this way.

A possible solution for this would be some kind of confirmation screen/prompt before calling option while zoom is active.

I'd also like an option for turning off all auto complete/speed dial like functions on the dialler screen. If I want to call someone in my phone book I'd use that screen rather than the dialler anyway.

A really annoying problem for me is that at present I cannot end calls trough the phone directly. The system fades out the screen when held close to your head during a call. This is a bit of a problem since with my eyes I hold the phone near my face so i can see the buttons. Doing so turns off the screen, and as such I cannot do anything on the touch screen.

There is also a high contrast mode that is pretty decent. I stopped using it myself because the normal keyboard is easier on my eyes.

High contrast mode keyboard

Default keyboard in dark theme

The built in navigation on my non Nokia handset isn't  bad, but it lacks some features. The first gripe it is stuck in portrait mode. Trying to type out addresses on the crunched up keyboard is far from ideal.

Crunched up keyboard

The system is also pretty dumb. You have to be very specific in asking for direction. Even when the system can find alternatives, it will not offer them to you. Instead it just pops up an error. (Strangely enough using nicknames, or slang for some cities does give you directions.)

Error given after hitting enter.

 It also doesn't take location into account when providing directions. So just asking for an address 2 blocks away might get results for a street with the same name in another city.

The search button at the moment is pretty useless. It is never contextual search, and always just opens up a Bing window. Bing isn't bad, but it is not very good for local search results around here.

The button itself would be a lot more useful if it would provide context specific search options. Like search in store, trough contacts, on page, in messages etc. You also cannot turn it off, or even have it temporarily disabled during say full screen media/stream playback.

Another missing feature is an easy way to check for app updates. There is as far as I know no way to just check for updates on all installed apps. The only way I've found is going into the page for every one in turn and click an update button if one is available. Even Microsoft apps like skype will not pop anything if you check for phone updates.

The OS also lacks a way to quickly close open programs manually. Holding down the back button shows what is currently running, but you have no way to directly end tasks from this screen. The OS wants you to back out of an application using that button.
 The browser is a good example of why this isn't ideal: After any amount of time on the web you'd have to back trough a whole slew of sites, possible log ins etc just to close the browser. (A work around is hitting start, opening the browser again, and then closing it by hitting back once.)

The last thing I wanted to talk about is that stock browser. It works well enough, but has limited media support. There is no forward button, and no speed dial like on most browsers these days. The available settings are pretty limited as well. It will load the last shown page on startup, and closing it as mentioned has quirks.
You can set it to show desktop site versions, but with neither flash or Silverlight support these will more often than not have issues.
At the moment non of the other major browsers are available on windows phone 8, so you are stuck with a rather limited and slower browser.

Note: I've had several issues listening to audio books. There are bits missing, and transitions aren't smooth. These files are fine on PC, but I do not know if it's my handset, the default player, some SD card issue etc.

My views on ME3 multiplayer

Granted I'm a bit late to the party, but I thought it was worth doing this little write up of my experience with Mass Effect 3's multiplayer.

In general it is pretty decent 4 player horde mode. During each match you are given some objectives to complete while dealing with waves. Each mission consists of 10 waves, followed by a 11th extraction wave. Completing that last wave with your full squad intact at the extraction point gives you bonuses.
Failing will grant you some rewards, but obivously far fewer.

You gain galactic readiness bonuses, XP and credits. You need those credits to buy booster packs. These are like packs of trading cards in that you buy them without knowing their content. There are several tiers, and the more expensive ones have a guaranteed 1 unlock of a specific grade. So say a premium spectre pack will have at least one rare for example.

 These packs can contain: character unlocks, character training, consumables such as healing packs, self revives, rocket launcher, special ammo, weapons etc.

Gear such as special ammo, melee damage boosts or shield boosters are equipped manually in one of 4 slots only for the next match. Consumables like thermal clip packs will stay in your inventory until you use them.

There are several classes, and characters to unlock in each class. Different characters/races will have unique skills. So my human engineer will play slightly different from a Vorcha hunter even though they are both in the engineer class.

You level up the class instead of each character in that class. This can make trying out new characters a lot more tempting since it takes away the grind. However once you max out the class at level 20 there is the option to “promote” that class. This gives you some war assets in the single player game, ups your N7 multiplayer rank by 10 points, and resets the class back to 1. (You do keep the unlocks for that class though.)

On the downside the game is pretty lag sensitive. I've had matches where I could not climb ladders, take cover or interact with the level and mobs at all.

Normally the in mission objectives play an audio briefing, but those also do not always trigger.

At the end of each match you see a results screen, but that will not stay up if the hosting player quits.

The lobby system is also mildly quirky in that it offers you options to directly apply level ups, or buy new packs from the store between matches. That is a nice feature, except it does not actually wait for all party members having clicked their ready buttons before starting a new match.

My main gripe with Mass effect 3 in general also pops back up here: There are far too many actions hard tied onto a single button. I would dearly love to bind sprint, cover and interact to unique keys. Trying to revive a downed party member laying right next to cover is an exercise in frustration.

A rather messy solution can be found here: https://masseffect.livejournal.com/1441515.html  As mentioned on the page, there is a small risk of getting banned using this in multiplayer. Having said that, I cannot believe EA woould do so/get away with that.

Mind your language

Microsoft added a new "feature" to the xbox 360. The console now auto detects your region based on connection data, and uses this to force a specific region+ UI language on users. 

Most users do not mind the region part, but there are quite a few that do mind the forced language setting. Even more so, because the machine itself has very specific language, and region settings.

People living/working abroad, taking their xbox on holiday, multi language households/countries, or those that just outright prefer a specific language. (Some localisation are quite poor.)

The implementation is also rather poor: Your xbox 360 will start showing a mix of 2 or more language. There are also countries with more than one official main language, where only one is available. For example: Some Belgian users are forced into French, but a good chunk of the country speaks Dutch. (That's not counting the German segment etc.)

This issue seems to be xbox branded service wide, and I'm not sure how this is on WP8 smart phones.

I ran into this issue myself after buying some direct download games. I had not noticed it earlier, because my 360 normally direct boots into the inserted game disc.

One of the threads on their official forums about the issue: http://forums.xbox.com/xbox_forums/xbox_feedback/f/2604/t/370546.aspx