Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club Double Bill - Banjo-Kazooie / Solar Ash (Apr)

For me the worst part is when you land a jump from high and to avoid damage and lost time you need to do a front flip. It is just super odd on the eyes ... That is the reason why I will never be a fan of VR too

Mirrors Edge - I remember finding it HIGHLY frustrating back in the day, and really wanted to like it. May give it another twirl. Still hacking away at Dragon Age Builders 2 and ME:SE (halfway through ME2) ...but have also been head-turned by Horizon on PC for a bit too - this is the evils of having time off, I try to play ALL the games!

@antifyre I'm glad that I'm not the only one who found the game to be very frustrating.

I saw that you were playing Horizon Zero Dawn on PC when I was playing on my Xbox One and thought it was so weird seeing that name pop up on an Xbox console, lol.

@themightyant @Ryu_Niiyama nice. There's actually one New 2DS XL that has escaped me because it was NA exclusive and that was the Hylian Shield one. I wanted that so badly but they never saw fit to release it here in the UK 😭😅

@LtSarge ha! I didn’t know it did that - I’d say it looked weird alright. Having to go back to work this week, having a touch of the ‘controller withdrawals’ so I am…..

I started Mirrors Edge and I am finding it sooo frustrating! I just finished chapter 2.
I died so many times. I couldn't figure out where to go until I looked up a walkthrough, and as others have said, had to use a system I had totally forgotten about as it was in the Tutorial and hadn't used since. I died from jumping into barbed wire yet I could get a few shots with a shot gun and I'd be ok. I don't know if I can continue playing as I'm really not enjoying.

I seem to be the odd one out that I'm actually really enjoying Mirror's Edge. Sure the combat is pretty dodgy, the controls take a bit if getting used to and I'm constantly dying, but none of that seems to be bothering me at all. I haven't really had any issues with working out where to go, but maybe just been lucky. Just finished chapter 7 so pretty close to the end I think.

@dmcc0 I said this before but I think Mirror's Edge is fundamentally a good game, it's just not good for a first playthrough because it expects you to already be good at the game. Which no one is on their first go. It requires playing through multiple times in order to fully enjoy the game and that's not something video games should do.

I’ll jump in on next month’s game. It didn’t take long for me to remember why I didn’t finish (or make it further than like 10 minutes into) Mirror’s Edge.

Not enjoyable for me, personally.

Finished Mirror's Edge over the weekend and I have to say, contrary to what most have said on here, I actually really enjoyed it despite some pretty big flaws.

Firstly, unlike most games, your character doesn't really gain any abilities as the game progresses (which is fine) so they pretty much throw everything at you in the tutorial and then don't use some of those abilities until much later in the games. I found that I'd forgotten about most of the combat stuff by the time I felt I needed to use it, and some of the more advanced platforming moves like wall running-jump combos isn't really used until later in the game so might've been easier to introduce, or at least remind the player, of those moves as they are needed. As far as I could tell there wasn't even a way to go back and refresh your memory on those things either which would've helped. Maybe the idea was that you avoid the combat? I did try that where possible, but would be really difficult on some of the later levels. I think there was an achievement for completing without firing a gun, so would be interesting to try that (I'm probably not going to though😂).

Secondly - the checkpoints. I died a lot. The fiddly controls and the 1st person view made some of the platforming sections pretty tricky - I was plummeting to my death frequently after completing a difficult section only to miss a pretty simple jump because the controls didn't register for whatever reason and I'd just drop off the edge of a building instead of jumping to the next rooftop and have to repeat the whole thing again. I think I can see what they were trying to do with this - keep repeating a section until you can nail it in one flowing sequence - but it doesn't really work when the controls are so inconsistent and just ends up being frustrating when it shouldn't.

As I mentioned before, I didn't really have any issues knowing where to go like others had. The Look (B) button seemed to be fine for giving the general direction you needed to go in most cases and it was just a case of working out how to get there.

Also, the ending. I won't spoil it for anyone, but as end-game battles go, it was the most anticlimactic ending I've ever experienced in a game. Admittedly I was playing on easy, so no idea if it's different depending on the difficulty, but I was sitting there expecting something else to happen...and it didn't.

As for next month's game, I'm not going to vote this time. My Game Pass sub expires in a few days and I'm not renewing for now so that I can clear some of the ever-growing backlog. Will definitely keep an eye on the topic though as I'll likely re-subscribe later in the year and, who knows, something in the backlog might get picked.

@dmcc0 Reading your thoughts makes it sound like you didn't enjoy the game at all. But I get it, it could be enjoyable for some people right from the start and not at all for others. I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

I think I'm going to skip next month as well because my Game Pass has also run out and it seems like The Forgotten City is leading, which is a game that I'm not that interested in playing anyway. So hopefully people will enjoy that game. I'll definitely be following this thread and reading people's impressions though. Might just encourage me to play it in the future!

@LtSarge Yeah, I kind of enjoyed it despite all the flaws 😂

@Dusk_Actual heya, Wana be added to the tag list for this thread?

@dmcc0 good to see you enjoyed Mirrors Edge! I know it's not in the spirit of the thread but I chose not to read the negative posts about it. Only because I didn't want it to colour my initial playthrough of the game. I will go back and read it all once I've started and/or finished it though. To be fair, I probably should do that with games that get overly positive reactions too lol as I always end up being underwhelmed by hyped games 😅

I am glad people are posting honestly about the game though. Me choosing to not read the posts is not at all supposed to be a slight against the posters. I just want to go in blind on some things and I will get back here and read the posts properly once I've finished the game!

@ralphdibny yes please!

@Dusk_Actual done 👍 and welcome 😃

I played through all of Mirrors Edge today. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it. It was ok. I didn't have any issues working out where to go, pressing B for directions worked for me even if it did end up pointing me off the edge of a building during a run causing me to fall for an unnecessarily long time before dying.

I almost felt like giving up half way through the game due to lack of interest. The brevity of the game is what kept me going, I'd done half of it in a couple hours so I thought I might as well see it out.

It's kind of a weird game. I guess it reminds me of Clustertruck but a lot easier and less fun. It looks pretty awful too but maybe that's just because it's a 360 game. Very over saturated, bit hard on the eyes. I wasn't really expecting the animated cut scenes either.

I duno really, the platforming was serviceable. Which is a shame for a game that is an actual platformer. I've played a lot better first person platformers including games that aren't even platformers such as Doom Eternal, Half Life 2, Duke Nukem 3D.

Looks like they chucked a Swingline Stapler (Office Space reference?) Into the final level too...

It's not the same one from the movie but it is a Swingline. I guess somebody just got told to put the reference in and looked up a Swingline on Google and modelled it.

I was keen to play the second Mirrors Edge, less so now. I probably will get around to it at some point. This game was OK but it didn't blow me away or anything. It wasn't terrible either, just a bit boring at times.

@ralphdibny pretty much what I thought about it. I was never frustated but bored at times. The visuals were fine but some things were hard on the eyes due to the first person perspective

The best idea posted on this thread is the idea of playing co-operative games because it's technically the only advantage of a club that encourages to play one game at a time. Even sharing impressions about the selected game can be done a posteriori. That idea got unsociable replies like "If I play with someone else, I'll have to book specific times to play with that person". I just wanted to share my opinion which is just that, my opinion.

I might play the game of the month although I didn't vote it and I see that most people didn't even like it.

@Banjo- we can try sometime but it is a fact that it is not that easy to coordenate timings with people all over the world with different time zones and live schedules.

@Banjo- it's a good idea for sure. Probably not something I am going to do though because I tend to keep my online stuff quite private. But if a co op game gets chosen then I'm sure people will be up for playing together.

I think generally the other benefits of game club are that 1. Backlog games might come up and encourage people to tick it off. 2. Games might get chosen that are outside people's comfort zones (i.e. I have never played and always avoided Metroidvanias. Ori and the Will of the Wisps completely changed that for me!) I'm sure other people will have some reasons that I've failed to think of right now but it's not like we need to justify the thread itself. It's just a nice thing to have.

Of course we can just play any games and talk about them on the forums but the Game Club is just a bit of fun really. Gives us something to do, share and be a part of. Everyone takes different things from it which is why there's a lot of discussion about what different people like about game club.

Do you Wana be added to the tag list for this thread? You are more than welcome!