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

@Lavalera that's fair enough. I've found GaaS stuff to be like that in the past. It's not just GaaS though, I've played plenty of games with boring grindy and repetitive parts. I normally have to love the game a lot and want to 100% it if I'm going to put myself through that though!

I'll be happy if the campaign is good all the way through. It's how I play my games anyway. Play them once and don't play them again unless I really want to.

I think I'm Gona vote for September too, it's actually a game I own because my game pass will be running out this month and I might leave it a while before I resub. My vote is for Perfect Dark

@ralphdibny

Vote (September): What Remains of Edith Finch

I was late for this month.

@Banjo- sweet added. I think I played WRoEF for the PS game club a few years back. It was decent and worth playing. I've since "played" it again with a guide on Xbox for the achievements when they did one of those 10,000 GS punch cards

@ralphdibny I've just done the 1st mission, introducing some of the characters with the major action sequence on the golden gate bridge (not too much of a spoiler, was on all of the promo videos I think). Early days but yeah, not going to lie, I really enjoyed it. Very on rails but lots of fun and well paced. Ms Marvel seems like fun character and nice to see the other avengers framed through her view.
I like the 2d beat em up comparison, I kind of felt that way playing yakuza 0. Combat hasn't been as involved here yet but still very early. Overall, pretty positive on the first main set piece!
For next month, I'll vote for
ori and the will of the wisps.
I must be masochist as I only played blind forrest recently and easily died more in that game than all of elden ring (I only played on normal too).

@ralphdibny I haven't played it but now it's optimised for the current generation, it seems a good time before it leaves Game Pass. There are some many Game Pass I'd like to play and not enough time, I don't know if it's the same for the others but that's better than having nothing interesting to play.

@R1spam I died more in Elden ring (not done yet) but ori is a challeging game for sure especially in the running sequences. Will of the wisps is absolutely fantastic game! Much much better imo and the first game I played once I subscribed to GP.

@Banjo- I think thats the same for most of us. My play later list is always around 40ish games on gamepass alone. And besides those i also have a lot of games i bought i want to play. But yeah it's always better to have to much you want to play than have nothing interesting at all

@Lavalera Absolutely. I try to play third-party games first because they leave Game Pass eventually. I also buy and play new games, e.g., Sonic Origins. It makes me wonder why some people complain when there aren't many new additions in a specific month.

@Banjo- Probably since those people are very limited in the games they like or want to play. Some people only care about the big AAA games. For them gamepass isn't really something they can enjoy. I actually love the amount of AA/indie games we are getting. It opens up a library of games i might not have found if i didn't have gamepass. And when i don't like a game that's on gamepass i don't really mind since i didn't pay extra for it.

@Balta666 that's great to hear as I enjoyed the first game a lot, I had to have done to keep going through like 100s of deaths! I do love me a good metroidvania though, was buzzing when I saw silksong would be on gamepass.

I found Avengers to be fine didnt think the enemies were at all interesting or the combat interesting or the level design or the game design. The story was ok 5/10

I think Guardians of the Galaxy was a much better game

its one of those games where if you hear its bad and its actually not bad its a nice surprise where as highly rated games generally have to exceed expectations

@Lavalera Exactly, the kind of games you don't know if you'll love and finish or hate and give up.

@R1spam ooo ori, nice choice. I absolutely loved the first one. Easily one of my favourite Xbox games and certainly the best Xbox 2D platformer!

I've progressed some more in Avengers and hit some kind of multiplayer-y style levels now, stuff like a control the point objective -_-. I am sure it's just to get you ready for the GaaS bits later on.

I've also found many somewhat confusing mission chains aside from the main and DLC campaigns. Not really sure about that, I played a Hulk one which was pretty boring (infiltrate and smash facility). I'm beginning to think that the side stuff is the source of the criticisms of monotony.

I think I'm Gona crack on with the main campaign and maybe revisit the side stuff and see how I get on with it at a later date.

I went from thinking this game was as good as Spider-Man if you ignore the online portion to that online bit slowly invading the single player in terms of its content and game play. I think it doesn't help that I don't know what is the campaign and what's not because these inorganic parts are introduced organically as you play. I think I'll just need to see how I get on....

On a positive note, I know this game is developed by Crystal Dynamics and a lot of it is reminding me pleasantly of the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy. Looking forward to digging deeper into this game tomorrow night if I can!

Soooo, cracking on with the main campaign and I've found I'm well over half way through at "Step" (whatever that means) 16 out of 23. So far, there has been no more levels comparable in quality to the first couple.

There has been a couple similar, I suppose Banner and Kamala going off somewhere uneventful and also Banner and Kamala going off to find Tony which ends in an aesthetically pleasing sequence at the very least. I do feel like the amount of "control point" (so far 2) and just random kill all the bad guy levels with very few set pieces is kind of making me unable to recognise the better parts that I just described. Not sure if that makes sense, it's like those better sequences are made less remarkable by the filler around it.

Also this game seems short, the main campaign part of it at least. I've only found 2 Avengers so far (as well as a very welcome cameo) so I am guessing the pace will pick up pretty quickly in the final 7 "steps" of this campaign as I have 2 or 3 more Avengers to find.

Loving this. Played online a bit but now on with the campaign. It’s one of that’s games that’s just really great fun to play. A real blast. It’s got a lot of niggly glitches which is a pain but overall I’m enjoying the experience.

After doing a couple more of the lame missions including a proper capture the flag -_-, I've got back into an actual story mission and now I've recruited Black Widow! Probably not gonna play with them tonight but may carry on tomorrow if I get time.

Getting mixed info on how many "steps" there are. Some places peg it at 23 and others at 31. This game is proper confusing in terms of how the missions are structured. At least I can find the main campaign portions, just follow the A logo!

I guess the lack of information and guides for each set of missions either means it confuses other people, not enough people care to make comprehensive guides/info available or missions are so run of the mill that they don't need guides. I don't really use guides for gameplay but I like to check the contents page and other lists to see how far I've progressed and what other things there are to do. Unfortunately I've yet to find a full list detailing every "step" in every "mission chain"

@jarvismp nice one, did you play with randoms or friends online? What glitches have you encountered? I don't think I've had any.

The menu/war table/mission chain stuff is a lot for me to wrap my head around so I decided to just focus on the campaign for now and see where I'm at either at the end or after I've done the 3 DLCs.

I've played a bit more and hit more of the gaas stuff. When this game let's you play and sets up big set pieces at you, it's cracking. When it's throwing gear you couldn't give a toss about at you, showing you how you grind for currency and skins, its so bad. I can only imagine how crap it was for the devs being forced to shoehorn all that gaas rubbish into what could be a great single player game. Hopefully embracer let's crystal dynamic make a single player game and not expect them to sell 15 million copies to mark it as a success!

@R1spam oh yeah, the gear thing is really tedious and some of those more open levels make it harder to focus on. I've opted to not go for full exploration. I hit Up on the D pad to scan for gear periodically and head to any marker that's not the objective and that's about as far as I go with it.