Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Rise of the Tomb Raider (May)

@Balta666 cheers, it's all good, I should be able to do it! Cheers again

@ralphdibny my votes are for Perfect Dark, Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Bugsnax

@ralphdibny I'll go with Gears of War.

@NintendoByNature I am thinking of playing soul hackers 2 at some point but one thing we try on the game club is to keep games under 20h until credits as to most can have the opportunity to finish the game in a month time.

@Balta666 oh shoot that's my bad. Relatively newer here and I can fully understand that.
@ralphdibny looks like gears of War from me then. My original post is now edited.

@NintendoByNature no worries! Cheers

@Balta666 @NintendoByNature cheers both! Votes added.

The game length is one of our "soft" rules. You can suggest longer games but they normally don't get voted in anyway. And if they did, they would cut the amount of people able to play due to jobs, kids, real life etc. But I am happy to stick them up there and see how they get on!

It being in game pass or at the very least, a recent GwG is another "soft" rule. Again, it's for accessibility reasons as a larger user base has access to it. But I'd take votes for non Game Pass games still. I'd only ever change this to a "hard" rule if people were feeling pressured to buy games they weren't going to buy anyway. Obviously it's not come up but if it did then I'd want people to tell me so I can make the change.

I think the only "hard" rule we have is that it can't be a game we've already played. The list is in post #1. The reason is that we only do 12 games a year. Which isn't a lot in the scheme of things so if we start repeating games then it becomes a bit pointless. I'd only change this rule if the GC died due to lack of contribution and was then restarted by the next generation and they required me to revive the thread/change the thread title every month.

I really Wana play Perfect Dark and Ninja Garden Sigma!

I mean, I know I could vote for them but I do worry that I won't actually have time to play them. Still got a lot of stuff going on in my life and it's hard to juggle everything. But I do have some immediate tasks that are pending!

First things first. Got a lot of eBay stuff to relist today with the 70% off sellers fees deal active.

Second things second. I have to sort out my two Wii U's and 5 3DS's before the e shop closes on Monday. I gotta buy games on the main Wii U and my New 3DS XL. I gota run through NL's list of everything to do before shutdown on both those consoles and my partner's New 2DS XL. I gota hack the second Wii U, my New 2DS XL and my original 3DS. And I'll probably just leave my 2DS 🤷‍♂️, maybe I'll do the NL list to it if it's not too long a process.

And Third things Third! I gotta play Bad Company 1&2 on game pass before they get removed later in April!!

Edit: oh yeah, fourth things fourth, I gotta test out a couple of scart switches I bought from eBay a couple weeks ago to make sure they work ok. I might do that now actually and get it ticked off my list.

Sorry bit of a ramble about my To Do list there, but sometimes I just need to write it down so I can get a plan clear in my head 😅

Edit: lol I just realised it got autocorrected to Ninja Garden Sigma. Me thinks that Koei Tecmo are missing out on a spin off idea there!

Perhaps a Collab with the lawn mowing simulator Devs??!

Ninja Garden Sigmalator!!

@ralphdibny I chuckled at "ninja garden sigmalator"... You need to pay for a screen cleaning from the coffee spread

Also good luck on the 3ds and Wii U endevours. I buy almost exclusive physical on those so I keep looking at some stores but it is not easy. As for digital only I will stick with high seas now that the markets are closed

@ralphdibny Is it just me or is it better to just buy the original versions of the Ninja Gaiden games from the Microsoft Store? Barring Ninja Gaiden 3, both Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2 are considered the "superior" versions over the Sigma versions.

I think I got Ninja Gaiden for $8 and Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge I got as part of Games With Gold (so if you have been keeping up with that over the years, you may have it in your Games With Gold list too).

@Balta666 haha I like to make at least one person spit out their coffee every day and you are my first and probably only for today so thank you 😅. I did make someone else choke on a rock cake not long after you posted though, just too bad she was eating a rock cake and not sipping her coffee instead 😅

And cheers, yep I'll be hitting the high seas as well. I think I'm Gona try and do the hacking this weekend too so I can see how it all works then I'll probably decide what exactly I want to buy if it's too difficult to do on a hacked console.

@GamingFan4Lyf I've got no idea tbh mate! I haven't actually played any ninja Gaiden games so I don't know a lot about them and their version differences. I seem to remember there being a bit of an uproar about the Sigma versions being included in the collection originally so I doubt you are alone in thinking that. I think they said they'd lost the source code for everything except the sigma versions or something.

I suspect ninja Gaiden 3 was before my time with Xbox. I think I got my Xbox one in in November '19 and subbed to everything a little while after that!

@Balta666 all my 3DS/Wii U eShop shenanigans are done!

I wrote a retrospective post over on NintendoLife if either you or anyone else fancies reading it. Though I won't blame anyone for not reading it as it's very long!!

I was planning to just write about my experience doing the eShop nonsense over the weekend but I ended up remembering a lot of stuff that I decided to write down. Personal journey malarkey, between my 3DS and I 🧡😂

So I did not finish Atomic Heart but I have also had my fill of the game.

I enjoyed the time I spent with it.

The art direction is very good. The setting and plot, albeit a tad controversial at first glance, was interesting. The story had a good "exposing the dystopia" vibe to it that I like. I actually enjoyed some of the back and forth before the main character and the glove (and the upgrade machines) - sure, some things felt flat, but I kind of liked that the main character verbalized a lot of the frustrations with some of the more annoying aspects of the game.

The game certainly wasn't lacking in self-awareness.

But, I just got to a certain point where I just felt like I saw everything I wanted to see and was satisfied not continuing through to the end out of fear that the flaws would tarnish the good experience I was having. I felt like, anymore of the obvious game-length padding would have become annoying. I felt like some of the gripes I had with enemies in the game would only get worse.

Combat was a little finicky at first, but I got used to it. I gave up on trying to save up for new weapons and solely focused on crafting ammo, upgrades, and canisters. Even still, I felt like combat was only going to get more complicated as I would have to deal with stronger enemies.

I basically left on a high note. I do hope that the developer is able to keep the lights on as I would like to see what else they accomplish. Atomic Heart wasn't a perfect game, but it's clear that the developers have talent that can only grow with time.

@GamingFan4Lyf interestingly after one hour or so I never shot a single bullet as I was only using melee and the shock blaster. The fact guns take so much space in the inventory plus you would need to carry ammo taking even more space led me to avoid it completly.

@Balta666 True, but the difference between 1 - 3 shotgun blasts vs 3 - 6 swings of a melee weapon makes the difference when there are tons of enemies to deal with.

Just checking in again, Return to Monkey Island is still the favourite for April with two votes!

@ralphdibny what games do we have votes in thus far?

@NintendoByNature Currently, all with one vote are Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, perfect dark, ninja Gaiden sigma, maneater, gears of war, crackdown 3 and bugsnax.

Return to monkey island has 2 votes.

You can click my signature below ⬇️ which will take you to this month's post which has the list of games and who has voted for what (near the bottom of the post) ⬇️

@ralphdibny ok cool. I'll take a look!

@NintendoByNature oh yeah, if you suggest a game that's not on the list then I'll add it to the list and people can vote for it. Periodically I'll do a cull on the list as well and delete stuff that hasn't been voted for a while or is a sequel we haven't played in the club, it's been removed from game pass or it's just a long game