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

@LtSarge weird, when I've checked on the console it's saying I dont own American Nightmare.
I do have the 2 DLC packs so if I want more after those I may pick the expansion up - its only £6.

Alan Wake month sounds good to me, people can play whichever add ons they fancy or just the base game.

@LtSarge game pass comings and goings can be a bit random sometimes even in terms of first party and/or console exclusives. The bulk of it seems to be there though. I wouldn't be surprised either way whether it turned up on the service or not.

But yeah defo make April the Alan Wake month, there's no rules that say you can't play DLC, spin offs, sequels, prequels, interquels or sidequels in the same month. I like to play the DLC straight after the game if it's all available to me for sure. I'd have done it on a game club game too if it had come up already. I was sort of planning to play Quantum Break and Control after this anyway even if the loss of American Nightmare stings a little bit.

I'm keen to get that Mac Bootcamp going now because I'm really put off by the true ending being locked behind DLC and I'm not going to pay for DLC on a game I don't own.

I'm not sure if I'll update the thread titled early or not but crack on with the game if you want to! It's only a few days left until April anyway!

@Mr-Fuggles777 @ralphdibny Sounds good guys! And yeah, I think it'll be easier to just let people play what they want instead of forcing everyone to play the base game, the DLCs and the stand-alone expansion. I'm definitely giving the main game a go later today. Very excited to finally experience Alan Wake after hearing so many great things about it!

What difficulty is everyone going for? Checking my achievements I completed it on Hard last time (10 years ago!!! Doesn't time fly).
I'm not sure whether to go for a more casual run and grab the achievements I missed or go for the Nightmare difficulty achievement. - I'm a little sceptical after this months Titanfall difficulty shenanigans lol.

@Mr-Fuggles777 haha, I'm still replaying Titanfall 2 very slowly. Getting one achievement each day and turning it off to claim 50 reward points (I played it on PS4 before)

Definitely will play Alan Wake on "Normal" or "Intermediate" or whatever this game calls it. It's my go to difficulty. I rarely have much desire to ramp up the difficulty nor to coast along on easy mode on any game.

I did replay Shadow of the Tomb Raider on its hardest difficulty actually but only because I had two trophies left to get before the platinum and they were difficulty related. I just blitzed through the story missions on new game + with all my upgraded skills and skipped as many cut scenes as possible. I don't think I would have fancied getting 100% exploration and doing all the tombs/collectibles if I was playing on its hardest mode from the get go.

@ralphdibny I need to be careful because I got slightly addicted to achievement hunting and it ruined my enjoyment of gaming - to the point I sold my Xb1.
I'm trying to find the balance between earning a few Internet points and enjoying the games I play - although it already impacted my enjoying of Titanfall because I had to grind for that hard so I'm going to take that as lesson learned.
The stupid leader board on the achievement screen doesn't help though

@Mr-Fuggles777 ahh I know what you mean, it can be hard to strike a balance! I'm more into them on PS4, mainly because I've owned working PS3 and 4 consoles collectively for longer than I've owned working 360 and One consoles. Also any real life friends I have that game are mainly on PS4/5 or are multiplatform like myself.

But, I only go for the Platinums these days if they either happen naturally as is the case in Spider-Man, Crash Team Racing and various telltale games or if there's only a few trophies left to get by the time the game comes to its natural end like in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I'll also make more of an effort to pick up trophies along the way if I've heard the game is an "easy Platinum" as was the case recently with Concrete Genie.

That being said, I do like the albeit small monetary reward you gain from Xbox achievements of ~4p/achievement which is more if there is a weekly reward punch card, game pass quest or a 10000 points for 10000 gamerscore punch card like they had in January.

So I just finished episode one of Alan Wake and so far this game is very interesting. Even this early on I can see why it was so highly regarded back in the day; the episodic format and style of narrative makes it feel like you are watching a TV show, which was something unique for 2010. I also had no idea that this game had horror elements, which is great since I've been craving some horror recently. The gameplay is very unique as well, the fact that you have to shine your torch on an enemy before being able to shoot it creates way more tension that just simply shooting it. At first the game felt way too easy but later on in the first episode the difficulty really starts to ramp up. I'm playing on Normal and it feels like you're constantly given ammo but obviously this isn't a survival horror game like Resident Evil so I guess it's fine to just go guns blazing. There are better weapons to find if you go off the beaten path, so the game definitely rewards exploration, which is great!

In terms of other stuff you can find on the side, the manuscript pages are a very interesting idea for a collectible. I don't understand fully what information they're supposed to reveal, but it's interesting nonetheless to try and piece together what's really going on. What sucks though is that you can only get some manuscript pages if you play in Nightmare mode, which I don't like since it makes collecting these pages not as fulfilling. But yeah, for those of you who want an incentive to play on Nightmare difficulty, this is it. Maybe collecting all pages will reveal some hidden truth or something.

So yeah, the game is overall very interesting so far and I can't wait to play more! One thing to keep in mind is that whenever an episode is over, it will say "End of Episode [X]" and a song will play, but you can just skip it since it's just music playing over the text for a couple of minutes.

@Mr-Fuggles777 I think I accidentally found a solution to achievement hunting addiction. Add people to your friends list that game so much that you never have a chance to get to the top of the leaderboard ever again. I added a couple of people when I got my Series X almost a month ago and they get so many achievements that I know I could never beat them.

@KilloWertz or you could see it a challenge to try and beat them and top the board .

I've set a target to hit 100k by the end of the year, I'm currently about 85k so I only need around 2000 a month.
This should stop me needlessly grinding and just enjoy the games I play.

@Mr-Fuggles777 Nah, I'm good. At least one of them gets several thousand a month. Like you, I want to just enjoy the games I play.

Skipped Titanfall 2 last month; hoping to get back into Game Club with Alan Wake. Don't know much about it, but plan to download it later this week.

Oh, and I'll be playing on normal mode (defo not Nightmare)..!

Alan Wake is installed and I'll be playing it on normal. Not playing it on the PC so i unfortunately won't be dipping into the DLC as a result. Gotta get 1st party DLC included in Gamepass Ultimate!

Just finished episode 2 of Alan Wake. Man this game is so good, the mix of story and gameplay is very much on point. Also, for some reason I feel nostalgic playing this game, probably because it brings be back to 2010 when TV shows like Lost, Prison Break, Heroes and House MD were popular. The game just gives off that kind of vibe and it's reminding me of another game that also came out the same year: Heavy Rain. I think it's because both games have a strong focus on the narrative that it's reminding me of TV shows from that time, not to mention the episodic format of Alan Wake. Man I miss those shows now lol.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what episode 3 will bring to the table!

@LtSarge ahh I loved house and lost so much!

Hi all!

This month's game is Alan Wake. Play all things Alan Wake - the main game, the DLC, the spin off American Nightmare, Quantum Break and Control. Or just play Alan Wake, up to you!

Just remember to spoiler tag any uh, well, spoilers! You do this by typing [spoiler] insert spoilerish text here [/spoiler ] without the space before the final bracket

Seems to be some disparity between the versions available. The PC version on Game Pass includes some DLC that is behind a pay wall on the Xbox version.

Obligatory tag list:

@Tothington91 @MAC26 @XBontendo @Justifier @LtSarge @Tjuz @nessisonett @crippyd @Krzzystuff @sib @Ryu_Niiyama @John117 @Kefka2589 @Kaori-chan @LeanerFasterStronger @cracked_seal @Mr-Fuggles777 @Mundaney @KilloWertz

Please let me know if you want to be removed from the tag list! Please let me know if you want to be added to the tag list! Please let me know something!

Suggestions for next month:
(votes start from zero again)

Perfect Dark
ReCore
Prey
Dishonored
Doom 64
Doom 3
and I'm just going to chuck this in here...
Doom Eternal

I'll put my votes in later but currently I'm leaning toward ReCore, Perfect Dark and Doom Eternal.

Sling a vote or votes in and I'll count them up. Alternatively suggest another game you want to play and eagle eyed game clubbers may vote for that one as well!

@ralphdibny first off thanks for taking the time to organizing this!

Secondly i vote for Perfect Dark, ReCore, Prey, Dishonored and I'll throw in Wolfenstein New Order... I think that's the first one?

I'll be voting for Perfect Dark, ReCore, Dishonored and DOOM 64 for next month.

My votes will go for Recore and Dishonored

@Krzzystuff cheers, no problem!!

I think new order is the first of the PS4/Xbox one generation at least! I really wish they'd port over all the old Wolfenstein games like they have done for Doom, it would be epic!