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

@themightyant I will admit that I don't have the rose tinted glasses as I only played through the series from beginning to end during the pandemic. Having only completed Halo 3 and had a brief soiree with the PC version of Halo CE before that.

There are things I like about the series but I do think it becomes more relatable in later entries. I appreciate how iconic it can be at times but I think the era of the PS2/early PS3 shooters is a weird one. They're kind of not old enough for the weird gameplay choices and level design to be forgiven as a relic of their time and not new enough to benefit from the QoL of modern games.

Of course that's just my opinion. Having had only a GameCube for that gen and subsequently a Wii (I got a PS3 a few years later and had a 360 for a while before that before it RROD'd) I am quite unforgiving when I go back and play the "greats" that I missed out on like the 3D GTA games, Halo, Gears or War, God of War, Bioshock etc. That said there are a bunch of games from that era that I played late that I absolutely love like MGS series from 2 onwards (already loved the first one on ps1) and the Uncharted games from the following generation. Swings and roundabouts I suppose!

@ralphdibny Ok cool

Figured I'd post this here since you guys played Redfall last month and I have some thoughts about the game.

So I just finished Redfall after roughly 18 hours of playtime. It was overall a fairly enjoyable experience, but there definitely were aspects that brought down the experience by a lot. The reviews have mostly focused on the technical issues the game had at launch. But if you play the game today, you won't notice many issues like that. During my entire playthrough, I had some consistent issues like not being able to set a waypoint by clicking once but instead twice, the amount of ammo shown was constantly off and frames would drop whenever I'd kill a special type of enemy to just name a few. I also had a few crashes. But throughout the 18 hours I played, I didn't encounter any major technical issues. In fact, that aspect isn't even the primary issue with the game. There are more major flaws with the game, which are:

• The gameplay loop is repetitive and limited
• The progression system is poor and unrewarding
• The game is relentless in terms of difficulty with no noticeable changes if you lower it

So I'd like to go through these three points one by one. For starters, the gameplay loop is really repetitive. Granted, they do a good job of introducing a lot of new stuff in the beginning. You start off with your standard handgun, then find your typical weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and even flare guns. Then the game introduces two unique weapon types, which are stake guns and UV beams. The former is effective against the vampires in the game, while the latter is mostly used for killing the stationary enemies that spew a red poison mist across certain areas. The problem is that these weapons are introduced immediately and you don't unlock any new weapons for the remainder of your playthrough.

Moreover, you can only hold and switch between three weapons at once. I mostly used a shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle throughout the game. But I wanted to use the stake guns and UV beams fairly often as well. So I had to constantly go into the menu and switch out my loadout, which was such a pain. Considering the developer wanted to copy Far Cry, they completely omitted the series' weapon wheel.

It's the same issue with the enemy variety: the majority of the enemy types are introduced way too soon. They should've spread them out a bit more throughout the playthrough to make things more interesting. But yes, there are plenty of different enemies. They just become uninteresting to face off against during the second half of the game.

Moving on to the progression system, it's absolutely the worst I've seen in a game in a long time. There is a skill tree but you can't even collect enough skill points to unlock most of the stuff by playing through the game naturally. Furthermore, the stuff you do unlock don't even feel that rewarding. It doesn't feel like my character has been improved at all whenever I unlock something new.

Consequently, the abilities themselves are so unsatisfying to use. You have four characters with different skills and mine has an umbrella that acts like a shield that then explodes when it disappears, a "psychic lift" that propels you upwards and her special ability lets her call her ex-boyfriend to come in and do some damage. The umbrella is fine, but the other two feel so useless and unsatisfying. I mean, I want my abilities to pack a punch. But in my case two of my three abilities aren't even (direct) attacks and the third feels very weak to use.

This brings me to my last point, which is the difficulty level. I started on Normal and it felt pretty good at first but then I started dying over and over again. So I lowered the difficulty to Easy and there weren't any noticeable changes at all. The enemies were just as relentless as before. I probably died 40-50 times during my 18 hour playthrough. I died more in this game than I did in Returnal, which is known to be a difficult game!

So what's the issue with the difficulty? Well, the enemies deal way too much damage. On top of this, you can easily find yourself surrounded by enemies that will absolutely wreck you. Even if you upgrade your health, you can easily die in just a couple of seconds if you're unlucky. The difficulty level is just very unbalanced and for a game like this that's supposed to be fun and a good time, it completely ruins the experience.

There are so many other issues with the game, such as a bad checkpoint system and a bad waypoint system to name some more.

There are some good aspects of this game obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered playing it to the end. Even if the gameplay loop is repetitive, it's still a relatively fun looter shooter and unique gameplay mechanics like needing to use a stake in order to finish off a vampire (which is the only way to kill them) makes the gameplay more varied. The story is pretty good as well. Even if the game doesn't have cutscenes where characters move, the narrative is rather captivating and there's a lot of backstory to the characters. Not to mention that there's plenty of lore to read, in a typical Arkane fashion.

So to summarise, the technical issues that Redfall is infamous for is the furthest from its problems. Repetitive gameplay loop, unrewarding progression system and relentless difficulty level brings down the experience a lot. There's still some fun to be had here, but if you're looking for an open world shooter, you'd do better with many other titles, including Far Cry. If I had to give the game a score, which I rarely do but in this case I want to just so that I can convert my thoughts into a numeric value, I'd give it a 5/10.

@ralphdibny hi mate, no thank you but I appreciate the invitation. I play whatever game I fancy at any given time and need to get through my current installed games. Currently The House of the Dead remake, Batman Telltale game, Forza 7, Coffee talk 2 and SD Gundam Battle Alliance (almost finished with Coffe talk2 and Gundam tbf). Halo will always be installed, I just enjoy the mechanics so tend to pick it up for a couple of evenings and then revisit it a few months down the line.

The timed challenges are so tough you need to learn a route and go for it 3-4 times. Pop the cheevo grab some medals, possibly find a solitary context sensitive cheevo and then I leave it until I'm in a lull or play a bad game.

I don't care for the sense of adventure in games, im an ex sailor and have seen beautiful sunsets and been in the most idyllic of locations in the real world. Rather overcoming a particular challenge is my bag and why I game. Probably why I dislike Zelda as it does nothing for me, it's easy, lacks urgency
, the games are long and are mostly about the adventure. Halo Infinite also suffers due to its focus on the open world. The levels contained within infinite are forgettable, there doesn't seem to be a big reveal - such as with the hunters or flood in earlier games. The enemies are just, kind of there to be shot at. The level design is weak. I do like the elite target enemies though, they are a nice additional for sure.

@ralphdibny I would like to add my votes to:

Unravel
Perfect Dark

Combat evolved is a truly wonderful game.

Let me ask you guys a few questions:

1. Does anyone else feel that the magic of Halo: CE is the campaign, and that the multiplayer is... well plain unfun? I only feel this way about CE. I feel every other Halo multiplayer (including 4) is a blast.

2. What are your opinions on the CE anniversary remaster? Personally, I think it's an awesome package and that the artistic style on the new graphics are not only acceptable, but optimal. I can't remember the last time I've played through CE on the original art.

However, I have heard a significant amount of grumbling from Halo players about the remaster. The most common sentiment I hear is that Gears fans got a much better re release in Gears ultimate edition. I can't speak to Gears ultimate, but I find it hard to believe Halo CEA is outright bad in comparison.

Also - for next month:

I've already played Amnesia Dark Descent, but what about Amnesia the Bunker instead? It dropped into Gamepass in June, and it's also a concise and quick play, I'm told.

@RDDMarston cheers added

@themcnoisy no worries mate 👍

@Balta666 vote added, unravel is a good shout actually, I've stuck a vote in for that too

@LeanerFasterStronger vote added!

Seems we have a tie between Unravel and Perfect Dark currently! As much as I'd love Perfect Dark to finally get it's moment in the sunshine having been on the list for so long, I thought I'd do a mass tag in order to garner more votes...

You can click the link in my signature below to check the list of games/throw more names in the hat

@Tothington91 @MAC26 @XBontendo @Justifier @Tjuz @nessisonett @crippyd @Krzzystuff @sib @Ryu_Niiyama @LeanerFasterStronger @cracked_seal @Mr-Fuggles777 @Mundaney @KilloWertz @antifyre @Magabro @themightyant @ZeD @K1LLEGAL @Balta666 @Bmartin001 @Banjo- @R1spam @lookupmore @Lavalera @frabbit @FraserG @WCB @TooBarFoo @SeriousSatan @xMightyMatt14x @BaldBelper78 @TuckNorris85 @Grail_Quest @Jsb5150 @Mamabear @liljazzy2 @Dydreamr @XFinest_KnightX @Elufachi @Amical @Supermutant @revluke @Akropolon @olskoolSEGA @HarmanSmith @Dr_Devious04 @EliteSlayer @GamingFan4Lyf @Pepa27 @MaxC @NintendoByNature @Captain_Chozo @HelloCraig @BlackMayge @AgentCooper @kyleforrester87 @RDDMarston

@ralphdibny I’ll help you out mate. I’ll vote Perfect Dark. TBH I started both but fell off both. But PD seemed like one I might go back to with a little nudge. Unravel not so much. Beautiful art style but found the gameplay very shallow and a bit tedious

@ralphdibny I'll vote for Perfect Dark. I need to play it myself soooo, good excuse to vote for it! (Unravel is great too)

@ralphdibny I'm knee deep in games at the moment but I want to see what all the perfect dark fuss is about! I can't commit to playing the whole game but I'll at least try the first hour or two

I have played both Unravel and Perfect Dark so I won't vote. Unravel is the best indie game that I've played. Perfect Dark is a wonderful remaster of the N64 classic. It has many things from one of the best shooters ever, Goldeneye 007. I hope that we get the Xbox 360 version of GoldenEye 007 officially, someday. Perfect Dark Zero is also great.

I played Halo Combat Evolved (Master Chief Collection) when I got my first Xbox and it's a solid game with some great strategic battles and moments of isolation. The first Xbox disc I got was Rare Replay, second Master Chief Collection. Two epic collections.

EDIT: I'm all digital now.

@Ralphdibny I'll toss chicory into the mix. I planned on playing it In the very near future anyway.

@ralphdibny I doubt I have the time to play it since I'm very busy with Diablo 4, Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XVI. But of those 2 Perfect Dark seems to be the game i'm most interested in if i have the time.

Halo Combat Evolved is the best Halo. I've beaten it multiple times... I could see me playing it again, specially now that my Funko Master Chief is sitting above my Xbox Series X

But the hype for Starfield is so huge that I'm replaying Skyrim. I've never finished it on Xbox consoles, so I'm trying to beat it... it's going to take a while, since I'm doing a lot of side content...

@ralphdibny I don’t know if I’ll have time to fully commit this month but I’ll throw in a vote for Unravel

Cheers all for the votes, thoughts and comments. I've added all the votes to the list in my sig.

We are currently 4-3 with Perfect Dark in the lead over Unravel. I haven't counted the half votes/non committal votes but I will use them it it ends up needing a tie breaker

@ralphdibny i am canceling my sub so you can remove me for now. Ill be back for Starfield.

@Ryu_Niiyama cheers for letting me know, I've knocked you off the tag list for now.

Give us a shout if you want to return! 😀

@ralphdibny Probably late now since it's already July (and my vote doesn't really change anything) but I'll throw a vote for Perfect Dark as well since I've waited so long to play it on Game Club. Not to mention that I have next week off from work so I'll have plenty of time to play other games besides FFXVI.