Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - On Indefinite Hiatus

@GamingFan4Lyf vote added! I actually have voting on it for exactly the same reason. I started it a while ago but bounced back, after a couple of hours, to something else released at the time and never came back.

I agree with peeps regarding Starfield being too long. I think it's almost certainly a given that will be the case.

Normally I'd leave it up to the vote which normally weeds out long games but I suspect Starfield would actually get voted for and wouldn't actually get finished by many within the month. I recommend not having it be an option.

Also with regards to new games, while we have played a few, I think they are better served by their own threads on this forum because I imagine most people will be playing them anyway without the need for it to be a Game Club choice. It might mean a quiet month for the Game Club because people are playing elsewhere but the new releases will be better served with their own thread and the GC can continue to highlight other releases.

I'd probably have a few exceptions to the "new game aversion" recommendation, like if it's a sequel to a game we've played in the GC like Psychonauts 2 or A Plague Tale 2. Of course, all of that isn't set stone so I would have left new games up to the vote but seeing as I am no longer administrating this thread, I can be less impartial with my opinion 😅. (Had to remain impartial as administrator so this didn't turn into a dictatorship lol)

Just my thoughts, if you were to pick Starfield then you couldn't expect people to finish it. I think the only way you could do that would be for gameclub to be your first 15 or 20 hrs and to share your experiences with it. It's likely to be hugely non-linear but maybe we could ask FraserG to ask who reviewed it for purexbox to suggest a broad area of the map to head in? If not viable, i would vote @Balta666 for Dordogne or planet of lana, which have both passed me by. I don't have any issue with recent releases, i think it helps attract people to this thread. I did boot up perfect dark but like goldeneye, I found it pretty difficult to go back to many games of that era without any nostalgia (and in goldeneye's case, even with a big dose of nostalgia 🤣). When they make a new one, I'll try it out.

@R1spam I feel that regarding starfield would be a bit convoluted to be fair. In my opinion things have been working fairly well so far and I feel playing only old games will "get old" (pun intended).

Votes added!

@Balta666 @r1spam I'll say the same thing I said to @AgentCooper about the PS Club. Just keep it simple and consistent. By all means try changes if you want to but in terms of 1 full game a month, simplicity and consistency will maintain engagement 👍

@ralphdibny 100% agreed!

@Balta666 @ralphdibny Just a suggestion, but could we change the start of the voting from the beginning of the month to the middle instead? It's quite discouraging when the new month starts and there's only talk about what we should play next instead of, you know, this month's game. It feels a bit weird to suggest titles for next month when we've barely started this month. It would also be a good way to boost engagement as it tends to get quiet here around the middle of the month as most people have already played through the game or are getting close to finishing it.

@LtSarge that'll be up to @balta666 if they want to do it that way. I did it my way to try and reduce the amount of work/confusion/whatever. Was just easier for me to keep track of a surge of votes at the beginning of the month and the end of the month. Coop is doing the PS one that way.

I'm in two minds tbh, I prefer it as it is currently because neither the topic of voting nor the topic of the game itself takes precedent. I feel like bookending the month with intense voting periods gives more time in the middle 3 week period to actually discuss the game when people get around to playing it. Obviously there is a mix of people who play it right away and people who spread it out and people who do it last minute so I'm not sure what the "best" week to hold votes is which is why I left it as a "vote whenever" kind of thing.

I do see your point of view though. I'm just starting Toy Story 2 for the PS Club but because votes are done in the last week there, it means my posts will get lost amongst the voting posts. But I'm a late player so I'm having the same problem for the opposite reasons to you lol

So I summary, my opinion is inclusive and controlled chaos > exclusive order

@Balta666 I get it entirely, I'd seen the idea from an outlet called MinnMax who do a gameclub and used the format for tears of the kingdom. I would agree with both you and @ralphdibny that things work well as they are, I just suspect Starfield will be a banger and suck everyone in for September! I'm really looking forward to Will of the Wisps this month, have downloaded now. Thought the first game was gorgeous and despite some brutal escape sequences, was a fantastic metroidvania.

@R1spam speaking of TotK, it sucked a lot of people away from here in the month it came out. It happens unfortunately but the point of GC isn't to bog people down with responsibilities, it's just supposed to be fun and collaborative when people have time to and choose to engage.

I think keeping it simple makes it easier to administrate too, maybe Balta wants more work to do for this club but I certainly didn't 😅. I'd encourage them to do the same so they don't get burned out quickly

Totally agree about Blind Forest. It was the best 2D platformer I'd played since Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. (VVVVVV was the best platformer I've played since Ori Blind Forest incidentally). I do wonder if I have too high hopes for Will of the Wisps and it will let me down.

@R1spam I follow Minnmax (altough not a patron) and know abou their "deep dives". Personally I feel that won't work on our community where sometimes we struggle to have more than 3/4 people playing the game in a month. It looks to me that it is better for the moment to keep it simple and mindfull that everyone here has different times to play games.

@LtSarge Altough personally I don't think it is a big deal atm, it is true that sometimes games are announced around the middle of the month and get into the mix at a later date and maybe that could be avoid with that suggestion.
I will take it into consideration moving forward!

@Balta666 I played DS1 and played a good 15hrs before bouncing off that too. I was told this is more accessible of a game, but im not sure I see it. I loved the graphics and world, but ultimately it's just not my cup of tea. I posted something more in depth on NL under 'Games You Recently Dropped.'

@Balta666 I like a lot of their deepest dives, though no doubt there is a scale difference in participation! Be good, have fun, let's go 🤣

Already made some headway. Got a few abilities unlocked. I played a couple years back and loved the game.

@ralphdibny I totally get that, in fact that's where I was coming from. If its what people are playing anyway, then it's easier to engage with and less of a responsibility to download and check out something else. All cool anyway and things work really well as it stands with the last thing I would want to do is increase the admin burden for running the club. There are often months where I struggle to put anything meaningful back about the games selected, due to other commitments/interests and that's just trying to play them 😬! I appreciated how much you put into them and know Balta666 has been a gameclub stalwart and will do a cracking job.

Speaking of totk, have you played it? Sure it's a conversation for another thread but God damn I think it might be the best game I have ever played! True work of genius.

@R1spam cheers 👍 yeah Balta will be great!

TotK bit of a touchy subject for me tbh. Had a lot of the nice little things spoiled for me by NL headlines. Stuff I would have wanted to discover for myself. Normally I'd just not click on articles related to a game I wanted to go in blind for but kinda difficult when they put the spoilers in the headlines to garner clicks. I did play and finish the game in the end but I just couldn't let go of that feeling so I just felt sad through its whole run time and it ruined it for me. Or I ruined it for myself depending on your perspective. Overall, I could have thought it might have been one of the best Zeldas but I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy it 🤷‍♂️

I'm Gona add you on PS and Xbox in a min, trying to make an effort to add more people to the actual consoles in case I leave this site in future just so I don't lose contact with everyone! You'll find out my real name when I add you, please don't share it on any of the forums 😅

Edit: added! They aren't close friend requests or anything, I'm just a numpty and when I created the IDs so I put my real first name in them, I didn't expect years later to be adding people from a semi anonymous online forum! 😅

@ralphdibny oh that's rubbish 😔. I get they stay alive on SEO clicks but putting things straight in the article banner is nasty. I stayed away from any totk stuff online and still am. I can't wait to finally look when I finish the game and realise how dumb I am when I see other folks creations! Maybe I've missed out on that community aspect of that though, such a tough line to walk. Sounds good and no worries 🤣. I have added on PS and should be on xbox tonight to start ori, though I've not had any notifications.

@R1spam cheers, I'm not sure if Xbox gives you notifications because they aren't really friend requests on Xbox, you can add someone without them adding you back. But I should be in your list of "people who friended you" or "followers" or something. I think you need to go in that list and add me from there. Should be obvious who I am as the first part (my name) of the gamer tag is the same as the PSN ID. I have a weird monkey head as my picture.

I did remove NL from my quick links after I saw the caliber of their headlines after the TotK launch but sadly the damage was already done.

I think you've gone about it in the right way though to be honest. I would have liked to have had a full playthrough and taken what I could have out of the game naturally by going in blind and then gone and looked at the community stuff for ideas to play around with in the sandbox.

Though I didn't return to BotW in any meaningful way, it took a long time for the community to break the game and get into the nitty gritty of it so it was well past my 99% playthrough (missing a damn bridle from a horseback archery challenge lol) that I saw all that stuff and it was quite welcome and I enjoyed reading it years later.

But with TotK, I think the expectation for creativity was already there so people blazed ahead with their creations and media outlets just picked it up and plastered it over headlines before I even had a chance to turn on the game.

With a game like BotW and TotK, I think it's much more rewarding to forge your own path and explore and discover things for yourself than it is to follow in somebody's else's footsteps.

So I've played Ori for a few hours now and it's already so much better than the first game. For starters, the combat is much improved. Instead of spamming orbs that home in on your enemies, you have a blade now, which requires more skill. Also, there are "badges" that you can find and equip in order to improve your character. Honestly, it feels like Ori 2 borrows a lot of elements from Hollow Knight, both in terms of combat as well as gear. And that's great, because Hollow Knight is my favourite Metroidvania of all time.

You're also able to manually regenerate health now instead of saving anywhere compared to the first game, which makes it less difficult. I've also managed to add an additional four health cells in just the first few hours alone. So overall, this game seems more gentle while still retaining the challenge the series is known for.

Can I also just say how beautiful this game looks on Series X and how wonderful the soundtrack is? I'm constantly mesmerised while playing it. It's such a delight to play!

I'm seriously enjoying this game a lot and I can't wait to play more of it.