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

@ralphdibny Oh that explains why I didn't see them then. Really cool that they added them to the game though. I'm surprised that the sites are still up after a decade, lol.

And yeah the coffee thermoses unlock achievements. They're basically useless collectibles, which were common in games back then, like the ones you'd find in the older Assassin's Creed games or the pigeons in GTA IV.

@Krzzystuff Congrats mate! Yeah the game definitely is a must-play. Too bad that most PlayStation users don't know that since the game was an Xbox console exclusive. Because when I was playing on PS3 and PS4, I definitely wasn't aware of how good this game was. I'm glad that I finally got to experience it now!

So I was planning on finishing up American Nightmare today seeing as how I was on the third and final level of the game. But apparently, the game will make you play through the same three levels again, which I should've figured out considering there were way too many manuscript pages in each level that you don't find on your first run. So I'm supposedly only halfway through the game now, lol. Which is fine since you can unlock new weapons by collecting manuscript pages and they still introduce new enemies in the same levels that you revisit. So it still feels fresh to play through them. Not to mention that the story and objectives are also different.

I just have to mention that I just unlocked the assault rifle in the game and man does this weapon feel satisfying to use! It's basically an M4 but it fires much more powerfully than a regular M4 does. It's almost like a mini turret, lol. I'm definitely going to be using it for the rest of the game, it's so good!

@LtSarge I remember those darn pigeons!

@LtSarge a big perk of the Gamepass club as I don't think i would have played this just on my own. So many games to choose from that looking back at older titles isn't usually a first step.

Just finished American Nightmare. So my opinion of all the Alan Wake content besides the main game is that one needs to play American Nightmare after playing the main game as it explains what happens after the ending. The DLCs aren't really necessary to experience since they're like an interlude between Alan Wake and American Nightmare. But yeah, there's definitely more of a closure now for the story after having played through American Nightmare.

As for the game itself, it started out really promising with small open world areas to explore and do objectives in. But then the game implemented a time loop where you revisit these areas not once, but twice, for a total of three times across the three areas available in the game. And I honestly didn't like that. I don't like time loops in any form of media at all. It's excruciating watching characters go through the same thing over and over again, both in TV shows as well as games. Not to mention that I think it's simply lazy design to just go through the same places, which is especially the case for American Nightmare considering this is a downloadable title which means that it's going to be shorter than an actual full release. So it honestly felt like the developers just wanted to unnecessarily extend the length of the game because that's what you did with games back then if they were too short. Luckily, each time you go through each set of the three areas, you go through them much faster due to fewer objectives. However, I think that pretty much strengthens my point that this was all unnecessary. Otherwise why force the player to go through all the areas three times while decreasing the amount of things you need to do. Why not introduce new and different objectives? Probably because they didn't have enough time and they needed to make the game longer, which is why they reused the same three areas and included fewer objectives. But yeah, if you have the patience go through it then I'd say it's worth experiencing if you really enjoyed the first Alan Wake.

So I guess that does it for the month of Alan Wake for me. Played through the main game, its two DLCs and the standalone expansion, which is pretty much all the Alan Wake content there is besides that one DLC pack in Control I guess. But for now, I think I've experienced enough of this series. It was a thrilling ride and I'm glad that I got to experience all these games through Game Club. They've been sitting in my backlog for numerous years and I probably wouldn't have gotten around to playing them anytime soon if not for Game Club. Hopefully we can play more games from Remedy in the future. Maybe Quantum Break later this year?

@LtSarge playing Alan Wake did get me interested in Remedy games and I'll definitely be playing Quantum Break & Control at some point as a result.

I'd definitely be up for some Quantum Break later in the year. I never did get around to playing it. If we did Control, I'd likely just save playing the Ultimate Edition until then. I've already played Control twice, but still would like to experience it on the Series X. I already bought it when it was on sale for $20, but it's waiting alongside a few other Series X games.

@Krzzystuff I know you're always playing and then deleting games because of space, so just a heads up on Quantum Break that it's around 100 GB.

@KilloWertz mofo what!!!! Why is it that large? Thanks for the heads up

@Krzzystuff I have no idea. It's one of those games that struggled at running well on base hardware, but then ran closer to what it should have once it got enhanced on Xbox One X.

So apparently, Dishonoured 1 had three DLC packs, whereof two of them are story DLCs and they're all included in the definitive edition that's on Game Pass. Are you guys going to be playing them as well? They're apparently 4-5 hours each so they feel pretty substantial and according to a quick Google search, they seem like pretty good story DLC that are on par with the base game. I'm definitely going to play through them considering we have an entire month to go through this game. Although I'll probably take a break in between the base game and the DLC like I did with Alan Wake, but yeah the DLCs seem like they are worth experiencing.

@LtSarge I'll try and finish whatever is included in the game

Just a day or two to go before the switchover to Dishonored!

I might still post a few thoughts here and there as I slowly make my way through Alan Wake and it's related games. For some reason I seem to be mega busy right now but hopefully things calm down a bit

I've really struggled to get back into Alan Wake after taking a break. I'm not sure if its because I've played it before but the levels feel like a chore between story segments - which is amazing. Doubt I will finish it before the end of the month as I'm busy shooting dinosaurs in the face with a grenade launcher at present lol. (Will keep it on my system and work through it alongside dishonored hopefully)

@Mr-Fuggles777 it's a weird one and I think I agree with you on that. I'm not big on the game play and exploration.

I love the setting, the atmosphere, the story, the voice acting and the characters themselves. I find the exploration of largely empty space to be tedious though especially when coupled with combat that verges enough on the difficult side to be annoying. This makes the exploration less worth doing because you could end up spending 5-10 minutes of it just killing the baddies instead of finding manuscript pages and coffee flasks.

I could almost see it working better as a walking simulator although they weren't as popular at the time. Or even if the game was just more linear or Alan Wake's movement speed was just a bit faster, it would make the in-between story sections a bit more palatable.

@ralphdibny I tend to agree. I missed a fair amount of collectibles simply because it wasn't worth exploring in certain areas where enemies would show up. I'd just ran past certain sections because of this. I did enjoy the combat however. Even though it could get repetitive, the fact that the game was on the difficult side kept the combat consistently fun. It does take a while to get used to when you should be using the different weapons. When overwhelmed by weaker enemies, use flashbang. When overwhelmed by stronger enemies, use flare to buy yourself some time. When there's a cluster of enemies, for example birds, use flare gun. And so on and so forth. I definitely found this aspect to be very fun but it could've been expanded upon towards the end of the game.

So I managed to finish Knack 2 on PS4 today which means I'm able to start up Dishonored at any time. I have it installed now and ready to go! Might start it up either today or tomorrow just to get some first impressions.

@LtSarge fair enough cheers, yeah I do all that but it's just not worth exploring and having to fight more enemies than I need to when all I am going to find is a cliff edge or a cliff face. So yeah I guess it's good for the compulsory bits but not so much for the optional bits.

Nice one on beating knack 2! I haven't played it yet, I guess I was waiting for it to become a ps plus game like the first one lol. I did think the first one was decent for a ps plus game, like an extended DreamWorks film or something. Worth playing for sure.

@ralphdibny I honestly found the first Knack quite off-putting due to its high difficulty, lol. The second one was much better in that regard. The game is still quite difficult, but it implements a lot of mechanics that makes it more enjoyable, such as health that regenerates, abilities to unlock throughout the story and so on. It's definitely worth playing!

So I just played the first hour of Dishonored and the game is very fun! It gives off the vibe of games like BioShock, not to mention that it's a first-person melee/shooting game where you dual-wield and scavenge resources like money, food, health vials, bullets and so on. It's basically a stealth version of BioShock and I like that. I also like that the game actually gives you an incentive for playing stealthily and taking down enemies non-lethally. Apparently if you kill people, you increase the amount of rats in the game which contributes to spreading the plague even more and thus you increase the risk of getting the bad ending. In other words, it's a pretty cool incentive to be more tactical and stealthy instead of just running in and killing everyone. Looking forward to playing more of the game tomorrow!

I've missed the last couple of games for various reasons, but have got Dishonored downloading now and will probably start it later this evening when I get home from work - assuming I don't get distracted by Forza Horizon 4 - again

@LtSarge Somebody's cheating my starting May's game before the month starts...

If I decide to push this game ahead of Gears 5, which I'm not sure I'll do as I really want to finally play that after I'm done with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, I guess I might be getting the bad ending since I remember killing plenty of people instead of being tactical in my playthrough I have saved. No sense in restarting again since I think I was likely around the halfway point, so I'd just pick it up from there.

@KilloWertz Yeah I tend to get excited for these things as they truly help motivate me to get through my backlog.

It could be interesting nonetheless for you to keep playing the game and share your thoughts on the bad ending if you get it. Just so that we can get different perspectives in here about the game. I'd love to find out what happens in both scenarios.

@LtSarge So, what you're trying to say is "play the damn game now and then play whatever else you want to afterwards"?