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

@LtSarge @ralphdibny Dante's Inferno is an amazing Hack & Slash, I actually preferred it to the older GoW games (the GoW reboot is the best Zelda game not on a Nintendo system and reallymoved the series forward) and if I remembered correctly had a combo system similar to Bayonetta.

Another good recommendation for next month would be Dead Space, especially given the recent announcement of a reboot.

@LtSarge haha you know me, definitely a completionist. I even emulated a mobile game called GoW Betrayal when I was playing through the god of war series' Greek era 😅

@Mr-Fuggles777 sounds interesting! I haven't much delved into the hack n slash genre. My favourite game in it is probably Metal Gear Rising for obvious reasons

Dead Space is a good shout too. Im up for playing something like that

@ralphdibny MGR was handled by Platinum so of you enjoyed that check out Bayo and Vanquish (although they are not on GP sadly)

@Mr-Fuggles777 I think I mainly enjoyed it because it was Metal Gear related to be honest. I do have Bayo 1&2 on Wii U but I've left them sealed for so long that I'm now apprehensive to open them! I'll see how I feel about it when I get a hankering to give them a try!

@ralphdibny The Bayonetta series is one of the most fun hack and slash franchises I've ever played. Definitely give those games a go if you're looking for fun games with a goofy story!

I just finished chapter 2 and 3 of A Plague Tale and this game is so much fun thus far! The mechanics are incredibly simple but still so satisfying given the situations you're in. I'm also loving the variety in this game and the crafting system. There's actually more to do than I thought! The story feels so realistic and believable, like this is something that could've happened back then. I'm definitely going to continue playing this game in the coming days, it's just so captivating to play.

@LtSarge how long has each chapter taken roughly?? I think there's 17 in the whole game

@ralphdibny I believe 30-40 minutes each if you take your time and explore everything, so it should take around 10 hours to get through the game.

@LtSarge that's about right. It's been a year since I've beaten this game in the PS4, but I believe it took me around 10h.

That and How Long to Beat estimates 10½ h for the main story.

Put me down for Dante's inferno and Dead space for September

@ralphdibny Thanks for checking in! I got pretty far with Psychonauts, about 75% of the way through, but alas I did not finish it. The game became a little too obtuse for me and started to show its age right as I was becoming interested in playing some other games instead so I ended up watching a lets play for the finale and then a bunch of retrospective videos to kind've marinate on the themes of the game.

I feel like I still got a good preparation for Psychonauts 2!

@LeanerFasterStronger no worries, I hope you are doing ok! Well you had a fair crack at the game anyway! Only 24 days until the sequel, should be decent! Hopefully 😅. I'd normally wait for reviews/patches before buying a new game but I think this is the first time in a long time where I'll be able to play it without waiting for the above due to game pass. Playing a brand new game will be a curious experience for me!

Coincidentally I started A Plague’s Tale over the last few days and I am currently on chapter 7.

I have to say i’m seriously impressed with it. I usually hate stealth elements in games but I am enjoying it here. The graphics and voice acting are very good (even in English).

Only annoying thing for me is the missable weapon upgrades but whats a French girl to do?

Otherwise very interested to see where the story goes when I have more time to play.

I have never actually played Psychonauts so maybe that will be next for me but to be honest I was hoping there would be a remaster or something. Looking very unlikely now with 2 just around the corner!

Kameo was a fantastic, and beautiful launch game for the 360. Unfortunately I don’t think it has aged that well; but it’s nice and short and I would recommend checking it out even if not for the game club.

@K1LLEGAL heya, wanna be added to the taglist for this thread or are you just popping by? Either's fine! If you do go on the tag list, there's no obligation to join in each month or anything. There's lots of part timers here (including myself to some extent!)

@K1LLEGAL Yeah that's what I'm liking a lot about A Plague Tale and that's the simple mechanics, even the stealth aspect. The gameplay is varied but still simple enough that anyone can enjoy. Well, at least initially! I don't know how much the difficulty ramps up later on.

@ralphdibny Speaking of the tag list, I noticed that Kefka removed their account and Tjuz hasn't written anything in almost a year. So I don't think it's necessary to keep those tags around, not that it really matters either way so you can decide what to do.

@LtSarge sweet cheers, I've nixed kefka and kaori-chan from the taglist because they don't have accounts anymore. I'll leave Tjuz on it though because they are still a regular over on push Square at least and you never know. I mean Tothington who created the original gameclub thread and said nothing in this thread randomly popped up to tell us they were downloading Psychonauts so miracles can happen 😂

I'm 0/3 for completing recent games I've played as they've just not been fun for me - including a couple that are considered classics - so was a bit hesitant to start A Plague Tale as some of the reviews I'd seen were mixed.

I needn't have worried though, I'm absolutely loving it so far. Great story and characters and the chapters have been pretty varied up until now - I've just finished chapter 7 - with a nice mix of stealth sections and some puzzle elements with a little bit of combat thrown in there too. The vulnerability of the main character almost makes it feel like a survival horror at some points; you always feel like you're not far from danger and you're not really in a position to brute-force your way out of a situation if you get spotted during the stealth sections and it definitely adds to the tension.

The puzzles themselves are not very challenging and generally fit into the story quite well, but not so simple that they become a chore and the difficulty in general is maybe a bit on the easy side, although it hasn't felt like there's any blatant hand-holding going on. Some of the stealth sections in particular can be a little too forgiving sometimes and I feel like I haven't really had to stop and watch the enemy patterns like I usually do in most other stealth games - mainly due to the dumb AI. One section in particular that stuck out was where I crept out from behind some cover in an area that was pretty well populated by enemies and was spotted by an archer that I hadn't noticed. He started firing and shouted to alert others...but nobody came near despite there being multiple enemies nearby. He just stood there pinging arrows at me until I ran back to cover. He then stopped firing and just stood there until his alert level went back to normal; he didn't come looking for me or anything despite being close enough just to walk over and see me. Everyone else just carried on as if nothing had happened.

The occasionally dodgy AI has been the only minor 'con' in a game that's been full of 'pros' so far; hopefully the remaining chapters are as good. Definitely a contender for my favourite Game Pass Club game so far.

@dmcc0 ah sweet, glad to hear you are having a better time with this one!! Interesting to read your thoughts on it too. Its certainly sounding more appealing. I'll have to at least give it go. You've made some decent progress on the game too so it does sound a bit like it might be the videogame equivalent of a page turner.

@ralphdibny Yeah, definitely. I actually went into it with a feeling I wasn't going to like it - so much so that I started it pretty late on Friday night with the intention of getting the first chapter out of the way so I could install something else to play for the rest of the weekend if it was terrible.

I did only play through that first chapter on Friday, but only because it was so late and I could barely keep my eyes open rather than because I didn't like the game. Didn't get a chance to play at all on Saturday due to family stuff and my wife and daughter's latest Greys Anatomy marathon in the evening meant I couldn't use the TV! I actually went back to it on Sunday morning for another chapter, as my wife was having a lie-in, and then had another session in the evening. That evening session seemed to pass in no time at all - thought I'd only been playing for a couple of hours but apparently I did 5 chapters without even realising and probably would've just carried on playing if I hadn't happened to look at my phone and saw the time. I was a bit bleary eyed this morning...

I actually wanted to take a week of break from A Plague Tale since my Game Pass ran out yesterday and I thought I might as well play through Wolfenstein 2 and Little Nightmares this week before renewing my subscription. But I haven't been able to think about anything else but A Plague Tale the past couple of days, lol. It's so weird how much this game has left an impression on me because I typically don't adore the stories in Western games as much as Japanese games like Persona or Steins;Gate. But A Plague Tale has seriously got me hooked. I just finished a couple of more chapters and now I'm on chapter 7 and the game is just so good, I can't wait to play more!

I have a couple of questions though. For starters, does killing humans affect a rating that will determine if you'll get a good/bad ending? Or is there only one ending? Because whenever I kill someone I keep getting criticised by my companions, lol. Makes me think that maybe I shouldn't do that then. My second question is, do you get an upgrade tool in between every workbench? Because in the last chapter, I went past two workbenches and I didn't find any upgrade tools in between. Which makes me think that maybe you don't get one that often or that you can only get a certain amount. For example, maybe if you missed one earlier in the chapter, there will be one later on but if I've already found one earlier then I won't find another later on. So maybe that's why there are multiple workbenches.

@LtSarge I remember Hugo being pretty upset when he first saw me kill someone - although I don't think I had much of a choice at the time. I think all of the other times have been either them or me and I don't recall any reactions from companions. Are you taking out enemies when you could've otherwise used stealth to get past them? I haven't really tried that approach as there's no 'stealth kill' move as far as I can see so I have been trying to conserve 'ammo' and I hadn't considered it TBH as it doesn't really fit the lead character to go around killing everyone in sight! I haven't seen anything to suggest there's Dishonored-style pacifist/psycho killer alternative endings though.

As for the equipment upgrades, there have been a couple of workbenches where I've not had enough materials to update anything, but I tend not to be too fussy with collecting items in these types of games as it can sometimes slow the story down a little too much. It could be that it's allowing for different upgrade paths - maybe you don't have enough materials to upgrade the path you want to after the first workbench so you wait till the next or just putting enough workbenches in the game in case you missed an earlier one? From memory there were a couple that might've been quite easy to miss (that's assuming I've even found all of them).