Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Spyro the Dragon (Dec)

Hello there. Thanks for the tag. Since I like being a bit of an early bird, I’ll write down my vote now.

• My vote is going to be Conker's Bad Fur Day. I own the game, so playing it will be extra convenient for me. Plus I need an excuse to finish it and I can’t deny horror isn’t my thing so I might skip out on this month’s pick. Have fun everyone!

Ooo a 5-6 hour game, sounds perfect! 😀

Still Wakes the Deep has a bit of pedigree behind it in this club as it was developed by Brighton based developer The Chinese Room who made Amnesia Machine for Pigs which was part of the Amnesia Collection that we played a few months ago.

They also made Dear Esther, which was one of the first games I ever bought on Steam. I was a bit of a lapsed gamer back then with a rubbish PC so the relatively novel idea of a walking sim set in Britain was appealing to me.

Even though The Chinese Room is based in the opposite end of the UK, Still Wakes the Deep returns them to their video-gameified Scottish roots from Dear Esther.

I think you had a good crack at it so well done! Sometimes life is too precious to grind out a video game!

@Yousef- no worries. Voting early was the norm until recently (and it is fine either way). Vote added 👍

@Balta666 I’ll go for The Quarry for August, definitely need an excuse to start it.

Hope everyone enjoys SWtD, I recently finished and loved it. If you’re going for the 100% GS remember the language needs changing before you select ‘New Game’. Have fun 👍

Seems like everyone is voting early now…I will vote for Conker’s Bad Fur Day again. Freaking love that game and I want an excuse to play it again now that I’ve finished a ton of other games that have been on my radar. Been always wanting to do a full second playthrough of it, though I might play the remake version if Bad Fur Day gets chosen.

@AgentCooper @Pastellioli both votes added! The remake is only available on 360, right?

@Balta666 @ralphdibny yep I gave it a fair shake. No reason to continue on if nothing changing from here on out. Not a bad game by any means, but also not a good game. From what I've played, it's nestled right around a 6.5/10. Great gameplay and combat, just needed some more variety.

Now onward to still wakes the deep. Excited to see what this ones all about.

Nice. I actually started this yesterday.

@Balta666 sorry for replying late, fell asleep. The remake was released for the original Xbox, and is backwards compatible, so it can be played on the 360, One and the Series X and S, though it is separate from Game Pass. I bought it on the digital Microsoft store for $10.00 where I live, though I am sure some people are selling physical copies of it online. I’d recommend getting it if you can since it has better controls and is less repetitive than the original version. Bad Fur Day has a couple of moments that do frustrate me from how janky it is.

Yeah I think we should maybe give people some time to play Still Wakes the Deep before adding votes to next months game. Just my opinion (of course that does not mean that we cant write about ohter games eleswhere on the forum).

@ralphdibny Have you played Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture? I loved that one. Dear Esther is brilliant too. I need to get round to Machine for Pigs someday.

I'll be frank, I have already finished Still Wakes the Deep but am replaying it for a few achievements and will be commenting as I go along.

I'll start by saying I think the gameplay is average at best, but I absolutely adore the writing, the voicework and the sense of place of this game, it just feels authentic. Verisimilitude - that sense of truthfulness - is REALLY important. We see far too much bad writing nowadays, with generic characters that don't feel either truthful or real, that it's a joy to experience characters that feel truly embedded in a time and place. They feel real.

I lived with a lovely but potty mouthed Scotsman for many years, a top lad, and this just brings me back to that, good memories. I really wish more games, or media in general, would give us authentic characters like this more often, it grounds the whole experience and elevates the rest so that the worse aspects, like the sub-par gameplay, matter less.

Mostly enjoying it a lot, even second time around.

@AgentCooper Similar boat to you. I loved Dear Esther (I still dream about that cave) and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, though a little less so. This feels very much in line with those games. So won't be for everyone (I know you can say that about ANY game, but some are more niche)... but they are for me.

Like you I never got around to Machine for Pigs, horror just not my usual jam. Also didn't play Little Orpheus either so might try and give that a go.

@themightyant how would you rate it on horror scale? I am fine with games like Hellblade (but with max brightness) but not much more than that...

@Balta666 I didn't really find it scary at all - and I don't like horror - though there are a couple of moments that got my pulse elevated, these are few and far between.

@themightyant Humm, I will give it a try at least (need to check if they have some accessibility features for scaredy cats like myself 😅)

So while I dont want to give any promises, but given that Still Wakes the Deep seems to be quite a short game I might be able to play it this month.

I have started the game now.

@Baldbelper78 Hope to hear your impressions of it later.