Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Halo 2 (Nov)

Have people played The Evil Within? I know it's somewhat customary to do a horror game for Halloween and I wondered if people would want to do this game (and/or the second one) in October?

Probs a bit early to think about it but just thought I'd float the idea and see what people think. I'll bench the idea if everyone's played that game already!

@ralphdibny Haven't played The Evil Within but I have it in my PS4 backlog. That's actually a great example of a game that I'm not going to play anytime soon so I'm definitely up for playing it during October. Not to mention that I'm really starting to get into ZeniMax games after having played Dishonored, so I wouldn't mind playing more games from them.

@LtSarge I thought it might fit that Bethesda/zenimax criteria if you hadn't played it already! I'm not hugely fussed about most of the games in that acquisition (apart from Doom which I absolutely love all of them and Wolfenstein which I absolutely love the old ones and quite like the new ones) but I could be down with The Evil Within for sure.

I'd probably give the fallout/elder Scrolls games a go one day but they are such time sinks that I can't see myself doing it any time soon!

@ralphdibny Yeah, Evil Within, DOOM, Wolfenstein and Dishonored are definitely fitting for Game Club. Also Prey! I don't know much about it, it supposedly has horror elements but I don't think it's on the same level of horror as Evil Within. I'd be more interested in checking out Evil Within though given a choice between those two.

Clearly the October game should be Costume Quest 2 folks!!!

I'll take evil within, prey or deadspace for October as well.

@Krzzystuff haha didnt you play that recently? Or did you just play the first one? Both games have been on my radar for a while, I was planning to play both soonish...

@ralphdibny yeah i played 2, great little game. Was just busting chops on that one but will recommend giving it a go

I'd be up for Evil Within as I bought it ages ago andf I've only played about 15 minutes or so.

@crippyd nice one 👍, sounds like Evil Within for Halloween could be a goer!

I was playing Re:core the other night and decided to go upto bed and carry on playing on upstairs. I swapped the Card between the Series X and S, along with playing on a 1080 screen upstairs it was like watching a different game!
The change in visual fidelity and lighting was ridiculous - even the Mrs noticed the downgrades!
Suffice to say, I went on to play some indy games in bed and will leave the bigger games to the better TV lol.

Since I've finished Yakuza 6, I decided to start up ReCore. Played through the first section and the game is seriously really fun. I'm loving the combat, it feels very unique in that the aim is not to just kill enemies but to extract cores from them after you've weakened them. Then you have that little mini-game of tug of war all the while other enemies are attacking you. It's very exhilarating and makes for some fun challenge. The controls also feel great, the jumping and the overall traversal just feel very smooth. This feels like a game I can get lost in for numerous hours at a time. I'm really looking forward to playing more!

Looking forward to participating for the first time and starting up ReCore tomorrow. Finished Mass Effect today and don't want to just rush through my replay of the whole series at once, so obviously it's the end of putting off ReCore ever since it released.

It'll also be cool to get to experience it at 60 FPS...

@Mr-Fuggles777 I'm quite surprised the difference between series S and X is that noticeable! The Series S is so tempting at £250 but it seems like in some ways that it's not as good as a One X but is better in other ways. Like there's a trade off going from One X to Series S. I don't properly understand all the specs jargon though! (Or at least I haven't bothered to try to understand it because the minutiae is not hugely interesting to me, I normally just want to know if something is better, worse or just a compromise!)

@KilloWertz nice one! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

So I just finished the first dungeon of the game and my god this is the most fun Xbox One game I've played since Sunset Overdrive. It honestly feels like a combination of all kinds of genres: RPGs, action, adventure, shooting, platforming, it genuinely feels like everything lol. It's simply incredible, I can't believe how this didn't receive more attention back in the day. It's so much fun!

A tip for those who are starting it out, the game doesn't mention this but there are boxes in the game like those found in the Ratchet & Clank series where you shoot them and a bunch of materials come flying out (like the bolts in R&C). I didn't know about this until I randomly thought to shoot some of them and these are everywhere in the first dungeon so don't miss out on them!

@ralphdibny I think it was more the difference in the TV from 4k to 1080 rather than the console.
I've played Ori on the Series S in 4k and it looks absolutely stunning. Saying that I didn't have a 1X to compare the Ss with.

@Mr-Fuggles777 ah fair enough, I didn't even know the Series S could do 4K, I thought it was lower resolution but it had 120 FPS or something. Shows what I know! 😅

I'm a bit of a weird one because the only 4K display I have is a monitor which I do all my gaming on. I get the high resolution but I don't get all the bells and whistles like HDR etc so I am somewhat keen to get the full experience that others have been getting at some point in the future when I'm financially better off.

But yeah, even among "similarly" specced TVs and even monitors, there is a vast difference in quality between brands and pricing. They are one of the hardest things to research and buy because you won't truly know how good one is until you've sat down and used it for a long period of time!

@ralphdibny I recently freaked out and bought a new TV in the bank holiday sale because it had a decent discount.
Jumping from a cheap Argos 1080 50" to a Samsung 55" QLED 4k was a massive improvement.
I could have gotten an 8k for the same price but I wanted a TV that could manage 120HZ. My car is paid of in Feb and I'm planning on keeping it so I got the TV on credit, the payments between Feb and June that would have gone on car finance will pay off the TV and Soundbar before the interest free period ends.

The only reason I ended up with the Series X, was because I went into Argos for some bits and they had 1 in stock so I panick bought it on the spot and put it on the Argos card.

@LtSarge The main issues with the game from a reviewers standpoint were that it's supposed to get repetitive and formulaic. I remember being excited about the game when it was coming out, even having it pre-ordered from Best Buy, but then cancelled it and only got the urge to give it a chance over the last year.

So, I guess we'll see how we feel about the game once we get deeper into it. So far, after only about 45 minutes with it I've highly enjoyed it as well. It feels great playing it at 60 FPS, and I do appreciate the uniqueness of it's combat as well. I noticed about shooting the boxes like in R&C, but then also somehow forgot as I kept playing. Again, we'll see how we feel about that as it goes on.

Didn't realize that Asobo was involved in it to an extent. Maybe if they were the ones to develop the game themselves, it would have turned out better (at least in the minds of the critics) as A Plague's Tale: Innocence was a great game. Regardless, it's a shame it bombed as this would have been a nice series for Xbox since it's something their library lacks (and is Sony's bread and butter).

@Mr-Fuggles777 I've yet to enter the world of finance but I think I am about to soon 😅. Ive never really spent more than my means but I'm sure that's resulted in me having a crap credit rating (I'm too scared to check!). My partner and I are starting to look at buying a house with a mortgage etc.

I think the most important thing to buy for this house is a new TV, 8K, up to 100 inches, 120hz, HDR, HDMI 2.1 and 3D (if I can find one with it, it tends to be only on the really expensive sets these days). But yeah, I don't know why I feel so strongly about it but I guess I kind of feel like if I can put down the deposit on a house then I should just spend a grand or 2 and get a ridiculous TV as I'm sure that's the thing im going to be looking at most in it 😅.

I think the next stop after that on the finance train for me is going to be an electric car. Probably a Nissan Leaf because they have a decent range (~250 miles) and are about 30 grand which is the lower end of the prices EVs go for. But yeah, like I say, I've never done finance, taken out a loan or taken out a credit card in my life so I don't know how well I am going to succeed at this 😂. I do have a student loan though I guess but that just gets taken out of my wage slip every now and then.

What car you got out of interest? They normally have that sizable final payment don't they? Not sure how worth it it would be on an EV because of the battery longevity, might just be worth trading it in for a new model. You can probably tell I've been thinking about it quite a bit!

@ralphdibny I had a business go under a few years ago so I'm trying to rebuild my credit score. If you are trying to build up your credit score get a credit card, buy on it and pay it straight off each month - it soon builds up.

As for car I've got a Fiat 500 Twinair, the wife said wasn't allowed anything bigger/faster after writing the last 2 cars off lol. In fairness I love it, it's dirt cheap to run (50MPG) and is actually fun to drive. Even if I do look like a Mr Man driving it