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

@KilloWertz I think I can see why reviewers thought the game felt repetitive. But at the same time, I've been noticing things that indicate otherwise. For example, you unlock different weapon types to use against different enemies, which means that you'll need to be alert and constantly switching weapons in order to perform well in combat. Not to mention that there are places you can't reach without certain power-ups I'm assuming, so there's going to be more variety in terms of traversal sort of like in a Metroidvania game. On top of this, once you beat the first dungeon the game becomes open world and so there are more options for what you want to do.

However, I don't know if the game was like this from the start or not. I noticed that my physical copy of the game is the vanilla edition while on the menu screen it says that it's the Definitive edition. So I'm assuming they updated the game a lot post-launch. Perhaps then they fixed a lot of the repetition, which is why I'm not noticing any now.

Made some more progress today and I'm really loving the open world aspect of this game. It's not too open but still has a fair amount of things you can do. For instance, today I discovered kind of a speedrun dungeon where you have to jump on very small platforms and get to the end of the dungeon as quickly as you can. On the way you have to shoot eight switches, find a yellow key and get through it in under three minutes. This is probably the first time where the game truly challenges your platforming skills and I love it! I managed to clear all three objectives on my second try and honestly, the rewards weren't all that great but the challenge was at least very fun. I'm hoping there will be more dungeons like this later on in the game.

@LtSarge I'm glad to know that so I don't get the urge to go back to it and try to do it again for the rewards I didn't get due to being too slow and missing a couple of switches. Maybe I was just stupid, but I had a far less enjoyable time with that. Probably didn't help that I had to go to work and tried Quick Resume with the game, only to get a black screen and lose my progress in the dungeon since it doesn't save it while you're inside until the end.

Since that was a lot of my playtime with it today, you had a better time with the game than I did. I left myself inside the building to do the Whisper in the Sand mission after finding all 6 of the things to open the door. My playtime will likely be more than your's as I spent way more time in the dungeon and finding the final one of the 6 to open to the door for the mission I left myself on. Maybe I was just having a blonde day with the game. I should go back to highly enjoying it again now that I'm back to the story portion.

@KilloWertz Yeah the rewards were mostly blueprints for your dog companion, which you can still find plenty of by simply exploring. Not to mention that there's a lot of flexibility in terms of levelling up your dog, e.g. by increasing its stats manually with the cores you collect, so these dungeons honestly don't feel that necessary to do. Still lots of fun if you're looking for a challenge and I think these ones really exemplify that this is not just a shooting game but also a platforming one.

Sorry to hear that mate. After playing through Hellblade on Game Club last year and using Xbox One's sleep mode, I realised that this feature, while very useful, is simply not well-optimised with older games. For Hellblade, I stopped unlocking achievements because I was using sleep mode. So I think the best thing to do is to simply avoid features like sleep mode, Quick Resume and so on with these older games that probably haven't been tested for this.

That's actually one thing PS4 does very well at, i.e. its rest mode. I use it all the time with the games I play and I rarely encounter any issues. Only time it happens is when I've used rest mode for a long time and the game ends up crashing. But that doesn't happen very often.

@ralphdibny Thanks for checking up on me I'd rather not discuss the issues over the internet, basically they are medical related which ties into my career as well. Not to worry though I am coping as best I can.

Titanfall 2 was a great time! I know that people always said it was a good campaign, but for whatever reason I dragged my feet on it for too long. Same for The Witcher 3. Everyone told me it was fantastic, but I never got around to playing it until 2018, 3 years after release, and boy oh boy that blew me away.

Seems like you enjoy racing games! Me too. I'm quite fond of both the Motorsport and Horizon franchises. Recently I've beaten Dirt 5 which was fun, and I gave Assetto Corsa a try because it was leaving gamepass. I respect the hell out of Assetto Corsa for what it is, but it wasn't for me personally. I might dabble in F1 at some point, but again, time is an issue as always. I wish I had gotten around to claiming FIA truck champ ): Kinda related, I tried Snow Runner for about an hour and that's quite fun, hoping to play that a bit more casually going forward. Any recommendations for other good racing games?

For what I have been getting into: MLB The Show (Thanks gamepass!), Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a tad bit of The Sims 4 and Hearts of Iron IV on PC, Outriders for a couple of weeks.

Things I'm interested in going forward: Final Fantasy X replay, Borderlands 3, Planet Coaster, dabbling with Skyrim to see the FPS boost for a bit, Yakuza 4, 5, 6, dragon, or Judgement, Doom Eternal, Halo campaign replays, The Ascent, Octopath Traveler, The Outer Worlds DLC, Wasteland 3 DLC, Pillars of Eternity 2, Psyconauts 2 (or 1), Torchlight 3, D and D Dark Alliance, off the top of my head.

Time will tell what sticks and what I actually end of playing. Wish there was time for all of them!

So I've played a good amount of the game today and at a point I started getting worried that it would be longer than we anticipated given its open world nature. However, after looking up a longplay on YouTube, it seems that the game should still be around 10 hours long even if you go off the beaten path. I'm almost 5 hours into the game now and that's halfway through the game according to the longplay and I've still done a fair amount of exploring. Now it actually feels kinda short, lol. Might have to go back to previous areas once I've unlocked more companions.

Speaking of which, I got my second companion today and the game feels way more intricate now. Having to switch between different rifle types as well as companions during combat can get very intense but ultimately it's very satisfying and a lot of fun.

@LtSarge It is what it is. I was able to still go back and do it last night, obviously minus actually doing it in time and getting enough switches. I had a better time with ReCore today though like I had hoped now that I'm back in the story though, so that's what matters.

Not going by playtime since I know mine is going to be higher than your's in the end because of last night (and I'm sometimes slower than most anyways), but I guess I'm no longer ahead of you. I just go the 2nd companion before I had to quit for work this morning, but I will have time to play it more tonight. Either way, it seems like we should finish it close to the same time, especially if you do more dungeons.

I think the easiest way I can describe how I feel about the game right now is it's a not quite as good Ratchet & Clank. That's not as negative as it sounds, as I'm still enjoying it well enough. Combat does lose a little bit until you get a new companion, as it is basically the same (shoot, dodge, shoot, pull), but I'm interested to see if it changes much with a new companion. It's not bad by any means. Just basically saying I see the complaint about the repetition, although I'm still having fun, so obviously I'm not agreeing with them entirely. It's still been well worth the playthrough so far, especially if you don't have a PS5 to play the new Ratchet & Clank.

@KilloWertz I've definitely noticed the game getting much harder in the area where you get the second companion. Enemies will start targeting you instead of the companion, which makes it harder to pull cores since the process will get interrupted by enemy attacks. Some environments will also make battles more challenging. For example, in the second story dungeon there's an area where fire shoots up from the ground and you need to avoid getting hit by it while also focusing on defeating the enemies. Moreover, there are now also enemy helpers who will heal the larger enemies if you don't take them out first. So the process of shooting and weakening the enemies in order to pull out their cores isn't as simple anymore. I've actually died multiple times during this part of the game, which is good because I want to feel like exploring, getting upgrades and leveling up me and my companions actually amount to something.

I wouldn't exactly compare this game to Ratchet & Clank (the only reason I mentioned it before was because of the boxes with materials that fly out when you shoot them). I would instead compare it more to the Metroid Prime games. You explore a hostile alien open world with interconnected areas, there are dungeons and puzzles to solve, the shooting is similar to MP as well (what with a regular shot, a charge shot and then different rifle types depending on the enemies), you have a double jump like in MP, you can't access all areas from the beginning since you need the necessary upgrades (just like any Metroidvania game), you can find health upgrades for your character (like energy tanks) and so on. In that regard I actually prefer ReCore because of its RPG and collecting mechanics since I love the feeling of progression.

The only complaint I have about ReCore so far is that it's not really that polished. You can literally walk through parts of the environment, and then there are sections where it's not even clear how you get back. But other than that this is genuinely a phenomenal game.

@Mr-Fuggles777 haha that car is sweet enough to be honest, ain't that the one with the modified motorbike engine? My partner's parents have that one and it's a small car but it's loud as hell lol

@LeanerFasterStronger no worries 👍, I hope you are doing better or getting better!

I'm actually a bit funny with racing games, Horizon 4 was the first one I'd played properly in over a decade probably. Except Kart games, I had aced MK Wii, MK 8 and CTR refuled in that time! Horizon has opened up the genre for me a bit but nothing has really compared to be honest. Motorsport 7 was a bit too realistic and not as fun as Horizon 4. I won't be playing Truck Racing beyond getting the easy achievements I think. I had a go on TT Isle of Man but again too difficult. I tend to just race on all the tracks in the GwG games and call them "complete", like I've given them a fair shake if you know what I mean. I gave that Assetto Corsa a go actually and it was way too hard for me lol. So yeah, not many recommendations because I haven't played that many! Horizon 3 is excellent though but I guess that's to be expected!

I plan on giving that V-Rally 4 from GwG a good crack at some point because that's a series I recognise from my childhood. I think I had v rally 2 or 3 on the Gameboy advance!

Sounds like you've been playing a fair amount of games and got a fair amount left! I just started that Ace Combat 7 which is leaving game pass soon and it wasn't at all what I expected. It's like an ultra realistic looking anime game. The cutscenes have characters that are like anime characters if they were real. It's kind of got this "out west" desert vibe that some anime has. The biggest anime trope is the alternate world/history the game resides in. It has fictional countries, continents and political and military alliances. It's a bit hard but I'm about 3 quarters through it so I'll probably stick it out. I might give that NightCall a go too before it leaves game pass if I get some time.

Hopefully next week I'll finally get started on ReCore and Subnautica which is the PushSquare game club game too.

@LtSarge that platforming speed run section sounds awesome! I'm looking forward to it

On the topic of the PS4 rest mode, I was actually thinking about it yesterday. How it's super easy to let the console go into rest mode and come back to the game. Framerates do take a hit when I log back in but it's enough of a breather to get to a save point and turn it off properly. Normally I turn consoles off properly but the PS4 rest mode is useful if I need to have dinner or something.

The Xbox One is weirder, I think there's an option in settings to go in to like a standby mode but it would be nice to just have the choice when you hit the Home button like you do on PS4. Currently it's set to fully turn off which means I always have to get to a save point before I turn it off

I just unlocked the third companion and in all honesty, I feel like the game has become a bit annoying now because of this. The reason being that you can only bring with you two companions at a time and I don't understand this design choice at all. It doesn't make the game more strategic or challenging, it just becomes annoying now because you'll need certain companions for certain things and if you don't have one of them with you, you'll need to go back to home base and swap one of them out for the other. It's just incredibly tedious. Not to mention that it doesn't fit with the whole point of swapping out companions/rifle types in order to match them with the right enemies. You can freely switch between all rifle types, but only between two companions, which is not optimal at all because you don't even know what kind of enemies you'll be facing in the next area. And the worst part is that there are apparently five companions in total and all of them have a feature that is necessary to progress in certain areas. What happens then if you bring with you two companions and you encounter a roadblock and you can't get past it with the two you have. So you'll have to fast travel back to base, grab the one you need, and then go back and clear the obstacle. I truly hope they've designed the rest of the game so that this won't happen to often, but this could potentially make the second half of the game incredibly annoying.

Played a couple of hours more now and I'm just going to come out and say it: the open world aspect just gets worse and worse the further in you get. Let me share some of the things that have dampened my experience of the game today:

• After getting the third companion, you unlock a huge open area to explore and so I thought, why not explore it. Turns out that the enemies here are at a much higher level than you are and so I kept dying and dying over and over again before finally leaving this place. It's absolutely not worth exploring this early on and considering how high of a level you need to be, the game pretty much expects you to grind in the previous areas before exploring this place.
• I decided to go back and unlock a dungeon in order to spice things up a bit. Went in, did pretty well and then I realised I couldn't progress. I recognised the obstacles were for an upgrade that I didn't have, yet the game still allowed me to enter this dungeon despite it being impossible for me to clear it. So I left.
• Then after a while, an orange objective marker showed up and I decided to follow it. It took me to a previous area and there I found enemies who were at a much higher level than I was and I died instantly.
• Finally, I decided to just go back to the beginning of the game and do a dungeon that required a low level. Surely a low level dungeon shouldn't pose any problems. Well, I cleared it and managed to not get a single reward at all despite looking everywhere for those switches and yellow key. At that point I just gave up on the open world exploration.

For real, it's seriously not worth exploring in this game. No matter what, there will always be something that hinders you or it will end up feeling unsatisfying even if you do clear it. I'm absolutely baffled at how awful the side content is. Not to mention that the optional dungeons literally repeat the same level design of previous story dungeons.

A tip though for those who have just acquired the third companion: go do the Renegade Vault dungeon ASAP. There will be an upgrade for your companion that makes traversal much easier.

But yeah, at this point I'm probably just going to focus on the story and disregard all the optional stuff. Apparently I'm only a couple of hours away from the ending so I might as well just wrap it up as soon as I can. I've pretty much experienced all there is to do in this game anyway.

Well, your opinion of the game took an almost complete 180 in a matter of a day....

Taking a little break from it to finish another game I was playing on my PS4, but the last time I played it yesterday I ran into an enemy that was immune to my attacks shortly after getting the 2nd companion. Didn't realize at the time that you could just randomly encounter enemies that you literally have no way of defeating. Ended up going the opposite direction once I figured out where to go.

@ralphdibny I forgot all about CTR Nitro Fueled, that's an incredible game! I honestly believe that it's the best kart racing game ever made. I dumped SO much time into it and the amount of love they put into that game is breathtaking. Lot's of service for the fans.

I feel you on GwG racing games. Usually I don't look into free racing games but I did end up completing Dirt 5, had a lot of fun with that.

Ace Combat 7 is a very good game. My first Ace Combat game was 4 on the PS2. From what I've gathered, a lot of people in the AC community consider 4 to be the best in the series. But I had a ton of fun with 7. It is a strange mixup of genres. You've got some crazy Kojima style military fiction, combined with poignant global geo and socio political and environmental commentaries, combined with absurd over the top machines from a mecha anime, mixed in with real life military craft. It's something that only a distinctly japanese studio could make, and it's awesome.

@KilloWertz To be fair it's just my opinion on the open world aspect. I'm still enjoying the rest of the game, although like I said it's rather annoying to be switching companions now that there are so many and you can only bring with you two.

I'm fairly certain that you as well as others will encounter these issues too once you reach the huge open area. The game should've honestly just focused on the story aspect because as far as I can tell, the story isn't that long at all.

Well apparently you need to explore the world because you need to have 30 prismatic cores in order to progress to the final level. I haven't had a problem with collecting them until now. So I just spent the past hour exploring the early areas and unlocking about a dozen more cores that I needed. Hopefully this is the last time you need to actually go out of your way in order to progress through the story because this wasn't fun at all.

So I'm just saying this now, I think ReCore is perhaps the worst choice for Game Club we've ever made. If anyone manages to beat this game, major kudos to you. According to the achievements, only roughly 3% of total players have finished it. I'm working my way there but this is definitely not a good game for Game Club.

I've also prepared a viking funeral for my copy of the game once (or if) I'm done with it.

@LtSarge I'm genuinely struggling to motivate myself to get through it, after the initial awe dulled it becomes a boring slog.

@Mr-Fuggles777 Can't blame you honestly. I typically have more patience for games like this, but it is genuinely getting out of hand now at the end of the game. It has brought down my overall enjoyment of the game so much.

Well we can't get it right all the time. Hopefully the next game will be better!

@LtSarge fancy a mid month skip and try something short for the next 2 weeks?

@Mr-Fuggles777 I don't think that's a good idea since there are people who are still playing the game or haven't started yet (even if they might decide to abandon it later on). Not to mention that this is how people lost interest in Game Club last year because we were setting such short deadlines for games. One game a month is honestly for the best even if this one turned out to be a dud.