Topic: Game Pass Club

@Tothington91 @MAC26 @XBontendo just wanted to tag some bods who have been vocal in this thread to see if theyve had time to play the games or if they have any thoughts on what should come next.

Apologies for the multiposting, I didn't want to tag you all in my previous comment which had a spoiler tag as the e mail notification for it will have the spoiler tag uncensored!

@ralphdibny I'm still playing Observation, haha. Good so far

@ralphdibny Yeah the reason why I'm looking forward to Tell Me Why is because it's made by Dontnod who made Life is Strange and I really enjoyed the first game in that series. I haven't played any of the other LiS games since that one, so it's been a while since I've experienced a game from those guys. And based on the length of each LiS episode (2-3 hours), we should be able to play Battletoads and TMW at the same time.

I haven't played the original Battletoads either due to how difficult it seemed to be. Do let us know what you think about it if you decide to play through it!

@XBontendo nice, let us all know your thoughts when you are done!

I haven't started Blair Witch yet. I've been so busy with work and school, but I am off tomorrow so I plan on getting a little bit of gaming in. I'm looking forward to this one! What are the options or ideas that have been pitched for our next game to try?

@MAC26 so far a double bill of battletoads and Tell me why episode 1 have been pitched, what do you reckon?

Good luck with Blair witch tomorrow if you manage to have a go!

@LtSarge just had a google of battletoads and it looks like there is actually 4 or 5 games, 2 are on rare replay (NES and Arcade) but I think there's also a SNES game, game boy game and crossover with double dragon which I may have to wack out an emulator for. Weird they didn't include the SNES and Gameboy game on rare replay though I can understand why the double dragon game wasn't included

@LtSarge I just "beat" the original Battletoads on Rare Replay using infinite lives. I swear that Rare used to be a bunch of sadists lol. It was ridiculous even with infinite lives and the rewind feature. For one level I had to remap the d-pad to A/B/X/Y for a section where you get dragged along by this unicycle thing and have to press the correct direction every time you turn a corner because the Xbox d pad wasn't accurate enough. Even then I had to pause it at every turn and swap direction before unpausing so this gnarly disco ball didn't catch up with me. Might be easier if it was on Switch with the separated d pad on the left joy con but still

@ralphdibny Nice! And yeah, it's cool that you can use stuff like infinite lives and rewind to beat the game, but still I don't know if it's worth playing the game like that. Hopefully the new game won't be as cruel as the original one, lol.

I just finished Blair Witch now as well and the game was overall really good, although the final chapter was a bit of a drag. I think it's because I played Layers of Fear some time ago and I'm kinda burned out on environments that repeat themselves, which that whole game was. In fact, the last chapter actually reminded me a lot of Layers of Fear, which is nice despite the repetitiveness since I liked how that game messed with your mind a lot. Although this part felt out of place compared to the rest of the game which takes place in the woods. It felt like I was playing a different game at that point because up until then, the game felt more open world, straightforward and not that scary.

Anyway, I got the bad ending obviously because getting the good one requires a lot of effort according to what I've read. It definitely warrants another playthrough for that but I genuinely don't feel like playing this game again since it was a decent experience the first time around. I think it's cool though that the developers added different endings since horror games like this usually only go for one ending even though it may not seem like the best one.

Overall, it wasn't the best horror game I've played but it was pretty good for what it was. I'm glad that I experienced it!

@LtSarge well done on finishing it. I guess I felt the final bit dragged too but I think I thought it was just because I was getting to the end of my allocated play time and wanted it to end. I did enjoy the house though, as I've said in my previous comment it was really trippy and cool. I've got that Layers of Fear game installed on my switch so I'll check that out at some point, I bought it real cheap in the sale but I never got around to playing it!

@ralphdibny Thanks mate! Definitely check out Layers of Fear in that case if you really enjoyed the house section. That game is honestly one of the best horror games I've ever played simply because of how creative it is. I'm curious to read your thoughts about it after having first played Blair Witch and not vice versa.

I'm all set for Battletoads now on Thursday!

So I've played an hour or so of Battletoads (still on act 1 I think) and the game is seriously really fun and also funny. I'm really liking the Saturday morning cartoon style they're going with and the humour is actually pretty good. The beat 'em up stages are great fun and rather challenging. On the first stage I kept dying over and over again by Porkshank, lol. But luckily you just get switched in as a different Battletoad instead of losing a life, and the other one that died gets a countdown before they can be used again, which is great game design in my opinion. It makes it so that you have to use all three Battletoads and learn each of their move sets, which are all unique and fun to learn. The game is in general pretty challenging but not in a way that is frustrating since you don't lose lives and there are plenty of checkpoints in the levels. This is what I'd expect from a revival of a 30 year old series; it's still challenging but the game lets you try over and over again without having to waste so much time getting back to the same point again like in the first games.

Also I just can't believe I'm playing a new Battletoads game in the year 2020. And it's actually really good, who would've thought that an entry from a Rare franchise these days can be good. If only Xbox could continue reviving all these Rare franchises like Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Conker, Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corps etc. then they could easily make Xbox One/Series X a compelling system to own for gamers who love these kinds of games. I'd pay top bucks for a Banjo-Threeie if it can be as good as this new Battletoads game, that's for sure. Not that I would need to since it would just be available on Game Pass in that case, lol.

@LtSarge that's awesome, I'm really looking forward to trying it. It's not a series I have a great nostalgia for so I'm not to fussed about the change in graphical style, it definitely looks cool though. The review on this site makes the game look really promising too.

I'm not sure if I'm going to go through all the other games first though, I might give Battletoads arcade a go tomorrow if I have time and if not I'll just jump in to Battletoads 2020 next week!

Yeah MS are definitely sitting on a goldmine of reasonably well regarded IP that they're not doing a lot with. I do wonder if something like perfect dark would do better with an n64 styled sequel rather than a modern update because an update would inevitably make it really generic in the sea of FPS's out these days

I couldn't believe some Battletoads games were missing from rare replay though, I literally thought it included everything that wasn't a Nintendo character.

@ralphdibny I mean honestly, Microsoft would be pretty dumb to not take this opportunity to revive a lot of the old Rare franchises. We now live in a time when it's popular to release remakes/sequels to old series: Streets of Rage 4, Wonder Boy III, Crash Bandicoot 4, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Resident Evil 2 and 3, MediEvil, the list goes on and on. I strongly believe that Battletoads is Microsoft testing the waters for their own franchises, and now that they've seen how well-received the game has been, they'll probably greenlight more old series. I mean, we're now seeing a brand new Fable game. That's something I would've never expected during the Xbox One generation and it's thanks to Phil Spencer's leadership. Combine that with how popular it is to bring back old games and there's just no way we won't see more titles from Rare's franchises.

“There was a graph that I saw… That Xbox was showing around internally. They showed me this graph and they were showing the power of Game Pass and using Descenders as one of the examples,” revealed No More Robots CEO Mike Rose. “The graph that they had done they had to alter the graph, because the spike was so good from when we went into Game Pass that it made it look like we had sold nothing before that point.”
https://mspoweruser.com/mike-rose-descenders-xbox-game-pass-i...

@LtSarge I just played through Battletoads Arcade, it took about an hour and 15 mins. It's set to autoplay (i.e. unlimited credits) and I don't think you can change this so there is basically no difficulty to the rare replay version because you can just keep hitting continue when you lose your lives and respawning where you died.

There is none of the type of level that made the first game hard even with infinite lives, it's mainly a beatemup with one shootemup level.

I'm sure it would be very difficult to do it without any continues though!

@ralphdibny Nice mate! I think I like the sound of Arcade more than the original game in that case. I'm actually getting rather interested in checking out the rest of Rare Replay now. I believe I played until Cobra Triangle (that boat game on NES) and stopped since it was getting boring playing all these old games that weren't particularly fun. I just wanted to get all the achievements, which was the only fun thing about Rare's early titles. I still haven't played games like Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corps, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day etc. I really should get to that!

I've given battletoads 2020 a go and I'm enjoying it so far! I've done four stages of act 1 but now I have to take a break to do some other things.

The game is fun, I especially liked the turbo bike level, my favourite part of that being the pink cutouts you have to jump through. I wish that went on for longer. I don't mean to be derisive but the animation does kind of remind me of old flash games you'd play online but it does quite suit this sort of game.

I've done one move where I turn into a mummy and I started another move with a different character that spawned an arcade machine but whatever I pressed next got rid of it so I didn't see the whole animation. I assume these are special moves of some sort but I don't know how to trigger them! Also I can't reliably pull off a bi directional attack.

I'm not sure about the voice acting for the toads either, the sunglasses one sounds alright but the other two sound a little bored. I guess I was expecting them to have more anachronistic 90s dude voices so I can't tell if it's kind of deliberately off-expectation or whether they just hired the cleaner to record some lines.

I also enjoyed the menial jobs bit. I kind of think the extra bits that have some humourous plot to them are better than the fighting sections but the fighting is still really cool, it's punchy, responsive, entertaining and attacks link together really well!

I wonder if this game is getting a physical release and what sort of price range they're aiming at.

Been playing a bit more of Battletoads now and I think the one thing that will motivate me the most to keep playing the game is the hilarious cut-scenes. This is a very funny game alright and the animation is fantastic, so much so that I would love to see a TV show with the Battletoads.

I'm still finding the game to be rather challenging at normal difficulty, so I don't think the gameplay will bore me anytime soon since I still need to get better at it despite what reviewers have been saying about it. There's also lots of variety and fun mini-games to break up the pacing, which in my opinion is definitely welcoming. Games these days should be more flexible and not have a rigid structure from beginning to end with the same kind of levels all the time. That's why I'm liking the levels in Battletoads since you never know what's going to appear next.