The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

I just posted an update to my post on page 1, bringing my total for this year up to 4/13.  What did I complete?  Go check out my page for the update...
 

Spoiler

IT'S FINALLY DONE!

 

[Jeevan | 8,948]

@Reed Rothchild +1

@Sumez

[Sumez | 2,995]

7 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

 

  Hide contents

IT'S FINALLY DONE!

 

Such a fantastic game, it's incredibly what they were able to pull off for the time.

 

  

6 hours ago, Jeevan said:

Hawt!

Edited March 1, 2023 by Sumez

[twiztor | 855]

Crash Bandicoot (PS1)
for a 1st gen 3d platformer, this is a very innovative and engaging game. it was fun to play and exciting to see how it pushed the ps1 to its limits.
that being said, this game is fucking WAY harder than i expected. based on its reputation and de facto spot as Sony's console representative, i expected a straightforward 3d platformer. I WAS WRONG. this is challenging in a lot of ways reminiscent of the NES. plenty of trial-and-error, leaps of faith  and straight up aggregation await you. play to win at your own risk. the saving/password system is amongst the worst i've experienced.  i'm not ashamed to admit that i beat every level legitimately, but used passwords i found online to bypass the bullshit saving mechanism.
has Crash become an icon of ps1 gaming? yes! but any gamer who can beat this game has earned his or her accolades as well.

[Jeevan | 8,948]

@Reed Rothchild +1

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

16 hours ago, twiztor said:

Crash Bandicoot (PS1)
for a 1st gen 3d platformer, this is a very innovative and engaging game. it was fun to play and exciting to see how it pushed the ps1 to its limits.
that being said, this game is fucking WAY harder than i expected. based on its reputation and de facto spot as Sony's console representative, i expected a straightforward 3d platformer. I WAS WRONG. this is challenging in a lot of ways reminiscent of the NES. plenty of trial-and-error, leaps of faith  and straight up aggregation await you. play to win at your own risk. the saving/password system is amongst the worst i've experienced.  i'm not ashamed to admit that i beat every level legitimately, but used passwords i found online to bypass the bullshit saving mechanism.
has Crash become an icon of ps1 gaming? yes! but any gamer who can beat this game has earned his or her accolades as well.

I've been seeing this repeated a lot lately, but I had this at launch with my PS1 and I don't remember the game being particularly hard. Now I'm second guessing whether I actually beat it or just played some fun levels and called it quits. I'll have to circle back around some day.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,593]

I had it back then as well and never considered it hard, but when I did the remake trilogy it definitely wasn't easy.

[twiztor | 855]

i really wasn't familiar with the game at all. i just kind of assumed it would be pretty easy due to it being such a flagship title that everyone seemed to have. nowhere near the hardest game i've played, but certainly more difficult than i expected. caught me by surprise as much as anything.

i feel like if i had this growing up, i would have been able to beat it by sheer determination (and a lot more gaming time than i have now!) but it's hard to say because i was never a great gamer as a kid.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Crash Bandicoot 1 is of above average difficulty, yes. Although this isn't that high of a standard to reach, it's maybe the hardest PS1 3D platformer that's reasonably well known (for reasons other than being terrible, so like, excluding Bubsy).

[greenthunder | 115]

Forgot I need to update my original post as well, so I'll get to that eventually. Still haven't gotten around to grinding in Strange Journey Redux, but on some other fronts:

Rhythm Heaven Megamix: I beat the main story. It was my first Rhythm Heaven and I liked it, outside of some games being suffering or me just being bad. It'll probably be one of those games I go back to play random games and attempt to eventually unlock all of them.

Etrian Mystery Dungeon: Beat the 7th dungeon and reached the credits. I've heard before it's a poor adaption of Etrian Odyssey to Mystery Dungeon and I'll probably have to agree.

Unlike Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (which is the only other Mystery Dungeon series I've played), the loop is delving a given mystery dungeon multiple times as opposed to one and done for Pokemon (outside of quests). Run until I find a good floor to build a fort in, leave to heal up/stock up, then start at the fort and keep going.

The party AI does suck a lot. It tends to spam attack skills a bit randomly and if someone gets hit with an irrelevant debuff, you'll have to spam cancel the AI members requesting to use an item to heal it. I did see recommendations to just use a solo character and that probably would have been better but I ended up suffering through the full party.

The boss fights are also a low point. I'd usually just teleport sigil my Medic, Runemaster and Gunner away then just whale on it. Unlike regular EO games, you're also forced to do the last 5 floors of a dungeon before the boss so I'd usually run out of TP like halfway through the fight and end up just slowly chipping away at the boss until it dies.

I did complain about it a bit but overall, not a bad game but definitely one of those games that don't mesh well with its series.

Started Atelier Ryza 2, might start Style Savvy: Fashion Forward, Layton's Mystery Journey or a game I didn't list here (illegal) alongside it.

[Floating Platforms | 741]

A couple days ago I finished Spider-Man: Miles Morales

I'm glad this one was on sale. I loved the PS4 Spider-Man game and this is still a great extension of that, but it definitely feels like a large DLC that was released separately instead. The story is incredibly short. Very few side missions and all of it was much more repetitive than the first. The collectible stuff basically involves going somewhere, maybe moving one thing and picking up the thing. I miss the variety of the puzzle types. The beat making thing wasn't fun because you simply had to find the right place to perch rather than actually construct something yourself.  I also could not get into The Tinkerer's storyline. Solid performance, but I hated the character's arc and frustrating rationale. Too many story beats felt recycled or elementary level for me to get fully invested in. It also would have been great to see more villains. There's Rhino, Tinkerer and Prowler (sort of). I was hoping the side stuff would lead to more bad guys, but instead you get more suits.  If this were part of the main first game, I would be thrilled with the depth of content for the DLC. As it's own package, it's still a lot of fun but sadly underwhelming.  I'm hoping that Spider-Man 2 doesn't skimp out when it releases.

On the handheld side, I started playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and thought I was going to start over, but my save file showed I was 3 hours in and and had done a couple of areas already. It's been so long that I completely forgot. So, I'm going to power through and see if I can find my bearings. I imagine I might need to backtrack through various areas and re-enter a painting or two at some point anyway.

I'm not sure what to play next for PS4/5. I might knock out another short one like Abzu or Untitled Goose Game. For my big title, I'm trying to decide between God of War and Watch Dogs: Legion.  I also played an hour of Lego City Undercover on Wii U for the first time since 2018 (!?).  Too much to choose from!

[Sumez | 2,995]

Sonic Lost World - Beaten 2/3

My 2023 backlog list has been really good to me. Outside of a single bummer, it's been very enjoyable to experience everything, so progress has felt super smooth. Meanwhile, Sonic Lost World is the first game on the list so far that I've had to drag myself through.
It's not that it's a super bad game though. Well.. it kinda is, but it's nowhere near the travesty that it was made out to be when it released. It has a lot of issues, but it's the same run-of-the-mill stuff you'll find in nearly every single other 3D Sonic game, so nothing new there - people have put up with that in worse games. You know, mechanics not consistently working like you'd expect, controls floating all over the place when trying to do precision movements, and and buggy stages with context sensitive actions or automated sections not triggering as intended. These things have become pretty much as much a staple of the Sonic series as going fast has, ever since the transition to 3D.

But Lost World had the potential to be even worse. Taking the gravity bending planetoid mechanics that directed most of Mario Galaxy, and basing a Sonic game on it? That sounds like a really dangerous idea - I came in expecting impossible cameras and wonky platforming with unreliable gravity.
But to be honest, Lost World actually nails that part. The abstract shapes of the stages bending in on themselves actually feels like an extremely solid fit for Sonic, in some ways it even feels more apt in this context than in that of Mario.

I'll also have to applaud the creativity and tone of the game. Nearly every new stage brings something new to the table, using the core mechanics in different ways to create vastly different challenges and gimmicks for you to force. It's pretty much the direct opposite approach from Sonic Generations (the only 3D Sonic game I'd say is really good) which was a much more laser focused game with a commitment to stages as race tracks. Lost World often has less of a focus on going fast, and more on simply exploring what you can do with its building blocks - to very varying results. Unlike Generations where every hidden red ring is placed along the optimal fastest path through the stage, Lost World will often make you take detours if you want them.

The controls are similarly changed from most of the other "recent" 3D games (Unleashed, Colours, Generations, and Forces all use the same control scheme), and is honestly a lot more confusing for it, probably being the primary thing holding it back and causing much of the backlash the game received.
You have three different jump buttons which also allow a tiny double-jump, but each of them behaves differently in regards to how the homing attack works. One lets you kick an enemy into other enemies, while one lets you bounce between them, and the third just ignores lock-on altogether. Since all of them function nearly the same the rest of the time, it very easily gets confusing once you do need a specific function, and often the game is also really, really bad at communicating which attack will work and which won't.
Generally, failing to communicate mechanics and what you are supposed to do at specific locations is probably the game's single biggest mistake, making it very often feel like it wasn't playtested at all. Some times mechanics that work in one place refuse to work in other places, and it's hard to tell how certain things actually work, resulting in a lot of frustrating trial and error over deadly traps.

It's kind of baffling exactly how blatantly these things were just left on the ground while the rest of the game actually feels extremely well cared for. It looks just amazing, and runs completely smooth on the WiiU. There are enjoyable cosmetic details everywhere, and the tone is IMO exactly what you want from a Sonic game, with this one arguably moving much closer to the original MegaDrive series than any 3D Sonic game has ever done before. No human cities, roads and cars or other things that don't belong in a story of a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog, just colorful jungles and abstract hills accompanied by catchy upbeat music.
The story too takes after Sonic Colours' light-hearted tone, that doesn't take itself too seriously. No annoying friends or edgy Sonic clones, just Tails hanging out while Knuckles and Amy only occasionally join in on a Zoom call. That said, the story scenes occur very frequently, are a little too long, and seem to exist mostly to supply gags which aren't funny anyway. The new set of villains are pretty cringeworthy, and honestly I'd recommend anyone just skipping all the cutscenes.

Sonic Lost World is a game I'd really love to enjoy, but for way too many little reasons it just turned out to be a chore to play it, and it's really, really not a good game. It feels like it's hitting very close to the goal, so it's sad that it ultimately failed, and ended up being succeeded by Sonic Forces, which just goes in the completely wrong direction yet again.

[Gloves | 11,843]

Progress has been steady on Mario Galaxy. Today I got my 60th star, which as I understand it means I can face off against Bowser and finish the game. 

A "completion" would mean getting all the stars and then doing it all again as Luigi, but honestly I've not enjoyed the structure of the game enough to continue on for full completion. I still much prefer the freedom of Mario 64 compared to these very linear stars. 

Should get it finished sometime in the next few days. 

[Sumez | 2,995]

@ThePhleo @Webhead123 @Murray @ifightdragons @the_wizard_666 @Vectrex28 @Splain @Jicsan @greenthunder@ConfusedCollector @G-type

 

  

[Webhead123 | 687]

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

@ThePhleo @Webhead123 @Murray @ifightdragons @the_wizard_666 @Vectrex28 @Splain @Jicsan @greenthunder@ConfusedCollector @G-type

 

  

Thanks, Sumez! I know it's been kinda quiet on my end but I'm simultaneously working my way through a handful of titles. I'm about halfway done with Grim Fandango and Dusk, a quarter of the way through Oracle of Seasons and, well, I keep banging my head against the wall of Gremlins 2 but I'm hoping for a breakthrough soon. That game gets pretty obnoxious by Stage 4.

[Sumez | 2,995]

@Webhead123 those are at least all some really great games! 

[Gloves | 11,843]

Well, I beat Mario Galaxy. It was alright, but I still prefer Mario 64. I'll have to give Galaxy 2 a go sometime. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,593]

Eternal Darkness 

I'd played through this back in the day, but got stuck on the final boss, and never did finish it off.  Or at least I had thought that.  I could swear the final boss was a Lovecraftian monster, but that fight actually takes place like 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through the game, so perhaps I hadn't gotten as far as I thought.

Either way, it's finished now.  Fun game, brings a lot of cool stuff to the table.  Also has a lot of aged rough edges.  And severe backtracking.  But I enjoyed it, again.

[Sumez | 2,995]

Kirby Triple Deluxe - Beaten 6/3

With a name like Triple Deluxe you'd probably think this was a bundle of three older Kirby games, or a compilation game similar to Kirby Super Star, right? Turns out it's just a fancy name that plays on the "3D" abbreviation, alluding to the 3DS, similar to how DS games liked going for subtitles abbreviated "DS". Well, the more you know. As such, 3D is definitely also the central gimmick in Kirby 3D, though more than anything else, it still manages to feel like a very traditional Kirby game for better or worse.

...And that's a formula I kinda burned out on after a bunch of mediocre games in a row, which really did nothing to set themselves apart, especially following the brilliant SNES games. "Amazing Mirror" had metroidvania elements, but did little to benefit from them, while Mouse Attack just felt like a run-of-the-mill baby platformer with absolutely nothing to set itself apart, and as such I really haven't touched any new Kirby game released since those, knowing that it's not really my style of game. It's not that I don't like Kirby, but the series' stubborn denial of ever challenging the player makes it really hard for any of the games to really stick with me in any meaningful way.

Regardless, the Kirby games are consistently expertly made games with a lot of sensibilities and eye for details, which are generally always completely excessive considering the framework they exist in. Even Kirby's Adventure remains one of the most visually appealing NES games, and Triple Deluxe lives up to this tradition. As someone who kinda grew satiated with these games many years ago, I'm happy to see that unlike some of the more middling games in the series, the excess of this one often manages to outweigh the pushover nature of the gameplay.

Unique to this game is 3D elements which combine well with the traditional 2D gameplay - instead of actually moving in three dimensions, stages are seperated into any number of layers, with things often going on in the background or foreground while you are playing, and key locations will allow Kirby to switch between these layers. This is a mechanic seen in quite a few other platformers, but I've never seen it employed as well as it is here.
Many enemies will attack you from across the layers, while a few unique items let you interact with other layers in specific ways, and often just paying attention to what goes on in the background will often help you overcome obstacles and find secrets, just like the foreground can obscure the action in unique and creative ways that actually feels engaging rather than annoying. It's hard to even imagine all the ways the game uses this mechanic in its favor, so I think that is really commendable.
The other big gimmick of this game is the "Hypernova" power which is simply given to Kirby at specific stage segments designed around having it. It feels conceptually similar to the giant mushroom in New Super Mario Bros (DS), and allows Kirby to grow overpowered and suck up nearly anything regardless of size, animated in hilarious detailed splendor. On one stage he even manages to literally suck up the health bar of a miniboss, which doesn't get a foot to the ground.
Unlike the giant mushroom though, this mode is more than just a visual gimmick, and allows for some pretty fun interactive puzzles and dedicated boss fights.
Like every other setpiece employed throughout the massive stages of Triple Deluxe, this just demonstrates an exceptional skill at making gameplay feel really satisfying even when it isn't particularly challenging.

I think few things describe the Kirby series better than the fact that it has disappearing platforms over bottomless pits... in a game where the player character can fly at will simply by pressing the jump button at any time.
And Kirby's health bar is massive, he can take a lot of hits before dying, and whenever you do, there is usually some healing food around the next corner... and if there isn't, one of the next enemies you slaughter will probably drop one, almost completely mitigating any potential consequence of taking a hit.
This ultimately informs my playstyle to being a lore more carefree than if it would have been if I knew that taking damage actually posed a threat. Some might argue that the lack of consequence to the game's challenges is what makes Kirby games good, and there's no doubt it's definitely something that helps increase the broad appeal of the series. Personally, I would say this game is good *despite* this fact, and it's regrettable knowing that the game could have been even better. Even removing the ability to fly would actually have made it better.

I ended up enjoying Triple Deluxe quite a lot, and it will never not be a disappointment to me that the game doesn't have a hard mode with more threatening enemies and less leeway for mistakes. In this game every single copy ability has a plethora of advanced moves you can perform using different combinations of buttons, which could potentially be fun to play around with, but you never need to do anything aside from walking up to the enemy and mash the attack button. Wouldn't it be fun, if they actually had some genuine utility?
I'm excited to play Planet Robobot as well, because I usually hear that it is similar to Triple Deluxe, but better. But I think I'm going to need a short break before starting with it, to avoid burning out on Kirby again.

[Vectrex28 | 366]

On 3/7/2023 at 5:03 PM, Sumez said:

@ThePhleo @Webhead123 @Murray @ifightdragons @the_wizard_666 @Vectrex28 @Splain @Jicsan @greenthunder@ConfusedCollector @G-type

 

  

Thanks, hahaha.

I worked a bit on Elden Ring but ugh Godrick is hard. I'll settle on some Bubble Bobble 2 for now

Got to Round 30 so far. Really love those late release Taito games

[Sumez | 2,995]

BB2 is a "late" Taito game?

I thought they got real good around the F3 era, but they've barely made anything of note since. Unless you're really into rhythm games I guess...

Im not really a fan of the nes BB2, but it's also not in-house taito. But it's on my backlog list for this year too, so it's getting a new chance. We'll see..

[Vectrex28 | 366]

Played one more game before going to bed. This time I got to Stage 60. Next time I got this! 

[Vectrex28 | 366]

3 hours ago, Sumez said:

BB2 is a "late" Taito game?

I thought they got real good around the F3 era, but they've barely made anything of note since. Unless you're really into rhythm games I guess...

Im not really a fan of the nes BB2, but it's also not in-house taito. But it's on my backlog list for this year too, so it's getting a new chance. We'll see..

Late as in Late NES

[Floating Platforms | 741]

Well, I've come down with some sort of minor respiratory illness, so I holed myself upstairs to not infect my wife and decided to open up steam. I ended up starting and beating Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill Remastered

I've played a couple of the Nancy Drew games and those have been entertaining point & click puzzlers that definitely require note taking and typically have a good variety of puzzle types. I learned about them from watching a couple streamers/youtubers and I was surprised at the polish and level of difficulty for what I assumed would be a little kids game.  Anyway, I wanted to go back and play the series in order, so this is the first one and it shows.  Only 3 small locations to visit, 5 different people to talk to and the puzzles are virtually all cyphers or reading things backwards. Obviously, it was also incredibly short.  It's an interesting starting point for the franchise, but not a particularly good one.

The Remastered version brings it in line with the rest of the series with uncanny valley 3D models of the characters as I've looked into the original PC version which has simple 2D animated people. The original also has a different location that doesn't exist in the remake, a totally different ending, and one less character.  It's pretty fascinating to see how different it actually was.  For my next Nancy Drew game I have to jump to the 3rd (Message in a Haunted Mansion) as the 2nd one (Stay Tuned for Danger) was never put on steam.

[Floating Platforms | 741]

No picture this time, but Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion is done.

This third entry in the series is a noticeable improvement over Secrets Can Kill but it is still finding its bearings.  The navigation is a bit clunky as everything is done with a magnifying glass icon, which is also used to zoom into key areas. So it's really hard to know if what you're clicking on will move you somewhere or lead to an item, or if you're missing something by clicking on the wrong spot. Later games changed movement to arrows.  Weirdly there are several red herring screens where you can zoom in on things but they never get used throughout.

The puzzles are still sparse. There's one at the start and the main objective you're working towards makes it seem like you'd have a lot of little puzzles to do throughout but it's all quickly thrown at you back to back to back at the very end.  The rest of the time is mostly light, easy inventory puzzles or finding things to unlock dialog options to progress the story. I ended up looking up a couple things near the end because I missed an easily miss-able zoom area that was needed for the next step (because it was too close to navigation clicks, I think), and also for the safe I couldn't figure out how to rotate the dial. The cursor gives no indication when you're on the wheel, you have to be at 3 or 9 o clock and outside of the actual wheel to see the rotate icon, which is silly.

Anyway, it was a fun enough story, even if the characters didn't want to talk about some of the key revelations I uncovered. It'll be interesting to see how adventure #4 compares.