The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[Reed Rothchild | 9,560]

1 hour ago, Webhead123 said:

The original or the 2014 remake? In either case, I'm curious to know your thoughts once completed as the original (Macintosh version) was a formative title for me in adventure gaming and I have great nostalgia for it and I have the remake in my GOG library but have never loaded it up.

Own both, but playing the remake

[Sumez | 2,970]

What qualifies as the "original" shadowgate? The dreary black and white mac game?

[Webhead123 | 687]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

What qualifies as the "original" shadowgate? The dreary black and white mac game?

I grew up with the Mac release and, to this day, it's still my preferred version. It got colorized ports to various home computers over the next couple years and the popular NES port in '89 but even though having color was a nice touch...it most cases it really washed out the very finely detailed art design of the b&w original (I think the same is true of all the MacVenture titles). And it might just be me but there was something slightly creepier about playing it in b&w, alone and late at night. These were games that were developed for the Mac first, so it makes sense that they were stylistically optimized for that platform.

I've played the Mac original, Apple II, MS-DOS and NES ports. All fine experiences in their own right but I like the Mac version. The MS-DOS port is just ugly, limited by CGA color. The Apple II is pretty close to the Mac but a bit blindingly colorful and the visuals end up kind of muddy as a result. The NES port is a decent effort but the clunky controls can get annoying, some areas were removed to save on memory and the music, while charming in a chiptune way, feels distracting to me.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,560]

Ghost of Tsushima

Also, as of right now I'm thinking this is the rough idea of the tracking of every game I've done this year so far.  Non-backlog games in italics:

1. Elden Ring (10/10)
2. Hades (9.5/10)
3. Deathloop (9/10)
4. Baba Is You (9/10)
5. Gradius V (8.5/10)
6. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser's Fury (with the kids) (8.5/10)
7. God of War (8.5/10)
8. MGS: The Twin Snakes (8.5/10)
9. Ghost of Tsushima (8/10)
10. Sin & Punishment (8/10)
11. Nier Automata (8/10)
12. Dusk (8/10)
13. Into the Breach (8/10)
14. Deus Ex (7.5/10)
15. Xenoblade (7.5/10)
16. Hellblade (7.5/10)
17. Ace Attorney 2 (7.5/10)
18. Uncharted 4 (7.5/10)
19. Eternal Darkness (7.5/10)
20. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold (7/10)
21. Resident Evil 3 (7/10)
22. Onimusha (7/10)
23. What Remains of Edith Finch (6.5/10)
24. Everblue 2 (6.5/10)
25. Fallen Order (6.5/10)
26. Pilotwings 64 (6.5/10)
27. Contra Shattered Soldier (6/10)
28. Strife (6/10)
29. Mischief Makers (6/10)
30. La Pucelle (5.5/10)
31. Buck Bumble (5.5/10)
32. Indigo Prophecy (5.5/10)
33. Yoshi's Story (4.5/10)
34. Winback (4/10)

TBD:

1. Shenmue (crap)
2. Paper Mario (decent)
3. Ori & the Will of the Wisps
4. House of Fata Morgana

Not started

1. Yakuza Kiwami
2. Control
3. Nioh
4. Dark Souls II
5. Resident Evil 2
6. Last of Us Part II
7. Danganronpa
8. Doom Eternal
9. KotOR 2
10. Trails in the Sky
11. Ion Fury
12. Shadowgate
13. Prey

[Webhead123 | 687]

Dusk complete.

Pretty great little retro shooter that feels like Quake but also pays homage to many other games. I don't know that any of the levels are true duds but I definitely think Episode 3 is the best of the bunch. Some notables like E3M3 "City of Shadows" and E3M5 "Blasphemy" are probably my favorite levels in the entire game.

The Jakob boss fight also made me laugh out loud when I first realized what was happening.

While I generally prefer the feel of movement in the Doom Engine or Build Engine to the floaty feel of Quake-like games, that's a nitpick so minor that I can't hold it against Dusk. Pretty great adventure from start to finish and anyone that likes the retro FPS genre should check it out.

8/10

Edited June 26, 2023 by Webhead123

[Philosoraptor | 468]

Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB), and Mega Man 6 are done.

I can't say enough about Zero Mission. It's a 10/10 game. I didn't expect it to live up to the hype, but it does. I can't think of anything negative to say about it.

Metroid II was a painful and boring experience, even with a map. I'm not a fan of point and click and adventure games, puzzle-heavy RPGs, or obtuse puzzles in general, and I think this game falls into those categories somewhere. I don't like the tedium of bombing every single mysterious pixel for five more missles. I also didn't really like the relative emptyness of the map, even though I get what they're going for there. Even the Metroid encounters were pretty whelming. 6/10, although I think others will like this more than me.

I put in Super Metroid twice and put about 30 minutes into it each time before literally falling asleep on the couch. I took that to mean my Metroidvania fatigue is now becoming literal, so I put it back on the shelf. I'm getting old...

So, I switched to Mega Man 6, even though it might be one of the more unpopular Mega Man titles because of the Rush powers. I thought the difficulty was really fair, and I didn't have as hard of a time 1cc'ing it as I feared. I've always thought Mega Man games were going to be the most difficult games I'll ever play, but it's clear that modern "difficult" platformers and action games have surpassed at least this Mega Man entry in difficulty. It's no Super Meat Boy or Rabi Ribi. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I'll definitely be playing more Mega Man games in the future.

These last three games also fulfill one of my backlog tasks for the year: beating a 2D Castlevania, Metroid, and Mega Man game. Woo! Now people won't look at me like I have two heads when I say what I haven't beaten yet.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Philosoraptor

[Reed Rothchild | 9,560]

@Philosoraptor takes the lead

edit: wait, no, I jumped the gun.  But soon.

[Brickman | 4,000]

10 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB), and Mega Man 6 are done.

I can't say enough about Zero Mission. It's a 10/10 game. I didn't expect it to live up to the hype, but it does. I can't think of anything negative to say about it.

Metroid II was a painful and boring experience, even with a map. I'm not a fan of point and click and adventure games, puzzle-heavy RPGs, or obtuse puzzles in general, and I think this game falls into those categories somewhere. I don't like the tedium of bombing every single mysterious pixel for five more missles. I also didn't really like the relative emptyness of the map, even though I get what they're going for there. Even the Metroid encounters were pretty whelming. 6/10, although I think others will like this more than me.

I put in Super Metroid twice and put about 30 minutes into it each time before literally falling asleep on the couch. I took that to mean my Metroidvania fatigue is now becoming literal, so I put it back on the shelf. I'm getting old...

So, I switched to Mega Man 6, even though it might be one of the more unpopular Mega Man titles because of the Rush powers. I thought the difficulty was really fair, and I didn't have as hard of a time 1cc'ing it as I feared. I've always thought Mega Man games were going to be the most difficult games I'll ever play, but it's clear that modern "difficult" platformers and action games have surpassed at least this Mega Man entry in difficulty. It's no Super Meat Boy or Rabi Ribi. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I'll definitely be playing more Mega Man games in the future.

These last three games also fulfill one of my backlog tasks for the year: beating a 2D Castlevania, Metroid, and Mega Man game. Woo! Now people won't look at me like I have two heads when I say what I haven't beaten yet.

Great write up and I felt the exact same with Zero Mission. I also really struggled with Metroid II but I played the 3DS remake so one day I want to give the GB version a go.

Give the Metroidvanias a little rest and come back to Super Metroid. It's a fantastic game.

[Sumez | 2,970]

15 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

So, I switched to Mega Man 6, even though it might be one of the more unpopular Mega Man titles because of the Rush powers. I thought the difficulty was really fair, and I didn't have as hard of a time 1cc'ing it as I feared. I've always thought Mega Man games were going to be the most difficult games I'll ever play, but it's clear that modern "difficult" platformers and action games have surpassed at least this Mega Man entry in difficulty. It's no Super Meat Boy or Rabi Ribi. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I'll definitely be playing more Mega Man games in the future.

Nice!

Yeah, the Mega Man games aren't really too hard, I think they have a really nice balance where they are always challenging but never difficult. But they might seem tougher in our memories because a lot of us played them as kids when we were used to easy games like Mario or Ducktales.

Just to be clear, none of the NES Mega Man games are bad, in fact all of them are really good. The only reason MM6 might be "one of the more unpopular ones" is only that people often pay less attention to anything released after 3, because of the idea that the formula was going stale, and the games too similar. But the fact is that Capcom only honed their skills as they kept making these games. MM4 is my own favourite, being just overall incredibly well designed. And while 5 and 6 don't rate quite as high to me, I think especially their graphics really do the best they can with the NES hardware. Buuut... we already have like 7 previous threads about this subject  

[Philosoraptor | 468]

15 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@Philosoraptor takes the lead

edit: wait, no, I jumped the gun.  But soon.

Yeah, you're too modest. You're ahead of me by quite a lot.

14 hours ago, Brickman said:

Great write up and I felt the exact same with Zero Mission. I also really struggled with Metroid II but I played the 3DS remake so one day I want to give the GB version a go.

Give the Metroidvanias a little rest and come back to Super Metroid. It's a fantastic game.

I plan on returning to Super Metroid. It seemed like a massive step up in the series.

Eventually, I plan on playing the remake on the 3DS to see if it's any better. I'm sure it is, but I'm curious how much better. I thought I might never play the GB game if I played the 3DS one first.

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

Nice!

Yeah, the Mega Man games aren't really too hard, I think they have a really nice balance where they are always challenging but never difficult. But they might seem tougher in our memories because a lot of us played them as kids when we were used to easy games like Mario or Ducktales.

Just to be clear, none of the NES Mega Man games are bad, in fact all of them are really good. The only reason MM6 might be "one of the more unpopular ones" is only that people often pay less attention to anything released after 3, because of the idea that the formula was going stale, and the games too similar. But the fact is that Capcom only honed their skills as they kept making these games. MM4 is my own favourite, being just overall incredibly well designed. And while 5 and 6 don't rate quite as high to me, I think especially their graphics really do the best they can with the NES hardware. Buuut... we already have like 7 previous threads about this subject  

Interesting. The way the people I grew up around always talked about them, I figured they were going to be slightly less difficult than I Wanna Be the Guy or Super Meat Boy. I owned Wily Wars as a kid, but I never ended up beating it. I erroneously assumed the NES games would be harder. I've been avoiding them all these years because I didn't think I was a good enough gamer to beat one.

I didn't actually give MM6 a rating in my last post, but on my spreadsheet I gave it a 9/10. It's good to know that they're all good. That tracks with what I saw online; there didn't seem to be a consistent "favorite" Mega Man game among the internet gaming community.

The only one I was mildly worried about maybe not being as good was the first one. I figured 6 was less popular because the music wasn't as good or the hover Rush power mechanic, which reduces the difficulty a pretty significant amount. I honestly played it first because it seemed to be labeled "the easiest" most consistently online, with 5 being the next easiest.

[Webhead123 | 687]

16 minutes ago, Philosoraptor said:

Eventually, I plan on playing the remake on the 3DS to see if it's any better. I'm sure it is, but I'm curious how much better. I thought I might never play the GB game if I played the 3DS one first.

Samus Returns feels more like a sideways step to me than a straight-up improvement or replacement. Sure, nice graphics, more intricate controls, quality of life, etc. etc. and it is clearly based on the original. That said, they end up feeling quite a bit different from each other.

[Webhead123 | 687]

28 minutes ago, Philosoraptor said:

The only one I was mildly worried about maybe not being as good was the first one. I figured 6 was less popular because the music wasn't as good or the hover Rush power mechanic, which reduces the difficulty a pretty significant amount. I honestly played it first because it seemed to be labeled "the easiest" most consistently online, with 5 being the next easiest.

I'm not an expert or anything but I think it's fair to say that the difficulty of the MM games goes mostly in reverse order. 6->5->4->2->3->1

I have a hard time objectively judging comparable difficulty between 2 and 3. Reason being, I've played 2 dozens of times since my youth, so most of it is routine for me now. 3 I've only played a time or two to the end, so I don't know if the challenge is genuine to the design or if it's just my lack of familiarity. The first one is almost certainly the hardest, though, mostly in the "cheap difficulty" kind of way.

Edited June 27, 2023 by Webhead123

[Reed Rothchild | 9,560]

I did another side quest, and knocked out A Short Hike in 2 sittings.

I'm not sure what I expected (a walking simulator mixed with Oxenfree?), but it wasn't that.  It's a little sandbox platformer type of thing.  And it's extremely short.  You could probably Speedrun this in 5 minutes.

So, fun.  But very limited.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

1 hour ago, Webhead123 said:

I'm not an expert or anything but I think it's fair to say that the difficulty of the MM games goes mostly in reverse order. 6->5->4->2->3->1

I have a hard time objectively judging comparable difficulty between 2 and 3. Reason being, I've played 2 dozens of times since my youth, so most of it is routine for me now. 3 I've only played a time or two to the end, so I don't know if the challenge is genuine to the design or if it's just my lack of familiarity. The first one is almost certainly the hardest, though, mostly in the "cheap difficulty" kind of way.

It sounds like you've played through a bunch of Mega Man games. Of the ones you've played, where would you put the rest of the mainline and X series in that list?

[Sumez | 2,970]

Mega Man 2 is by far the easiest of the NES ones (playing on the original difficulty level, not the even easier mode added in western releases), and 1 is undoubtedly the toughest. I'd say 5 is second toughest, but your mileage may vary. Both it and 3 have some slightly harder stages preceeding the Wily stages. 

Personally I'd say Mega Man X is tougher than any of them, if only by a small margin. Mostly due to the final boss gauntlet. But that game also gives you more ways to remedy the difficulty, for example you can refill subtanks to always have healing available, and boss weaknesses tend to give you a bigger advantage in X games than they do in the original MM games. 

Edited June 27, 2023 by Sumez

[Webhead123 | 687]

2 hours ago, Philosoraptor said:

It sounds like you've played through a bunch of Mega Man games. Of the ones you've played, where would you put the rest of the mainline and X series in that list?

That's basically all of the mainline series that I've played. I've played a stage or two of 9 and 11 but not enough to give any real feedback on them.

As for the X games, I've also only played the first (and a couple stages of X2). As far as relative difficulty, it's hard to say but I think X1 is maybe in the middle of the pack. A little more challenging than the later NES games but not by a lot. As Sumez points out, the thing about X1 is that it gives players a lot of tools to make the game easier, so you can set yourself up to breeze through, or you can opt to handicap yourself and make it more difficult.

[greenthunder | 115]

Finally went and played through all the story missions of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy+. It's one of the handful of 3DS games I picked up in the last few years that are outside of my normal genre tastes, but I figured I might as well grab it and give it a shot. I ended up liking the gameplay, even though I did suck at it a bit. I got mostly C ranks, but I think story mode mostly uses time based ranks, which is a struggle with the slower starting planes. The music is also pretty great, so good experience overall.

As for my next game, I'm leaning toward Project X Zone now as a mixup, since my last two JRPGs were turnbased/ATB. I may also "cheat" and play some games that aren't on my list.

[Sumez | 2,970]

God damn, TOTK ended up poking a 1½ month gap in my backlog progress. I was well on pace to hit 50+ games this year, but that's looking extremely unlikely now  

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

I did it! I finally did it! After almost a year of innumerable starts and stops, I finally finished Final Fantasy X. 

To provide some context, the original FF on NES was the first RPG I ever played. I'm not sure I ever made it past Garland, but I knew it was something special. I was a massive Final Fantasy and Square fan in the SNES and PS1 days, putting hundreds of hours into FF7, FF8, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, and many more. However, I didn't get a PS2 until late in the lifecycle of that console and I fell off the FF wagon hard. As I grew busier with each passing year, I pretty much abandoned JRPGs in favor of shorter games. Still, I often think about those Square glory days and, all these years later, Final Fantasy still holds a special place in my heart.

Call it a midlife crisis or a simple longing for the past, but last year I decided I was going to make a concerted effort to get back into JRPGs in hopes of rekindling that long lost spark. I decided my first goal would be to play through the mainline FF games that I missed, so I started FFX. First impressions were not good and I struggled to stick with it; the game was just so different from its predecessors. I missed the open world, I missed the more standard leveling, and I really didn't like the characters or story. This led to a fit of starts and stops, forcing me to relearn the game every time I played. This didn't help my enjoyment. Finally, I decided to recommit over the past couple weeks and now I've done it. I'm finally crossing one of my White Whales off the list.

Pros:

• The active battle system is fun. Changing characters and weapons on the fly provides a nice taste of action while keeping the traditional turn-based format. It also allows you to use all the characters and level everyone without grinding extra battles.
• Overdrive modes and abilities are mostly fun and varied. I did find Lulu's right stick rotation mini-game to be unreliable and I would've liked a bit more guidance on Rikku's mixing (at least in-game tracking of recipes).
• Bosses require lots of strategy and some of them are really fun.
• Graphics are very impressive for an early PS2 game. The HD remaster even has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a couple quality of life changes for refilling health without navigating into the menu.
• Weapons, armor, and Aeon customization is a cool idea, although in practice it has severe limits.
• This is definitely the most difficult Final Fantasy game I've ever played. I have to give credit to the developers for adding some serious challenge to a popular, mainstream series, even if it's not always implemented in a way that feels fair or fun.

Cons:

• Story and characters are simple and boring. They all just kind of exist with only surface level interactions and motivations. This goes for both the protagonists and antagonists. There is no satisfying conclusion. Tidus's relationship with his father is particularly under-developed and even kind of silly.
• I hate the sphere grid. It's not interesting and you have so little flexibility until the very end of the game that a standard leveling approach would have been better. Going into the menu every few battles to upgrade felt like a huge waste of time.
• Upgrades and customization of equipment and Aeons require insane grinding for rare items and is never well-explained.
• The game's length feels padded by unnecessary hurdles despite being incredibly linear. I assume this is due to a tight development schedule and new hardware. Enemies have way too much health and encounter rate is way too high. End game content requires insane backtracking and there's no way to really figure it out on your own.
• There is a bit too much trial and error. Many of the big bosses require very specific strategies and if you don't know them going in, you're almost guaranteed to die. Scan is not helpful in most cases which is quite frustrating.
• Unskippable cutscenes! Having to sit through several minutes of nonsensical dialogue to fight again is infuriating.
• Boss fights often come down to a nearly endless cycle of buff, debuff, dispel, repeat until their health is slowly whittled away. This would be fine if there was some variety in the fights or perhaps fewer bosses, but it starts to feel almost comical by the end.
• It's pretty much impossible to access the best items and equipment without using a guide. This stuff is so unintuitive, the game feels like it was meant to be played with a guide rather than be experienced or discovered through exploration.

Overall: 6/10

This is easily my least favorite modern FF game. In fact, the only games I like less than this are FF2 and FF3 which always felt like lifeless slogs to me. Perhaps someday when I retire and have near infinite free time I'll go back through this with a guide, but until then, I have zero interest in suffering through again. That being said, I do plan to play FFX-2 at some point in the future.

 

That just leaves Deathloop on my actively playing list. My next backlog game will probably be Link's Awakening remake and maybe something on PS4/PS5. Other than that, I've got a lot of new stuff lined up (Hi-Fi Rush, Atomic Heart, Starfield).

[Jeevan | 8,915]

@Reed Rothchild gave the n64 some love +1

[Reed Rothchild | 9,560]

1 hour ago, Jeevan said:

@Reed Rothchild gave the n64 some love +1

So that puts you at 15 or... 50?  100?

[Jeevan | 8,915]

17 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

So that puts you at 15 or... 50?  100?

call it 15 i guess, i lost count .  I got paperboy lined up to stream tomorrow, couple of the regulars wanted to see it, then re2 after that.

[fox | 1,668]

Beat Like A Dragon: Ishin (my first yakuza game)

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

10 minutes ago, fox said:

Beat Like A Dragon: Ishin (my first yakuza game)

Don't leave us hanging! What did you think? I've always wanted to get into this series.

[fox | 1,668]

5 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

Don't leave us hanging! What did you think? I've always wanted to get into this series.

Good story.  Very cutscene heavy.  Bit of a reservoir dogs vibe with a gang of professional tough guys who have secrets.  Nice combat with different styles (brawler, sword, gun, sword and gun.)

It is a history setting, so I took it kind of like a more realistic mystical ninja, where you run around town and visit shops and play mini games.  Some of the side stories get pretty funny.  I wasn't into maxing out every social relationship with every side character or fishing or planting a garden at my house or other simulation things, which might be the main appeal to some people.  Gambling on cock races was fun.