The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[Brickman | 4,009]

7 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I can understand this sentiment completely. 

But have you *seen* how people who are great at monkey ball just tear it apart? This game needs a super tough expert mode for those folks! 

Yeah very true. I’m glad they have the mode there, I was just frustrated at the time  it didn’t have any bearing on my score though.

I tip my hat to those who can beat Expert without losing a continue, it’s definitely a hard game that takes practice to master but also a lot of fun.

[Sumez | 2,988]

I honestly recommend looking up some monkey ball speedruns on gdqvods.com - that shit is absolutely bananas

[Brickman | 4,009]

59 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I honestly recommend looking up some monkey ball speedruns on gdqvods.com - that shit is absolutely bananas

Yeah you weren't kidding. They made it look like the levels were easy mode. It definitely was  

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

I keep pausing my Danganronpa plays to do Dicey Dungeons.

Stupid addictive roguelikes!

[rdrunner | 422]

On 11/8/2023 at 5:03 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

I keep pausing my Danganronpa plays to do Dicey Dungeons.

Stupid addictive roguelikes!

Still need to play Dicey Dungeons.  Got it on sale and looks really good.

You'll have to let us know after: Slay the Spire or this one?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

3 hours ago, rdrunner said:

Still need to play Dicey Dungeons.  Got it on sale and looks really good.

You'll have to let us know after: Slay the Spire or this one?

StS

But it's closer than I thought it'd be!

[fox | 1,673]

Spiderman 2.  Enjoyed it so much I did all the side stuff and 100% all the districts.

I'm also maybe a quarter into Final Fantasy 1.  I have the bad habit of restarting this game every time I play it.  Maybe this will be the time I finish it this go around.

Also unless there is a surprise drop release, most of my TBD 2023 are being delayed to 2024.  At least that means I can laser focus on the rest.

Edited November 13, 2023 by fox

[Sumez | 2,988]

Not sure at what point Everblue 2 is considered completed for me... I finished up the story last night, but doing that unlocks a whole ton of salvaging quests which feels like the true meat of the game. I think I'll dive into that a bit, but some of these quests also seem so obnoxious that they are only there to pad out the game.

But having to lift out a massive truck from the car deck of a sunken ferry in order to show off to a horny lady was kinda hilarious.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

6 hours ago, Sumez said:

Not sure at what point Everblue 2 is considered completed for me... I finished up the story last night, but doing that unlocks a whole ton of salvaging quests which feels like the true meat of the game. I think I'll dive into that a bit, but some of these quests also seem so obnoxious that they are only there to pad out the game.

But having to lift out a massive truck from the car deck of a sunken ferry in order to show off to a horny lady was kinda hilarious.

Hmm, I remember doing the final mission in the northwest corner of the map where you're racing the clock, but if there was any postgame content after that I didn't do it.

[Sumez | 2,988]

Wait, you were racing the clock? The game just ended for me the moment I put the thing in its place. 

And yeah there is tons of postgame content I only just started but I wouldn't be surprised if it was half the game. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Sumez

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

3 hours ago, Sumez said:

Wait, you were racing the clock? The game just ended for me the moment I put the thing in its place. 

And yeah there is tons of postgame content I only just started but I wouldn't be surprised if it was half the game. 

I dunno.  Isn't there an escape sequence?  I could be misremembering.

[Jicsan | 591]

I did it.  I finally finished the last boss and saw the true ending on Dragon Quest 11!

Spoiler

I have just under 100 hours on the in game clock.  But, that doesn’t include all the times that I fought bosses for hours and repeatedly died and reloaded saves.

I really enjoyed this game, even though it just kept going and going.  There was a couple of places where it was an uphill struggle but when I finally got over those humps I was fully bought in again.  I didn’t resort to using a guide until very far along and I’m glad I did in the final act.  The level grinding was very slow, but people who wrote the guides have it figured out.  So it took me like 90 hours to get from 1 to 55 playing normally. Using a leveling guide that utilizes two different Pep techniques I was able to go from 55 to 99 in about 4 hours.

I have about 4 trophies left to get the platinum,  which I’m still going to work on, but for the backlog challenge this game is done!!

[Sumez | 2,988]

I ended up calling it quits with Everblue 2 when the "quest board" ran out of quests for me.

I guess I could have continued taking on the random(??) quests from hotel guests to get your hotel's rating up to a maximum 10/10 stars, but that seems pretty pointless. And of course there's the recognition of handing over every single item of every single type to their respective NPCs, but that's an insane compulsion I can't imagine anyone wants to devote themseles to in this game (I did get every string instrument for the instrument guy, that's gotta be good enough ).

So that's 37 of the game's ingame "achievements" (titles), clocking in just over 18 hours, which is indeed nearly twice as much as I was at when I reached the ending of the main story quest.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sumez

[Philosoraptor | 468]

On 11/8/2023 at 4:37 AM, Brickman said:

The game has three levels of difficulty, beginner has 10 levels, advanced has 30 stages and expert has 50. If you can also beat the mode without using continues you can play the bonus stages. I never saw those and don’t have the patience for it.

Beginner and Advanced modes I felt were the right balance of difficulty but fun. Expert just felt way too brutal and I ended up resorting to playing it emulated and using save states (saved at the start of each level).

In the second one, you can unlock/buy up to 99 extra lives, so making it to the bonus stages a bit easier. Sadly, there's not a similar mechanism in the first.

Congrats on the clear!

On 11/7/2023 at 10:25 PM, Floating Platforms said:

If I were adding my Game Boy challenge to the backlog totals, I'd be way ahead.  Including those, I've finished 76 games this year so far.  I might just barely eek past you as I think I'll still cross 40 games from the backlog list. I'm halfway through Guardians of the Galaxy and just got 3 weeks off from work approved before year's end! That mean's I'm going to finally take care of Metroid

You're just ahead of me. I just finished game #74 on the year.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Philosoraptor

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

On 12/23/2022 at 1:26 PM, Gaia Gensouki said:

COUNTER: 9/305

Ping 

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,077]

I only got two complete two more games and even then it was basically finishing up games that I had already played in the past. But at least I got the platinum trophies on both of them, i.e. Lightning Returns and the remake of Resident Evil 3.

It was actually quite weird to go back to FF XIII-3. Just look at the time when I got my first trophy in the game. It's been almost eight years between first playing this and finally completing it.

I hope that next year I'll get to complete more games than just these measly few.

Spoiler

 

[Floating Platforms | 736]

Guardians of the Galaxy is done

I had a ton of fun with this game but it's not without its problems. Beware that the characters will not stop talking. I had no issue with that, but others certainly will. I appreciated that when you went into little side areas, there were unique conversations just about that. The contextual flow of the dialogue was quite impressive.  The combat was engaging but not too difficult. Controlling your main character and then giving orders to the 4 companions was fluid, but you never needed to get too specialized with things. There were some enemies that had environmental weaknesses, but even that wasn't a huge factor. Technically, this game felt unpolished. Plenty of cases where the models were jerking around or their lips got out of sync. I also had a couple crashes and other instances where I needed to reload the checkpoint because it didn't recognize that I beat everyone on the battlefield or that I crossed a certain point on the map. Anyway, I enjoyed the story well enough, but the big standout was the voice acting.  The actors aren't really trying to emulate the movie cast (especially Star Lord who sounds like Jason Bateman with a Canadian accent), but their cadence is still quite close and they're all great with the more emotional moments.

To save time on trophy hunting, I did use a collectible guide, but it wasn't nearly as spoiler-y as I was led to believe. I got everything except a single combat trophy done last night and then cleaned that one up at lunch today. Now I have to figure out what my last PS4 game of the year is going to be.

[Sumez | 2,988]

Everblue 2 - Beaten 12/11 + (??)% completion 14/11

From the team that brought you Tetris The Grand Master 2 - probably the best game ever made - Everblue 2 is a diving simulator and probably very far from being the best at anything.

That said, if I play a diving game, I'm expecting a compulsion driven casual game designed entirely around just moving around and looking at things - and that's exactly what this game delivers, and to be honest it's a little hard to put down.
The game puts you in a loop between exploring further and further areas, salvaging everything feasible, and using what you salvaged to expand your capabilities, and solve various quests for people in the town.

What you probably wouldn't expect from a game titled "Everblue", is that the ocean itself is pretty much horribly utilized. It has zero verticality, constantly tying you to the completely flat ocean floor, meaning that the indicated "depth" is really nothing more than a number at the side of your HUD, and an indication of how dark the colors are in the area you are swimming.
Just swimming around looking for things will not really do you much. There is nothing to actually see, outside of the fish swimming around you mostly for the sake of atmosphere. Instead a radar will beep to tell you when you can push a button to pick an item which could for all intends and purposes just be randomly given to you at random intervals.

The premise of ocean exploration is both intriguing and ultimately extremely scary to me, due to the vast infinity potentially stretching in every direction at any given moment. None of this is present in Everblue 2, and if that is that sort of thing you want to try, Subnautica completely eliminates and obsoletes Everblue at pretty much every single potential aspect. Play Subnautica, it's fantastic.

What Everblue 2 however does have instead of its promised ever blue sea, is a handful of underwater locations, mostly wreckages of ships from various eras. These can be explored in fully 360 degree 3D space, and although they might seem like much at first, many of them are actually surprisingly expansive. The game usually limits how much you can explore them based on how much weight your gear (and HP) allows you to carry, and occasionally interesting obscured paths or keys that open new ways through lends just enough player agency to actually feel like a video game. Some marine life can attack or poison you, but those act mostly as minor inconveniences, rather than any sort of outright threat.

Littered around in these areas are tons of related objects, and our player character can potentially pick up anything that's not nailed down, given enough space in his bag. To the point where one post-game quest involves hauling along a gigantic truck.
Picking up everything would involve an absurd amount of hikes back and forth, and the areas can never be exhausted since everything reappears as soon as you return to the same area. This greatly extinguishes the thrill of finding a valuable item, since you can always just go back down and easily pick up the same item again.

But between dives, you'll walk around an island town interacting with people. This is ultimately just a fancy menu system with a bunch of crudely prerendered characters stuck to a picture of a town, where you click on who you want to talk to. The game tries to use this setup to tell the story of a thrilling adventure where you compete with a for-some-reason super evil salvaging corporation to save a potentially supernatural pirate treasure from falling into the wrong hands.
Lacking any kind of visible engagement with characters, and supported by an extremely flatly delivered translation, that story is honestly completely unconvincing. And the attempt at an emotional moment at the tail end of it becomes a little laughable. But I appreciate the effort, since it still creates some sort of unified goal for your diving exploits rather than just picking up keepsakes for random townspeople.

The biggest annoyances from the quests you are given comes from the fact that you really have no way of knowing where to look for many of the items, while some are incredibly easy to just miss given how dark many of the explored areas are, revealing very little ahead of you. And some times people will show up requesting items you already came across long ago and either skipped over or sold, and really can't remember where to find at this point.

A lot of little misses such of this makes Everblue 2 a much less engaging game than I feel it could have been. But ultimately the technical limitations preventing a fully explorable 3D ocean such as sported by Subnautica is what really holds back the game. Spiritual sequels Endless Ocean 1 and 2 do reportedly add this to some extent, but completely lack the RPG-like approach of Everblue. A combination of those would be nice to see some time in the future - but hell, we already do have Subnautica, so maybe I should just be content with that. Play Subnautica, it's fantastic.

[Sumez | 2,988]

Got myself a US copy of Xexyz, so I'm back in the game with that. But I can't find my King Kong 2 anywhere  

Otherwise I think it currently looks like I actually could meet my goal, outside of Saga Frontier

EDIT: Lol damn nevermind! Just double-checked my collection tracker to make sure I actually did own the game. Turns out I forgot I had a boxed copy, and not just a lazy ol' cartridge, so that's why I couldn't find the game among all the loose FC carts. The box is in beautiful condition, too. Time to play this!

Edited November 17, 2023 by Sumez

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

Trails in the Sky.  That was a marathon.  Good stuff though.

Tentative plan:

• 2024 - Sky & Sky 2
• 2025 - Trails Zero & Trails Azure
• 2026 - Cold Steel & Cold Steel 2

 

1. Elden Ring (10/10)
2. Hades (9.5/10)
3. Deathloop (9/10)
4. Baba Is You (9/10)
5. Doom Eternal (9/10)
6. Jamestown+ (9/10)
7. Gradius V (8.5/10)
8. Control (8.5/10)
9. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser's Fury (with the kids) (8.5/10)
10. God of War (8.5/10)
11. MGS: The Twin Snakes (8.5/10)
12. Resident Evil 2 (8.5/10)
13. Ori & the Will of the Wisps (8.5)
14. Ghost of Tsushima (8/10)
15. Sin & Punishment (8/10)
16. Nier Automata (8/10)
17. Dusk (8/10)
18. Into the Breach (8/10)
19. Nioh (8/10)
20. Deus Ex (7.5/10)
21. Hellblade (7.5/10)
22. Dark Souls II (7.5/10)
23. Ace Attorney 2 (7.5/10)
24. Trails in the Sky (7.5/10)
25. Uncharted 4 (7.5/10)
26. Eternal Darkness (7/10)
27. Xenoblade (7/10)
28. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold (7/10)
29. Yakuza Kiwami (7/10)
30. Dicey Dungeons (7/10)
31. Resident Evil 3 (7/10)
32. Onimusha (7/10)
33. What Remains of Edith Finch (6.5/10)
34. Paper Mario (6.5/10)
35. Everblue 2 (6.5/10)
36. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (6.5/10)
37. Yoku's Island Express (6.5/10)
38. Dear Esther (6/10)
39. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II (6/10)
40. Crash Bandicoot 4 (6/10)
41. Pilotwings 64 (6/10)
42. Contra Shattered Soldier (6/10)
43. Strife (6/10)
44. A Short Hike (6/10)
45. Ion Fury (6/10)
46. Mischief Makers (6/10)
47. La Pucelle (5.5/10)
48. Buck Bumble (5.5/10)
49. Indigo Prophecy (5.5/10)
50. Shadowgate (5/10)
51. Yoshi's Story (4.5/10)
52. Winback (4/10)

TBD:

1. Shenmue (crap)
2. Danganronpa (great)
3. House of Fata Morgana (too early to tell)

Not started

1. Last of Us Part II
2. Prey

[Sumez | 2,988]

9 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

2024 - Sky & Sky 2

2 and 3?

[Brickman | 4,009]

Beyond Good & Evil is done. 

BGE is like that cult movie or book that people really interested in the medium know about, have heard nothing but great things but just have never gotten around to it. The cover is rather generic and there’s not a lot out there about it compared to other games in the genre. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is a game you should play if you’re into Action-Adventures. 

I’ll try to keep the plot short because I don’t want to spoil anything by accident. You are Jade, an investigative reporter who lives in a world that is constantly getting attacked by aliens. The government is useless and does very little to stop these attacks. You set out on a mission to expose the truth of what’s really going on by joining an underground resistance group. 

This game was planned to be a trilogy but did so poorly that they never continued the series. They did announce a new BGE in 2017 which will be a prequel but has no release date.  

Firstly, this game looks beautiful on the GC. The environments are interesting and varied and the details added for what was available at the time look great. I really felt like I was in this world. They didn’t make it too big, so you felt like you were really part of this area, but it also felt like there was a much larger world out there that probably would have been explored in the other games. 

The voice acting is superbly done. Every character feels real, and the VA for Jade was likeable and believable. I became so invested in these characters because they were so well fleshed out.  

The gameplay in these types of games can make or break them sometimes if not enough attention is spent on making it fun. While this game doesn’t break any new ground or barriers, it does meld a lot of different aspects from past Action-Adventures perfectly. The game has a main hub and from there you explore dungeons that are your missions. In these dungeons you explore, kill enemies, solve puzzles, take photos, stealthily move around and take on bosses. It’s the combination of all these elements that make it so engaging and fun. The game never leans into one aspect too much, so you never feel like one aspect is dominating over another.  

The music is beautiful, never feels out of place and always fits the mood or tension. 

The game might seem a little short compared to other Action-Adventure games, but I found it to be the perfect length and meant it didn’t drag on unnecessarily, which can happen in this genre. 

I really wish this game had succeeded because Jade is such a great video game character and could have easily gone head-to-head with characters like Nathan Drake and Lara Croft if the series had continued. I know I’ve probably written too much, and most have probably stopped reading by this point, but I can’t recommend this game enough. Play BGE! 

10/10 

[Jicsan | 591]

Added another 14 hours to the clock on Dragon Quest XI, but got the platinum trophy finally.  This game is super done now.

 

 

[Sumez | 2,988]

4 hours ago, Jicsan said:

This game is super done now.

What draconian challenges did you do?

[Sumez | 2,988]

Xexyz - Beaten 19/11

Man Xexyz is a weird game. Reminiscent somewhat of Kid Icarus, it switches between different styles of stages, some being more straight forward action, while others require a little bit of explorations. The core of the game involves jumping and shooting enemies while entering doors along the stage in order to help build up your in-game currency, get hints, or get various powerups. There's not much rhyme of reason to how it all works, but it does add a bit of mystery to each stage. On the first one you learn that you need to shoot a certain block to open a door to a hidden enemy which will give you the item you need to progress.

The game then progresses into a less linear fortress stage which is broken up by a segment where you enter a vehicle and play a short shoot'em up stage, explore some more, and fight a boss. Then you take another vehicle through another shooter stage ending with another boss fight, leading you into the next area where the process repeats.

Most of the interaction with NPCs in the various rooms is sort of busywork, but it's definitely the game's most appealing aspect, giving it its unique identity outside of being just another "jump and shoot" platformer on the NES.

...Though you have to also consider that little else in the game is appealing at all. Graphics are ugly and hard to make out, the controls are both floaty and hard to steer, and enemies are terribly designed, behaving erratically and often placed or moving in locations where they are near impossible to fight, often taking way too many hits as well. Whenever you leave a door that you'd entered, all enemies respawn and there's a good chance someone is gonna just appear right on top of your head.
The shooter stages are equally poorly designed, with a massive and unintuitive player hitbox, enemies tanking so many hits they are hard to take down before they slam into you, and annoying speed-up portions where stuff will come at you faster than you can react.

It might be possible to beat the entire game without taking a single hit, but I actually seriously doubt it. You get a sizeable life bar, and you'll need it. Likewise, beating the game's bosses frequently comes down to strategically making the best use of the resources you can access, rather than just playing well.

I think Xexyz is a good representation of what a lot of people think all NES platformers are like. Incredibly janky, ugly and feeling like they were designed before anyone found out how to make video games. Nevermind the fact that games like Contra, Mega Man, and of course Super Mario Bros. all came out before this, and play fantastic by today's standards as well.
Sadly, a lot of the early games are much like Xexyz, especially when digging into the portion of the library that never left Japan, and there is honestly little reason to give this one the time of the day. Forget about this, and stick to all the fun games also on the platform.