The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[fox | 1,673]

Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster is cleared

After so many restarts on earlier versions and restarts early in the year I finally nailed down a party that worked for me in Final Fantasy I

I actually feel like the early part of the game is harder, because it takes a lot to get your team up and running with costs of armor and magic being pretty high.  Once I hit the mid game class change, I went on a tear and nothing could stop me.  Even bosses fell in a couple turns.  But dang, Chaos got a huge boost in the pixel remaster.  He ate my lunch a couple times until I did a bit of leveling, but mostly I think it came down to luck as I just eek'd out a win out of what looked like defeat.


I just started Tunic and Alan Wake 2, so I should be able to knock those out in the next month.  Unless there is a surprise stealth drop of Silk Song or something, those two might close me out for the year.

[twiztor | 855]

Wario Land 3 (GBC)

so i started this game and immediately wasn't a fan. it has all the stuff that i didn't like about Wario Land 2: straightforward levels, no damage/health, cheap hits, etc. after that first hour or so, i contemplated calling it quits.

But i am very glad i stuck with it. Each level has multiple paths with 4 exits. As you play and earn upgrades, it changes how you approach the stages to find more secrets. This becomes very non-linear and is a much better game for it. My mindset changed when i stopped approaching this as a platformer and instead viewed it as a puzzler.

i wound up really digging this game. it's not perfect, but it does a lot of things right. 

[Sumez | 2,988]

On 11/24/2023 at 7:48 PM, T-Pac said:

it seems like everyone who decides to start collecting Japanese imports immediately buys Kid Dracula and King Kong 2

I wasn't aware of this, but it sounds like a sensible choice. I was pretty late in getting ahold of King Kong 2. But those two are definitely two of the best games to never escape Japan.  

Others that come to mind are Nazo No Murasamejou, Mitsume Ga Tooru, and Crisis Force

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

Just over one month left.  Some of us are very close.

Also, the 2024 thread is now up as well.

[BlackVega | 583]

Now this has been in my mind for quite some time. Just beat Super @Gloves Ball for NES using a real Power Glove and holy moly I just barely managed to beat it on my last life (final boss almost completely obliterated me and depleted all my lives) with my hand sore as hell

Now here's my short review of the Power Glove itself- I specifically wanted it for Super Glove Ball to beat it in glove mode because the controller mode is just impossible to beat (see boss no.2) and Super Glove Ball is actually the only game specifically made for the Power Glove and to be honest..... it's not that bad. Granted it is VERY BAD for regular games and there is no reason you would ever use it for them but Super Glove Ball actually has a special glove mode where you can control it in analog mode and this is what makes 100% sense. I must say it IS better to play this way and it is surprisingly precise and responsive, almost like Wii 20 years before the release but oh my goodness is it SUPER ANNOYING to position the sensors so they respond almost all the time and are accurate and the glove still occasionally glitched out on the screen or lost connection. Also putting the sensors on top of your TV is a lie because it almost didn't work at all for me and the cursor was glitching and twitching all the time. However it is not like Power Glove doesn't work completely and does whatever it wants or whatever that celebrity AVGN was muffling about. Also I had to play this game for 2 days and pause in between because my hand was so tired and mind you this game is not easy at all

Also just to add insult to injury I only got the 6th place AFTER BEATING THE GAME..... just WTF??? Come on I beat the game, just give me the 1st place for that fact alone

[Sumez | 2,988]

Metroid 1 is a game I've played tons of times, but as far as I remember I've never gone all the way through (I might have done it in the late 90s on emulator, but it's completely gone from my memory, and if I did I likely cheated)

I think the game has a bit of a bad reputation, but I actually had a good amount of fun with it, exploring the first area, mapping out everything on paper - getting all the items I could find there, and ready to take on the next two areas...

And then my disk drive just stopped working. Or, it would work sporadically, and I could load my save and play the first area again, but the moment I took the elevator, it would just load indefinitely, and the drive in general was just a lod more noisy than I remember it ever being before.

Took it apart to see if it needed lubrication, and the belt just snapped over the moment I opened it up.

 

So yeah, that's another hiccup in my plan to finish my backlog this year
In a worst case scenario could play the US copy I have, but I really want to try the original version of the game without the notorious bugged enemy behaviors etc. from the cartridge versions, or bothersome password saves.

I ordered a bunch of new belts from a French eBay seller, so hopefully they will be here in a couple of weeks the latest, and it's just a question of whether I'll be able to replace it without fucking up some more. I've never tried aligning the gears of an FDS drive, but I've found some really good guides.

[BlackVega | 583]

Aha I also beat Mr. Gimmick for NES over the weekend. Now this one was initially intended for NES completions thread and I beat it so many times before so it never hurts to do it again and I put a short work of it. It is also really short if you master it

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

@ThePhleo last year you waited until the very end to reveal your updates.  Can we expect the same this year? 

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

3 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@ThePhleo last year you waited until the very end to reveal your updates.  Can we expect the same this year? 

Yes.

Spoiler: Once again, no where near as much as I wanted, but more than I thought I would get done!

[Sumez | 2,988]

Kirby Planet Robobot - Beaten 24/11

I expected Planet Robobot to be similar to Kirby Triple Deluxe, but "similar" is underselling it. This literally just feels like a bunch of new levels for the exact same game. So mostly everything I said in that writeup still applies to this game.

The game's primary gimmick is still the way it utilizes the 3D perspective and two different depth layers of the stage, often in fun an creative ways to integrate puzzles into the stages which are still so extremely easy you'll likely not lose a single life throughout en entire playthrough.

Like in Triple Deluxe, each stage has three mildly hidden items you can find, which often require a modicum of awareness or puzzle solving to find. Not really too obscure, you'll most likely get through every stage with all three items first try, and hit 100% collection by the time you reach the end boss - but given the easy pushover nature of the game, it's the primary mode of actual engagement on offer.

The one big thing separating Planet Robobot from Triple Deluxe is that the secondary gimmick - "hypernova" in the previous game, has been replaced with a robot armor in this one. It's a similar effect, powering up Kirby to be even more invincible, and easily take out enemies and obstacles he couldn't before - but in a fun twist, the armor inherits Kirby's ability to copy the skills of most enemies, lending entirely new attacks and utilities to already existing enemy forms.

I think this mild improvement is the primary reason most people prefer Robobot over Triple Deluxe, but it really is a very mild difference - both games are nearly identical in how they look, feel, and play. To be honest I was kind of burned out by the game as I neared the end, but last few stages making up the game's final area, manage to feel like a fitting excalation of the theme and are by far the best in the game, making sure it ends on a high note.

If you like Kirby, you already know what you're getting into, and this game won't disappoint. But it's still "just" a Kirby game, and it's still never gonna dare to challenge you, even the slightest bit.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

The Last of Us Part II

Good stuff.  Could it have been 5-8 hours shorter?  Definitely.  But that's not a cardinal sin.  And did the story make some bold choices?  Yes.  But it was for the better.  There are few if any games that have as compelling of villains as this.

Looks like PSN dropped twitter integration so here's the equivalent of my screen capture:

Anyway, I look forward to Season 2 of the show where they adapt this to rave reviews.

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

TBD:

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

Not started

1. Prey

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

Looks like we'll set a new best for posts and be up over last year for views.  I'd call that a success.

[Foochie776 | 1,061]

I learned a lot about my gaming this year.

 

Using this thread and having a slightly more concentrated backlog to focus on definitely helped me alleviate the feeling of having to play everything. While my full backlog is quite long it was nice to focus on a smaller piece. One thing I didn’t take into account this year was Zelda coming out, which took up a huge chunk of my time and then falling in love with Stardew Valley. I’ve never liked playing this style of game but wow this grabbed me. 
 

As I start to look forward to next year, my backlog will be a little smaller of a focus and I will be a little more methodical with what I play. 
 

Though I did knock some very long term titles off the list this year and found some new favorites! 

[Webhead123 | 687]

Finished Shinobi III.

The Shinobi series is probably the defining franchise on the Genesis for me, in terms of how consistently excellent they are. While I think I still prefer Revenge of Shinobi as the best overall game, Shinobi III is no slouch and makes many improvements in graphics, control, stage variety, etc. I think the only thing that knocks Shinobi III down a peg is the final stage, which feels artificially difficult. I don't know if it was a case of "rental philosophy", wanting to keep the player from being able to beat the game in a weekend. All I do know is that, while I'll continue revisiting the game in the years to come, now that I've experienced it, I have no real desire to revisit the kind of stuff the final stage demands of you. Yes, I actually like the end game "maze of doors" level of Revenge more than the "maze of instant death pits and moving platforms" of Shinobi III.

Still a great game and easily a 9/10 for me. Now I can just ignore the part that keeps it from being a perfect 10.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Webhead123

[twiztor | 855]

was able to knock Wario Land 4 off my list today, which completes my Wario challenge.

WL4 is exactly what i expect of a Wario Land game. some light puzzles, a couple hidden items, platforming, and a bit of the bizarre. it eschews the mechanics of WL2 and 3, instead going back to its WL1 roots in a way. in a way, that's a shame, because WL3 is a legitimately great non-linear game. but it does have the benefit of just being a straightforward solid game. i felt like the puzzles were less difficult, which lead to a breezy fun experience playing this one.

this series had been on my backlog for a long time, and i'm glad to have the experience of playing them all.

next up: on to the 2024 Backlog thread with Wario World for the Gamecube!

Edited December 8, 2023 by twiztor

[Sumez | 2,988]

15 hours ago, Webhead123 said:

I think the only thing that knocks Shinobi III down a peg is the final stage, which feels artificially difficult. I don't know if it was a case of "rental philosophy", wanting to keep the player from being able to beat the game in a weekend.

It's been a while since I played it, but I recall the final stage being much easier than most of the ones preceeding it, and could be easily handled by methodically going through it, since it's just a series of traps. You know most of the traps in the first half can be destroyed, right?

[Webhead123 | 687]

5 hours ago, Sumez said:

It's been a while since I played it, but I recall the final stage being much easier than most of the ones preceeding it, and could be easily handled by methodically going through it, since it's just a series of traps. You know most of the traps in the first half can be destroyed, right?

I think the irritation comes mostly from the sections with the moving/crumbling platforms. I also found it feeling ironically anti-climactic since the entire section has not a single enemy and is all platforming memorization where a mistake in certain sections just instantly costs you a life. When combined with limited lives/continues, putting a gauntlet like that right before the final boss feels cheap to me and kinda spoils the finale. The entire rest of the game leading up to that section was pretty awesome, as far as I'm concerned.

[Foochie776 | 1,061]

Reed have you made a 2024 thread yet? 

[Gloves | 11,816]

1 minute ago, Foochie776 said:

Reed have you made a 2024 thread yet? 

https://www.videogamesage.com/forums/topic/14041-the-2024-backlog-challenge/

[fox | 1,673]

Spoiler

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,572]

6 hours ago, fox said:

  Hide contents

 

Thoughts?  I have it on next year's slate.  Will probably happen sooner than later.

[fox | 1,673]

6 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Thoughts?  I have it on next year's slate.  Will probably happen sooner than later.

It's a good mix of Zelda and Souls, which a cool graphic style that makes everything look like a diorama and you can tilt the camera to find hidden areas.  Plus you get to play as a fox.  But the real gimmick, is you get to find pages of the instruction booklet in game to learn new moves and figure out where to go.

I thought the first 90% of the game was fantastic.  After the final dungeon though, a lot of your upgrades get locked away and you have to do a lot of backtracking to old zones to get them back.  Felt like that added a couple hours of padding at the end, but maybe it won't take you that long if you remember where they are.

So I beat the final boss and got the bad ending and credits.  To get the good ending you have to figure out a puzzle that was beyond me and I was already feeling ready to put it to bed, but if you like secrets and puzzles you might be better at that.

[Floating Platforms | 738]

Been a little bit since I've added one, but I'm not through with the year yet.  I'll be going through steam stuff for about a week and have the last 2 weeks of the year off from work to make a last minute push.

Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum is done

https://imgur.com/2XnQpkk

Cool...imgur changed their interface again and I don't know how to make the link show up as an actual image on here anymore.

The style of the game is the same as Mean Streets but with several quality of life improvements.  You don't have to take notes or worry about properly spelling people's names when asking about stuff. It's in a convenient list. You automatically remember codes, etc and addresses and don't have to type those in as there's a fast travel system. I also don't remember voice acting in the first one, but it's here now at times.  The scenes where you wander around are nice enough to make it so you don't have to physically walk around many times to grab key items or open doors, but conversely some of the interface choices are odd. For instance, sometimes you can click "goto" and then the door and it will automatically work. Other times, it will force you to move Tex through and it's hard to know why.  There are some timed events and plenty of potential softlocks if you don't create multiple saves, but it's usually really easy to know when you've hit a blocker. The game also has an in-game hint system in the "help" tab. It lists all the objects in the room as a starting point. Then you can click those and get a hint. I did use this feature sometimes, but mostly to know I didn't miss anything before moving on because sometimes the rooms do scroll if you walk to the right and it's not always clear when that's a thing.  Story wise, it's interesting enough, but doesn't have the same sense of humor - this one plays mostly seriously. There are other things I could complain about, but it was generally an interesting game with a few different gameplay quirks (tunnels, hover board, trap avoidance), and it was fun to finish up these pre-FMV Tex games. I started the series with Under a Killing Moon, so I'm curious to see how much farther Pandora Directive goes (next year?)

I'm going to work on the next Nancy Drew game since there are so many to get through and then probably Zak McCracken this week if things go well.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

Well, I'm making some killer progress in Nobunaga's Ambition II the last couple days.  Chose the Warlord Rivalry scenario and picked Tokugawa Ieyasu.  I thought picking Nobunaga would be too easy, although I kind of regret not picking Uesugi Kenshin for his 100 base war stat.  Still, although I've spread my troops a bit thin, I've managed to spread across the entire central region of the map.  Takeda Shingen made some early mistakes, allowing me to capture him with relative ease.  Although I haven't wiped out his clan, I did manage to get rid of him personally, making his surviving kin irrelevant.  Also, I repeatedly harassed Nobunaga's rear as he was attacking his neighbours, taking his base every time he fought.  Then the computer attacked him twice in a month, knocking him out of his own game.  I now have to decide whether I want to take the east or west out.  The east has stronger foes, but they're also more entrenched, meaning victory won't be easy.  Conversely, I've been expanding in thr central area pretty easily as they're full of weak daimyos, but I don't want to get all my strong generals so far from where I need them.  I may just take a couple years to fortify, as I now have tons of generals but not enough troops to go around.

TL/DR - lots of progress, and two of the toughest daimyos are already dead.  Woop woop.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

So for anyone interested, I've managed to get my empire up to 15 fires so far, out of 38, so roughly 40% of the map.  I had stalled for a bit, building territory, squeezing some extra troops here and there, etc.  Once I managed to take Fief 19 though, it freed up a bunch of troops to move over to fief 5 to focus on the eastern front.  While that was happening, the Hojo clan took out the remnants of the Takeda.   Since the easiest path through the east is to take out the Hojo before sweeping north to take out Uesugi Kenshin, that's the route I'm going to take.  Kenshin is gonna be a pain though...his 100 war is kind of intimidating.  On the plus side, I do still have a reasonably clear path to beating the Hojo.  It's just going to take time to build up the necessary body points to plow through them.

Meanwhile, since i wasn't having any luck with the Incite War option, I tried something that I completely ignored due to it not working often in other Koei games...I threatened my neighbours into submission My test run was on province 20, and when it worked, I tried it elsewhere as well.  I got the single general in province 26 to bend his knee, and then I did the same to province 11.  That leaves just province 14 on my northern flank to take care of, which potentially could allow me to attack both Uesugi and the Hojo together!  At this rate, I should be done by week's end...like with most Koei games, it appears that the game gets easier as you progress, almost becoming a foregone conclusion at the half way point.  I'm actually excited to knock this one off though...it's the last Koei game for me to beat on the NES, and once it's done there's actually only two more strategy games (Desert Commander and Godzilla 2) to knock off to finish the entire genre!