The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[G-type | 2,601]

Wizard of Wor is done.
The medal score for this one is probably too low, but this was the actual challenge score from CBS electronics so it is what it is. I'm not really compelled to keep pushing as the game was kind of glitchy for me. Not sure if that was just an emulator issue or a problem with the cart too…

Edited February 20 by G-type

[Sumez | 3,013]

7 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Okay Tunic, not every game can or should be Dark Souls.

I honestly wish Tunic would have stayed Dark Souls for longer, because it was really good at it. Like I wrote in my write-up a few pages back, the whole back half of the game, for as cool and fascinating as it is, is really lacking in actual gameplay.

[Sumez | 3,013]

6 hours ago, T-Pac said:

Also - Irem made Bomberman games for the arcade!!? I love Bomberman and I love Irem, so that sounds incredible haha!

I've been championing Bomber Man World (not the PS1 game Bomberman World, confusing I know) a few times, it's a crime it is so overlooked. If it's not my favourite Bomberman game, then it's at least in the top 3. I know a few people with nostalgia for the first arcade Bomberman (and of course the Neo Geo Bomberman game is quite common in retro arcades), but the second Irem one seems a lot more obscure.

Now, both of the Irem ones potentially share all the same strengths, but the first one has a really annoying control quirk.
The corner cutting in both games works differently from the Hudson or Produce developed ones (PCE/SNES) - instead of easing over the corner, your character just snaps across, and the rotation of the sprites isn't centered properly according to the perspective it is drawn in, so when you're changing direction at the same time, it can feel quite off-putting until you get used to it.
But the first game makes this even more annoying, because the corner cutting works on every block in the game even when they are adjacent to eachother, meaning there isn't actually any corner - so instead you'll just get stuck in a wall. Fortunately that was fixed for the sequel! And for this reason I really recommend just jumping straight into Bomber Man World, but you really want to play both with a four-way joystick if possible.  

Here's a 1CC run I recorded for a live event some years ago: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1567958325?t=1h14m25s

 

[Foochie776 | 1,066]

On 2/16/2024 at 6:04 PM, Brickman said:

Get the rom with all the bonus e-reader levels that were released in Japan. I think about 38 or so levels. They're some of the best Mario stages I've ever played and really challenging.

Oh woah! I’m going to do that!

[Foochie776 | 1,066]

On 2/16/2024 at 11:11 AM, Tantalus said:

Just an FYI, the Switch online version of the game includes all of the e-Reader levels. They are worth checking out, if you haven't already. There's some really interesting and creative ideas, and it pulls mechanics from some of the other Mario titles (pulling up vegetables like Mario 2, the cape feather from World, etc.)

I didn’t realize that! I’m going to revisit it now! 

[Gloves | 11,890]

I beat Baldur's Gate 3 over the weekend. Took pretty long since I was playing co-op with my wife, but overall was very enjoyable. I did my typical first playthrough character - a Dwarf with a huge fuck-off sword. Big numbers, no death, all fun.

Started a playthrough solo (i.e. not co-op), playing as The Dark Urge. Went with a half-elf Sorcerer for this run, and I've bumped up the difficulty to Tactician, and am restricting myself to two characters - myself and Shadowheart, who will remain a cleric, but re-spec'd into a healer/tank. It's been fun so far.

[Floating Platforms | 749]

Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins is done

It's a Lego game, so it's good for mindless fun.  The story in this 3DS Prequel was abysmally lacking. There were some 3D rendered cut scenes, but most of it was done through voiceless text boxes. I don't really mind that tactic, but even those have massive leaps of faith in logic and progression that there is literally no cohesive narrative. The jokey, cute-sy storytelling is a big draw for Lego games.  The world here is the same as the console version, but crunched a bit and missing a couple of areas. It's not seamless and each new area needs to load. Most of the time and interest comes if you are an obsessive collector like me as the main story and unlocking all the abilities will get you to less than 30% done on the indicator shown in the picture. The rest of it is exploring the levels and finding all the stuff.  It's fine but the main story that I played on Wii U was miles ahead.  Not sure if I should pop in Kirby Triple Deluxe or Yoshi's New Island next.

I'm also still plugging away at my platinum quest for a few long games. Splitting time between Danganronpa V3 (story is done, just getting started on the post-game extra modes), Yakuza 0 (in the middle of Chapter 2), and Assassin's Creed Valhalla (no idea how to measure my progress - I have 3 allied territories and character level is 75-ish). AC: Valhalla is quite weak compared to Origins and Odyssey. There's some quality of life stuff that's missing like having your raven actually mark things or highlight enemies (maybe that comes later, but I haven't found a way to upgrade it), the parkour traversal seems practically broken at time chasing those damn tattoo designs and the world is annoyingly big and purposefully empty. Too many quests are having you travel 400m away to talk to someone and then go another 400m to the next location to do something for a couple seconds and then go back. I felt more engaged and immersed in the previous two games.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,640]

7 hours ago, Gloves said:

I beat Baldur's Gate 3 over the weekend. Took pretty long since I was playing co-op with my wife, but overall was very enjoyable. I did my typical first playthrough character - a Dwarf with a huge fuck-off sword. Big numbers, no death, all fun.

Started a playthrough solo (i.e. not co-op), playing as The Dark Urge. Went with a half-elf Sorcerer for this run, and I've bumped up the difficulty to Tactician, and am restricting myself to two characters - myself and Shadowheart, who will remain a cleric, but re-spec'd into a healer/tank. It's been fun so far.

Part of me wants to put that on my list next year (BG2 is in my top 10-15, BG1 in my top 25), but another part of me really wants to actually play my copies of Divinity and Divinity 2 first.

 

 

Also, me playing Tunic:

"Oh, I figured it out.  I'm a genius.  I mean, the manual spelled it out completely, but I remembered to look at it and figured out what pictures mean.  That's a win!"

[Foochie776 | 1,066]

Mario Advance 2 is almost done and this may be the first time I’ve ever done all 96 exits by myself! 
 

I like SMW but it’s low on the Mario rankings for me 

[Ankos | 481]

1 hour ago, Foochie776 said:

Mario Advance 2 is almost done and this may be the first time I’ve ever done all 96 exits by myself! 
 

I like SMW but it’s low on the Mario rankings for me 

There's a pretty cool glitch that can only be done on the GBA version. Once you get all 96 exits you are able to press select and select levels on a menu to warp to their location on the map. If you do this the same frame you try to move on the map the game will then try to input that movement after it places you back on the map, which can allow you to move off of the normal paths. Most of the time this doesn't lead to anything special, but there are a couple of places where unused levels can be accessed

 

[Sumez | 3,013]

5 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Part of me wants to put that on my list next year (BG2 is in my top 10-15, BG1 in my top 25), but another part of me really wants to actually play my copies of Divinity and Divinity 2 first.

Are you talking about Divinity 1 and 2, or Original Sin 1 and 2? Because while I'd recommend the former two games, they have really no relation to BG3 at all. It's not until the Original Sin sub-series that the Divinity games really started being anything near the same vein

[Reed Rothchild | 9,640]

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

Are you talking about Divinity 1 and 2, or Original Sin 1 and 2? Because while I'd recommend the former two games, they have really no relation to BG3 at all. It's not until the Original Sin sub-series that the Divinity games really started being anything near the same vein

Just the two OS games.  Everything else is further down the list somewhere.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

17 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

...(BG2 is in my top 10-15, BG1 in my top 25)...

I must be missing something. So many people love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I gave them a 6/10 and 7/10 respectively when I played them in late 2020. I played them both on the PS2, if that makes a difference, but do you see someone who gave those kinds of ratings to the first two enjoying the third?

Edit* Sorry Reed. Just saw it was @Gloves who played BG3. Although, I'm still interested in hearing about what I may be missing from the first two.

*What say you, Gloves?

Edited February 21 by Philosoraptor

[Sumez | 3,013]

40 minutes ago, Philosoraptor said:

I must be missing something. So many people love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I gave them a 6/10 and 7/10 respectively when I played them in late 2020

I'm pretty sure they never came out on PS2. Maybe you're thinking of Dark Alliance, which are completely different games?  
That said, BG1 definitely isn't a 6/10 game, it's way too boring for that score.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,640]

49 minutes ago, Philosoraptor said:

I must be missing something. So many people love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I gave them a 6/10 and 7/10 respectively when I played them in late 2020. I played them both on the PS2, if that makes a difference, but do you see someone who gave those kinds of ratings to the first two enjoying the third?

Edit* Sorry Reed. Just saw it was @Gloves who played BG3. Although, I'm still interested in hearing about what I may be missing from the first two.

*What say you, Gloves?

Dark Alliance 1 and 2 are very, very different games from the actual Baldur's Gate series.  And I can't imagine they hold up in this day and age.  Hell, DA2 bored me way back in 2009.

[Brickman | 4,073]

1 hour ago, Philosoraptor said:

I must be missing something. So many people love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I gave them a 6/10 and 7/10 respectively when I played them in late 2020. I played them both on the PS2, if that makes a difference, but do you see someone who gave those kinds of ratings to the first two enjoying the third?

Edit* Sorry Reed. Just saw it was @Gloves who played BG3. Although, I'm still interested in hearing about what I may be missing from the first two.

*What say you, Gloves?

It really depends what type of RPG's you're into. If JRPG's are more your style then BG is going to be a difficult time. If you like DnD and slow exploration/unraveling story then you will love it. BG 1 & 2 are some of the best RPG's ever made, but if you aren't into their style you will struggle with them big time.

Also, obviously in some aspects they're dated, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the person.

You should play NwN if you haven't, I feel that's the game they really got the perfect blend.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,640]

8 minutes ago, Brickman said:

It really depends what type of RPG's you're into. If JRPG's are more your style then BG is going to be a difficult time. If you like DnD and slow exploration/unraveling story then you will love it. BG 1 & 2 are some of the best RPG's ever made, but if you aren't into their style you will struggle with them big time.

Also, obviously in some aspects they're dated, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the person.

You should play NwN if you haven't, I feel that's the game they really got the perfect blend.

He played the Dark Alliance games.

[Foochie776 | 1,066]

I’m sitting at 87?/96 exits, so I’ll play through this weekend and if I find the rest awesome, if not I’ll call in good and shelf it. 
 

Torn between Super Mario RPG and KH 1.5 next 

[Jicsan | 592]

I finished Return to Monkey Island, it was great. 

I'd been mislead about this game.  Before it was out it read like it would be Ron Gilbert making a direct sequel to the first two games only and ignoring the games from Curse of Monkey Island onward.  That was all misdirection.  It was very faithful to all the previous games,  and references them many times.  It has a bit of a meta ending that was fine, but a bit disappointing.  I wasn't a fan of the art style at first, but it grew on me by the end. 

I was going to post that I'd finished this after getting the platinum trophy, but I've given up on that for now.  It has this stupid speed run trophy where you have to beat it in less than two hours.  I did a run through right after I finished it, spammed skip on all the dialog, and still didn't get the trophy with no indication of how long that second playthrough took. 

Highly recommended if you like Monkey Island, it makes me want to go back and binge play the others.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

23 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

He played the Dark Alliance games.

Yeah I did. That explains what I wasn't getting. I didn't realize they were different animals. 

[greenthunder | 115]

Beat Layton Mystery Journey two days ago. As expected, the game didn't really shake up from what you get in the earlier hours. I do think I would have enjoyed it more if the final case was the overarching mystery/hinted at throughout the other cases. It wasn't the worst game ever, but definitely weaker in comparison to what came before it.

It wasn't on my original list, but I mentioned it in the thread so I'll mention it again here. I've been going through Rogue Galaxy since I like Level-5 and my friend lent his PS2 to me, so that's been my current main JRPG. There's definitely a bit of old game jank and odd balancing going on, but so far I'm enjoying it. I saw people complain about a specific boss battle and that was definitely rough, especially when it's right after another (easy) boss battle, and it's a 1v1 where you're playing as an axe wielder with slow attacks against a faster attacking character. At the point where I'm starting to get into the main plot, since the first few chapters were mostly introducing the party members and cast.

[Brickman | 4,073]

 

PC Master Race 

Beat 3 games on PC
 

Just finished my final PC game for this achievement which was Warcraft 3. I was hoping to get it done before I go away for a month.

A few months after the release of WoW I jumped in because my friends convinced me I needed to play it. I had played a little of Warcraft 2 but didn’t really know much past the basic plot. I got hooked on WoW and played until the end of Wrath of the Lich King. 

I finally decided it was time to play Warcraft 3 and I’m glad I did. While this game does obviously borrow a bit from StarCraft, especially with how the races feel, it is also different enough to not feel like a StarCraft fantasy clone.

The introduction of day/night and upkeep really add a nice dynamic to the game.

There really isn’t anything I can fault with this game. The scenarios are varied and fun, the story is really deep (and now so many things in WoW make more sense to me) and I like the light RPG elements for your hero.

Just like StarCraft, I plan to play the expansion next year. Can’t wait!

[Reed Rothchild | 9,640]

Yep, you have a good one to look forward.  StarCraft and Warcraft III (and the two expansions) are by far the best Blizzard games imo, not that I've played any of StarCraft II.

[DefaultGen | 5,506]

43 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Yep, you have a good one to look forward.  StarCraft and Warcraft III (and the two expansions) are by far the best Blizzard games imo, not that I've played any of StarCraft II.

Starcraft II is by far the best Blizzard game

[DefaultGen | 5,506]

Maybe not that much better than Diablo II, but I feel like ARPGs have advanced past D2 and because RTSs are totally dead, SC2 might just be the best one ever.