The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[Sumez | 2,995]

5 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

The Witness.

Loved it.

Did you do that hidden cave with the Grieg music playing?

Won't spoil anything if you didn't, but to me it's kind of where the whole game really comes together. But it's pretty obscure to find, so I'll drop a hint if you haven't.

[T-Pac | 7,590]

22 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@T-Pac gonna finish his list first for the 2nd time in 3 years.  You're gonna have to do another bonus list

That's the plan - but I know I can't keep this pace forever, so we'll see...

And to be fair - my backlog isn't filled with thousand-hour games and I'm a dirty cheater anyway, so that helps.
(Unless you consider that it can take, like, 6+ hours to make a T-Pac Arcade episode AFTER I've already finished a game - so I guess it evens out haha).

[T-Pac]

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

Did you do that hidden cave with the Grieg music playing?

Won't spoil anything if you didn't, but to me it's kind of where the whole game really comes together. But it's pretty obscure to find, so I'll drop a hint if you haven't.

There is a lot I haven't done.  I'll return to it at some point.  Obviously the 

Spoiler

black spire things start lighting up with every hidden puzzle you find, but I haven't scoured the island for those.  And there are plenty of locations with closed doors or unsolved puzzles.  When I sink another 20 hours into it later this year I'll keep this cave in mind.

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

I'm also proud of myself for not giving into temptation and looking for a single hint.  The one quasi-exception was the hedge maze puzzle I accidentally guessed out of the blue.  I spent an hour trying to reverse engineer why my solution had worked, baffled.  So I gave in eventually, and found out it was the one and only puzzle I'd come across that 

Spoiler

relies on sound, and I'm usually forced to play with the sound down pretty low, so I never would have heard it.  It's very obvious with sound.  And it turned out to basically be optional anyway.  I think.

 

[Jicsan | 592]

Beat Dragon's Dogma II last night.  It was great, I loved every bit of it, but I feel it's not as good as the first. We'll see how I feel about that after completing it again on NG+.   I'm planning to master all the classes and complete all the quests I missed.  Since I played it blind the first time through I missed some stuff.  I didn't even learn a specialization for my main pawn.  I was going to go back to FF7 Rebirth right after finishing this, but of course I started a NG+ first thing this morning.  I'll be going for the platinum trophy too, so I'll post that when it happens.

The world was actually harder to traverse because of all the mountains and rivers everywhere, basically forcing you stick to the main paths.  The enemy encounters in the original game were much more epic.  Not only in how they occurred (ie when you return to a certain fort that you cleared of goblins, only now there are two cyclops to fight at once! Or the giant chained up cyclops on Bitterblack isle.  Or the cinematic fight with Gregori where you run away from him toward the screen!), but sometimes you just had to run away from enemies because they were so powerful.  In DD2 the enemies seemed too easy and I never really was afraid of taking them on.  Once when I was fighting a drake, a griffon descended and I just fought that too at the same time.  That was epic sure, but not in the same way.  My death count says 43 times, but I feel like over half of those were from falling when trying to traverse down a mountain I didn't want to go around.

Spoiler

The post game was very creative.  The original has the Everfall, which was an epic boss rush/puzzle challenge that was one of the coolest parts of the game but it is pretty straight forward.  DD2 has the Unmoored World for the post game that has an awesome gimmick to change how you traverse the world.  But it only has two new "boss" fights and the rest is all quests.  The quests were cool and saving everyone felt very rewarding.

Here's hoping they patch in some new monsters, encounters, and more variety to the dragons (first game had awesome undead dragons, and the Ur Dragon).  And I'd also like a big dlc update along the lines of Dark Arisen someday. 

Highly recommended if you loved the first game!

[Brickman | 4,023]

I think I am going to hang up my controller (well Analogue Pocket) on Star Soldier. I don't like to give up on games but I know when to admit defeat (I also don't have enough time in my life to grind a very average game out).

Star Soldier was released a few years after the release of the Famicom and was a pretty big success in Japan. It was released later on the NES and didn't do so well. I can see why. 

Star Soldier looks pretty dated now and even for a NES game it didn't really look that amazing compared to the likes of Gradius or Salamander. The levels feel repetitive and look similar. 

The main hook or "killer feature" was that your ship could go under some of the terrain. Sounds interesting in theory but in practice it is a nightmare and just adds to the difficulty. It is hard to tell what terrain you can and can't go under so you could be blasting some enemies only to find yourself now under terrain then you reappear near more enemies. You also can't shoot when you're under terrain. It just ends up being a mess and confusing.

This game is notorious for being difficult. I don't know where this ranks on the NES difficulty scale but I can only imagine it is up there. You get three lives and can earn a few more with points but there's no continues. Added to the difficulty is the fact that your starting weapon sucks, if you die past where the upgrades are you're essentially stuck with your starter weapon for the rest of the level and if you don't beat the boss in a certain time you go back to the start. 

There are a few hidden items through the game which would be fun if they also didn't come attached with annoying conditions like having the digit in the 1000's place and the 100's place being the same number. 

With that said. I didn't absolutely loathe my time with this game. It was ok. I managed to consistently get to level 5 and felt done with the game. I don't really think it is a game worth playing with all the amazing options out there, but there's worse games out there that you could be wasting your time with.

4.5/10

[Floating Platforms | 742]

Yakuza Zero is closer to being done. Staying up late on a Friday night, I've now finished the completion list and beat the other Amon guy. Now all that's left is to do the Climax Battles and then go through the game on Legend difficulty. It will still take some time but nothing seems too daunting at this point.

[T-Pac | 7,590]

On 4/19/2024 at 1:08 AM, Brickman said:

I think I am going to hang up my controller (well Analogue Pocket) on Star Soldier. I don't like to give up on games but I know when to admit defeat (I also don't have enough time in my life to grind a very average game out).

Star Soldier was released a few years after the release of the Famicom and was a pretty big success in Japan. It was released later on the NES and didn't do so well. I can see why. 

Star Soldier looks pretty dated now and even for a NES game it didn't really look that amazing compared to the likes of Gradius or Salamander. The levels feel repetitive and look similar. 

The main hook or "killer feature" was that your ship could go under some of the terrain. Sounds interesting in theory but in practice it is a nightmare and just adds to the difficulty. It is hard to tell what terrain you can and can't go under so you could be blasting some enemies only to find yourself now under terrain then you reappear near more enemies. You also can't shoot when you're under terrain. It just ends up being a mess and confusing.

This game is notorious for being difficult. I don't know where this ranks on the NES difficulty scale but I can only imagine it is up there. You get three lives and can earn a few more with points but there's no continues. Added to the difficulty is the fact that your starting weapon sucks, if you die past where the upgrades are you're essentially stuck with your starter weapon for the rest of the level and if you don't beat the boss in a certain time you go back to the start. 

There are a few hidden items through the game which would be fun if they also didn't come attached with annoying conditions like having the digit in the 1000's place and the 100's place being the same number. 

With that said. I didn't absolutely loathe my time with this game. It was ok. I managed to consistently get to level 5 and felt done with the game. I don't really think it is a game worth playing with all the amazing options out there, but there's worse games out there that you could be wasting your time with.

4.5/10

Aw man, I love Star Soldier! I think the most important criteria for enjoying it, though, is recognizing that it isn't really the same category of shoot-em-up as Gradius or Salamander. It's almost more like Galaga in some ways.

That being said, I've never made it very far in the game, either. And I ALWAYS play with turbo haha. Does your Analogue Pocket support auto-fire?

[T-Pac]

[T-Pac | 7,590]

20/40 - Rockman 1 [Nintendo Entertainment System - 1987]

Finished: 2024/04/15

Caveats: Used the pause-trick on the Yellow Devil boss.

[T-Pac]

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,079]

Today I beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. I played it as part of the weekly NES challenge and decided to finally try and beat the whole game, while I was at it. And I think that it's a really good beat 'em up for the system. Actually, it's hard to believe that this game is running on the NES in the first place. Really incredible graphics and it plays very well, except for the special attacks which sometimes didn't work for me.

But there is one big downside to this game: the levels go on for a bit too long and some of the later bosses take way too many hits. Therefore this game can sometimes drag a little. Couple this with the limited continues and having to potentially start this game over from the very beginning, it can be a bit demoralizing. Still, it's an overall good time and an easy recommendation, which is why I would give it an 8 out of 10.

1. Little Nemo: The Dream Master (8/10)
2. TMNT III: The Manhattan Project (8/10)
3. Destiny of an Emperor (6.5/10)
4. Wurm - Journey to the Center of the Earth (5.5/10)

PS: I also tried TMNT II just a moment ago and it feels a bit weaker than III. I made it to level 7 before getting a game over. Maybe I'll try to beat it too since it's technically also on my list. But maybe some other time.

[Brickman | 4,023]

6 hours ago, T-Pac said:

Aw man, I love Star Soldier! I think the most important criteria for enjoying it, though, is recognizing that it isn't really the same category of shoot-em-up as Gradius or Salamander. It's almost more like Galaga in some ways.

That being said, I've never made it very far in the game, either. And I ALWAYS play with turbo haha. Does your Analogue Pocket support auto-fire?

[T-Pac]

I can appreciate what it was trying to do at the time but I just feel that it never executed those things properly. With limited time in peoples lives I would recommend people play Gradius or Salamander. 

I think 4.5 isn’t too bad of a score, that puts it at just below average. Not bad but nothing propelling it to be part of the greats.

That’s a good question about turbo on the Pocket. I’ll have to look into it. 

[greenthunder | 115]

It's that time of year where I fall off my backlog list. Which isn't a bad thing, but I've also fallen into a mood where I'm not really sticking with games, partially because of life stuff, partially because I'm craving something specific gamewise and none of my backlog really has it. Admittedly, part of the issue is I like finishing games before I move onto the next one for a given console and I'm not mega hyped/obsessed with my current set.

3DS wise, I'm on the 2nd half of Project X Zone 2, which I started mostly because of Phoenix Wright lol. They tightened up the map length a bit by capping attack count to 3, having true player/enemy phases and reducing the fieldable unit cap, but at the point of the game where fodder spam is ramping up and about 1/4-1/2 of the units still don't have mass attacks, which is annoying. I'm debating playing Attack of the Friday Monsters because I should be able to knock it out in a night or two, but more importantly it seems rather lighthearted, which I could go for right now.

Switch wise, I started the Trials of Mana remake and got a couple hours into it. Didn't have a particular attachment to any of the chars so I went with Riesz, Hawkeye and Duran. I'm enjoying the game, but I haven't clicked with it yet. I've reached Valsena now so I'm hoping classes show up soon.

I'm considering starting Persona 3 Portable, but since I'll be in and out of town the next few weeks, my decision mostly hinges on how much voice acting there is since I probably won't always be in a spot where I can listen to the game.

[Gloves | 11,846]

I played through Incredible Crisis on PS1 today and was blown away by how... unique it was. I don't think I'd ever even heard of it before, or I've at least forgotten if I have, and if it's not on a ton of "hidden gem" lists it deserves to be. 

It's a series of 25 mini games which tie together an absolutely ridiculously nonsensical (and hilarious) over the top story following members of a family as they each have just the most ridiculous day ever while trying to get home in time for grandma's birthday. The mini games are mostly simple in function, but were surprisingly difficult right from the start. Admittedly some of that is the game having odd timing on rhythm sections (and/or me sucking at rhythm mechanics) or throwing a lot at you at once, or demanding fast button presses at the same time as dodging. 

Anyway, super quirky title, highly suggest checking it out. 

[Sumez | 2,995]

7 minutes ago, Gloves said:

if it's not on a ton of "hidden gem" lists it deserves to be. 

I have actually seen it show up very frequently on those.

But it also had fairly wide distribution, and based on how often I saw it really cheap in second hand sales, it must have sold quite well. I even remember seeing it reviewed on national TV here. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people don't consider it "hidden".

Edited April 22 by Sumez

[Gloves | 11,846]

6 hours ago, Sumez said:

I have actually seen it show up very frequently on those.

But it also had fairly wide distribution, and based on how often I saw it really cheap in second hand sales, it must have sold quite well. I even remember seeing it reviewed on national TV here. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people don't consider it "hidden".

Maybe that's just an outside North America thing, or my memory is failing.

Good, either way. I liked it a lot.

[Sumez | 2,995]

Well it's definitely an underdog kinda game!

Soundtrack was made by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra whom you might have heard of btw. which is kinda crazy.

[Gloves | 11,846]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

Well it's definitely an underdog kinda game!

Soundtrack was made by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra whom you might have heard of btw. which is kinda crazy.

I have and was surprised to hear a ska soundtrack, that was a real treat lol I've not listened to ska at length for some time.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

I'm most of the way through Rise of the Tomb Raider.  Can probably clear the story tonight.

Just started chipping away at Ace Attorney 3 in bed at night

Chipping away at Trails in the Sky SC, which is gonna take forever.

I'll get back to Walking Dead after I finish Tomb Raider.

Maybe get back into Dark Arisen after that.

[wongojack | 228]

I've got about 300 minutes in Control (a game I actually mentioned on page 1).  It is a quality game and about what I was expecting.  The 3rd person gameplay is kind of refreshing in that the aiming is pretty loose and auto-aim is turned off by default.  Also - it seems you can use your powers effectively enough to make the gunplay secondary if you like.  It has been a while since I played Quantum Break, but I suspect the gameplay borrows most from that other Remedy game.  Story is predictably difficult to follow while simultaneously engaging.  Difficulty - pretty easy although I have died a few times here and there in combat especially right at the beginning.

@Reed Rothchild - Of the 3 Tomb Raider reboot games, I think I liked "Rise" the best.  They struck a nice balance with the open world and the linear story.  Finding the tombs always felt like a real discovery to me.  Although, it had the least memorable story IMO.  Felt pretty uninspired in that department.  Still remember it being quite a good game.

[wongojack | 228]

9 hours ago, Gloves said:

I played through Incredible Crisis on PS1 today and was blown away by how... unique it was. I don't think I'd ever even heard of it before, or I've at least forgotten if I have, and if it's not on a ton of "hidden gem" lists it deserves to be. 

It's a series of 25 mini games which tie together an absolutely ridiculously nonsensical (and hilarious) over the top story following members of a family as they each have just the most ridiculous day ever while trying to get home in time for grandma's birthday. The mini games are mostly simple in function, but were surprisingly difficult right from the start. Admittedly some of that is the game having odd timing on rhythm sections (and/or me sucking at rhythm mechanics) or throwing a lot at you at once, or demanding fast button presses at the same time as dodging. 

Anyway, super quirky title, highly suggest checking it out. 

I remember playing this bitd.  I may even still have my copy or perhaps it was a rental.  Anyway, I got scared off by the early difficulty, but the oddball humor/story/presentation was definitely memorable.

I generally have more patience now for this type of game.  Maybe I'll go back to it.

[Gloves | 11,846]

1 hour ago, wongojack said:

I remember playing this bitd.  I may even still have my copy or perhaps it was a rental.  Anyway, I got scared off by the early difficulty, but the oddball humor/story/presentation was definitely memorable.

I generally have more patience now for this type of game.  Maybe I'll go back to it.

The difficulty off the bat was a bit rough, it TOSSES you into it. That said, I think the difficulty especially of the first dance bit is just the wonky timing on button presses. This permeates the game - WHEN do I press each button? It's something I think you need to stumble through on your first go.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Fun stuff.  I gave it a half a point higher score than Uncharted 4, as I preferred the pacing more here, and appreciated the optional "fuck around and do things" stuff.  And the tombs and challenges, and all that.  By the end I was pretty content with it though, so it will probably be a year or three until I think about playing the final game in the trilogy.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
5. Firewatch (8.5/10)
6. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
7. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
8. Rise of the Tomb Raider (8/10)
9. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
10. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
11. The Talos Principle (7.5/10)
12. The Quarry (7/10)
13. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
14. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
15. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
16. Beyond Oasis (5/10)

[JamesRobot | 5,841]

Just wrapped up Tunic.  Gotta say it lives up to the hype even if I was a little reserved going in.  Deliberately designed to drop you into the world with zero context, it genuinely feels like the first time you powered up the Legend of Zelda uninformed by decades of sequels.  Obviously it's derivative but Tunic is unique enough to stand on it's own.  

It definitely has a Fez vibe to it as well. Not quite so whimsical, Tunic has a more serious tone.  But the developer explicitly spoke on the influence.

Totally worth owning a physical copy and the game almost demands it.  Highly recommended.

 

Spoiler

 

[Red | 439]

@Gloves

I don't really like most of the mini-games in Incredible Crisis, yet I've played through it multiple times.  It's one of those games that even though I'm not crazy about the gameplay, everything else about it makes it an enjoyable experience.

I even wound up getting the Japanese version as well, which has two mini-games that were cut from the US version.  One in which you have to diffuse the bomb on the train by following instructions on signs people are holding that the train passes by.  The other is a karaoke rhythm game.  They were both Japanese heavy, so I'm guessing the US publisher decided it would be easier to just cut them than try to localize them.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

7 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

Just wrapped up Tunic.  Gotta say it lives up to the hype even if I was a little reserved going in.  Deliberately designed to drop you into the world with zero context, it genuinely feels like the first time you powered up the Legend of Zelda uninformed by decades of sequels.  Obviously it's derivative but Tunic is unique enough to stand on it's own.  

It definitely has a Fez vibe to it as well. Not quite so whimsical, Tunic has a more serious tone.  But the developer explicitly spoke on the influence.

Totally worth owning a physical copy and the game almost demands it.  Highly recommended.

 

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MASSIVE SPOILER:

Spoiler

"Where the fuck is the missing section(s)!" - me, probably