The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

Yeah I have the complete edition release.  I figure I'll play through scattershot, doing side stuff here and there, and then decide near the end how completionist I'm gonna be.

[Floating Platforms | 742]

Kirby's Triple Deluxe is done

I've completed the story, Dedede's Tour (which is just the game again as him, but with some warps and fewer collectibles), I did all the Kirby Fighters stuff on easy (mini smash bros gauntlets) and I did the 3 courses on drum dash, but I play most 3DS stuff with sound off so I didn't get all gold to unlock the 4th course. I also didn't touch Arena which is the boss rush as I was able to mostly brute force most of them and didn't feel like taking time to learn strategies to deal with several in a row.  I also was over 100 keychains short of the full set, so that 93% was going to take a long time to get up to 100% even with those other modes done. Replaying levels to farm keychains (that could be duplicates) sounds like too much of a slog.

Maybe I'd go back in the future, because the game is fun.  Obviously you don't expect too much challenge from Kirby games, but this one is put together well and that final boss gauntlet was tougher than expected. Otherwise, it was mostly a breeze.  There was some thinking and puzzle solving needed in order to get some of those sun stones or keychains and I can imagine littler kids might have a tough time with those parts. Either way, it kept my adult brain engaged.

I'm also working on Tunic right now and I'm maybe halfway done...????

Here's where I'm at: 

Spoiler

I have 2 of the 3 keys. I went through the quarry and I'm in the underground area. I feel like I've missed some sort of key item though and I definitely still don't have a full grasp on some of the mechanics hinted at in the manual pages.  But I think I'm near where the next boss is but I've been getting lost quite a bit. If I'm right and the 3rd key is here, I have no clue how much there is left to do. I feel like there are a bunch of doors that are still closed to me.  I'll keep fumbling around. It's been a great experience so far, but I wish there was a run button.

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

Hard to say.  Depends on your brain.

[Foochie776 | 1,062]

I finally burnt out on Stardew Valley again so I booted up Kingdom Hearts Re Chain. 
 

I was fully aware it was different but I’m pretty on the fence about this.. 

[Floating Platforms | 742]

On 5/3/2024 at 2:07 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

Hard to say.  Depends on your brain.

Man, with this game, my brain always feels like it's failing me. Amazing how you can feel temporarily smart when you figure something out only to learn it opens a single room and not the next area.

[Sumez | 2,995]

11 hours ago, Floating Platforms said:

Man, with this game, my brain always feels like it's failing me. Amazing how you can feel temporarily smart when you figure something out only to learn it opens a single room and not the next area.

Have you started taking notes yet? I really recommend getting pen and paper out for anything that looks suspicious

[T-Pac | 7,590]

23/40 - Musha Aleste [Sega Mega Drive - 1990]

Finished: 2024/04/30

Caveats: Played on easy mode.

[T-Pac]

[Floating Platforms | 742]

11 hours ago, Sumez said:

Have you started taking notes yet? I really recommend getting pen and paper out for anything that looks suspicious

So, I beat the story last night

Spoiler

(the bad ending)

but I didn't end up taking notes for anything for that. I did get stuck a few times, but nothing that wasn't solved by scouring the manual over and over. The bigger problem I had was navigating the world. For whatever reason, I just never got the hang of what doors and paths went where. I lost so much time going across the whole map just to learn I was in the wrong spot. I'm not sure if any amount of notes would have helped my brain deal with that.  I honestly don't know why it was such a big issue either as my in-game map senses are usually solid and it's not like the overworld is tricky in that way.

I was using a txt file for some of the optional secrets and made a MS paint like thing for a different thing. But I can happily say that I beat the game without looking things up, but after that was done, I did start going online so I could get all the secrets and I can easily say that there's a bunch that I would have never figured out.  I just have a couple more trophies to get before the platinum is unlocked so in a day or two I'll be totally done.

[Brickman | 4,022]

Hatena Satena (GBA)

Hatena Satena is a puzzle game best described as a mix of Picross and Minesweeper. You have different size grids, and you reveal a picture using the available colours. You will also receive a number which will gives you a clue how many of the same colour are around the one you just placed. Added to the pressure is a time limit and a life bar. This simple puzzler gets addictive, and I enjoyed chipping away at a puzzle or two every night. 

This was an exclusive for the GBA in Japan. I’m not sure why it never made it to the West, but it is a pretty decent puzzle game that probably should have. The art style is nice and colourful and the music is catchy and never distracting (an important thing with puzzle games). 

It does fall short in some areas unfortunately. The pictures aren’t very interesting or at times don’t really look like the final object they are meant to be (there’s definitely a stretch of the imagination on some of them).   

The core game revolves around four stories and each story has a set of puzzles to complete over different sized grids. Unfortunately, the core gameplay never changes things around except for the grid sizes so it really does start to drag towards the end and eventually the game overstays its welcome. 

I think with a few tweaks this could have been an even better puzzle game. It’s still worth a play if you’re into puzzle games, you may find yourself getting addicted to the simple nature of the game. 

7/10 

[Jicsan | 592]

I finally got the platinum trophy in Dragon's Dogma II this morning.  Had some stupid bug that stopped me from getting a quest related trophy (Are we there yet?), so had to start a 3rd playthrough just to get that one.  But I just ran through the minimal quests required to get back to it, took like two hours maybe.  Now back to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth!

[Floating Platforms | 742]

Tunic is done.

I'll put my long review in a spoiler tag so I can rave and/or rant about everything, but the TL:DR of it is: A really great game that felt like two separate games that should have been integrated more.

Spoiler

As I mentioned above, I played through the story without looking anything up online, which felt like an accomplishment on its own. It did turn out to be the bad ending as I had no idea how to get the two remaining pages and didn't really understand what fairies were for.  Through my exploration, I did find a couple of the secret treasures and fairies before tackling the final boss. After that fight, I allowed myself to look online for trophy clean-up and to figure out what the hell path page 9 was supposed to be for the mountain door. I had everything all sorted out except for that and I never would have thought to do what it was asking. I also had no clue what the line in the path was supposed to mean. Honestly, I'm glad I looked up the fairies and treasures. For some of them, I doubt I would have figured out the locations of the secrets and for some, I don't know if I would have produced the proper sequence. I found most of the ones that were spelled out in the manual, but I guess there are some extremely vague hints for others that I didn't pick up on.

Honestly, one thing that was personally disappointing is that the manual didn't translate as I went along. For some reason, I expected that to change as pages were picked up or progressed through the story. It didn't hurt my overall story experience, but in terms of post game code-breaking, I had no desire to decipher a new language and translate each page manually to get more hints. It's great that that level of puzzle solving exists for the people that want to go there, or even further in some of the deeper secrets. But I'm content in finding my way through the end and then looking up all the cool stuff and admiring the development.  In some cases, I knew what the game wanted me to do, but I needed the guide to help with the sequence because of how my brain works or because its so absurdly long that I'd rather not mess up and feel the need to backtrack to four different areas just to find my mistake and say I did it all by myself.

Okay, so onto the gameplay. It's great. The combat was challenging at first to me, then it got easier. Then the bosses make me feel like I'm being cheated with the dodge roll invincibility not triggering the way I expected. I appreciated the balanced difficulty of it all. I think the 3rd boss under the quarry was the toughest. When I fought the final boss for the bad end, that only took a couple tries. Learning new enemy types in the different areas was never frustrating but navigating the world was a little bit.  Maybe it's just me, but the overworld section was a tiny bit too large and same-y visually, so I constantly went down the wrong stairs or through the wrong exit path or used the wrong grapple hook. Pairing that with my characters slow movement was my least favorite thing. I did finally figure out to equip the card to make you walk faster, but it wasn't much better. I watched a speedrun video to get the last achievement for grabbing the gun before the sword and their movement was 2x mine, so I must have missed something else to help me run (or the PC version has different speed).  Too late now.

I loved that any time I got lost and couldn't figure out what to do that it was my fault. I could always go over the manual again and again, zooming in on pages, to understand what I missed or what I should try next. It was an extremely rewarding system and made the adventure that much more satisfying.

The strangest decision to me is that the post-game stuff is so much different. The main plot points of the game are centered around combat, and environmental puzzle solving. After that, the treasures and fairies are all witness-like puzzles that can technically be done any time but there's no reason to. I really wish that these would have been integrated more into the story and introduced earlier as something for an optional alternate ending. Why not force us to open a door or two with d-pad inputs? Or find a fairy that leads us to a specific location? Minor gripe, but the game felt like two halves packaged as one, or like integrated DLC.  Still loved my time with it.

I think I'm going to knock out one or two shorter games before diving back into Danganronpa 3 & AC: Valhalla

[Sumez | 2,995]

Agreed with most of that on Tunic, and I said some of the same things a few pages back on my own writeup. It's a game that does (at least) two widely different things. It does both of them really well so it's hard to criticize it for it, but I do wish it was more focused in its design.

[Foochie776 | 1,062]

KH Re:Chain was a huge learning curve, I’m still pretty new to RPG’s but I think I’m liking it. 
 

I got super lost in Traverse Town to the point I almost said screw it but I’m making progress now! 

[Gloves | 11,844]

I just beat Makai Prince Dorabocchan, my 150th game so far this year.

[Brickman | 4,022]

2 hours ago, Gloves said:

I just beat Makai Prince Dorabocchan, my 150th game so far this year.

Wow! You are well prepared for anything Reed throws on his game debates!

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

3 minutes ago, Brickman said:

Wow! You are well prepared for anything Reed throws on his game debates!

 

[Sumez | 2,995]

Shadow Man (Remastered) - Beaten 2/5

Shadow Man is a breed of games that felt ubiquitous at the time, but just aren't made anymore. It's a game that rarely gets any attention, even though I feel like it was pretty high profile back when it came out.
It's a mix of everything that was the late 90s - 3D Zelda-slash-Tomb Raider style exploration with plenty of platforming and a collectathon structure that gives you access to new areas when you find and collect certain numbers of macguffins. Spice things up with an edgy demon/voodoo/world of the dead theme, and a synth-heavy industrial horror soundtrack, and you got 1999 in a nutshell.

 

I'll be honest, the game doesn't give a good first impression. Awkwardly animated cutscenes that dump a ton of complex lore on you, but give you no idea about what is going on. Areas are bleak and repetitive, and hard to find your way in. Enemies barely telegraph attacks, and even taking a hit gives you little to no feedback. The controls feel familiar, but are off in various ways that are bound to throw you off ever so often all the way until the end. And the combat in general is really just plain garbage.

But give the game a chance, and you'll eventually get dragged into the bizarre worldbuilding, and the complete maze-like stage layout. For every few steps forward, you'll run into new branching paths, and for every path you explore, new branches continue to show up, making it incredibly hard to even keep track of what options you have explored, and where you are even headed. Every stage will open shortcuts and wrap around on itself like a really solid Soulslike map, feeling like a complete mystery until you're done surveying every corner.
Upgrades are frequently required to explore specific areas of one map, although often it is not clear what you need until you have it, and the game will not shy from sending you really far into any one area before realising you can do nothing here yet and have to come back later. And it's not like it outright tells you that either, you'll just have to make that conclusion yourself (or go back and ask the game's single helpful NPC).

But it actually works, and never feels frustrating, mostly due to the idea of the game's main collectible, amusingly literally called Dark Souls, caps and all.
Like Mario's stars or Jiggies in Banjo-Kazooie, these artifacts, once enough have been collected, allow the Shadow Man to open various gates placed throughout the entirety of the game's massive interconnected world. And you better remember where they are located, because you don't get much of a map to rely on either. So no matter where you go, or what dead ends you end up in, you'll always gradually get closer to opening the next major gate.
There is a LOT of backtracking in this game, but every time you go back to an area you'll likely discover brand new places or ways to get around, so throughout my entire playthrough that never felt tedious at all - instead it feels incredibly rewarding finally being able to reach and collect that Dark Soul you spotted five hours earlier!

Complimenting this is a cool tome that you find quite early on in the game, containing a bunch of cryptic texts and crude drawings, most of which seem ritualistic, and make little sense with the modicum of information you have at that time. But inspecting it later on, you'll likely spot bits of information that suddenly make more sense to you, and help informing you about mechanics that otherwise seemed obscure. 
It's not quite on the level of the pages that you find throughout Tunic, but the experience is not dissimilar, and it's a cool gimmick that I wish more exploration-focused games would attempt.

Although the majority of the game takes places in the world of the dead, you'll occasionally travel to the real world to combat a group of serial killers, the game's five major bosses. They have a really weird dynamic, because there's a whole mechanic in place, where the protagonist is unable to turn into Shadow Man during the daytime, and therefore has less powers while there. But these areas also feature very little combat in the first place, and once you figure out you can't complete them in this state, you probably won't go into any of the others until that plot point has been solved, rendering the whole day/night issue irrelevant.

The real world areas are very tonally distinct from both eachother and from the rest of the game, and offer a really cool chance of pace. But personally, due to the circumstances described above, I ended up just doing all of these at the tail end of the game, and I imagine that's how most people play it. On one hand, it would have been better off if you're enticed to actually do these sporadically throughout, but at the same time I also really appreciate the highly nonlinear structure of the game.

[Floating Platforms | 742]

Nancy Drew: The Final Scene is done

No picture because they're spoilers and credits don't indicate the game.

I'm playing these in release order now (after exploring a couple out of sequence) and this is still not quite the formula I like the most from the series.  Once again there are surprisingly few puzzles to solve and notes are rarely needed, aside from writing down phone numbers because you will be calling people a lot.  Honestly the vast majority of this game was running around to talk to the 4 NPCs and then using the phone to talk to a bunch of people and rotating that cycle until the plot progressed.  Strangely, there were also a lot of areas that you could click on to get a close-up of that had absolutely nothing to interact with. Normally if you zoom into a part of the room, there's an object to grab or open, etc. Here, there were several zoomed in screens that had zero clickable objects.  Story wise, it was as serviceable as most Nancy games have been so far, but even though you do a ton of talking, the characters remain one dimensional.

After beating this, I started Secret of the Scarlet Hand and this one is immediately more puzzle forward, so hopefully this is the big switch in approach I've been looking for.

[Sumez | 2,995]

Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider - Beaten 7/5

Moonrider is the sort of game that would be right up my alley. A nimble cyborg ninja samurai in a straight forward arcade-like action platformer? I loved Hagane, there is no reason I shouldn't love this.

Well, ideally Moonrider is exactly that, but ultimately it feels very similar to JoyMasher's old game, Oniken, in this sense. The exact recipe for a game that I'd swallow up, but it just isn't very well made. I thought they had really improved when they knocked it out of the park with Blazing Chrome a few years ago, but apparently that one was just a one-off.

It's hard to explain exactly why Moonrider isn't that great, but a combination of the level design, enemies and occasionally awkward moveset just means it never manages to flow that well. In order to pose a challenge rather than just being fodder, every enemy feels like it takes exactly one hit too many to kill, which will often force you to stop you in your tracks or retreat in order to deal with them.

The game has a run button, and you're generally encouraged to use it at all time, but attacking while running will also always result in a dashing attack which does extra damage, but will also both move you a considerable distance forward and, once again, stop you in your tracks. When it works well, it's fun - rewarding skillful play with a more devastating damage output. More often however, it's just annoying how easily it will send you headfirst into hazards, and/or break the flow of your progress. Especailly during boss fights, this move is just a massive annoyance, since it is rarely useful there, but the run button absolutely is.

The worst aspect of the game, however, are the two behind-the-back motorcycle stages which pretty much play themselves, demanding little of the player, and waste a ton of time on complete dead air where nothing happens.

Replaying stages without dying for a better time to get the game's S ranking can still be fairly enjoyable, as learning stages can mitigate most of the frustration from trying to deals with enemies showing up anywhere to hinder your progress. But I don't think it's enough to drag the game up from being little more than "adequate" in the context of the family of action games that it plants itself into.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,598]

Ace Attorney 3 - still on case 2, which means this is gonna take forever.  My biggest complaint with the series is still alive and present: trying to move the investigation forward by presenting everything and everyone to everybody.  Still, these games are too charming to hold that against them.

Trails in the Sky SC - 30 hours in and I just started chapter 4, and there's 8 or 9 chapters, which means I'll be done by August.  I'm really trying to lean into the "easier retries" thing so I can brute force my way through boss battles and cut that time down.

Horizon Zero Dawn - It's fun, even if some of the systems kinda aggravate me.  And I shouldn't have played it on the heels of Rise of the Tomb Raider, as they share some similarities.  Blowing turrets off a giant robot T-Rex so that you can use them against it is pretty cool.  I assume I'll have this wrapped up in the next two weeks.

Think I'll finish off Walking Dead next, and then maybe start up Spider-Man or Dark Souls III.

[Brickman | 4,022]

Final Fight (SNES)

Brawlers, beat ‘em ups, belt scroller, whatever you want to call them, they’ve never really been my thing. Save for a few, I usually get a bit bored of them or get frustrated with their cheapness.  

I’ve never played a Final Fight game, so I was going in blind. The short of it is, I think it’s an ok slightly above average game.

Firstly, the visuals are nice and the soundtrack is really solid. They have a good beat and tend to match the world you’re in. 

The difficulty curve can be a little intense in this game. At first, you’re breezing along and knocking everyone out like they’re nothing. Then it changes around Stage 3, everyone is stun locking you or hitting way harder. I like difficult games, but I don’t like cheap difficult games. This game tends to lean a bit towards cheap at times. The boss fights aren’t too bad though and each one feels pretty unique. I liked the variety they brought to the game. 

The levels themselves are where I think the game falls short. They just feel so boring to me. The backgrounds are changing but you never really feel like anything is changing overall. Punch punch, jump, kick, grab someone and move again. Yes, this is the aim of these types of games, but I don’t get the same feeling in this game as I do in something like The Simpsons or Turtles in Time. Unfortunately, I just found it to be a slightly above average game. 

6.5/10

[fox | 1,681]

May Update:


FF7 Rebirth

 

[fox | 1,681]

6 completed

Playstation 5
Balder's Gate 3
Gigabash - completed
Sea of Stars - completed
Outer Wilds
Mayhem Brawler - completed
Suicide Squad - completed
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - completed

Switch
Blasphemous 2
Citizen Sleeper
Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
Gourmet Warriors
The Last Faith
Monster Train
Paper Mario - 10% done
Princess Peach Showtime
Prison City
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario Wonder
Wrestlequest
Unicorn Overlord - finished ch 1
Contra Operation G - completed

Coming Soon
Paper Mario 1000 year door - May
Gravity Circuit - June

TBD 2023
Blade Chimera
Blazing Strike
Dragon Warrior 3 2dHD
Little Nightmares 3
Mina the Hollower
Silk Song
Wolf Amoug us 2

[Lago | 224]

Cook, Serve, Delicious.  Beaten.  Crap that game is hard. 60 hours total, not all this year. Also counting Gang Beasts.  Won a match against the fam.  They absolutely love that game.  Tons of laughter when we all play.

[wongojack | 228]

All right - I am ready to report that I've actually completed 2 games from the backlog list I posted on the first page of this thread.

Tetris Effect: Connected PS4

There's really not that much to say.  This is quite the nifty update to Tetris including many new game modes and single player challenges along with multiplayer competition and community events.  It also includes a VR option that while not the greatest VR experience in the world certainly offers a new and interesting way to experience Tetris.  All of the excellent gameplay from the original is here and with more challenges and scenarios, the only way you will NOT like this is if the music turns you off, or you just don't like Tetris.  I can't give this game anything but an easy 5 out of 5.

 

Control Xbox Series S/X

 

This was an interesting game.  I really liked the story although I've seen online how it has been criticized heavily.  I didn't really mind the "Don't reveal everything" style of storytelling, and I enjoyed actually reading the various texts that filled in the story elements.  However, the gameplay for me was very hit and miss.  There were times when it was laughably easy and other times when the game environment made it much more difficult.  Exploring the "Oldest House" was quite interesting, and the best moments come when you feel like you've discovered something the game has hidden from you.  The worst moments come when you are trapped in a room with a boss that constricts your movement and forces you to drastically change your playstyle to defeat waves of annoying enemies.  There was also one puzzle in the game that I would have never figured out without a lot of trial and error or looking up hints.  But then, there's the incredible blistering soundtrack of the "Ashtray Maze" that was totally awesome and reminded me of how much I enjoyed the concert battle in Alan Wake.  I haven't finished playing the last DLC, but I'm ready to pass judgement.  Even though the game was a mixed bag, there's enough here to consider it above average.  I had thoughts about a 3, but I'm giving Control a 4 out of 5.

Here's a complete list of games that I've finished this year with a score out of 5.  Those in green are ones that I earmarked for this thread.

>Y2k
The Expanse: Telltale Series 5/5
Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris 5/5
Spiderman 5/5
Tetris Effect: Connected 5/5
Battlefield Bad Company 2 4/5
Battlezone Gold Edition 4/5
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4/5
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 4/5
Control 4/5
Half Life: Alyx 4/5
Punch-Out (Wii) 4/5
Slinger VR 4/5

Classic
Castlevania Symphony of the Night 4/5
Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition (Intv) 4/5
Ghostbusters (SMS) 3/5
Tennis (NES) 3/5