2012, end of the world, or end of your pile? - the 12 month thread

Garden Ninja wrote:

I also finished up World of Goo on Steam. Mostly enjoyable, but it really dragged in places. I kind of wish they had polished and cut some content to make a fantastic 3 hour game, rather than an okay 6 hour game. I don't think I'll go back to it.

Preach it! Pacing could use a bit of work for sure and I'm still sitting near the end of World 3. I think this might be my target this month for those spots when I don't have enough time to really invest in BL2.

ccesarano wrote:

Hey, at least you guys finished games. I'm STILL going through Darksiders 2. Son of a Female Doggo is long.

Well, to be fair, I've been working on Dirt 3 since last November, and HOARD since April of last year. Both had been a bit on and off slow burns and were very near completion by the time I got to them this month.

28.6 hrs for Dirt 3 and 15.1 for HOARD.

shoptroll wrote:
Garden Ninja wrote:

I also finished up World of Goo on Steam. Mostly enjoyable, but it really dragged in places. I kind of wish they had polished and cut some content to make a fantastic 3 hour game, rather than an okay 6 hour game. I don't think I'll go back to it.

Preach it! Pacing could use a bit of work for sure and I'm still sitting near the end of World 3. I think this might be my target this month for those spots when I don't have enough time to really invest in BL2.

It's interesting that the end of 3 is where you stopped. I felt like that, and the beginning of world 4 were the best paced sections of the game. 4 especially has 2 new Goo Ball types that I liked a lot.

Garden Ninja wrote:

It's interesting that the end of 3 is where you stopped. I felt like that, and the beginning of world 4 were the best paced sections of the game. 4 especially has 2 new Goo Ball types that I liked a lot.

I think I hit a level I couldn't figure out at the time and was then waylaid by Kingdom Hearts and helping get the apartment ready for parental visits.

Man, I failed majorly in sticking to my promise earlier this year of not buying any games, but I feel like I've made some progress. I removed some games from the list that I've decided not to bother with, and included games in my growing pile that I gave priority to, some of which I have gotten through. 48% isn't TOO too bad....

Games in my collection I want to finish/watch the credits roll.

  • Alpha Protocol*
  • Bullet Storm
  • Diablo 3 (PC)
  • Secret of Monkey Island 2
  • Portal 2
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution
  • Civilization V
  • The Witcher
  • The Witcher 2
  • Legend of Grimrock *
  • Dark Souls*
  • Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (MGS 2 & Peacewalker...already beat 3 again last year) *
  • Gabriel Knight 2
  • Last Story
  • Mass Effect 3 (XBOX)
  • Orcs Must Die
  • Maniac Mansion*
  • Secret of Mana (lowest priority)*
  • Gemini Rue
  • To the Moon
  • Xenoblade Chronicles

Status: 10 of 21 (48%)

* = In Progress
/ = Abandoned / Sold
/ = Finished / Completed

2012 Releases I will be purchasing - list of releases

  • Bioshock Infinite (PC)
  • Heart of the Swarm (PC)
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 (if I finish everything else) (PS3)

Status: 0 of 3 (0%)

MasterShizzle wrote:

Just joined, so I may be signing up a bit late, but I've added a bunch of everyone to my Backloggery.

Welcome to the group!

Just joined, so I may be signing up a bit late, but I've added a bunch of everyone to my Backloggery: http://www.backloggery.com/MasterShi....

Well I finished Torchlight 2 so that never makes it to the pile.

I also went back and abandoned some stuff on backloggery and the pile in general. Several games that I sunk between 5-15 hours into, feel like I got the gist, but am really just not motivated to finish. I'd rather try some other new stuff for 5+ hours than go back to polish these off.

Bioshock 2, Company of Heroes, Dead Island, and Legend of Grimrock.

I wipe my hands of them now, and probably forever. All great games (well Dead Island was only ok/good), but I just don't have the interest or time to get back to them.

Heck with it though. I'll take some progress however I can get it.

The Witcher will probably end up in that group soon too. One weekend soon I'm going to sit down and give it a few hours to try again and then that will be it.

Crossposted from the Q4 2012 thread:

I finished up Crysis 2 the other night. All in all I'd say it was just alright, which is about what I'd expected, though I had hoped it would be better.

I played on Rookie, since I read that suit upgrades carry over to later playthroughs, and even then, while I only died a handful of times, I was close way more often than I should have been. In a lot of shooters I've played, on easy you are basically a bullet sponge, but here you are pretty killable, despite being a super soldier in a nanosuit. I never played the first Crysis, so that may be bad expectations about what the suit is supposed to do. I feel like they wanted you to use stealth most of the time and avoid straight up firefights (I've read that the highest difficulty has to be played that way), but it didn't really feel feasible until later in the game after several upgrades. A stealthy playthrough might be more fun, except for certain forced fights. The end-boss is going to suck at least:

Spoiler:

It is basically 4 high powered enemies, that can cloak, fire a blast that will drain your energy to unclock you, and are bullet sponges. On Rookie.

I was also really disappointed that there were no cool weapons to use. Despite fighting off an alien invasion, with the exception of the microwave canon, it's all standard modern guns. Even the microwave gun isn't fun to fire, feeling basically like any other gun, and you can't find replacement ammo for it. It does have a pretty cool death animation associated with it, but that's it.

The story was similarly disappointed. I don't know if it was bad storytelling, or if I was supposed to have played the first game, but I didn't know what the hell was going on. Based on the fact that everyone calls the aliens "The Ceph", I think the invasion was already well underway at the beginning of the game, but you aren't given an background info ahead of time. We don't know why they're here or what they want until way late into the game, and even that felt more like a blink-and-you'll-miss-it off-hand comment, than a real story payoff.

I might go back for a few achievements, but I have no interest in Crysis 3 at this point.

Well after a few months of little progress made I beat Darksiders 2 and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron this week. I don't plan on purchasing anymore games until Black Friday, so I'll either be working on Mark of the Ninja next, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, or Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom.

We'll see what the weekend has in store.

ccesarano wrote:

Well after a few months of little progress made I beat Darksiders 2 and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron this week. I don't plan on purchasing anymore games until Black Friday, so I'll either be working on Mark of the Ninja next, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, or Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom.

We'll see what the weekend has in store.

Let me just put my vote in for Mark of the Ninja. I had a blast with it, and it's got some very nice replayability.

Personally, one XCOM loads, I'm on a purchase blackout until Christmas. My pile has gotten far too big, and I'd like to do some work on it before the holiday season gets here.

Garden Ninja wrote:

It's interesting that the end of 3 is where you stopped. I felt like that, and the beginning of world 4 were the best paced sections of the game. 4 especially has 2 new Goo Ball types that I liked a lot.

Got to the end of World 4 this morning but I'm stuck on one of the later puzzles

Spoiler:

Mom's computer

World 4 is pretty awesome though!

EDIT: Took a page from Clocky's backloggery and finally finished condensing a couple of systems into a single entity. Much better looking now!

I must hate the very notion of clearing the pile, as I bought El Shaddai for $20 today.

I've taken the physical copies of games in my collection I have not started or beaten and put them in two separate piles today. Longer games and supposedly shorter games. They have been stacked by priority, with one exception. I have Dragon's Dogma on the top of the longer games pile, but I'm thinking of starting with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood first and saving Dragon's Dogma for after the two Assassin's Creed games. In the shorter games pile I have El Shaddai on top, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom second, and then Dead Rising 2 before Ico/Shadow of Colossus and after that is DeBlob.

Hopefully this will help me out a bit in clearing the pile, though I haven't created a similar stack for my DS games. I am currently playing Aliens: Infestation, which I don't even know if I remembered to include on my list, and just realized I still have to continue Radiant Historia, which got sidetracked by both Theatrhythm and New Super Mario Bros. 2.

Everyone I know wants longer games and rejoices when a game is like fifty or more hours long. Where do these people get their time?

To help quench the "I'm not completely done with it but I want to see how it ends", I've youtube'd both the FFXIII and Borderlands 2 endings. Much easier to put aside now (the latter was a rental that just got more and more frustrating).

Just watched a quick-look for Retro City Rampage - will be paying the $15 for that thing. Just trying to decide between PSN (now) or XBLA (later on when released).

I know this is technically not the thread for such discussions, but as it discusses two separate games together it didn't seem to fit in either one's respective thread.

One of the reasons it has taken me so long to get to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is because of all the side missions. I knew they would make the game take longer and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to just burn through the story for the sake of completion. In particular, this drive to just burn through the story is part of why I didn't enjoy Darksiders 2 as much as I would have otherwise (if I just sit back and focused on playing the game rather than how close I was to completing it for the sake of moving on with my pile).

I must be in a different head space, or it must be the execution, because for the past two nights after work I've basically sat down and just done the side missions in AssBro with little focus on the story. "Oh look, there's my objective. Let me hit all these side missions on the way there first". Yet I am not bothered by this or feeling any sense of guilt or what have you. I'm just enjoying the game at my own pace.

Why couldn't I do this with Darksiders 2? When I first began playing I was really enjoying exploring all the side passages, yet later on I ignored some of them for the sake of pushing on with the story. Is it because I've just started AssBro? I dunno. It could be, however, that there's a much more clear progress system in AssBro. I'm already more than halfway through all the viewpoints, Cult of Romulus hideouts and Borgia Towers and I'm not even close to halfway through the story. Though I'm also uncertain if the game takes place outside of Rome at all as well.

In any event, I've also come to the conclusion that the Assassin's Creed games are more or less a collection of "hardcore" mini-games strung together by a story.

I think I may be selling my PSP. Simply put, it's gotten all of 36 hours of play since I bought it in April. That leads me to believe that, as I'd feared, I'm a one console kind of girl and don't really have room in my heart for two handhelds.

With the PSP catalog and selection of PSOne Classics, it has a lot to recommend it, but I simply never play it. When I think about buying new handheld games, though, the PSP never comes to mind. I've got a wishlist a mile long for the 3DS and eShop, too, so it's not like I'll run out of stuff to play.

But hey, at least I have a backlog of one on the platform and not dozens.

I ended up caving and bought Dishonored while I was getting my friend a copy of Nier for his birthday.

Bah.

ccesarano wrote:

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to just burn through the story for the sake of completion.

...this drive to just burn through the story is part of why I didn't enjoy Darksiders 2 as much as I would have otherwise (if I just sit back and focused on playing the game rather than how close I was to completing it for the sake of moving on with my pile).

Yet I am not bothered by this or feeling any sense of guilt or what have you. I'm just enjoying the game at my own pace.

I was really enjoying exploring all the side passages, yet later on I ignored some of them for the sake of pushing on with the story

Take your time, enjoy the game, forget completion percentages. Mark a game as 'done' when you're ready to do so, not when some arbitrary point is reached within the game. I guess this is why the 12 month thread exists alongside the monthly. You can take your time, and apply a more long range perspective to your playing.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that I will NEVER get to clear my pile, and I'm fine with that. Clocky on the other hand used this forum to help reduce the pile to less than a handful of titles and systems.

What I'm trying to say is, figure out what type of 'pile offender' you are, then embrace it. We can then help it's reduction, or limit it's increase.

Well after rebuilding Rome, getting the speshul armor and using a FAQ for all 10 Subject 16 Glyph puzzles, I decided "f*ck flags" and went ahead and finished off Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood last night. The game is technically smaller and shorter than Assassin's Creed 2, but holy sh*t that was a lot of side quests. And they have plenty of endgame content as well.

Too bad I'm gonna drop Dishonored in the tray tonight instead. (Well, insert, as Dishonored will be on the PS3 as opposed to the 360).

I have mixed feelings about the Assassin's Creed franchise now. I was able to love everything about 1 and 2, but playing Brotherhood I just started to realize Ubisoft doesn't know the difference between making something challenging and throwing in a bunch of stuff that makes it more impossible. I kind of want to play Revelations alongside/after Dishonored, but I also think if I did that I'd want to shoot myself in the face.

Either way, this has been a productive month for beating games. Too bad half of them were games I bought in August, and now I'm moving on to games I bought this month.

Started another playthrough of Dragon Age II - totally forgot how much I enjoy the characters (Varric, Isabela and Bethany are an awesome group).

Finally beat Dragon Age II's "Legacy" DLC last night. Will get to "Mark of the Assassin" soon enough.

I've hit an odd point with my handheld collection: I'm out of things to play. Ish. I've canned Ketzal's Corridors and Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story because I just wasn't having fun with either one. I have the 3DS Ambassador games, not all of which I've finished, but I find them difficult to play without being able to use the 3DS's sleep mode. And the only other unfinished DS game in my collection (Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey) is currently out on loan.

What it's made me do is, in many cases, really dig into the games I had already beaten and finish them up. I've revisited Mighty Switch Force and Mutant Mudds, and I dug deeper into New Super Mario Bros. 2 than I might normally have. I'll probably plunge back into Pushmo's bonus puzzles soon. Likewise, once Kid Icarus makes its way back home, I'll probably play through that again to get it a bit closer to completion. I also dug up an abandoned copy of Dragon Quest IX and have found myself enjoying it again.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to get a new game for my 3DS. I'd like to get Paper Mario when it releases later next month, but I'm not sure I'll have the spending money for it. And you know what? I don't mind. It reminds me in some ways of when I was young. I didn't have a huge library of games, so the games I had got a lot of play. I really dug into a lot of them in much the same way I'm digging into things now. It's nice.

(And if I'm really hankering for a new experience, I've got a steadily growing pile of borrowed Wii games to work through. ;))

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It reminds me in some ways of when I was young. I didn't have a huge library of games, so the games I had got a lot of play. I really dug into a lot of them in much the same way I'm digging into things now. It's nice.

Did I ever share with you my promoted blog on Destructoid? It discussed something similar, and actually seems quite relevant to this thread now that I think about it.

But yes, I yearn for a day when my pile is small enough that I can go back and replay old games more fully. It's one of the reasons I don't plan on buying any next-gen consoles aside from the Wii-U, at least for a while, and I won't even be getting a Wii-U at launch.

ccesarano wrote:

I yearn for a day when my pile is small enough that I can go back and replay old games more fully.

This is what my pile has become lately...

Hear hear! Aside from enhanced ports/remakes on the GBA/DS I don't think I've actually replayed a game in my library since high school. Back then I was always replaying the JRPGs or platformer games I had. I'd love to circle back around to some of the PSOne JRPGs but the pile is always beckoning :\

m0nk3yboy wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I yearn for a day when my pile is small enough that I can go back and replay old games more fully.

This is what my pile has become lately...

Given how my year has turned out, I've made significant progress on the pile and am finally starting to feel like I don't have so many games that I can pick one from those I haven't played and come up with one that suits my mood. That hasn't happened in like 3 years. Can't wait to have a small enough backlog to be able to go back and savor some older games I've already gone through. I've tried replaying some, but usually the game lasts 1 sitting before moving on to a game I haven't finished yet.

Finished up World 6 of NSMB2 tonight, seven worlds "done" in total. I may go back to this game to attempt to finish it more completely, but for now I'll set it aside so I can resume Radiant Historia. I saw the credits roll, and that's what counts.

I think it's been a while since I last gave a status update, and since it'll be a while before I knock anything else off the pile this seems like a good time.

Games already in my collection I want to finish/watch the credits roll this year:

Key
@ = Tabled / Hit “The Wall”
* = In Progress
+ = Unplanned

Main List:
Bastion + DLC (PC)
Magicka + DLC (PC)
Half-Life (PC)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC)
Mass Effect + DLC (PC)
Borderlands DLC (PC)
Megaman X Collection (PS2)
*Megaman Anniversary Collection (PS2)
Defense Grid + DLC (PC)
Gish (PC)
Orcs Must Die! + DLC (PC)
Bulletstorm (PC)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GCN)
Darwinia (PC)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)
Breath of Death VII (PC)
Aquaria (PC)
@Deus Ex (PC)
@Saint’s Row: The Third + DLC (PC)
Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (Wii)
+Peggle Deluxe
Shatter (PC)
+A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda
+Windosill
World of Goo (PC)

Portable:
Kirby Mass Attack (DS)
+Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (iOS)
Chrono Trigger (DS)

Status: 9 of 28 (32%)

2012 Releases I will be purchasing:

Key
@ = Acquired
* = In Progress
+ = Unplanned

@Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3) (February) - Day 1
@Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) (April) - Day 1
@+*Quantum Conundrum (June)
Gunpoint (PC) (Summer?) - ?
@The Last Story (Wii) (August) - Day 1
New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS) (August)
@Borderlands 2 (PC) (September) - Day 1
@Torchlight II (PC) (September) - Day 1
@Kirby 20th Anniversary Collection (Wii) (September) - Day 1
Professor Layton & The Mask of Miracle (3DS) (October) - Month 1?
Paper Mario Sticker Star (November) - Day 1
@Journey (PS3) (March) - Day 1
@+Botanicula (PC)
@Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb (PC) (May) - Day 1
@Diablo III (PC) (May) - Day 1
@+10000000 (iOS)
@Kingdom Hearts 3D (3DS) (July) - Day 1
@Final Fantasy Theatrhythm (3DS) (July) - Might wait for sale/reviews?

Status: 7 of 18 (38%)

2011 and Prior Releases I will be purchasing and at what price:
These are the games I will restrict myself to when the buying urge comes upon me, and for lower prices than I normally would purchase (unless digital). I will not necessarily buy all of these games.

Key
@ = Acquired
* = In Progress
+ = Unplanned

Batman Arkham City GOTY (PC) - $25 or less w/ DLC and Asylum beaten
@Final Fantasy IV Complete (PSP) - $15 or less
Tactics Ogre (PSP) - $15 or less
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP) - $15 or less
@Catherine (PS3) - $20 or less
Rayman: Origins (PC) - $20 or less
Katamari Forever (PS3) - $20 or less
Enslaved: Journey to the West (PS3) - $20 or less
@Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) - $20 or less
Nier (PS3) - $20 or less
To The Moon (PC) - $20 or less
@+SMT Digital Devil Saga
@+SMT Digital Devil Saga 2
@Mario Kart 7 (3DS) - $35 or less by end of March
@Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) - $35 or less by end of March

Status: 2 of 14 (14%)

I've definitely failed pretty much all my side objectives for this year, but this thread has gotten me to pay better attention to how I'm gaming and fueling the pile. I'm currently on track for this to be my best year for pile growth which I think is progress enough. I'll say more about my observations when we hit the end of the year.

shoptroll wrote:

Enslaved: Journey to the West (PS3) - $20 or less

Well, I was gonna offer you my copy for $20, but decided to check prices, and found it's only $10 shipped at Newegg. I wouldn't feel right asking for $20 and I'll hang on to it if all I can get is $10 or less.

You're welcome!...?

The good news is I've avoided buying games like Xcom and Dishonored. The bad news is I still havent finished Diablo 3, which should be a rather straightforward goal. Have no idea how I'll tackle Skyrim before EOY.