2013 - 12 month pile thread. Hello New Year, good bye pile!

m0nk3yboy wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I suggest "Fools of the Pile" for the April thread. :D

Better get in quick, looks like Hemidal isn't doing the monthly threads any more... :(

You know what... I totally bought at it...

Just dropped the axe on three more games. My pile is honed to a fine edge of awesomeness.

I say play it through now so it never has a chance to become a pile game.

Monthly report:
BEATEN:
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif)
The Walking Dead (PC) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif)

ADDED: (Thanks to Mrwynd!)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif)

Games I'm not sure are going on the pile that came free from PS+:
Vanquish - The demo has failed to pull me in, twice. But it feels like if I had the progression in game it might be fun.
Joe Danger 2: The Movie - Already have the original and haven't beaten it.
Spec Ops: The Line - Modern combat FPS games generally bore me
The Cave - I've come to grips with: Double Fine = barely interesting.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Spec Ops: The Line - Modern combat FPS games generally bore me

Listen to me - this doesn't go on the pile. It gets played. NOW!

January: 3IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) : 1IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/null.gif) : 9IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif)
February: 6IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) : 0IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/null.gif) : 1IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif)

March:
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) Picross DS
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) The Cave
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/null.gif) Starscape
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif) 初音ミク -Project DIVA F-
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif) Mass Effect 3
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif) Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory
IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif) XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Pile change this year: 0 (12IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) : 2IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/null.gif) : 14IMAGE(http://www.backloggery.com/images/new.gif))
Remaining Pile: 81

Ok, so instead of finishing off another game last month, I ended up being gifted a game instead! So the pile has continued to be impervious to change for another month!

March report:

Finished: Little Inferno, Knights of Pen and Paper (I gave up on grinding my way to the last boss).

New on the Pile:
Bioshock Infinite (planned)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Don't Starve (random gift, thanks Obriano!)
Dungeon Plunder (iOS)
Nimble Quest (iOS)

So that didn't work as well as one could hope. April is largely going to be Bioshock, I think.

As Bioshock: Infinite falls, Devil May Cry shows up in the post!

Getting my $1's worth, I'll tell you what

Enjoy DmC.

I'm finishing that ahead of launching in to BI. I am about three chapters from the end if I am reading the FAQs right.

I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite for what it was, but man, are there better games out there. Like DmC, for example. Just a couple chapters in and am decently amazed at the style and swagger this game flaunts.

Plus, Kat is kind of hot too.

Thanks to a corrupted save, I lost all my progress in Resident Evil Revelations. I tried starting over last night, but the circumstances bummed me out a bit, and I just had trouble getting back into it. Survival horror games like that are really dependent on tension and a fear of the unknown, but I played through it recently enough that I already knew where the enemies and upgrades were. I might just let it lie for a month or so until I'm ready to try it again.

Wasn't feeling up for BioShock: Infinite tonight and was looking for some "comfort gaming". So I dug out the PS2 and Mega Man Anniversary Collection, finished up Mega Man 3 and took Mega Man 1 to the first Dr. Wily stage. Just what I needed

Oh, and Yellow Devil can go die in a fire.

I added a Priority column to my spreadsheet and am messing around with formulas. Right now the formula is "Days on Pile" x "Est. remaining hours", with smaller numbers meaning higher priority. Not sure how other people think of it, but personally, I figure the stuff you got more recently was stuff you were excited about more recently, but I also like shorter games because they are easier to knock off and knocking games off the pile feels like progress.

We'll see whether this turns out to be useful.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Thanks to a corrupted save, I lost all my progress in Resident Evil Revelations. I tried starting over last night, but the circumstances bummed me out a bit, and I just had trouble getting back into it. Survival horror games like that are really dependent on tension and a fear of the unknown, but I played through it recently enough that I already knew where the enemies and upgrades were. I might just let it lie for a month or so until I'm ready to try it again.

Man, if that happened to me, unless the game were completely fantastic, or I were only an hour or two in, it would probably completely kill my motivation to play it at all.

Oh yeah, reminds me that I haven't linked the spreadsheet I've been tinkering away at. Not as thorough as Garden Ninja's, but it does what I wanted it to do, which is to give me a general order to play the games in.

Mantid's Sheet v0.2.

Most of the sheet is unlocked and isn't my master copy, so feel free to change numbers and dates in it to see how it moves things around. Most everything you put into the sheet is on the second tab, labeled "Input", though you can add completion dates in the "Output" tab. The two "Calc" tabs are locked to none of the formulas get broken, and they just have a jumble of numbers in them anyhow unless you want to look at the formulas themselves.

Still have things I want to do to it, like sorting the completed games to the top of the list instead of having all preceding games get calculated off the last date entered. Will probably require the "Date Completed" field to be moved to the "Input" tab for sorting purposes.

Between Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and DmC, DmC is probably my GotY so far, followed by TR. DmC just has more swagger and style, and truthfully, wasn't a huge fan of the Bioshock Infinite gameplay.

And DmC goes down

Still a bit of a toss up to my current GotY, but with SR4 out in August, all bets are off

Plus, it is only April

Garden Ninja wrote:

I added a Priority column to my spreadsheet and am messing around with formulas. Right now the formula is "Days on Pile" x "Est. remaining hours", with smaller numbers meaning higher priority. Not sure how other people think of it, but personally, I figure the stuff you got more recently was stuff you were excited about more recently, but I also like shorter games because they are easier to knock off and knocking games off the pile feels like progress.
We'll see whether this turns out to be useful.

Mantid wrote:

Oh yeah, reminds me that I haven't linked the spreadsheet I've been tinkering away at. Not as thorough as Garden Ninja's, but it does what I wanted it to do, which is to give me a general order to play the games in.
Mantid's Sheet v0.2.

So I held off until I had five minutes to take a proper look at these spreadsheets. I've been struggling with myself: should I add a priority column? should I be inputing the money I spent on these games, and calculate the money-to-time ratio? In then end, I decided against it. The pile is there, I know it's there. I know I spent money on these games (or that other very awesome people did), I'm very much aware of that. I don't want to add extra pressure on myself, and for me, that's an extra step I won't take, it just wouldn't work for me. I already have a vague system for picking and choosing the next game I'm going to play, taking a few things into account (whether it's a gift, the estimated time it's going to take to complete it, how long it's been on my pile, and my drive to play the game). There's also Backloggery's fortune cookie, if I ever get stumped.
I think the next step for me is going to learn to accept dropping games. I can't force myself to beat games just because. Fun comes first, right? Right?

Eleima wrote:

I think the next step for me is going to learn to accept dropping games. I can't force myself to beat games just because. Fun comes first, right? Right? :D

Absolutely fun comes first.

Dropping games is hard. REALLY hard, especially if you have a MASSIVE pile. I'm still regretting dropping Dragon's Dogma, and Kingdom of Amalur, and that was a few weeks ago. May also be the main reason I am just playing my 3DS as well, as my 360 pile is still a fresh wound.

I know that all sounds a tad dramatic, but being as I had these for so long, there was more than a little attachment that had be overcome.

Do what works best for you in the end.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I think the next step for me is going to learn to accept dropping games. I can't force myself to beat games just because. Fun comes first, right? Right? :D

Absolutely fun comes first.

Do what works best for you in the end. ;)

Indeed. Gaming should never become a chore.

The spreadsheets help some of us organize the mess. I made my spreadsheet just to give me some guideline on what to play next. For the last few months I've been saying "ok I'm going to play this, then that, and then that," only to change it the next time I looked at my pile. Now I have an order written down to keep me playing rather than swaying about on what to play next.

I don't plan to stick unerringly to my spreadsheet, after all that's why I have the "Manual Order" column for and why I want to resort games by completion (I'll undoubtedly start and finish games before they are up in the queue). I know a couple of the games will be bumped up in the order. Some will undoubtedly be dropped when I get to them as well.

Ultimately we're just throwing out options, you don't have to feel pressured to follow or mimic any of us. Just find what clicks with you.

Oh absolutely, no worries on that count, Mantid! The only pressure I'm feeling is the one I'm generating myself. For example, I bought XCOM during the Christmas sale and started playing it a couple of weeks ago. I must've played about 4 or 6 hours, but while I recognize its strengths, I feel little inclination to return to it. It just feels very "wash, rinse, repeat" to me, which is very odd because I'm mostly playing GW2 these days. A MMORPG. With some grinding. But I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying talking with other goodjers, I'm enjoying the story, I'm enjoying the world. I'm not into the world being overrun by aliens, and sending out ships and training my faceless soldiers (no matter how much I customize them). So yeah, maybe I'm in a phase, maybe I need to just focus on smaller games like Thomas Was Alone (which I definitely recommend) until my GW2 vibe passes, who knows.

Sorry for going on so much about my pile problem.

Mantid wrote:
m0nk3yboy wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I think the next step for me is going to learn to accept dropping games. I can't force myself to beat games just because. Fun comes first, right? Right? :D

Absolutely fun comes first.

Do what works best for you in the end. ;)

Indeed. Gaming should never become a chore.

Ditto. I wasn't sure the Priority column would really add any value, but it was something I was trying, and since some people are using my spreadsheet as a template for their own, I wanted to post about it. FWIW, I'm already thinking of removing that column. Time and pile and estimated remaining hours are typically how I prioritize things, but not always, and it's a really rough guideline anyway, so it doesn't need a dedicated column.

I've actually thought of another way to approach it recently and am going to try it out. At this point, I've culled pretty much all the cruft from my pile. What's left is all stuff I think I'll really enjoy (though I might find out I don't like it when I finally get to it, but that's a different issue), so I'm hesitant to drop anything more. However, some of those games are stuff I really want to play soon, while others are can wait a bit. As such, I'm breaking up my pile into a regular pile group, and a backburner pile. I was using NULL in backloggery to indicate dropped games, on the theory that I might re-add them, but nothing is stopping me from re-adding them anyway, so I'm going to delete those. Then NULL can be used for the backburner pile which will keep the numbers more meaningful. I haven't decided how this will affect the spreadsheet yet. I'll probably do a test run for a while before I muck with it.

I've been playing Ni No Kuni lately. I know it's still pretty brand new, but I'm having a lot of fun with it. At my current completion rate I'll probably not finish the damn thing until I have grandkids... but it's at least enjoyable in its weird Pokemon-esque way.

Thanks for the feedback and support, guys. I ended up dropping XCOM, in the end, because it was just so frustrating. While I recognize the game's strengths, its fine craftsmanship, it's just not a game for me. I want to like it, I want to play and finish it, but I just can't get there.
At least I'm making progress with the pile, I guess.

One less in the pile, one less thing to mentally overcome when you look to find your next title, one less reason to be intimidated by the pile's size.

All wins from me.

m0nk3yboy wrote:

One less in the pile, one less thing to mentally overcome when you look to find your next title, one less reason to be intimidated by the pile's size.

All wins from me.

+1

Got 2 more games out from GameFly in my $1 month - have until next Tuesday to play Metal Gear Rising and Injustice: Gods Among Us.

April is apparently my month for cutting things. I cut three games already, and I'm considering cutting Punch-Out!! (Wii), as well. It's cute, but after about fifteen minutes with it, I felt like I'd gotten my fill.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

April is apparently my month for cutting things. I cut three games already, and I'm considering cutting Punch-Out!! (Wii), as well. It's cute, but after about fifteen minutes with it, I felt like I'd gotten my fill.

Things you never want to hear in the bedroom...

Beat the story mode in Injustice: Gods Among Us

trueheart78 wrote:

Beat the story mode in Injustice: Gods Among Us :)

I really liked MK vs DC, how good is Injustice? I'm not looking to buy now, but if I see it for a low price in 6 months time, I may just grab it if it's good.

In related news, I just 're-bought' Kingdom of Amalur for the 360. It's the one title I really regretted trading in. I was cleaning up my 360 hard drive, and i came across the title. Sitting there was all of the title's DLC.

The importer also had a sale on all of their Skyward Sword titles (vanilla, with sound track, with soundtrack with gold remote). I picked up the vanilla for $30. EB is still asking $99 for the same product locally.

2 more on the pile, but I feel good about adding those.