2016 - The 12 Month Pile Plan

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I'm still playing only Witcher 3. This is so not good for the Pile.

But it's great to see you obviously enjoying something so much. :)

Well I always enjoy my games, for sure. I'm never forcing myself to play anything. But it's been awhile since I've spent 40+ hours on a game, most definitely.

Eleima wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I'm still playing only Witcher 3. This is so not good for the Pile.

But it's great to see you obviously enjoying something so much. :)

Well I always enjoy my games, for sure. I'm never forcing myself to play anything. But it's been awhile since I've spent 40+ hours on a game, most definitely.

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I mentioned this before, I think, but Darksiders II is almost worse for being so close to being a great game but instead falling short and being just an okay one. You can see a great game in it, but they drop the ball just often enough that they rarely fulfill on that promise. But sometimes they do, and the game hits a good stride, and it's enormously fun, like when it turns its open field hub into a huge boss battleground. That's why I'm still playing a game that's otherwise only okay.

I think at this point it goes without saying, but if you ever want to just write a lengthy blog post on your thoughts on Darksiders II, know that I'll be reading it.

And probably nodding my head the whole time.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I mentioned this before, I think, but Darksiders II is almost worse for being so close to being a great game but instead falling short and being just an okay one. You can see a great game in it, but they drop the ball just often enough that they rarely fulfill on that promise. But sometimes they do, and the game hits a good stride, and it's enormously fun, like when it turns its open field hub into a huge boss battleground. That's why I'm still playing a game that's otherwise only okay.

So there's an uncanny valley effect going on?

So was expecting other people to chime in with their reports by now. Guess I'll start us off.

I was actually relatively productive in April. I beat Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Ratchet & Clank, and saw credits role on Star Fox Zero. Three of those games I started and finished this month, which is almost unheard of for me. Didn't really get to touch Twilight Princess, however, nor crack the wrapping on Republique. I also started Aviary Attorney, which has gotten a bit sidetracked for recording for my next video, which is behind schedule.

But using turn-based RPG's for gaming during lunch at work and while exercising is proving to be a success with Bravely Second. So yay!

I should have more free weekends this May, I think, so I anticipate some decent progress despite the likelihood of being quite busy.

What is this, the Pile Police? You'll have my report on Monday, weekends are too busy taking care of the family to write up the report!

I have completely neglected the pile so far this year in favour of games I can't finish. I've mostly played Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3 and Hearthstone.

Pile disablers I call them.

Plus, I have Overwatch coming this month. So yeah, thanks for wrecking my pile, Blizzard.

ccesarano wrote:

So was expecting other people to chime in with their reports by now. Guess I'll start us off.

Gesh! Fine then!

April Report:

Completed:

Bought:

Spoiler:

Played:

  • XCOM2
  • Megadimention Neptunia VII

Modded:

  • XCOM2

April was a month which went nowhere. Just ... horrible. So many problems. Including other people's problems which then made my own problems worse.

I finished essentially nothing. I played very little, nowhere near as much as I wanted to. Heck, I only read 14 books in the entire month and several of those were sub-200 pages and only one was over 500! That says it all. That's 6 below par and normally I'm reading longer stuff too. Small wonder I feel stressed and anxious; I read like most people breathe so I've been 'holding my breath' for most of a month.

On the silver lining side of the storm cloud, I did stumble across a pair of quotes which fit my backlog efforts. I'll share as others may find likewise. "Procrastination is the thief of time; collar him" - Charles Dickens, and "Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on." E Nesbit's Railway Children.

May has an assortment of releases, none of which I feel like I am super-keen to play. There's Stellaris and Total Warhammer and, as a strategy gamer, I'm moderately interested, but no more than moderately. I don't care one jot for Warhammer but do like the Total War series, so I could like it despite the setting or find it boring because of it. Stellaris falls more into the "I'd like to play it before Paradox start changing core gameplay every few months and the game becomes a chore to keep up with" bracket. Fire Emblem: Fates finally reaches Europe at the end of the month! I find that I cannot be bothered with it. Nintendo didn't want my money when I wanted to play it, so this time they can wait until I do feel like it. Like when the game is on sale. Or never. I don't have time for it now, and during the wait I've seen it talked to death so I currently don't want to play it because I feel like there's nothing left to discover for myself. I need time to half-forget what I've read. That's the exact same story behind most of my 3DS backlog so this time I'm being smart. Yokai Watch dawdled into Europe last Friday. That one I may pick up as it's already available at clearance-type discounts and I haven't seen it talked to death during the wait.

[rereads that last block] Perhaps May is more like the Month of the Grumpily Apathetic Frog!

Backlog clearance and current game completion is the name of the game for May, then. I'll finish Dark Souls III and Final Fantasy VIII. When FFVIII falls I'll stop dragging out my Game of the Year 2015 winner, and tackle the final dungeons of Final Fantasy XII. I love the game so much I don't want it to end so I've spent the last 4 months stalling, giving Squeenix every possible chance to fulfil my joking prophecy and announce a HD port before I reach the credits. Other than that, I have plans to clear a bunch of short games. Stuff like Firewatch (picked it up last week from the EU PSN sale), Soma, Okage: Shadow King, and so on. If my "play, finish, delete" attack plan clears enough HDD space on my PS4 I may treat myself to Ratchet & Clank; bright, colourful, easy - sounds like a good prescription for a stressed frog. I've played a few others in the series and, while they never fit my sense of humour, they do generally play well.

ccesarano wrote:

So was expecting other people to chime in with their reports by now. Guess I'll start us off.

We were doing some last minute gaming before April was actually over.

Continued: Final Fantasy XIII

Finished: Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, Steins;Gate

Dropped: Dragon Quest V (iOS), Yoshi's Woolly World

Started: Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations, Majora's Mask 3D, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

FFXIII is coming along. I expect to finish it in May.

Yoshi is adorable and clever but for some reason I never felt like playing it and eventually decided I'm just not going to right now.

While I got through DQIV on my phone, I seem to have lost the desire to play something on it at the moment so I've set aside DQV for later on maybe.

Not too far into any of the games I started but I'm enjoying them all. Now that I'm on the third path of FE: Fates, I've decided to play on Casual and enjoy all the different characters. I'll be taking my time with this one, playing it off and on for a while.

This month I realized that my strategy of playing one game per system didn't really work out because if I play more than four games at a time something gets totally neglected. So, I'm working with a no more than four games at a time approach now, regardless of system. That means my PS4 and Wii U are getting no love at the moment, unfortunately.

I was going to participate in FFX-2 but decided FFXIII was enough FF for me right now, given that I've already played other FF games this year.

April was mostly a series of incredibly poor purchases. I'm really enjoying Bravely Second and Affordable Space Adventures, but Dark Souls 3 and Ratchet & Clank feel like a bit of a bust. I'd like to return to both eventually. Right now, I'm not really interested in either.

Making a short list for what to play with specific overall goals in mind, however, has been quite successful. It's both helped me decide what to play and helped me not buy some tempting deals.

I also ended up doing a lot of things in April other than gaming. I watched a greater than usual number of movies, and I'm making good progress on writing fiction. It's wild to think that when I finish this story, I'll have spent nine months laboring over what will be a fifteen minute morsel for frogbeastegg.

April I finished
Nights of Azure
Onechanbara Z2 Chaos
Bravely Default True ending. (carry over from last year.
The Order 1886

May looks pretty good with Valkyria Chronicles being the only day 1 purchase. Uncharted 4 may sneak into the impulse territory.

Eleima wrote:

What is this, the Pile Police? You'll have my report on Monday, weekends are too busy taking care of the family to write up the report!

And here's my April update:

Started:
Diablo III - Season 6 (PC)

Continued:
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)

Beaten:
None!

100%/Completed:
None!

Added to the Pile:
Banner Saga 2 (PC)
Jurassic Park: The Game (PC)
The Walking Dead: Season 2 (PC)
Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series (PC)
Tales from the Borderlands (PC)
Poker Night 2 (PC)
The Wolf Among Us (PC)
The Walking Dead - 400 Days (PC)
The Walking Dead (PC)
Puzzle Agent 2 (PC)
Puzzle Agent (PC)
Back to the Future: The Game (PC)
Bravely Second: End Layer (3DS)

Thoughts on last month: Still enjoying Final Fantasy XIII after 35 hours of play Didn't do a whole lot last month aside from that. Snagged the Telltale Humble Bundle for questionable reasons which bloated the pile. Because that's what piles do. On a slightly bright note, this prompted me to go through and condense all the episodic games on Backloggery because I was tired of waiting on them to actually address this, which resulted in about 30-40 entries going *poof* and my PC section looks a little cleaner now.

Progress!

Plan for this month: I would like to blow through Season 6 of Diablo III in the first half of the month, and then get back to Final Fantasy XIII. Not sure if I'll finish XIII this month but barring any serious complications it's looking like that'll be off the pile by end of June which makes me really happy

On the horizon: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe Overwatch? I don't see a whole lot else on my radar for May.

Summary for April: I need to play shorter games to make any progress on the pile.

Started:
Bastion (Vita)

Finished:
Trails in the Sky (Vita)

Continued:
Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)

Dropped:
Tales of Graces (PS3)

Plan for May: finish Valkyria Chronicles or Bastion before Uncharted 4 comes out. Other than Uncharted, I see nothing else on the May release schedule to get excited about.

I was cleaning the basement the other day and came across the box for Tales of Graces. It has been over a year since I last played this game. I found it to be just too vanilla and boring with controls that felt like random button mashing. Time to declare that this game just isn't for me and move on.

I went through my Steam library today and permanently removed a bunch of games from my account I haven't even touched. From my 200 I only removed like 20 but I know I will never play those games since a lot of them had been in my account for years and I have never even launched them. I've actually made progress in a game recently I'm about halfway through Shadow Warrior and I am enjoying it. Hopefully I can wrap that up some time this week.

Eastwardflea wrote:

I went through my Steam library today and permanently removed a bunch of games from my account I haven't even touched. From my 200 I only removed like 20 but I know I will never play those games since a lot of them had been in my account for years and I have never even launched them. I've actually made progress in a game recently I'm about halfway through Shadow Warrior and I am enjoying it. Hopefully I can wrap that up some time this week.

How do you permanently delete stuff in your steam library? I know about putting games in a hidden folder but this is news to me.

April didn't afford much gaming time up until the last week or so. I did make some very minor progress though (as long as you don't account for pile expansion...), and finished something for the first time in months!

Finished:
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Continued:
The Witness (so close...)
Remember Me
Dark Souls
Bastion

Dropped:
Undertale
Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

Added:
Tales from the Borderlands
Puzzle Agent
Sam & Max: Devil's Playhouse
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
The Book of Unwritten Tales
The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles

Shooting to keep picking up momentum going into May, finish out my current games in progress (though maybe not Dark Souls), and dig in to some adventure games.

kergguz wrote:
Eastwardflea wrote:

I went through my Steam library today and permanently removed a bunch of games from my account I haven't even touched. From my 200 I only removed like 20 but I know I will never play those games since a lot of them had been in my account for years and I have never even launched them. I've actually made progress in a game recently I'm about halfway through Shadow Warrior and I am enjoying it. Hopefully I can wrap that up some time this week.

How do you permanently delete stuff in your steam library? I know about putting games in a hidden folder but this is news to me.

Go to the steam support page. Log in. Scroll down and you will see a search bar that says "search steam support" or something like that. Type in the name of the game you want click on it and there should be an option to remove it from your account permanently.

Mind. Blown. I might try this myself. I have so much bundle trash that I have no intention of ever playing. Thanks!

kergguz wrote:

Mind. Blown. I might try this myself. I have so much bundle trash that I have no intention of ever playing. Thanks!

No problem man it helps especially with all of the bundle trash. But be careful if something came in with a bundle it takes everything included in the bundle out of your library

Oh my God the second half of Shadow Warrior sucks so bad. The game was enjoyable when the levels were around 30 minutes a piece, but when the level length decided to double halfway through this game starts to wear out its welcome. I only have about 4 chapters left I am going to try to push through.

Did not know you could do that, although the "Hide this game in My Library" functionality has always been enough for me.

April...

Finished: Persona 4 Golden
Started: Persona 4 Dancing All Night

I have a Persona problem. Or maybe a Persona solution.

I also spent a fair amount of time playing Kingdom Hearts Unchained X.

I can't really complain about a month spent mostly with P4 and KH, despite lack of so-called "progress"

Oh, Demyx, thank goodness you're alive! I assumed your new job was keeping you away, but it's good to see you!

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Oh, Demyx, thank goodness you're alive! I assumed your new job was keeping you away, but it's good to see you! :)

Hi Clocky! I like your new avatar

Late, but here I am with my April report.

Added:
None!!

Finished:
None.

Dropped:
None!

Mostly played:

  • The Witcher 3 (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif)
  • Guild Wars 2 (PC) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/mastered.gif) - Logging in for the daily rewards and made a Sylvari ranger with the level 80 booster.

Remaining games: 48 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) (47 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif))
Progress (Games): 10 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) + 2 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/null.gif) - 20 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif) = -8
Est. remaining hours: 399 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) (408 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif))
Progress (Est. total hours): 46 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) + 10 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/null.gif) + 64 played IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) - 123 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif) = -3

Backloggery says +4 for 2016, unchanged since last month.

Much like March, April was "unproductive". But eff that noise, I'm having a blast with The Witcher 3. In fact, so longer, goodjers, I've got a date with Geralt tonight.

I'm also late with my report. Oops.

Added:
Battlefield 4 (Gamelfy)
Hyrule Warriors (Gamefly)

Finished:
Paint it Back (iOS)
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Battlefield 4 (Gamelfy)
Assassin's Creed Syndicate

After finishing up Syndicate near the end of the month, I jumped back into MGSV a bit. I think I'm gonna focus on that for my active long game.

I placed a pre-order on Overwatch earlier this week, and I keep thinking lately about how much I want to light my pile on fire

Minor pile breakthrough tonight managing to cut over 20 games and bringing the total back down to about where it was at the start of the year. I could probably cut another 20 but let's not get too crazy. :p

Good news is there's only 5 or 6 games for the rest of the year that are must buys. Bad news is there's probably a lot more games that aren't even on my radar yet.