2018 - 12 Month Pile Program

I know it's almost a week ahead of schedule, but I'm not sure I'll be beating anything else after today so reporting I shall go.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF HIATUS TIME:
Finished up God of War and my replay of Tomb Raider in July, but start of August I suffered a herniated disc. This meant finishing up Lost Sphear and getting a bunch of time with Octopath Traveler on the Switch was easy, what with the system's portability. However, there wasn't much of any other gaming done and I spent a lot more time watching film and anime since all I could do was lay down, and even when I could sit again, I didn't want to do much sitting after I got done work. Nevertheless, by mid-September I was ready to become addicted to Spider-Man to completion, as well as finishing up my replay of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Which leads us to...

OCTOBER SUMMARY:
Completed Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Mega Man 11, a replay of Darksiders, and a replay of Darksiders II.
Continued progress in Octopath Traveler and started Destiny 2: Forsaken

REFLECTION/NAVAL GAZING ON WHAT I PLAYED:

Spoiler:

I'll start with Mega Man 11 as it's the simplest. I liked it a lot! Enough to possibly be my favorite with the Blue Bomber himself. Don't know if I like it more than Mega Man X, but that's because nostalgia is a Heck of a thing to fight. Played it twice, and think I'll try and give it a third playthrough at some point on Normal difficulty, performing some new experiments with weapons.

I confirmed that I really like replaying prior games in a series leading up to the new entry's release, at least in the case of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I had a good time revisiting the first two games, and it allowed me to better understand what I liked and disliked in Shadow. I'm not going to go into detail here as I plan to write several weeks worth of content for my website, but for everything it does right, it does something else horribly. I also wish they kept Rhianna Pratchett on for the writing, as Eidos Montreal just seem to not really understand what the Crystal Eidos creative team were trying to do with her. It's not awful, just... eh, typical video game notion of what a character arc is, as opposed to the direction I felt they were going once you hit Rise (not that the prior games were particularly stunning in the narrative department, but certainly more consistent).

It turns out that I love Darksiders. Like, one of my top games of all time love. It's not perfect, but boy howdy does it hit me buttons. I really like the dungeons, I really like the ripping-off of Zelda, I really like the combat even though it's slower than I'd like, and I really like the Prince of Persia world navigation. Heck, I even love the self-serious heavy metal aesthetic and style to it. It's one of those rare instances where it feels like the game was made for me.

Which is why Darksiders 2 is so comparatively disappointing. It's not a bad game, and it has a lot of good stuff, but boy is it just too dang big. It's also interesting in that for every thing it does better, it does something worse. Combat, for example. I like how much faster Death is compared to War and his dodge is much more responsive. However, the quick-execute of smaller foes is incredibly finnicky and pointless, and the nature of the combat and enemy attacks makes the block/parry too difficult to be worth it. By speeding up combat they made that particular mechanic pointless. Similarly, the secondary weapon doesn't really serve a purpose like War's scythe or gauntlets. Scythe was great for crowd control, gauntlets for knocking foes back. I suppose this is what the different Arcane abilities were supposed to be for, but you only really get enough skill points to make two useful, and I chose health-steal-explosion and really-short-runtime-defense.

I honestly think the move to RPG mechanics was a negative on the whole. There's less a sense of growth because foes level up with you, and thus less a proper scale of challenge. Loot drops were mostly trash, meaning you'd sell it or feed it to a possessed weapon that's good for maybe twenty minutes until you find the one odd item that's better. Got chests left undiscovered? Meh, honestly, who cares. Probably worse than my current gear anyway.

What's funny is that the game is actually not much longer than the original Darksiders. The first took me about 15 hours or so to finish on a nearly completionist run, 17 hours maximum. Darksiders II was about 25 hours after doing a bunch of optional side quests that I had to backtrack in order to do. It otherwise might have only been about 20 hours. So what's the deal? I think it's that, even though not all dungeons are as big as the first Darksiders game, you have so many spread across these massive, open lands that you start to spread your good ideas too far out. Next thing you know you're doing yet another fetch-quest in a dungeon that's 70% hallways and shallow puzzles.

Note that I still didn't finish all side quests or get nearly all the collectibles. In Darksiders I was missing some health and wrath cores, but otherwise I was 100% on everything. Darksiders II? Meh, didn't really finish collecting anything. So easily the game could be 30-35 hours, maybe more depending on if you feel like suffering through The Crucible. Then there's DLC adventures! Included in Deathinitive! Uuuugh! It's simply too much game, and it really drags at the Kingdom of the Dead where the world is just... gray. All gray. Nothing but gray. If you thought the first Darksiders needed a bit more color, oh boy...

Darksiders 3 is supposed to scale back into a smaller game again, so we'll see what happens. Will Darksiders 2 simply be the black sheep? Or will the first always be my only true love of the franchise?

NOVEMBER GAME PLAN:

Spoiler:

Don't know yet. This Friday I'll be grabbing the Spider-Man DLC, but I doubt that'll take much time. I'd like to snag The Missing, but with Christmas coming up and bills to pay I'll have to see whether I got the cash the paycheck between DLC and Darksiders 3. Which, yeah, Darksiders 3 is currently the only new game in November I plan on purchasing.

If I can get my butt in gear and finish my script for Rise of the Tomb Raider then I can start recording footage of Final Fantasy VI. That will be no rush. I guess I'll continue Destiny 2: Forsaken, which... yeah, it's actually not bad, but it doesn't really have hooks in me. I might be over Destiny in it being an addiction, but Forsaken at least sounds appealing to return to.

Basically, I'm looking for the next "big project" before Darksiders 3. I bought Vampyr this year, and I have yet to remove it from the shrink wrap. I don't know if I want to. I should probably continue my quest in Monster Hunter World. However, I'd like to boot up the Devil May Cry HD collection and finally give the first DMC a go. It would be a fine Halloween game, a nice change of pace from big open-world, and give me a chance to try and play catch-up before DMC5. It's also supposedly not too long.

Right now the certain games being played are Octopath Traveler, Destiny 2: Forsaken, and in time Final Fantasy VI, then Darksiders 3. Until Darksiders, though, none of those are really a "primary" game. So... yeah, just gonna see what I feel like.

FINAL WORD:

Another reason I'm posting early: I discovered during my hiatus that having no "end of month" deadline, or illusion of deadline, was a boon to the mood. I no longer felt pressured to complete something before the last day, and was cool with just being 3/4th or 4/5th or 19/20th done a game. I'm gonna try and maintain that mentality still, as it really improved how fine I was with the length of games.

I totally agree with your take on Darksiders II. I'm waiting to see how the third one pans out before I can muster the interest in it.


If I stick with my current 3DS habits, I think I can finish Etrian Odyssey Untold, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, and Dragon Quest VII by the end of the year. That's my goal, and I'm just going to keep right on rotating between the three of them as long as they're holding my interest.

Which has really been the secret to finishing long-form games for the first time in ages for me: I play through a few hours of a game, usually through the next major boss fight, and then I'll rotate off to the next game and do the same. I've worked through hundreds of hours of games this way this year, and they've almost all been big RPGs that I know I wouldn't have completed before. I'm actually pretty excited about this!

If I could finish those three games, I would be really happy with that.


Less exciting is that I think I'm giving up on PC gaming. I've had a gaming PC for a year and a half now, and much of it has felt like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. I don't like mouse and keyboard controls, and trying to find ways of making that work has been an ongoing headache.

But it's really come to a head in the last few days when I finally got fed up with GOG after their most recent Twitter "mistake" and asked them to delete my account. They were one of my main alternatives to Steam, and I hate to lose that, because Valve feels like a scummy company that I can't in good conscience support. They treat their employees and their customers alike like garbage.

There's a platform for people who want controllers and don't want to give business to GOG and Valve. There are, in fact, three of them. I'll just send my money that way.

I have some PC games that I'd like to finish, but at this moment in time I'm not feeling super motivated to play them. If they get good enough discounts on PlayStation, I might just opt to buy them twice than put up with the hassle.

I played Darksiders II at the end of last year, and enjoyed it a lot, but it was absolutely too long, and the pacing was all off. I didn't even try the two DLC areas. But I enjoyed it more than the first game, in a way I can't quantify since I played Darksiders 1 years ago and don't remember it very well. The ideas and ambitions for the third game sound up my alley, but the footage still only looks.. okay. Unless it's really panned, I'm sure I'll play it eventually regardless. The series is my kind of gaming junk food.

I've been in hurry-up-and-wait mode for RDR2 this month. I added some games to the pile thanks to some generous GWJers here, fell down a Titan Quest rabbit hole and picked up Divinity: Original Sin for the CRPG club. No pile progress this month, then, and I still expect little to no progress for the rest of the year.

The good news is I rewatched the Darksiders 2 documentary today, and the head of Gunfire, Dave, has basically said if he could go back he'd have made the second game as big as the first, and prefers exploration as the core of the games, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that means Darksiders 3 will have more focus.

Otherwise I've basically been on media blackout, though I've been tempted to watch some of the more recent videos they've put out. I've heard some things about how it'll play and it sounds like it's not a 1:1 return to form with the first game, but that's also fine by me if each game has a different style.

Also: I decided on Devil May Cry as the next main game.

Do you count episodic games as one game or each episode as a seperate game?

Since I rarely play them as they're released, I usually count them as one game.

October 2018 Update

Good things happened, in general. My previously stolen Vita from back in May was located and re-appropriated, so that was something completely unexpected; I can now play my Vita games again! I got a promotion at work (also unexpected). My freelance writing work volume has started to pick up after over a years of hardly getting anything to come my way.

All in all, good things outweighing the bad.

Beaten/Finished

Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know!

Added:

Infamous Second Son
Full Throttle HD
Ratchet & Clank PS4
Slain: Back From Hell
Deep Ones
Yakuza: Dead Souls

Progressed in:

Divinity Original Sin
Hollow Knight
Dead Space 2
Double Dragon IV
Horizon Zero Dawn
Dead Cells
2064 Read Only Memories
Infamous Second Son
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Not a great month for completion, but I did snag some games I had my eye on for a while... so a good month for deals?

October 2018

October Completed
Nothing... Though I have crossed nigh on 200 games off the PS4/Vita piles due to cancelling PS+

October Played
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Tales from the Borderlands (Abandoned on PS4)

October game time
15-20 hours

September Purchases
Dragon Quest VII (3DS £10) - for the JRPG club
Battlefield 1 + Season Pass (PS4 £4)

Plan for October
Estimated available game time - Up to 40hrs
Slipped a little on purchases after zero buying of games last month, but £14 total over two months that's pretty good for me! Cancelling PS+ has meant abandoning Tales from the Borderlands for now, I'll restart on PC before too long am sure. Continue with Rise of the Tomb Raider which I'm enjoying as much as the 2013 reboot so far, if not more! Start Dragon Quest VII for the JRPG club and revisit Oxenfree for Eleima's new Adventure club.

Finally...

Game of the Month - January Battle Chef Brigade
Game of the Month - February Monster Hunter World
Game of the Month - March What Remains of Edith Finch
Game of the Month - April Slay the Spire
Game of the Month - May Into the Breach
Game of the Month - June Moonlighter
Game of the Month - July No Man's Sky NEXT
Game of the Month - August Slime Rancher
Game of the Month - September Tales from the Borderlands

Game of the Month - October Rise of the Tomb Raider

Not a whole lot happened. 2 games completed in 3 months, my pile is disappointed. At least it didn't grow.

Completed:
Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Progress:
Two Point Hospital

Added:
Ignoring Humble Monthly (which doesn't count!), nothing.

Oh crap. Today’s the 31st. Right. ^^

BrokenClavicle, that’s so awesome your Vita was returned to you!!!

October!

Finished:

  • Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
  • Stretchmo
  • Bound
  • The Gardens Between
  • Unravel Two
  • The Alliance Alive

Worked on:

  • Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
  • Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3D
  • Etrian Odyssey Untold: Millennium Girl

Still hoping to finish the four I've been working on by the end of the calendar year.

Ready or not, here's my October report.

Added:

  • Moon Hunters (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • The Shrouded Isle (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • Shattered Planet (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • Mad Max (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • Little Briar Rose (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • The Red Strings Club (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • Goetia (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • The Night of the Rabbit (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)
  • Cupid (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)

Um.... I can explain this, I swear! The first three were gifted after I Kickstarted Dungeon Boyfriend, Mad Max was a gift, and the next four were on sale ans the last one I got for free..
Whoops.

Finished:

  • Purrfect Date (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) - A slog that didn't pay off. Don't recommend.
  • Assassin's Creed: Chronicles of India (uPlay) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) - Frustrating, but EL2018 got me through it.
  • Jurassic Park: the Game (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) - See above. Do not recommend this one.

Dropped:
None.

Played:

  • Guild Wars 2 (PC) IMAGE(https://backloggery.com/images/mastered.gif) - The Mad King has returned!
  • The Banner Saga 2 (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) - Didn't play much of it, need to get back to it.
  • Cinderella Phenomenon (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) - LOVING THIS. I'm doing all routes, so it's taking a little longer.
  • Agents of Mayhem (Steam) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif)IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) - Only played an hour on Monday, it looks like great fun.

Remaining games: 58 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) (55 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif))
Progress (Games): 39 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) + 8 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/null.gif) - 46 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif) = 1
Est. remaining hours: 523 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) (504 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif))
Progress (Est. total hours): 390 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif) + 159 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/null.gif) + 24 played IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif) - 355 IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/new.gif) = 218

Backloggery is at 29, so a bit of a set back there. I'm very hopeful for November though. I plan to wrap up Banner Saga 2, and I'll be playing Oxenfree for the Adventure Game Club, and Cinderella Phenomenon will be marked as "complete". I'll try and finish Agents of Mayhem too.

October Report:

Added:
Nothing!

Finished:
Knack 2

Played:
Rainbow Skies (Vita)
Burnout Paradise Remastered (PS4)

After finishing Horizon Zero Dawn and the DLC in September, I needed a shorter game. Knack 2 was perfect for that--fun, relatively easy platformer/puzzle/beat 'em up. My oldest son got a PS4 recently and Burnout Paraside so have been doing multiplayer with him which is a nice way to catch up on things since he is a busy guy with new job and apartment. Otherwise, I'm going to knock out a couple smaller games from my pile list in November and see how the holiday sale prices look on some of the big 2018 releases. 11 games in 10 months isn't bad.

Eleima wrote:

BrokenClavicle, that’s so awesome your Vita was returned to you!!!

I know! Thanks. It was the most unexpected thing. Local police were able to find it. So that was super nice and wonderful. I really missed the little portable the world forgot.

October Report~~

Added:
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS3)
What Remains of Edith Finch (PS4)
Doki Doki Literature Club (Steam)

Beat:
Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam)
Fran Bow (Steam)
What Remains of Edith Finch (PS4)
Doki Doki Literature Club (Steam)

Made Progress In:
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4)
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Planned games to beat in 2018

Spoiler:

Assassin's Creed: Unity (Steam)
Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance HD (PS4)
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep -a fragmentary passage (PS4)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (3DS)
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD (Wii U)
Banjo Tooie (X360)
Nier (X360)
Stardew Valley (Steam)
Life is Strange Before the Storm (Steam)
Resident Evil 7 (Steam)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam)
Persona 5 (PS4)
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (PS4)
The Witness (Steam)
Pikmin 3 (Wii U)
Child of Light (PS4)
Freedom Planet (Steam)

Huh. I played my 3DS in October more than in any other month since I got it in 2011.

Added:
Uncharted Lost Legacy

Finished:
Dirt Showdown
Uncharted Lost Legacy
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition

Playing:

Rise of Tomb Raider
Dragon Quest VII
Lumo
Valkyria Chronicles 4
Dirt 3
Burnout Paradise
Wolf Among Us

Recap:

Spoiler:

Decent month for me, not alot of short games like last month, but I have decided to play the type of games that currently interest me, after pretty big arcade racing kick last month I've been into alot of adventure third person shooter type games, had pretty good time with Tomb Raider earlier in the month which spurred me to buy Uncharted. What a game, not too long but beautiful, top notch voice acting and straight to the point without any uncessary stuff. GOTY contender for me. I unded up starting Rise of Tomb Raider shortly after that.. while it is a beautiful game, its filled to the brim with pointless mechanics and B grade voice acting.
Still playing DQ7 for the jrpg club but not making as fast progress as I wish, my VC4 playthough has slowed down a bit too due to much more difficult battles that require solid time commitment to play through.

Future plans:

Spoiler:

With year end nearing, I've been thinking about my past purchases. I still have a few games that I bought earlier this year that are still in shrink wrap. I'm thinking I should make a list for next year/december and make a plan to actually play those. There is still that whole Witcher franchise I would like to get through too.

Apologies, I've had to update my report, as I forgot to mention Cupid, a visual novel I got for free... This is worse than I thought.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

October!

Finished:

  • Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
  • Stretchmo
  • Bound
  • The Gardens Between
  • Unravel Two
  • The Alliance Alive

Worked on:

  • Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
  • Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3D
  • Etrian Odyssey Untold: Millennium Girl

Still hoping to finish the four I've been working on by the end of the calendar year.

Clocky, it definitely seems like you have a good system going to finish games. I've seen what you've posted about keeping a few on rotation, rather than just focusing on one, and it's working really well. I'm curious: when did you start the games that you finished this month? And, how many hours would you say you spent to get the kind of production you had this month?

No judgments here, of course, I've logged plenty of hours this year alone.

And my own report:

October Report

Added:
Donut Country (iOS)

Finished:
Pushmo (3DS) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/beaten.gif). I'm through the main puzzles, and about 24 of the 54 "extra" puzzles. Not sure if I'll finish those.
Donut Country (iOS) IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/completed.gif)

Dropped [set to Null] IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/null.gif)
Several more that I have no plans to visit, or revisit:
AI War: Fleet Command (PC)
Daggerfall (PC)
Dusty Revenge (PC)
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes (PC)
Gratuitous Space Battles (PC)
Icewind Dale II (PC)
Monster Love You (PC)
Streamline (PC)
Time Frame (PC)

Played:
Dragon Quest XI (PS4)
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix (PS4)
Dragon Quest VII (3DS)
Pushmo (3DS)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)
Donut Country (iOS)
Divinity: Original Sin (PC)
Hollow Knight (PC)
Ellipsis (PC)
Girls Like Robots (PC)

Remaining Games:
144IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unfinished.gif ) / 54IMAGE(http://backloggery.com/images/unplayed.gif)

Reflection / Goals for November:
The list of games is pretty wide, but most of that time was spent on DQ XI, Pushmo, Hollow Knight, and KHFM. DQ XI is my favorite game on the list right now, and will be among my GOTY contenders, so I want to spend more time with it. I recently picked up Spirit Tracks again; I had set it down for a while because catching all the bunnies was driving me nuts.

To keep up with my goals for October - December, I'll probably try to finish Spirit Tracks and either KH or Hollow Knight.

LastSurprise wrote:

Clocky, it definitely seems like you have a good system going to finish games. I've seen what you've posted about keeping a few on rotation, rather than just focusing on one, and it's working really well. I'm curious: when did you start the games that you finished this month? And, how many hours would you say you spent to get the kind of production you had this month?

No judgments here, of course, I've logged plenty of hours this year alone.

Thanks to Backloggery and the 3DS Activity Log, I can answer this in agonizing detail. Behold!

Unravel Two, The Gardens Between, and Bound were all very short. I finished them within a day or two of buying them, and they were each only a few hours long.

Stretchmo, I took about two weeks to play through (4 hours of gameplay). Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest was about 45 days from beginning to end (August to October, 18 hours of gameplay), although I took a long break in the middle there because I honestly didn't enjoy the game that much. The Alliance Alive was about 60 days beginning to end (also August to October, 36.5 hours of gameplay).

As for October as a whole, I played about 70 hours on my 3DS, and I would guess maybe 15 hours on my PS4 and Switch. The most time I spent on anything there was about 10 hours playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch.

On my 3DS, the month broke down as:

  • The Alliance Alive - 20 hours
  • Dragon Quest VII - 20 hours
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3D - 12 hours
  • Etrian Odyssey Untold - 9 hours
  • Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 7 hours
  • Stretchmo - 2 hours

What that looks like in a week is:

  • Sunday - Dragon Quest VII - 1 hour; The Alliance Alive - 1 hour
  • Monday - Dragon Quest VII - 30 minutes
  • Tuesday - The Alliance Alive - 1 hour; Dragon Quest VII - 30 minutes
  • Wednesday - The Alliance Alive - 3 hours
  • Thursday - The Alliance Alive - 2 hours
  • Friday - The Alliance Alive - 2 hours (this was actually the day I finished it); Xenoblade Chronicles 3D - 1 hour
  • Saturday - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D - 30 minutes

So over the course of a week, I'll put meaningful time into three different games, but I swap between them every couple days. Could I have put 70 hours into a single game on my 3DS last month? Not a chance. But six different games? I can manage that.

Quote is not edit

Actually, this is as good an opportunity as any to clean up my list, since this is likely the state it's going to be in at the start of 2019, barring one or two shorter items I decide to pick off before then.

PC

  • Baldur's Gate
  • Else Heart.Break()
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood
  • King's Bounty: The Legend
  • King's Bounty: Crossworlds
  • KOTOR II
  • Observer
  • Pillars of Eternity
  • Planescape Torment
  • SOMA
  • Tyranny
  • Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II: Retribution
  • Warhammer 40K: Space Marine
  • Watch Dogs 2

I might have to adapt that approach to my backlog, I have so many partially started JRPGS that I would really like to make some progress with.

Fastmav347 wrote:

I might have to adapt that approach to my backlog, I have so many partially started JRPGS that I would really like to make some progress with.

The one thing I don't like about it is how long in calendar time it can take to finish a game. I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3D since June!

On the other hand, I have over fifty hours in Xenoblade now, a game that I've tried to play four other times now and never made it more than a dozen hours in.

I like that satisfaction of rolling credits on something, though, so I've found that sometimes taking a break from long-form games to run through a few short ones can feel great. Walking sims, puzzle platformers, and indies are great for that.

It can also be nice to dive into a game that's long but just completely different. Picross games eat up as much time as an RPG, for example, but they feel like a break because the gameplay is so divergent.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I like that satisfaction of rolling credits on something, though, so I've found that sometimes taking a break from long-form games to run through a few short ones can feel great. Walking sims, puzzle platformers, and indies are great for that.

I feel like I need more of this, getting bogged down in long CRPGs. Probably going to take a page out of absurddoctor's book and identify some of the shortest stuff in my backlog to enjoy clearing out before year's end.

Rather than wait another month I decided this is where I'll post thoughts that belong nowhere in particular yet aren't substantial enough for me to wrangle for my website yet.

So I wanted Devil May Cry to be my primary game, but I end up playing it a little bit and then wanting to switch to something else. That ends up being Destiny 2: Forsaken most of the time, and then when I realize I'm not enjoying the grind and am just wanting to do the actual fun stuff with friends, I move on to something else.

This is I suppose where I'd just switch things up, but Devil May Cry isn't actually very long it seems and I'm not hating it. I just wish it was remade something fierce. It's odd to consider that I missed out on this game so long ago, as the Resident Evil type environment would have been up my alley back in my high school days. It was just a bit too early for me to try something like that, and by time I was into such games it was because of Metroid Prime and the Resident Evil Remake. Both games that were notably superior just in going back in replaying them. Devil May Cry is a game that has not aged well, but I find fascinating nonetheless. I'll play it this time and don't mind opening guides for optimal strategies on bosses, but in the end I feel like this game's own legacy left it way, way behind. It's as if Capcom decided once it wasn't going to be an official Resident Evil they were going to minimize budget and resources.

I'm gonna skip DMC2 because it is universally panned, maybe only giving it a whirl post-DMC5 next year (which is why I'm trying to go back and play these games). I'm just hoping the actual mechanics for DMC3 have more polish, because the graphics themselves sure don't.

I did a bad and bought Yakuza 0 while it was on sale. We'll see how quickly I abandon my efforts to play the DMC games I missed plus a revisit to DMC4.

39 games finished so far this year. I need a life.

Lightweight. I've finished 45. And I've spent way too much time playing Guild Wars 2.

Oh, phew. For a moment, I thought I had a problem.

You two are amazing. Just yesterday, I made myself a list of games that I’d love to clear off my backlog, and came up with about 34. That felt tremendously overwhelming.