Don't Be Scared, It's Just the Pile

Finished The Witcher 2 last night. I liked the game a lot, and it improved on The Witcher 1 in many ways, but it seemed a lot shorter than the first, and had less side quests. This game was relatively short, but that said I do feel I need to replay the game making different choices along the way to experience all the game has to offer.

Spoiler:

I chose to side with Roche at the end of Chapter 1, so I need to replay Chapters 2+ siding with Ioroveth.

6 down, 4 to go

Oh, my poor pile. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll get to any of the games I listed by the end of the year.

Should be done with Ocarina of Time 3D this week (maybe tonight even). Please add Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA) as my next target.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Shadow Wars is also turning out to be a much, much bigger game than I had thought it would be. I had expected it to be a 20-30 hour game, not a 60 hour one.

I must have just hit a very long mission, because Shadow Wars is back to looking like a 20-30 hour game. I burned through a good chunk of it in a couple hours, so I'm optimistic that I'll be able to finish it.

Still not so optimistic about my other pile picks.

I can't, for the life of me, get to playing anything... this week, that is... I need to get my priorities straight, darnit! Gots to get mah game on!

As expected, just finished off Ocarina of Time 3D. Will post thoughts in the other thread.

I think I'll be finishing off Simpson Hit and Run (mutli, I'm on GCN) since I just reloaded it to see if I'm gonna keep playing and now that I'm not doing barts area, I'm having fun.

Got back to playing STALKER, and just finished it. My ending was...

Spoiler:

My ending was I went to the Wish Granter and wished to be rich (and proceeded to die when the ceiling collapsed on me and I was hallucinating it was raining money). I wasn't aware of the "true" ending or what you had to do to get it while I was playing, but that seems like something most people would then go back and replay the game to get.

I liked the atmosphere of the game a lot. I liked the combat, although I did have to knock it down to Easy (which felt like Normal difficulty in most modern games). I liked the openness of the game, but I did feel it lacked some structure. Maybe it was just the diary/journal/map UI was a bit cumbersome, or the main storyline was thin, I often felt like I was blindly following navigation markers/arrows without totally knowing the purpose of going there. I didn't really care much about sidequests, so I didn't get involved with the factions (which I think benefited me to some extent, as I was neutral with both groups). By the end of the game, I just found it easier to run from one end of the zone to the other than fight, as it saved me a lot of time/ammo, and ultimately health packs as I didn't take much damage from the occasional glancing bullet.

7 down, 3 to go! At this point all I have on my "pledge" list is DS games, so I'll probably start playing some "bonus" PC pile games as well in the next two months.

Breaking down by months. Things will probably slow down once I get my hands on Skyrim:

October:
Far Cry 2 (Multi)
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War (PC)
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS)
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (DS)
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS)

November:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (PC)
The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings (PC)
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (DS)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (DS)

December:
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (DS)

While on vacation, I installed & played & beat SPAZ since I'd forgotten to install Dragon Age & copy my saves to the laptop. But now I'm on the 4th and final Dragon Age: Origins DLC.

Poppinfresh wrote:

I finished Nier with all 4 endings. I really enjoyed it, though I'm sure it wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea. It's on a short list of games I may actually come back to at some point.

I love how the NG+ mechanic in Nier makes it less of a slog to get to the multiple endings in the game.

I finished Nier with all 4 endings. I really enjoyed it, though I'm sure it wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea. It's on a short list of games I may actually come back to at some point.

Next up, I think I'll give L.A. Noire a try. I'm also going to try to finish Forza 3, by which I mean finish the final season of the game.

AndrewA wrote:
Poppinfresh wrote:

I finished Nier with all 4 endings. I really enjoyed it, though I'm sure it wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea. It's on a short list of games I may actually come back to at some point.

I love how the NG+ mechanic in Nier makes it incredibly important to get to the multiple endings in the game.

Fixed.

I maintain that if you haven't at least seen the B ending, you have not actually beaten that game. I think the developers would agree.

Nier is a different game when you play it for the second time. I love that about it.

For now, my year end looks like LA Noire and Sly Cooper 1, plus a couple things that aren't old enough for the pile yet. With the arrival of a second child, paternity leave, and a large amount of vacation time to take, I expect to make more progress than I have been while not working, before that all comes crashing to a halt when I head back to work sometime in February. I expect sometime in there is when I'll start Dragon Age: Origins to make absolutely sure I don't get to cross anything off the list for 4-6 months.

walkera wrote:

For now, my year end looks like LA Noire and Sly Cooper 1, plus a couple things that aren't old enough for the pile yet. With the arrival of a second child, paternity leave, and a large amount of vacation time to take, I expect to make more progress than I have been while not working, before that all comes crashing to a halt when I head back to work sometime in February. I expect sometime in there is when I'll start Dragon Age: Origins to make absolutely sure I don't get to cross anything off the list for 4-6 months.

Ahhh, Sly Cooper... one of my absolute favorite platformers of any generation. Love the series. Wish there was a new one, too!

I'm on a full-court press to finish up Shadow Wars before Mario 3D Land releases on Sunday. Can he do it?

I'm making miserable progress, but on a positive note, the thread should be up to date.

I finished up the last season of Forza 3 over the weekend. I almost finished all the races of Forza 1 before my hard drive died, and I finished all the races in Forza 2, but I don't see that happening with Forza 3. It seems like there are a lot more races in Forza 3, and I'm kind of tired of the courses. I've tended to play Forza 3 when I wanted to play something fairly basic in concept, but it seems like Pinball FX 2 is taking it's place for that.

Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is finished. 30 hrs for the campaign with more challenge maps, if I want to play them. Impressions here.

And now that Arkham City is done, too, that's... three days of pile work until Skyward Sword hits. This is such a busy time of year.

Just re-started MGS3 Subsistence.... Man, I've missed David Hayter's voice.

I finished Lego Pirates of The Caribbean on 360. I've had that from Gamefly long enough to have bought 2 copies of the game. I think it's time to either cancel Gamefly or sell of the pile and add it to the Gamefly queue. Oh, 1st world problems.

Now hear this, I will finish both Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2 before 2012.

honeycut1 wrote:

I finished Lego Pirates of The Caribbean on 360. I've had that from Gamefly long enough to have bought 2 copies of the game. I think it's time to either cancel Gamefly or sell off the pile and add it to the Gamefly queue. Oh, 1st world problems.

Now hear this, I will finish both Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2 before 2012.

Why didn't I think of this before? That's not a bad idea.

I'd like to swap out Lost in Shadow for Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, please.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd like to swap out Lost in Shadow for Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, please.

FTFY

mrtomaytohead wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd like to swap out Lost in Shadow for Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, please.

FTFY

Close. But Phantom Hourglass is on a portable platform, so I'll be playing it at different times than Skyward Sword. But yeah, might as well scratch the Wii game off my list, because there's no way I'm getting to that.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'd like to swap out Lost in Shadow for Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, please.

FTFY

Close. But Phantom Hourglass is on a portable platform, so I'll be playing it at different times than Skyward Sword. But yeah, might as well scratch the Wii game off my list, because there's no way I'm getting to that.

I've got the benefit (or not, depending on your view) of having/getting to wait for my birthday and/or Christmas for any new video game this time of year. Birthday is less than a month away now.

In the meantime I'll be pushing through anything in my pile I can get my hands on. Simpsons may fall this weekend. Unless I can drag myself through the 2nd half of the General Knoxx DLC for Borderlands. I only want to finish that up to say I did it, and gave the DLC a full run. The lack of quick travel points (especially since the path is blocked to vehicle traffic for a portion) is infuriating to someone with a young one like me. Zombie island was actually fun and worthwhile DLC but still could have used a quick travel point or 2 more, but the Knoxx one is just downright annoying.

I managed to finally Gold Star all the weapons in Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam and with that the game has been completed.

Machinarium is done, and marked complete in Backloggery since there doesn't seem to be any thing to do differently in another playthrough.

Visually, the game is gorgeous, and I liked the way it told its story. Gameplay on the other hand was frustrating, and I started leaving a guide open while I played to nudge me along when I got stuck, or couldn't figure out the game's logic. This mirror's my experience with Adventure games in general, which makes me think I should stop trying to play them.

I still have seasons 2 and 3 of Sam & Max that I haven't touched, and I'm thinking of just not bothering. That would knock 10 games from my list. Although, I do wish there were a way to transfer licenses, because it seems a shame to buy a game and not play it, and I'm sure someone would enjoy it. I also am going to purge the steam wishlist of any adventure games, and find Let's Plays for the ones I care about.