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Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Final Thread
The 2022 Backlog Burner Event has officially concluded!
Use this thread to update on your games from the last week of the month, give overall thoughts, and provide feedback about the event itself.
You can view all threads for the event here
Meta question for the crowd:
It didn't seem like there was an appetite here for a full-month event (and I'm including myself in that). If we did this in the future do we think it would run better as a weeklong thing instead of a full month?
Also, I like the idea of having other events like this with different focuses. I'm thinking about one where we replay old favorites, one for mods/romhacks, etc. What are some other "modes" people would like? I feel like if we could come up with a solid handful of them we could come up with a formal rotation and do a gaming "focus" week once ever two or three months.
I'm open to any and all ideas.
I think one issue was the release of a couple of highly anticipated games. Elden Ring and Lost Ark probably both contributed somewhat to people not playing backlog games. I don't think it's an action item that needs to be addressed, just a reality of the situation; there are often highly anticipated games that come out, and people will often play them before things in their backlog.
With regards to having more events like this, I think that could definitely work. One idea that I came across from this event was randomizers, so perhaps a randomizers week could be cool.
That's exactly what ended up killing it for me. I was intending to get through at least a game per week from my backlog, but then I always just wanted to put my gaming time into Lost Ark, Elden Ring, King of Fighters XV, Monster Hunter Rise, ...
The last few months have been ridiculous for game releases, with so many major ones. I definitely still love the overall idea of Backlog Burner and want to do more of it sometime, but I think the timing was rough for this one. Whenever I was starting to play a game, I just couldn't get myself to start up Touhou Luna Nights (the second game on my list) instead of all of those other options I really want to keep playing right now.
Yeah, I didn’t even look at upcoming releases when I planned this (and to be honest it’s not really something I have a pulse on anyway). That’s something that can be tackled better in future events.
I will admit to being surprised though — is February normally a big hitter month for games? I always thought the post-Christmas period was a lull for a lot of entertainment, as most companies seem to want to try to get out their big names before the holiday season. Don’t know if this February was an anomaly or if I’m definitely out of touch.
I posted the first week and fell off because I don't play games with any sort of structure. It's also why I, and I'd bet many others, have backlogs in the first place: We go after the thing that attracts and/or catches us. That is specifically why I abandoned Half Life, and the notion in general.
I'm not everybody, of course, and I feel the format is a particularly bad fit for myself. I also misunderstood the goal and figured I'd need to stick with one game, despite observing a few of these.
I might stick with shorter format.
I personally prefer the month long process, because I'm a very slow player and I play in small increments.
Lost Planet 3 - Much like Alice: Madness Returns, I got into this and then quickly questioned why I would ever feel the need to see this through to the end. It's a pretty bog standard third person action game. Even worse, it's packed full of boring cutscenes. So I'm not here for the story and the gameplay isn't very exciting and then I've talked myself out of continuing.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - Okay, the last of three RTS games I played. Despite skipping the tutorial, the first level of the actual campaign is a tutorial. That was sort of an odd choice. Why give me the option to skip the tutorial if you're just going to force it on me from the start? I have the assume the tutorial was even more basic. And then I got to the first real mission and wow. I am terrible at this game. I didn't get out of the first mission without getting my functional army wiped out. I was being pulled in every damn direction and it was bad. I could restart on easy. I just uninstalled.
Bonus: 2064: Read Only Memories - This is a game I've picked up and put down repeatedly, and I picked it up again and put a couple more hours into it. I sort of like what it's going for, but I also find some of the characters abrasive. I might push through this one to see it to the end. I'm more looking forward to ROM: Neurodiver, and I don't want to start it without finishing 2064.
Wrap-up: I played nine backlogged games and I might actually finish two. I kind of enjoyed Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, and I want to get through 2064: Read Only Memories before playing Neurodiver. If I do finish them, it's because they're so easy that it's more or less a given that I will reach the end with just time invested in playing them. No frustration or beating my head against gameplay.
The rest of them, however, validated my choice to keep these games backlogged for so long. None of them really spoke to me, though they're all fairly outside my wheelhouse. What I take away from this is that I'm not really compelled to play games that mildly interest me, and that translates to a real uphill struggle for them to keep my attention. While this was going on, I kept playing other games that I had more fun with, and checked out some really promising Steam NextFest demos that I'm excited about. It turns out I know what I like pretty well, and I don't really have to question that often.
I played a bit of The Stillness of the Wind and it is a very well crafted farming game where you play a little old grandmother alone on a farm, who keeps in touch with her family by post. It's bleak and beautiful; while I have only dabbled, I will likely play more.
I continued to play Sunless Skies which continues to just hit a lot of good notes for me. There's lots of story, lots of interesting lore, lots of weird; if you're looking for a top-down, original GTA style, steampunk, gothic cosmic horror rpg where you pilot a steam engine through space, then this is probably the game for you.
My son has also gotten me to spend a bit more time at Hydroneer which remains a very cute game. With my help, my son has created a machine that effectively manufactures money, so he is just raking in millions of coins, and then building the machine bigger. I guess that's what Hydroneer is all about - make money so you can make more money. It's pretty fun though. Edit: my son is currently playing behind me, and he did something and now his framerate is at 1 frame per 5 seconds, and it's just constantly clicking, and then everything exploded. There is perhaps... some level of optimization that the game could make about having lots of chunks on the ground? Thank goodness there are options to just remove dirt chunks and raw materials from the world.
Edit: I also summed these up on my website though I omitted Stillness of the Wind. Fun fact, I rebooted my website a while ago thanks to another of @kfwyre's Tildes project TiMaSoMo 2020 (link to my summary) and have continued to do at least some updates, though not as much as I'd like.
Well my TV broke and I'm waiting for the new one, so I must report that I failed to complete The Outer Worlds 😭