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May 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion
Week 2 has begun!
Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.
Quick links:
Week 1 Recap
10 participants played 10 bingo cards and moved 15 games out of their backlogs!
There were 0 bingo wins.
Game list:
- Bastion
- Chop Goblins
- THE CORRIDOR
- DARK SOULS III
- Final Fantasy III
- HUMANITY
- In Other Waters
- Life is Strange: Complete Season
- Metal: Hellsinger
- Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD
- Some Distant Memory
- Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
- The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith
- Vault of the Void
- A YEAR OF SPRINGS
J-Chiptunator's Backlog Bingo Card (2/25)
Recommended by someone on Tildes✔ Bastion
Is mostly text-based✔ Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit -
Continuing towards the second week of Backlog Bingo, this time with Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit - that's playable from Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition right out of the gate. It's a rather dark text-based visual novel originally released in 1996 for the Satellaview peripheral for Super Famicom, which of course largely consist of reading befitting of the Is mostly text-based category.
As far as my knowledge of the Chrono series goes, I never played much Trigger and Cross, so I'm going blind into Radical Dreamers lorewise. So far, I'm almost halfway into the game, more specifically...
Spoilers
... at the point where I found an imprisoned rambling old man who needs some item to get him to speak much more clearly. Earlier on, I got a good laugh at throwing Kid's knickknacks at the Mouth of Truth just to get it and Kid to react in different ways, but disappointed at the fact that used items won't be removed from the list of choices. And thus, rendering Kid's (over)reaction meaningless.
Seeing as it takes 3 hours to beat it on average and 7 hours to complete according to HowLongToBeat, I assume it will have multiple endings. No idea on how the ramification from the choices I've made outside do-or-die situations would influence the story in any shape or form. Maybe I'll find out in one of those endings.
The combats and perilous situations I've encountered both uses the hidden timer that will force skipping the choice option if you wait for too long. There's even a Game Over should you manage to get yourself killed by a death trap, but I'm unsure if that's even possible during battles, having never died in any of these so far. Overcoming through all these aforementioned situations are generally an intuitive process despite the lack of UI commonly found in today's visual novels.
For old time's sake, I played with a wired SNES Classic Controller directly connected to the obscure RetroPad32 device plugged into Switch dock's USB port. Turns out, it's among the accessories that add as little as 0.711ms according to MisterAddons Input Lag page. One frame of input lag is 16.67ms on a 60FPS gameplay, and human players can indeed perceive the difference in input responsiveness starting at half-frame. For many of the action and reaction-oriented games on Switch and PC, this is how I'm going to roll going forward.
Oh wow, that's really neat. I've heard of the Satellaview before, but I didn't know any of the unique content had been made playable today. Nice touch with using the SNES classic controller. Definitely adds to the retro feel.
I actually started Chrono Trigger a few months ago, and have played maybe 20% of the way through so far. I've enjoyed it but JRPGs are hard for me to really sink my teeth into. If/when I finish, I'll be glad to know there's a way to play the tie-in story in English now.
I decided to shelve the bingo aspect and see how much I can fill at the end of the month since I wasn't having trouble picking games. This past week I've played Umurangi Generation and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Both these I picked up on sale recently for a couple bucks.
Umurangi Generation is an indie photography game where you go through levels capturing shots from a given list. It had absolutely sick vibes, from the aesthetics to the soundtrack. I liked how it used the environment to build out its world without using exposition. As cool as the photography aspect was, the gameplay basically amounted to a point and click. Sometimes this got annoying when I would still be struggling to find a pic after exploring the level quite a bit. I did end up looking up one shot for a level after searching for far too long only to find out the game didn't actually load the objects in! It still let me snap where they were supposed to be for credit. All in all spent a bit under 4hrs with it and I do still recommend it to folks, but for the vibes over the gameplay.
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is a project from Ninja Theory that follows Senua's journey to Hel to recover the soul of her sacrificed partner. A major theme of the game deals with psychosis, which the developers approached with sensitivity as they enlisted the help of psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and members of the community. Senua hears voices, which you hear as the player too, but there are also other elements they work in as well that ultimately weaves one of the best portrayals of psychosis I've seen in media yet (and that's from someone that has struggled with it too). They used binaural recording tech that makes the voices sound really close to your ear and other sounds at varying distances, it's creepy! I'm not finding the gameplay very engaging after about 4hrs. There's some action combat, but it is fairly barebones. The rest of the game mostly consists of walking. There have been a few environmental puzzles, though calling them puzzles is a stretch. They also enlisted historians to help ensure their Norse mythology is accurate, which is neat, but also means the lore stones scattered throughout retelling Norse myths aren't terribly interesting to me since I'm familiar with the material. I haven't finished it, but I'm unsure if I'd recommend this one. I think, as a game, I don't recommend it, but I do recommend it as an excellent immersive, interactive art experience if that differentiation makes sense or has any meaning.
I picked up the Yakuza collection on sale, I may start those after Hellblade, which may just put an end to this backlog journey so I'll poke around my libraries a bit more first. Yakuza 0 sucked me in, I loved it, I'm excited to get some more in.
You started it but never completed it✔ The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith
Recommended by someone on Tildes✔ Coromon
Considered a cult classic✔ Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Week 2, and I'm currently playing Hotel Dusk! I'm going to mark that one under "Cult Classic". I won't check it off until it's done, though I won't go for "must complete it" for all of them. This one has a finite story though, so I want to finish it first.
Putting my thoughts in a spoiler so people don't have to scroll past it constantly. No actual spoilers besides minor references to puzzle mechanics.
Thoughts on Hotel Dusk
Currently on Chapter 7, and it's been really interesting so far. It's been a long time since I played a DS game that relied so heavily on the touch screen, I only realized I could use the D-pad to move instead of the touch screen last night. The puzzles also really make use of the DS, one has you close and open the DS and another has you tap two spots at once. That second one really blew me away, I'm used to touch screens only registering one place.I've never played a game where I hold it vertically before. I'm already used to it, I keep opening my DS vertically even when I was doing a shiny hunt in Pokémon last night while watching a show with my mom xD
I do have a spoiler-free guide open, which is a bit shameful, but I have needed it for some parts. There's a couple details I would have certainly missed, or taken a VERY long time to notice or figure out. I just realized I can't get the "best" ending because I've gotten some game overs though, but that's okay. Maybe someday in the far future I can replay it... Or just look up the best ending on YouTube xD
One final thought before I return to playing: Louie looks like Danny from Game Grumps and I can't stop thinking that every time we talk.
I beat Hotel Dusk! I beat it yesterday technically (at like 5 am before going to sleep), but our wifi had been acting up so only reporting on it now. Pretty good game, I'd rate it an 8/10 I think.
My overall thoughts (and tagging @Mendanbar since you said you were interested to hear my thoughts on it):
Overall Thoughts on Hotel Dusk (Spoilers Included!)
The game was pretty well-done overall! I gave some observations on the mechanics above, so I won't expand on it too much. I'm impressed at how they incorporated the unique features of the DS, particularly the ability to touch multiple parts of the screen at once, and closing the lid. I was thrown off by the scene with mouth-to-mouth requiring to close the DS instead of using the microphone though.I was impressed at how so much of the story tied together, it's a bit wild how many people at the hotel were tied to Nile in some way. Though I'm a bit disappointed at the ending leaving some loose threads. That's natural, but I had expected to see something from Iris in the epilogue. We didn't get much closure on that tape she had, like confirmation whether it was Dunning or someone else who listened to it, or what Dunning was supposed to do with that tape. At least she talked to Kevin, though I missed seeing her on the roof.
I'm also just a bit disappointed that we never saw Bradley. I expected him to show up at the climax, not get a letter and a second-hand story about his motives and reasoning. The ending we got is probably the more realistic, but it's still just a tad disappointing. I feel bad for him with how his life got so horribly derailed by the case, and that he didn't even get a chance to talk to his friend and just got shot, never getting in-person closure. Seems like he got revenge at least.
I think the biggest open ending for me though was the storyline with Summer and Helen about Alan Parker. Their whole storyline seemed disconnected from the rest of the game, which makes it stand out. It makes the lack of closure about Alan a bit disappointing. Makes me wonder if it was planned to be revisited in a later game before the studio shut down...
Aside from all that, I still have some other questions: why was Mila in a coma for 10 years? Why didn't her father ever tell Dunning about her being in a coma? What was up with her father being listed as missing for 7 years by the LAPD, while still visiting her every month? Why did she only wake up after he died, and after Bradley visited? Was her father artificially inducing the coma somehow with poison or something?? Did Bradley somehow manage to "cure" her with an antidote?? (Also, Mila is mentally 9. I can't get over that.)
And a final note, where was Jenny this whole time?? Why did she only return NOW? What happened during those ten years she was kidnapped?
Overall, pretty good game. I'll have to play the sequel sometime in the future for sure, and I also have plans to play Another Code: Recollection eventually. Just a shame that the studio shut down. From what I can tell, there was likely supposed to be at least one more game to wrap up Kyle's story.
Anyways, I guess I'll keep up column. Next up I think I'll try Coromon, which was recommended by someone on Tildes.
I started Coromon for the Recommended by Tildes! I only started a little bit ago, but I already love it. Such strong Pokémon vibes, while also feeling so fresh and new~
I'm checking this one off the list. This game has a lot of grinding, so I can play it while watching TV and such. Which is great, because I'd been looking for a game I could play while watching video essays!
Next on my list: maybe One Lonely Outpost?
A decade of buying FromSoftware games and bouncing off them I started buckling down. After some success in DS3 I wondered how I'd fare in Elden Ring. Embarrassingly Magrit was my white whale. Back around release I sunk ~30 hours exploring, grinding, and failing to kill Magrit. Last night I rerolled a character and within ~2 hours one shot Magrit. That puts me 3/3 on boss one shots since revisiting the Dark Souls/Elden Ring series. It just suddenly feels easier?
Then last night I started a new character and was just exploring. Eventually found myself at Magrit's bridge. Was down several flasks since I had cleared the whole path up to him including the troll without resting. Touched grass outside his arena but didn't rest (game wouldn't let me for some reason). My ashes were unavailable and figured I'd just give it a shot, die, and then get a rested attempt. Quickly made it into the enrage phase around that time my ashes became available. I popped out the jellyfish and he was just... melting? Hadn't done any other content so was slightly under leveled (17?) and +1 on my katana. Doing a dex/bleed build but really haven't put much into it yet, equipment is all stock samurai, haven't done any other dungeons. Previous attempts I was around RL 30ish with faith/dex builds and the winged scythe. Really happy this type of game is finally clicking for me.
I had assumed it was going to take a significant effort to down Magrit based on previous experience so that was my goal to mark the bingo card. Let's see if I can get every FromSoftware game on my bingo card, requirement being first boss down since that's always been my stumbling block. Next up: Sekiro, DSII, and DS.
(I'm counting horse riding as "having driving" 'cause I'm not gonna check that box with anything else I have on my backlog)
NotCoffeeTable's Git Gud 2024 (3/25)
From a studio you haven't heard of before✔ Humanity (tha ltd)
★ Wildcard✔ Dark Souls III
Has driving✔ Elden Ring
That's awesome! I love when Souls games finally click for people. It's like finding a rhythm and staying on beat. You might still fall off from time to time, but you understand it now, and can practice your consistency.
Hey, a horse counts! Too bad Bloodborne Kart needed to be rebranded, though.
You could probably make use of "Part of a Trilogy" for the next Souls title. And both DS1 Remastered and DS2: Scholar of the First Sin fit the remake/re-release category too.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the game/series!
Thanks! I'm pretty excited because the Dark Souls/Elden Ring design philosophy and aesthetic nails my preferences exactly. But no matter much much I tried I couldn't get the mechanics to work for me. Honestly I credit God of War and Stellar Blade for onboarding me a bit. Getting me to think more about i-frames and what my preferred playstyle actually is.
I forgot to respond to this earlier, but Legally Distinct Bloodborne Kart looks awesome! I’m not one for soulslikes, but I am absolutely someone for kart racing.
Also, it releases at the perfect time. I feel like it’s against the spirit of the Backlog Burner for me to get new games this month, so a May 31st release means that I can pick it up promptly on June 1st. 😁
Has permadeath✔ DIG - Deep in Galaxies
Focuses on exploration✔ In Other Waters
You can complete it in one sitting✔ Some Distant Memory
★ Wildcard✔ Chop Goblins
Has a lives system✔ Andro Dunos II
I'm off to a slightly slower start than I wanted, but that's the nature of my schedule this month. I was traveling last weekend, and I'm traveling again this weekend (and in fact, I'm also traveling the weekend after that -- this is the busiest travel month I've had maybe ever?).
That reality has actually put a big twist on planning out the games for my Backlog Bingo card, because it means I'm forced into a specific subset of games I wasn't necessarily planning on exploring. For one, I'm looking at things that only work on my Steam Deck since I'm away from my desktop. I'm also specifically looking at things that do not have achievements not because that's one of my boxes (although it is) but because Steam's offline mode doesn't play nice with achievements.
I've been playing two more games that I'm not ready to add to my bingo card just yet, and that'll get me one away from winning my first bingo! I think the fifth square is going to have to wait a while though, because I had trouble finding a game with campaign DLC and no achievements. I'll just hop to other ones in the meantime though. I have something I'm really excited about set up for "An updated version of an older game."
Chop Goblins - ★ Wildcard
After I posted this topic, I wanted something short and sweet to add to my card. I also wanted something I’d play on my desktop instead of my Deck, since I’m currently at home and not traveling. I hate playing FPS games on a controller and much prefer mouse/keyboard, so, inspired by @Shevanel and their post last week, I decided I’d try out Chop Goblins.
It was good! It took me a little over an hour to beat, though I admittedly go at a slower pace than intended (gotta look for those secrets!) and am legitimately bad at games (the final level took me four or five tries).
I don’t necessarily love boomer shooters as a genre. They can sometimes feel a bit hollow to me. This one, however, I enjoyed. I can’t really put my finger on why other than it felt good to play. I liked the level design; I liked that each level had a different theme which helped it feel varied; I liked that it didn’t overstay its welcome; I liked how it hinted at some of its secrets. I do think the lack of a save feature is unnecessary — you could easily save games between levels and have a nearly identical experience.
One thing it helped me appreciate was how I particularly enjoy simple graphics because they’re easy to parse. A lot of times when I play modern games, there’s so much detail that it can get a little overwhelming or fatiguing. Not so here — everything has a deliberately crunchy, low-poly aesthetic which makes the screen very easy to read.
I might dive back into the game to hunt a few more achievements, but I’m otherwise done with it and happy with what I played.
Happy that my post could help contribute to your card! I agree with you on the lack of a save feature - while I acknowledge that it was David S's "intended way to play," I don't think anything would have been lost with the ability to at least save between levels. But outside of the achievements that force you to do a full playthrough, at least there is a level select so you could hop in with little effect to the overall game at that point. Excited to see where your card takes you moving forward!
Funnily enough, Steam Deck has weaned me off caring about achievements as much. I felt exactly the same as you, wanting to pick and choose so that my achievements would pop, but especially with alternative game stores where achievements were broken on Deck entirely, that made me start to prioritize the actual enjoyment of my games, and focusing on the convenience factor of the Deck, not on the inconvenience factor. I don't have to stop playing this game because no wifi, I don't have to restart games to get the achievements to pop, I just play them, use sleep mode as god intended, and be content. I came to my senses that literally nobody, even or especially the ones closest to me, care about my game achievements, and neither should I. I've been playing through some longer games, not exactly a fit for the Backlog Burner, thanks to this mentality
You've reached gaming enlightenment! (And I genuinely do meant that seriously!) I wish I could just not care about achievements, but for some reason my brain insists they're important. Not enough to 100% every game or anything, but enough that I'm incapable of just ignoring them.
I will add though that Steam achievements actually serve a practical function for me.
A few years ago, after Steam added "playing card" drops to games (a feature I still hate), I ran an idler for my library so that all of my cards would autodrop. Thus, I have a lot of games in my library that have playtime according to Steam despite me never actually playing them. When I see a game in my library that has several hours played but 0 achievements, then I know it's something I idled. Thus, getting achievements is a way for me to "record" on Steam I actually did play a game.
If I'm trying a game out and it's not for me, I'll actually play until I get at least one achievement so that, years later, I can know the game wasn't one that I idled.
That sure sounds like a legit reason to want some achievements! I also hope I didn't come across as judgy or condescending, I wasn't trying to pat myself on the back and say this is the One True Way. Needless to say, everyone has their own way of gaming, there's nothing wrong or bad about achievements, and I fully understand how great it feels to 100% a game and have that official indicator of what you've finished along the way
It's a small compromise we need to make with the Deck, achievements vs convenience, no one right answer... aside from Valve straight up fixing the problem lol
You didn’t come across that way at all, no worries. I’m legitimately jealous of your ability to not care about achievements — it would make travel planning much easier for me. 😆
Andro Dunos II - Has a lives system
Scrolling shooters are an odd genre for me. I genuinely enjoy their company, but more for a short visit than for an actual stay.
I play through them (usually badly), enjoy my few attempts at beating them (which I almost never do), and then put them aside for something else.
Andro Dunos II is no exception. I did three runs of it, each one clocking in at maybe 20-30 minutes. I did not beat the game, even by pumping up the continues to
9and the difficulty down toNovice.Like many of my other Backlog Bingo squares, I also played this one on a plane, and I also went into it without any background knowledge. I'd never played or even heard of the original game.
When I started playing it, my first thought was "this feels like a great Sega Genesis game." Why Sega Genesis and not SNES? I don't rightly know -- maybe it gave me "blast processing" vibes? Having no internet connection at the time (because Southwest now charges $8 per leg for WiFi access), I couldn't check the background info for this game, so I spent my time while playing trying to sleuth out the truth of it:
It was legitimately hard to figure out, especially because the game's modernization was well done (good framerate; Xbox controller prompts) but the gameplay and art style felt very distinctly old-school.
It turns out the correct answer was option number 2. This game is a 2022 sequel to a 1992 game originally released on the Neo Geo. (Side note: the original also got an official limited run physical Dreamcast release in 2022, which warms my Dreamcast-loving heart). While the two games in the series were released 30 years apart, Andro Dunos II really does feel like something straight out of the 90s. The top Steam review talks in glowing terms about the original and then says that this "looks and plays like a successor made 6 months after the original game."
I enjoyed my time with it. There are several different weapon sets, and you can level them up to make them more powerful. The game isn't anything particularly special, but it also doesn't do anything glaringly wrong either. Fans of the genre would likely enjoy this, especially if they want something strongly retro-inspired.
Shmups are not my genre, but I've heard Andro Dunos II is among one the better ones available. It seems like a lot of fans of the original were very hyped for its release, and the devs actually delivered. Especially from your description, it seems like they really nailed the "modernized retro" feel.
It's probably the Shmup I'd choose to play if I suddenly forgot just how bad at these games I am. I picked it up from a Fanatical bundle last year after some very strong recommendations.
DIG - Deep in Galaxies - Has permadeath
This is a 2D mining roguelite where you explore, loot, and fight enemies in procedurally generated worlds. It feels a bit like Terraria meets Spelunky.
There's an overarching story about you being part of the rebels against big imperial forces, and different worlds have different missions that help you destabilize those forces while bolstering your own. This is really just a pretense to have a randomized mission system, however, and it works fine. Ultimately the game is about powering up your character.
Your character has a set of base stats, and you can find and do things to permanently upgrade those stats. The idea is that you get more powerful, which lets you tackle more powerful worlds and bosses, until you're able to finally beat the Big Bad.
I first started playing in a manner I would call "cautious." I treated the game more like an action platformer. I ended up dying fairly early on and didn't necessarily love what I did.
Then I started a second run and reflected on the fact that the game is literally called "DIG.” So, instead of politely hopping on the surfaces of all the game's topography like I had been, I started mining down into those surfaces much more. This, it turns out, is way more interesting. Not only can you find money while mining, but you can find powerups, chests, dungeons, etc. Little secrets are scattered all throughout the levels, most of which are hidden until you dig near them.
This made the game significantly more enjoyable, and it eventually shifted my gameplay to something that I would call "extremely capitalistic." By the middle-to-end of the game I was wholesale strip-mining planets for every resource I could find. This swing away from "cautious" probably went too far in the other direction, because I outright broke the game. I think the devs intend for you to find one or two interesting things on a map and call it a day. Instead, I spent way too long searching for every one, which heavily imbalanced things in my favor.
By the end of the game, I was getting permanent +8 melee damage every time I opened a chest, and every time I ate a healing item I gained 20% of its value as max HP. I killed the final boss in two hits and got the achievement for killing him without taking damage because he never even had a chance to hit me.
My playthrough took about three hours. If I were less thorough in my playstyle, it would probably be closer to one. I'm happy with that finish and don't feel a compelling need to return to the game, but I might try another run on a harder difficulty level.
Ultimately, I recommend the game if it sounds interesting to you. It plays great on the Deck, and breaking the game was legitimately fun. It reminded me of when I was a kid and would turn on cheat codes and get that incredible sense of power. The game has less than 100 reviews on Steam at the moment, so I'd consider this a veritable hidden gem. I think it's got a lot to offer and deserves more players.
I wasn't planning to participate, but I picked up a used steam deck last weekend and unintentionally started playing a few games that happened to work out well. I am going to play a little loose with the rules. I have been mostly a PS5 gamer for a few years, so there are some recent games that I have been meaning to pick up and play, but haven't been on PS5. I didn't own them before the event so they aren't technically backlog games, but I was planning on playing them at some point, so I am going to count them. I will mention the games that fall into this scenario.
Also I am playing golf, and I am using the bingo site to plan my route.
So this is just the current iteration of my route. Only the games with a check emoji in front are actually completed.One of my cells is another game played for this event, so I will edit out my route to avoid influencing others.Has a lives system✔ Vampire Survivors
Has a silent protagonist✔ Vampire Survivors
Has a time limit✔ Vampire Survivors
Has permadeath✔ Vampire Survivors
Set in a fantasy world✔ Vampire Survivors
Randomness determines your fate✔ Vampire Survivors
A solo-dev project✔ Vampire Survivors
Has less than 16 achievements✔ Aperture Desk Job
You can complete it in only a few hours✔ Aperture Desk Job
Has environmental storytelling✔ Bendy and the Ink Machine
Focuses on exploration✔ Bendy and the Ink Machine
All 3 of these games are backlog-ish as described above. Vampire survivors is probably the most qualified game of the 3 to be considered a backlog. I have wanted to try it out ever since Luke gave it a shout out on the WAN show. The other two are much more of a stretch to consider backlogs. Although since I am playing golf, I am actually planning on replacing those two with other games that hit more categories. I will consider them placeholders until I get to the other games.
Vampire survivors is doing some serious heavy lifting on my card. 7 different spots! I did end up regenerating the bingo card a few times, but only because I forgot to remove a few categories that didn't apply to me. I selected this card before I even chose to count vampire survivors. The spot I am most worried for is another backlog burner game. I own very few games that are already on the list. I hope something pops up soon that can apply to more than just that cell. My current best choice is Bastion, but I have played it part way through a few times before. It wouldn't feel right to count it unless I finished it completely.
Vampire Survivors Review
Holy shit this game is good! It took me a few rounds to unlock a few items and understand some strategy, but once I did, I could hit that exponential power curve. It's nice to have a game that pushes the slot machine/gambling mechanics triggers in my brain without having it be microtransactions or something else harmful.
Aperture Desk Job Review:
It was fine as an introduction to the steam deck. Nothing really that impressive. It did what it was supposed to, and did it well, but nothing special. I would have liked a more fully fleshed out game similar to Astro's Playroom.
Bendy and the Ink Machine Review:
I don't usually go for horror games, but it has always seemed like a really rich genre. I think I heard about Bendy around when it was released, but I didn't pick it up because of the genre. Since I want to get into horror, it seemed like a good intro to the genre. So far, its been pretty fun. The aesthetic and art style are fantastic!
I actually did a sequel to this in the last couple of days! Bendy and the Dark Revival. I thought the art was pretty great, the atmosphere is creepy, and it's overall pretty decent. I don't know if I'll finish it, but I'm going to try to get back to it.
Pinging all previous Backlog Burner participants: here’s the new topic for the week.
Notification List
@CannibalisticApple @Carrow @Durinthal @Eidolon @J-Chiptunator @Mendanbar @Notcoffeetable @Shevanel @WesIf you would like to be removed from the list, let me know.
Also, if anyone would like to be added to the notification list, let me know as well!
Good first week, wondering where to go next on my board.
Bingo card (4/25)
Music/rhythm-focused✔ Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
You can complete it in one sitting✔ A Year of Springs
From a series you have played✔ Final Fantasy III
You chose it based on title alone✔ 2064: Read Only Memories
I already have an idea of what I want to use for most squares but not enough time to hit all of them, I think I only have one more Final Fantasy in me this month.
"You chose it based on title alone" was an easy one. I've had 2064: Read Only Memories for several years on both Steam and Switch, bought just for that title, but I hadn't gotten around to it until now.
As a cyberpunk adventure game it has your character, a journalist, investigating the mysterious disappearance of a colleague with the help of their newly built robotic assistant. While I'm not a fan of classic adventure games that require finding the exact right item and using it on the right object, those elements aren't overwhelming here and it's mostly another visual novel (not my first and probably not my last one this month). A lot of the recurring characters are almost fully voiced which is more than I was expecting and I enjoy their performances.
I read a couple of negative comments about the game calling its messaging too direct, but that just gave me a chuckle. Since when was anything punk trying to be subtle? To me, a cyberpunk setting that isn't in your face about current societal issues is just a
sparklingvaporwave-flavored dystopia.Currently I'm about a third of the way into the game and while I've found myself drawn in by the characters and soundtrack, I think I want to take this one more slowly so I'm going to put it aside for now. Might not finish it this month but I'm curious enough to want to return sooner rather than later.
Shevanel's Bingo card
Has a skill tree✔ Yakuza Kiwami
From a series you have never played✔ Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD
You can complete it in only a few hours✔ Chop Goblins
You got it for free✔ Curse of D'Sparil (Heretic WAD)
I'm glad I knocked a couple games out right at the top of the month, because it's definitely been slower going this week. I have two more games currently in the works which would net me a "Bingo," but I want to give one of them an honest effort, as it's a longer-form game and doesn't feel right to put it on the card yet.
That said, I'm still deciding on how much grace I want to give myself to call a spot "filled." I certainly don't plan to see a game through to completion if I'm absolutely hating the experience, though I also acknowledge that even if I'm enjoying my time with a game, I simply don't have the time to, say, explore the entirety of an entry in the Yakuza series within the month (which may or may not be my "skill tree" game in the top-left corner). I acknowledge these are my own hang-ups and not at all stipulated by the Bingo rules, but I feel like I'm going to hold myself to one of the below standards moving forward to determine if a game is "completed" and I'm justified in adding it to the card:
I've really enjoyed seeing what everybody else has been burning through. Here's to another week!
Yakuza Kiwami - Has a skill tree
The Yakuza series is one of those behemoths whose virtues I see extolled all the time, and I always say to myself, "Man, I'm sure that'd be a great game to dig into if I could ever get around to it." Well, this is me forcing myself out of my Elden Ring pre-DLC run (and perhaps a few more DOOM II WADs) to deliver.
As someone with very little exposure to the series outside of highlight reels folks post online showcasing its goofier side, I'm going to make an attempt at an analogy here that may fall flat, but it at least helped me grep my feelings on the game: Yakuza is to the 3D GTA games as Outer Wilds is to No Man's Sky. I acknowledge it's not a perfect analogy, but hear me out: both Outer Wilds and No Man's Sky are open-ended space exploration games, but Outer Wilds is the inch-wide-and-mile-deep to No Man's Sky's inch-deep-and-mile-wide. In a similar vein, while GTAs III-V are all open-ended games that give you a ton of freedom to walk, drive, and sometimes fly wherever you'd like, there isn't a ton below the surface. Story missions are usually well thought out, with a great cast of characters, but the moment-to-moment gameplay beats (outside of the major set pieces) are not terribly deep. I don't think this makes them necessarily bad games, mind you, I just think it's worth acknowledging that the games are open-ended, but not much more than that. On the other hand, Yakuza Kiwami is a much tighter experience that is literally far more contained than virtually any GTA game in recent history, but it feels so much deeper and larger by comparison. The sidequests, various combat mechanics, and *gestures broadly at everything* world within the game are truly engrossing.
HLTB already clocks the main game without any extra content at 18 hours, which feels a lot like eating a cake after scraping off all the frosting. I'd love to take my time with this game, which will take me a lot longer, so I'm going to make an entry for it now, understanding that I'll keep chipping away at it through the month.
Side note: I chose to install and play this on my Steam Deck, and it runs and feels great. The Deck's suspend mode is a godsend at any rate, and in defense of the Kiwami remake, you're able to pause all cutscenes, so it's a surprisingly good pick-up-and-play experience!
Curse of D'Sparil - You got it for free
It's funny; I have hundreds of games in my Steam backlog alone, and I don't think I'm savvy enough to have picked up any of them for free. I'm trying to keep most of these backlog entries in the spirit of the card; i.e. I was really hoping to fill this with a game that I actually got for free, but I suppose I'll have to settle for a "mod," or in this case, a level replacement WAD. I've posted about DOOM WADs in the past, so I won't get too deep here, but I'm a big fan of the modding/level-building community that has risen out of one of the grandfathers of FPS gaming (DOOM II). So I get even more excited when an acclaimed WAD hits my radar and it's for a game built on the id2 engine other than DOOM II.
Curse of D'Sparil is a 9-level WAD for Heretic. Make no mistake, Heretic is basically medieval fantasy DOOM, but it has plenty of its own little twists that make it a unique experience, such as the inclusion of consumable items, something that you'd more readily find in Build Engine games from the mid-late 90s, a la Duke Nukem 3D. This WAD is widely considered one of the most well-known and successful Heretic WADs out there, and for good reason - it's very excellently made. It's clear that the modders knew and loved Heretic well. For folks who have played Heretic and want more of the same, I'd recommend it!
With that out of the way, I'll add a caveat that I only played half of the 8 primary levels available, and am gonna call it good there. Most WADs in my experience go one of two ways, which I'll call the Plutonia Path or the TNT Path. Plutonia and TNT: Evilution were two of the first "MegaWADs" on the scene, and they became so successful and so well-known that they were eventually pulled into the official DOOM fold and were released as new level packs within Final DOOM. Both packs are mechanically well-crafted, complete game experiences. However, Plutonia operates off of a "less-is-more" approach, offering tight, extremely punishing levels that require mastery of the gameplay to overcome, whereas TNT very much takes a "more-is-more" approach, with gigantic levels that have hundreds of enemies and often lots of backtracking, where exploration and patience is often rewarded over twitch reflexes. I'm trying to present these in a neutral way, but I'm personally a much bigger fan of the Plutonia Path, and I'm afraid to say that Curse of D'Sparil definitely follows the TNT Path instead. After finishing the fourth level, which had 478(!) enemies in it, I decided I had seen enough. For reference, I believe the highest enemy count in any level from DOOM II is the first secret level on the highest difficulty, which has 149 enemies.
If you like the TNT approach, you'll really like Curse of D'Sparil. It's a well-made game and a worthy love letter to Heretic. It's just not my favorite approach to the genre.
I think that definitely counts! Maybe you could have found another free game online, but I think it's even more in the spirit to pick something from your existing backlog, which it sounds like you did. So I'd say that's perfect.
I didn't actually know what Final DOOM was until reading this comment. It's interesting how much more open game devs were to collaboration with the community and smaller teams in the early days. I'm thinking about projects like Duke Nukem's "Duke It Out In D.C.", or Half-Life: Blue Shift (back when Gearbox was a tiny studio). Many of these expansions were accepted and made into "official" releases, which was pretty cool to see.
I'm guessing the scope and legalities of modern game development just makes things like that too difficult now.
Totally agreed - I feel like the "evolution" of the Internet (I hesitate to omit the "de-" there) is reminiscent of the same kind of thing. Less wild-west, but also some of the magic and exploration of the "open-source" vibe is gone. One of the few modern examples that comes to mind of a fan-made game that was embraced by a larger studio/publisher is Sonic Mania, which I've heard great things about, but surprise surprise, it still sits untouched in my backlog.
I have been falling behind because my son has got me on Minecraft and most of my free time for video games has gone that way. I'm still planning on getting everything done this month though! I've got a golf card, and I've started planning things out, so hopefully this weekend I'll figure something out.
My first entry knocked 6 off my list, although one of them is perhaps questionable.
(6/24)
Released before you were born✔ Breakout
Known for its impact on gaming✔ Breakout
You got it at full price✔ Breakout
Has less than 4 achievements✔ Breakout
Is one of the oldest games you own✔ Breakout
From a different culture or country✔ Breakout
The one game was Breakout. I had a good look at this card, and I am going to claim that it meets these criteria:
It's from the US, and I'm from Canada. That's questionable.
I fiddled with and got the old Atari 2600 working on a very old TV. It did not look great, but it did function. Breakout was actually pretty fun. I also played ET for a while, and then Adventure. The kids were pretty uninterested, other than in Breakout, which they liked well enough.
The Canada and US are different countries in my book! I do get that it feels a bit against the spirit of the category though, but ultimately it’s your call.
I think it’s very cool that you played it on original hardware. Kind of wild that technology of its age can still function.
Considering how much effort I had to put in to playing original hardware, I don't mind that there were a couple of gimmes that came with it. :D
I also originally had selected "When the hell did I buy this" but then I realized that for something bought close to 45 years ago, I have a pretty good idea of almost the exact date that it was purchased. My dad bought it coming home from working up north, just before my birthday. He bought it for himself, but I know the story.
I also thought of you while doing this, as I considered setting up the old ColecoVision as well.
Well now I definitely have to play something (or several somethings) on the ColecoVision. Any recommendations?
I should specify that the old unit I have is actually a Coleco Adam (the "PC" addon for the ColecoVision) so I'm not 100% sure if the games that we had are available on the classic ColecoVision, but Artillery Duel is probably where it's at. It's the grandaddy of games like Worms / Scorched Earth - you and your opponent are little tanks shooting at each other. Still great fun!
Pitfall! is the other classic game that we played a lot. It's a fun little platformer where you run through the jungle. There was a remake for... Windows 95 maybe? But the original was great.
The other thing that we would do is program, because you could write programs in Basic on the Coleco Adam, if you had the write cassette tape where Basic was stored. Yes, a cassette tape like a music cassette. It's such a weird little machine. I remember writing any number of choose your own adventure gameson it waaaaaay back in time.
That seems like a great pick for golf mode! Nails some of the really difficult categories. The game has certainly had an impact on gaming, and I can't count the number of clones that have appeared. Some have been rather good!
By the way, try adding an extra line break after the closing
</summary>tag. That should fix the table issue.Oh wow I didn't even notice the issue with the table, thanks for the heads up.
Edit: Oh wow, I didn't even notice the issue with the link that was broken. Good thing I don't use markdown daily in a professional sense, or this would be embarassing.
Five down! I've been trying to get a bunch of entries in early because I knew the V Rising 1.0 release this month would steal my attention for a while. I'll definitely be circling back around for more though. I've already got a bunch of games in mind I'd like to try.
I hope everyone's been enjoying the event so far, and thanks so much to all who have participated, or plan to participate soon!
Bingo Card (5/25)
Has driving✔ Open Roads
Has/uses cards✔ Vault of the Void
Music/rhythm-focused✔ Metal: Hellsinger
You can complete it in only a few hours✔ The Corridor
You have to tinker to get it running✔ Dark Souls 3: Archthrones Mod
This time I'm not submitting a game, but a mod. It's a small cheat but I hope you'll allow this for the "You have to tinker to get it running" category.
The Archthrones mod for Dark Souls 3 is extremely impressive. It's a complete overhaul mod that adds new areas, bosses, enemies, weapons, armours, quests, fully-voiced characters, and more. It may as well be a complete game.
It's been in development for four years, and in fact this release is still only a demo. Despite that, it still took me 16 hours to complete everything, and I'm fairly experienced with Souls games (1,500+ hours combined). I did play on the 1.0 release though, without the balance patches that smooth out the early game. I'd already started, so I decided to press on.
The mod completely reimagines some maps, replaces others with areas from previous games, and some maps are completely new. There's new mechanics, including the guard counter from Elden Ring. There's a whopping 17 unique bosses in the demo alone, and all of them are tough and interesting. Some animations have been lifted from other Souls games, but I don't begrudge the modders for this. They're good animations, and FromSoft themselves reuse assets all the time.
I even did some co-op! The devs run a private server which the game connects to rather than the vanilla server, so multiplayer works and there's no risk of banning. Out of paranoia I still opted to play on a second Steam account with family sharing, but I can confirm the save data was stored in a separate location.
Forgive me if I'm going on, but I'm just really impressed. I've played and enjoyed a lot of Dark Souls mods in the past: remixes, overhauls, difficulty enhancers, masochistic simulators, and various randomizers. But I can tell you that the modding tools are getting better and better every year. Where mods used to be simple texture swaps and event scripting changes, today they let you interact with nearly every system the devs themselves use.
As a side note, a lot of these tools were created for the upcoming mod Nightfall, which also released an impressive demo a couple years back. It offers a similarly impressive scope and is based on the Majora's Mask time loop mechanic. I hope to talk more about that when it finally releases.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what else Archthrones has in store for us. The demo absolutely blew me away. If you're a big Souls fan and don't know what to do with your hands until the Elden Ring DLC comes out, this one is definitely worth checking out.
Since I've never played anything in the franchise I had no idea the Dark Souls modding community was that robust, that's cool to see!
Oh man, I would love to pick your brain on your favorite Soulsborne mods out of the ones you've tried. I'm very similarly disposed, probably ~1,200 hours across all of From's games. I've only ever tried DS1 mods but enjoyed them immensely. I think I finished The Scorched Contract but it was years ago, and I got a kick out of the Dark Souls "Gun Game" mod but gave up around Nito.
I always love seeing the reused assets in gameplay footage of some of the mods I've checked out; it feels like a fun little Easter egg that you can only catch if you're familiar enough with boss movesets.
Oh, and here I was trying to show restraint by not talking about modding for three pages.
First of all, if you've finished the Scorched Contract mod, then congratulations! That mod is genuinely one of the most difficult gaming experiences I've persevered through. I did a completely blind run, but in hindsight got pretty lucky with the order in which I killed bosses.
For passers-by, the mod works by giving you an additional debuff every time you defeat a boss. By the end of the game, you're afflicted by permanent curse (half-health), calamity (double damage taken), a permanent egg parasite (halves your soul gain and prevents you from wearing a helmet), and have a constant health drain effect. You have no status resistances and your weapon durability is constantly degrading. Strong weapons damage you when you use them. Enemies scale their health and damage to New Game+4. Most bonfires are disabled. Bosses regenerate health over time. Offensive magic spells are disabled, and enemies become extremely resistant to all but a single damage type (which randomly cycles throughout the fight). Additional enemies are added to boss fights. The game's most notorious boss has five different phases you have to fight through.
It's a very difficult mod, and I commend anyone who has completed it. I will say though that it's also one of my most memorable gaming experiences. There's nothing like exploring each new layer of hell to discover the innovative new ways they've found to torment you.
Thankfully however, most mods are not so diabolical. The Daughters of Ash mod that I mentioned in my previous comment is definitely one of the larger expansions I've played. I also played that one blind, and as a result did end up missing a lot of things. But it was a very different way to play a game I thought I knew every inch of. It relies heavily on event scripting so the environments and enemies are mostly the same, but the way things work and function are very different. There were a lot of surprises - some bad, but most good.
The Prepare to Die Again mod was one of the first I played. At the time, modding was in its early days so it was mostly tricks like moving enemies or bonfires around. Some of the new bonfire locations were really clever though, I thought. One notable one was in a normally unused section of the Sen's Fortress exterior. The mod has gone through drastic changes since I last played it though (back in 2018), so I expect it's nothing like I remember it today.
I've had some really memorable randomizer runs. I usually use just the item randomizer mod, which I've played normally but also before with a "use what you see" rule in place. In that case, any item you visually spot needs to be picked and immediately equipped. This can lead to some really amazing - but usually awful matchups. One time I had to equip both the Symbol of Avarice and the Dusk Crown Ring. ie. Half health, and constant health drain. Later I needed to fight Pinwheel with a catalyst - with no magic - in my left hand.
So there's definitely some fun to be had there. I later did a semi-coop/semi-competitive run with a friend using the fog gate randomizer. We enabled every possible setting, which adds both sides of the fog gates to the pool, as well as multiplayer zones and map borders. By the end I had a notepad file with a list of descriptions to try to form a map of that giant mess. "Okay, so the asylum takes you to The Depths, then turn left and dip through Demon Ruins...".
For a truly wild experience, you can enable item, enemy, and fog wall randomization all at once.
I like the permanent gravelord mod because I almost never do NG+, and thus never get to see the gravelord phantoms spawn. I was really hoping that they'd enable them for NG cycles in the Remaster, but I guess they didn't want to scare off newer players.
I remember the Gun Game mod you mentioned and always intended to try it, but never did. I did try Roguelike Souls which was interesting but felt a bit unbalanced and could be frustrating to restart (such is the rogue life).
I haven't modded DS2 and DS3 as much, mostly because I worry about slipping up and getting my account softbanned. I will say though that the DS2 LightingEngine mod is extremely good, and another dev is working on a lighting and gameplay overhaul with impressive visuals as well, though still unreleased. (Finally, Iron Keep makes sense)
For DS3 I've played through the Cinders mod a couple times. It's a strange one. To use your own term above, they take the "TNT approach" where more is more. They introduce in some way nearly every mechanic or feature you can think of from other FromSoftware games. Tons of new classes, weapon types, bosses, upgrades, NPCs, and so on. Choose where to spawn. Opt to use Bloodborne dashing instead of rolling, why not!
It lacks the polish of a much more refined experience like Archthrones, but there's definitely a ton of wacky builds and fun to be had. It asks you to break it in the same way games like Morrowind do. The mod also changes rapidly, and every time I look some system has been overhauled or reworked.
I've done a little Sekiro modding too. Before the post-release content update, I installed a boss rush mod which actually had a lot of interesting features. It had a sort of roguelike system with upgrades between boss encounters. Later of course they added an official boss rush mode, so the mod had less reason to exist.
I tried to get the Sekiro co-op mod to work, but I guess the server was down at the time. It's by the same author as the Elden Ring seamless multiplayer mod though, which as I understand is very good.
There's a number of quality-of-life mods that I think Sekiro kind of needs. For example I don't like having to hold down a button to hoover up any money, so there's a mod that makes that automatic. I also like to include a borderless fullscreen fix since FromSoft has been slow to adapt in that area. I don't think it was the one I used originally, but this tool seems to offer both of those features and more.
I tried running a mod that gave you infinite spirit emblems, with the goal of exclusively using prosthetic tools (except when required). Unfortunately after a few hours I found I just wasn't having much fun, and the Kusabimaru is just much more engaging to play with. I do wish there were more incentive to experiment with prosthetics and combat arts in the game, though. Sword is just too good.
I think those are all the major mods I've used/can recommend. I sometimes use small mods, like hiding enemy health bars, or porting the objectively best DS2 parry sound back into DS1. Of course if playing DS1 PTDE I'll use DSFix.
The Remaster is a lot less effort in that respect, but I do feel a lot more comfortable modding PTDE because there's no player bans (or servers at all, for that matter). As mentioned above, I use Steam's Family Sharing with a second account when modding any other game out of an abundance of caution.
Sometimes vanilla challenge runs can also be fun. I shared a couple of those I've done a few months ago. I used to bounce between these games constantly, but now I tend to just play when the mood strikes, usually after a year or two away. So instead of going for full blown challenge run, I might just choose a suboptimal build, or add some more minor restrictions or themes to keep it interesting.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts. Sorry to be so brief.
I'll excuse your brevity just this once!!
Thanks for the excellent run-down. I'm now second-guessing if I finished the Scorched Contract. I do distinctly remember being cursed and having an egg head along with the calamity debuff, but I'm not so sure about anything beyond that point. I also remember it being an absolute nightmare. The only other real challenges I've put myself through was an NG+ SL1 run of the PtDE, with the added caveat that I did all bosses. I've started level 1 runs of every other game but have never finished them, though it's usually out of impatience more than anything. I was a bachelor fresh out of college when I did those SL1 runs. Fast forward 12 years, and it's hard to justify to my family why I need to spend six hours dying to Aldrich while attempting to hit him with a glorified toothpick.
Major props to you for all of the modded and challenge runs you've put yourself through!! Anymore, my "challenge runs" come in the form of me being too stubborn to accept help that the newer games give me. On my first Elden Ring run, I (foolishly) elected not to use co-op, summons, or spells (well, besides a re-spec so I could cast Law of Regression exactly one time). I don't decry anyone who uses any of these things, and on the contrary, I have used them all liberally on all of my runs since then. I suppose I just needed to prove to myself that I still had it in me. Malenia may have taken me 249 attempts that first playthrough, but hey, who's counting?
I'm super bummed that we never got more Sekiro content, but I love that you tried a prosthetic run. It just goes to show how amazing the combat flow of that game is given that the sword pulled you back. I'm glad they added the Gauntlets of Strength, though, as all of the Inner bosses still remain some of the very best combat experiences I've ever had in a game.
Additional major props to you acknowledging the best parry sound in the series. I'm firmly in the camp that ER is basically DS2 II and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm really looking forward to Shadow of the Erdtree, but I just might have to try a few of the more fleshed out mods you mentioned given what you have to say about them. Appreciate all your insight!
Elden Ring is 100% a Dark Souls 2 2. They finally paid homage to their history, and brought the best ideas forward. I've missed you, twinblades!
I really need to play more ER. I explored every inch of that game on my first playthrough, and spent a long time trying to string together lore before all the fan theories started coming out. It kind of wore me out though, so I haven't spent as much time with it as I have the other titles. I'd like to get back into it once the Backburner ends, and in advance of the DLC release. I need to get reacquainted and finish up my current NG+ playthrough.
I'm also sad we didn't get any Sekiro DLC. I think it's possible they'd make a sequel, but probably not for a while. I get the feeling FromSoft has been growing restless with their formula and wants to start experimenting again. They do have two teams so we might see a mixture of "safer" and experimental games, but who knows.
If you choose to do any more modded runs, feel free to shoot me a PM. I'm sure I'd be happy to discuss further!
Open Roads, a narrative-driven game. I picked this one for the "Has Driving" category, mostly based on the name, but in the end I'd say only a small portion involved time in a car. Ah, so it goes!
The format reminds me a great deal of Gone Home. You look through a series of belongings, explore memories and uncover a mystery. Ultimately I enjoyed the story, thankfully did not predict the ending, and found the voice acting to be well executed.
At first I thought I was getting poor performance, but I guess the animations are just designed with minimal frames and no lip sync, so it feels a little disjointed from the voice overs. It's not a big deal though and I got used to it pretty quickly.
I played the title on Game Pass, and that seems like the best platform for something like this. There's not really any replayability since there's few options in the dialogue. So it might not be something you'd want to buy at full price, but it's a great inclusion in a subscription service.
I was just saying in the last Backlog thread that I enjoy short narrative experiences, so this was a well timed pick. I completed it in one sitting, though it still took a few hours so I definitely needed a stretch break afterwards.
It might not on the level of a masterpiece like the first Life is Strange game, but I definitely enjoyed my time with Open Roads. The story it tells is human, believable, and likely relatable for many.