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May 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion
Week 3 has begun!
Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
If you did not participate in previous weeks but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.
Quick links:
Week 2 Recap
10 participants moved 18 games out of their backlogs!
There were 0 bingo wins.
- 1 participant played free choice
- 7 participants played standard bingo cards
- 2 participants played bingo golf
Thus far, a total of 33 games have been played for the May 2024 Backlog Burner.
Week 2 Game List:
- 2064: Read Only Memories
- Andro Dunos II
- Aperture Desk Job
- Bendy and the Ink Machine
- Breakout
- Chop Goblins (x2!)
- Coromon
- Curse of D’Sparil
- DARK SOULS III - Archthrones mod
- DIG - Deep in Galaxies
- ELDEN RING
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- Hotel Dusk: Room 215
- Open Roads
- Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit
- Vampire Survivors
- Umurangi Generation
- Yakuza Kiwami
Week 1 Recap
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
This week I added Bendy and the Dark Revival to the list of games I tried out.
15/24
Has both combat and puzzles✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
From a genre you find challenging✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
Recommended by someone IRL✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
Great reviews, but not your usual type✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
Released before you were born✔ Breakout
Popular game you never got around to playing✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
From a genre you don’t normally play✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
Known for its impact on gaming✔ Breakout
You got it at full price✔ Breakout
Has survival mechanics✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
Has less than 4 achievements✔ Breakout
Is one of the oldest games you own✔ Breakout
“When the hell did I buy this?”✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
From a studio you haven't heard of before✔ Bendy and the Dark Revival
From a different culture or country✔ Breakout
This was good for 8 achievements apparently. I think they are all above board:
Overall... I think this could be a good game, and I'll probably revisit it, but I'm turning into a big ol' softy and find it hard to stay engaged in horror survival games these days. It makes me want to go back to The Long Dark which is a game that I actually loved, but haven't played in a long time. It also seems like it's probably reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy's which I never played, and Amnesia: the Dark Descent, which I have started 5 times, and never gotten particularly far.
The Bingo Golf master is showing us how it’s done!
Fifteen squares filled with only two strokes! I’m not sure what par is for this hole, but I feel like you’re on track for an albatross. 😁
It's going to get fiddly after this though. I'm trying out Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus though - I think that might get me a few more tickboxes!
Has a lives system✔ Vampire Survivors
Has a silent protagonist✔ Vampire Survivors
Great reviews, but not your usual type✔ Paratopic
Has a time limit✔ Vampire Survivors
Has gravity manipulation✔ Slime-san
Has permadeath✔ Vampire Survivors
Released before you were born✔ Quake
Set in a fantasy world✔ Vampire Survivors
Randomness determines your fate✔ Vampire Survivors
A solo-dev project✔ Vampire Survivors
Has a review score above 88✔ Quake
Has less than 16 achievements✔ Aperture Desk Job
You can complete it in only a few hours✔ Paratopic
Known for its ending✔ Paratopic
Released in the year you joined Tildes✔ (2018) Paratopic
Has environmental storytelling✔ Paratopic
Has a cozy vibe✔ Slime-san
Has the letter ‘Q’ in the title✔ Quake
Focuses on exploration✔ Quake
Changes this week:
I wanted to replace bendy because it really felt like a stretch to count it as "backburner". Paratopic slotted in pretty well, and covered a few more categories to keep my golf score down. I have some plans to replace aperture desk job for similar reasons, and counting for only one score in golf is not great. I am pretty worried about the rest of my board. I haven't been able to find many more good games that fit multiple categories. I am particularly worried about the "someone else has played" cell in the bottom right. So far I haven't seen any games pop up that are also on my backburner.
@kfwyre thanks for hosting this event! I have had a really good time so far, and I plan to participate in the future.
Paratopic
This game fits squarely into the "not your usual type" category. I like short games, and paratopic seems to attempt some replay value, but I deleted it from my steam deck as soon as I finished it and won't be looking back. Some of the people leaving steam reviews seem to really like the story, but I just don't see how it does anything interesting. It seems to me like some edgy teenagers proof that "games can be art too". It doesn't seem to have anything useful to say, and it still says it poorly. I don't mean any disrespect to people who get a lot out of it, but it isn't for me. I also had some unknown control issues in the camera section. The camera controls on my steam deck were mapped to the joystick controls, but for some reason they weren't working. I kinda just assumed it was intentional. I didn't realize until you had to
spoiler
shoot the guy at the end. I couldn't shoot him, so I grabbed a random controller layout from another user to finish the game.Slime-san
I have been using different thresholds for different games to count them towards my bingo. This game has the least playtime (15 minutes or so), but I still feel confident counting it as backlog burned. It plays like a super meat boy clone. It is really well done, and the art style is really good. I am keeping it installed, but I am not really in the mood for a tight platformer, so I won't be playing it again until later. From what I have played, it seems like a good game.
Quake
It was actually quite difficult to find a game I wanted to play from before I was born. I don't want to dox myself too much, but Quake just managed to fit that requirement. As for the game, HOLY SHIT ITS GOOD! Why didn't anyone ever say anything 🤪. The movement is fast, the combat balanced but not too easy (playing on middle corridor difficulty), the guns are satisfying, the puzzles are simple but not boring (exactly what I expect out of an FPS). I was expecting to have some issues with things we take for granted now that weren't common back then (controls, possibly other things), but there was none of that. If Quake released today, I would wait for a sale (because I do that with most games), but I would be satisfied with it as a game. I have played much more modern games that are significantly worse in many ways than Quake.
Forgive me if you've mentioned it before, but your review of Quake makes me want to ask if you've ever dug much into other retro FPSes, aka "boomer shooters." If you like Quake, there are so many incredible options from that time period (all the way to today) that capture the same kind of feeling, and I'd love to recommend a few if you're interested!
Additionally, if you happen to have the PC remastered version of Quake (this one developed by Nightdive Studios), I heartily recommend the included expansion packs. Even the classic ones released in the 90s are good fun, but MachineGames's newer expansion packs, specifically "Dimension of the Machine," is some of the best boomer shooter gameplay I've experienced in recent memory!
Oh yeah I would love some more recommendations! I’ll definitely be checking out those expansions. I haven’t really dug much into historic shooters. Half life and HL2 are awesome, but I haven’t really done anything else. I guess I kinda figured it would be too much work to get running or the controls would be wonky.
tl;dr if you're willing to spend some money on Steam, I recommend you check out DUSK for a game that will play very similarly to Quake, DOOM II to get a good idea of how the older DOOM games played (though it really is worth it to dig into GZDOOM and some more modern games built using this engine, which I get into below), and Ion Fury to get a taste of games built on the Build Engine. If you like any and/or all of those, there is plenty more information below to learn more, and I apologize in advance for extending your backlog to infinity and beyond.
I went off the deep end with this one a little bit, so hopefully that tl;dr gives folks an off-ramp. If you want to learn more about boomer shooters, especially how to try some of the older games as well as only have to spend ~$5 to (legitimately) obtain literally hundreds of old games and get them running on your PC, then read on!
First, your concerns about having to fiddle to get some of the older entries running or deal with outdated control schemes is valid, but thankfully more and more games are being ported (or remade) for modern systems which makes the point of entry a lot more simple. Additionally, there are plenty of new games that capture the boomer shooter vibe but with all the creature comforts you'd expect games to have in the late 10s / early 20s.
Before I get too deep into this, a necessary(?) aside to talk about several of the more well known boomer shooter "categorizations." This is all very unofficial, mind you, but the way I see it, most boomer shooters feel like they are natural evolutions of a few of the grandfathers of the genre. It usually comes down to the big three: you have your DOOM-likes, your Quake-likes, and your Build Engine games (I don't like the ring of "Duke Nukem-likes", plus, Nukem didn't have the staying power of the other series. Blood-likes, perhaps? Sounds sticky). There are notable exceptions to the genre that live outside of these three categorizations, but generally speaking, most boomer shooters will fit neatly into one of these three. A big reason for the differences between these three categories is that all three feature different game engines on top of which the games are built. Even more confusingly, DOOM-likes and Quake-likes are both built using id Tech engines (DOOM with id Tech 1 and Quake with id Tech 2), which is another reason why I delineate those vibes by game instead of engine as well. It goes without saying that what I'm calling "Build Engine games" are always programmed in the Build Engine--or at least, they are made to feel like they were.
So you have a general idea of what sets some of these older games apart, and you have a taste of one of the big three already: Quake. Up next would be to decide how you want to proceed on the journey. Do you devour all the games that feel like Quake, or do you explore some DOOM-likes or Build Engine games and see if one of those aesthetics trip your trigger even more?
The simplest way (not the best way, IMO, but the simplest way) to dive into the genre at large would be to pick up a few of the newer notable entries on Steam that fall into each category listed above, whether they're older games that were ported to work with modern hardware, full remakes, or simply new games in the boomer shooter genre. Mind you, this obviously comes with a heftier cost, but it's the most hands-off approach from a user perspective, and it's a nice way to see what the modern development scene has come up with. A few of the more noteworthy recent entries and/or remakes:
That being said, the best way (not the simplest way, IMO, but the best way) to dive into the genre at large starts with picking up DOOM II. If you're willing to tinker around with game files, buying DOOM II is the first step in what can become the world's biggest boomer shooter rabbit hole, since now it means that you have (legally) obtained the DOOM2.wad file and can run any number of DOOM WADs (aka, modded level packs) for free by launching them from a source port such as GZDOOM. This also means you can play your Steam version of DOOM II with vertical mouselook and better lightning enabled, which might make the game a lot more palatable to you. This is a stupidly dense conversation topic that I've touched on in the past here on Tildes, though if you'll humor me, I've written a lot more extensively about doing this kind of thing on my blog (which I almost never update), should you be interested in learning more. There's also a ton of information out there about how to get GZDOOM running and using official WADs to play modded levels, though I'd be more than happy to help you out should you get stuck at any specific spot. Needless to say, if you're interested in playing more games that feel like the classic DOOM entries, there are literally tends of thousands of hours of of modded material out there that can be had for free, and so much of it has already been vetted and voted on by the community so now you can go back and experience the best of the best from 30 years of DOOM without breaking a sweat.
I'll close by leaving you with two things. First, a collection of guides written by Steam user edgdangon1, who has put together a rather comprehensive list of guides that have collected many of the games in the categories I've mentioned previously (i.e. DOOM / Quake / Build Engine). He's not 100% accurate, and I wouldn't recommend many of the games he's listed, but it's a great resource in that you can see virtually all of the boomer shooters of note that are available on (and off) Steam in one place at one time. My second thing is a list of the boomer shooters that I have played and would recommend to others, so you have a slightly more vetted list. That said, the list is going to have to wait until tomorrow, because I did just realize how late it was here. More to come!
Edit: I'll try to break this list down by category to help you down the road. Otherwise, they'll just be alphabetical per category. I'll include both games that I've played and can personally vouch for, as well as games that are widely considered among the community to be excellent, but that I haven't gotten around to yet (#backlogproblems).
DOOM-likes
DOOM WADs
Yeah, we gotta go subcategory-level on this one. You will have to tinker to get most of these working apart from a few bigger Total Conversion Mods. But if you're willing to take the plunge, these are all 100% free and many are just as good, if not better, than any DOOM-likes you'll find for sale on Steam. I'll keep these in chronological order since it's interesting to see the evolution of level modding over time. Edit: the links I'm adding will all be links to the WAD's entry on the DOOM Wiki, since it'll give a little bit more context to each WAD if you're curious. If you do want to download any of these, click on the site listed in the "Link" section of the card on the right side of the screen (it will very frequently bring you to the WAD's corresponding downloads page on Doomworld/idgames).
And again, a reminder that there are literally thousands of DOOM WADs out there, with organizations like the Cacowards highlighting the best of the best over the decades. I'm only sharing out about the ones with which I'm familiar, but if this interests you, definitely dig into the endless and free content here.
Quake-likes
Build Engine games
Miscellaneous
These don't really fit anywhere else, but they are close enough to the boomer shooter spirit that I wanted to include them in case it's something you might enjoy.
Closing thoughts
Gonna take a break here, but I'll endeavor to come back and add Steam links (/DOOMWorld links to the WADs) to everything.
Edit: all links have been added!
Whoa dude this is insane! I’ll probably wait until June to pick up any of these (gotta finish my golf card after all), but I’ll definitely be grabbing some of those. I’ve kinda become pretty bored with modern shooters. I’m not interested for the most part in multiplayer, and single player campaigns seem to be a dying breed. I haven’t kept up with new releases very well, but the last good single player fps I played was the titan fall 2 campaign. These will definitely scratch the right itch.
I'm so glad I could help light the fire, and I'm excited to see what you think! It's funny that you mentioned Half Life being your earliest foray into the past - it's generally agreed that Half Life was one of the primary reasons the boomer shooter genre fell out of favor for the better part of 20 years. Don't get me wrong, HL & HL2 are some of my very favorite games of all time, but they were some of the pioneers of the "FPS as a spectacle" movement where it felt more like you were a character in a movie and just being pulled along for the ride, vs. letting the moment-to-moment gameplay shine. That said, I think HL and HL2 still balanced the gameplay and spectacle really well. But the problem is that most other modern shooters after them go all-in on the spectacle camp and leave the gameplay itself wanting.
Also a great callout on TitanFall 2 - that's one of the few modern non-boomer shooters that captures the same kind of energy I missed from them for so long. Sometimes I just want to sit down with a single player FPS and have a ton of fun, and boomer shooters deliver in that department in the biggest way.
I'll get that list added to my parent comment ASAP so you have even more entries to bog you down come June :)
Has permadeath✔ DIG - Deep in Galaxies
“When the hell did I buy this?”✔ The Deadly Tower of Monsters
Focuses on exploration✔ In Other Waters
You can complete it in one sitting✔ Some Distant Memory
★ Wildcard✔ Chop Goblins
Released in the year you joined Tildes✔ Super Lucky’s Tale
Has a lives system✔ Andro Dunos II
Released before you were born✔ Frogger
An updated version (remake, re-release) of an older game✔ Jak and Daxter (OpenGOAL)
I’m still behind where I’d like to be. I’ve had a very busy two weeks compounded by genuinely awful travel luck. I cannot tell you how much time I have spent on planes, waiting in airports, and dealing with delays (and yes, cancellations). I also cannot tell you how much the Steam Deck has helped make that process easier. (Hint: I only played Jak and Daxter for maybe 30% of my recent travel time, and it took me probably 10-12 hours to beat it.)
The good news is that the major travel is done for the month, though I still do have some minor travel this weekend. Between the time I can squeeze in this weekend and my longer holiday weekend after that, I’m hoping I can catch up to where I’d like to be, which is actually winning my first bingo!
I’m not there yet. I’m very close — only one square away! I have a few things lined up for Has campaign DLC but they’re all longer desktop games, so even if I start on that this week I might not close it for a while.
I am three squares away from wins in three other directions, so I might choose some shorter games to try to fill in some of those in the meantime too. I would like to close out this week with at least one five-in-a-row!
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy via OpenGOAL - An updated version (remake, re-release) of an older game
I played Jak and Daxter back when it came out, and it was genuinely mind-blowing for me at the time. I loved it, and it quickly entered the pantheon of “My Favorite Games of All Time.”
It has then since sat for over twenty years as a fond memory. I’ve always wanted to go back to it.
So, not too long ago, I spun it back up on an emulator on my Steam Deck and learned a very unfortunate fact: the game has inverted horizontal camera controls. And no setting to change that either.
I tried to play through the frustration for a bit, thinking I’d get used to it over time, but that never happened. Anyone who’s ever played a 3D platformer knows that fighting the camera is already a source of frustration in places, and I could see that between me and the end of the game lay a whole lot of accumulated frustration from even the most basic camera manipulations. I felt like that would sour my appreciation for the game, so I put it aside.
Enter OpenGOAL. It is a decompilation and reimplementation of the Jak series of games. This makes it effectively act as a “remaster” of the game similar to a “source port” for something like DOOM. The game runs natively on PC, runs at a higher resolution, and includes quality of life fixes that the OpenGOAL devs have added.
One of those quality of life fixes (arguably the most important one) is the ability to toggle between normal/inverted camera controls for each camera axis and type. I could now play the game with normal, natural camera controls!
I installed it on my Steam Deck (where it worked perfectly) and ventured back into a world that I haven’t visited in twenty years.
There were two things I remember loving when I first played it.
The first was the fluidity of the character animation during gameplay. The motions of the characters looked smooth and complex, but also elegant. I also think it was one of the first games I played that was set at 60 FPS. I know that’s a normal standard now so it doesn’t seem that noteworthy, but, in a past full of some genuinely bad framerates, I think it gave the game some visual fidelity that felt unmatched and “next gen.”
The second was the contiguous game world. The game doesn’t have loading screens. It’s broken into different regions which are effectively their own individual levels, but they are all connected in-game and you move yourself between them in the world rather than using a map or a warp system. At the time, this gave the game world a satisfying, cohesive feel — it was simply one big world and you got to visit every corner of it. The game had a very far draw distance (another noteworthy feature at the time) so you could see other parts of that one big world far off in the background.
In replaying the game, I got to revisit these two points.
With regards to the animations, the game still has it. They look great which means, consequently, they feel great. Jak’s rolling jump in particular is a highlight. It’s effectively the same as a long jump in Super Mario 64 but its excellent animation gives it an intangible quality that, for me, makes it feel a lot better to execute.
The only complaint I have about the movement is that the game often “ate” my inputs, particularly on double jumps or attacking after jumping. I’d tap jump twice, but only the first one would register. I had a lot of deaths because of this. It seemed like the issue was when I did two inputs too quickly in succession so I learned to pause slightly between them, but then sometimes it happened after a pause as well. I couldn’t ever fully pin down the issue, but it also wasn’t bad enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game. I have no idea if this is a fault of OpenGOAL or if the fault is in the original game and OpenGOAL is faithfully reimplementing it (with how good a job they’ve done, I suspect it’s the latter).
With regards to the game’s contiguous world, well, that was less impressive. With older, more modern gaming eyes, I can see a lot of the tricks the devs used to hide loading. The “one big world” of the game felt much more illusory to me this time around. That said, I don’t want to be down on the game for this. Despite their techniques being obvious over twenty years later, I remain impressed by what they were able to do during the time in which they were doing it. It was cleverly done, and even with my critique here I don’t think it’s aged poorly. I much prefer this game’s style of smoke and mirrors to cover loading rather than the more modern technique of “the main character slowly pushes themselves through a narrow enclosure.”
As for the game itself, it’s lovely. It’s an enjoyable 3D collectathon. Some of the areas feel a bit more inspired than others, but the game remains varied and interesting and satisfying to play even today. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it — not as much as when I was younger, of course, but enough that I’m close to 100%ing the game. I finished the final boss at 87% completion and just have to dive back in for a little more cleanup.
If you’re wanting to revisit Jak and Daxter, or you’re wanting to try it out for the first time, then I cannot recommend OpenGOAL enough. It felt like a complete professional remaster of the game, and it was absolutely flawless on the Deck.
Popping in to say that I have now officially 100%ed the game!
I was going to share a screenshot, but I learned as I tried that it is a massive pain to share screenshots of non-Steam games on the Steam Deck because you can’t simply upload them to your Steam account and get them on a different device.
I then tried to go digging for the actual file in desktop mode, but apparently they’re saved in some difficult to find folder buried deep in the directory tree. I made a minimal but good faith effort to locate them, failed, and then just stopped.
Anyway, take it on faith that I finished it fully! It was a delightful game. And OpenGOAL really is something special. They’ve done a fantastic job. It really felt like I was playing an official remaster the entire time.
Nice job on completing it. I really like these decompilation projects but hadn't heard of OpenGOAL before your post. I was never in the Playstation ecosystem, so I missed out on some of these seminal titles. Will definitely make note of this if (or when) the retro game urge strikes, because that seems like something that would be right up my alley.
Congrats! I'm not familiar with OpenGOAL, but I've built up quite a library of old games via EmuDeck, and I'm wondering how much more fluid of an experience OpenGOAL would be. I have the Jak & Daxter Collection for PS3 on my Deck via EmuDeck, and it worked pretty well from what little I tried. That said, I never played the original game so I'm not sure if it's a faithful recreation (let alone the fact that I also never played the Collection on the PS3, so it may not be a recreation of any of the above!).
I’m not sure about the PS3 version, but OpenGOAL was noticeably better than emulating the PS2 version. Visually it was a lot sharper, but the main quality of life update was being able to reverse the horizontal camera controls.
OpenGOAL also adds the option to highlight precursor orbs to make them more visible. That feature isn’t true to the original, but it makes hunting them down a lot less painful. I remember having to scour the levels for a long time on the original, trying to find the last few ones I’d missed. Through OpenGOAL I didn’t have that same problem.
If you’re intending to play just the first game, then OpenGOAL is probably the way to go. On the other hand, if you’re wanting to do the whole series, then emulating the PS3 collection is probably best. At present only the first game is complete in OpenGOAL — the second is playable but in beta, and the third is still being developed.
I have to admit that, even though you mentioned it being a re-release / remake per your bingo card, I was taking the concept at face value until you mentioned the highlighted orbs, so I went and visited OpenGOAL's site. Wow, this is clearly a huge undertaking! I can definitely see how it would be the primo way to experience the first entry in the best way possible. What an incredible effort from that dev team!
Never played anything in the series but it's great that these open source projects for classic games exist. Now you have me wanting to try Ship of Harkinian as it's been ages since I've played Ocarina of Time.
Super Lucky's Tale - Released in the year you joined Tildes
I have a pretty big Steam library, so I was like "Released in the year I joined Tildes? HA! I wonder if I can pick a game from the month I joined Tildes."
Friends, I didn't choose a game from just the month I joined Tildes. I had my choice of three unplayed games that were released on the exact date I joined Tildes. Consider this an implicit indicator that my Steam library might be, uh, WAY too big.
Anyway, I joined Tildes on September 14, 2018 (and I’ve been happy here ever since!). My game choices were:
Not bad choices, to be honest -- I'm interested in playing all three. I chose Lucky simply because it was the only Deck Verified one.
The game is a (mostly) 3D platformer (some of the levels are 2D). You collect coins and complete tasks to win lucky clovers -- the game's version of Mario's stars.
I think this one ended up being an unfortunate pick though. I had just played a great 3D platformer (Jak and Daxter), and comparison is the thief of joy. Lucky didn't live up to the very high bar set by that game, and it was hard for me to not think of one in the context of the other since I played them effectively back-to-back. Movement in particular stuck out for me -- getting from place to place in Jak genuinely felt great; in Lucky it feels a bit stiff and imprecise.
To be fair, I don't think the game is trying to out-do something like Jak and Daxter. Lucky is specifically going for a younger audience. It's bright; it's colorful; it's simple. There isn't anything wrong with it at all, I'm just definitely not in the target audience for a kids' game. I do think it would be wonderful for them -- if I had children I'd be happy for them to play this.
I put an hour and a half into it, and I'm moving on. Not a bad game by any means, just not for me.
Frogger - Released before you were born
This category was a bit of an outlier for me, which I appreciated. My Steam library makes up probably 95% of what I consider “my backlog,” so I like when categories force me out of that lane. When I saw this category on my bingo card, I checked my Steam library for games that released before I was born and came up just short! I did have a few official emulation packs on Steam that were technically released recently but were made up of games older than me, but I figured if I was going to be emulating anyway, why not dive back into the meticulously set up and curated RetroDECK install I did for myself?
I was leaning towards playing something from the ColecoVision simply because it’s a system I know nothing about but have always been curious about. @aphoenix had actually given me recommendations for Artillery Duel and Pitfall, both of which I did end up trying out. I realized when playing them though that neither really fit the “Backlog” criteria of the Backlog Burner. I’d never even heard of Artillery Duel, and Pitfall was a game I was aware of but never really felt I needed to play. The whole point of the event is to scratch pre-existing itches, not identify new ones!
I thought about arguing that trying out the ColecoVision as a whole would count as part of my “Backlog” since I’ve always kind of wondered what it was about, but that also felt like cheating. What I needed was a specific game that’s given me a specific “itch” for a long time.
And that’s when I noticed Frogger in my list of games.
See, I’m no stranger to Frogger. I had a version of it on my TI-83 calculator that saw a lot of play in high school, but my main connection to the series was the 1997 3D reboot of the series on the PlayStation. I played that game more than anyone should have; it is not a great game. It is needlessly hard. It is punishing. It is clumsy. It requires a lot of trial and error, memorization, and perfect rapid execution.
But when you’re young, living in a time where videogames were harder to come by, and haven’t developed a critical eye for game design yet, then you play what you’ve got, and you do it over and over and over again, and you like it even when you probably shouldn’t. I brute forced my way through that game and hated it but also kind of loved it in the way that you learn to love anything you spend that much time choosing to do.
So the original Frogger has always been in the back of my mind as something I’d like to visit, but I’d kind of forgotten about that until I saw it it sitting there in my RetroDECK game list. It was a longstanding itch that I wanted to scratch. Backlog requirement met!
The game itself is pretty simple. You’re a frog and you have to hop across a street, then across a stream, to get yourself to the top of the screen. Get five frogs to the little alcoves at the top of the screen and you get to the next level, which is a similar layout but ups the difficulty. The challenge of the game comes from timing. There are vehicles on the street you have to dodge, and then the obstacles reverse for the stream: instead of dodging things, you have to specifically target them, hopping directly on the logs and turtles so you don’t fall in the water.
It’s an elegant, clever concept for a game. It also plays quite well by modern standards. When I tried out Pitfall the game felt very clunky. It was slow, and the game ran at an obvious interval. It made it so that the movement didn’t feel good and my inputs didn’t feel immediate. Some of my deaths in that game didn’t feel like my fault.
Frogger, on the other hand, still feels sharp and responsive. When I died, it was definitely my fault.
The game is meant to be played and replayed. Sessions are quick, and there are only four levels total. At present the best I’ve done is getting four out of five frogs placed on level 3, which I got a frustrating THREE times in a row!
I’m not using save states, and it’s not because I’m above save scumming (I genuinely love it) but because save states weren’t working on my emulator. That means I’m playing the game as intended and not just cheesing my way to the end, which is for the best.
For the purposes of the Backlog Burner, I’ve “gotten the spirit” of the game so I’m considering it done. I do plan to leave it installed though. It’s the kind of game that’s fun to come back to every so often, and I could definitely see myself playing it as an “offline” game while I’m on plane flights.
Oh man, I used to love Frogger so much. You know, if you'd pressed me for more Colecovision games, I probably would have added Frogger, and also Donkey Kong JR (added in that one as extra just in case). I actually played Frogger on a restored arcade unit some time in the last several years - one of my cousins is a pinball repairman, and has also restored some other units, and he had a Frogger in his basement for a while. I also found it replayable and the kids even loved that one, though I think that might have been form factor at least in part.
The YouTube animator Noodle put out a sort of unofficial "history of Frogger" video last year. His humor is definitely not for everyone, but the production value is awesome and I learned way more about Frogger than I ever expected to!
The Deadly Tower of Monsters - When the hell did I buy this?
When the hell did I buy this? No idea. It came out in 2016, and according to ITAD it was in a Humble Bundle in 2017. That is a likely source since I am a habitual bundle buyer, only I checked my Humble account and I never bought that bundle. I must have picked it up on its own sometime in the past eight years. Also, weird coincidence: a few days ago I started up Hacknet for “Has campaign DLC” and I learned just now that it was also in that same Humble Bundle. Odd!
Anyway, this game has some good ideas.
It’s framed as a DVD re-release of a schlocky old-school sci-fi B-movie. The director is recording commentary for the DVD, so he comments on different elements of the game (the in-universe film) as well as some of your player choices. It’s sort of like Bastion, only it’s going for a “humorous spoof” tone.
The game itself plays along. When you encounter dinosaurs for the first time, the director comments on using stop-motion to film them. Sure enough, the dinosaurs look like clay models and are animated with a terrible frame rate. Lots of little cheeky moments like that are in here, along with some fourth wall breaks and videogame-specific humor (early on, the game clearly pokes fun at Assassin’s Creed for letting the player land in hay piles).
It’s a neat and altogether original way to convey a game, and I enjoyed that aspect. Also I think the level design is interesting. The titular tower is outdoors, rather than indoors, which gives the game a cohesive verticality I wasn’t expecting. There’s an entire mechanic that lets you warp back to a previous ledge if you jump off or fall off, which is essential for both finding secrets and recovering from mistakes.
Unfortunately, the game’s high points are not enough to keep me going.
The actual gameplay itself is… bland. It’s a top-down third-person beat ‘em up. Movement and combat both feel awkward and insubstantial. I didn’t enjoy the gameplay much at all but kept going because I liked everything else.
If that were the only issue then I might trudge through it, but the game commits a cardinal sin that made me put the game down for good. The third-person camera is programmed to “lead” the player by showing a bit more in the direction you’re heading. Go left, and the camera juts out a bit to the left; go right, and it swings right. This sounds good in theory, but in practice, it means that the camera ends up swooping around your character as you move around, because you’re often moving in different directions or rapidly changing between them.
I’m more prone to motion sickness in games than most people, but my problem is usually first-person games. It’s rare that a third-person game make me feel nauseous, but this one did it. I stopped playing after less than an hour.
It’s a bit of a shame, because I genuinely do think the creative aspects of the game were interesting and entertaining.
This comment is like a little time capsule for me - I distinctly remember when that Humble Bundle came out because I played both The Deadly Tower of Monsters and Hacknet within the same month back in 2017. I felt the same way; it was a fun concept but the execution made me put it down at the time. I am excited to hear your thoughts on Hacknet when you're ready to write about it!
Slacked off a bit last week but also got a couple more done in the past couple of days.
Bingo card (8/25)
Has survival mechanics✔ Frostpunk
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
Is mostly text-based✔ a new life.
Uses procedural generation✔ Death Must Die
You chose it based on title alone✔ 2064: Read Only Memories
You don't think you'll enjoy it✔ LoveChoice
Aside from the couple of new entries here I'm in the middle of a couple of longer games which will get added to the board eventually (and the game known for its difficulty is difficult, go figure).
"Survival mechanics?" How about trying to keep a settlement from freezing over in an absurdly cold climate? I gave Frostpunk a shot last night and while I can see the appeal, I don't think it's going to be something I'll put a lot of time into. I came within less than a day of surviving the storm before losing despite not knowing how to do anything at the start; maybe I'll give it one more go to see if I can succeed but it's not necessarily a gameplay loop that I find all that compelling if (from what I saw at a glance) each scenario is fairly static from one game to the next. I tend to be more interested in seeing new patterns rather than trying to optimize something I've been through before, so once or twice is generally enough for me here.
I also played the newer survival city-builder Against the Storm late last year so I was comparing the two a bit as I was going along here. The atmosphere of Frostpunk is an aspect that I enjoy, giving you some moral choices where you'll likely sacrifice some people along the way to ensuring the settlement continues as one of the last bastions of humanity, but it's also rather impersonal compared to something like Papers, Please as ultimately the people are just more resources even if they have individual names. The stakes feel higher than in Against the Storm as the latter has a safe haven that you retreat to once the storm does arrive so the settlements there feel more like temporary playgrounds, but those also ended up being more entertaining for me with providing more variety each time.
I considered picking up something like Dwarf Fortress or NetHack as a cheeky option for "mostly text-based" since they use ASCII for everything in their unmodded forms but I definitely don't have the time to dive into those. a new life. was even shorter than my "complete in one sitting" entry at about an hour to get through all the endings but as it's another visual novel it fits the text-based theme well enough to me. I didn't like it quite as much as A Year of Springs but it's still a nice little story that hurt a bit to read when I got some of the bad endings.
Death Must Die is my "uses procedural generation" pick (hey, Dwarf Fortress and NetHack would also fit that...), not my first time playing the game but it had a major update last month and I wanted to check that out. In simple terms it's Vampire Survivors gameplay crossed with Hades style god lore/boons and as someone else put it, if you're going to copy other games you might as well copy the best. The procedural generation comes into play with you existing on an infinite plane with different interactive features popping up at random that might give you short-term benefits like invulnerability or a speed boost. The loops are fairly short with the final boss of the act appearing after 20 minutes, so it quickly feeds into a "just one more run" mentality that drains a lot of free time.
I initially looked at LoveChoice as a potential entry for my mostly text-based square but nope, turns out there's a bit more interactivity with various objects in each scene. However, before I quit a few minutes in I found a couple of reasons to put it under "you don't think you'll enjoy it" instead so that's where it ended up. Last night I came back to it and I ended up making it through 2/3 of the routes in about an hour before deciding I had enough even though it wouldn't take much longer to complete the entire thing with all the endings.
First, the writing. The first route starts off at a game jam with a girl being left alone at a table and the (point of view) main character's thoughts being "This is my chance to talk to her," as if he's immediately going to start hitting on a stranger a minute into the game. It pretty quickly jumps to them dating and having rather simple dialogue the entire time through their relationship. Since it appears to be made by a Chinese studio my assumption is that at least part of my qualms are coming from a translation/localization standpoint, but it's still not great overall.
Second, it's very much designed for mouse (or maybe touchscreen, I didn't try) controls and using a joystick just moves a mouse cursor around outside of the menus, not a great interface on the Switch or Steam Deck. Most of the time it's just kind of an annoyance, but there is one minigame that requires you to click on moving objects on the screen. While they're not moving particularly quickly, I couldn't get a perfect score on one occasion unless I knew ahead of time where they would enter the screen (since it seemed to be random) so I'd have enough time to chase after them with the cursor.
Overall I can see it being appealing to some people but it didn't really work for me.
Let's see this past week I didn't game so much. I finished Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. My final verdict is that I do recommend it, with the caveat that the immersive experience is the worthwhile part moreso than the gameplay. They have a video where they talk about the making of it and how they approached the psychosis angle, I teared up when the interviewees expressed that they felt heard, respected, and represented.
I started BattleBit Remastered, a FPS in the vein of Battlefield from a small indie team. Maps support up to 254 players. It has a classic server browser and support for community servers. I've enjoyed my time with it, despite concerns about open comms. There's a death mic feature where it'll open mic you and opponents on death if you opt in, a good number of folks actually RP dying sounds, it's cute. The game aspires towards milsim aspects, but doesn't forget to be fun. So I do recommend it to fans of the FPS genre, but I consider it a bit less accessible than something more arcadey like Halo for those less experienced with the genre.
Yakuza Kiwami stayed on the back burner, it may stay there until I wrap Persona 5 Royal. The primary remaining entries on my backlog are all RPGs, it's probably most prudent to play one of those at a time. I'm sure I can find something else of interest if I check, may whip out that bingo card to filter through.
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
Player some more Coromon, and just started One Lonely Outpost, a space-themed farming sim. Hoping to use it to mark off the "exploration" if it has enough exploration involved! It's early access, and so far that apparently might mean I can't choose a name besides Riley? Like Coromon, I'll check it out for a couple hours before ticking it off.
I'm not doing a bingo card because I just don't have the time to play enough games. I get through 1, maybe 2, games a month depending on their length.
But I started something Ive been putting off for 14 years in the spirit of burning the backlog. I finally started StarCraft 2!
I'm enjoying it a lot! I love the rpg elements added in, that's a pretty unique thing I don't think I've ever seen another rts do. And considering it's a 14 year old game, that is rather shocking to me that no one has done it.
The story is interesting, I'm early in the Zerg campaign now and excited to see where things go from here and how the overarching plot plays out. Good pickup from StarCraft 1 plot points which I just replayed last year.
All in all, loving it so far, but dreading the Protoss campaign as they're my least favorite to play as, and the Zeratul missions in WoL make them seem even worse than in SC1.
Despite all my metrics, this event isn’t just about quantity! Finally scratching a 14 year itch is absolutely a valid way to backlog burn.
Pinging all previous Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here’s the new topic for the week.
Notification List
@aphoenix @brews_hairy_cats @CannibalisticApple @Carrow @Durinthal @Eidolon @J-Chiptunator @Mendanbar @Notcoffeetable @Shevanel @Weldawadyathink @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!
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)
Released in the year you joined Tildes✔ Returnal (PC)
How the heck is it already May 15?! I had high hopes of working towards a blackout at the top of this month, but at this point, I'll be happy if I clear a single row, let alone more than that. I thought about starting up the game that would net me a top-row bingo, but my heart wasn't in it yet, and I really want to clear at least a few levels of it to give it a proper shake-out. We'll see how I feel this weekend!
Returnal (PC) - Released in the year you joined Tildes
Returnal only has one foot in the "backlog" category for me, as I did put a couple (literally, two) hours into it on PS5 when I first picked one up last year. But like all home consoles in a shared environment, the PS5 is now the Blu-Ray and HBO Max machine (and the Bloodborne machine, a title which it inherited from its older brother upon retirement), so I was happy to re-purchase this when it was on sale for the PC a few months back and spend some proper time with it during this Backlog Burner.
First, I was pleasantly surprised at its relatively small install size of ~50gb given its age and graphical fidelity. I'm still reeling from the 75gb Helldivers 2 install (worth it) and the 100gb I just gained back from uninstalling Fallout 76. I was also surprised at how well it ran given my PC. While I do have a 3060, the rest of my rig is a Ship of Theseus whose voyage began just about 10 years ago, almost to the day. I think the HDD (now used as secondary storage) is the only original plank in its hull. But Returnal runs buttery smooth at the "Medium" graphics setting, which, given that my monitors are only 1080p, is plenty for me.
If you're not familiar with Returnal, it's a third-person shooter which is most easily described as a bullet-hell roguelike, but with a really gorgeously foreboding and dark sci-fi atmosphere. The roguelike gameplay mechanic is built into the story itself, as you crash-land on a planet while trying to track a mysterious energy signal, and when you die during a run, you wake back up in your recently-crashed ship, retaining all of your memories (and some permanent gameplay upgrades) between runs. I know very little about the story beyond that point, but I've managed to make it to the second area of the game and I really enjoy the gameplay and atmosphere so far.
Edit: I "regret" starting this game so early in my card, because it very well may be the reason I never get another entry on the board. Absolutely love the gameplay loop and the world-building it's done around the concept of the "loop" itself is very good. I would say it's one of only two roguelike/roguelite games that I've played which have fully and successfully integrated the endless replay / loop mechanic into the story itself, the other game being Hades.