The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

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Phaseknox
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The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

Played: Eternity: The Last Unicorn, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon

Finished (playing): Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon

Playing: Decay of Logos, Eternity: The Last Unicorn

Added: Dark Rose Valkyrie, Eternity: The Last Unicorn, Forgotten Anne, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Remothered: Tormented Fathers

While I was enjoying Nights of Azure 2, I decided to stop playing it because I knew that I couldn't have it finished by the time that Decay of Logos came out. I'm currently in an action adventure mood, so I decided to play Eternity: The Last Unicorn. It's an old school style fixed camera angle action adventure game that was developed in Brazil. It's indie, low budget and looks and plays like a PS2 game. While it looks and feels like an older game and is lacking production values, I'm still enjoying it. The story and characters are nothing great, but the core gameplay is decent. It's basically a hack-and-slasher where you have a fast weak attack, slow strong attack, dash/dodge and magic. There are also finishers which is a nice addition. The fighting doesn't feel weighty, but you know when you're hitting the enemies and there's good hit detection. There's light adventure elements and traps as well, so it's not strictly combat the entire time. The environments have decent fantasy art design, and are path-like with splitting paths and areas that you can't access until later making it somewhat like a Metroidvania game. While everything about it is fairly average, I'm still enjoying my time with it.

The following games come out this week:
Astral Chain
Collection of Mana
Control
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan
Decay of Logos
Wreckfest

I'm interested in Control, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan and Decay of Logos. I'm going to wait to get Control and The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan when they're cheaper, but I'm getting Decay of Logos on day one since it's only $19.99.
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I've been playing Eternity: The Last Unicorn, and the best way to describe it is PS1 Resident Evil meets Dark Souls. The design structure is like the PS1 Resident Evil games with fixed camera angles, backtracking and getting key items to access areas. It has a dark fantasy theme with difficult to defeat creatures that can kill you in just a couple of hits, and the bosses are big and menacing with extremely long health bars.

I've been somewhat enjoying the game despite it being low budget and rather poorly made because I really like the old school Resident Evil design structure, but the cheapness of the difficulty just so that it could be labeled a Soulslike game to help it sell better hurts the overall experience. It wasn't too bad at first, but I reached a giant spider boss that swipes its legs at you that you can't avoid because you can't block or jump. You can dash, but dashing doesn't prevent you from getting hit by them. The only way that I could see defeating the boss was to spam my attacks and healing items while getting hit hoping to kill it before it killed me, and that's how I did it. I watched a YouTube video of the fight to see if I was doing something wrong, but it turns out that's the only way to kill it. Directly after this fight I was pitted against the hardest enemy mob that I've encountered in the game yet. Keep in mind that not only are the camera angles fixed making it difficult to see things at certain angles, but the environments are path-like not giving you much room to maneuver. So facing a mob of difficult enemies is made even more difficult because of this.

Despite all of its problems (and there are many), I'm still compelled to keep playing it for some reason. It's like playing an old school action adventure game from the past which I've missed, and it's hitting the spot right now. The cheapness of the enemy and boss difficulty might eventually make me stop playing it, but I'm sticking with it for now.

Apparently it has the lowest score on Metacritic for a game that came out this year, and the guys in the video below wanted to check it out for that reason. It's really funny watching them play it, and the comments that they make about it.

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isthatallyougot
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by isthatallyougot »

Phaseknox wrote: Sun Aug 25, 2019 12:57 pm Despite all of its problems (and there are many), I'm still compelled to keep playing it for some reason.
You do like some outliers phase. Not like I'm one who should talk, lol.

I'm still playing PES, Harvest Moon, Pinball Arcade and Rule of Rose.

enjoying them all.
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jfissel
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by jfissel »

Finished: Nothing

Now Playing: Dragon Quest Builders 2

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 30 games

Played a good amount of DQB2 last week, but this week should be super busy at work so I don't know how much time I'll be able to play.
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argyle
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by argyle »

{Games added:[/b] Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Switch) - something else might have come in the mail that I'm forgetting, but haven't been picking up much

Last week or so: Finished Golden Axe & Magic Sword (MAME) as well as Lego Marvel Super Heroes. Played some FFXII.

This week: Picking up 5 (!) so I'm sure I'll start something new, and plan on chipping away at FFXII.

So I've had a project going for the past couple of months that I haven't mentioned. Back in June I picked up one of those Street Fighter 2 Arcade1Up machines on clearance at my local Target. Since my intention from the start was to mod it, I specifically wanted the SF2 machine since because of all the buttons it would handle nearly any arcade game I threw at it. I've been slowly working on it here & there, and I have it pretty much finished as of last week. I installed a Raspberry Pi in it w/ a couple thousand arcade roms, swapped out the buttons & joysticks & installed some much beefier speakers. I've had a lot of fun working on it, and after playing it some last week I'm really happy with the results. I'll take some pics and / or video of it later & post it here to show exactly what the end result is. All said & done I still have less money invested in it than the stock machine retailed for, and it's now the swiss army knife of arcade cabinets. It's not full size, but I don't have room for a full size cabinet in my house right now and it's perfect for one person sitting down at it anyway.

Other than that, I've been trading in a TON of old games, mostly crap, taking advantage of the $5 bonus deal GS ran for the past 2 weeks. Using the credit I got from that, as well as some ebay cash from a few games I found that were worth it to sell rather than trade, I've managed to take care of most of what I want for the rest of the year. These are the games I preordered & payed off over the past 2 weeks:

Collection of Mana
Astral Chain
Greedfall
Hardcore Mecha (import)
Goat Simulator: The GOATY (Switch - import)
Silence (import)
Daemon X Machina
Hori Split Pad Pro controller for Switch
Indivisible
A Hat in Time
The Outer Worlds (2 copies)
Luigi's Mansion 3
Death Stranding SE
...and I paid for that copy of FFXII using some of that as well.

Nice to have some upcoming gaming covered by ditching some crap that was just collecting dust! :)
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed
if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I
became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the
desire to be very grown up.” ― C.S. Lewis

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isthatallyougot
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by isthatallyougot »

argyle wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:25 pm So I've had a project going for the past couple of months that I haven't mentioned. Back in June I picked up one of those Street Fighter 2 Arcade1Up machines on clearance at my local Target. Since my intention from the start was to mod it, I specifically wanted the SF2 machine since because of all the buttons it would handle nearly any arcade game I threw at it. I've been slowly working on it here & there, and I have it pretty much finished as of last week. I installed a Raspberry Pi in it w/ a couple thousand arcade roms, swapped out the buttons & joysticks & installed some much beefier speakers. I've had a lot of fun working on it, and after playing it some last week I'm really happy with the results. I'll take some pics and / or video of it later & post it here to show exactly what the end result is. All said & done I still have less money invested in it than the stock machine retailed for, and it's now the swiss army knife of arcade cabinets. It's not full size, but I don't have room for a full size cabinet in my house right now and it's perfect for one person sitting down at it anyway.
That sounds really cool. That would be a fun tinkering project. Yeah, show us what you did.
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I bought Decay of Logos this morning, and played a little of it. Based on what I've played of it so far I'm surprised that they're selling it for $20 instead of $30-$40 (not that I'm complaining), because the quality and production of it seem better than a $20 game. It seems like something that could have been released physically for $40.

The best way to describe it is a mix of Zelda, Dark Souls and Rime. It has similar art design and graphics to Rime (which are the best aspects of Rime IMO), a fantasy action adventure design similar to Zelda and combat similar to Dark Souls. I like the little that I've played so far, and look forward to playing more.
argyle wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:25 pmSo I've had a project going for the past couple of months that I haven't mentioned. Back in June I picked up one of those Street Fighter 2 Arcade1Up machines on clearance at my local Target. Since my intention from the start was to mod it, I specifically wanted the SF2 machine since because of all the buttons it would handle nearly any arcade game I threw at it. I've been slowly working on it here & there, and I have it pretty much finished as of last week. I installed a Raspberry Pi in it w/ a couple thousand arcade roms, swapped out the buttons & joysticks & installed some much beefier speakers. I've had a lot of fun working on it, and after playing it some last week I'm really happy with the results. I'll take some pics and / or video of it later & post it here to show exactly what the end result is.
Sounds like a fun project, I look forward to the images and/or videos of it.
argyle wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:25 pmI've been trading in a TON of old games, mostly crap, taking advantage of the $5 bonus deal GS ran for the past 2 weeks. Using the credit I got from that, as well as some ebay cash from a few games I found that were worth it to sell rather than trade, I've managed to take care of most of what I want for the rest of the year. Nice to have some upcoming gaming covered by ditching some crap that was just collecting dust!
I did the same thing last week getting enough GameStop credit to buy like five new games at launch that I'm interested in. I plan on using the credit for big new releases that I'm interested in since I'm still going to buy already released games from Amazon since they're cheaper new there than what GameStop sells them for pre-owned.
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Phaseknox
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Re: The Backlog Check-in Vol. 86: 8/24/19: Astral Chain/Collection of Mana/Control/Decay of Logos/Man of Medan Edition

Post by Phaseknox »

I've been playing Decay of Logos, and enjoying it. It's pretty much what I was expecting it to be, but perhaps a little more Soulslike than I anticipated. It's like a Souls game with a cartoonish aesthetic. While it's not quite as challenging as a Souls game, it's still more challenging than it would appear to be based on its Rime/Zelda-ish appearance. It has a similar design structure, gameplay and combat to a Souls game.

It starts out more abruptly than I would have liked not really explaining much before it lets you play, but you can collect memories in the world that give information about events that occurred before you started playing that help shed some light on things. There's a few NPCs that you come across as well that explain things a bit too. But the majority of the game is you feeling alone in a dangerous world exploring every part of it since it's directionless, you just go where it will allow you to discovering things along the way.

I like pretty much everything about it except for your elk companion. It's a dumb animal that wanders around aimlessly often getting stuck in the environment, and the only thing useful about it is that you can store stuff on it. You can also ride it, but it moves so clunky and slow that there's no reason to since you move faster on foot.

I admit that I was expecting the game to be more Zelda and less Souls. Since it's a more colorful and cartoonish fantasy action adventure game I think that a Zelda design structure would have been more fitting overall, but I'm still enjoying it for what it is.

Based on what I've played so far it seems like a $30 game, it's a little higher quality than a $20 game but not quite the quality of a $40 game. I'm finding it to be worth the $20 asking price, and I look forward to seeing more of what the adventure has to offer.
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