The Backlog Check-in Vol. 330: 4/27/24: Endless Ocean Luminous Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: Almost My Floor, Ashina: The Red Witch, Cybertrash Statyx, The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, Tiny Tinas’s Wonderlands

Finished: Almost My Floor

Playing: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Added: Nothing

Games releasing this week
Abiotic Factor
Armed and Gelatinous
Chill Pulse
Cyber Citizen Shockman 3: The Princess from Another World
Denizen
Echoes of the Plum Grove
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
Endless Ocean Luminous
The Fall of Elena Temple
Farming Simulator 22 - Farm Production Pack
Front Mission 2: Remake
Foundry
Great Houses of Calderia
Hexguardian
Homeworld: Vast Reaches
Hunt: Showdown
Indika
Loop Hero
The Lullaby of Life
MotoGP 24
Multiverse Designer
Outrider Mako
Planet Zoo: Barnyard Animal Pack
Poltergeist Watcher
Potion Shop Simulator
Sclash
Sea of Thieves
Sherwood Extreme
Stronghold: Definitive Edition - Valley of the Wolf
Surmount: Little Climbers on a Big Adventure
Tales from Candleforth
Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya
Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago
Undead Inc.
Untamed

[canedaddy]

Played recently: Balatro, Gris

Finished: nothing

Added to backlog: nothing

Current backlog: 35


I checked out a couple of games last week but nothing got its hooks in me in my comedown from Sea of Stars. I'll try again this week.

Has anyone here played Pentiment, one of the four that came from Xbox to PS? I see it's on sale on PSN. IGN gave it a 10/10.

https://www.ign.com/articles/pentiment-review

[argyle]

Games added: Castle Crashers Remastered, HAAK (arrived in the mail last week, both for Switch), Dex (very, very cheap Switch digital sale - .20 ), Neon White, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (both ps5) & Cuphead (Switch) - those three were GS sales

Last week: Finished Dragon's Dogma 2, played Fallout 4 & Slay the Spire

This week: Going back to Unicorn Overlord now that I'm done w/ DD2, and I'd like to start one of the many sidesplorers in my backlog - not sure which one yet.

Dragon's Dogma 2 was good, but it could have been great. The gameplay was very fun, the world was big and mostly interesting - but they didn't give you a lot of compelling reasons to explore other than "I haven't been there yet". I always felt that there weren't enough sidequests. It could have used something like the Elder Scrolls games have, optional storylines that are interesting & give you an excuse to explore around. The main storyline was pretty anemic as well, and wrapped up like a wet fart. Some parts of the story weren't wrapped up at all, and I guess that could have been because I missed something - but if so, that's still annoying because games shouldn't let you just miss main story stuff. When I finished, I had one quest in my log that wasn't finished, because it broke. And due to the wonderful save system - or lack thereof - I couldn't go back & fix it without losing a ton of progress, so I just said "screw it" and finished the game. BTW, for those that don't know, you can save by sleeping in a bed - either at an inn or one of the houses you buy - or the game autosave. That's it. And if you load an "inn save", it deletes the last autosave. So that makes the quest jankiness that occurs even more fun, since you can't just make a save and have that to fall back on if things go sideways.

The star of the show here, like I mentioned, is the gameplay. The combat is a blast. The game encourages you to change classes, and each one feels unique and has its own fun abilities to play with. Working with the pawns is also fun at times, but can also be a chore at times - and they never shut up, saying the same things over & over & over & over & over & over. It's exhausting.

I'll have to see how I feel about it after some time has passed - but GOTY this is not.

[Phaseknox]

Dragon's Dogma 2 was good, but it could have been great. The gameplay was very fun, the world was big and mostly interesting - but they didn't give you a lot of compelling reasons to explore other than "I haven't been there yet". I always felt that there weren't enough sidequests. It could have used something like the Elder Scrolls games have, optional storylines that are interesting & give you an excuse to explore around.

The star of the show here, like I mentioned, is the gameplay. The combat is a blast. The game encourages you to change classes, and each one feels unique and has its own fun abilities to play with. Working with the pawns is also fun at times, but can also be a chore at times - and they never shut up, saying the same things over & over & over & over & over & over.

It sounds exactly like the first game which is why some people have been calling it Dragon's Dogma 1.5. I was hoping that Capcom would have improved the story, characters and side quests from the first game because all of those aspects were somewhat lacking. But gameplay and combat still made it a ton of fun to play. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t improve the weaker aspects of the original. I’m still looking forward to playing it when I get a PS5, but my expectations are lower now than they initially were.

[canedaddy]

Playing: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

How are you liking that? I loved Borderlands 1 and 2 but never finished 3... something about it didn't click (maybe the terrible UI/menus?).

I'm hesitant to play Tiny Tina just because of Tiny Tina. She was fine in very small doses but a whole game with her yapping seems like it would be headache-inducing.

[isthatallyougot]

I finished up playing Mercenaries mode quite a bit in RE3 along with a second run where I could see all the alternate choices as well as punishing Nemesis for being the abomination he is! It's still a really great game and I had so much fun returning to it.

I also finally finished configuring Morrowind to my liking. I usually don't need to tweak and tinker too much with PC games. There are small issues from time to time, but with Morrowind we're dealing with 1) An old game, 2) A game designed to be played with KB&M, and 3) A Bethesda game, lol. That's quite a bit of effects working against a smooth experience.

I wanted to play with controller and that took a good while to set up just to my liking so that it felt like a smooth and natural experience. I would have never played this with KB&M - it just doesn't feel right, given the type of game and my history with the franchise. I also wanted as pure to original experience as possible for my first time through which required a couple of patches/mods that took a bit to configure the way I wanted. I wanted things to look as good as possible without being "untrue" to the original, if that makes sense. And I was having some issues with the UI acting wonky from changes I made to the size for legibility. (The default is incredibly tiny and I didn't like it.) After laboring through some things, I've got it up and ready for the way I want to play - mostly the original game as-is, just with some presentation, control and UI enhancements for the modern world along with the removal of the trademark Bethesda technical proficiency.

I've only just dipped my toes into things, but I'm excited to have it ready to go and am ready to really get lost in it. I hope it lives up to my love for the series (especially Oblivion).

Edit: Cane & phase, I still haven't played any entry in the Borderlands franchise despite having them all. I ought to rectify that. My kid enjoyed the first. I think I'd enjoy it too, but who knows.

[crimson_tide]

Izzy my man, thanks for the lowdown on online storefronts. Next, I'mma need to know about some emulation because what I need is more games for more analysis paralysis .

Played: Infinite Wealth. On chapter 12 and speeding toward a climax I am sure. I loved the game before and love it so much more after chapter 7. Y'all need to get in on this They have paced it well. I will gripe a bit about the dungeons. I think I prefer the 'hey, here's this tower that's like 30 levels, just grind here's approach of the last game as opposed to these drab dungeons in this one. They are just there to grind but they tried something and it's just not matching the level of everything else on offer here. Still getting that platinum though!

Bought: Disgaea 5, Langrissier 1&2, Trails in the Sky FC, Mass Effect collection and SNK Collection are all in my cart for Steam . going to definitely get Disgaea 5, we'll see about the rest

Beat: Nothing

At the park with the kiddo and it's back to work tomorrow for the finishing stretch before summer at the end of June! Hope all's well fam

[Phaseknox]

Playing: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

How are you liking that? I loved Borderlands 1 and 2 but never finished 3... something about it didn't click (maybe the terrible UI/menus?).

I really liked Borderlands 1, 2 and The Pre-Sequel, but I didn’t like 3 as much because the story and characters were mid, the levels were linear and the difficulty wasn’t balanced for playing it solo with a ridiculous amount of enemies to fight and bosses that were bullet sponges clearly designed for co-op.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands starts off promising like a medieval fantasy version of Borderlands, but due to the concept of it being Tiny Tina’s tabletop RPG it becomes repetitive quickly because instead of embarking on a big ongoing adventure exploring and traversing large open environments taking on quests like in the Borderlands games it’s just a series of battle scenarios created by Tiny Tina that consist of fighting waves of enemies in somewhat small open-ish areas or through linear levels. You basically go from one battle encounter to the next that all seem pretty much the same with only the environment graphics changing.

There’s also a linear top down view overworld map that you sometimes traverse with your character having an oversized head and small body that’s meant to be a parody of classic JRPGs, but it’s really out of place and doesn’t fit with the main first person portions of the game.

Tiny Tina talks a lot while you’re playing because she’s creating the scenarios that you’re in, and her humor is hit and miss. If you find her kind of annoying then you probably won’t like her constant banter.

I already quit playing the game because despite liking the graphics, gameplay and combat I didn’t like much else about it. There’s barely a story, the characters are kind of dumb, the overworld map is lame and the game itself is basically a straightforward FPS instead of an FPS RPG like the Borderlands games.

Cane & phase, I still haven't played any entry in the Borderlands franchise despite having them all. I ought to rectify that. My kid enjoyed the first. I think I'd enjoy it too, but who knows.

Borderland 1 and 2 are a couple of my favorite games, The Pre-Sequel and 3 aren’t quite as good IMO but are still good and worth checking out if you like the first two games.

Played: Infinite Wealth. On chapter 12 and speeding toward a climax I am sure. I loved the game before and love it so much more after chapter 7. Y'all need to get in on this

I’ll get in on it just as soon as I finish Yakuza 1-7.

Hope all's well fam

Things have improved a little for me recently compared to how they’ve been for the past few months, so my mood has somewhat improved as well. I think that part of the reason why I’ve been a bit negative lately is because I’ve been kind of cranky, but I’m feeling a little better now.

[canedaddy]

I really liked Borderlands 1, 2 and The Pre-Sequel, but I didn’t like 3 as much because the story and characters were mid, the levels were linear and the difficulty wasn’t balanced for playing it solo with a ridiculous amount of enemies to fight and bosses that were bullet sponges clearly designed for co-op.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands starts off promising like a medieval fantasy version of Borderlands, but due to the concept of it being Tiny Tina’s tabletop RPG it becomes repetitive quickly because instead of embarking on a big ongoing adventure exploring and traversing large open environments taking on quests like in the Borderlands games it’s just a series of battle scenarios created by Tiny Tina that consist of fighting waves of enemies in somewhat small open-ish areas or through linear levels. You basically go from one battle encounter to the next that all seem pretty much the same with only the environment graphics changing.

There’s also a linear top down view overworld map that you sometimes traverse with your character having an oversized head and small body that’s meant to be a parody of classic JRPGs, but it’s really out of place and doesn’t fit with the main first person portions of the game.

Tiny Tina talks a lot while you’re playing because she’s creating the scenarios that you’re in, and her humor is hit and miss. If you find her kind of annoying then you probably won’t like her constant banter.

I already quit playing the game because despite liking the graphics, gameplay and combat I didn’t like much else about it. There’s barely a story, the characters are kind of dumb, the overworld map is lame and the game itself is basically a straightforward FPS instead of an FPS RPG like the Borderlands games.

Well that doesn't sound so hot. Thanks for the word.

I decided to check out The Messenger since I loved Sabotage's work on Sea of Stars. Man, it is really hitting the spot -- fun and funny -- but I don't think I can play it much longer. The double jump comes off an attack, and that move is destroying my right thumb. I'm in the sixth area and I don't think I can go much farther. Bummer, because everything else about this game is wonderful.

[argyle]

It sounds exactly like the first game which is why some people have been calling it Dragon's Dogma 1.5. I was hoping that Capcom would have improved the story, characters and side quests from the first game because all of those aspects were somewhat lacking. But gameplay and combat still made it a ton of fun to play. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t improve the weaker aspects of the original. I’m still looking forward to playing it when I get a PS5, but my expectations are lower now than they initially were.

That's unfortunate. Like I said, it's still a fun game, and I put a ton of time into it before I finished it. But a stronger story & more quests would have really elevated it.

I loved Borderlands 1 and 2 but never finished 3... something about it didn't click (maybe the terrible UI/menus?).

Glad I'm not the only one. I tried to play B3 a few times, both solo & with DG, and I kept bouncing off of it. Overly complex equipment stats are part of it - and the first two may have had that as well, but by 3 I expected that to be better. I had probably played Diablo 3 too much by then, and it gives you a very simple way of telling if something is better at a glance. I don't think that's the only issue I had, but it was a big one.

Played: Infinite Wealth. On chapter 12 and speeding toward a climax I am sure. I loved the game before and love it so much more after chapter 7. Y'all need to get in on this

It's high on my "to play" list, probably late summer or fall. As you guys know I tried going straight from LAD to TMWCHN, but being in the exact same locations again was a bit much that close together so I decided to put it down for the time being. I've been thinking of jumping back into that one soon, and then I'll have another short break before tackling IW.

I decided to check out The Messenger since I loved Sabotage's work on Sea of Stars. Man, it is really hitting the spot -- fun and funny -- but I don't think I can play it much longer. The double jump comes off an attack, and that move is destroying my right thumb. I'm in the sixth area and I don't think I can go much farther. Bummer, because everything else about this game is wonderful.

The Messenger is one of 6 Switch games I've misplaced. They HAVE to be in my house somewhere, but I haven't been able to locate them yet. I have the cases, so I'm assuming I put them in one of those cartridge carrying cases & have misplaced that. Sucks too, not only have I not finished The Messenger (and I'm too stubborn to buy a digital copy when I know I have the physical one somewhere) but that thing has gotten PRICEY too.