The Backlog Check-in Vol 313: 12/30/23: Fantavision Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: A Plague Tale: Innocence

Finished: Nothing

Playing: A Plague Tale: Innocence

Added: Nothing

Games releasing this week
The Knight of Nephiart
Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem
Portal: Revolution
Rune Fencer Illya

[crimson_tide]

Happy New Year fam!

Played:...ummm... Vampire Survivors. And 13 minutes of Digimon Cybersleuth just to get it running on my Steam Deck.

Beat: Nothing.

Bought: A lot. For my Steam Deck. But the only one that actually matters is Vampire Survivors. Sorry.

This week: literally ANYTHING but Vampire Survivors. I need an intervention.

So I bought a ton of games in the Steam sale. There's a few I want to get through before doing my game of the year list. Shorties like The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Binary Domain. Out of the pile though, hands down the winner of my attention was Vampire Survivors. I was at the in laws house this week and between hanging with family and doing work stuff, I put FOURTEEN HOURS into this literal nothing game. It's in SERIOUS contention for my game of the year, I can't stop playing it. I intended to dabble in what I bought like Witcher 3 or MM Battle Network or Monster Hunter Rise or Digimon Cybersleuth. Nope. All Vampire Survivors all the time. I love hate this Steam Deck. This thing is gonna be a whole ass problem...

[jfissel]

Finished: Spider-Man 2 (platinum #92)

Now Playing: ???

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 41 games

I did it - got Spider-Man 2 in under the buzzer . Fantastic game, we'll see where it falls in my GOTY rankings.

As for what I'll play next, I will probably go with whatever was voted #2 in my "what should I play next" post...with the caveat that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth comes out at the end of January.

[canedaddy]

Played recently: Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Finished: nothing

Added to backlog: nothing (yet... still eyeballing the PSN sale)

Current backlog: 33


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

2023 went out with maximum suckage... my whole family and I have been sick since before Christmas with all sorts of ailments, from stomach viruses to COVID.

I see Santa Claus brought crim a SteamDeck. Sweet. I was considering buying one with my fantasy football championship winnings, but then I lost.

Got in a lot of time with Like a Dragon between trips to the bathroom. What a great game. I don't think it's intentional, but it cracks me up that the title reflects the fact that it's like Dragon Quest.

[isthatallyougot]

Happy holidays all!

I've still been playing Windbound and having a really fun time. I made it to the final boss on my previous run, but didn't stock up on healing items - had only a tiny amount and still got her down to just a tiny sliver of health before taking a blow that sent me back all the way to the beginning of chapter 1, yet again, lol. I should have been more patient and gathered more resources, but the winds were in my favor to the final area, and I didn't feel like fighting them to go back to previous islands and get some more food to protect myself. In retrospect, my impatience was stupid since it cost me *WAY* more time having to start the whole thing over from square one again, but I did what I did, lol. I've put close to 40 hours into it already, and I love so much about it. It surely has some areas that could be improved, but the overall sensation of an isolated island hopping adventure is really compelling and has kept me engaged through probably 7 or 8 restarts. It's short of an all-time great because of several issues, and I'd love to see what could be done with some greater talent and experience with this formula - fine-tuning and sharpening up some elements, but it's been mostly great overall. I don't understand why it has a 59% rating on Steam. I guess people just don't like the (sometimes) ponderous navigation mostly. And I've seen too many people compare it to BOTW due to its visual similarities. But they're mostly very different, minus a few aspects like the tower activation, which is common to many games.

[argyle]

Games added 4 physical pickups this week - Astalon: Tears of the Earth, Ori: The Collection, and Sea of Stars all for the Switch plus Smelter for the PS4

Last week: Finished Souldiers, played Star Ocean The Second Story R & Broken Age

This week: More of the same.

The Star Ocean 2 remake is fantastic. They just updated the graphics & added some quality of life improvements, but otherwise it's the same game as before. I dabbled with it on the PS1 but never got beyond the first couple of hours or so. I'm about 8 or 9 hours in now and can say it's a really good game. There's a very interesting skill system that you almost have to do a little research on, but it adds a ton of depth to the game. The English voice acting isn't the best, but I'm sticking with it because I don't speak Japanese.

Broken Age is good. Not great, but good - I finished the boy's story (or as much of it as you can before it forces you over to the girl) and I'm a good ways into hers now. Doesn't feel like a very long game at all, and it's very breezy. There's been some new talk of Fran Bow lately, and as it's probably the last point-&-click I played I can say this doesn't hold a candle to it. Fun enough for what it is though, and I am curious to see how the two stories end up tying together.

[isthatallyougot]

Broken Age is good. Not great, but good - I finished the boy's story (or as much of it as you can before it forces you over to the girl) and I'm a good ways into hers now. Doesn't feel like a very long game at all, and it's very breezy. There's been some new talk of Fran Bow lately, and as it's probably the last point-&-click I played I can say this doesn't hold a candle to it. Fun enough for what it is though, and I am curious to see how the two stories end up tying together.

I'll be really curious to see how you feel about things as they wrap up. For me it ended with a real plop of a thud after a pretty strong first act and part of the second, and ultimately made me feel worse about it overall, given the strong first half+. Have you finished all of act 1 and are only missing the girl's half of act 2, or are you just half-way through act 1?

[argyle]

Broken Age is good. Not great, but good - I finished the boy's story (or as much of it as you can before it forces you over to the girl) and I'm a good ways into hers now. Doesn't feel like a very long game at all, and it's very breezy. There's been some new talk of Fran Bow lately, and as it's probably the last point-&-click I played I can say this doesn't hold a candle to it. Fun enough for what it is though, and I am curious to see how the two stories end up tying together.

I'll be really curious to see how you feel about things as they wrap up. For me it ended with a real plop of a thud after a pretty strong first act and part of the second, and ultimately made me feel worse about it overall, given the strong first half+. Have you finished all of act 1 and are only missing the girl's half of act 2, or are you just half-way through act 1?

I...don't know? It gives you the choice of who to play first, so I chose the boy. I played as him until it forced me over to the girl. I haven't noticed any indication of what "act" I'm on.

[isthatallyougot]

Broken Age is good. Not great, but good - I finished the boy's story (or as much of it as you can before it forces you over to the girl) and I'm a good ways into hers now. Doesn't feel like a very long game at all, and it's very breezy. There's been some new talk of Fran Bow lately, and as it's probably the last point-&-click I played I can say this doesn't hold a candle to it. Fun enough for what it is though, and I am curious to see how the two stories end up tying together.

I'll be really curious to see how you feel about things as they wrap up. For me it ended with a real plop of a thud after a pretty strong first act and part of the second, and ultimately made me feel worse about it overall, given the strong first half+. Have you finished all of act 1 and are only missing the girl's half of act 2, or are you just half-way through act 1?

I...don't know? It gives you the choice of who to play first, so I chose the boy. I played as him until it forced me over to the girl. I haven't noticed any indication of what "act" I'm on.

Oh, I see. You're in act 1. I can assure Mr. Autistic Tim Schafer will introduce himself towards the back half of act 2. I hope you feel differently, but I'll just say that I was very positive about things until later in the game too. And the narrative really took a dive for me as well.

[canedaddy]

I've still been playing Windbound and having a really fun time. I made it to the final boss on my previous run, but didn't stock up on healing items - had only a tiny amount and still got her down to just a tiny sliver of health before taking a blow that sent me back all the way to the beginning of chapter 1, yet again, lol. I should have been more patient and gathered more resources, but the winds were in my favor to the final area, and I didn't feel like fighting them to go back to previous islands and get some more food to protect myself. In retrospect, my impatience was stupid since it cost me *WAY* more time having to start the whole thing over from square one again, but I did what I did, lol. I've put close to 40 hours into it already, and I love so much about it. It surely has some areas that could be improved, but the overall sensation of an isolated island hopping adventure is really compelling and has kept me engaged through probably 7 or 8 restarts. It's short of an all-time great because of several issues, and I'd love to see what could be done with some greater talent and experience with this formula - fine-tuning and sharpening up some elements, but it's been mostly great overall. I don't understand why it has a 59% rating on Steam. I guess people just don't like the (sometimes) ponderous navigation mostly. And I've seen too many people compare it to BOTW due to its visual similarities. But they're mostly very different, minus a few aspects like the tower activation, which is common to many games.

Heads up: The game is on sale for $1.99 on PSN right now. I'm about to pick it up along with a few others.