The Backlog Check-in Vol. 351: 9/21/24: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Edition

[Phaseknox]

Played: Second Life

Finished: Nothing

Playing: ?

Added: Nothing

Games releasing this week
Against the Storm - Keepers of the Stone
Anarkade
Ara: History Untold
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles
Athena Crisis
Aura of Worlds
Beyond Galaxyland
Bloomtown: A Different Story
Breachway
Cash Cow DX
Cat Rescue Story
City 20
Crossbow: Bloodnight
Crusader Kings III: Roads to Power
C-Smash VRS - New Dimension
Dark Sky
#Drive Rally
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2
EA Sports FC 25
Echo Point Nova
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed
The Forever Winter
G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra
Golden Lap
Go Mecha Ball
GreedFall II: The Dying World
Flowstone Saga
Hidden Path Skirmishes
Iron Meat
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports
Mechabellum
Metal: Helllsinger VR
Monopoly
Mortal Kombat 1 - Khaos Reigns
Murder on Space Station 52
The Nameless: Slay Dragon
Night Slashers: Remake
9th Dawn Remake
One Last Breath
Pineapple: A Bittersweet Revenge
Project Castaway
The Puzzle Maker: Cebba’s Odyssey
Ravenwatch
Remnant II - The Dark Horizon
Reynatis
Rune Coliseum
Shadows of Doubt
Silver Axe - The Honest Elf
63 Days
Throne and Liberty
Tiny Glade
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - Void Shadows
Witchfire
Worlds of Aria
Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition

[crimson_tide]

Oh good, that GI Joe game is coming out soon! Wonder if the kiddo want to co on that one with me...

Oh and guys, guess what! I beat a game that's NOT Like A Dragon!

Played: Hi Fi Rush

Beat: Hi Fi Rush

This week: I don't know...but whatever it ends up being, it's staying on my Steam Deck until credits if I like it!

So that's the trick. I have to play whatever I play exclusively. I keep getting stuck with analysis paralysis and end up getting nowhere in anything I am playing. So no more than 1-2 games on the Deck at any one time.

As for Hi Fi Rush ..there a boss that has a Fiona Apple theme song that is brilliantly integrated to the fight and the theme of that level and then a dance battle in the middle. And the penultimate level is goddamn glorious. And then they botch the game because Chai just sucks, doesn't stop sucking and then because they are wrapping it up he is told by everyone (so by default, we the audience are being told) what a great and special little guy he is. They try to do the Scott Pilgrim thing and nail it aesthetically but the character stuff...nah. That being said, it's definitely something everyone should play because it plays so well. Just know that Chai sucks and never stops sucking even though the game seems to think he has shown growth. He doesn't. This is a real sticking point for me because the mediocre male but is somehow special narrative device is just tired and needs to go. It's currently the 2nd or 3rd best game I played this year though in spite of that.

[argyle]

Games added: Contra: Operation Galuga, Demon's Tilt

Last week: Finished Planet of Lana, played Cursed to Golf, Yars Rising, and LAD: Infinite Wealth

This week: Same

I know I talked about it a little last week when I first finished it, but Planet of Lana is just sublime. I've played 2 fantastic 2D platformers this year, this one & Gris, and I honestly couldn't say which one I like better. Gris is more abstract, but both are absolutely gorgeous and very moving. Both are must-plays, and since they're short they're easy to fit in around other games.

Cursed to Golf is great so far. If they made a golf game out of the Worms series, it would be this. It's a good game to play a few rounds of & then do something else, so I'll probably be chipping away at this one for a while - no pun intended.

Yars Rising has a great sense of humor and a banging soundtrack. Seriously, it sounds like a cross between Persona & Ape Escape music. Gameplay-wise it's fun if a little basic. It's a true sidesplorer, so there's that. As you progress, you hack a lot of terminals - you do this by playing a mini-game that's basically a variant on Yars Revenge. Some of them get really tricky, but they offer you the chance to turn on invincibility for that one hack if you fail several times in a row (I've taken them up on this once so far). I need to put a little more time into this one before really saying much more.

I dug into Infinite Wealth this past weekend, and I'm full hooked on it now. I'm in chapter 3, just after they re-introduce Poundmates to you. I'm really digging the tweak they made to the combat. It's basically the same with one key difference - you have a circle around your character within which you can move them & line up attacks. It makes it so that lining up things isn't completely dumb luck anymore, so there's even more strategy. I have a couple of very, VERY minor nit-picks. The voices of the people in Hawaii who speak English sound like...well, what they are, Japanese people doing an American accent. For the love of God, don't switch your voices to English thinking that may fix this - it doesn't (they didn't re-dub those characters for the fully English voice track), and Kasuga's English voice is horrible. Just absolutely awful. Oh, and this leads to my other minor complaint - the radio talk show. Mainly, it isn't translated at all. Not redubbed (tried it while I had briefly switched to English, but it's still in Japanese) and it's not even subtitled. I don't understand why they even left it in if they weren't going to translate it.

But these are pointless complaints in the big scheme of things. The game is a blast, and I'm very invested in the plot already. Sure, chapter 2 is basically one long cutscene broken up by 2-3 fights, but the story and characters are so interesting that I didn't really mind (much... ). Definitely looking forward to sinking more time into this one.

[jfissel]

I dug into Infinite Wealth this past weekend, and I'm full hooked on it now. I'm in chapter 3, just after they re-introduce Poundmates to you. I'm really digging the tweak they made to the combat. It's basically the same with one key difference - you have a circle around your character within which you can move them & line up attacks. It makes it so that lining up things isn't completely dumb luck anymore, so there's even more strategy. I have a couple of very, VERY minor nit-picks. The voices of the people in Hawaii who speak English sound like...well, what they are, Japanese people doing an American accent. For the love of God, don't switch your voices to English thinking that may fix this - it doesn't (they didn't re-dub those characters for the fully English voice track), and Kasuga's English voice is horrible. Just absolutely awful. Oh, and this leads to my other minor complaint - the radio talk show. Mainly, it isn't translated at all. Not redubbed (tried it while I had briefly switched to English, but it's still in Japanese) and it's not even subtitled. I don't understand why they even left it in if they weren't going to translate it.

But these are pointless complaints in the big scheme of things. The game is a blast, and I'm very invested in the plot already. Sure, chapter 2 is basically one long cutscene broken up by 2-3 fights, but the story and characters are so interesting that I didn't really mind (much... ). Definitely looking forward to sinking more time into this one.

Sounds like you're having a lot of fun!

Finished: Astro Bot (platinum)

Now Playing: Layton's Mystery Journey (3DS)

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 43 games

Got the plat in Astro Bot and I am probably going to play a few random games in between now and Nov 14th when Dragon Quest 3 Remake releases.

[argyle]

This is long overdue:

[isthatallyougot]

The only LoK game I've played was the PS1 original, and while I really dug the presentation, the load times were BRU-TAL. I'll have to emulate it and go back to it and the larger series one day.

***************************

I've still been playing Legend Bowl. I'm about 80 hours in and on my fourth season of my franchise. I'm currently 4-1 and on the hardest difficulty. (Legend) I'm hoping that I'll have some resistance to my dominance so that I can keep playing. Last season on the difficulty below (Superstar), it got really tough in the playoffs, so maybe I can look forward to getting properly abused. The running game has gotten *significantly* harder, so there's that. But I keep raising my game along with the difficulties, so yeah:





I also started up Return to Castle Wolfenstein for a couple of reasons. I was in the mood for a Boomer Shooter and I also wanted to clear some of the installs off my hard drive that have been sitting there. It's not that I need the room, but I get excited about playing something, install it, rinse and repeat, and eventually I'm looking at way too many games that are ready to go, but I can't play every darn thang ya know. It's pretty fun so far. It shows some age, but it's got those hallmark elements that make this genre fun so far, even in the early going. Gotta kill dem Nazis and their abominations, ha.

I'm also planning on going back to Halls of Torment. I've already played 24 hours, and I was having a good time, but the 1.0 just released, which I was waiting on before investing more time. So now I can enjoy the full release and hopefully find some improvements as well.

[jfissel]

Anyone watch the Playstation State of Play just now? Astro Bot DLC coming soon (online challenge levels) and the reveal of

DisplayCollapse view

Ghost of Yotei

coming out next year.



Also, a new Layton game was announced for Switch.

[argyle]

I'm down for the new Dynasty Warriors game next year, and Ghost will end up on PC eventually.

[isthatallyougot]

For those of you who don't want to bother with PC gaming because of the (occasional) hassle, I'll tell a little recent story. I mentioned that I started up Return to Castle Wolfenstein recently - a 20+ year old game, but one that sells on the Steam storefront still.

Anyway, I installed it a long time ago, but just decided to fire it up. Well, first I click the play button and some loading up "noise" starts activating in the background, and I'm eager to dig in. Well, it hiccuped, spurted and flashed a few times and then finally dumped me back onto the game page in my library without starting. I tried again a few times to be sure it wasn't just a one-off, which can sometimes happen of course. Still the same trying to load with no success. So I start digging around and found a patch (called Knightmare 1.42d) that should sort me out. I grab it, scan for malware, extract into my directory and try again. Everything loads up fine. Sweet! Quick fix, no problems. So I started playing and have been enjoying myself for a couple of hours over a few sessions. Next time I try to fire it up, it starts loading my save and *bam*, back to the game page with a crash. I'm like, that's weird. I try a few more times and still a no go. So I turned off cloud saving on Steam so that I could uninstall and reinstall without reinfecting a new installation with whatever was causing the problem. Fresh install now ready to go, with *only* my save folder restored to the proper location, I boot it up again. Still, won't load without crashing. I thought that is very strange. So I did another clean install without restoring even my save file - only replacing the 1.42d patch that remedied the original problem, back to square one, ya know. Boot it up again and it *still* crashes upon trying to start. I'm like what the HECK! Why would it run before but not now. It makes no sense whatsoever. So I do some more digging and found another patch (iortcw) and did the dance to get that one running. And now things are running fine and look even better with no crashes so far. But one down side is that I'm not technically running it through Steam so I don't get to see my hours played. It's a little thing, but I love having that record for the time I've spent with each game. Also, in the process of trying to sort this mess out I discovered a community mod called 'REALRTCW' that is more than just a patch - it's got plenty of improvements and changes, and it's free for owners of the game proper, so I installed it and figured I might give that a play when I'm finished with vanilla.

But, I just thought I'd share for those of you who hate that sort of hassle. I know some of you guys can't stand that sort of thing. Personally, I kind of like it, in a masochistic, twisted sort of way. Granted, it's always preferable when you just install, click play and you're off. And that is usually the case - 95%+ of the time as long as it's not an older title. But there's something in that sort of annoyance that just brings out the stubborn bastard within. (This problem wasn't too bad in this particular case be clear, even if annoying.) I just grit my teeth and the obstinate cuss within is determined to wrassle that bitch to the ground one way or another, lol.

Anyway, with that sorted, it's been pretty fun so far. It's got good atmosphere and the shooting is fun and there are a good number of secrets stashed around. I'm still early though.

[canedaddy]

For those of you who don't want to bother with PC gaming because of the (occasional) hassle, I'll tell a little recent story. I mentioned that I started up Return to Castle Wolfenstein recently - a 20+ year old game, but one that sells on the Steam storefront still.

Anyway, I installed it a long time ago, but just decided to fire it up. Well, first I click the play button and some loading up "noise" starts activating in the background, and I'm eager to dig in. Well, it hiccuped, spurted and flashed a few times and then finally dumped me back onto the game page in my library without starting. I tried again a few times to be sure it wasn't just a one-off, which can sometimes happen of course. Still the same trying to load with no success. So I start digging around and found a patch (called Knightmare 1.42d) that should sort me out. I grab it, scan for malware, extract into my directory and try again. Everything loads up fine. Sweet! Quick fix, no problems. So I started playing and have been enjoying myself for a couple of hours over a few sessions. Next time I try to fire it up, it starts loading my save and *bam*, back to the game page with a crash. I'm like, that's weird. I try a few more times and still a no go. So I turned off cloud saving on Steam so that I could uninstall and reinstall without reinfecting a new installation with whatever was causing the problem. Fresh install now ready to go, with *only* my save folder restored to the proper location, I boot it up again. Still, won't load without crashing. I thought that is very strange. So I did another clean install without restoring even my save file - only replacing the 1.42d patch that remedied the original problem, back to square one, ya know. Boot it up again and it *still* crashes upon trying to start. I'm like what the HECK! Why would it run before but not now. It makes no sense whatsoever. So I do some more digging and found another patch (iortcw) and did the dance to get that one running. And now things are running fine and look even better with no crashes so far. But one down side is that I'm not technically running it through Steam so I don't get to see my hours played. It's a little thing, but I love having that record for the time I've spent with each game. Also, in the process of trying to sort this mess out I discovered a community mod called 'REALRTCW' that is more than just a patch - it's got plenty of improvements and changes, and it's free for owners of the game proper, so I installed it and figured I might give that a play when I'm finished with vanilla.

But, I just thought I'd share for those of you who hate that sort of hassle. I know some of you guys can't stand that sort of thing. Personally, I kind of like it, in a masochistic, twisted sort of way. Granted, it's always preferable when you just install, click play and you're off. And that is usually the case - 95%+ of the time as long as it's not an older title. But there's something in that sort of annoyance that just brings out the stubborn bastard within. (This problem wasn't too bad in this particular case be clear, even if annoying.) I just grit my teeth and the obstinate cuss within is determined to wrassle that bitch to the ground one way or another, lol.

That is why I will never be a PC gamer. I would have thrown my rig out the window somewhere in the middle of that first paragraph. Thank you for sharing.