2019 games back-log

[vladgd]

10. Shining Force Sword of Hajya



Kind of a random entry. I am a big fan of Shining Force II for the genesis, probably my alltime favorite srpg. Not too hot on the first game, but this game comfortably fits in the middle.

No exploration, just 24 battles with some town menu stuff inbetween, but a solid game, and under $5.00 on the 3ds e shop. Recommended.

1. Front Mission 4
2. Paper Mario TTYD
3. Luigis Mansion
4. Zelda Wind Waker
5. Rebel Galaxy
6. Persona Q
7. Eternal Darkness
8. Dragon Quest
9. Strange Journey Redux
10. Shining Force Sword of Hajya

I'll most likely beat more and if/when I do, I'll update, but I set out to do 10 last year and I did it, and I set out to do 10 again this year, and I did it again. That's ~23 games nixed off from my backlog, and a lot of em have been around for a long time.

Out of the lot, Persona Q may be my least favorite of those games,  Eternal Darkness is by far the most fun I've had out of the list, and Front Mission 4 is the game I feel best about completing since I've started and stopped the game many times over the past 15+ years.

[Bobbias]

Congrats on beating so many games. I almost never manage to beat anything :/

That said, most of the games I spend any real time on are things you can't really beat. Path of Exile, rhythm games, minecraft, terraria (ok, you can "beat" those, but they're more timesinks than beatable games in my view).

[vladgd]

That's typically what I started avoiding when I started doing this. Can't beat it? Don't play it. I also tried not starting anything I had no intention of finishing. If something was too long and I wasn't feeling a long game (of which probably a majority of the games I want to finish are well over 20 hours long), I'd look for something shorter.

All in all this year, all 10 of those games hours combined was probably less than I played monster hunter world alone last year. I ain't exactly beaming with free time anymore, but somehow can still manage.

Fully intend to add to the list, but maybe I'll touch up on one of those "can't beat this" games, maybe an mmo, or play tekken again or something.

[Bobbias]

Well some of the problem likely also stems from the ADHD. I finished the first playthrough of Nier Automata and absolutely loved it, started my second playthrough then... just stalled out and haven't felt like playing again, despite how fucking good that game is. I've picked up Atelier Lulua, Tyranny, and Y's 1 and 2 recently, but I've stalled out somewhere in the course of each one of them, and just never find myself feeling like actually playing any of them again (it might change with Lulua because that's the most recent one out of that list). But the problem is that if I'm not feeling a game, I can't just hop in and hope that experiencing the game again will spark my passion to continue it again. My brain just don't work that way. Either I'm feeling it, or I'm not, and nothing will change things. And if I ain't feeling it, I'm not going to be able to concentrate, no matter how much I intellectually want to play and enjoy the game. I just literally can't concentrate on it, and lose all enjoyment when I try to force things.

I definitely think you're going about things the right way in terms of essentially forcing yourself to beat stuff in the limited time you have though. It's a good way to ensure that you actually beat the games you set out to beat.

[Spectere]

Well some of the problem likely also stems from the ADHD. I finished the first playthrough of Nier Automata and absolutely loved it, started my second playthrough then... just stalled out and haven't felt like playing again, despite how fucking good that game is.

Ending B was the hardest one for me to get through just because the playthrough with Nines was so similar to 2B's. The only silver lining is that the hacking mechanic makes boss fights hilariously trivial, so that sped things up by quite a bit.

It really is worth pushing past it, though. I promise, the game gets a lot different after you get ending B.

[vladgd]

Ever since I changed my mentality, I've had an easier time beating things. Most of it is just not even playing stuff I know I ain't got the time or motivation to finish, and the other part is knowing I've been missing out on a lot of good goddamn games, and as a videogame player I deserve to enjoy more games than I did before I started...so...ahem...

11. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night



I like castlevania, I like metroid, I like "metroidvanias" like...shadow complex...

So, if shadow complex is more on the metroid end of the spectrum, this is more of the castlevania end of the spectrum. Makes since since Koji Igarashi the castlevania guy was the head of this project shows that this is a castlevania ass game. You could call it symphony of the night 2, since it's essentially just that, a sequel to that fantastic game...mechanically speaking, not lore/story. Music, enemies, level design, gameplay, all sotn, even the save menu select music screams castlevania. lets take this bloodstained track compared to "cough" this sotn track, these ninjas know what we wanted, these ninjas don't hide it.

Not sure if im going to platinum trophy this bitch, but I 100% the map, and afiak beat all bosses, including optional bosses.

tl;dr this game is fantastic pay koji his $40.00 usd and experience a videogame ass videogame done well.

now maybe I can paint some damn warhammer minis instead of being addicted to a videogame, NEXT!

[Spectere]

I backed the shit out of Bloodstained when it was on Kickstarter and I'm SO FUCKING GLAD it turned out to be awesome.

I'm only about two hours in, unfortunately, since this past week (and weekend) was pretty busy. I plan to play the shit out of it this coming week, however. I did get to smack the crap out of David Hayter, though, so life is good.

[vladgd]

12. DOOM (2016)



I feel privileged to have recently came off a kickass castlevania game, to literally...one of my favorite single player fps games...ever?

Not even joking. Half-Life takes the cake, and I'm not counting deus ex games (they're more of a hybrid genre), but after half-life...what other single player fps do I like more than this game?  Even with that, the shooting in doom runs circles around half-life, half-life is just king in level design which I tend to prefer, so apples to oranges.

I am extremely glad I waited until I had a new pc to play this. Now in 1440p on a large monitor.  I pretty much quit the fps genre thinking I didn't even like it anymore, and it's more I just don't like the fps games companies are making anymore. Give me fast movement, no reloading, all the weapons at once, no ducking behind cover to wipe off the raspberry jam, and fast challenging gameplay over those boring stop and pop shooters any day.

DOOM Eternal is a day one buy assuming life things don't get in the way. Fantastic. 11/10 game.

[Spectere]

I feel your frustration with the FPS genre. CoD getting ridiculously popular for years was probably the single worst thing to happen to the genre overall, as all the industry did was copy its corridor-inspired level design. Doom 2016 proved that not only can you modernize old-school FPS design, but you can do so in a way where it works with consoles.

It's not to say that it's the only one in recent history to do so, but I'd say that it manages to successfully take what Serious Sam and the Machine Games Wolfenstein titles did, crank everything up to 12, polish the bits that were too jagged, and make something that's even more busy and chaotic than the originals. Woooooo boy, what a game. So psyched for Eternal!

[vladgd]

13. Metroid Prime



LOOOOOOOOOOOONG time coming, played this when it was new, got to the windwaker part of the game where you have to collect the mcguffins to see the end, quit. Played again in 2008, got to the impact crater, seen the infiniately respawning metroids which are randomly immune to 3/4 of your weapons, said fuckkkkkk that, quit again.

FINISHED, DONE

Either way, great game, one of the best soundtracks in videogame history in my honest opinion, and iunno, who doesn't know metroid prime? It's gud.

[Spectere]

I need to play through Prime again. I actually started practicing speed strats in it (on the original 0-00 version, that is) several years back and was consistently able to do the early space jump, hive mecha skip, and a few boost ball bypasses. I should really get back into it at some point.

I also need to get through Prime 2 and Prime 3 (I still have a sealed copy of the latter for after I beat the former).

[vladgd]

14. Plants vs Zombies



Slowing down on world of warcraft now that im 60 and don't really want to do dungeons, so polished up another game I started a decade ago. Now if only they'd make a sequel worth playing.

Can I hit 15? WE'LL SEE!

[vladgd]

15. Disgaea 1 Complete



Uhh, that didn't take long. I think i beat this game in like 3 days from start to finish...

Surprisingly playable after having beaten d5 last december. More used to the cutesy silly anime saturday morning cartoon vibe this time around, so it was pretty tolerable.

Not bothering with postgame stuff, just wanted to polish this game off since I bought it I think before I got disgaea 5...but I took it out of the shrinkwrap...3-4 days ago...

Still, kinda wanted to play that game for over a decade, chewed through it, enjoyed it probably more than disgaea 5 to be honest. However, I might actually dip back into 5 to try some postgame stuff if I feel like it, getting billions of statpoints sounds cool.

15 games before november, I swear I don't play games 24/7, but I'm kind of impressed with what I've managed to finish this year. Anything more will just be a bonus.

[vladgd]

16. Links Awakening Remake



So I got bronchitis, and last year it lasted...ohh several months, so I've been feeling kinda miserable. When that started up, decided to buy a switch to ease the pain, but was too sick to even really play the thing. So after a week or two of owning the damn thing, I got well enough to play it, so despite getting pokemon right away...and..."cough" 3-4 other games "cough", I really wanted to play links awakening, so again..."cough" bought that because fuck money "cough".

Long story short, I almost don't wanna count this as a new game completed because it's actually a really faithful (albiet with a lot of QoL updates) remaster of the gbc game, which I beat some 20 years ago. But the original had only 2 buttons, this one has shield and pegasus boots actually mapped to their own buttons, it handles different enough to where while very similar, it plays different enough to the originals.

It's a damn good zelda game, while I was luke warm on wind waker, this one is fantastic. Second only to OoT in my opinion. I'm probably the only person in the world to buy a switch, get pokemon, get bored immediately (playing it now and enjoying it, just bad first impressions), bought this zelda game and chewed through it in 4-5 days. All the while not even considering breath of the wild (game gets a lot of praise, but it kinda doesn't seem like a zelda game at all).

Ending this with bronchitis fucking sucks, second time getting it, first was last year, and I hope to christ I don't get it next year. I'm on day 23 of this bullshit and I'm hacking up a lung daily. Getting sick for a few days sucks enough, but after a few weeks it's just depressing. I don't even smoke, why me?

Too late in the year to gun for 20, but I think I can finish pokemon and MAYBE one other game before January 1st. We'll see how the physical health goes between now and then.

[vladgd]

17. Pokemon Shield



Slow start, didn't really get into it. AFTER the start, while a flawed game, it's some of the better times I've had with a pokemon game in the past few years. Still a bit too much story for my liking, but "feels" toned down compared to sun and moon (which I didn't even make it to the second island challenge i hated that game so much), so that's a bonus. It does still very much feel like an on rails experience, but they give you more of an illusion you can go and do whatever, and the wild area helps.

I'd probably rate the game lower if I didn't live with my girlfriend who has her own switch, and copy of sword...and running around doing "raid" battles with her is fun. They may not be exciting on their own, but they're an INSANE source of exp candy (you can powerlevel like no other pokemon game with this) meaning you really have no consequences of trying new guys since it's so easy to boost exp. Not to mention you get the chance to catch the pokemon in said "raids" so it's a passive way of catching mons.

It's a good start to a non competitive pokemon multiplayer system. I wouldn't say drop everything and get the game for the wild area alone (it's a good size area, but it isn't massive or anything), but it's got enough substance to where it's a good addition, and I can easily see this being improved in future games.

Ain't going to pick this over my beloved original gameboy pokemon red, or the original gbc silver, but it's a big step up from sun and moon, and I can't really complain there. I didn't love the game, but I enjoyed it.