Tag Archives: backlog beatdown

Injustice, Tomb Raider and Organ Trail

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It’s been tough getting game time in these last two weeks. I must have underestimated how busy I would be during the summer. Most of my time has been sucked up playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which as most know is basically unbeatable. But I did finish a game this week at least and made some progress.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Cost: $39.99

Status: Completed

Time to beat: 5 hours and 25 minutes

Shame how Deathstroke just turned into the character for noobs.

Shame how Deathstroke just turned into the character for noobs.

Ricardo already posted a review on the site about Injustice, but I had a chance to play through it on my own. What a dumb, but fun, game. Besides the ho-hum character design, this is exactly what I wanted out of a superhero fighting game. Created by NetherRealm studios, the game is similar to the studio’s previous fighting game, Mortal Kombat, but differentiates itself enough to make the fighting mechanics interesting. What am I talking about? I never really play fighting games, but the DC Comics hook and a little peer pressure got me into playing this game.

One of the best parts of the game are the transitional stages. When a player throws a fighter against a wall, they sometimes will break through into another part of the stage in an absolutely ridiculous animation. It’s a joy to watch as much as finding out each character’s special attack, which are arguably crazier than the screen transitions. Actually, pretty much all of the game is off the wall, when considering that the main story arc is about two different dimensions and DC favorites jumping back and forth between them. It’s silly, but completely entertain and a blast to play.

I turned out to be partial to fast characters, like Flash and Nightwing, while still enjoying a few others such as Ares. Unfortunately, I could never win an online game, because people are just too good at fighting games. There is a lot of theory that I simply don’t know and my twitch reaction time isn’t always the best. Still I had fun with the single player and I could stomp down a few friends with a bit of effort. Well worth the price I paid for the game and for anyone who is either a fighting game or DC Comics fan.

Tomb Raider

Cost: $39.99

Status: Incomplete

Time played: 8 hours and 25 minutes

Lara reacts with grief after killing a man, but 15 minutes later, she kills a dozen more.

Lara reacts with grief after killing a man, but 15 minutes later, she kills a dozen more.

One of the biggest games to be released this year was Lara Croft’s return adventure. It’s a gritty reboot, of course. I forgot that it was rated M until the first time Lara was violently impaled by a innocent branch. This game holds no punches and could almost be considered a bit torturous to the heroine. She gets her payback though, with out-of-place execution moves that would be nearly impossible to learn within eight hours of being on an island. At least they look cool!

The game is basically Batman: Arkham City mixed with Uncharted, which is not a knock to the game at all. It plays to the idea that every new item or weapon you get will  unlock a previous area that was formerly inaccessible. It’s fun, and the game plays best when there is no combat involved. It’s not that combat is bad, it’s just dry when compared to how much fun exploring and collecting is. Maybe I want a game that plays like a modern Donkey Kong 64.

Going to continue plowing through it. My goal is to get this game done this week.

Organ Trail

Cost: ~$5 Android Humble Bundle 6

Status: Incomplete

Time played: 1 hours and 10 minutes

Name them after your friends for twice the fun!

Name them after your friends for twice the fun!

Organ Trail is simply Oregon Trail with zombies. You make a team of four ragtag survivors and attempt to travel to the other side of the country. Along the way, your station wagon gets attacked by zombies and some of your survivors can be bit. At some of the stops there is an option to kill an infected survivor in hopes of protecting the rest of the team. It really isn’t that much different from, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s still fun to play and I hope to get into it more. It also just dawned on me that this is kind of a rogue-like, which is a genre I have been missing on my phone for a while. Hope to put much more time into this in the coming weeks. If you’re interested, it might still be on sale on humblebundle.com and is playable on PC and Mac as well as Android.

 

Added to backlog:

Android Humble Bundle 6

 The Witcher 2

Theme Hospital

 

10000000, Kingdom Rush and Guacamelee

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Being forced to outside of the house as the school year ended made tending to my game backlog a bit difficult. Luckily, I still have many handheld and mobile games to play, but with two new Humble Bundles coming out over the last week, my net gain has been in the negatives. Mobile games have been a huge time waster for me, but at least I have been engaging games that can be actually beaten.

10000000

Cost: Free

Status: Completed

Time to beat: 4 hours and 13 minutes

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It may seem impossible at the start, but this room will make your brave little runner juiced up!

Last week, 100000000 was free on the Amazon app store. As an Android user, I was unaware this critically acclaimed game was even released on Google’s platform until checking the daily free app. I found myself entranced by the simple ingenuity of matching blocks to defeat monsters. There are a few games like this already on the market – the Puzzle Quest series comes to mind – but mixing endless runner and match three together gives an unparalleled sense of urgency.

10000000 continually pushes scoring 10,000,000 points to beat the game. At the beginning it’s an impossible task, but as the player runs further they grow more powerful. There are RPG elements, albeit boiled down to the basics, which encourages players to take another swing at it when they would normally be discouraged to continue. Unlike most puzzle games where I hit a wall of diminishing returns on my score, my score continually rose. Even if it’s more reflective of my time put into the game than my actual skill, it is still satisfying.

Excellently designed for a mobile game, each run can take about three minutes before the player is killed making it perfect for standing in line. On top of that, the progression makes it enjoyable for even longer play sessions. The problem with long play sessions: they reveal exactly how short the game is.

Kingdom Rush

Cost: $1.99

Status: Completed

Time to beat: 6 hours and 5 minutes

Besides the gameplay, the art style is a joy to look at as well.

Besides the gameplay, the art style is also a joy to look at.

Android users don’t have a comparable application such a Game Center that iOs users get to unify all of their games together. Recently, Google announced Play Game Services as their attempt to make gaming on Android more accessible. I was excited to test out the cross platform play, the cloud saves and leaderboards Google promised at their I/O conference. Desperate to try new offerings from glorious leader Google, I bought one of the few games that integrated Play Game services that day, Kingdom Rush. Unfortunately, the game services features were nothing more than achievements. Cloud saves and leaderboard were nowhere to be found. Disappointed, I decided to play the game and I discovered one of the most addicting tower defense games I have ever played.

It took awhile for me to figure out what set Kingdom Rush apart from the hordes of other tower defense games currently on the market, but the main aspect seems to be the interactivity and sheer difficulty of the game. On Normal difficulty it is a very challenging game. The setup is the most important part and sometimes the game will throw a curveball half way through that will poke a hole in your initial strategy. It’s discouraging, but also gives the player a glimpse of hope when they realize where they went wrong. Every time I wanted to jump back into complete it. Most tower defense games are just a matter of waiting, but Kingdom Rush gives the player access to a couple of spells to cast on each wave of enemy. This keeps the player invested and on their toes, similar to the sunlight in Plants Vs. Zombies, while most tower defense games just have the player wait until it is over. Unlike many other tower defense games, progression also continually drives the players. Stars for good performance give the player a reason to go back and perfect past levels. What a great little game that I stumbled upon.

Guacamelee!

Cost: $11.99 (Playstation Plus)

Status: Completed

Time to beat: 6 hours and 20 minutes

gaming-guacamelee-screenshot-9

The humor doesn’t always hit the mark, but it’s usually charming.

I have been craving for a game to play on my Vita for a while now. Guacamelee! is more of a console game, but I wanted to see how a game made for the big screen would translate to the smaller one. Turns out – for the most part – very well. Besides the sometimes-small text, I would think that the game was made with the Vita in mind. Thank Drinkbox studios for making cross play such a breeze and the lack of extra shoulder buttons noticeable. Guacamelee! is one of the best titles of the year due to its level design, art direction and engaging combat.

The gameplay and the frequent appearance of Chozo statues took me back to the days of playing Metroid: Fusion on my Gameboy Advance. I would be whipping out my Vita to pump up the power of my Luchador and give him the ability to unlock new areas to explore. Near the end the bosses and enemies became a bit of a drag by always putting up a shield that required a massive amount of hits before it was broken. It wasn’t as much fun as taking out dozens of enemies at a time, but it wasn’t too big of hassle. Overall it was satisfying experience and money well spent with some neat exploration puzzles that any fan of Castlevania and Metroid would appreciate.

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Next week I plan on playing more of the 2013 version of Tomb Raider. From what I hear it’s one of the best games of the year, but I am only about half way through it. So far it’s enjoyable, but more on that next week!

Added to backlog:

Rocksmith

Injustice

Poker Night 2

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon

TellTale Bundle

Humble Bundle 8

Prologue

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I have a problem.

I can’t pass up a good deal. Even if I don’t need something, finding a great deal on a piece of technology or even food gives me a little rush at the checkout. Sure, saving money is great, but there is one major drawback. Lack of use. I hate wasting anything. When I hate wasting anything, buyers remorse happens a lot when I buy something I don’t need and end up not using it. It’s a vicious cycle.

The biggest culprit of my downfall is video games. I have tons of them. Sure it might be good that someone who wants to write about video games professionally has a large collection of them, but a lot of the time they would be purchased to simply gather dust, physically or virtually. Thanks to Amazon, Steam and Green Man Gaming I can find a deal on nearly every game, old and new. Just today I grabbed a two for ten deal off a site I had never heard of before thanks to SlickDeals. Hooray! Now I own DarkSiders II and Deus Ex: Human Revolution! Then a thought came to me: I needed to see if I actually owned these games before I bought them.

I fired up Steam and breathed a sigh of relief when I found that I owned neither of them. But, the fact that I have to check without actually knowing what games I own told me that I had to do something. Rather than swear off buying games entirely (that will never happen and would probably be bad from a career standpoint) I will take time to beat the games I buy and jot them down in this column, along with thoughts about the game and purchases the previous week.  Although I am no doctor, this seems like the healthiest way to curb my addiction, since I will be gaining valuable knowledge about games and will be able to brush up on my writing at the same time, but I care about my health a lot that’s why I go to the best health centers, and have a Spokane medical malpractice lawyer in case something goes wrong during my health checkups or treatments.

For a look into how many games I have failed to beat, or even touch, I imported my Steam account into Backloggery.com. I went down the list and checked off every game I had beaten. After much scrolling and clicking, it turned out the results were mostly unsurprising. Out of the 170 games I own on Steam I had only beaten 41 of them. This needs to be put to an end. The quest to complete my backlog needs to start now when I have the time. But first, I need a few ground rules to keep me sane and accountable.

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1. Attempt to beat every game I can

The keyword here is attempt. Every game will be started with the intention to beat. But to be realistic, there are some games that are just too hard for me to complete or can’t be finished. For example, I have sunk countless hours into the latest SimCity, but there isn’t a foreseeable end to the game. At no point are the credits going to roll. But there is a feeling I get when I am nearing the limit of what a game has to offer me. An example of a game that is too hard is Osmos. That game gets to the point of restarting over and over hoping to get a better position and becomes completely frustrating and hopeless experience. Those games I will just count as beat, since I got all I wanted (or could handle) from that experience.

2. Mark down every game I buy between posts

I want to keep myself accountable if I buy any games while trying to beat my backlog. This includes even the Humble Bundles I pick up. Backsliding into a higher game count isn’t the worst thing that could happen, because at least I will be logging and keeping track of it, but I want to at least discourage myself from spending money and increasing my backlog.

3. Don’t feel ashamed to use FAQs, if needed

Alright, most games should be attempted to be beaten solely on my own, but as a human I have the tendency to get stuck in places. Normally I just give up when I hit a seemingly impossible section because looking up how to beat a level or puzzle of a game irks the insides of me and makes me feel like I didn’t actually beat the game. But here is where that mentality stops. I am here for the experience the developers have created, not to get frustrated with my own stupidity. Besides, there are many other parts in my life for me to get frustrated at. Shoelaces, am I right guys?

4. Beat, not complete

While there is a spot to mark off a game as completed as opposed to beaten, I want to set realistic goals. Trying to finish over a hundred full length games with the added pressure of having to search every little nook and cranny, sounds like something that would drive me to the edge of sanity. Seeing the end credits would be enough to make me feel like my purchase was worth it. Although, if the game was compelling enough I am not going to hold back an urge to collect everything, but I will just not make it a priority.

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So here goes nothing. This is an experiment that will hopefully help me finish the games I spent money on and as a bonus, provide content to the site. The first game I will attempt to finish will be the Guacamelee! I have almost neared completion of that game and will eventually be able to beat it.  Hope everyone enjoys reading this. See you next week!