It took a bit longer to get through the next ten sessions than it did the first, and there are a few reasons for that. First, I took a little time away to focus on a specific title in order to finally get it finished. Second, I’ve been busy with work and life stuff. And third, I was busy surviving Snowpocalypse 21. In any case, this set of play sessions did see two tiles get scratched off the Bingo Board, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.
Let’s get into it, shall we….
Streets of Rage 4 had the privilege of being the first game I scratched off the list. It was the first and last time the random number generator picked the game. I grinded away at it and almost beat it. I finished the session stuck on the final stage. And it bugged me. So much so that I woke up the next morning and had to take another crack at it. It must have been the fatigue the night before, because I beat the stage and the final boss on the first try, without any of the assists I was leaning on previously. In all it was a pretty fun game, but I do think forcing myself through the second half of it kinda killed the buzz a little.
I think I only played SOMA for about an hour. It ended up being a short session and I didn’t really get a good grasp of what the game is. I’ll get back to it one of these days.
It was kind of the same story with The Evil Within 2, though that one was a bit by choice. I don’t know what it is about The Evil Within, but my threshold for that game is extremely low. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but after an hour’s worth of playtime, I’m done. If I had to guess, I think it’s a combination of the camera’s proximity to the main character and his movement. It’s… weird, and can be pretty claustrophobic, to be honest. I couldn’t stand that close to someone in real life, much less follow him around for hours on end. I am getting closer to the end of the game though, and unfortunately it’s suffering from the same disconnect the first one did. I just don’t feel like I’m making progress in the game’s world due to the fractured nature of it. That may also be contributing to my lack of interest.
Need for Speed: Payback was lucky enough to pop up twice in ten sessions, and I was lucky enough to play it! NFS Payback was highly-criticized when it released for it’s lootbox-driven upgrade system, where you use “cards” to upgrade your car with better parts. It’s actually not that different from the way The Crew works, only it was purposefully grindy in order to push real-money purchases onto the player. It was pretty scummy, and EA knew it, so after some backlash they removed all that shit and patched the game up nice and neat. Now it’s back to being your average run-of-the-mill Need for Speed game, meaning it’s not bad, but it’s not great. I’m enjoying it well enough I suppose, once I tune out the cringy “street cred” dialogue that EA insists on shoving in there. In two play sessions I’ve made a decent amount of progress, but it’s starting to get a bit long in the tooth.
I had Journey to the Savage Planet pop back up in the RNG again, and I put a pretty decent amount of time into it. I even played it offline for a bit. I don’t like it. I’ve tried, and I think I can tolerate it long enough to complete it, but I just… don’t like it. It’s something about the aesthetics, or maybe it’s just the pacing, I don’t really know. I should like it. I’ll continue to work on it for the sake of the project.
Mass Effect Andromeda is done. Completed. Finit-o. I am not looking back, either. I got each planet to 100% viability, did most of the loyalty missions, and a decent number of side missions. But there was a point where I just had to say enough was enough. The tasks seemed to never end (and maybe they don’t) and I just got tired of doing them. They weren’t particularly fun. The combat was decent, and was probably the only thing that kept me going. The rest of the game was dull. Extremely dull. I really didn’t care about the vast majority of it. At first, I thought it was me, but the last mission was awesome and I was totally into it. Why they couldn’t have added more of those moments in the game is beyond me. You can read more about my playtime in my Backlog Barbecue write-up on it.
I worked on Star Wars Republic Commando some more. The game is good, and was probably great for its time, but it hasn’t aged well. The missions are pretty long and can be tough at times. The weapons suck and your A.I. teammates aren’t the brightest. They have no sense of self-preservation. I think I have ticked off two out of the three chapters in the game. Maybe next time it pops up I can scratch it off the board.
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy made its debut recently, and I have to admit I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far. I really do think there is a room in the current gaming landscape for those old adventure-platformers. They just have to be good. Yooka-Laylee wasn’t good. It was a bad Banjo-Kazooie clone (because Banjo is still pretty damn fun) and really hurt people’s perception of what that genre can offer. Hopefully we get some other new remasters and reboots this coming generation that will change people’s minds and we might get some more.
Last, Splinter Cell Double Agent got some more love. This is one of the more aggravating games I’ve played recently, but it’s the kind of frustratingly tough gameplay that still manages to be fair. If you fuck up a mission, it’s because of a mistake you made. If you play sloppy, shit’s gonna go south for you real quick. I get loose and careless after playing for a while, and it gets me into all kinds of trouble. Still, I made some great progress during this play session and I’d like to think I’m over halfway through the game at this point.
That wraps up my summary of the sessions 11-20 on my Backlog Bingo card. Judging by how much progress I’ve made over this much time, I do have a feeling this is going to be quite the project. Granted, the more playtime I put into more games, they’ll start dropping like flies eventually, but until that happens, I will have my share of recaps, for sure.
Until next time!
