Well we’re getting down to the nitty gritty here, aren’t we? We’re a whopping 50 rounds into the Backlog Bingo, and the pickin’s are getting slim indeed. There are only half of the original 30 games still available, and I gotta say, I’m not really enthusiastic about what I have left to look forward to.
But first things first. One of the decisions I made at the end of the previous ten sessions was that things were going far too slow, and to speed things along a bit, I’d leave every tenth session up to the gaming gods. The Random Number Generator would choose a number, and whatever game was chosen would be taken back behind the barn and… dealt with. Papa EA-style.
And I stuck to my guns on it. Round 50 came around much quicker than I expected, but it was time to click that generate button and see who the (un)lucky contestant would be. It turns out, that contestant turned out to be Eastshade, a quaint and laid-back little adventure game featuring a bunch of furries and a main character that likes to paint. I will admit, I was a little bummed seeing this one go. It never really had it’s chance, as the RNG never, ever seemed to choose Number 1. Well, not until now.
I don’t really want to see Eastshade go, but I also have to be honest with myself; I never should have put the game down to begin with. It’s one of those games that’s great for a weekend when you’re just looking for something different. Once that moment passes, it passes. I’ve tried to pick it back up several times since, which is why it ended up on the bingo card. But I’ve reached a point where I just don’t remember what I was supposed to be doing in the game, and it’s just vague enough in its setup to keep the next objective from being obvious. After a few minutes of fumbling about trying to figure out who to talk to and where to go, I just end up turning it off again. Most of the time when something like this happens, I’ll end up re-starting the game from the beginning. I can’t see myself doing that with Eastshade. As I said, it would’ve been great for a bored weekend, but its time has passed, and so here we are. The gaming gods have spoken. Eastshade is gone.
Aside from that, I was able to complete three other games and remove them from the board as well. Splinter Cell Double Agent, Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice, and Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy all rolled credits this time, and it was truly a great feeling to finally be done with Sphinx. It’s not a bad game, but it’s an old game, and old games have old game design, a lot of which is largely considered obsolete by today’s standards. It was a good game though, and I’m glad I was able to finish it off. Splinter Cell DA wraps up my domination of all things Splinter Cell, and now I have completed all the games in the main series. I patiently await a Splinter Cell 7. I only needed to play Hellblade for about an hour in order to finish it and wrap it up, but holy shit that hour feels like forever. There are some marathon battles toward the end of the game, and by the time you watch the endgame cutscene, you’ll feel just as tired and worn out as Senua herself.
Other games I played during these sessions were that eternal thorn in my side (Yakuza 0), some laid back yet frustrating gaming in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Unravel, and what I consider to be one of the most agonizing and trudgingly arduous games I have ever played, Ori and the Blind Forest.
I was lucky enough to get TWO gaming sessions for Ori back-to-back, and holy shit that game gets on my last nerve. It’s just not a fun game. It’s gorgeous. The music is wonderful. There’s a touching story about strength and survival. And it’s a fucking chore to play. Stay tuned to this blog because there’s a pretty good chance Ori will end up in a very special Rant-astic.
The last game I played was Little Nightmares. I didn’t finish it, but it’s a pretty short game and I’m about halfway through it. I can see myself just booting it up outside of the random number generator and finishing it off.
In any case, sessions 51-60 should be interesting, as these games are now really starting to wear thin on my nerves. Some of them I still look forward to playing, like A Plague Tale and Nier Automata. Others, like Silent Hill HD Collection and The Outer Worlds, have yet to even be chosen once. I personally think the random number generator is kinda broken. Just a quick look through my list will show a lot of the games having been chosen repeatedly, while others languish away. Some of them I’m just tired of looking at, like Need for Speed Payback. Seriously, what was I thinking putting a fucking Need for Speed game on this list? I don’t know if I’ve ever beaten one. With only 15 games remaining, the possibilities of repeats are going to go way up, so that will either result in the completion of more games or the abandonment of a few as I get more and more tired of looking at them.
In the end, Session 60 will see the end of yet another title, so no matter what, we’ll be down to, at the most, 14 titles by the next recap. Which ones will still be around? We can only wait and see.
