2021 Backlog Thread

[GodisanAtheist]

My god, I finally beat Kingdoms of Amalur. I'll do a write up eventually, but what I can certainly say is this: If you want to stretch the hell out of your dollar, you could do a helluva lot worse than KoA.

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE

Not much to write up about Ori other than it's an absolutely beautiful Metroidvania with a great story. The combat is simple so it focuses more on platforming and simple puzzles to help you navigate the game and it does allow you to access some areas far earlier than you should (depending on how good you are at platforming). The only thing I absolutely hated about the game was the escape sequences. If you don't do them perfect, you're going to be starting the whole sequence over and with how fast-paced they are, you're going to be starting them over quite a bit. Thankfully, the escape sequences all focus on skill and platforming, so if you're constantly failing, it's 100% on you which I really enjoy about games. It doesn't give the player any wiggle room to scream that it's RNG that's screwing them over or a janky mechanic - it's all about how well you can execute the new skills you've acquired thus far and outrun impending doom.

I was able to achieve 100% with almost everything except some of the combat achievements in under 10 hours, so if anyone is looking for a laid back cinematic experience, grab this immediately.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Need something quick and stupid.

Bulletstorm is scratching that itch just right.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Fired up BroForce just to check it out and I am pleasantly surprised. Was hoping to have a solid couch co-op game to play with my kids (and the jury is out given the extreme but cartoony violence) but even single player the game is an absolute blast to play with absurd level destruction + 2D sidescroller + extremely simply gameplay mechanics. Unlocking all the iconic "bros" is worth a chuckle (i.e Rambro, RoBROcop, Bro in Black, etc...)

 

[Stg-Flame]

Fired up BroForce just to check it out and I am pleasantly surprised. Was hoping to have a solid couch co-op game to play with my kids (and the jury is out given the extreme but cartoony violence) but even single player the game is an absolute blast to play with absurd level destruction + 2D sidescroller + extremely simply gameplay mechanics. Unlocking all the iconic "bros" is worth a chuckle (i.e Rambro, RoBROcop, Bro in Black, etc...)

Ellen Ripbro was one of my favorites. My ex and I played BroForce for hours. I just wish the character unlocks reset after you wiped the game because it's far too easy with some characters. Once we discovered you could fly across the map by melee attacking a pig while standing on it, it became a race to see who could find a pig first and ride it to the end of the level.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Ok, need something less "bro-y" and need something with a little more gravitas.

Fired up Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. God damn, that opening literally had chills runnning down my spine. I think I'm in for a "good" time (given the rather depressing subject matter).

 

[Fenixgoon]

Ellen Ripbro was one of my favorites. My ex and I played BroForce for hours. I just wish the character unlocks reset after you wiped the game because it's far too easy with some characters. Once we discovered you could fly across the map by melee attacking a pig while standing on it, it became a race to see who could find a pig first and ride it to the end of the level.

i'd have to go back and play to find which bro was my favorite. there were so many good ones.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Completed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Beautiful game with a lot of thought and consideration put into it, but it feels like it would have been better served going all in on Walking SIm/ Puzzle Game than trying to shoehorn the combat elements in.

Depressing as well. Really need something flat out goofy now.

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE
September - Backlog hiatus + Mark of the Ninja Remastered

Took a bit of a break from my backlog and decided to run through Mount and Blade Warband once more, but decided to give myself a challenge and go for a female ruler and overtake Calradia. I've tried this run many times in the past, but due to the difficulty of gaining Right to Rule (such a stupid mechanic), I always got bored and gave up partway through. This time I committed and slogged through the beginning while establishing my finances, my Honor, and Right to Rule. If you don't plan on playing a game of Warband for literal months, you'll have to do quite a bit of grinding. Trying to get at least 100 Nord Huscarls stashed away for sieges, raising 100 Sarranid Mamlukes for everything else, and raising your relationships with lords are probably the longest ones that you can grind. Getting your Right to Rule high enough for other lords to accept you as a rightful ruler (and therefore defect to your side but also listen to you when you make demands/requests) has a few quick steps, but for the vast majority of it, it's simply "just participating". Gaining Right to Rule as a male ruler is so easy it's not really even a mechanic, not to mention you can make it insurmountably easier on yourself by starting the game off as a Nobleman. Towards the end of my conquest run, I stopped caring about trying to keep friendly lords happy and I learned the hard way that it's a very bad idea to give someone a castle or town that has 153 Huscarls and 100 Rhodok Sharpshooters garrisoned inside (trying to retake that castle after the lord defected cost me over half my entire unit reserves and it was so difficult none of my lords lasted more than a few minutes when they assisted during the battle). Still a fun game that I'll likely get back into at some point again.

Mark of the Ninja Remastered is a really fun stealth game that has some fairly janky controls as well as a checkpoint system that caused me to restart an entire level twice. It's incredibly short as I beat the entire game 100% in less than 10 hours and a fair chunk of that time was spent just restarting checkpoints because the perfectionist in me wouldn't allow me to raise an alarm. It has some really fun stealth mechanics that lets you use the environment to your full advantage and none of the items really felt like they were gimmicky despite the fact that when you unlock a new item, you'll get at least one challenge related to that item during that level. There's also some pretty fun puzzles tucked away inside the hidden areas. It does suffer from the Talion Affliction in that your main character will try to stick to every wall like a goddamn gecko and when he's on a wall, it's sometimes difficult to get him to let go. I'd highly recommend this game to anyone but I also would highly advise you don't spend more than maybe $5 or $10 on it. There is a New Game+ that makes the game more difficult, but I'd already seen it once - didn't need to see it again.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Completed Broforce. God bless 'Murica.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Completed Broforce. God bless 'Murica.

Have you also completed The ExpendaBros?

Edit:

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE
September - Backlog hiatus, Mark of the Ninja Remastered, Deadbolt

Deadbolt is an odd game, but incredibly fun if you're the type who loves precision as well as perfection. You're basically the grim reaper but you're a hit-man sent to kill the undead but it's difficult to fully describe the game so it's best if you just go check out the trailer on the Steam page. It's only $10 and well worth the money as I beat it in under eight hours. It's a pretty fun (but it's pretty damn difficult at times) indie game that is nice to just sit back and run through for some mindless fun. I will give some tips in spoilers if anyone is interested in picking this up, but the spoilers only pertain to weapon purchases. I had to restart once because I didn't necessarily buy the wrong guns, but there are certain weapons that make a lot of levels far less of a headache.

Spoiler: Tips for using Souls

Suppressed Shotgun + Hammer combo make the vast majority of the levels a lot easier and the Scythe is well worth the money. At least one of the powerful handguns also come in very useful but I ended up using both. All of the 9mm guns are garbage.

One thing that isn't explained well is that certain guns have the ability to penetrate walls and that can easily factor in how you complete the levels.

 

[Artorias]

Halo CE Anniversary
Halo 2 Anniversary
Halo 3
Homeworld 1 Remaster
Halo 3: ODST
Ruiner
Halo: Reach
Halo 4

Well just completed Halo 4 and the MCC collection itself. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes FPS or is looking to get into HALO.

Halo 1-3 is the pinnacle with all of them being fantastic quality, I really cant separate them and anyone one of them could be my favorite.

ODST is also a very solid entry with a slower pace. I really liked collecting the audio logs and overall atmosphere. Going through the flashback missions was also well done, I think Halo really misses out on not presenting more of the civilian and normal soldiers viewpoints which ODST has benefited from.

Halo Reach is also another good shooter, the gameplay starts to shift with the addition of armor abilities and sprint, however it still feels like a Halo game. The story is overall well done if a bit short, I wanted more squad interaction.

Halo 4 is where things fall off a cliff. The gameplay is not Halo and its overall feel is much different. The new enemies are a chore to play against and the redesigned of the covenant is strange. It feels like your playing a knock off, I guess that's what happens when you switch developers. The main story is average, however I did like the relationship building between Chief and Cortana. Overall this the least replayable game for me.

I guess I will have to wait for 5 to come on PC, however from what I'm reading its much worse than 4, I might just watch a full story playthrough of this. At least it seems the developers are listening and brining some of the old feeling back with the new Halo 6 Infinite.

Halo CE Anniversary
Halo 2 Anniversary
Halo 3
Homeworld 1 Remaster
Halo 3: ODST
Ruiner
Halo: Reach
Halo 4
Samorost 3

Well looks like I've been side tracked since May. Completed Samorost 3 a couple months ago, fun point and click puzzle adventure however a little on the short side.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Have you also completed The ExpendaBros?

- I didn't know that was a thing... but now that I do you bet your ass I'm gonna complete it!

Free on Steam no less!

 

[Fenixgoon]

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus - nice little tactics game. if you're into 40k and find it on sale, you'll get your money's worth.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Started playing some Alan Wake as a sort of "spooktober" game, but holy crap that intro level was so stupid I just stopped.

Downloading Deus Ex Mankind Divided, gonna see if that grabs my attention or maybe Dishonored 2.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Recently completed Thief 3, Doom 64, Duke3d, bulletstorm, and now working on talos principle to mix things up. Might tackle the Quake 1 remaster next.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Torment: Tides of Numenera
The ending was a bit of a letdown IMHO. Not nearly as profound as PS:T. Still, enjoyable game, and not super long.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Feeling a bit in-between gaming right now, real life is getting a bit too real and needs a bit more attention at the moment, but I've sort of been noodling around with DX: Mankind Divided, might fire up Dishonored 2.

Want something First Person and a bit more complex that will push my 980Ti a bit...

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE
September - Backlog hiatus, Mark of the Ninja Remastered, Deadbolt
October - The Fall, The Fall Part 2: Unbound

The Fall was only $2 during the last Summer Sale and I understood why after I beat the game in under three hours. Now, that's not to say it's a bad game because it's absolutely not. It's a puzzle game that's very reminiscent of the old text-based adventure games, but set in a 2.5D side-scroller. You're an AI loaded into a mech/battle suit that has crash landed inside a factory on a planet that was designed to repair damaged mechs and you have no idea why you've crashed and you're tasked with figuring out the mystery. The controls for keyboard and mouse (specifically the mouse) is not user-friendly, but I absolutely hated the controls with a gamepad so I don't think it's so much a control issue, but rather that the aiming (mouse or analogue stick) is just ass. The story is well-written and the puzzles are challenging enough to keep you going, especially if you really enjoyed the older text-based adventure games or you love games that refuse to hold your hand. For $2, definitely pick this up if you want to get immersed in a good story with interesting puzzles for a few hours.

The Fall Part 2 is NOT worth the current price (on sale for $14 right now). I beat this one in under six hours, but most of that time was spent on the stupid Butler section simply because the puzzles are not explained very well, nor does it give you any hints. It throws a lot of new concepts at you with zero explanation and you're left to just fiddle around with everything until you get a new dialogue. There is also a fairly confusing "out of body" portion that has a heavy Metroid feel to it and introduced a weird forced combat arena mechanic that just feels very out of place. It almost seems like they had the core of the game design down but felt the game was too short for the asking price, so they shoehorned these weird sections into the game just to pad the length. Granted, you can disable the combat sections from the start of the game and just go in for the story, but I don't like playing through with cut content. With all that being said, it was a good game but it was not worth the money spent. If they charged only $5 for this game, I'd say grab it with the first game in a heartbeat, but with the current price, just skip it. The story continues from the first game but it takes a really weird turn which leads off into a cliffhanger for a Part 3. I should add that despite the complaints above, both games have phenomenal voice acting/writing and the atmosphere/graphics are top notch for a story game.

The first game was released in 2014 as a Kickstarter project, Part 2 was released in 2018 on Steam, and there's only been one comment in the last two years from a developer about Part 3 being "something they want to do, but are working on other things first". There was a lot of talk back in 2018 (Steam discussions aren't very active) from developers revolving around a Part 3 being talked about, but they couldn't make a decision due to the lackluster sales from Part 2. Personally, I'd love to see how the story is concluded, but it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon, so I can still only recommend anyone play just the first game and rest easy knowing that's where the story ends.

Want something First Person and a bit more complex that will push my 980Ti a bit...

If you find something, let me know. The most I've been able to find for pushing my 980Ti is Fallout 4 with tons of mods and Doom 2016. I haven't attempted anything more recent like Borderlands 3 or Cyberpunk because I'm fairly certain my PC won't be able to run them at the settings I want. Tarkov will also push your system, but the netcode is complete garbage and even the most popular streamers who have 10k PCs rarely max the settings in that game.

 

[JujuFish]

AC: Odyssey is too damn big for a completionist. 20-years-ago-me would be in heaven right now.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I've dipped my toe in a couple different games recently: Tomb Raider 2013, Borderlands 1, Prey 2017...

But I'm finding myself more and more drawn in by Dishonored 2 at the moment, so that is what I am playing. Doing an Emily run, will likely go high chaos (did a low chaos run in D1), but we'll see...

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE
September - Backlog hiatus, Mark of the Ninja Remastered, Deadbolt
October - The Fall, The Fall Part 2: Unbound, Rimworld Royalty DLC, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms + Iron Plague Expansion

Rimworld Royalty DLC adds a lot of new content for the fans of the game, but it doesn't add enough to warrant the price. It basically gives you the ability to infuse one or two of your pawns (or all of them but that will take much longer) with psychic abilities. A lot of the abilities are pretty fun and a lot of them are really useful, but in the end, it's still Rimworld. There's new furniture to build, new clothing, new weapons, new floors, new meals, and a slew of other new stuff that you can easily obtain if you just mod the vanilla game. This DLC is also a lot more difficult as I was getting raided by mechanoids in extremely large numbers very early. There's also a lot of new quests which I found really fun so if you're a fan of Rimworld and wanted more micro-management, grab Royalty. I haven't tried Ideology yet, but it's on my list.

TA:Kindoms was just because I thought about it the other day, then went to GoG to see how much it would cost to relive some nostalgia, then tried to buy it only to find out I already bought it several years ago on GoG... Takes only a few seconds to install and even less time to boot up. Now, I will say that I only played the TA series at a friend's house back in the day, so my experience playing this game and other TA titles was very limited to what I played at my buddy's house and holy shit this game did not age well. There is zero in-game explanation for anything and the UI is a nightmare. Instead of using normal RTS hotkeys and commands, TA utilizes almost every command via the Control, Alt, and Shift keys and none of them are all that useful. The campaign is also all over the place with nothing explained and the vast majority of the campaign levels can be completed in mere minutes or you literally don't have to do anything at all - the maps will play themselves and you just sit there and watch.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Just completed a run of Dishonored 2. An incredible Thief-like. One of the rare games that is really tempting me with its NG+ mode.

 

[CP5670]

I'm playing several custom mods for old games. Several Dark Mod maps (Requiem, House of Locked Secrets, William Steele), Pumo Mines (Descent 2/D2X-XL), Crossfire (Freelancer), Warzone (Tiberian Sun) and Return to Rapture (HL Alyx).

Torment: Tides of Numenera
The ending was a bit of a letdown IMHO. Not nearly as profound as PS:T. Still, enjoyable game, and not super long.

I really liked this game, although it's definitely flawed and has niche appeal. The tides system was a cool idea that doesn't have much impact in practice.

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Hades + Darksiders
February - Darksiders 2
March - Dawn of War Soulstorm + Unification Mod
April - Warhammer 2 Total War, Company of Heroes 2, Trine 4 (not going to play Trine 3 since it's just a flaming pile of garbage)
May - Just Cause 3
June - Shadow of War + DLCs
July - Dishonored, Noita, Darksiders 3 (cont.)
August - Darksiders 3, Ori and the Blind Forest DE
September - Backlog hiatus, Mark of the Ninja Remastered, Deadbolt
October - The Fall, The Fall Part 2: Unbound, Rimworld Royalty DLC, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms + Iron Plague Expansion
November - Rampage Knights

Rampage Knights is your typical beat-em-up style indie game in a similar style to Battleblock Theater, Lost Castle, and other co-op games out there. It's short and sweet and I think I grabbed it for $5 during one of the recent sales. It passed the time but once I beat the game twice, I really didn't have any drive to do it again. There are multiple classes that can be unlocked via challenges (achievements) but they all play very similar so there wasn't much incentive to hunt for every achievement, especially since the vast majority of achievements only give you silly hats to wear.