Backlog Bingo 2024
The board
Row 1: Tourist Trophy, Nioh, Returnal, Super Monkey Ball,
Diablo 2 Resurrected
Row 2: Celeste, Mindustry, Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2, Fate/stay night, Gravity Circuit
Row 3: Demon’s Souls 2020, Racing Lagoon, Elden Ring. Monster Hunter Rise,
Control
Row 4: Death Stranding, Monster Hunter Dos,
Citizen Sleeper,
Super Robot Wars Alpha, Sekiro
Row 5:
Ace Combat 3,
Metroid Prime Remastered, Ghostrunner, Metal Gear Solid 2, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
Thoughts on games played
- 3/22: Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere is a game absolutely dripping with atmosphere. Between the extremely Y2K graphic design permeating the menus and the banger soundtrack, it's hard to think of any games that match it in slickness of presentation on the original PlayStation. But it's not just skin deep. Each of the missions are fun to play and will get you in that "just one more!" groove that makes it hard to put down. Couple that with its ridiculous amount of branching paths and possible endings (in the Japanese version) and you've got one of the most solid PS1 games I think I've ever played.
- 4/20: Control is a hell of a game to play when you live right by an unlabeled government building. I typically do not play or enjoy playing third-person shooters, but I was unable to resist its unique architecture and aesthetic. Stumbling across Darling's tapes about various Bureau research subjects was incredibly reminiscent of when new DHARMA Initiative stations (and their training videos) would be discovered while Lost was airing. I almost never engage with games purely for their fictional worlds, but this is one of the rare games where I preferred the fiction to the actual gamefeel. Too many moments in this game were bogged down by annoying enemies that are frustrating to kill, and there were too many waves of them so it was dragging on forever. My deaths didn't feel earned a lot of the times, and while combat animations are viscerally satisfying, the damage those animations would deal made everything feel hollow.
- 4/20: Sneaking another game completion in just before midnight, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking Citizen Sleeper. As someone who struggles a lot with Western-developed role playing games, I don't think it's the kind of game I would have tried were it not for its striking art style, color palette, and bold UI choices. I think the idea of needing to figure out a way to escape a space station before your robot body fully decays is much more impactful when you feel the urgency as sources for the resources to repair your body dry up over the course of the game, and I was getting incredibly antsy near the end that if the game would draw on any longer, I was going to reach some sort of fail state. (Luckily, the game ended exactly when I needed it to and I escaped without issue.)
- 5/1: Kicked off the month by beating Diablo 2 for the first time (via the Resurrected version, on PS5). I love how every item rarity has its own unique quirk that makes each of them valuable in their own way, and the shallowness of the stats allow early game items to stay relevant until the end of the game. The hardest part was getting the hang of knowing what to pick up and what to ignore because so much drops everywhere.
- 6/12: Gotta call it quits on Celeste, unfortunately. Wonderful little platformer, but ultimately the mid-game started giving me really bad RSI pain even during short sessions, and I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't appreciate it as much slowed down in assist mode.
- 7/20: Just finished beating Tourist Trophy. I’ve got a video on the way tomorrow about it already, so I won’t spoil it. Tourist Trophy proves that Polyphony Digital has what it takes to find creative new ways to fiddle with the typical GT formula, but unfortunately those ideas never escape containment and make it out of weird spin-offs like this or the Prologue games.
- 9/2: Gravity Circuit is a fun little melee-centric homage to the Mega Man series with an engaging ability upgrade system. Sadly, its grappling hook controls poorly and grappling hook traversal sections were an exercise in frustration, bringing down an otherwise stellar game.
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