Discussion 2022 Backlog Thread

[GodisanAtheist]

@JujuFish has handed off the torch on this one, thanks Juju!

So PC hardware prices suck (graphics cards, at least), AAA games suck, multiplayer games are polluted with spambots and cheaters... or they just suck too.

What is a PC gamer to do?

You know those 1000+ games you've got in your Steam (or GOG or Epic or whatever) library? Play them. Help them fulfill their dharma. I guarantee you got some absolute bangers in there, you're just stuck in FOMO mode or whatever. Make a list, vary up the genres to keep things interesting. Tell yourself you're going to TRY at least one game a month from that list, don't have to complete it, just download and try it. Don't like it? Go back to your safe space. Find something new that you love? That's a win all around.

Without further ado, my list of 12 games for 2022 (+ the game I'm currently playing and some leftovers from 2021):

Darksiders 2 (H&S) (Completed)
Serious Sam: The First Encounter (FPS) (Completed)
Shadowrun Returns (RPG) (Completed)
The Force Unleashed 2 (H&S) (Completed)
Tomb Raider 2013 (TPS) (Completed)
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (Walking Sim) (Completed)
Hollow Knight (Metroidvania) (Completed)
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (FPS) (Completed)
Batman: Arkham Origins (TPS) (Completed)
The Banner Saga 2 (TBS) (Completed)
Super Meat Boy (Platformer) (Completed)
Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (RTS) (Currently Playing)
Helldivers: Deluxe Edition (Iso-Shooter) (Currently Playing)

Deus Ex Mankind Divided (FPS)
Dishonored Death of the Outsider (FPS)
Shadowrun Hong Kong (RPG)
Titan Quest Anniversary Edition (RPG)
Wasteland 2 (RPG)
Company of Heroes (RTS)
Dawn of War 3 (RTS)
Deadspace 2 (TPS)
Sleeping Dogs (TPS)
Pit People (TBS)

Got a pretty solid mix of games on there. Certainly won't be the only thing I play in 2022, probably won't actually play everything on that list. But I have a path, I got a plan, I'm a man on a mission.

Put your lists to type, come back to this thread over the year as you look for things to play or discuss games you've completed. I personally will be using this post to track my game completions for the year.

Good luck!

 

[Igo69]

Hmm, will play FEAR and its 2 expansions and after maybe 2nd and 3rd. The other AAA games i want to play are Dying Light 2, Stalker 2 and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 but i won't be able to since my current computer will not handle those games and i just won't spend so much money building a new PC.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Probably will do another run through Darksiders 3

After that, Seven and Iron Danger, I think. Also need to finish Pyre and Wartile

 

[JujuFish]

Cheers! I need to decide on my list. Will update later.

 

[repoman0]

Starting off the year with a second play through of Witcher 3. I expect I’ll be playing mostly new games this year aside from that. Elden Ring, god of war, horizon forbidden west, gran turismo 7, and a few more I know I’m forgetting. Should be a good year to not have to touch my backlog too much

 

[JujuFish]

Resident Evil VII
Subnautica
Dying Light
Horizon Zero Dawn
A Plague Tale Innocence
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice
The Sexy Brutale
Life is Strange
Thomas Was Alone
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War
Spyro Reignited
Stephen's Sausage Roll

Some of these are games that I have started and enjoyed but got away from for one reason or another (Horizon, Subnautica, Life is Strange). Most of them are new for me.

 

[DigDog]

i dont get how you can have such a long "currently playing" list; if i leave a game for more than 2 days, i already forgot half the control scheme.

I am currently playing Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, which is really excellent, however it is absolutely plagued by freezes, and has truly ridiculous load times.

In my to-do list, Duck Game (have not touched this at all since buying it and there is a solid chance i never will), BallisticNG (still waiting to buy a PS5 controller), and that's it.

I uninstalled Quake Champions because the QoL was disgusting, couldn't get a decent game out of 10.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Here we go again...

January - Chasm

Chasm is a fairly short and sweet metroidvania where you venture into a cave to discover what kidnapped all the townfolk. Every person you rescue has a small side-quest attached to them which gives you an extra something to do inside the caverns below. The caveat to this metroidvania is that all the levels are procedurally generated so the only way you can play the same map as someone else is to use the same seed. It took me less than 12 hours to 100% the game and I grabbed it on sale for about $5 the other day. I don't really need to go into the mechanics since it's a fairly standard metroidvania - complete an area, get a powerup, go to a new area, backtrack to access hidden areas, kill enemies, get loot, etc.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Here we go again...

January - Chasm

Chasm is a fairly short and sweet metroidvania where you venture into a cave to discover what kidnapped all the townfolk. Every person you rescue has a small side-quest attached to them which gives you an extra something to do inside the caverns below. The caveat to this metroidvania is that all the levels are procedurally generated so the only way you can play the same map as someone else is to use the same seed. It took me less than 12 hours to 100% the game and I grabbed it on sale for about $5 the other day. I don't really need to go into the mechanics since it's a fairly standard metroidvania - complete an area, get a powerup, go to a new area, backtrack to access hidden areas, kill enemies, get loot, etc.

-That's fascinating, I would think Metroidvanias have to have hand designed levels given the entire premise is "cannot access X area without Y upgrade" and a procedurally generated system could potentially goof and put Y upgrade in X area creating a softlock situation, but they must have some sort of rules around the generation to prevent that sort of thing.

 

[Stg-Flame]

-That's fascinating, I would think Metroidvanias have to have hand designed levels given the entire premise is "cannot access X area without Y upgrade" and a procedurally generated system could potentially goof and put Y upgrade in X area creating a softlock situation, but they must have some sort of rules around the generation to prevent that sort of thing.

Not really that unheard of anymore since randomizers have become pretty popular. It's essentially the same thing as creating a randomizer since you'll need certain logic to be set within the program to make sure you can't softlock the game or create an unwinnable seed.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Just beat Darksiders 2. Overall a very solid sequel, essentially improved on just about every aspect of the first game.

 

[JujuFish]

I beat Resident Evil VII yesterday. I'm ahead of the game, for once!

I liked it. It was my first RE game. I'm curious what the experience would have been like in VR. Too bad that was never ported to PC (and I suppose not having a VR headset doesn't help me). After finishing it, I realized I was being way too conservative with my ammo. Would play another game in the series.

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Chasm, Black Mesa

Not really sure what to write about Black Mesa other than I never finished Half Life 1 simply because the marine AI went way overboard with the aimbot and they could throw a grenade accurately from across the map. This iteration however, felt a lot more polished and a lot more fair in terms of AI difficulty. There's not much to say about Black Mesa other than the visuals were really well done in the Borderworld and the fights were pretty good, but I think the strongest point was the music that fit perfectly. The weakest aspect of this is how oily Gordon's boots were the entire game. I can't count the number of times I had to look at that "Loading" screen simply because I was trying to make a jump only to slide off the edge after I had landed the jump. Small gripe, but it's a solid game. There was also a point in the game where it stopped being so linear (somewhere around the Lambda Complex) and after each encounter, I had to spend five minutes wandering around the room simply because I didn't notice the tiny ledge that looked like every other ledge, but this one I could climb on in order to progress. Nowhere else in the game did this occur, but for some reason the Lambda Complex forced you to just try to parkour everything you saw. Half of the areas where I had to ascend vertically, I'm not 100% sure I even did it right because half the time I was just jumping off railings at the walls to see what I could land on.

 

[Igo69]

Finished playing FEAR 1 and 2.

Playing Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 1 and then 2. Love these modern shooter stealth games in huge maps

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Just played through the demo level of Serious Sam The First Encounter HD. I'm torn. It definitely gets the blood pumping, but its missing something. Croteam's giant boxy levels, goofy as **** monsters, and almost complete lack of any sort of thematic coherence are all making me want to put it down.

The promise of a relatively short gaming experience makes me want to keep going.

Let's see how this plays out.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Cleared Darksiders 3 on NG+2 Apocalyptic difficulty, including Keepers DLC. Funnily enough, the boss of the game was not as difficult as I remembered, or as difficult as some of the other bosses. Maybe I'm getting good at this game....

Now to get back to Metal Gear Solid...maybe. I'm definitely a "clear the level" player. Leave no man alive vs. Leave no trace

 

[CP5670]

Just played through the demo level of Serious Sam The First Encounter HD. I'm torn. It definitely gets the blood pumping, but its missing something. Croteam's giant boxy levels, goofy as **** monsters, and almost complete lack of any sort of thematic coherence are all making me want to put it down.

I tried this once a long time ago and got bored, even though I generally like this type of game. The waves of monsters are just too long and become tedious after a while. Painkiller, Hard Reset and of course Doom are better games of this type with better level design.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I tried this once a long time ago and got bored, even though I generally like this type of game. The waves of monsters are just too long and become tedious after a while. Painkiller, Hard Reset and of course Doom are better games of this type with better level design.

- I took a look on HLTB and the game is all of 6 hours to complete, so I'm going for it. The demo level was, ironically, a pretty poor representation of the actual campaign in that it dialed the game up to 11 which can be overwhelming to a new player, while the campaign definitely has a better/smoother ramp up to the insanity.

That said I agree with your comment about the monster waves. Its done well in some scenarios, but there are way too many giant boxes with a "oh my god is this the 6th spawn in?!" which is funny because without that, the game would have been half its already short length.

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Chasm, Black Mesa, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

Serious Sam isn't my cup of tea. It was fun at times but most of the levels I was just hoping the end was right around the corner. The first few levels have you kiting most enemies while you wait for your shotgun to reload both barrels or switching to your revolvers because they are more than six inches from your face. After acquire your Tommy Gun, the only time you touch the shotgun again is because you accidentally hit that hotkey because the game throws more than enough ammo for you to just hold down left click and never let go. Mindlessly just holding the left mouse button while you make things disappear might sound fun for a while until you realize there's really only five or six enemy types and then it's just knowing when to switch between your rocket launcher, minigun, cannon, and laser. I didn't mind the game except when it just locks you in yet another arena while enemies spawn at you in waves or in the case of one rage-inducing level, when you've spent a long time on a particularly long level which throws endless waves at you while you make your way down a long corridor only to accidentally get hit by your own grenade and realize you never made a single save and have to do the entire level over again. That said, it's not a bad game but definitely don't play it for any kind of plot. I'm installing the second game so we'll see how long this will take me to trudge through it.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

January - Chasm, Black Mesa, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

Serious Sam isn't my cup of tea. It was fun at times but most of the levels I was just hoping the end was right around the corner. The first few levels have you kiting most enemies while you wait for your shotgun to reload both barrels or switching to your revolvers because they are more than six inches from your face. After acquire your Tommy Gun, the only time you touch the shotgun again is because you accidentally hit that hotkey because the game throws more than enough ammo for you to just hold down left click and never let go. Mindlessly just holding the left mouse button while you make things disappear might sound fun for a while until you realize there's really only five or six enemy types and then it's just knowing when to switch between your rocket launcher, minigun, cannon, and laser. I didn't mind the game except when it just locks you in yet another arena while enemies spawn at you in waves or in the case of one rage-inducing level, when you've spent a long time on a particularly long level which throws endless waves at you while you make your way down a long corridor only to accidentally get hit by your own grenade and realize you never made a single save and have to do the entire level over again. That said, it's not a bad game but definitely don't play it for any kind of plot. I'm installing the second game so we'll see how long this will take me to trudge through it.

- SS feels like a fan mod for another game.

I admit I am having fun, but the game has run out of new things to show me and I am not hoping for the ending to arrive soon.

 

[Stg-Flame]

- SS feels like a fan mod for another game.

Feels like an Unreal Tournament mod honestly and I'm fairly sure some of the same enemies in Unreal 2 are in Serious Sam. That being said, the second game is a marked improvement over the first game. I'm only a few levels in and while it is "more of the same", they do offer more weapons and new enemy types right off the bat.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

After I finish my trial/re-skill in Rimworld I plan on loading the AT Rimworld scenario, hopefully get you all off the planet then load Kenshi which I bought years ago and barely played.

 

[MrSquished]

NM

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Ok, beat Serious Sam: The First Encounter.

People must have been really been hungry for... whatever the hell that was... back in 2001 for this game to have acheived such a cult status.

I'll do a write up later but I have to calm my nerves after that final level, never been so close to punching my monitor in my life.

 

[JujuFish]

Beat Spyro 1 this morning. Boy, that was a fun nostalgia hit, even though I've never played Spyro before. Love me some 3D platformer/collectathons.