Discussion 2022 Backlog Thread

[SteveGrabowski]

In my experience, Bloodborne is *significantly* easier to parry, and is the biggest reason it is easily the easiest FromSoft game I've played.

Gotta strongly disagree there. Sekiro you can often get away with just tapping the block button over and over to get deflections and stuff like Mikiri Counter and the jump and head stomp over a sweep have much easier timings IMO. I think Bloodborne is much easier to parry on than Dark Souls or Demons Souls (haven't played DS 2 or 3 yet) and can't really compare on Elden Ring since I did a build that flat out did not parry on it, but Sekiro is by far the most forgiving FromSoft game I have played when it comes to parries for me.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

In a bit of a motivational slump right now. Inching my way through Death of the Outsider. I enjoy it when I play but the motivation to play is on hiatus at the moment.

Honestly you should give Sekiro a shot. It's a tremendously fun game and has one of the best battle systems you'll ever find. Only one I think might be better is Sifu's, which is another game I highly recommend, though it's also very difficult. But Sekiro against bosses it's often just a battle of attrition deflecting each other's attacks and then harshly punishing when the enemy makes a mistake and you have a good counter for it. Playing it like a Souls game you can actually get through the early game, with great difficulty, but it can be done. But when you get to the Genichiro Ashina boss you'll get stomped and he's unbeatable if you haven't played the game the way they designed it: eg deflecting enemies' attacks to tire them out and picking your spots to throw an aggressive move or recognizing and countering when your opponent gets over aggressive and opens a hole in his defense. It's very unlike other Souls games or really anything else I have ever played. It also has an unkillable ally who you can fight to get timings down for your counters and such, which is extremely useful in the early game since it's so different from anything else ever made.

Also since you're a shinobi, stealth is absolutely critical in the game. Most miniboss fights you can usually find a way to sneak around to get a deathblow on them from behind, which takes away one of two life bars they have.

I think IGN's review is pretty dead-on here, and it's a 9.5/10 game for me also. Basically a must play but not quite in my 10/10 top tier of games I have ever played, which would be Super Mario Bros 1, Shinobi (arcade), Zelda A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Fallout 2, Half Life 1, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Skyrim, Bloodborne, NieR Automata, and Elden Ring.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Just beat Dishonored DOTO. Never rises to the peaks of the first and second game, but does solid work throughout. If you liked Dishonored, you'll like this game.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

OK, decided to fire up Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered (ugh) edition.

Already feeling like its gonna be a hell of a mixed bag: gameplay fundamentally looks good, destruction physics is a solid hook, environment is bland as all hell, low rent GTA/Ubisoft-clone open world isn't doing my excitement levels any favors, but I'll give it the first zone to either grab me or I'll let it go.

 

[JujuFish]

I wish more games had the destructability of the Red Faction series. Red Faction 1 was one of the few shooters I actually got into the multiplayer portion of.

 

[Stg-Flame]

OK, decided to fire up Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered (ugh) edition.

Already feeling like its gonna be a hell of a mixed bag: gameplay fundamentally looks good, destruction physics is a solid hook, environment is bland as all hell, low rent GTA/Ubisoft-clone open world isn't doing my excitement levels any favors, but I'll give it the first zone to either grab me or I'll let it go.

I played that game when it first came to the PS3 and it was incredibly fun just to run around with the hammer and try to bring down the buildings. I loved the system of rewarding you for destroying everything. I never knew there was a remastered version so I might pick that up one of these days.

Just remember that it's an older game so don't expect to see something that would rival RDR2.

 

[CP5670]

I liked Red Faction 3 and 4. The maps are generic but the destructible environments are a fun mechanic and it's fun to just smash stuff. I like how you have that power to put things back together as well.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Just finished Sekiro and can now remove it from the backlog. JFC the final two bosses were tough, though the final boss has a much easier final phase.

 

[aigomorla]

havent had any time to play any of the games i got on steam sale, except like 1 or 2.
My backlog is getting longer and longer.

But i did have fun playing and finishing Wayward Terran Frontier.
Something about customizable space ships, and going Pew Pew has always given me enjoyment.
Also i recommend distant worlds 2, if you like 4x, although its not as great as the first one, but DW2 scale is massive.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Doing a good job clearing out my backlog so far this year. Currently on Tomb Raider 2013.

 

[CP5670]

I finished Disco Elysium. Amazing story and the best game writing I've seen in many years. It won't appeal to everyone and is more of an adventure game than a RPG, reminds me of Planescape Torment but is unique in its own way (and is fully voiced). Many different aspects of your own personality "talk" to you and try to influence your actions during dialogue, and your RPG stats control which aspects are more pronounced. The main plot is relatively short but all the side quests took me over 50 hours.

 

[Fenixgoon]

i've stalled on Pathfinder Wrath of Righteous. The crusade system, while a neat idea, is even more tedious than regular kingdom management. I think I'm going to have to set it to automatic, so i can just go and adventure. it's a shame, because the idea is solid. but i applaud the devs for making so many of the game aspects scalable/optional (raise/lower difficulty, set certain functions to auto-resolve). that makes it accessible to more "casual" people like myself, and those that really want to min-max can do so too

 

[Stg-Flame]

January - Chasm, Black Mesa, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam 3: BFE
February/March/April - Skyrim, Skul: The Hero Slayer
April/May - Battlechasers: Nightwar, Vampire Survivors, Rogue Legacy 2
May/June - UnMetal,
July - Rogue Legacy 2 (again), 9th Dawn 2

Don't play 9th Dawn. I only continued playing it because Steam wouldn't give me a refund and I got about halfway through the game and became hardlocked and since there's no save points and I wasn't able to die to teleport, it kept spawning me right back in the same area. You also can't customize your controls and the default control scheme is garbage. It looks like it has potential to be fun but the numerous flaws heavily outweigh anything else. Garbage game, don't waste your time.

 

[nakedfrog]

I might finally wrap up Shadow of the Tomb Raider in August! Then moving into Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I played around with it a little when I was down with the plague, I don't know if I'll end up sticking with it, but we'll see.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I might finally wrap up Shadow of the Tomb Raider in August! Then moving into Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I played around with it a little when I was down with the plague, I don't know if I'll end up sticking with it, but we'll see.

- Thoughts on Shadow? I've yet to play Rise but everyone says Shadow is a solid step down in quality from both Rise and 2013.

 

[nakedfrog]

- Thoughts on Shadow? I've yet to play Rise but everyone says Shadow is a solid step down in quality from both Rise and 2013.

I think the story itself is fine, and gameplay overall seems pretty much the same. Probably the puzzles were better in the first two, and the "leveling" feels basically pointless. I constantly have unused points because the various upgrades pretty much seem equivalently "meh". I'm still enjoying it and planning to play through to the end. There probably is too much fluff in here, too many side quests and collectibles etc, but you clearly don't need to do them all--I can see how it would irritate the sort of person who likes to 100% things.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I'm in a predicament right now. All the games in my backlog that I want to play, I've been holding off for when I build my new PC and the others that are on my list that I could easily play (with maxed settings), don't look appealing to me. I'll probably stick to working on 100% Binding of Isaac and playing Risk of Rain 2 intermittently as well as Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4 again. It's physically painful watching the GPU market continue to fluctuate as it's done over the last few months. The 3080s that I've looked at in the past have dropped and jumped $200 overnight multiple times and I honestly hate waiting for the 4000 series to release just to see the 3000s hit a decent price and that's with everyone assuming the 4000s will release at a decent price.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I'm in a predicament right now. All the games in my backlog that I want to play, I've been holding off for when I build my new PC and the others that are on my list that I could easily play (with maxed settings), don't look appealing to me. I'll probably stick to working on 100% Binding of Isaac and playing Risk of Rain 2 intermittently as well as Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4 again. It's physically painful watching the GPU market continue to fluctuate as it's done over the last few months. The 3080s that I've looked at in the past have dropped and jumped $200 overnight multiple times and I honestly hate waiting for the 4000 series to release just to see the 3000s hit a decent price and that's with everyone assuming the 4000s will release at a decent price.

980 Ti can't hang at 1080p these days? I have a 1660 Super which is roughly the same power and it's still solid at 1080p in most of what I have thrown at it, and can do 1440p pretty solidly in easier to run games I have played lately like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Sekiro, Persona 5 Strikers, and Ghostwire Tokyo.

The cpu will definitely be a bottleneck in some stuff though. I ran a very similar cpu (Xeon E3-1231v3) until a couple of month ago and the bottleneck in Elden Ring at launch was so bad it caused slowdown, and Control was kind of ugly with that cpu too so I bought both on PS5 instead. Surprised you'd rather play RDR2 on PS4 though. When I played it on my E3-1231v3 + 1660 Super I was able to get a mostly 1080p60 using the settings Hardware Unboxed recommended.

Still, a platform upgrade isn't too bad these days with $150 R5 5600 and $160 i5-12400F out there, though boards are pretty expensive.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I'm in a predicament right now. All the games in my backlog that I want to play, I've been holding off for when I build my new PC and the others that are on my list that I could easily play (with maxed settings), don't look appealing to me. I'll probably stick to working on 100% Binding of Isaac and playing Risk of Rain 2 intermittently as well as Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4 again. It's physically painful watching the GPU market continue to fluctuate as it's done over the last few months. The 3080s that I've looked at in the past have dropped and jumped $200 overnight multiple times and I honestly hate waiting for the 4000 series to release just to see the 3000s hit a decent price and that's with everyone assuming the 4000s will release at a decent price.

- I hear ya. I'm at 1440p/144hz and I'm still far enough back in the timeline that the 980Ti chews through everything with ease but there are definitely a couple games that I'd certainly like to try but will be closer to 60FPS than 144 at my preferred resolution. I've been spoiled by high refresh rate gaming and its tough to go back to 60hz/FPS. Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, DX Mankind Divided, and a few more are at the top of that list.

Not to turn this into a buildapc thread but I've been stalking quite a few 6700XTs on ebay which would bring me a near perfect doubling of GPU raster performance and RAM + stuff like Freesync and lite RT performance. At the moment as AMD cards seemed to have dropped much further in price than NV and my trigger finger is getting itchy although my understanding is the mining difficulty bomb that is (yet again) supposed to drop in September along with next gen GPU announcements will likely drive prices even lower. Not even wasting my time with a new CPU etc until I have a new GPU in hand.

Luckily I am far from bored with my backlog (although I have hit a point in Red Faction Guerilla that the novelty has worn off and I just want the game to be over) so absolute worst possible case scenario I can probably continue to trudge along for another year if absolutely necessary. Actually a good time to refresh some secondary components like my ancient PSU, AIO CPU Cooler, and dime store mid-tower while I wait for GPU prices to hit their rock bottom.

 

[Stg-Flame]

980 Ti can't hang at 1080p these days? I have a 1660 Super which is roughly the same power and it's still solid at 1080p in most of what I have thrown at it, and can do 1440p pretty solidly in easier to run games I have played lately like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Sekiro, Persona 5 Strikers, and Ghostwire Tokyo.

The cpu will definitely be a bottleneck in some stuff though. I ran a very similar cpu (Xeon E3-1231v3) until a couple of month ago and the bottleneck in Elden Ring at launch was so bad it caused slowdown, and Control was kind of ugly with that cpu too so I bought both on PS5 instead. Surprised you'd rather play RDR2 on PS4 though. When I played it on my E3-1231v3 + 1660 Super I was able to get a mostly 1080p60 using the settings Hardware Unboxed recommended.

Still, a platform upgrade isn't too bad these days with $150 R5 5600 and $160 i5-12400F out there, though boards are pretty expensive.

It can, but this PC is over a decade old and if I'm going to run the newer games (Cyberpunk, Borderlands 3, Iron Harvest, etc.) then I want to run them at decent settings so I'm not looking at something resembling a Minecraft slideshow.

Not even wasting my time with a new CPU etc until I have a new GPU in hand.

This is where I'm at as well. I've been told by countless people to just grab some RAM now, a CPU down the line, a case after a few months, peripherals when they drop in price, GPU after... blah blah blah. I refuse to have parts sitting in my house for months just collecting dust simply because one of those parts is still overly expensive. I buy everything at once, build it when it's delivered, and stress test the same day. I don't want to deal with the nightmare that is customer service and try to explain that I purchased a CPU four months ago but only just now realized it's broken.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

This is where I'm at as well. I've been told by countless people to just grab some RAM now, a CPU down the line, a case after a few months, peripherals when they drop in price, GPU after... blah blah blah. I refuse to have parts sitting in my house for months just collecting dust simply because one of those parts is still overly expensive. I buy everything at once, build it when it's delivered, and stress test the same day. I don't want to deal with the nightmare that is customer service and try to explain that I purchased a CPU four months ago but only just now realized it's broken.

- I've been stalking used 5800x/5900x prices on ebay as well and I've even bid on a few but then I realized that I could potentially pick up a new CPU and Mobo, install them in my PC, clean windows install and everything... and still be limited by my 980ti thanks to how old the games I play are and the 1440p resolution. Without the new GPU, which is where 90% of the performance uplift would come from, I'd just be throwing money away on the rest of the components.

We're close though, I can feel the tingling in my nuts. Its either jock itch or the sense that we're on the verge of a glut of GPUs hitting the used market and pushing prices down everywhere. I'm seeing more cards being listed, at lower starting prices, with no reserves, staying at lower bidding points longer and selling for progressively less and less money.

My personal baseline is a 6700xt/3060ti (2x my 980ti performance) for ~$300 shipped or 6900XT/3080 performance for ~$450 shipped. As soon as I see those price points its a go.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Completed the main campaign of Red Faction Guerilla. Going to just beeline the story missions in the Badlands expansion. Considering the game complete at this point.

AA Jank as hell but i adore the commitment to fully (and I mean fully) destructible buildings. Can literally level entire bases and small cities all the way to the ground. Would love this mechanic to come back in a modern game.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Decided to fire up The Outer Worlds. Looking for a Bethsoft style open world that's not so sprawling with some stronger RPG elements and TOW sounds like it fits that bill almost perfectly (and ironically is precisely what a lot of the complaints of the game seem to be centered around).

Only just completed the tutorial mission so I haven't really gotten enough to really chew on, but the production value and sense of humor seems to be there so we'll see how this goes.

 

[Artorias]

My first completed game of 2022 is Doom Eternal's base campaign. Great fun. Will be moving on to the two DLC expansions.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Been playing Persona 5 Strikers and it genuinely feels like a sequel to Persona 5 rather than a spinoff. At least storywise. The stories are usually awful in Persona's spinoffs. Obviously the combat is different being Dynasty Wars style as opposed to turn based like in the main series. Overall though a solid 8/10 so far that I can't believe I waited until now to play.