BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

Mskotor

January 2024 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Overall backlog progress :

25% completed

62% beaten

1% never played

12% won't play

Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition (Q2 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐

RPG Story_Rich
58h | 46 of 46 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- More dynamic combat than in ME1
- More interesting companions
- Weapon damage and defensive / offensive stats are updated per weapon type or character class, no need to browse through piles of really similar equipment to find something better
- Last mission is great, with visible impact of decisions taken through the game
- Game has all DLCs, including a comic
- Planet scanning speed is increased
- DLC armors and weapons are no longer dumped on us at the start of the game, like in the original

The bad 👎
- Prevalent bug where it's not possible to move camera around for a couple seconds while aiming
- Miranda's butt shot during conversation is removed xD
- There is more hub areas, but they feel smaller than citadel hub in ME1
- Companions can have bad issues with path finding, to the point they get stuck 2 rooms earlier, and we need to babysit them forward

Conclusion:

ME2 improves on ME1 in pretty much any way, except for using thermal clip as normal ammunition. Instead of mechanism where weapons cool down. It had bigger sci-fi vibe. And legendary edition improves on some annoying features of the original, making annoying bits more smooth and less irritating.

Details

📘 Story
☐ Bare-bone
☐ Average
☑ Good

☑ Interesting lore ☑ Well written NPCs Shepard goes on a mission to secretly look for reapers invasion evidence. And get killed in the opening sequence. And then is "resurrected" by a crazy man with too much money, to protect humans from being abducted by insect-looking collectors. We then focus on solving problems of our companions, which takes like half of the game. After lost sisters, fathers, daughters and assistants are found everyone go to face the collectors. There is a lot of new lore to learn, new hubs to discover and companions to romance. The game ends with the famous suicide mission, where our progress with companions, ship readiness and decisions made during the last mission all contribute who will survive. If we rushed through the game and not care much about what is happening around us, we can even kill Shepard. Which is not common, games in general give main character plot armor or bend backwards in next part to explain main hero magical resurrection. And Shepard is not a cat, and was resurrected once already ;D

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive Game is filled with our companion loyalty quests, instead of fetch quests from ME1. Which makes gameplay way less tedious. There are few main missions, a lot of companion missions, and some deliveries of quest items that we find along the way here and there. There is no hard point of no return, but there is soft one. Where delaying progress in the main missions will lead to death of some NPCs. But if we do side mission before progressing with the main one it will not happen. And if you rush through main missions in games, and ignore all (even major) side quests it's your fault! It is war, we must prepare for the fight.
🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	☑ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting There are fewer abilities and the skill tree is easier to navigate. Instead of having to invest x points into an ability, before we can unlock something we want (like investing in first air to unlock neuron shock) we add points directly into specific abilities. All passives are part of the class tree (instead of being spread out among other trees), there is no armor restrictions. Abilities also have one common cool down, which means we don't keep from using them "for later" or use them early and having nothing for a bit later in an encounter. We can decide if we want to use weaker abilities more often, or less of strong ones. Like spam throw which can stagger enemies and have recharge of 2-3s, or use carnage that regenerates for 10s but deal a lot of damage. Experience is given for beating a mission, not killing enemies or doing side objectives. Which makes it impossible to level up mid-mission.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Controls are less stiff than in ME1, but still not great. The cover shooting mechanic can be a bit lackluster, there is this annoying bug where we get stuck aiming at one point (which means instant death on Insanity difficulty...). Only type of movement we can do is walking (and sprinting for short distance). No jumping, using ladders, dodging.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate The fact that we don't pick up junk weapons along the way, and just upgrade stats for a whole weapon class, allowed devs to get rid of the tedious inventory management from ME1. We just pick up a weapon category (there are weapon restrictions per Shepard class, e.g. as sentinel I could at first use only heavy and submachine pistols) and upgrade it in the Normandy research section. There is no inventory screen during missions, we adjust everything before the mission. Rarely there are weapon lockers on the mission, which allow us to change weapons mid-way. Most of the time after we find a new weapon. As for the armor, we either pick a set (that we need to buy first most of the time) but it has disadvantage that it's not possible to remove helmet for cut scenes as they are one-piece. Or we adjust individual parts (torso / helmet / arms / legs / shoulders) with parts we find during gameplay. It allows having option to decide if we want to have stronger shields, weapons, melee, biotic etc.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Great	☑ Well designed weapons I do think it's improvements over ME1 for the reasons described above. Sadly, the really basic cover mechanic makes it less flashy and fluid. Enemies to respond to our action, try to flank us, or use abilities effectively. One funny thing is that in this game, enemy rockets are not homing. So it's possible to walk towards the enemy with a rocket launcher, and just side step incoming projectiles. Rockets in ME3 are faster and do follow us, so it's not a viable option anymore.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☑ Good voice acting ☑ Good weapons & effects ☑ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

It Takes Two (Q1 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Co-op Puzzle
12.5h | 0 of 20 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Game is made for co-op, it's not just an element someone added later on
- Story is a typical "relationship breaks as people don't have time for each other", but shown in a way how it can be rebuilt. Not just putting blame on the other person for all the issues
- Most of the levels are well thought-through, and have interesting puzzles
- Game split screen is made in a good way, and camera is never an issue

The bad 👎
- Game is played through EA desktop (aka Origin) and keep having server issues
- Some levels are clearly less polished / more rushed than others
- There is a super cute (and huge...) jumping spider that we can ride on. I see how people with arachnophobia could freak out because of it though

Conclusion:

It is a solid co-op game, a step up from the devs previous "A way out". Not a simple "two players get the same tools to solve the puzzle" approach. Each character has different abilities, and this "forces" them to co-operate in order to get to their goal. And the story shows some simple truths about building a relationship, that we often forget in our busy lives. But at the same time game focus on "relationship rebuilding" may make game out-of-focus for people who would just search for another player online to "beat" the game.

Details

📘 Story
☐ Bare-bone
☐ Average
☑ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs On the surface, typical story how adults focus on job, and it drifts them apart, until all they can think about it divorce. And a kid caught in the middle, which thinks it's their fault. The kid wants their parents to be friends again, so it "cast a spell", turning parents into toys and forcing them to work together in order to break the curse that was cast upon them. We travel through fairy tale-like maps, each one focusing on other aspect of a parent's life. Her singing, his gardening, their daughter favorite toys etc. Our guide is animated "Dr. Hakim love book". "Relationship help" book read by the kid that is part of the curse, forcing our character to go through different advices how to save a relationship.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	☐ Grindy ☐ Repetitive It is a mix of simple mix of exploration and puzzles, that do work together well. There is not much side tracking to lose eyes from the next objective, and puzzles don't require a lot of thinking. Each map have its own mechanic. E.g. on garden map one character can turn into plants, and other water down plants; on "inside crazy squirrel's tree" map one character shots matches, while other covers items in flammable sap. There are some easy but well-designed boss fights at the end of levels, really basic enemy encounters on some levels. There is no hub area, we are teleported between maps by Hakim's book.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting Each map has unique abilities tailored for cooperation. One character shots nails that are used by another to swing around. Other time one character transform into plants, when other can water them down promoting growth or use scythe to cut down weeds.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	☐ Not customizable ☐ Stiff animations ☐ Sometimes confusing Controls are crispy. No collision problems, no timing issues. Even flying sequences are fluid and natural. We can walk / run / use grapple hook. And then we get accessories that allow us to use map-specific abilities.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	☐ Well designed weapons There are some combat sequences, abut it's not a combat focused game. They work fine, are flashy and fluid. But nothing complex. Like combat with scythe dumbs down to pressing LMB.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☑ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Bound By Blades (Q4 2022) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Action Mobile
3h | 12 of 15 (80%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- It works?

The bad 👎
- Grindy. Takes 2-3h to beat the game, but would need additional 10h to repeat the same couple battles to get 100%
- Backgrounds look like they were made in HD (or less...) and then just stretched to fit FHD
- "Cutscenes" are drawn in really lazy way, that try to spin it as being "artistic". Bad lines and contours, and colors that look like person who made it not care they move out of object bounds
- Really generic and dumb story
- There is an issue with statistics where they go up and down, no matter how many points we invest

Conclusion:

There are many good games out there, so go and play something else. It's not unplayable, but also don't have any good points. Games like this make me wonder why Steam doesn't have "neutral" option for review. Positive reviews do say that the game is not good, but also not bad. So they gives it thumbs up?

Details

📘 Story
☑ Bare-bone
☐ Average
☐ Good

☐ Interesting lore ☐ Well written NPCs The world is attacked, and our heroes are trained since they are toddlers to save the world. Obviously, their "extremely powerful teacher" is killed soon after, and it turns out those barely teenagers are even stronger than he was. Just one big yawn.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	☑ Grindy ☐ Repetitive We pick up a boss (from a board in a village... not even a overmap), run around it on a small grid to kill it, appear back in the village to use boss drops to craft better loot. Rinse and repeat. Each boss has their own set, and it's necessary to kill it 2-3 times to get enough materials to craft a full set. Crafting a better set is basically the only way for us to get more powerful, so it's necessary for progression.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	☐ Skill tree ☐ Statistics ☐ Crafting We can run around, and have light + heavy attacks, and dodge. As boring and basic as it gets. And same goes for combat. Run around on a grid to avoid boss attacks, spam LMB when boss have break to deal some damage. There are 5 health potions per boss, and we will use them a lot, as our health and defense is made from toiler paper.
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	☐ Made for gamepads ☐ Hard to navigate Inventory allow to equip previous gear sets (but who would need to do it...). Not possible to sell stuff, so we just sit on a pile of junk. Normally we just go to smith to craft better sword, and forget about all other menus.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☑ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: