BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

Gotta Beat' Em All! Lengray’s profile

My backlog-killing strategy

1. Keep up-to-date stats about all the games I own
2. Be extremely selective about which games I want to add to my library
3. For potential additions, set up alerts on my gg.deals wishlist and stick to them
4. After adding a game to the backlog, try to play it as soon as possible
5. Drop a game if playing has become a chore

Backlog outside of Steam

Last updated: December 7, 2019

Origin unplayed: 15/22 │ playing: Vampyr

Uplay unplayed: 20/25 │ playing: Steep

Battle.net unplayed: 4/7 │ playing: -

Wii unplayed: 10/16 │ playing: -

SNES Classic Mini unplayed: 9/20 │ playing: -

3DS unplayed: 48/59 │ playing: Pokémon X - FIFA 15

Emulation

DS playing: Suikoden Tierkreis

GameCube playing: -

My ratings explained

★★★★★  A complete disaster in every way. To be deleted.
★★★★★  Very poor To be deleted too.
★★★★★  Didn't enjoy the game much but it might appeal to others.
★★★★★  Quite pleasant but has a few elements I didn't like.
★★★★★  A very good game. Worth a second playthrough.
★★★★★  I thoroughly enjoyed this title from start to finish!

STORE PAGE

6 hours playtime

30 of 33 achievements

The Secret Order 4: Beyond Time ★★★★★

Every time I review a HOG I've beaten, I ask myself "What can I say this time that hasn't been said before?" And once again, the answer is: not much. This game follows the traditional template of combining a far-fetched story with puzzles that we have seen many times before. What does it do different? The animations are better than in most HOGs but the voice acting is dreadful, I mean really dreadful. The main story is forgettable but the extra adventure you get after has a pleasant darkness to it. Some of the puzzles were nicely challenging while others I solved in seconds. All in all, a very uneven game.

WIKIPEDIA PAGE

82 hours playtime

3DS

Project X Zone ★★★★★

I really liked this game but I thought I would never see the end of it. It's the first crossover I've played and this tactical RPG is a damn good one, even though it's repetitive and drags on too much. The story is rubbish and is just an excuse to have tons of fun fighting. There are 90 characters from Namco Bandai, Capcom, and Sega franchises to play with (or against) and the pixel art and the animations are spec-ta-cu-lar. The combat is easy to get into as you choose your attacks with simple key combinations. There's a nice evolution in the character development with extra attacks to get, skills to unlock, equipment to find and it's really fun to find character combinations that work well. The game can be quite challenging in the beginning (I had to restart after 10 hours) but once you get comfortable, it gets progressively easier. There are 41 levels, each taking between 30 minutes and 2.5 hours! However, there's a nice quicksave feature so you can take a break at any time. Each level contains one or more bosses you must fight over and over as they don't die and just leave the level. The music is excellent, matching the game the current group is from. And if, like me, you've never heard of some of the characters, there's an ingame "crosspedia" which nicely presents each one.

WIKIPEDIA PAGE

11 hours playtime

3DS

Azure Striker Gunvolt ★★★★★

A very nice Megaman-like title. While being a small game, it packs quite a few good ideas, especially the original combat system: instead of shooting enemies directly, you tag them with you gun and then use electric bolts to damage them. There's gear to craft and skills to unlock but to get all of them involves serious grinding as the game pushes you to replay the levels over and over. There are also secret gems to collect to unlock the true ending but some are really hard to find. If you're looking for a futuristic tight platformer for your 3DS, this one is a very good choice. There's also a Steam version but apparently, it's not that good.

WIKIPEDIA PAGE

3 hours playtime

SNES Classic Mini

F-Zero ★★★★★

Firing up this game on the SNES Classic Mini I got last year was fun for a while but despite its "legendary" status, it has quite a few shortcomings. First, I still own the cartridge version from back in the day on which I spent many hours when I was a teen. I remember being obsessed with getting the best time on the "Big Blue" track. But 27 years later, things are not nearly as fun. The game is very short, it's single-player only, the primitive AI cheats at every turn and except for the main "ships", the other racers are just on the track to be a nuisance. Some even deliberately ram into you! But it was visionary at the time.

STORE PAGE

12 hours playtime

Uplay

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon ★★★★★

A must-play for any fan of 80s futuristic action movies! Ubisoft got everything right on this one: the superb synthwave soundtrack, the references to iconic characters like the Terminator, the neon-driven art direction, the obsession to "blow things up" and the cheesy dialogue lines. The main storyline is short (about 4 hours) but good and the world unsurprisingly borrows a lot from FC3 with garrisons to capture, (repetitive) side missions and silly collectibles like VHS tapes or TV sets. I had a lot of fun going for all the achievements, especially the one for which you must kill off a blood dragon (they shoot devastating lasers out of their eyes) with the bow.

WIKIPEDIA PAGE

13 hours playtime

DS

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors ★★★★★

I had a great time playing this game! After the impulse buy of the Zero Escape trilogy on Steam when it was on a deep sale some time ago, I decided to have a go at the original before playing the "remastered" version. I found the puzzles very interesting, even if they are on the easy side with the game pointing you in the right direction. The story is original and quite gripping, the characters are nicely fleshed out and the flow of the game is excellent. The only issue I had with it is that when you get a bad ending and start over, you can skip the dialogues you've read but not the puzzles you already solved. I only got 3 endings and will hopefully get the true one on Steam.

WIKIPEDIA PAGE

8 hours playtime

3DS

Sonic Generations ★★★★★

This 3DS version, apparently more than a port of the regular Steam/consoles version, is very fun to play. The gameplay is varied and the level design is good. The story is ridiculously simple and far-fetched with time distortions, double Sonics and Tails but no one plays Sonic games for the story. The only two problems I have is how it's sometimes difficult to react to what's coming (mostly due to the top screen specs) and that the game is too short. I understand it takes a good bit of effort to design levels suited for speed runs but a few more levels would have been great. However, to extend the playtime, there are plenty of short missions which unlock art and music.

STORE PAGE

13 hours playtime

24 of 41 achievements

Infinite Air with Mark McMorris ★★★★★

After playing 60+ hours of Steep a few months ago, I was quite interested to try out this one. While it doesn't have the scope of Steep, the actual snowboarding gameplay is excellent and a lot more of a simulation than Steep is. The game rewards stomping clean tricks over simply landing crazy ones and I really enjoyed this. The big issue with this game is how crappy it runs and how ugly the landscape is. No matter what settings I tried, my computer kept running very hot, even with Vsync on, and there's a lot of stuttering on big maps (it's a Unity game...). And if that's not enough, there's a ton of texture pop-in. Yuck! The soundtrack is excellent though.

STORE PAGE

46 hours playtime

20 of 28 achievements

Fallout 4 Season Pass ★★★★★

The current monthly theme has given me the perfect reason to play though the Fallout 4 DLCs. I'll review them in the order I've played them. First Vault-Tec Workshop was disappointing. It only has a few quests which are just an excuse to give you control over your own vault. If you're into building, this is great. Unfortunately, I'm not. Then I played Automatron and it was better. Still on the short side, it was quite challenging, its story was quite good and this DLC gives you the ability to have custom robot companions. After that I played through Far Harbor and I feel this is the best DLC. The atmosphere is phenomenal, the storyline morally interesting and there's quite a bit of exploration to do. Finally, I got to Nuka-World and enjoyed it very much for the most part. The different sections of this amusement park are quite unique, the quests are interesting but I didn't like the end ones which force you to take over settlements in the Commonwealth. I didn't mind leading the Raiders in the new zone but back in the Commonwealth, it didn't fit with the moral stance I had taken since starting the game. Contraptions Workshop and Wasteland Workshop are just fillers and I didn't touch them. As a conclusion, only get it if you've really enjoyed the main game and can get it on sale as the full price is a joke.

August '19 Report

Another month, another few games beaten and … twice as many added to the Backlog of Doom! For a change, I played through two great titles and two disappointing ones. I guess I just expected more from games with high ratings.

STORE PAGE

105 hours playtime

46 of 52 achievements
STORE PAGE

12 hours playtime

Origin
STORE PAGE

9 hours playtime

no achievements
STORE PAGE

2 hours playtime

7 of 14 achievements

.hack//G.U. Last Recode ★★★★★

My first experience with the DotHack universe, I really liked this RPG and tried to play it like when it was originally released, leaving a few months between episodes 1, 2 and 3. For those who are not familiar with series, it mostly takes place in a fictional MMORPG called The World. You log in and out of it when you're logged off, you can access ingame emails, news, forums and a card game. The story revolves around a virus spreading in The World which puts people in a coma in real life. While the combat felt repetitive and easy, there is no grind required and it's very simple to play. I can't compare this HD version to the original PS2 one but it all felt very sharp and smooth. Episode 4, new in this version, is much shorter than the other ones but serves as a nice epilogue.

Dead Space ★★★★★

This was the first game I got on Origin a few years ago and it was high time I played it. I had quite a few jump scares and the camera, placed very close, forces you to constantly look around. The guns felt powerful and varied but it took me a while to realise the ammo drops you get depend on which guns you own. I really enjoyed the enemies' designs and how they move through air ducts to get to you from above. However, I didn't really like the fact that the hero, Isaac, is mute and just gets to do what he's told. And there's a puzzle I got stuck on mid-game and that broke the rhythm. Didn't like that either.

Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project ★★★★★

I generally like VNs but this one I had a hard time getting into. The core Narcissu trilogy was alright but the other stories just felt like more of the same. This game tries too hard to be sentimental and while I’m as compationate as the next guy, I felt something was off in the way the characters behave and how it all ends. It didn’t help that just before, I had finished reading Flowers For Algernon, which did make me cry. One annoying technical issue is that this game uses a launcher to start the different stories and the settings are not carried over from one story to the next. And finally, the art is very minimalistic: a tiny window and lots of reused assets.

The First Tree ★★★★★

The store pages says "a third-person exploration game ... a poignant and beautiful journey that crescendos at the source of life, and perhaps result in an understanding of death." Quite pretentious isn't it? In fact, there's not that much exploration. You play as a vixen, listen to a guy and his wife talk about his memories of his dad, and collect stars placed in the different levels because ... I don't know. The fox is looking for her missing kit but spends her time looking for collectibles. Another thing that completely broke the immersion for me: the fox can double jump! On the plus side, the game is quite pretty but was made in Unity, an engine I don't really like.

Also played
PC Euro Truck Simulator 2 • The Elder Scrolls Online • Tokyo Xanadu eX+
3DS Pokémon X • Project X Zone

Statistics

966	games
63%	never played
7%	unfinished
20%	beaten
10%	completed
0%	won't play

Lists