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Battling the Backlog

Making Time for Games

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I mentioned back in the April Journal that playing Sekiro was, more than anything else, making me want to play Nioh again. But I didn’t really act on it at the time. I didn’t feel like I had the time for it, and instead mentally slotted it into a short-term backlog. This is not an unusual cycle for me to go through. It also happened with Final Fantasy XIV, just since this blog has been alive.

It doesn’t always happen that way though. Sometimes it’s more of a spontaneous, ‘I want to so by golly I’m going to’ type arrangement, as was the case with Transport Fever when I wanted to play something more tycoony again.

In any case, I digress! With this post I don’t mean to talk about creating more total time to spend gaming. But rather about prioritisation. Fitting the games I want to play into the time I have, and the ones that get dropped as a result.

I was reflecting on this and how things may’ve changed since I started blogging again. And how it hasn’t. I think for the most part I’ve simply become more aware of it now that it can have a fairly direct impact on what I write about here. I certainly believed my game choices to be fairly random previously, but in truth the same patterns were followed.

Perhaps just a little more… Quickly. I found that before the rate at which I would flip games was much higher.

Either way, it does have the rather poor side effect of meaning that I rarely finish a game. I imagine there being a sort of seesaw style graph where interest in the current game and interest in a new game intersect, and eventually tips from current to new. Typically well before the current is finished.

The strength of interest in the current game can shift where the tipping point is precisely, but it’s a rare thing indeed to have it occur after I finish a game.

I guess the question then becomes is this actually a bad thing if fun is still being had? I tend to view incomplete games as a negative, but also simply as a fact of life. I would never have time to play everything I wanted to if I insisted on finishing everything I started… So perhaps it’s actually OK.

But there is no other entertainment medium I’d apply this to. I finish books. I finish movies. Generally even TV shows. I couldn’t imagine even trying to apply a taster style approach to these… So why games?

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Playing Past the End

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I ‘finished’ Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey roughly 20 hours of play ago. I finished what I would consider to be the main story thread regarding your family in any case. Perhaps 10 hours of play ago, I finished the story strand linking present-day and the Isu — The First Civilisation. There are a few other story strands that will have endings of their own, I’m assuming. Such as eliminating once and for all the Cult of Kosmos and raising to the very top of the Mercenary rankings.

But those are certainly second-fiddle to resolving the family story. You might have gathered already, but simply getting that far in a single-player title is unusual for me. I come by my massive backlog of unfinished titles honestly. 😉

For a good while I thought Odyssey would fall to the same fate, as I’d put in a little over 20 hours at launch and then never touched it again. Certainly returning to blogging has seen me make a more concerted effort at finishing things, but Odyssey has gone beyond even that. I haven’t been able to put it down!

With this context, it’s probably also going to come as no surprise that I’m not a completionist by nature. I absolutely know there is no world in which I truly ‘100%’ this game with all side content done, achievements completed, etc. I probably won’t even make any sort of serious dent into a ‘New Game+’ mode.

I’m still playing on because:

  • First, it’s fun as all hell. Nothing else would matter if this wasn’t true.
  • I’m getting my game ‘ready’ for the DLC. All three chapters of ‘The Legacy of the First Blade’ are out now and the first chapter of the second season of DLC, ‘The Fate of Atlantis’ is also out.
    • Before I start this DLC, I wish to complete the two story strands I mentioned earlier — the Cult and the Mercenaries.

I’m just about there on both threads. There is in fact only one Mercenary between me and the top spot. I just need to discover who they are so I can track them down and… have a chat about our relative positions in life.

The Cult is going to take a bit more work still. I’ve cleansed the world of several branches already, but there are still more clues to be discovered and identities uncovered before I understand who the overall leader is. One of the last clues I received on the leader’s identity was extremely intriguing, too. I am almost ready to make an assumption on who it is before being able to more ‘formally’ uncover them, but I’m happy taking out some more of their underlings for now.

Although I must admit, I am getting rather antsy to start into the DLC already. Soon. Soon!

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Iteration within the Tomb Raider Series

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How…How did that get there?

ManicTime tells me I have just under 5 hours in Rise of the Tomb Raider — the 2015 sequel to the Tomb Raider reboot — what struck me immediately though was how different Crystal Dynamics had made the game while maintaining the integrity of the core experience they’d established with the 2013 release.

There is a mix of both streamlining of some and deepening of other game systems.

For example, the rope arrows used to connect certain puzzle elements or make-shift bridges used to require a separate key input to differentiate it from firing a standard arrow. Now it is context sensitive to what you’re aiming at.

Button-overloading (more than one potential action on a singular button press) with context like this is not always appreciated, because it isn’t always done well, leading to accidentally triggering unintended actions. In Rise of the Tomb Raider’s case though, it is done well. There are no situations where you’re aiming at a rope-arrow enabled ‘thing’ and want to fire a standard arrow.

There are some less successful changes too, though. The first entry in this Tomb Raider series had a rudimentary crafting system with a single resource, ‘Scrap’. Rise of the Tomb Raider expands this out to wood, hides, berries, cloth, metal and more.

The introduction of this system is powerfully done, reflecting Lara’s growth in willpower to survive no matter the odds. You are thrust into the freezing Siberian winter, and need to put together the base essentials of a camp fire, makeshift bow and arrows.

Not everyone you meet will want to be friends.

Unfortunately it’s a system that quickly outstays its welcome. It becomes a distraction from the other, far more enjoyable, aspects of the game. Unlike Tomb Raider’s ‘scrap’ which was acquired quickly and easily as you progressed through the game — you will often need to go out of your way and do things other than what you would have otherwise wanted to, in order to upgrade your weapons and equipment.

The most egregious example of this being hunting for hides. While there are some wolves you’ll need to do battle with in the course of normal play… The sheer volume of hides required means you’ll need to depopulate the region of many herds worth of deer.

Overall though, I’ve still been enjoying the experience. The extension to the play area sizes and world building in general are much better. The skill system is excellent, and the story so far a massive step forward giving Lara more agency and a more direct involvement with the previously quite mysterious ‘Trinity’.

I still have a long way yet to go with Rise, and things may yet change. Already though I am extremely curious to see where Crystal Dynamics took things with 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

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Digging for Artifacts in the Backlog

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Only about 6 years late.

Actually the news here might be that I finished a game. Never mind that it’s one that released 6-years ago. Tomb Raider’s reboot and first entry in the recent trilogy of titles was released March 2013. I’ve just now finished it April 2019.

It was an interesting experience. It both holds up very well and displays its age. There is the odd very low resolution texture and low poly-count objects which belie the game’s age graphically. Sure, some of the effects work also give it a dated appearance. But otherwise it still looks really good.

Climbing through one of the game’s tombs or puzzle areas, or even watching the enemy moving into position, and I think you’d be hard pressed without prior knowledge to say how long ago it came out.

What really betrays the era is the game’s almost begrudging attitude toward letting you control the camera. This simply doesn’t really happen in modern game design, but is a frequent occurrence here.

It can be a helpful pointer at times, but at others the forced perspective when you just want to take a look around can be quite jarring. Literally. It will at times continually ‘shake’ the camera back into the position the designers wanted.

The sound effects and music are excellent, but the voice overs are… Hmm. They are something of a mixed bag. Some of the voice actors are excellent, others are OK… Others you wonder who on the dev team they were related to.

But for all that I enjoyed it. It’s a short game (if you’re not a completionist after all the relics and challenges), clocking in at a little over 10 hours for me, including the 3-4 hours I’d already given it in the past. Cloud Saves let me resume the campaign that I was around 36% of the way through from way back when.

I don’t recall why I stopped playing it originally, it was likely just something else I’d been waiting on more came out.

As a Lara Croft prequel the story worked well, but I believe someone coming to the series now could well have been skipped over it and gone straight to the second entry, Rise of the Tomb Raider. I don’t know yet whether one should do that, only that one could. (I’ll know after playing Rise, which is up next.)

What I do know though from finishing this one is that you don’t need to. If you’re interested in the whole experience, know that the original game of this trilogy is perfectly serviceable today, 6-years on.

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Impulse Purchases Alive and Well

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Far Cry 5: New Dawn — Not a game I thought I’d own any time soon.

One of the more positive side-effects of running this blog has been an increased focus on a smaller set of games. There have been few to no impulse purchases simply because there was a sale on, or similar. I had been curious how long that effect might hold for. We have an answer now. This long. 😉

Last month I outlined some of the coming games of interest, there was one I missed off that list simply because I hadn’t kept a close eye on when it was coming.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — There isn’t any world in which I didn’t pick this one up.

It was this one! Sekiro. Ironically, it is also the least played of my recent acquisitions! Those other ones..? OK, those ones were straight up impulse purchases.

Far Cry 5 / Far Cry 5: New Dawn

Far Cry 5 and Far Cry 5: New Dawn are two titles I hadn’t imagined picking up any time soon… But then a Ubisoft 50% sale weekend came along… A friend was feeling in the same boat as me re: Division 2 and wanting to not invest too much time when meaningful progression wasn’t possible. One thing sort of led to another, and here we are.

Far Cry 5 we’re playing exclusively in co-op, New Dawn in single-player mode when the other isn’t available. New Dawn is a direct story sequel to Far Cry 5, but playing both together has still been working out quite well. Like one of those movies that tell the past and present story alongside each other.

Far Cry 5: New Dawn — The church has quite a different aesthetic now from the ‘Old World’ days of Far Cry 5.

There are some differences between the two titles which thematically, at least, fit. Far Cry 5 you’re purchasing your weapons and have access to quite a wide array of customisation options. Scopes, silencers, the whole nine yards. New Dawn by comparison has you scavenging for the materials needed to put together even the most rudimentary of weapons.

I have nothing against the crafting mechanic itself, but the limited customisation options is certainly a bit of a downer.

Devil May Cry 5

I fear that this one might be one that I grab with the best of intentions and then never actually manage to fit it into my play schedule. I’ve not really touched it yet other than the intro-mission.

I loved Devil May Cry 4 though, which came out some 11 years ago now. I devoured this game, finishing it over the course of a weekend even though I’d not played any of the previous entries. If I recall correctly, DMC4 was the first in the series to get a PC release at launch rather than a later port of dubious quality.

We’ll see how it goes. The Division 2 will kick into high-gear again next week, at least for a little bit. Variety might have to wait!

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