Gaming Backlog 2023 lookback
2023 has ended, and 2024 is upon us.
And honestly? Fuck 2023. Garbage-ass year, and its shit stain is gonna remain on my life for at least a bit longer. I was already having a rough first part of the year, then two of my dogs died within a week of each other due to a bad batch of Purina, and while me and my mom are still not over it, we did have to introduce a new puppy into the house since the one remaining dog was getting really depressed, so that's been a handful. Everything else is too personal to get into, but I'll just say that I'm REALLY hoping my 26th year of life is at least MARGINALLY better than 25.
But I did set out a list of games for me to try and complete, and I got very little of them done. However, the list is only meant to be a loose guide on where to go next alongside anything new I may encounter, so it's okay if I need to reshuffle some things. Devil May Cry, Batman Arkham Asylum, and Resident Evil 2 I just didn't have time for, and I kinda fell out on Hollow Knight, so I'll have to try and restart that at some point.
But hey, talking about the games I DID play before listing the ones I PLAN to play means free content for the blog, so let's get into it.
Sonic 06-Silver's story and final story(PS3)
This one is the holdover from the year prior. My first playthrough of Sonic 06, as a whole, had some major rough patches, but I'd say I overall had fun with the game. If you're not a hardcore Sonic fan, though, just look up Windii's translation of the Japanese cutscenes.
A fairly solid entry into the Metroid franchise, but I have my quibbles with it. They have implied lore for the Chozo in this game, but all it really boils down to is, "Bad guys are bad, and the bad guy juice is driving us crazy. I sure hope our child implied to be Samus will stop it after we fucking die." And sure, that WORKS, but other games, Super Metroid in particular(since they religiously played that for this game, apparently), had a lot more meaning to their narratives, and to Samus' continued connection to her adopted people even long after they were all dead. The atmosphere for the environments is strong, but they need the narrative to elevate that atmosphere, and Prime just doesn't have it.
Gameplay is also mostly fine, but enemies can kinda become hit sponges at points, and the lock-on system only helps so much with that aspect. In addition, them respawning whenever you leave was a massive mistake, since it makes backtracking tedious and annoying.
And speaking of backtracking, this game has some of the worst backtracking I've seen outside of MAYBE Samus Returns? Though that at least has a teleportation system. I legit got blindsided by the Artifacts quest at the end, having only randomly encountered ONE beforehand, so I basically just had to do this massive quest through these areas I had already been in, bloating my 12 hour playthrough to 15, and REALLY exposing how confusing the map system in this game is.
All that just to access a final area that annoyed the shit out of me(FUCK FISSION METROIDS), and a final boss that was…Okay? I almost wished I'd put the game down right there. Would've had the same amount of narrative payoff.
So overall, while I can't say I DIDN'T have fun with the game, I do have my problems with Prime, and vastly prefer 2D Metroid. Maybe the sequels are better? Time will tell.
A fairly short entry, beaten in under a week, but kinda what I needed after Metroid Prime took forever. Played it around the time that new Spider-man game came out, and man, what a contrast.
The biggest flaw with the game is how stiff some of the controls are, and Spider-man's absolutely ass running speed, but the game's simple charm and cartoony sense of humor kinda pulls it through to the end. Plus, fire webs are a thing.
Definitely gonna try for a What If mode playthrough at some point.
Things I ended up playing this year that weren't on the list, but may have been new to me. You can't fully guide what you wanna play, it's just meant to focus it a bit, so here's the extras.
OctoDad: Dadliest Catch(PC)
Played this with 3 other friends back in January(though that feels like 3 years ago now, geez), and had a blast. Did it all in one session.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog(PC)
The surprise, free release of this on Steam made this a must-play for me on launch day, and after a 2-hour playthrough, I finished the game and loved it. I'm very happy to be living in the era where we all embracen Sonic's stupid friends with open arms, and the finale having actual emotional weight to it, unlike certain games in the 2010's, was SO satisfying. You can put Sonic and his friends into a more comedic situation without completely tearing out their personalities, and this game proves that beautifully. Only flaw is some very noticable grammatical errors in the dialogue, mainly in the late game. Been considering trying my hand at fixing that myself via a mod, but I don't have the time for that just yet.
The Batman(Jakks Pacific, Mame)
Mainly played this for a let's play that'll be coming to my YouTube channel soon, since it's actually a game I played back in the day before it, like many plug and plays back then, got busted, but this was my first time completing it for myself, so let's add it to the pile.
It's VERY simplistic, with missions either involving being a side-scrolling beat-em-up, running through buildings doing detective work, basic platforming, or messing with some type of vehicle. You do directly fight SOME of the villains, but that's kind of a rarity. The game isn't BAD, but its main appeal is in how relatively obscure it is. It emulates well in Mame if you know how to navigate it.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild(Switch)
Nowhere near finished this one, and probably won't for a while. Mainly played it since my brother gave me his old Switch games when he learned I had one. I had a decent bit of fun with what I played, but the constant loss of weapons to enemies FAR more powerful than myself just burned me out on it.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past(Switch)
Played this while I was trying out Switch Online. Didn't manage to finish it before my brief subscription ran out, but I got fairly close to the end. My save file should be intact on my system, so I should be able to get back to it and finish it at some point. Only flaws were, "Old game is being old game."
Another one I have from my brother, and only occasionally play when the lines run long at my plasma donations. I know this is apparently one of the bad ones, but I'm having fun so far as a non-Pokemon fan. Don't know if I've played enough to give it a ranking, though.
I'd view Mega Man 1 and 2 as perfectly solid games for their time, though I did accidentally play 2 on hard mode since that was the Japanese version. I have to use the rewind thanks to my weak-ass skills, but the platforming is very tight and snappy, to the point where I kinda wish the bosses weren't there to interupt that action. 3 was just a slog the whole way through, though, and 4 isn't looking much better.
Sonic Origins Plus(Switch)
I've technically played all of these games before, but these were mostly new versions, so eh, why not?
Sonic 1's remake was just as bad as I remembered. An almost input delay on the controls, more jank than even the original game, and the downright broken Springyard boss.
Sonic CD is about the same as always, you get what you put into it, which for me isn't much.
Sonic 2's remake, while not technically bad, still bothers me with the small differences that I notice more as someone who slays pussy at the regular game. However, I did find this version of the remake to be the most tolerable of the versions I've played.
Sonic 3&K was always somewhat uneven to me, but I gotta admit, the Origins port is the first one I technically beat legit. The biggest obstacle besides the horrible Lava Reef Act 2 boss was always Doomsday Zone, and its incredibly imprecise missiles, which seems to have been fixed for this version. I also hoarded coins to get the Chaos Emeralds in this game only, and it did gangbusters for me.
Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon(PC)
So my initial experience with Sonic Frontiers was pretty magical for me. A friend of mine bought it on Steam before launch, and let me play it through library share. And since it came out just two days before my birthday, that meant I could have a blast even despite some technical limitations that mods later helped mitigate. It was great to play this game that took a little bit of everything from across the franchise, and used all of it so meaningfully, both in gameplay, and story. Heck, I even liked Cyberspace as these quick, fun little challenges to beat purely through skill. The ending hit somewhat similarly to SA2's, having this somberness to it despite lacking much of the narrative complexity SA2 had. Sonic sacrificed himself for his friends, they sacrificed themselves for him, and Sage sacrificed herself to let such friendships continue, having realized the power they held. And sure, her being alive after the credits mitigated that impact, but the emotional stakes were there! And the updates just helped refine everything.
THEN UPDATE 3 CAME OUT, AND SHAT ON EVERYTHING.
First of all, I had to wait a week before I could even TOUCH the update, since Sega broke the game on computers with integrated graphics cards, making it unable to go full screen, and leaving the framerate in even the MENUS stuck at 1 FPS. And the only reason I played it within that week was because of a fan DLL that disabled the mod loader, so any and all optimizations came from sticking the files from the Switch conversion mod up the game's ass like an unruly lover.
So yeah, not a good first impression.
Gameplay wise, technical hiccups aside, it'a just okay. Knuckles outright sucks, even after the latest patch(how hard is it to just do SA2 Knuckles again!?), Amy is…Not much to write home about, and while I like how Tails' flight works, along with the ability to use the SA2 Cyclone, they only have fairly bare-bones platforming to do, unless you wanna challenge the enemies they are nowhere NEAR powerful enough to actually fight, and you're very likely to miss any other content that isn't REQUIRED to finish the campaign. I only ever encountered Sage once as Amy, and then never again with any of the new characters, so narrative cohesion is a lot lower than the base game. In addition, Cyberspace is ruined, given these unnecessarily difficult challenges with no checkpoints. I only did two of them before just giving up and getting all of the look-out Koco in the open zone(not hard to do, btw. I unlocked the first three towers, and most of the fourth before I even knew what they were for). And Sonic's trials were either way too easy, or way too difficult. I couldn't even do the penultimate one before that last patch, I had to do some save file fuckery for that, since the Titans, with their BIG wind-ups, weren't designed for the new parry. It felt like the creators were mad at someone in particular with some of these, even on easy mode. All that for a new final boss that is perfectly cool, but not worth what was sacrificed for us to get there.
Speaking of which, the story. Wow, this is bad.
It's not 2010's level of bad, since everyone is in-character, at the very least, but from a meta perspective.
1) Sonic's friends sacrificing themselves loses all meaning when they're back like, 5 seconds later.
2) Sonic's cyber corruption means nothing when it can just be gotten rid of in a few conversations.
3)Eggman and Sage's arcs are incomplete without her death, even if they did chicken out of it originally,
4)The new ending has zero weight to it.
They try to keep the tension going by giving Sonic's friends their own Cyber Ligma, but I'm sorry, this new ending stinks. The original ending was a bit rushed, sure, but the rest of the game was a really tough act to follow, and it still resonated emotionally with me. This one just takes away the good parts in an attempt to "fix" the ending, when I would've preferred it be sequel content. Let's pitch it, Sonic and friends get rumblings that the End is back, so they go back to Starfall, meet up with Eggman and Sage(they weren't surprised about her being back in Murder, despite Sonic naming Frontiers as his last adventure in that game, so it would work), and Sage offers the plan for everyone else to get the Chaos Emeralds while Sonic allows himself to be re-corrupted in order to gain the blue eyes and new parry. Simple, effective, leaves everything intact, and doesn't change much.
Most of this section was written before the patch, but I felt it important to leave it mostly intact as to properly explain the absolute middle finger this update was. The one I was anticipating the most might've ruined the game permanently on my current hardware.
Like, here's some examples of pre-Update 3 screenshots:
And this is how the best settings now look after the patch:
Basically, this update just kinda soured me towards Frontiers a bit, and I really hope Sega learns the right lessons from it.
In conclusion, this year sucked, and my hobbies have only done so well because of that fact. Hopefully, 2024 will have me get more off of the list.
Holdovers from last year:
Devil May Cry 1-Switch if I can manage to buy it there, PC if not)
Resident Evil 2(Leon's story)-Gamecube
Sonic 4 Episodes 2 and Metal(PC)
Bionicle the Game(Gamecube)
Lot of PC in there, I'll admit, but I have a few I need to get to on there.
Additionally, I have Sonic Superstars on my Switch, but I still need to finish Trip's story before I write about it. Expect it in next year's post.
Remember, I don't need to get to EVERY entry on here within the year, but my goal is at least half of them. Might also try for a TV shows watchlist goals, but that will be a separate thing.
