Game Backlog Burner - Part 2
A week into backlog burner and chill and I have made a lot of progress towards the goal of trying out a bunch of games that were not on my radar at all before now. This is shaping up to be a fun event, and I will be trying to do more of these community created events. Surviving Mars, God's Trigger, Sonic Mania, Bad North are all up!
Week 2
Surviving Mars August 2019
This is a city building game on Mars. The point is... to survive, and perhaps flourish! I've played through the tutorial, and it's fairly in depth, very cool, and pretty well done. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue playing; while I enjoy a lot of things about it, it's feeling like a bit of a misfire to me, but I'm not sure if that's covid ennui talking, as nothing is seeming as enjoyable for the last few days. I'm going to give it another go at some point. 7/10
God's Trigger *September 2019
This is a slick indie action game where you play as an angel and a demon, switching between characters as needed. In some ways it reminded me of No More Heroes; it's stylish and violent and dark and sometimes funny. The characters are cliche, but they know that they are, the levels are hard, but doable, and it's got a cool mechanic. I'm not good at top down shooters where you use the left joystick to move and the right joystick to aim and shoot with triggers, but if that sounds like fun for you, then this is a good pick. I probably won't play too much more, but I might see if people are playing it on twitch or something. 8/10
Sonic Mania October 2019
I was going to check out Battletech from the same month, but it looks huge and intense and I'm not sure I'd ever get into it, so I went with Sonic Mania instead. Review: It's SONIC. I was instantly 10 years old. 9/10
###Bad North - Jotunn Ediition *January 2020
OMG I skipped a bunch of months. o_O I found this simple game to be fun. I liked the art, and I felt like the concept was pretty solid; you command a small army, defending an island from invaders. You must progress eastwards, and you can upgrade your little men to improve their defenses. It's kind of like a tower defense, but you can constantly adjust your defenses by redeploying on the fly. Fun game, but nothing that grabbed me for the long haul. 6/10
I'm actually getting to bundles where I've played other games in the bundle. Here's a mini-review of those, which I'm not counting as part of the backlog burning.
Blasphemous December 2019
A relatively difficult 2D sidescrolling platformer that is definitely a bit, well, blasphemous. Lots of quasi religious symbolism turned on its head, often made profane. The story is a bit lacking - I'm not clear on why I'm doing anything - but the gameplay is fun and relatively easy to get into. I'm probably going to eventually complete this. 7/10
Two Point Hospital January 2020
This is a delightful little business simulator / city builder. It's silly, relatively fast paced, and entertaining. Optimizing your hospital is not particularly onerous, and each map has a bit of a wrinkle and introduces things at an appropriate pace. Cartoony fun! I'm still playing this off and on. 8/10
###Planet Coaster March 2020
I only played for about 20 minutes. It feels like a continuation of Roller Coaster Tycoon, which I enjoyed years ago. I will get back to it at some point. I haven't played enough to give it a fair score, but I'll give it this very provisional estimatated score: 7/10
Next Steps
- November 2019 - I think I'm going to try Evergarden.
- December 2019 - Soul Calibur VI is most likely the game for this month.
- February 2020 - Book of Demons
- March 2020 - Though March has another viking based game (Niffelheim) I'm going to opt for a non-viking game; probably My Friend Pedro
- April 2020 - Tossup! Opus Magnum, This is the Police, Truberbrook, Hitman 2. Which should I pick? Anyone have any ideas?