+0 Lil Gator Game
A short, cute collectathon adventure that you play the titular Lil Gator trying to convince your older sister to play with you. I enjoyed it enough, mostly for all the Zelda references. It’s obviously inspired by the 3D Zelda games, if you are a fan of those.
No, Banjo is TIMELESS, not old. The humor, story, characters, writing, and music stand up even today. The only outdated aspect is probably all the collectables, but you don’t need them all to complete the game.
Ace Combat 7 +1
Never played one of these before and think after Maverick came out at the cinema and seeing it in sales a number of times I grabbed it a while back. Played on easy as wasn’t sure what to expect and glad I did as hit some a nasty difficulty spike for me on one mission and needed to consult a guide.
I can see how this game appeals and the story was pretty mad and enjoyed the twists. Running some of the missions taking out ground targets brought back memories of desert strike so a nostalgia trip too. Would have been nice to spend more time on it and redoing missions but lack the time and probably skill lol.
I’ve moved onto two games now Far Cry 4 after finishing 3 early in the year - picked up both in a sale a while ago and enjoyed 3. The other is AI: Somnium - was this on game pass for a while as think that’s where I started in back 2022 but must have bought it at some point.
Good to read other peoples progress and impressions on games.
Played this recently as well and enjoyed it more than A Short Hike, which is very similar. A fairly quick and easy 1000G, too.
-1 Solasta: Crown of the Magister
I really enjoyed it while it was on Game Pass, but didn’t complete it. It’s now on sale, so I picked it up. I believe it’s the most faithful video game adaptation of a tabletop RPG. Solasta specifically is based on D&d 5th edition.
I never got around to that… Looks interesting.
We has another Monday, so update time! Sad news this week where our reigning champion Jorge succumbed to the temptations of the dark side and crashed and burned in a massive pile of purchased games. Tsk, tsk. I hope you’ll join us again next year, Jorge! 
Current leaderboard:
@Zip 21.5
@Searsy82 17
@SilentJay76 17
@Knottian 14.5
@ACyberRazorCut 10.5
@vrinn 9
@profjjj 7.5
. @ Mort 5
@MasterLeePhD 3.5
@Rodya 2
@APOPHIS1989 -3
+1 Pity Pit
It’s basically a Dig Dug clone. Since I will be away this week, I planned to do a large GS completion to keep me in the running for the GS challenge, and I chose this game for that purpose. Though it didn’t really matter, since season 7 of the GS challenge ended earlier today. (I won!)
+1 Red Death
I noticed my completion percentage wasn’t increasing as much when I completed a game, so looked back through my recent games and realized that I hadn’t fully completed it, so I went ahead and topped it off. It’s a shoot em up with an arcade feel, pretty standard in all respects.
I thought I was going to have a minus one because something I remember wanting to check out (Reagan Gorbachev) is on sale, but apparently my past self already bought it at some point. Now I’m stuck wondering if I got it as cheap as it is now… I think I remember hearing about it on Major Nelson Radio possibly.
+1 Castle Walker
A pretty bad platformer I only played for the GS. I would not recommend, even for that reason.
Total = 15.5
Completed two from Game Pass. Toem and Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly. +0 +0
I’m glad I pushed to finish Coffee Talk, I had enjoyed the first one and then just never got going on this. If you liked the first one you’ll probably like this, if not it’s more of the same but with more drink options. The game is set in a fictional version of Seattle in 2023 over 15 days. There are a number of story arcs, and your competence at serving people what drink they want and occasionally passing them items that have been left for them determines the outcome of the stories they’re involved in. While playing a bad outcome I was pretty amused when one of the characters threatened me after I got his drink intentionally wrong the second time. I enjoyed most of the characters well enough and was rooting for them. If you unlock everything else you get one last visitor, Fahmi, who was the writer and creator of the original game who died in 2022 looking for his lost cat. It was a nice touch to add him and have him talk to you a little.
Toem looked neat so I tried and completed it. You are a young photographer traveling to experience the Toem phenomena up on a mountain peak, and as you make your way through each stop on your way, you stop and and solve picture related quest puzzles (take a picture(s) of something then show it to the person typically). You get a tripod, the all important honk attachment for your camera, and at the end after the credits in what I presume was dlc for the pc game, you get a water balloon launcher for your camera. A couple quests take place in multiple locations but most are contained to the region they are given in. This is black and white and isn’t super detailed at first glance, but if you pull out your vintage camera, you often see more detail. I loved details like monkey balloons looking surprised when they got hit with a water balloon or the seagulls when I used the honk on them, but in general this was pretty cute.
I enjoyed both of these games and am glad I had time to play them.
Thank you for the mini-reviews, convinced me to actually finish these before they leave Game Pass. I did enjoy Coffee Talk and its little stories and characters so I’m sure I’ll enjoy the sequel too, not sure why I’ve been putting off playing it for so long. Too many games I guess.
Definitely too many games. And honestly the GaaS nature of stuff these days doesn’t help, so it’s nice to have some short experiences like these.
How are GWG handled? I could see them as counting as a subscription, but since you could choose to claim the games or not, I could see conscious effort to add to your backlog.
If you count them as part of your backlog, they are in your backlog I’d say. They are claimed like you say and half of them (the 360 ones) are owned for real. Since GwG is dead there’s no problems with negative points etc. either to consider anymore.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
Fair enough. The one I am about to post is one I always intended to finish, so I have definitely counted it as backlog.
I think the only thing that should count for/against you is purchased games (titles you own and paid money for).
Subscription based games don’t count for or against you if you play something on game pass or PS+. So unowned Games with Gold titles shouldn’t either. They are even considered separate in the Xbox library under their own tab.
The lone exception, as you pointed out, are 360 titles. As those are yours to keep.
For example, I have beat quite a few retro games this year. I went out of my way to only include ones that I own physical copies of and had never beat. If I just consider the entire ROM library on my steam deck part of my backlog, I can add about +20 to my score.
It is important that every one play by the same rules and those rules should be as simple and clear cut as possible.
+1 Coffee Talk
I always said I would complete it before starting Coffee Talk 2 on Game Pass. We’ll, CT2 is leaving in about a week, so it was now or never. I didn’t enjoy it originally, finding it slow and boring. But I am glad I pushed through, as I became enthralled once the mysterious spaceman showed up, adding a much needed shot of scifi and yearn to learn more into the fantasy visual novel. I am actually excited to play the sequel now!