XboxEra's 2024 Backlog Challenge |OT| Surely this is the year?

+0 Metal Gear Solid 2 HD - This game sux. (Or “didn’t age well,” if you want to be generous.)

+1 Metal Gear Solid 3 HD - Much, much better. A bit heavy on the cutscenes, like all these games seem to be, though. But I enjoyed this one for the most part.

+1 Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD - Surprisingly substantial game for a PSP title. Maybe a bit too much so. Nearly quit this one early on, too. But it slowly grew on me. I’d say the main game is pretty solid in the end. Decided to skip the “true ending” extra chapter grind, though. It just looks annoying, unnecessary and way too long, forcing you to play 30-ish (?) “optional” side-ops and re-playing boss fights just to unlock some repetitive hide-and-seek missions to find the same escaped scientist six times over and eventually get one more proper mission. (Just lock the damn guy up already, ffs!)

5 Likes

I admit, I chuckled. :wink:

Nice completions! I have not played any of these, but that repeating of missions sounds like my experience of MGSV… not great.

3 Likes
  • +1 - Capcom Arcade Stadium: 1943 (XOne): I beat this early last night but wanted to wait until I beat it with all three planes, since it’s a bit of a shorter game. I love shoot’em ups and 1943 is the clear foundation for games like Ikaruga decades later. I’d still recommend this as a great intro option, but avoid 1942 like the plague… it has aged extremely poorly.

Total = 30.5

4 Likes

I’ve had more crashes / messed up game issues with my current pair of games than I’ve run into in a long time. I’m done with one but played about an hour or so of coop and while I got the 100% complete achievement, somehow like 7 others didn’t unlock for me but they did for our other account. And seriously so many crashes with the other one.

I’ll write them up once I’m done with both since they’re related, but it’s been much more painful than I expected.

1 Like

Sounds like my wife’s time with Coral Island :frowning:

1 Like

Completed Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and 5-7 (Xbox One). (+2)

As I mentioned the other day, had issues with my account not getting some of the end game achievements in the first game (basically all the ones for buying all the various groups of characters), but completed it, and think I’m done with it for now until I want to do another entire playthrough sometime. I’ll have to remember not to do co-op around the time I go buy up everything… The second game, I got to a certain point and it just kept crashing on almost every level when I was doing free play, really kind of ruined it for me. After that, I had certain levels that wouldn’t allow you to do the puzzle with the right character & spells. It made me glad that I hadn’t bought the (non back-compat) Xbox 360 versions when they were on sale since I’m sure they’re just as janky.

I also saw that for whatever reason ($$$) they just released an Xbox Series remaster of this pair of games, so one can only hope that they actually fixed a couple of the bugs in them while they were updating them (yeah right). Anyway, there’s a lot of good story, characters, humor in these games but the issues made it less fun.

4 Likes

+1 Outbreak Shades of Horror Chromatic Split

I’m gonna be honest, it had a rough launch, but after five patches in the first week, it runs a lot better now. I liked the metroidvania aspects of the game, but I felt the story was a little light considering it’s meant to set up next year’s installment. The expanded crafting is nice, but could use more polish. Overall I enjoyed it and will be trying out the extra modes and NG+.

4 Likes

5 patches in one week seems a bit much (since presumably you’d try to fix more than one issue in a given update)

1 Like

That’s disappointing. I have these in my LEGO backlog too.

2 Likes

I eventually closed out and restarted the Xbox a couple of times and it seemed like I had somewhat fewer (though still some) issues, so it’s kinda hard to say for sure. They’re good games overall though, and it wasn’t until I was playing the levels 2, 3 times and having enough characters unlocked to do everything that I had issues. By that time if you’re going through for the story, you’ve played it pretty well.

1 Like

From my understanding, each one focused a different system. One patch for video performance, one “day one” patch, one patch for stability, one patch for difficulty tweaks, and one for “incorrect item arrays”, whatever that is, and other fixes. It’s just one guy doing them, so I guess it was easier to split them up like that?

Is that on steam? I guess I was partly thinking console and that the changes have to go through cert, that I think there might be some cost involved each time so if it’s pc that makes some more sense.

It actually released on Xbox first! So the first patch or two was exclusively on Xbox, with PC getting them included upon release. After that, PC was getting the updates first because of the Xbox cert process. But that process only delayed the update by a few hours, or a day if it was later at night when the patch was submitted.

-3 Bioshock Remastered Collection

I initially had no interest in it considering that the originals are backwards compatible. However, I looked into it when it was offered for $7.50… That’s $2.50 per game! Turns out that there’s a few new things in the remasters like new plasmids and the addition of New Game Plus. So I spent most of this months $10 reward credit on it.

4 Likes
  • +.5 - State of Decay 2: Heartland (XSX) - I loved this expansion but apparently quit right at The Gauntlet. So I spent last night and before work this morning to finish it out. Couldn’t recommend the game and expansion enough, SoD2 is one of my favorite games of all time.

Total = 31

4 Likes

You sure about that? :wink:

One of these days I’ll get to State of Decay 2… It’s in the backlog of course. I’ve only played a little bit of the horde mode in co-op, but it seemed nice.

2 Likes

Hahaha fat fingered clearly, let me fix it :slight_smile:

As for SoD2, I can’t recommend it highly enough and if you ever want a co-op buddy, you know who to call.

2 Likes

+1 Metro 2033 Redux (Steam)

It’s maybe starting to show its age a little bit. But still one of the most atmospheric games I’ve ever played. Absolutely top notch voice acting, too. (Except for the children.)

2 Likes

+1 - Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered (XOne) - Beat this last night and I thought after a decade later I might feel differently about this game, but nope - the story is about the most “but the fascists weren’t all bad” vibe you can get and I hated how much it fucked with the canon. Great gameplay though, just absolutely atrocious story and equally atrocious fake Irish brogue.

Total = 32

3 Likes

Grim Fandango +1

Well, I finally did it. This is one of the handful of really old games I have had in the backlog for decades. I bought this for PC sometime in the early 00’s, a physical disc no less which I still have in my collection. Ran into technical issues a little bit into the game (yay, PC gaming) and young me didn’t really appreciate the game enough to overcome those. Shelved it, and never got around to it, until now. With a remastered version on Game Pass, I decided to give it a go and boy am I glad I did.

It’s an excellent, old school adventure game with a very cool artstyle, fun characters and obtuse puzzles. Controls are pretty bad (especially if you are into achievements…) and it’s definitely a product of its time, showing its age in the gameplay. Had to use a guide many times hah. But still, I can see why this is considered an all-time classic. Really enjoyed this and I’m very happy to finally put this one in the completed pile.

7 Likes