10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy
10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE: 31 December 2024
I've updated this post a little to reflect how the backlog has changed. I had this blog on a pause for 2.5 years, but my plan for 2025 is absolutely to bring this back! I'm changing jobs in Feb/Mar 2025, so it may be that there's a bit of a quiet period until I'm settled in. I wanted to come back to the blog as writing it gave me a real motivation to continue beating games.
My plans are that I will do a post each time I beat a game, maybe with some screenshots and my quick thoughts on the game, with a monthly (or there-abouts) post that covers the graphic that I had before (if I can still find it!)
---
Hello there folks!
Welcome to my blog and my backlog, I hope that you'll enjoy following along and coming on this journey to finally play through the many games I've bought on the cheap over the years!
ABOUT ME:
My name's Thomas and I'm (at the time of editing this blog post) 27 years old. I live in Berkshire in the UK on the outskirts of a small town. I've been a member of the site for I think 10 years now, but I've only really been using it for the last five years. I work as an Audit manager, so it will probably be no surprise to anyone that I like tracking my backlog and completion times and just love the data that goes into all this. I grew up playing lots of racing games on PS1 and PS2 and so you may see games from that era feature throughout.
ABOUT THE BACKLOG
So I've been meaning to start beating games in my backlog for quite some time as I've just accumulated lots of games through sales over the years, but always struggled to find the time to complete things. You can kind of see in my timeline when I stopped playing games so much and it very clearly matches when my A-Level exams started in College, then I had Uni, then I had professional exams after that.
Anyways. The backlog properly started at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in about March 2020. I was furloughed from my job (for non-UK peeps, this meant the government paid my salary and I was temporarily not at work and told to stay at home). My friend Tero recommended that I should use this sudden free time to play games and that just led to me logging everything on here and starting this journey! On reflection I'm so glad I did because not only did it help me through that period of time, but also I have thoroughly enjoyed playing through things again! The first game that got played was Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, and I thought I'd share this screenshot from that time
That smirk, that charm.... those graphics xD
The backlog started as being one game at a time... then soon it was two games at a time... now there are lots of categories, and I thought I'd talk about those. Basically I struggle to game for more than about 1-2 hours at a time, and I like to mix the games up and not just focus on one game at a time so that things continue to feel new and I can look forward to rotating round to another game again. Also, I mean it helps a lot when you're in different moods and stuff being able to choose from a small selection of current playthroughs.
The categories at the moment are:
- Action / Adventure: Effectively this is just everything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories
- Shooter: By which I mean first person shooter
- Strategy: I have lots of these games, some are like grand strategy games, some are more like management games and stuff like that
- Racing: I have so many in the backlog that this actually means non-rally games
- Rally: It's embarrassing that this category has so many games that it gets its own category haha
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE BLOG:
Well, I'm going to be doing a post right after this one that will talk about the progress I've made between March 2020 and October 2021. Then you will get my Late November 2021 update post on Wednesday. My goal is to provide one update every two weeks or so, just because I find it really interesting to track these things (and it might give me some inspiration to actually complete things). There will be a little graphic that I post with those updates too that gives you a nice "at a glance" view of things.
What I'm hoping to do is then give a little progress update for the games that I'm currently playing, talk about the games that I've completed / retired in terms of how I found them and whether I would recommend them, and finally maybe give some hints at what I'm planning to play next.
Why do I call them "Early" and "Late" updates? Well, that's easy. I love Napoleon Total War and I always loved the little icons at the bottom that showed the season pic and also each turn was either Early January, Late January etc. Something about recording the time like that seems nice (and also gives me some flexibility should things get busy or go wrong!).
I'm going to try and not spoil games when I post about them, but just give you my thoughts and share any funny or cool moments that I can :)
CONTACT ME
If you wanted to chat about anything in this blog, I'm on the HLTB Discord as "CommissarTommy" and you can also find me on Steam under the same name! (Of course you can also message me on this site as well).
---
Enjoy the blog <3
I've updated this post a little to reflect how the backlog has changed. I had this blog on a pause for 2.5 years, but my plan for 2025 is absolutely to bring this back! I'm changing jobs in Feb/Mar 2025, so it may be that there's a bit of a quiet period until I'm settled in. I wanted to come back to the blog as writing it gave me a real motivation to continue beating games.
My plans are that I will do a post each time I beat a game, maybe with some screenshots and my quick thoughts on the game, with a monthly (or there-abouts) post that covers the graphic that I had before (if I can still find it!)
---
Hello there folks!
Welcome to my blog and my backlog, I hope that you'll enjoy following along and coming on this journey to finally play through the many games I've bought on the cheap over the years!
ABOUT ME:
My name's Thomas and I'm (at the time of editing this blog post) 27 years old. I live in Berkshire in the UK on the outskirts of a small town. I've been a member of the site for I think 10 years now, but I've only really been using it for the last five years. I work as an Audit manager, so it will probably be no surprise to anyone that I like tracking my backlog and completion times and just love the data that goes into all this. I grew up playing lots of racing games on PS1 and PS2 and so you may see games from that era feature throughout.
ABOUT THE BACKLOG
So I've been meaning to start beating games in my backlog for quite some time as I've just accumulated lots of games through sales over the years, but always struggled to find the time to complete things. You can kind of see in my timeline when I stopped playing games so much and it very clearly matches when my A-Level exams started in College, then I had Uni, then I had professional exams after that.
Anyways. The backlog properly started at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in about March 2020. I was furloughed from my job (for non-UK peeps, this meant the government paid my salary and I was temporarily not at work and told to stay at home). My friend Tero recommended that I should use this sudden free time to play games and that just led to me logging everything on here and starting this journey! On reflection I'm so glad I did because not only did it help me through that period of time, but also I have thoroughly enjoyed playing through things again! The first game that got played was Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, and I thought I'd share this screenshot from that time
That smirk, that charm.... those graphics xD
The backlog started as being one game at a time... then soon it was two games at a time... now there are lots of categories, and I thought I'd talk about those. Basically I struggle to game for more than about 1-2 hours at a time, and I like to mix the games up and not just focus on one game at a time so that things continue to feel new and I can look forward to rotating round to another game again. Also, I mean it helps a lot when you're in different moods and stuff being able to choose from a small selection of current playthroughs.
The categories at the moment are:
- Action / Adventure: Effectively this is just everything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories
- Shooter: By which I mean first person shooter
- Strategy: I have lots of these games, some are like grand strategy games, some are more like management games and stuff like that
- Racing: I have so many in the backlog that this actually means non-rally games
- Rally: It's embarrassing that this category has so many games that it gets its own category haha
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE BLOG:
Well, I'm going to be doing a post right after this one that will talk about the progress I've made between March 2020 and October 2021. Then you will get my Late November 2021 update post on Wednesday. My goal is to provide one update every two weeks or so, just because I find it really interesting to track these things (and it might give me some inspiration to actually complete things). There will be a little graphic that I post with those updates too that gives you a nice "at a glance" view of things.
What I'm hoping to do is then give a little progress update for the games that I'm currently playing, talk about the games that I've completed / retired in terms of how I found them and whether I would recommend them, and finally maybe give some hints at what I'm planning to play next.
Why do I call them "Early" and "Late" updates? Well, that's easy. I love Napoleon Total War and I always loved the little icons at the bottom that showed the season pic and also each turn was either Early January, Late January etc. Something about recording the time like that seems nice (and also gives me some flexibility should things get busy or go wrong!).
I'm going to try and not spoil games when I post about them, but just give you my thoughts and share any funny or cool moments that I can :)
CONTACT ME
If you wanted to chat about anything in this blog, I'm on the HLTB Discord as "CommissarTommy" and you can also find me on Steam under the same name! (Of course you can also message me on this site as well).
---
Enjoy the blog <3
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
PROGRESS UPDATE: MARCH 2020 TO OCTOBER 2021
So in a way I'm sorry that I'm going to whizz through more than a year's worth of games, but I still wanted to give some context in terms of the games I have been playing and the experience so far, mostly so that it gives you an insight into the journey up until this point and hopefully paints a nice picture for my backlog post that will be just the last two weeks that will be posted relatively soon :)
So sit back, relax and enjoy :)
(Apologies in advance, the graphics for this post were really rushed but believe me the pics for the more regular updates are much less compact - just a lot to fit on here)
To touch on the retired games a little.
- Test Drive Ferrari Racing Legends: I tried my absolute best to stick with this game but holy heck it is so boring and the campaign has virtually 0 variation. The slog was just too long for me to handle
- ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead: I was really enjoying all of the infantry gameplay. But the tanks and the helicopters were just too clunky and I wasn't having a good time, so I decided to just not play through this and the rest of the series.
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game: Now this one I was actually enjoying! But the game randomly when I got to a certain level refused to recognise my controller and was absolutely unplayable on keyboard and mouse. I tried everything to get it working again (even reinstalling and restarting the campaign) and nothing worked. RIP friend.
Some developments you may see in there is the emergence of the PS2 racing games. That really happened because my friends came over and we found a dusty old box of my PS2 games and as a kid I was so rubbish at games that I never completed a lot of them. Well... also I got bored quite easy back then so they also didn't get fully completed for that reason. Loads of them went up on my backlog after that though and I'm looking forward to playing more :)
But yes, the first proper update (which will show the actual format of what I want this blog to be) will come at the end of November - So I will see you all then :)
So in a way I'm sorry that I'm going to whizz through more than a year's worth of games, but I still wanted to give some context in terms of the games I have been playing and the experience so far, mostly so that it gives you an insight into the journey up until this point and hopefully paints a nice picture for my backlog post that will be just the last two weeks that will be posted relatively soon :)
So sit back, relax and enjoy :)
(Apologies in advance, the graphics for this post were really rushed but believe me the pics for the more regular updates are much less compact - just a lot to fit on here)
To touch on the retired games a little.
- Test Drive Ferrari Racing Legends: I tried my absolute best to stick with this game but holy heck it is so boring and the campaign has virtually 0 variation. The slog was just too long for me to handle
- ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead: I was really enjoying all of the infantry gameplay. But the tanks and the helicopters were just too clunky and I wasn't having a good time, so I decided to just not play through this and the rest of the series.
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game: Now this one I was actually enjoying! But the game randomly when I got to a certain level refused to recognise my controller and was absolutely unplayable on keyboard and mouse. I tried everything to get it working again (even reinstalling and restarting the campaign) and nothing worked. RIP friend.
Some developments you may see in there is the emergence of the PS2 racing games. That really happened because my friends came over and we found a dusty old box of my PS2 games and as a kid I was so rubbish at games that I never completed a lot of them. Well... also I got bored quite easy back then so they also didn't get fully completed for that reason. Loads of them went up on my backlog after that though and I'm looking forward to playing more :)
But yes, the first proper update (which will show the actual format of what I want this blog to be) will come at the end of November - So I will see you all then :)
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE - LATE NOVEMBER 2021
Well folks, here it is! My first update using the standard format going forwards, this time covering the later part of November. This month I was battling against workload chaos but still managed to make some good progress
GAMES BEATEN
GRID (2008) - PC - 19h 21m - 9 / 10
GRID is a game that I had started, probably about 8 years ago, on Xbox 360, but had never really got around to finishing. I finally managed to complete it in this period and honestly it remains one of my favourite racing games to this day! There's just something really special about how the game deals with the action and the fast-paced nature, a real step up from TOCA 3, not just graphically but in terms of the depth of the story element too. I just really loved placing through this game again and the fact that you can customise your team, choose the team mates and choose the cars you race in each event really does make this more engaging than a lot of racing games I play. The fact as well that there are lots of different racing disciplines and that the three regions - USA, Europe and Japan - all have their own feel made it feel like there was more content than TOCA 3, despite being almost 10 hours shorter. Part of me was in despair at finishing the game, because I have GRID 2 up next and I've just heard not the best things about that - but we shall see!
Tropico 3: Absolute Power - PC - 14h 33m - 8 / 10
This is an expansion pack to the base game of Tropico 3, but honestly it plays out almost like a sequel. Totally new campaign, new buildings and edicts, new radio presenter and lots of new islands. Tropico has always been a quirky series, but for me this is the one that really started that off. I think Tropico 3 planted all the right seeds, but they realised with Absolute Power that you could absolutely push that even further without taking away from the gameplay. If you haven't played either - you should get the Gold Edition on Steam as the original is still great and made even better by Absolute Power's new buildings. Generally playing through this has been a blast, with each island in the campaign feeling like a new adventure with its own sets of challenges. My favourite moment from this was El Presidente giving a speech about how the housing crisis was the fault of the environmentalists (spoilers - it was actually my fault!) and then in the next sentence praising the environmentalists for protecting the gifts mother nature has bestowed upon us. Truly a man fighting for both sides.
Alan Wake's American Nightmare - PC - 2h 35m - 8 / 10
This one was technically a replay for me as I have beaten it in the past, but actually didn't remember doing so... so it basically felt like playing the game for the first time again. As you will have seen in my previous post, I had just finished Alan Wake and, for the first time, the two DLC chapters. American Nightmare is a much less dark and gloomy version of that, the game kind of takes itself slightly less seriously and focused a bit more on the gunplay than the original game. I can kind of see why people like and hate this though as folks that loved the original may find this a bit hollow, but others may find that the gameplay is actually more fun and approachable than the original game. One thing I hadn't appreciated is just how good this game looks, I mean it just seemed like a really nice step up from the original game. I really love one of the game's central concepts where you are effectively reliving the same events over again, but with the knowledge from the previous time you played through so that you can begin piecing together the things you need in order to defeat Mr. Scratch. The game still holds up honestly after all this time, and the only downside is that there was only 2h and 35m of this game to enjoy! There's extra content in the form of the arcade missions, but maybe I'll come back to those another time!
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - PC - 3h 41m - 5 / 10
Y'know folks... I've already moaned about this game a lot on the HLTB Discord, but by God is this game clunky. For some reason the gun play just feels like moving a boat around and you have basically 0 recoil control when you're not using a sniper. Why am I talking about small arms gameplay when the game is called 'Sniper' you ask? Well that's because for some reason City Interactive decided that instead of making the vast majority of the game about sniping, they'd include a load of run-and-gun sections that just felt painful to complete every time. The story of this game was also a wild ride. It kind of felt like a collection of things that just kind of happened and I'm not sure why or what impact doing these things had, but they happened. Perhaps I should be kinder to City Interactive and perhaps my playthroughs of the later games will save the series... (X). If you want to play this on a modern PC, you should check out PC Gaming Wiki if you don't want all the menus and the cutscenes to be black and white and upside down
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - Second Strike DLC - PC - 1h 52m - 5 / 10
Clearly this month I decided that just the base game alone was not enough suffering, so I actually played the "Unfinished Business" DLC in which you are required to hunt down and kill the leader who took over from the General that you assassinated in the first game. Perhaps it was because this was just one Act compared to the base game's four, but the story felt a little less disjointed. The gameplay however just ended up being a nightmare for me and I ran into lots of bugs... in fact I now actually have the slowest completion time for this game on HLTB, my legacy has been created.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
Racing games are continuing to get the majority of my time at the moment as I find them easy to dip in and out of during this heavy period of work. On WRC: FIA World Rally Championship I have managed to get to about 6/10 of the campaign blocks completed, but I know the remaining ones will be very long as they're the big championships. Good news is that I'm enjoying GRID 2 a lot more than I thought I would, closing in on finishing the 3rd season now.
My initial progress on Order of War has been slow, but I can definitely say that I am enjoying it. Honestly I've just accepted that this is a longer series and that this will probably remain in these updates until about February 2022. I've started on the US campaign and have completed the first two missions and I think there are eight in that campaign, plus a full German campaign... so a long way to go.
I'm giving myself a well earned rest before starting Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, which is technically a replay for me, so no progress yet. Same with Dream, no progress on the board yet. It's actually interesting as this will be the 3rd time I've started the game. The first being when it was very early in development, so most of the game wasn't available to play and so I never got to complete it. The second time I had a HDD failure and lost my game data and my save and so just kind of gave up. I remember liking it though so hopefully I can make a start again in the next two weeks at some stage.
Also... No progress on LittleBigPlanet: PS Vita since September. Mostly as I just haven't picked up my Vita in that time, but trust me over Christmas I am intending to beat the heck out of that game to score the first Vita title in the backlog completed.
--
GAMES ADDED
I didn't actually buy any games in this period. Rather instead I just added games that I had on Gamersgate that I forgot about, and finally got around to adding the DLCs (AKA the only actual parts with gameplay) for Battle of Empires: 1914-1918
--
RETIREMENTS
Thankfully none this month... no matter how frustrating Sniper: Ghost Warrior was!
--
NEXT UPDATE
I should be uploading the next one of these updates in around mid-December, so it'll be before Christmas :) My hope is that one of those two current racing games will be beaten, but be prepared for it to be a much quieter update than this because most of the games in progress are quite early on and will likely be end of the month if not later completions. All depends on how much free time I get of course :)
Until next time!
Well folks, here it is! My first update using the standard format going forwards, this time covering the later part of November. This month I was battling against workload chaos but still managed to make some good progress
GAMES BEATEN
GRID (2008) - PC - 19h 21m - 9 / 10
GRID is a game that I had started, probably about 8 years ago, on Xbox 360, but had never really got around to finishing. I finally managed to complete it in this period and honestly it remains one of my favourite racing games to this day! There's just something really special about how the game deals with the action and the fast-paced nature, a real step up from TOCA 3, not just graphically but in terms of the depth of the story element too. I just really loved placing through this game again and the fact that you can customise your team, choose the team mates and choose the cars you race in each event really does make this more engaging than a lot of racing games I play. The fact as well that there are lots of different racing disciplines and that the three regions - USA, Europe and Japan - all have their own feel made it feel like there was more content than TOCA 3, despite being almost 10 hours shorter. Part of me was in despair at finishing the game, because I have GRID 2 up next and I've just heard not the best things about that - but we shall see!
Tropico 3: Absolute Power - PC - 14h 33m - 8 / 10
This is an expansion pack to the base game of Tropico 3, but honestly it plays out almost like a sequel. Totally new campaign, new buildings and edicts, new radio presenter and lots of new islands. Tropico has always been a quirky series, but for me this is the one that really started that off. I think Tropico 3 planted all the right seeds, but they realised with Absolute Power that you could absolutely push that even further without taking away from the gameplay. If you haven't played either - you should get the Gold Edition on Steam as the original is still great and made even better by Absolute Power's new buildings. Generally playing through this has been a blast, with each island in the campaign feeling like a new adventure with its own sets of challenges. My favourite moment from this was El Presidente giving a speech about how the housing crisis was the fault of the environmentalists (spoilers - it was actually my fault!) and then in the next sentence praising the environmentalists for protecting the gifts mother nature has bestowed upon us. Truly a man fighting for both sides.
Alan Wake's American Nightmare - PC - 2h 35m - 8 / 10
This one was technically a replay for me as I have beaten it in the past, but actually didn't remember doing so... so it basically felt like playing the game for the first time again. As you will have seen in my previous post, I had just finished Alan Wake and, for the first time, the two DLC chapters. American Nightmare is a much less dark and gloomy version of that, the game kind of takes itself slightly less seriously and focused a bit more on the gunplay than the original game. I can kind of see why people like and hate this though as folks that loved the original may find this a bit hollow, but others may find that the gameplay is actually more fun and approachable than the original game. One thing I hadn't appreciated is just how good this game looks, I mean it just seemed like a really nice step up from the original game. I really love one of the game's central concepts where you are effectively reliving the same events over again, but with the knowledge from the previous time you played through so that you can begin piecing together the things you need in order to defeat Mr. Scratch. The game still holds up honestly after all this time, and the only downside is that there was only 2h and 35m of this game to enjoy! There's extra content in the form of the arcade missions, but maybe I'll come back to those another time!
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - PC - 3h 41m - 5 / 10
Y'know folks... I've already moaned about this game a lot on the HLTB Discord, but by God is this game clunky. For some reason the gun play just feels like moving a boat around and you have basically 0 recoil control when you're not using a sniper. Why am I talking about small arms gameplay when the game is called 'Sniper' you ask? Well that's because for some reason City Interactive decided that instead of making the vast majority of the game about sniping, they'd include a load of run-and-gun sections that just felt painful to complete every time. The story of this game was also a wild ride. It kind of felt like a collection of things that just kind of happened and I'm not sure why or what impact doing these things had, but they happened. Perhaps I should be kinder to City Interactive and perhaps my playthroughs of the later games will save the series... (X). If you want to play this on a modern PC, you should check out PC Gaming Wiki if you don't want all the menus and the cutscenes to be black and white and upside down
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - Second Strike DLC - PC - 1h 52m - 5 / 10
Clearly this month I decided that just the base game alone was not enough suffering, so I actually played the "Unfinished Business" DLC in which you are required to hunt down and kill the leader who took over from the General that you assassinated in the first game. Perhaps it was because this was just one Act compared to the base game's four, but the story felt a little less disjointed. The gameplay however just ended up being a nightmare for me and I ran into lots of bugs... in fact I now actually have the slowest completion time for this game on HLTB, my legacy has been created.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
Racing games are continuing to get the majority of my time at the moment as I find them easy to dip in and out of during this heavy period of work. On WRC: FIA World Rally Championship I have managed to get to about 6/10 of the campaign blocks completed, but I know the remaining ones will be very long as they're the big championships. Good news is that I'm enjoying GRID 2 a lot more than I thought I would, closing in on finishing the 3rd season now.
My initial progress on Order of War has been slow, but I can definitely say that I am enjoying it. Honestly I've just accepted that this is a longer series and that this will probably remain in these updates until about February 2022. I've started on the US campaign and have completed the first two missions and I think there are eight in that campaign, plus a full German campaign... so a long way to go.
I'm giving myself a well earned rest before starting Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, which is technically a replay for me, so no progress yet. Same with Dream, no progress on the board yet. It's actually interesting as this will be the 3rd time I've started the game. The first being when it was very early in development, so most of the game wasn't available to play and so I never got to complete it. The second time I had a HDD failure and lost my game data and my save and so just kind of gave up. I remember liking it though so hopefully I can make a start again in the next two weeks at some stage.
Also... No progress on LittleBigPlanet: PS Vita since September. Mostly as I just haven't picked up my Vita in that time, but trust me over Christmas I am intending to beat the heck out of that game to score the first Vita title in the backlog completed.
--
GAMES ADDED
I didn't actually buy any games in this period. Rather instead I just added games that I had on Gamersgate that I forgot about, and finally got around to adding the DLCs (AKA the only actual parts with gameplay) for Battle of Empires: 1914-1918
--
RETIREMENTS
Thankfully none this month... no matter how frustrating Sniper: Ghost Warrior was!
--
NEXT UPDATE
I should be uploading the next one of these updates in around mid-December, so it'll be before Christmas :) My hope is that one of those two current racing games will be beaten, but be prepared for it to be a much quieter update than this because most of the games in progress are quite early on and will likely be end of the month if not later completions. All depends on how much free time I get of course :)
Until next time!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE – EARLY DECEMBER 2021
Hello again everyone! Can you believe that it has been just over two weeks since my last update already? Gosh December is speeding through and whilst this year I had hoped to spend it in Austria that has not happened, and I will have to navigate the awkwardness of the CommissarTommy family Christmas. The good news however is that I will have lots of time of work as I am lucky enough to work in a sector where nothing happens in this time of year.
The next update therefore is likely to be absolutely jam packed with things because I’m hoping to use a lot of my free time to relax and play some games. Also, news from me is that I passed my final exams for a professional qualification I’m doing – which means 2022 will be much more gaming heavy and I’m so hyped!
GAMES BEATEN
Dream - PC – 2h 45m - 6 / 10
I mentioned in the previous update to the blog that I was playing back through this game in what was my third attempt to beat it (owing to early access and a HDD failure). Due to this, my time to beat is totally out of sync with the rest of the site because I already knew how to tackle the entire first dream (of four) and I didn’t need any time at all to adapt to the game’s weird and wonderful ways.
This game is incredibly pretty and the world it creates is interesting. The storyline hooks you in for sure and so looks and story are things that are definitely in the game’s corner. However, my gosh is it slow paced. When I initially read that criticism in Steam reviews, I was like… “of course it’s slow paced, it’s a puzzle exploration game, ugh”. But the more I reflected on this as I was playing and after I beat it, the more I realise that this is a very fair criticism. It’s not slow because it wants you to explore the environment, it just feels slow for no real reason. Sometimes you can sprint, sometimes you cannot, and it couldn’t be less clear why this is. Personally I’d not recommend this one, even though I’ve given it a 6, but that’s mostly because I really like the game’s story – which isn’t so good that it’s worth ignoring everything else for.
WRC: FIA World Rally Championship - PC - 29h 01m - 7 / 10
So, this is where most of my time went for this update…
There’s so much I can say here, but I’ll preface it by saying that people on the Discord will have already seen me rant about this game as I’ve been struggling through it over the past month or so. See, the game gets god awful reviews generally across the Board, and I understand why. Compared to other games at the time… say DiRT 2… this game is just boring. However, I found that playing it in smaller chunks was the way around this. The game really suffered from failing to understand that sometimes less is more. There were just too many rally events in the ‘Road to WRC’ mode that meant often times you were driving for no real purpose apart from credits (which already seemed to be in endless supply) and it took way too long to build up to the main events, JWRC, PWRC, SWRC and of course, the WRC.
The game also repeats a small number of rallies way more often than others (Germany and Portugal anyone!) and it just made me detest these stages by the end of the game. Which is a shame as when I first played them, I enjoyed them. I’ll be honest though. If you’re a WRC fan you should skip this one and try some of the later games, preferably after WRC6 (which I will get to at some stage in 2022 or 2023… let’s see). This one tries to do too much and ends up doing pretty much nothing good as a result because of this.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 - PC - 3h 55m - 7 / 10
Clearly I just enjoy putting myself through these games as I’ve now also completed the second one. The weird thing here is that this was actually a replay for me as I had played this game a few years ago. Now, I assumed (and poorly remembered) that this game was entirely set in Bosnia. Therefore, I was very shocked to see that the Philippines was the first location for Act 1. I didn’t remember any of this section when I first played it and having beaten the game again… I still don’t remember any of it. The graphics are incredibly pretty in this Act, but the actual gameplay and location basically just makes it seem like SGW but with a new lick of paint.
Act 2 is actually set in Bosnia and more of the nonsense City Interactive story stuff happens here, but I shall not spoil it so that you can discover the story for yourselves… but it’s nothing to write home about. Act 3 was slightly more action packed, being set in the Tibetan mountains and I’m sad that I didn’t remember this from my first playthrough because it’s pretty. So pretty in fact I have put a screenshot below for you to see.
I rated this much more highly than SGW1 you may have noticed and that was mostly as this game addressed two of my big criticisms. It correctly identified that the sniping part of the game was where the fun lied, and therefore focused much more on this. Secondly the shooting and aiming mechanics no longer felt like moving a tug boat around the screen. A welcome change.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2: Siberian Strike - PC - 1h 28m - 7 / 10
As I did in the last update, I decided to play through the DLC directly following the main game and honestly this time I was surprised (in the good way!). The DLC for SGW1 felt like a mission that they just sort of forgot to put into the game. Siberian Strike however feels like its own mini-campaign and honestly, I really enjoyed that. New setting and almost a new way of having to think compared to the jungles and urban sprawl of the main game. I haven’t given it a higher rating than the base game however because some of the actual fights were just not impressive enough to earn that coveted 8 from me. Definitely a step in the right direction for the series generally though.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
With the completion of WRC, I have decided (on the good recommendation of a member of the Discord site) that I will not dive straight into WRC 2 and instead the Rally category would swap to something different. I’ve decided that for this I would put Colin McRae Rally 3 for the PS2 in its place. I played 30 minutes of this just to check that the disc was working and get a save file in place. The handling is so different from a modern game, so I actually ended the first stage of Rally Australia 20 seconds down. Lost another 14 in Stage 2, but managed to recover in the remaining 4 or so stages to actually win by about a second. Looking forward to getting into this one more once I am free from work :)
GRID 2 has made literally no progress since my last update sadly, mostly due to trying to focus on WRC. This is absolutely on my list to beat at Christmas because I’m still enjoying it lots!
As sort of spelled out in the last update, Order of War has had very slow progress. Honestly I’ve decided to change the playthrough from Normal to Easy. Mostly because I want to enjoy the game instead of have to go up against enemies with near endless supplies of anti-tank weapons (pretty sure every single soldier in the Wehrmacht didn’t have a Panzershrek… but I digress!). I’ve completed three missions in the US campaign and I’d expect that this will still be here in February, so I don’t think the Christmas break will actually result in me making much progress.
Well folks… Come on… You’ve already guessed it… Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is going to be next. However, I’ve found out that I actually got the season pass whenever I got this, so that means that I need to add the DLCs separately to the backlog, which will mess the numbers about a little.
The action / adventure line is going to see me finally start a series that I’ve been looking to play for so long and that’s starting with Life is Strange. This is a game series that I was actually given as a gift by a good friend and so I’m looking forward to starting this in my time off. No progress made so far, but as this is a really story heavy game I wanted to make sure I gave it the time and attention it deserves.
Apologies fellow Vita Enjoyers, but I still haven’t made any progress on LittleBigPlanet: PS Vita. However, I got a new sofa (stick with me, pls) and that means that I can now lie on the sofa after work on when I want some downtime and play the Vita instead of doing so in bed… which just makes me fall asleep. So yes, progress will be made this time… I swear!
--
GAMES ADDED
Okay so I know what you’re thinking… the backlog actually grew. Yes, you’re correct. Basically though these were always planned things that I had been meaning to do. Night Call was actually just a game I omitted, but from Call of Duty 4 down to Heavy Rain in the blue box I have purchased these to allow me to complete a series / developer collection.
The only interesting entry here is Tales of the Neon Sea as my friend gifted that to me out of the blue this month – so that one wasn’t my fault!
--
RETIREMENTS
Another fortnight with no retirements, yay! :)
--
NEXT UPDATE
You’ll get the next update on the 1st January or there abouts and I’m hoping it will have lots of completions in it… or at the very least lots of progress on various games. I just wanted to use this section to say to everyone on the HLTB Forums that I hope you have a wonderful festive period, whatever you do or do not celebrate. I will be on the Discord from time to time as usual, ranting about whatever games I’ve decided to play and trying to spread some smiling doggo emotes.
Until next time!
Hello again everyone! Can you believe that it has been just over two weeks since my last update already? Gosh December is speeding through and whilst this year I had hoped to spend it in Austria that has not happened, and I will have to navigate the awkwardness of the CommissarTommy family Christmas. The good news however is that I will have lots of time of work as I am lucky enough to work in a sector where nothing happens in this time of year.
The next update therefore is likely to be absolutely jam packed with things because I’m hoping to use a lot of my free time to relax and play some games. Also, news from me is that I passed my final exams for a professional qualification I’m doing – which means 2022 will be much more gaming heavy and I’m so hyped!
GAMES BEATEN
Dream - PC – 2h 45m - 6 / 10
I mentioned in the previous update to the blog that I was playing back through this game in what was my third attempt to beat it (owing to early access and a HDD failure). Due to this, my time to beat is totally out of sync with the rest of the site because I already knew how to tackle the entire first dream (of four) and I didn’t need any time at all to adapt to the game’s weird and wonderful ways.
This game is incredibly pretty and the world it creates is interesting. The storyline hooks you in for sure and so looks and story are things that are definitely in the game’s corner. However, my gosh is it slow paced. When I initially read that criticism in Steam reviews, I was like… “of course it’s slow paced, it’s a puzzle exploration game, ugh”. But the more I reflected on this as I was playing and after I beat it, the more I realise that this is a very fair criticism. It’s not slow because it wants you to explore the environment, it just feels slow for no real reason. Sometimes you can sprint, sometimes you cannot, and it couldn’t be less clear why this is. Personally I’d not recommend this one, even though I’ve given it a 6, but that’s mostly because I really like the game’s story – which isn’t so good that it’s worth ignoring everything else for.
WRC: FIA World Rally Championship - PC - 29h 01m - 7 / 10
So, this is where most of my time went for this update…
There’s so much I can say here, but I’ll preface it by saying that people on the Discord will have already seen me rant about this game as I’ve been struggling through it over the past month or so. See, the game gets god awful reviews generally across the Board, and I understand why. Compared to other games at the time… say DiRT 2… this game is just boring. However, I found that playing it in smaller chunks was the way around this. The game really suffered from failing to understand that sometimes less is more. There were just too many rally events in the ‘Road to WRC’ mode that meant often times you were driving for no real purpose apart from credits (which already seemed to be in endless supply) and it took way too long to build up to the main events, JWRC, PWRC, SWRC and of course, the WRC.
The game also repeats a small number of rallies way more often than others (Germany and Portugal anyone!) and it just made me detest these stages by the end of the game. Which is a shame as when I first played them, I enjoyed them. I’ll be honest though. If you’re a WRC fan you should skip this one and try some of the later games, preferably after WRC6 (which I will get to at some stage in 2022 or 2023… let’s see). This one tries to do too much and ends up doing pretty much nothing good as a result because of this.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 - PC - 3h 55m - 7 / 10
Clearly I just enjoy putting myself through these games as I’ve now also completed the second one. The weird thing here is that this was actually a replay for me as I had played this game a few years ago. Now, I assumed (and poorly remembered) that this game was entirely set in Bosnia. Therefore, I was very shocked to see that the Philippines was the first location for Act 1. I didn’t remember any of this section when I first played it and having beaten the game again… I still don’t remember any of it. The graphics are incredibly pretty in this Act, but the actual gameplay and location basically just makes it seem like SGW but with a new lick of paint.
Act 2 is actually set in Bosnia and more of the nonsense City Interactive story stuff happens here, but I shall not spoil it so that you can discover the story for yourselves… but it’s nothing to write home about. Act 3 was slightly more action packed, being set in the Tibetan mountains and I’m sad that I didn’t remember this from my first playthrough because it’s pretty. So pretty in fact I have put a screenshot below for you to see.
I rated this much more highly than SGW1 you may have noticed and that was mostly as this game addressed two of my big criticisms. It correctly identified that the sniping part of the game was where the fun lied, and therefore focused much more on this. Secondly the shooting and aiming mechanics no longer felt like moving a tug boat around the screen. A welcome change.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2: Siberian Strike - PC - 1h 28m - 7 / 10
As I did in the last update, I decided to play through the DLC directly following the main game and honestly this time I was surprised (in the good way!). The DLC for SGW1 felt like a mission that they just sort of forgot to put into the game. Siberian Strike however feels like its own mini-campaign and honestly, I really enjoyed that. New setting and almost a new way of having to think compared to the jungles and urban sprawl of the main game. I haven’t given it a higher rating than the base game however because some of the actual fights were just not impressive enough to earn that coveted 8 from me. Definitely a step in the right direction for the series generally though.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
With the completion of WRC, I have decided (on the good recommendation of a member of the Discord site) that I will not dive straight into WRC 2 and instead the Rally category would swap to something different. I’ve decided that for this I would put Colin McRae Rally 3 for the PS2 in its place. I played 30 minutes of this just to check that the disc was working and get a save file in place. The handling is so different from a modern game, so I actually ended the first stage of Rally Australia 20 seconds down. Lost another 14 in Stage 2, but managed to recover in the remaining 4 or so stages to actually win by about a second. Looking forward to getting into this one more once I am free from work :)
GRID 2 has made literally no progress since my last update sadly, mostly due to trying to focus on WRC. This is absolutely on my list to beat at Christmas because I’m still enjoying it lots!
As sort of spelled out in the last update, Order of War has had very slow progress. Honestly I’ve decided to change the playthrough from Normal to Easy. Mostly because I want to enjoy the game instead of have to go up against enemies with near endless supplies of anti-tank weapons (pretty sure every single soldier in the Wehrmacht didn’t have a Panzershrek… but I digress!). I’ve completed three missions in the US campaign and I’d expect that this will still be here in February, so I don’t think the Christmas break will actually result in me making much progress.
Well folks… Come on… You’ve already guessed it… Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is going to be next. However, I’ve found out that I actually got the season pass whenever I got this, so that means that I need to add the DLCs separately to the backlog, which will mess the numbers about a little.
The action / adventure line is going to see me finally start a series that I’ve been looking to play for so long and that’s starting with Life is Strange. This is a game series that I was actually given as a gift by a good friend and so I’m looking forward to starting this in my time off. No progress made so far, but as this is a really story heavy game I wanted to make sure I gave it the time and attention it deserves.
Apologies fellow Vita Enjoyers, but I still haven’t made any progress on LittleBigPlanet: PS Vita. However, I got a new sofa (stick with me, pls) and that means that I can now lie on the sofa after work on when I want some downtime and play the Vita instead of doing so in bed… which just makes me fall asleep. So yes, progress will be made this time… I swear!
--
GAMES ADDED
Okay so I know what you’re thinking… the backlog actually grew. Yes, you’re correct. Basically though these were always planned things that I had been meaning to do. Night Call was actually just a game I omitted, but from Call of Duty 4 down to Heavy Rain in the blue box I have purchased these to allow me to complete a series / developer collection.
The only interesting entry here is Tales of the Neon Sea as my friend gifted that to me out of the blue this month – so that one wasn’t my fault!
--
RETIREMENTS
Another fortnight with no retirements, yay! :)
--
NEXT UPDATE
You’ll get the next update on the 1st January or there abouts and I’m hoping it will have lots of completions in it… or at the very least lots of progress on various games. I just wanted to use this section to say to everyone on the HLTB Forums that I hope you have a wonderful festive period, whatever you do or do not celebrate. I will be on the Discord from time to time as usual, ranting about whatever games I’ve decided to play and trying to spread some smiling doggo emotes.
Until next time!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE – LATE DECEMBER 2021
It's almost that time to wish in a new year folks and so just before we get there, and to round off my 2021 updates, here's my update blog post for late December 2021.
This month has allowed me to play lots of games, and I sort of hinted at that in my previous post. This was because I actually had a little time off of work. I decided to use this time to really crunch through a load of games in the backlog, mostly PS2 games from my childhood. One thing that I changed this time around though was that I found PC versions of some of these games. This is mostly because I just like being able to play these games in a higher resolution.
GAMES BEATEN
Colin McRae Rally 3 - PS2 – 8h 41m - 6 / 10
So this was a game that I very nearly didn't actually end up playing. For some reason I had given my friend the disk for this game and so when I went to play it I couldn't actually find it. Luckily when I mentioned to my friend that I was intending on playing it he posted the game back to me and so this playthrough was able to take place.
The low score that I've given the game will probably be fairly controversial, but I've got a few reasons for this. The first being a complaint I have about a lot of PS2 era rally games. Sometimes the car just feels like it's making absolutely no connection to the ground and there's no sense of grip at all. This was really noticable in this game for me and it just meant that sliding completely to the left/right with no forward momentum happens regularly. WRC II: Extreme is a game that managed to avoid this (and thus I gave it 10/10 - by far the best rally game on the PS2).
Another weird choice in this game was to make it so the player had to complete all three seasons as Colin McRae in the Ford Focus. This means you don't really get to choose your car unless you're playing a single stage or championship. The seasons themselves are also not very compelling for me. Basically playing the same few stages again and again and again. It seems like there's enough locations for there to have been more variety, but you'll find all three seasons felt the same just with harder AI. It's not all bad though, it still plays as a good rally game.
GRID 2 - PC - 12h 32m - 8 / 10
I went into this game with such low expectations because the community commonly talk about this game being worse than the original GRID (and I'll admit, there's not as much depth). However, I've found myself pleasantly surprised by the game. The driving feels good once you get your head around it and actually there is a good range of cars and locations that can be found. One thing that was nice was that they kept the ability to have your team and the colours in there, so I was able to keep some continuity from the original GRID.
One thing that I didn't like so much about this game however was the whole way the story mode is presented. Not only was it a bit too dude/bro for my liking (go figure, all racing games around this time were) but also the story just felt like the progression wasn't as clear as the original game. For instance, in the original GRID there was a clear way of unlocking better and more difficult championships and you could see how far you were. They removed that for the seasons in this game and it's a choice that's there for narrative reasons, but also means that it's not as exciting to progress and instead can feel a bit grindy.
Something that surprised me about this game was that the average time on HLTB is 5 hours more than my time for the main story and 9 hours for main story and extras (how I played this as I completed all the optional races). I was surprised that it ended as quickly as it did and I'm interested in knowing why my run ended up being so fast.
Lotus Challenge - PS2 - 2h 51m - 3 / 10
So this is a game that I found in my box of PS2 games from when I was a kid but didn't remember actually playing. It was always going to be a good start when I tried to play this on PC and the game recognised no input, no controller, no mouse and keyboard. This game is garbage, I won't beat around the bush. It looks bad, it drives bad and the campaign is just weird. It's trying to be waay more than it needs to be and the story mode jumps around so much that it's hard to actually know what's going on.
The game had a weird gimmick, that thankfully never caught on. This is that you can use the analogue stick as if it was a steering wheel instead of just going left to right. Whilst you can disable this in the options, it's forcibly enabled for some missions and often accidentally gets triggered when steering. Terrible game, but hey, I finished it and I can be absolutely done with it now.
Evolution GT - PC - 8h 03m - 6 / 10
This game is one that I remember starting about 10 times on the PS2 as a kid but never really making any progress with. Playing back through it again I'm honestly not even sure why that is because this game wasn't all that bad. It's very basic in terms of the actual driving and really feels like a lot of other games that were coming out at the time. Under the surface though, the game describes itself as a "CarPG" because you level up your character and have different skills which do different things. For instance if you improve your intimidation skill you can cause other drivers to make mistakes by tailing them. It's an interesting system and honestly the game introduces a number of features, such as rewinding the race if you make a mistake, that other developers would make a staple in the future. It's got all these cool ideas, but I think was just a little too early and so none of them are particularly well executed.
One strange thing about this game is that Gabriele Tarquini, who is a very well known and beloved race driver, was actually in this game and features in all of the game's cutscenes. Through these he discusses various driving tactics and introduces the gamne's mechanics. However... it's not really him. In the videos it is him, but they have dubbed over his voice with an absolutely terrible voice actor who just tries less as the game goes on and honestly struggles more to get the words out than you can see Tarquini is from the video. Just seems so bizarre to me that you'd hire a really famous racing driver who can speak English and then dub over him. Really strange choice and honestly shows more of these theme of having terrible execution of some of its ideas.
Actual Tarquini
Game Tarquini
LittleBigPlanet PS Vita - PS Vita - 5h 15m - 8 / 10
Finally! I have completed a game on my PS Vita! I've played games on my Vita before and I always tell people how much I enjoy it, but I'd never actually beaten anything on the system before. I think I chose an amazing game to start, even though I hate platformers normally. My friend described LittleBigPlanet as "the exact type of game that you'd enjoy" to me and so I had to make it the first one.
The game definitely didn't disappoint, I loved the music, the artstytle (I will defend SackBoy with my life), the characters, the story and the way that the game utilises all of the various control input methods that the Vita has. There were some moments that were a little tricky - which is definitely 100% just my fault rather than the game being hard lol. It was short though, and I know that's because there's loads of community content, but I just wish there was even more to the main story because I didn't want it to end when it did.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
One thing that has surprised me a lot over the past over the past few weeks is the progress that I've made on Order of War. At times the game can be unfair and slightly painful but overall I'm really enjoying this (especially since switching to 'Easy'). I've beaten the US campaign and am basically half way through the German campaign. I'd say this one is going to be something that I aim to complete for the next update. I'm convinved (and I've talked about this on the Discord) that my time is going to come in way under the only current timed completion for this game on HLTB. Hopefully it'll be helpful for the site to have another time on there to give a better average. This also explains why I was predicting this to take a lot longer than it has.
Clearly I couldn't get enough of the WRC series as I'm already back around again! I've been making tonnes of progress on WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship. I'm looking forward to going into more detail about this game but just know I'm having a better time of it than the first game! Clearly I'm also cementing myself as a massive Milestone fanboy accidentally, but the racing game I'm playing at the moment is Superstars V8 Racing. So far I've only done the licences and chosen the team I'll be playing through with. Should be nice!
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 has had absolutely no progress in the past few weeks. This was mostly due to me focusing on other things, but also becasue I really just needed a little break from the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series for a little bit. I am genuinely really looking forward to playing this one on Steam though as the reviews seem to be slightly better than the first two games and from my discussions regarding the previous two games on here they seem to be getting better as they go. I'll probably at least make a start on this one in the coming weeks, if not definitely in late January 2022.
I've also not made a start on Life is Strange as of yet. However that's honestly mostly been driven by not being in the mood to play it just yet. I'm still waiting for the best time to start and I think that when life starts going back to normal a little in January I will play this (ironic considering the game is called Life is Strange and I'm waiting for my life to be more normal lol).
With a Vita game completed and my absolute love for the console having returned, I cannot wait to start the next game on this line. I've basically gone with another game that I already had installed (but never played) and one that I've been waiting to play for so long! I've decided to start playing The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series. Last time I mentioned the new sofa would be pivotal for me playing more Vita and I was right!
--
GAMES ADDED
Sadly the total number of games has not moved so much despite five completions and a retirement during the month due to the addition of three DLCs for Company of Heroes 2. I actually already owned these, but I am keen to play through these so I have added the DLCs to my backlog and will record times separately. These aren't actually "new" to the backlog though.
The only thing I did actually buy was V-Rally 4. This was mostly something I purchased so that I can continue my current plan of doing WRC-Colin McRae-Other and then repeating until I've cleared all the rally games from my backlog. Apparently this is on the same engine as the WRC games, so maybe this is a bad choice but we shall see.
--
RETIREMENTS
Shox - PS2 - 4h 41m - 2 / 10
So I was genuinely gutted to retire this game because I really had hoped to complete it as it was a game that I really struggled to make any progress with as a kid. Now I can kind of see why...
I only had two races left to complete in order to beat the game, but I just couldn't manage to to beat two of the 'ice' levels in the final championship. There's a few reasons for this, firstly being that the game has some of the most slippery (and not just because of the ice) controls I've ever seen. Cars just seen to move around as if they're not making any contact with the ground. The physics engine is also whack, as the game has jumps all over the place (you cannot avoid them) and yet often randomly your car and the AI will get totally stopped and flipped on the spot when landing. It's very frustrating and means it's hard to be consistent.
The other massive issue is that the game's AI operate as a hive mind and the rubber banding in this game is insane. So much so that you will see an AI car flip and get reset and then within seconds have caught up again. It gives no space for feeling like you're actually doing well because no matter how quick your lap times are the AI will always be right behind you. I tried a lot to get through those last two races, but in the end it just stopped being fun and therefore I decided to retire it because this backlog has to be enjoyable, that's what it's all about!
--
NEXT UPDATE
The next update will come in the middle of January. In advance I'm not expecting many completions for the first update of 2022. Mostly because it'll start getting busy again when I go back to work, but also because currently the list of games in the currently playing tab are a lot chunkier than for any of these previous updates.
I hope you all have a great new year and that 2022 is a better one for us all. Stay safe if you're out celebrating folks!
It's almost that time to wish in a new year folks and so just before we get there, and to round off my 2021 updates, here's my update blog post for late December 2021.
This month has allowed me to play lots of games, and I sort of hinted at that in my previous post. This was because I actually had a little time off of work. I decided to use this time to really crunch through a load of games in the backlog, mostly PS2 games from my childhood. One thing that I changed this time around though was that I found PC versions of some of these games. This is mostly because I just like being able to play these games in a higher resolution.
GAMES BEATEN
Colin McRae Rally 3 - PS2 – 8h 41m - 6 / 10
So this was a game that I very nearly didn't actually end up playing. For some reason I had given my friend the disk for this game and so when I went to play it I couldn't actually find it. Luckily when I mentioned to my friend that I was intending on playing it he posted the game back to me and so this playthrough was able to take place.
The low score that I've given the game will probably be fairly controversial, but I've got a few reasons for this. The first being a complaint I have about a lot of PS2 era rally games. Sometimes the car just feels like it's making absolutely no connection to the ground and there's no sense of grip at all. This was really noticable in this game for me and it just meant that sliding completely to the left/right with no forward momentum happens regularly. WRC II: Extreme is a game that managed to avoid this (and thus I gave it 10/10 - by far the best rally game on the PS2).
Another weird choice in this game was to make it so the player had to complete all three seasons as Colin McRae in the Ford Focus. This means you don't really get to choose your car unless you're playing a single stage or championship. The seasons themselves are also not very compelling for me. Basically playing the same few stages again and again and again. It seems like there's enough locations for there to have been more variety, but you'll find all three seasons felt the same just with harder AI. It's not all bad though, it still plays as a good rally game.
GRID 2 - PC - 12h 32m - 8 / 10
I went into this game with such low expectations because the community commonly talk about this game being worse than the original GRID (and I'll admit, there's not as much depth). However, I've found myself pleasantly surprised by the game. The driving feels good once you get your head around it and actually there is a good range of cars and locations that can be found. One thing that was nice was that they kept the ability to have your team and the colours in there, so I was able to keep some continuity from the original GRID.
One thing that I didn't like so much about this game however was the whole way the story mode is presented. Not only was it a bit too dude/bro for my liking (go figure, all racing games around this time were) but also the story just felt like the progression wasn't as clear as the original game. For instance, in the original GRID there was a clear way of unlocking better and more difficult championships and you could see how far you were. They removed that for the seasons in this game and it's a choice that's there for narrative reasons, but also means that it's not as exciting to progress and instead can feel a bit grindy.
Something that surprised me about this game was that the average time on HLTB is 5 hours more than my time for the main story and 9 hours for main story and extras (how I played this as I completed all the optional races). I was surprised that it ended as quickly as it did and I'm interested in knowing why my run ended up being so fast.
Lotus Challenge - PS2 - 2h 51m - 3 / 10
So this is a game that I found in my box of PS2 games from when I was a kid but didn't remember actually playing. It was always going to be a good start when I tried to play this on PC and the game recognised no input, no controller, no mouse and keyboard. This game is garbage, I won't beat around the bush. It looks bad, it drives bad and the campaign is just weird. It's trying to be waay more than it needs to be and the story mode jumps around so much that it's hard to actually know what's going on.
The game had a weird gimmick, that thankfully never caught on. This is that you can use the analogue stick as if it was a steering wheel instead of just going left to right. Whilst you can disable this in the options, it's forcibly enabled for some missions and often accidentally gets triggered when steering. Terrible game, but hey, I finished it and I can be absolutely done with it now.
Evolution GT - PC - 8h 03m - 6 / 10
This game is one that I remember starting about 10 times on the PS2 as a kid but never really making any progress with. Playing back through it again I'm honestly not even sure why that is because this game wasn't all that bad. It's very basic in terms of the actual driving and really feels like a lot of other games that were coming out at the time. Under the surface though, the game describes itself as a "CarPG" because you level up your character and have different skills which do different things. For instance if you improve your intimidation skill you can cause other drivers to make mistakes by tailing them. It's an interesting system and honestly the game introduces a number of features, such as rewinding the race if you make a mistake, that other developers would make a staple in the future. It's got all these cool ideas, but I think was just a little too early and so none of them are particularly well executed.
One strange thing about this game is that Gabriele Tarquini, who is a very well known and beloved race driver, was actually in this game and features in all of the game's cutscenes. Through these he discusses various driving tactics and introduces the gamne's mechanics. However... it's not really him. In the videos it is him, but they have dubbed over his voice with an absolutely terrible voice actor who just tries less as the game goes on and honestly struggles more to get the words out than you can see Tarquini is from the video. Just seems so bizarre to me that you'd hire a really famous racing driver who can speak English and then dub over him. Really strange choice and honestly shows more of these theme of having terrible execution of some of its ideas.
Actual Tarquini
Game Tarquini
LittleBigPlanet PS Vita - PS Vita - 5h 15m - 8 / 10
Finally! I have completed a game on my PS Vita! I've played games on my Vita before and I always tell people how much I enjoy it, but I'd never actually beaten anything on the system before. I think I chose an amazing game to start, even though I hate platformers normally. My friend described LittleBigPlanet as "the exact type of game that you'd enjoy" to me and so I had to make it the first one.
The game definitely didn't disappoint, I loved the music, the artstytle (I will defend SackBoy with my life), the characters, the story and the way that the game utilises all of the various control input methods that the Vita has. There were some moments that were a little tricky - which is definitely 100% just my fault rather than the game being hard lol. It was short though, and I know that's because there's loads of community content, but I just wish there was even more to the main story because I didn't want it to end when it did.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
One thing that has surprised me a lot over the past over the past few weeks is the progress that I've made on Order of War. At times the game can be unfair and slightly painful but overall I'm really enjoying this (especially since switching to 'Easy'). I've beaten the US campaign and am basically half way through the German campaign. I'd say this one is going to be something that I aim to complete for the next update. I'm convinved (and I've talked about this on the Discord) that my time is going to come in way under the only current timed completion for this game on HLTB. Hopefully it'll be helpful for the site to have another time on there to give a better average. This also explains why I was predicting this to take a lot longer than it has.
Clearly I couldn't get enough of the WRC series as I'm already back around again! I've been making tonnes of progress on WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship. I'm looking forward to going into more detail about this game but just know I'm having a better time of it than the first game! Clearly I'm also cementing myself as a massive Milestone fanboy accidentally, but the racing game I'm playing at the moment is Superstars V8 Racing. So far I've only done the licences and chosen the team I'll be playing through with. Should be nice!
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 has had absolutely no progress in the past few weeks. This was mostly due to me focusing on other things, but also becasue I really just needed a little break from the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series for a little bit. I am genuinely really looking forward to playing this one on Steam though as the reviews seem to be slightly better than the first two games and from my discussions regarding the previous two games on here they seem to be getting better as they go. I'll probably at least make a start on this one in the coming weeks, if not definitely in late January 2022.
I've also not made a start on Life is Strange as of yet. However that's honestly mostly been driven by not being in the mood to play it just yet. I'm still waiting for the best time to start and I think that when life starts going back to normal a little in January I will play this (ironic considering the game is called Life is Strange and I'm waiting for my life to be more normal lol).
With a Vita game completed and my absolute love for the console having returned, I cannot wait to start the next game on this line. I've basically gone with another game that I already had installed (but never played) and one that I've been waiting to play for so long! I've decided to start playing The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series. Last time I mentioned the new sofa would be pivotal for me playing more Vita and I was right!
--
GAMES ADDED
Sadly the total number of games has not moved so much despite five completions and a retirement during the month due to the addition of three DLCs for Company of Heroes 2. I actually already owned these, but I am keen to play through these so I have added the DLCs to my backlog and will record times separately. These aren't actually "new" to the backlog though.
The only thing I did actually buy was V-Rally 4. This was mostly something I purchased so that I can continue my current plan of doing WRC-Colin McRae-Other and then repeating until I've cleared all the rally games from my backlog. Apparently this is on the same engine as the WRC games, so maybe this is a bad choice but we shall see.
--
RETIREMENTS
Shox - PS2 - 4h 41m - 2 / 10
So I was genuinely gutted to retire this game because I really had hoped to complete it as it was a game that I really struggled to make any progress with as a kid. Now I can kind of see why...
I only had two races left to complete in order to beat the game, but I just couldn't manage to to beat two of the 'ice' levels in the final championship. There's a few reasons for this, firstly being that the game has some of the most slippery (and not just because of the ice) controls I've ever seen. Cars just seen to move around as if they're not making any contact with the ground. The physics engine is also whack, as the game has jumps all over the place (you cannot avoid them) and yet often randomly your car and the AI will get totally stopped and flipped on the spot when landing. It's very frustrating and means it's hard to be consistent.
The other massive issue is that the game's AI operate as a hive mind and the rubber banding in this game is insane. So much so that you will see an AI car flip and get reset and then within seconds have caught up again. It gives no space for feeling like you're actually doing well because no matter how quick your lap times are the AI will always be right behind you. I tried a lot to get through those last two races, but in the end it just stopped being fun and therefore I decided to retire it because this backlog has to be enjoyable, that's what it's all about!
--
NEXT UPDATE
The next update will come in the middle of January. In advance I'm not expecting many completions for the first update of 2022. Mostly because it'll start getting busy again when I go back to work, but also because currently the list of games in the currently playing tab are a lot chunkier than for any of these previous updates.
I hope you all have a great new year and that 2022 is a better one for us all. Stay safe if you're out celebrating folks!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE – EARLY JANUARY 2022
"Well here we are again, it's always such a pleasure!" - Glados
Well folks, it's been another fortnight and so it's time for me to do my normal update to the blog! My year has started off much busier than I thought, both in terms of social stuff and meeting up with lots of pals around new year's, but also work once I got back after the holidays. That's kind of meant things have slowed down a little on the gaming front. This update saw me beat two strategy games, really quite unheard of, but I've just really been feeling them recently.
GAMES BEATEN
Order of War - PC – 13h 18m - 8 / 10
Order of War is a real time strategy game where you can play one of two campaigns, the USA and Germany, and you guide squads to capture objectives and fight enemies on a variety of battlefields from the western and eastern fronts.
I have really enjoyed playing this and it has been on the 'playing' list for quite a while. I originally started the playthrough on 'Normal' difficulty, but found that USA campaign mission 3 suddenly became a barrier to progression. There's just so many more anti-tank units on 'Normal' compared to 'Easy' and so I changed it to 'Easy' so that I could continue enjoying the game. Honestly, it was still challenging at times on 'Easy' so not one for the faint-hearted. In some ways I had hoped to see some more unique units in the game, but the roster is very much the basic WW2 units you see in other strategy games. There is a Soviet faction, but you only really see them as an opponent in the German campaign.
The game is generally good however, and actually supported my slower style of playing these types of games. However there were times where I got surprised by an enemy charge and had to fall back. Frustrating things are present though, including the enemy spamming anti-tank guns and infinitely respawning them if you try and eliminate them from range using artillery.
Weirdly enough I managed to beat this in 12 hours less than the only time on the site, so now the average looks very different to what it was when I started, and that's probably why I had been predicting this would take me way into February.
The Walking Dead - Episode 1: A New Day - PS Vita - 2h 08m - 8 / 10
The Walking Dead is a game series made by Telltale based on the world of the TV show with the same name in which a virus has begun to infect people and turn them into zombies.
I remember when this game came out I watched a let's play of the first episode of this game and loved it. The drama, the impossible decisions, the incredible storytelling. I had forgotten everything that happened, but knew I would go into this liking it and I was not disappointed. One thing that was slightly irksome was some lag on the Vita's end in action sequences, but that's not a total issue.
The choices that the game gets you to make feel impossible to make the "right" decision and you know what? I love that. Becasue sometimes, in the words of Bob Ross, you've gotta make big decisions. The hardest of these for me was choosing between Carley and Doug. I am usually someone that chooses with my heart but I chose Carley. I just felt that Carley had built some real trust with Lee in the previous scenes. After making my decision I sat thinking about it afterwards, wondering if I would have done the same in real life. That's the sign of a good game to me, one that you can keep thinking about even when not playing.
I have decided to record my completions for each episode individually. This was a hard choice as I didn't want to artifically "inflate" my numbers. However, I am quite genuinely going to be playing these over a long period of time and each episode I will play in one session. So I will be experiencing them as five different games in effect and so it seemed fair.
Company of Heroes - PC - 12h 30m - 7 / 10
Company of Heroes is the first in a now long running series of real time strategy games. There's base building involved and you control squads of soliders in WW2. The campaign "Invasion of Normandy" has you playing as the USA against German forces.
One of the big debates in the WW2 RTS community is whether you're a Men of War person or a Company of Heroes person. That's because the games are totally opposite takes on the RTS genre. Company of Heroes has base building... lots of it. It also has units with a health bar instead of the likelihood of one-hit kills from Men of War. I personally like both, but much prefer Men of War. Company of Heroes is just so fast paced and I'm too slow and methodical for the game sometimes. However, the Invasion of Normandy campaign has lots of variety and I genuinely enjoyed it. It's a shame in some ways that they never let you play as the Germans in the campaign as they appear to have some really interesting units.
I had a moment in this game where my headquarters had been rushed by enemy infantry and vehicles and I was sat there with a barracks that was just a small tent full of holes and on fire, and one halftrack with an AA gun on it. I somehow managed to turn the tide of battle with a very lucky sticky bomb from my last soldiers before they died to kill the APC and a base clear from the halftrack. Company of Heroes is packed of these moments. Sure the graphics are dated as anything, but the game has loads to offer, even after all this time. Just be prepared to be frustrated by the controls and the AI fairly regularly.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
I'm actually really close to beating WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship. However, that's just the "Road to WRC" mode up to the WRC itself. I'm going to record my time for that as "Main Story" but continue to complete the WRC Safari and Group B bonus seasons to record a second time for "Main + Extras" and honestly I'm super excited as classic rally cars are a new addition.
On the non-rally side of things, Superstars V8 Racing, I have completed the licences and have chosen which team I want to complete the campaign with - Lanza Motorsport - and I have but a real life pic of the BMW M5 in white and gold that I'll be driving:
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 has been started and I initially just wanted to check it was working and suddenly two hours had past me by... Perhaps it's some kind of weird Stockholm Syndrome that I've got from playing too many City Interactive games, but I can tell I'm going to enjoy this. I avoided playing it since then as I want to wait for things to be a little less busy so I can really sink some good time into this one!
Still nothing on Life is Strange and there won't be for a while either. I took the decision that it would be best to wait until I have completed Walking Dead as I don't want to be playing through two episodic games interchangeably. Still really really looking forward to this one!
Hopefully the weekend that I am posting this I will complete The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series Episode 2. As mentioned above, I'm loving it so far but I can sense that the road is going to get really heavy from here on out.
I will be continuing on the Company of Heroes series, this time focusing on Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts which is the first expansion pack. This is actually longer than the base game so I will give myself a little break before diving back in, but two new factions to play around with which should be great :)
--
GAMES ADDED
The total actually went up again! Ugh.
I added Episode 1 of the Walking Dead due to how I'm cataloguing the completions, so that doesn't count. I got Driv3r as I watched a YouTube video about the scandal around the game's launch and I really wanted to own it again, so got a retail DVD version for very cheap. This kinda spiralled as I then saw Parallel Lines on sale on GOG for very cheap and so picked that and Assassin's Creed up at the same time (now I have all the early games). The Sinking City was a pickup that I made because it was so cheap. Fun fact I actually met one of the lead people on this game at EGX Rezzed one time and he was totally rude to me and my friend as we didn't immediately figure out one of the game's mechanics and so that genuinely put me off buying for some time.
--
RETIREMENTS
Thankfully nothing over the past two weeks... maybe the Walking Dead will make me feel so bad about my decisions that it will be next lol.
--
NEXT UPDATE
The next update should be at the end of January. I can see the workload pressures easing slightly closer to the end of the month, so perhaps we'll see WRC2 and one other game get completed, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm kind of at the start of a lot of games on in-progress on lots of longer games, so expect the next one to be quite quiet.
"Well here we are again, it's always such a pleasure!" - Glados
Well folks, it's been another fortnight and so it's time for me to do my normal update to the blog! My year has started off much busier than I thought, both in terms of social stuff and meeting up with lots of pals around new year's, but also work once I got back after the holidays. That's kind of meant things have slowed down a little on the gaming front. This update saw me beat two strategy games, really quite unheard of, but I've just really been feeling them recently.
GAMES BEATEN
Order of War - PC – 13h 18m - 8 / 10
Order of War is a real time strategy game where you can play one of two campaigns, the USA and Germany, and you guide squads to capture objectives and fight enemies on a variety of battlefields from the western and eastern fronts.
I have really enjoyed playing this and it has been on the 'playing' list for quite a while. I originally started the playthrough on 'Normal' difficulty, but found that USA campaign mission 3 suddenly became a barrier to progression. There's just so many more anti-tank units on 'Normal' compared to 'Easy' and so I changed it to 'Easy' so that I could continue enjoying the game. Honestly, it was still challenging at times on 'Easy' so not one for the faint-hearted. In some ways I had hoped to see some more unique units in the game, but the roster is very much the basic WW2 units you see in other strategy games. There is a Soviet faction, but you only really see them as an opponent in the German campaign.
The game is generally good however, and actually supported my slower style of playing these types of games. However there were times where I got surprised by an enemy charge and had to fall back. Frustrating things are present though, including the enemy spamming anti-tank guns and infinitely respawning them if you try and eliminate them from range using artillery.
Weirdly enough I managed to beat this in 12 hours less than the only time on the site, so now the average looks very different to what it was when I started, and that's probably why I had been predicting this would take me way into February.
The Walking Dead - Episode 1: A New Day - PS Vita - 2h 08m - 8 / 10
The Walking Dead is a game series made by Telltale based on the world of the TV show with the same name in which a virus has begun to infect people and turn them into zombies.
I remember when this game came out I watched a let's play of the first episode of this game and loved it. The drama, the impossible decisions, the incredible storytelling. I had forgotten everything that happened, but knew I would go into this liking it and I was not disappointed. One thing that was slightly irksome was some lag on the Vita's end in action sequences, but that's not a total issue.
The choices that the game gets you to make feel impossible to make the "right" decision and you know what? I love that. Becasue sometimes, in the words of Bob Ross, you've gotta make big decisions. The hardest of these for me was choosing between Carley and Doug. I am usually someone that chooses with my heart but I chose Carley. I just felt that Carley had built some real trust with Lee in the previous scenes. After making my decision I sat thinking about it afterwards, wondering if I would have done the same in real life. That's the sign of a good game to me, one that you can keep thinking about even when not playing.
I have decided to record my completions for each episode individually. This was a hard choice as I didn't want to artifically "inflate" my numbers. However, I am quite genuinely going to be playing these over a long period of time and each episode I will play in one session. So I will be experiencing them as five different games in effect and so it seemed fair.
Company of Heroes - PC - 12h 30m - 7 / 10
Company of Heroes is the first in a now long running series of real time strategy games. There's base building involved and you control squads of soliders in WW2. The campaign "Invasion of Normandy" has you playing as the USA against German forces.
One of the big debates in the WW2 RTS community is whether you're a Men of War person or a Company of Heroes person. That's because the games are totally opposite takes on the RTS genre. Company of Heroes has base building... lots of it. It also has units with a health bar instead of the likelihood of one-hit kills from Men of War. I personally like both, but much prefer Men of War. Company of Heroes is just so fast paced and I'm too slow and methodical for the game sometimes. However, the Invasion of Normandy campaign has lots of variety and I genuinely enjoyed it. It's a shame in some ways that they never let you play as the Germans in the campaign as they appear to have some really interesting units.
I had a moment in this game where my headquarters had been rushed by enemy infantry and vehicles and I was sat there with a barracks that was just a small tent full of holes and on fire, and one halftrack with an AA gun on it. I somehow managed to turn the tide of battle with a very lucky sticky bomb from my last soldiers before they died to kill the APC and a base clear from the halftrack. Company of Heroes is packed of these moments. Sure the graphics are dated as anything, but the game has loads to offer, even after all this time. Just be prepared to be frustrated by the controls and the AI fairly regularly.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
I'm actually really close to beating WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship. However, that's just the "Road to WRC" mode up to the WRC itself. I'm going to record my time for that as "Main Story" but continue to complete the WRC Safari and Group B bonus seasons to record a second time for "Main + Extras" and honestly I'm super excited as classic rally cars are a new addition.
On the non-rally side of things, Superstars V8 Racing, I have completed the licences and have chosen which team I want to complete the campaign with - Lanza Motorsport - and I have but a real life pic of the BMW M5 in white and gold that I'll be driving:
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 has been started and I initially just wanted to check it was working and suddenly two hours had past me by... Perhaps it's some kind of weird Stockholm Syndrome that I've got from playing too many City Interactive games, but I can tell I'm going to enjoy this. I avoided playing it since then as I want to wait for things to be a little less busy so I can really sink some good time into this one!
Still nothing on Life is Strange and there won't be for a while either. I took the decision that it would be best to wait until I have completed Walking Dead as I don't want to be playing through two episodic games interchangeably. Still really really looking forward to this one!
Hopefully the weekend that I am posting this I will complete The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series Episode 2. As mentioned above, I'm loving it so far but I can sense that the road is going to get really heavy from here on out.
I will be continuing on the Company of Heroes series, this time focusing on Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts which is the first expansion pack. This is actually longer than the base game so I will give myself a little break before diving back in, but two new factions to play around with which should be great :)
--
GAMES ADDED
The total actually went up again! Ugh.
I added Episode 1 of the Walking Dead due to how I'm cataloguing the completions, so that doesn't count. I got Driv3r as I watched a YouTube video about the scandal around the game's launch and I really wanted to own it again, so got a retail DVD version for very cheap. This kinda spiralled as I then saw Parallel Lines on sale on GOG for very cheap and so picked that and Assassin's Creed up at the same time (now I have all the early games). The Sinking City was a pickup that I made because it was so cheap. Fun fact I actually met one of the lead people on this game at EGX Rezzed one time and he was totally rude to me and my friend as we didn't immediately figure out one of the game's mechanics and so that genuinely put me off buying for some time.
--
RETIREMENTS
Thankfully nothing over the past two weeks... maybe the Walking Dead will make me feel so bad about my decisions that it will be next lol.
--
NEXT UPDATE
The next update should be at the end of January. I can see the workload pressures easing slightly closer to the end of the month, so perhaps we'll see WRC2 and one other game get completed, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm kind of at the start of a lot of games on in-progress on lots of longer games, so expect the next one to be quite quiet.
4 Yrs✓#
Skyhler
4 Yrs✓#
First off, I must say I love your graphic. It's a very good hook that actually made me want to read what you've been up to in regards to tackling your backlog. Do you mind messaging me on how you achieved this so I can "borrow" and by that, I mean steal this idea? It's actually really good! Haha.
Telltales The Walking Dead was an absolute pleasure, and even if you have to make very painful decisions, please don't let that deter you from playing more of it. It's actually a really damn good story and I can highly recommend it to anybody. I won't spoil anything, but I will say it's damn good to say the very least.
I agree with your decision about postponing Life is Strange until you finish The Walking Dead. The main reason being, having one episodic series being played through is enough for one person I feel. Nothing wrong with them, but I feel that playing one at a time doesn't interrupt the tension and immersion of the game.
Looking forward to seeing more updates! :3
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Hey there, thanks for reading the blog! :D
Please do feel free to message me about the little graphic thing, more than happy to help :)
You're totally right on Walking Dead, it has been worth the turmoil and I'm hoping to play Episode 2 today, so that will hopefully make it into the next update too.
4 Yrs✓#
Skyhler4 Yrs✓#
Thanks!
Yeah, I often find that emotionally-bound storytelling is a way to quickly get you to remember a game as opposed to just hacky slashy, pew pew etc. I haven't played the 3rd season of Walking Dead but I heard it's also pretty good. Telltale usually does a good job with their games, its a shame their company went bust though.
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE – LATE JANUARY 2022
I'm ever so slightly late in posting it and gosh has it been a whirlwind past few weeks with balancing work and everything else, but I made it! Here's the blog update folks for late January 2022 - we survived the first month of the year!
GAMES BEATEN
Superstars V8 Racing - PC – 2h 26m - 6 / 10
Superstars v8 Racing is a game by Milestone and Black Bean, focused on the now defunct Italian Superstars v8 Touring Car series, featuring real drivers and teams from that competition.
I remember seeing the demo for this game on Xbox 360 and playing it lots back in the day. It's such a weird niche because I remember watching the Superstars v8 series on Eurosport. It's just the kind of thing you never expect them to make a whole game dedicated to... and yet here it is!
This game was way too short. I played through all of the Superstars licences and one whole season on the default settings, including qualifying for each race. It's a shame, becasue the track roster is honestly amazing, lots of lesser known Italian tracks and even one in South Africa from the international series. My biggest complaint about this game is that it shouldn't have come out. That's a pretty bold statement to make, right? Well, yes, but stick with me here. The game was followed just over a year later by Superstars V8: Next Challenge (which I will also play). This game had loads of "fake" cars where they hadn't got the licences in place yet, which were all fixed in the subsequent game and properly implemented. It also has lots of weird bugs, especially with planes and helicopters having models in the sky but they do not move at all... it looks so goofy.
So yes, this game shouldn't have released and Milestone should have used the licence to make Next Challenge, which I know will be much better. I still enjoyed my time with the game though and I am looking forward to the next one. I mean for real, how often do you get to play a game about an interest as niche as this? If you're wondering why the Superstars V8 licence specifically was picked, it's because Milestone are based in Italy, so it was the team's local touring car championship - similar to how Codemasters picked up the ToCA licence back in the day.
WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship - PC - 23h 10m - 8 / 10
WRC 2 is the second game in the re-launched WRC series, again made by Milestone and Black Bean. This follows the World Rally Championship, including classic cars for the first time not as DLC.
So anyone on the Discord will have seen the emotional journey that this playthrough has been. After my love-hate relationship with the original game, this one started out as hate, but quickly became love. I played almost the entire 23 hours of this playthrough whilst watching livestreams and listening to podcasts. I wouldn't recommend playing these older WRC games without something, else or it just gets repetitive.
I had an emotional moment playing this as once I had beaten the WRC and was on the 2nd event of the first bonus season my save game became corrupted and soft-locked. So I had to download a save from the internet and spent the rest of my time as a Russian guy called Sergei with a female co-driver and someone else's team designs. These things happen I guess in playthroughs and I didn't spoil or skip any content, but gosh was it a heart wrenching moment when my save just stopped working. (AKA, back up your damn saves Thomas)
The second game in the series makes major improvements to the graphics, even improving the stages that made a return from the first game. The new car roster is so much better too, with the addition of Group B and "WRC Safari" which is basically just 70's, 80s and 90's WRC cars that were not in Group B. The handling is easier to get your head around and the career is less mind numbing. The addition of 'Super Special Stages' is great too. These are like little circuits where the track crosses over so that you can race against someone else without being together, see a pic below of the real WRC when it came to Greece's Olympic Stadium in 2005.
The game really isn't for everyone, and there are frustrating things about it too (the research and upgrading is pointless, the game doesn't give enough prize credits and then suddenly after you finish the WRC it gives you too much etc) but overall they did a much better job this time and I appreciated that a lot.
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts - PC - 11h 03m - 8 / 10
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is the first of two expansion packs to the original Company of Heroes strategy game. This expansion pack has two campaigns: Operation Market Garden, focused on playing as the Germans defending against the Allied paratrooper invasion of the Netherlands, and Liberation of Caen, where you can play as the British in the events after D-Day.
I was quite harsh about the original Company of Heroes, despite concluding that it was a solid game. I've rated this one better, and for good reason. The two new campaigns have more personality, they feel like they're less generic than the original game and you are exposed to a much wider variety of units.
Operation Market Garden was a much shorter campaign and it was interesting to play as the Germans as in CoH they play very differently from the base game. This campaign felt quite easy but it was still enjoyable and I'd recommend playing this one first because it introduces you to some different strategies and functions of the game.
Liberation of Caen... oh how you test me game! The campaign as a whole is interesting and the British forces play very differently. However, this campaign overstays its welcome and honestly was bittersweet by the end. I read a guide before playing to see roughly how many missions there were and it said one campaign had 8, the other 7. Well that's wrong - This one has NINE... but it should have 8 in my view. The final mission is pointless and the game throws way too many heavy units at you for no reason. This is *after* you've liberated the city, so what's the point in continuing? The city battle itself was quite epic though, and overall the campaign was good - don't mistake me there!
The Walking Dead - Episode 2: Starved for Help - Playstation Vita - 2h 30m - 9 / 10
The Walking Dead is a game series made by Telltale based on the world of the TV show with the same name in which a virus has begun to infect people and turn them into zombies. This is the second episode of five where... stuff happens, look I can't spoil it :)
Well this is actually the reason that I'm late posting this blog. I had actually been struggling to find the motivation to continue this only because my bursts of motivation to play this never seemed to overlap with my actual time to play it. I still want to play all the episodes through in one day per episode. I don't like the thought of leaving it a few days or completing it over three sessions because the story is so good and so engaging and engrossing that I just wouldn't want to step away and allow it to lose some impact.
I loved this episode... even if it made me cry on two separate occasions. The choices were hard, they really made you think and it felt like every decision that I was having to make wasn't a clear cut choice, the implications for different people were clear. It's a hard balance to get right between "there is no 'good' option" and still giving the player satisfaction, but this really nailed it. It's so hard to write about it without spoilers but gosh, just go and play it if you haven't already.
The only reason I docked this a point is because there are still some odd bugs on the Vita and slowness and it does sometimes interrupt the immersion. There were only two occasions where that happened here, but gosh is it immersion killing to have an action sequence stop so the game can catch up!
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
I've now developed some weird ritual where I play Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 on a Sunday evening. It's kind of my little reward for working hard in the week at the moment as honestly I am really enjoying the game a lot. I've got about 9 hours in, played Act 1 but almost done all of the side stuff on Map 1 (Mining Town). The story itself is garbage, but I'm finding the rest of it fun and enjoyable. This will stick around for a while but I'm legitimately going for a 100% completion playthrough. I took this picture of a monument I found in the game that I thought was kinda pretty :)
Next up on the list in terms of playtime is Grid Autosport. It's nice to come back to the Grid series, and gosh did they revert back from whatever the handling situation was in GRID 2 very quickly haha! I'm playing through this one slowly and methodically, just enjoying the different disciplines, but this will be on here for some time - it's a long game!
Well after my last minute clutch move in completing episode 2 of The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series, expect Episode 3 to get completed as part of the next blog update!
I have made a return to rally games... after saying I was taking a break. Colin McRae Rally 04 is the game of choice this time... but not on PS2 *shock*. This is actually not by design. My PS2 sadly stopped working just after new years and so until I can find a new one I will be playing on PC only. I wasn't actually supposed to start this yet, but partner was using my Steam Library to play Metro 2033 Redux and was really enjoying it, so as the only non-Steam game in the rotation at the moment this was what filled that time. (He's really enjoying the game so I didn't want to disturb, I know it's my library haha!)
No progress on Life is Strange but as per the last update this is because I'm waiting to finish Walking Dead before starting another episodic game. No progress on Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor either as I've only just finished Opposing Fronts, so want to catch my breath first before diving back in. I've heard it's shorter though, so maybe this'll get beaten in the next few weeks.
--
GAMES ADDED
AB-SO-LUTE-LY NOTHING!
Which is great, I've made some progress on the backlog! I have however realised the backlog on the site isn't quite up to date. The stuff I want to play has changed and I'm not sure I've captured some other things. So I'll be doing a little spring cleaning in about March time where I'm going to go through it all and make sure the numbers are up to date and I'm only including things I'm intending on playing.
The reason The Walking Dead Episode 2 appears here is because I'm recording the completions per episode and adding them as I actually play them, so this is an admin point and doesn't change the backlog progress.
--
RETIREMENTS
Nothing this time around :)
I'm feeling good about everything in the queue at the moment, honestly, so hopefully we won't see anything here for some time.
--
NEXT UPDATE
Your next update will of course be in mid-February. My hopes are to have made lots of progress on things, but work wise I've busted my January backlog so I should have more time to dedicate to games and beat a few!
Look out on this blog for an update in a couple of days where I will be going through the "Date Released" stat for the games I've completed so far. Just wanted to do a little analysis on that becasue I found it interesting and it paints a little story of my backlog.
I'm ever so slightly late in posting it and gosh has it been a whirlwind past few weeks with balancing work and everything else, but I made it! Here's the blog update folks for late January 2022 - we survived the first month of the year!
GAMES BEATEN
Superstars V8 Racing - PC – 2h 26m - 6 / 10
Superstars v8 Racing is a game by Milestone and Black Bean, focused on the now defunct Italian Superstars v8 Touring Car series, featuring real drivers and teams from that competition.
I remember seeing the demo for this game on Xbox 360 and playing it lots back in the day. It's such a weird niche because I remember watching the Superstars v8 series on Eurosport. It's just the kind of thing you never expect them to make a whole game dedicated to... and yet here it is!
This game was way too short. I played through all of the Superstars licences and one whole season on the default settings, including qualifying for each race. It's a shame, becasue the track roster is honestly amazing, lots of lesser known Italian tracks and even one in South Africa from the international series. My biggest complaint about this game is that it shouldn't have come out. That's a pretty bold statement to make, right? Well, yes, but stick with me here. The game was followed just over a year later by Superstars V8: Next Challenge (which I will also play). This game had loads of "fake" cars where they hadn't got the licences in place yet, which were all fixed in the subsequent game and properly implemented. It also has lots of weird bugs, especially with planes and helicopters having models in the sky but they do not move at all... it looks so goofy.
So yes, this game shouldn't have released and Milestone should have used the licence to make Next Challenge, which I know will be much better. I still enjoyed my time with the game though and I am looking forward to the next one. I mean for real, how often do you get to play a game about an interest as niche as this? If you're wondering why the Superstars V8 licence specifically was picked, it's because Milestone are based in Italy, so it was the team's local touring car championship - similar to how Codemasters picked up the ToCA licence back in the day.
WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship - PC - 23h 10m - 8 / 10
WRC 2 is the second game in the re-launched WRC series, again made by Milestone and Black Bean. This follows the World Rally Championship, including classic cars for the first time not as DLC.
So anyone on the Discord will have seen the emotional journey that this playthrough has been. After my love-hate relationship with the original game, this one started out as hate, but quickly became love. I played almost the entire 23 hours of this playthrough whilst watching livestreams and listening to podcasts. I wouldn't recommend playing these older WRC games without something, else or it just gets repetitive.
I had an emotional moment playing this as once I had beaten the WRC and was on the 2nd event of the first bonus season my save game became corrupted and soft-locked. So I had to download a save from the internet and spent the rest of my time as a Russian guy called Sergei with a female co-driver and someone else's team designs. These things happen I guess in playthroughs and I didn't spoil or skip any content, but gosh was it a heart wrenching moment when my save just stopped working. (AKA, back up your damn saves Thomas)
The second game in the series makes major improvements to the graphics, even improving the stages that made a return from the first game. The new car roster is so much better too, with the addition of Group B and "WRC Safari" which is basically just 70's, 80s and 90's WRC cars that were not in Group B. The handling is easier to get your head around and the career is less mind numbing. The addition of 'Super Special Stages' is great too. These are like little circuits where the track crosses over so that you can race against someone else without being together, see a pic below of the real WRC when it came to Greece's Olympic Stadium in 2005.
The game really isn't for everyone, and there are frustrating things about it too (the research and upgrading is pointless, the game doesn't give enough prize credits and then suddenly after you finish the WRC it gives you too much etc) but overall they did a much better job this time and I appreciated that a lot.
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts - PC - 11h 03m - 8 / 10
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts is the first of two expansion packs to the original Company of Heroes strategy game. This expansion pack has two campaigns: Operation Market Garden, focused on playing as the Germans defending against the Allied paratrooper invasion of the Netherlands, and Liberation of Caen, where you can play as the British in the events after D-Day.
I was quite harsh about the original Company of Heroes, despite concluding that it was a solid game. I've rated this one better, and for good reason. The two new campaigns have more personality, they feel like they're less generic than the original game and you are exposed to a much wider variety of units.
Operation Market Garden was a much shorter campaign and it was interesting to play as the Germans as in CoH they play very differently from the base game. This campaign felt quite easy but it was still enjoyable and I'd recommend playing this one first because it introduces you to some different strategies and functions of the game.
Liberation of Caen... oh how you test me game! The campaign as a whole is interesting and the British forces play very differently. However, this campaign overstays its welcome and honestly was bittersweet by the end. I read a guide before playing to see roughly how many missions there were and it said one campaign had 8, the other 7. Well that's wrong - This one has NINE... but it should have 8 in my view. The final mission is pointless and the game throws way too many heavy units at you for no reason. This is *after* you've liberated the city, so what's the point in continuing? The city battle itself was quite epic though, and overall the campaign was good - don't mistake me there!
The Walking Dead - Episode 2: Starved for Help - Playstation Vita - 2h 30m - 9 / 10
The Walking Dead is a game series made by Telltale based on the world of the TV show with the same name in which a virus has begun to infect people and turn them into zombies. This is the second episode of five where... stuff happens, look I can't spoil it :)
Well this is actually the reason that I'm late posting this blog. I had actually been struggling to find the motivation to continue this only because my bursts of motivation to play this never seemed to overlap with my actual time to play it. I still want to play all the episodes through in one day per episode. I don't like the thought of leaving it a few days or completing it over three sessions because the story is so good and so engaging and engrossing that I just wouldn't want to step away and allow it to lose some impact.
I loved this episode... even if it made me cry on two separate occasions. The choices were hard, they really made you think and it felt like every decision that I was having to make wasn't a clear cut choice, the implications for different people were clear. It's a hard balance to get right between "there is no 'good' option" and still giving the player satisfaction, but this really nailed it. It's so hard to write about it without spoilers but gosh, just go and play it if you haven't already.
The only reason I docked this a point is because there are still some odd bugs on the Vita and slowness and it does sometimes interrupt the immersion. There were only two occasions where that happened here, but gosh is it immersion killing to have an action sequence stop so the game can catch up!
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
I've now developed some weird ritual where I play Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 on a Sunday evening. It's kind of my little reward for working hard in the week at the moment as honestly I am really enjoying the game a lot. I've got about 9 hours in, played Act 1 but almost done all of the side stuff on Map 1 (Mining Town). The story itself is garbage, but I'm finding the rest of it fun and enjoyable. This will stick around for a while but I'm legitimately going for a 100% completion playthrough. I took this picture of a monument I found in the game that I thought was kinda pretty :)
Next up on the list in terms of playtime is Grid Autosport. It's nice to come back to the Grid series, and gosh did they revert back from whatever the handling situation was in GRID 2 very quickly haha! I'm playing through this one slowly and methodically, just enjoying the different disciplines, but this will be on here for some time - it's a long game!
Well after my last minute clutch move in completing episode 2 of The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series, expect Episode 3 to get completed as part of the next blog update!
I have made a return to rally games... after saying I was taking a break. Colin McRae Rally 04 is the game of choice this time... but not on PS2 *shock*. This is actually not by design. My PS2 sadly stopped working just after new years and so until I can find a new one I will be playing on PC only. I wasn't actually supposed to start this yet, but partner was using my Steam Library to play Metro 2033 Redux and was really enjoying it, so as the only non-Steam game in the rotation at the moment this was what filled that time. (He's really enjoying the game so I didn't want to disturb, I know it's my library haha!)
No progress on Life is Strange but as per the last update this is because I'm waiting to finish Walking Dead before starting another episodic game. No progress on Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor either as I've only just finished Opposing Fronts, so want to catch my breath first before diving back in. I've heard it's shorter though, so maybe this'll get beaten in the next few weeks.
--
GAMES ADDED
AB-SO-LUTE-LY NOTHING!
Which is great, I've made some progress on the backlog! I have however realised the backlog on the site isn't quite up to date. The stuff I want to play has changed and I'm not sure I've captured some other things. So I'll be doing a little spring cleaning in about March time where I'm going to go through it all and make sure the numbers are up to date and I'm only including things I'm intending on playing.
The reason The Walking Dead Episode 2 appears here is because I'm recording the completions per episode and adding them as I actually play them, so this is an admin point and doesn't change the backlog progress.
--
RETIREMENTS
Nothing this time around :)
I'm feeling good about everything in the queue at the moment, honestly, so hopefully we won't see anything here for some time.
--
NEXT UPDATE
Your next update will of course be in mid-February. My hopes are to have made lots of progress on things, but work wise I've busted my January backlog so I should have more time to dedicate to games and beat a few!
Look out on this blog for an update in a couple of days where I will be going through the "Date Released" stat for the games I've completed so far. Just wanted to do a little analysis on that becasue I found it interesting and it paints a little story of my backlog.
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
MISC UPDATE - RELEASE DATES FOR COMPLETED GAMES
I mentioned in the previous backlog update that I'd do a short post about completed games and the makeup of my completions so far, and what they say about my backlog, as well as what to expect in the future. I always update the game details when I start a new game to make them as complete as possible (Sorry Everdred for all the update requests I add into the queue!) and so I've managed to fix the few instances where games didn't have a release date that I had completed.
IMMEDIATE OBSERVATIONS
One thing that's obvious from the above is that the early 10s is clearly where the majority of the things I have been playing were released. There's also a noticeable jump in the early 00s. This observation really shows the two key sources of games in my backlog:
- Early 00s PS2 era racing games
- Early 10s games I bought on Steam sales
Now why Early 10s you make ask, especially when I got into PC gaming in about 2014. Well, simply this is because I was absolutely all over Steam Sales back then. I was way more in the know about games than I am these days and would often pick up 5 or 6 games for a combined total of £20 in a sale (sometimes multiple times in one sale) with the money I got working my first job when I was 16. I can verify that this is the cause of this spike, because I know that this era and these games are the reason my backlog even exists in the first place. This will be a theme throughout the rest of the backlog undoubtedly... but is this a sign of things to come? Well, let's investigate that a little later.
In terms of why there's a big gap in between... well blame this on a mixture of me finding other hobbies at the time, being very slow to adopt into the Xbox 360 / PS3 era and also a little bit of where I'm at with playthroughs and starting series from the beginning. Basically I expect this to fill up and be a lot more even over the course of the backlog and through looking at the backlog tab on the site I can see this will likely be the case.
2002 SPIKE
The 2002 spike I had hypothesised was due to PS2 era racing games, and looking into this further showed this was indeed the case. The games I've completed from 2001 to 2003 are:
- Lotus Challenge - Nov 2001 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Jan 2002 - PC
- Colin McRae Rally 3 - Feb 2002 - PS2
- Pro Rally - Mar 2002 - PS2
- V-Rally 3 - Jun 2002 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Spearhead - Nov 2002 - PC
- WRC II Extreme - Nov 2002 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Breakthrough - Sep 2003 - PC
You can clearly see from that list that this has been a pretty consistent chunk for PS2 racing games. The interesting thing about seeing Medal of Honor Allied Assault in here is that I only actually came across the series in about 2014/15 and when I played those games in the backlog that was genuinely the first time I had even seen gameplay from these original games. So it's cool that they're there but also I think something we may see from other series (Call of Duty for instance) that I intend to play through as part of my backlog.
REMAINDER OF THE BACKLOG
So the remainder of my backlog? How similar is it?
Well one key thing to know about the way I play through games is that I try to do a series in the backlog in chronical order of release, so that alone means that we'll see more newer games being completed later down the line. For instance in my strategy line I have been completing the original Company of Heroes and its expansions, 2006 - 2009, whereas I intend to later play Company of Heroes 2, 2013 to 2014, however that's still in the main zone.
Perhaps a better example is WRC. I have played a PS2 game from 2002, the 2010 reboot of the series and 2011's WRC 2. I'm intending to go all the way up to 2021's WRC 10 and I've already got those games, so 2015 won't be the newest game I complete forever. Looking at my whole backlog remaining of ~160 games though, there are genuinely only about 20-30 games that were released after 2015, most of which are in series I've already started, so not "new" in that sense. So I wouldn't expect too much. To address why that is... basically I have been on a "new game ban" with myself for a long time as I couldn't justify spending money on games when I still had such a massive backlog. Due to this I stopped paying as much attention to games and therefore lost track of releases and most of the games I still want to play are slightly older. I really look forward to exploring more of that post 2015 world once I've made more progress on my backlog.
Another reason was because around 2016 onwards, I became way more interested in multiplayer games at University (although now I've done a complete reversal on this) so I was focused on those, but those aren't games I'd have in my backlog... or for that matter games you can "complete". So that all just leads to this black hole in my catalogue after 2015.
---
NEXT UPDATE
Hope you've enjoyed my rambling on this and that it has given you a bit of an insight into my backlog and indeed me. The next update will be my normal one on the 14th for Early February. See you there everyone :)
I mentioned in the previous backlog update that I'd do a short post about completed games and the makeup of my completions so far, and what they say about my backlog, as well as what to expect in the future. I always update the game details when I start a new game to make them as complete as possible (Sorry Everdred for all the update requests I add into the queue!) and so I've managed to fix the few instances where games didn't have a release date that I had completed.
IMMEDIATE OBSERVATIONS
One thing that's obvious from the above is that the early 10s is clearly where the majority of the things I have been playing were released. There's also a noticeable jump in the early 00s. This observation really shows the two key sources of games in my backlog:
- Early 00s PS2 era racing games
- Early 10s games I bought on Steam sales
Now why Early 10s you make ask, especially when I got into PC gaming in about 2014. Well, simply this is because I was absolutely all over Steam Sales back then. I was way more in the know about games than I am these days and would often pick up 5 or 6 games for a combined total of £20 in a sale (sometimes multiple times in one sale) with the money I got working my first job when I was 16. I can verify that this is the cause of this spike, because I know that this era and these games are the reason my backlog even exists in the first place. This will be a theme throughout the rest of the backlog undoubtedly... but is this a sign of things to come? Well, let's investigate that a little later.
In terms of why there's a big gap in between... well blame this on a mixture of me finding other hobbies at the time, being very slow to adopt into the Xbox 360 / PS3 era and also a little bit of where I'm at with playthroughs and starting series from the beginning. Basically I expect this to fill up and be a lot more even over the course of the backlog and through looking at the backlog tab on the site I can see this will likely be the case.
2002 SPIKE
The 2002 spike I had hypothesised was due to PS2 era racing games, and looking into this further showed this was indeed the case. The games I've completed from 2001 to 2003 are:
- Lotus Challenge - Nov 2001 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Jan 2002 - PC
- Colin McRae Rally 3 - Feb 2002 - PS2
- Pro Rally - Mar 2002 - PS2
- V-Rally 3 - Jun 2002 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Spearhead - Nov 2002 - PC
- WRC II Extreme - Nov 2002 - PS2
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Breakthrough - Sep 2003 - PC
You can clearly see from that list that this has been a pretty consistent chunk for PS2 racing games. The interesting thing about seeing Medal of Honor Allied Assault in here is that I only actually came across the series in about 2014/15 and when I played those games in the backlog that was genuinely the first time I had even seen gameplay from these original games. So it's cool that they're there but also I think something we may see from other series (Call of Duty for instance) that I intend to play through as part of my backlog.
REMAINDER OF THE BACKLOG
So the remainder of my backlog? How similar is it?
Well one key thing to know about the way I play through games is that I try to do a series in the backlog in chronical order of release, so that alone means that we'll see more newer games being completed later down the line. For instance in my strategy line I have been completing the original Company of Heroes and its expansions, 2006 - 2009, whereas I intend to later play Company of Heroes 2, 2013 to 2014, however that's still in the main zone.
Perhaps a better example is WRC. I have played a PS2 game from 2002, the 2010 reboot of the series and 2011's WRC 2. I'm intending to go all the way up to 2021's WRC 10 and I've already got those games, so 2015 won't be the newest game I complete forever. Looking at my whole backlog remaining of ~160 games though, there are genuinely only about 20-30 games that were released after 2015, most of which are in series I've already started, so not "new" in that sense. So I wouldn't expect too much. To address why that is... basically I have been on a "new game ban" with myself for a long time as I couldn't justify spending money on games when I still had such a massive backlog. Due to this I stopped paying as much attention to games and therefore lost track of releases and most of the games I still want to play are slightly older. I really look forward to exploring more of that post 2015 world once I've made more progress on my backlog.
Another reason was because around 2016 onwards, I became way more interested in multiplayer games at University (although now I've done a complete reversal on this) so I was focused on those, but those aren't games I'd have in my backlog... or for that matter games you can "complete". So that all just leads to this black hole in my catalogue after 2015.
---
NEXT UPDATE
Hope you've enjoyed my rambling on this and that it has given you a bit of an insight into my backlog and indeed me. The next update will be my normal one on the 14th for Early February. See you there everyone :)
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
UPDATE – EARLY FEBRUARY 2022
Gosh, I said in my last update that work was going to calm down and it did not! I have really not played many games or been as active as I'd like both here on the forum and on the Discord, but hopefully things will start calming down a bit for the second half of this month. I've been working at the Army Museum here in the UK and so my morning commute has involved being greeted by an actual tank:
Anyways, here's the backlog update that I know you're here for instead of hearing about my day-to-day!
An important note this month is that I've realised that the Backlog / Replay number is totally wrong because I noticed that there are some things missing from my HLTB page and some things on there I added years ago that I actually have no intention of playing as part of my backlog. I've actually already undertaken the reconciliation on a spreadsheet and will share the results of that soon in a separate update blog. The next blog will have the corrected numbers and I've also used custom lists to show my wishlist of future games so that in my head it's clearer what I still don't own when I decide to play through a series in one go.
GAMES BEATEN
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor - PC – 3h 08m - 6 / 10
Tales of Valor is the final expansion to the original Company of Heroes game and manages to cover three campaigns, two playing as Germany and ones playing as the US.
My initial thoughts on this expansion was that it was pretty disappointing overall from a single player perspective. I know this added a new faction to play as and a fair few units for multiplayer, but you can see by the playtime alone that there was perhaps not much on offer compared to the base game and indeed the first expansion that I covered in the last blog update.
Tiger Ace was the first campaign and it saw you playing as a Tiger squadron, with the emphasis being much more on playing as a single tank (with some direct control options!) rather than the base building of the original. This was an interesting change up and actually would have been nice if they expanded the functionality to more vehicles in the game. Sadly the campaign was very short so by the time you'd started unlocking some of the nicer upgrades... it was already over.
The next one was Causeway, focusing on a US infantry squadron and this was much better. They used the limited space on the map well and kept the key areas of action interesting so that it didn't feel samey. The upgrades for the infantry squadrons were also great and made the infantry gameplay feel a lot less awkward and bullet spongey than in the base game. I had a crash on this campaign that really knocked the wind out of my sails as it happened right on the final cutscene and I had to play the whole mission again.
The last, and by far the worst, campaign was Falaise Pocket, which focused on a German squadron defending a town from the advancing American army. Not only did they only use one map, but they also didn't change anything about it and the missions effectively could have just been one long mission with three checkpoints. Taking over garrisons was a nice idea, but the glitchy enemy units not advancing and the really generic feeling of the missions just made this one a miss for me.
Colin McRae Rally 04 - PC - 4h 54m - 7 / 10
Colin McRae Rally 04 (terribly named, yes) is the 4th instalment of the Colin McRae games which are focused on off-road racing across a variety of locations. This time 2WD cars had a proper championship as did Group B monsters.
I was very harsh on Colin McRae Rally 3 when I played that over Christmas and this game made some moves to improve that. It looked a lot better, but I think that had a lot to do with me playing this on PC as my PS2 spectacularly died on New Year's, giving a new meaning to the phrase "starting the year with a bang". The controls were also much better - the cars seemed to be less floaty and easier to control. The ability to choose which car you used in the championship was actually also an addition this time around, instead of being forced to spend 3 seasons driving the same car. Also some issues were fixed, such as the AI randomly crashing on super special stages and getting stuck.
The game did however still have some issues with the handling, re-used the same locations and didn't really make them feel different enough from one another. I didn't even end up playing the Group B championship (even though I had intended to) because I genuinely just didn't find those cars to be fun to drive or feel much different from the other cars in the game. Fairly problematic when a front wheel drive Ford Puma feels more chaotic to drive than a Group B turbocharged crazy machine.
Overall a step forward and for me one that I am very happy to beat because I never had the patience for it as a kid. I'm also now only one game in this series (Colin McRae 2005 - yes they change the naming convention AGAIN) from the DiRT games, which I absolutely love.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
My sneaky Sunday sessions of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 have continued and this has been the game that I played the most hours of in the past two weeks. I've now got 100% of the points of interest on Mining Town, 98% on Village (the last one can only be accessed in a certain mission that I haven't got to yet) and just unlocked Dam. My goal is to continue playing through this and get the PoIs and Most Wanted list done for Dam before continuing the story. Definitely still going for the 100% on this and really enjoying it a lot. I've been enjoying it consistenly enough to say that it's not just enjoyment because the two before it were so bad, it's actually quite fun.
I've made some slight progress on Grid Autosport. This time around I'm doing one championship in each discipline and then moving to the next discipline to make it more balanced as when I attempted to play through this in 2014 I only played Touring Car and Street and made no progress on the others, so I missed out on a lot of the game. It's pretty good and I'm getting used to the big shift in handling. I do however feel like with TOCA Race Driver 3 that the game is going to overstay its welcome a little and the later championships are going to be long for the sake of it.
The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series Episode 3 did not get beaten this time around! I was just too tired at the weekend to really make much progress on it sadly, but I am still very excited to see where it goes and have added Seasons 2, 3 and 4 to my wishlist :)
One game I'm very excited to start is Rome: Total War. I'm going to do a blog post going over my faction choice and their starting position as I've decided to play as one of the factions that you can unlock using a .txt file but is not normally playable. I've never actually played this one but love the series so I'm excited to really get stuck in. Do expect this one to stick around in the updates for a while as it will be a long campaign!
Whilst you may think my next rally game is WRC 3 as in the newer one, this is actually the PS2 one. However, as mentioned earlier this is on hold because my PS2 is dead as a dodo, but I'm hoping to sort that out when I get paid at the end of the month. So don't expect any movement on this one. No progress also on Life is Strange because I need to finish Walking Dead season 1 first.
--
GAMES ADDED
This was an annoying month for "the number" because two of the games I added are not actually "new", they just both got missed out when I was originally putting the list on the site together. I had always intended to play both though, so it was very odd to me that they didn't make it. However hitting that same issue twice in a month basically triggered me to totally reconcile with all the gaming apps (Steam, Ubisoft Connect, Origin etc etc) that I had included all the games I intended to play.
--
RETIREMENTS
Nothing this time around :)
Some games will however be removed from the little reconciliation that I did, so I will mention those in the update blog on that topic.
--
NEXT UPDATE
My next update will be at the end of February! A short month so less time to crunch in some last minute completions. I'm actually not sure if there will be any on the next update outside of Walking Dead as I'm starting lots of new games and the ones in progress are all fairly long titles... So expect it to be a light touch update.
However I will be doing two other posts outside of the regular updates. One about my Rome: Total War playthrough and another about my reconciliation of the backlog and the new scary number going forwards. I hope that those will be a little bit more interesting than just my fortnightly progress update. Stay safe in the meantime folks :)
Gosh, I said in my last update that work was going to calm down and it did not! I have really not played many games or been as active as I'd like both here on the forum and on the Discord, but hopefully things will start calming down a bit for the second half of this month. I've been working at the Army Museum here in the UK and so my morning commute has involved being greeted by an actual tank:
Anyways, here's the backlog update that I know you're here for instead of hearing about my day-to-day!
An important note this month is that I've realised that the Backlog / Replay number is totally wrong because I noticed that there are some things missing from my HLTB page and some things on there I added years ago that I actually have no intention of playing as part of my backlog. I've actually already undertaken the reconciliation on a spreadsheet and will share the results of that soon in a separate update blog. The next blog will have the corrected numbers and I've also used custom lists to show my wishlist of future games so that in my head it's clearer what I still don't own when I decide to play through a series in one go.
GAMES BEATEN
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor - PC – 3h 08m - 6 / 10
Tales of Valor is the final expansion to the original Company of Heroes game and manages to cover three campaigns, two playing as Germany and ones playing as the US.
My initial thoughts on this expansion was that it was pretty disappointing overall from a single player perspective. I know this added a new faction to play as and a fair few units for multiplayer, but you can see by the playtime alone that there was perhaps not much on offer compared to the base game and indeed the first expansion that I covered in the last blog update.
Tiger Ace was the first campaign and it saw you playing as a Tiger squadron, with the emphasis being much more on playing as a single tank (with some direct control options!) rather than the base building of the original. This was an interesting change up and actually would have been nice if they expanded the functionality to more vehicles in the game. Sadly the campaign was very short so by the time you'd started unlocking some of the nicer upgrades... it was already over.
The next one was Causeway, focusing on a US infantry squadron and this was much better. They used the limited space on the map well and kept the key areas of action interesting so that it didn't feel samey. The upgrades for the infantry squadrons were also great and made the infantry gameplay feel a lot less awkward and bullet spongey than in the base game. I had a crash on this campaign that really knocked the wind out of my sails as it happened right on the final cutscene and I had to play the whole mission again.
The last, and by far the worst, campaign was Falaise Pocket, which focused on a German squadron defending a town from the advancing American army. Not only did they only use one map, but they also didn't change anything about it and the missions effectively could have just been one long mission with three checkpoints. Taking over garrisons was a nice idea, but the glitchy enemy units not advancing and the really generic feeling of the missions just made this one a miss for me.
Colin McRae Rally 04 - PC - 4h 54m - 7 / 10
Colin McRae Rally 04 (terribly named, yes) is the 4th instalment of the Colin McRae games which are focused on off-road racing across a variety of locations. This time 2WD cars had a proper championship as did Group B monsters.
I was very harsh on Colin McRae Rally 3 when I played that over Christmas and this game made some moves to improve that. It looked a lot better, but I think that had a lot to do with me playing this on PC as my PS2 spectacularly died on New Year's, giving a new meaning to the phrase "starting the year with a bang". The controls were also much better - the cars seemed to be less floaty and easier to control. The ability to choose which car you used in the championship was actually also an addition this time around, instead of being forced to spend 3 seasons driving the same car. Also some issues were fixed, such as the AI randomly crashing on super special stages and getting stuck.
The game did however still have some issues with the handling, re-used the same locations and didn't really make them feel different enough from one another. I didn't even end up playing the Group B championship (even though I had intended to) because I genuinely just didn't find those cars to be fun to drive or feel much different from the other cars in the game. Fairly problematic when a front wheel drive Ford Puma feels more chaotic to drive than a Group B turbocharged crazy machine.
Overall a step forward and for me one that I am very happy to beat because I never had the patience for it as a kid. I'm also now only one game in this series (Colin McRae 2005 - yes they change the naming convention AGAIN) from the DiRT games, which I absolutely love.
--
CURRENTLY PLAYING
My sneaky Sunday sessions of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 have continued and this has been the game that I played the most hours of in the past two weeks. I've now got 100% of the points of interest on Mining Town, 98% on Village (the last one can only be accessed in a certain mission that I haven't got to yet) and just unlocked Dam. My goal is to continue playing through this and get the PoIs and Most Wanted list done for Dam before continuing the story. Definitely still going for the 100% on this and really enjoying it a lot. I've been enjoying it consistenly enough to say that it's not just enjoyment because the two before it were so bad, it's actually quite fun.
I've made some slight progress on Grid Autosport. This time around I'm doing one championship in each discipline and then moving to the next discipline to make it more balanced as when I attempted to play through this in 2014 I only played Touring Car and Street and made no progress on the others, so I missed out on a lot of the game. It's pretty good and I'm getting used to the big shift in handling. I do however feel like with TOCA Race Driver 3 that the game is going to overstay its welcome a little and the later championships are going to be long for the sake of it.
The Walking Dead - A Telltale Games Series Episode 3 did not get beaten this time around! I was just too tired at the weekend to really make much progress on it sadly, but I am still very excited to see where it goes and have added Seasons 2, 3 and 4 to my wishlist :)
One game I'm very excited to start is Rome: Total War. I'm going to do a blog post going over my faction choice and their starting position as I've decided to play as one of the factions that you can unlock using a .txt file but is not normally playable. I've never actually played this one but love the series so I'm excited to really get stuck in. Do expect this one to stick around in the updates for a while as it will be a long campaign!
Whilst you may think my next rally game is WRC 3 as in the newer one, this is actually the PS2 one. However, as mentioned earlier this is on hold because my PS2 is dead as a dodo, but I'm hoping to sort that out when I get paid at the end of the month. So don't expect any movement on this one. No progress also on Life is Strange because I need to finish Walking Dead season 1 first.
--
GAMES ADDED
This was an annoying month for "the number" because two of the games I added are not actually "new", they just both got missed out when I was originally putting the list on the site together. I had always intended to play both though, so it was very odd to me that they didn't make it. However hitting that same issue twice in a month basically triggered me to totally reconcile with all the gaming apps (Steam, Ubisoft Connect, Origin etc etc) that I had included all the games I intended to play.
--
RETIREMENTS
Nothing this time around :)
Some games will however be removed from the little reconciliation that I did, so I will mention those in the update blog on that topic.
--
NEXT UPDATE
My next update will be at the end of February! A short month so less time to crunch in some last minute completions. I'm actually not sure if there will be any on the next update outside of Walking Dead as I'm starting lots of new games and the ones in progress are all fairly long titles... So expect it to be a light touch update.
However I will be doing two other posts outside of the regular updates. One about my Rome: Total War playthrough and another about my reconciliation of the backlog and the new scary number going forwards. I hope that those will be a little bit more interesting than just my fortnightly progress update. Stay safe in the meantime folks :)
4 Yrs♥$✓#
churros
4 Yrs♥$✓#
Before reading the post I was like "that ray tracing on the window is awesome, what game is that". The tank not having any visible scratch helped trick me.
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
ROME: TOTAL WAR FACTION AND INFO
So for some games in my backlog that I know are going to be particularly long where I have to sort of forge my own path I will be doing some of these additional little updates every now and again. Mostly so you folks can see the madness of some of my playthroughs, but also see some of the stories behind the very long games in my backlog that may stick around for a month or two at a time (at least!).
First up for this new treatment is Rome: Total War. A game that I've owned for maybe 10 years but have never played. I got it at the same time as Medieval II Total War which kind of stole its thunder a little. I've played lots of other Total War games though, so hopefully that will guide me through this one!
FACTION CHOSEN
For this campaign I have chosen to be a little sneaky. You can unlock more factions in earlier total war games using the guide HERE and it's dead easy to do! I decided that I wanted to play as ARMENIA without really knowing much about the game. According to the wiki this is quite a challenging choice.
According to the Total War Wiki:
Armenia is a heavy cavalry focused faction. They get some very good missile cavalry choices, including long ranged Cathaphract Archers! They also get regular Cataphracts as well, however, they don't have a light cavalry unit that can fight in Melee. Their starting infantry is similar to Parthia, meaning it is terrible, but they get some better choices later on. Their foot archers and siege weapons are average. Armenia is a very good faction with unmatched Armoured Horsemen, along with decent infantry support.
So really, it looks like I am going to have to play a slightly weird game here. Lots of ranged cavalry and a really poor selection of starting infantry. So why would I pick Armenia you may ask?
Well, I think that their positioning on the map is interesting. It gives me a chance to avoid some of the churn of the main European theatre (which I will hopefully cover more in Medieval II Total War another time). Armenia will also force me to adopt a different playstyle from my normally very infantry focused way of playing these games. I also think the faction will be challenging, with lots of large neighbours around. These being Pontus, Scythia and Parthia.
STARTING POSITION
I've added this image to show the starting stats, but mostly that victory condition. I'm going all out on this one and trying to conquer Rome and hold 50 provinces. A very difficult ask considering I am starting with just 2 provinces and as I mentioned before surrounded by lots of large factions. When looking at Armenia's financial situation below, it's not the best in terms of resources, so I can already see that early game I will need to focus on building a strong economy before I start attacking too many enemies.
FIRST SESSION
I won't be covering the whole game in detailed blogs like this, but I wanted to detail what happened in the first hour to give you an insight. My initial moves were diplomatic. Making trade agreements with neighbours and an alliance with Pontus in case there was any kind of early game attack.
I searched for a rebel settlement (which are basically guilt free to take over and don't upset the other factions as everyone is at war with them). This search led me to find... NOTHING. That was until I found the City of Byzantium sat there with absolutely no real army defending it. I managed to build a port and ships in one of my starter cities and transported my army to take the city.
After building up the economy a little more and getting the public order under control in Byzantium I decided to declare war on Thrace. They were the best bet in the region as they had no allies and appeared to be quite weak. You can see in the screenshot below that I've already started sieging one of their two cities. If I'm successful and manage to wipe them off the map I will have 5 provinces (10% to the goal!) but will definitely need to play it carefully as I know that there are now lots of alliances in this area that could prove troublesome.
NEXT UPDATE
Over the coming weeks I will likely post an update about my giant reconciliation of games as I've now completed this and updated everything on the site. That may come after the next regular update though (so in March), depends on when I have more time! As for RTW, I'll of course write about it now as part of the regular blog updates, but maybe a deep dive half way in might be fun!
So for some games in my backlog that I know are going to be particularly long where I have to sort of forge my own path I will be doing some of these additional little updates every now and again. Mostly so you folks can see the madness of some of my playthroughs, but also see some of the stories behind the very long games in my backlog that may stick around for a month or two at a time (at least!).
First up for this new treatment is Rome: Total War. A game that I've owned for maybe 10 years but have never played. I got it at the same time as Medieval II Total War which kind of stole its thunder a little. I've played lots of other Total War games though, so hopefully that will guide me through this one!
FACTION CHOSEN
For this campaign I have chosen to be a little sneaky. You can unlock more factions in earlier total war games using the guide HERE and it's dead easy to do! I decided that I wanted to play as ARMENIA without really knowing much about the game. According to the wiki this is quite a challenging choice.
According to the Total War Wiki:
Armenia is a heavy cavalry focused faction. They get some very good missile cavalry choices, including long ranged Cathaphract Archers! They also get regular Cataphracts as well, however, they don't have a light cavalry unit that can fight in Melee. Their starting infantry is similar to Parthia, meaning it is terrible, but they get some better choices later on. Their foot archers and siege weapons are average. Armenia is a very good faction with unmatched Armoured Horsemen, along with decent infantry support.
So really, it looks like I am going to have to play a slightly weird game here. Lots of ranged cavalry and a really poor selection of starting infantry. So why would I pick Armenia you may ask?
Well, I think that their positioning on the map is interesting. It gives me a chance to avoid some of the churn of the main European theatre (which I will hopefully cover more in Medieval II Total War another time). Armenia will also force me to adopt a different playstyle from my normally very infantry focused way of playing these games. I also think the faction will be challenging, with lots of large neighbours around. These being Pontus, Scythia and Parthia.
STARTING POSITION
I've added this image to show the starting stats, but mostly that victory condition. I'm going all out on this one and trying to conquer Rome and hold 50 provinces. A very difficult ask considering I am starting with just 2 provinces and as I mentioned before surrounded by lots of large factions. When looking at Armenia's financial situation below, it's not the best in terms of resources, so I can already see that early game I will need to focus on building a strong economy before I start attacking too many enemies.
FIRST SESSION
I won't be covering the whole game in detailed blogs like this, but I wanted to detail what happened in the first hour to give you an insight. My initial moves were diplomatic. Making trade agreements with neighbours and an alliance with Pontus in case there was any kind of early game attack.
I searched for a rebel settlement (which are basically guilt free to take over and don't upset the other factions as everyone is at war with them). This search led me to find... NOTHING. That was until I found the City of Byzantium sat there with absolutely no real army defending it. I managed to build a port and ships in one of my starter cities and transported my army to take the city.
After building up the economy a little more and getting the public order under control in Byzantium I decided to declare war on Thrace. They were the best bet in the region as they had no allies and appeared to be quite weak. You can see in the screenshot below that I've already started sieging one of their two cities. If I'm successful and manage to wipe them off the map I will have 5 provinces (10% to the goal!) but will definitely need to play it carefully as I know that there are now lots of alliances in this area that could prove troublesome.
NEXT UPDATE
Over the coming weeks I will likely post an update about my giant reconciliation of games as I've now completed this and updated everything on the site. That may come after the next regular update though (so in March), depends on when I have more time! As for RTW, I'll of course write about it now as part of the regular blog updates, but maybe a deep dive half way in might be fun!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
THE BIG SPRING CLEAN - SORTING OUT MY BACKLOG
Update: I managed to forget the games that I've classed as 'replay' when calculating the new number, so I've updated this below
Hi folks!
It has been a while since I've posted here and that's really due to a couple of reasons, mostly work related stuff as it has really been a very busy and chaotic time for me and my team, but also because I've been spending time recently renovating my bathroom, which has been a whole adventure in itself! Something about removing the terrible work that the previous occupant bodged and replacing it with something more sustainable is nice.
Anyways, no-one reads this blog for my advice on those things so I will talk about games!
I mentioned in a previous update to the backlog that I had identified that a number of things were missing from my backlog and that I needed to sort that out. Well, I have decided to do just that because I got bored of having to add every game I decided to play to the backlog because it was for some reason missed off.
From my previous post (before the Rome: Total War post) you can see that the number was...
169
So that's our starting point!
--
Exporting the backlog from HLTB
My initial starting point was to get the backlog itself out of HLTB so that I could see it in a format that would let me chuck colours on it and identify where all the gaps are. You can do this by going into your profile and then hitting options and clicking on the option below.
This process gives you the data for all your playthroughs in a handy little .csv file. I converted this to a .xlsx file to allow me to format it and have multiple tabs.
--
Reconciling the backlog
Step 1 of this process was to go through the existing list and mark up the following:
- Games where I no longer felt like keeping them in the backlog, or where there was actually no way to 'beat' the game in my eyes
- Games where they are in the list, but the expansions or DLCs are missing from the list (and potentially from the site)
This actually enabled me to identify some more entries that I needed to add to the site, so overall this was a good process. It also helped me identify where there were games that I had put on the list a while ago but did not actually ever intend to beat as part of this process.
The second part of this process was logging into all the various accounts I have (Steam, EA, Ubisoft, GOG etc) and making sure that the games that I had actually intended to play were properly recorded in the reconciliation itself. This process identified 33 new entries that I had intended to play but never put into the backlog before - although to be clear this also included a lot of DLC and expansions, so perhaps I hadn't missed quite as much as I'm worrying about.
As you can see I also recorded the gameID from HLTB for the missing games so that I could quickly add them in afterwards by just changing the URL.
--
Wishlist
Now you may be thinking... why when you've got quite so many games would you need to also have a wishlist? Well, I've talked before about how I really just stopped buying games mostly after 2015 (although there are many exceptions to this) and so basically there are about 6 years of gaming history that I've paid no attention to... and a few before that where I didn't really pay attention either as I was focused on buying older games.
So what I did was search Wikipedia and HLTB for games releasing every year since 2008 and then just spent an evening going through and ticking off things I would one day like to play. I used a custom list on HLTB to record these games (which you can see on my profile). This list has 53 more games on it but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy them right now - it's more of a future intent to get round to them once the actual backlog itself is looking a little lighter.
--
Shared games
So me and my partner have Steam Family Sharing enabled and he has used my account to play through some of the Metro games and it got me thinking that maybe I should go through his library and make note of anything I don't own but would like to play at some stage. So I have made another custom list for these shared games - of which there are 25.
I wanted to keep this list separate after having a really good chat on the Discord about this (I remember Dune being involved in that conversation but also thanks to anyone else who was!) a while back and how recording these things in the backlog could end up being a slippery slope. Having them in a separate list means that I've kept track of it somewhere and could pick a game up off the list, but doesn't count it as part of my backlog... which is my own doing.
--
The NEW number!
So when I started this process, 'the number' was at 169. Now, after the reconciliation, identifying the new games and scrapping some of the ones I'm not feeling I have ended up at...
212
This number excludes the 8 things that are currently in my "playing tab" (it's a mix of games and DLC's, it's still just the 6 categories) so I guess it's technically 204. But yeah... this process has ended up just extending the backlog, but honestly I'm happier with the new number because it's more reflective of the actual amount of games that I would like to hopefully some day play through that I own.
At last year's rate of 37 games beaten, that's going to take me a grand total of...
5.51 years
Heck.
Guess I'm in this for the long run folks!!
--
NEXT UPDATE
Tomorrow I will be posting a normal update to the blog, apologies for missing Late February's post, but I didn't manage to complete a whole lot in that time so actually it was probably a good thing!
Update: I managed to forget the games that I've classed as 'replay' when calculating the new number, so I've updated this below
Hi folks!
It has been a while since I've posted here and that's really due to a couple of reasons, mostly work related stuff as it has really been a very busy and chaotic time for me and my team, but also because I've been spending time recently renovating my bathroom, which has been a whole adventure in itself! Something about removing the terrible work that the previous occupant bodged and replacing it with something more sustainable is nice.
Anyways, no-one reads this blog for my advice on those things so I will talk about games!
I mentioned in a previous update to the backlog that I had identified that a number of things were missing from my backlog and that I needed to sort that out. Well, I have decided to do just that because I got bored of having to add every game I decided to play to the backlog because it was for some reason missed off.
From my previous post (before the Rome: Total War post) you can see that the number was...
169
So that's our starting point!
--
Exporting the backlog from HLTB
My initial starting point was to get the backlog itself out of HLTB so that I could see it in a format that would let me chuck colours on it and identify where all the gaps are. You can do this by going into your profile and then hitting options and clicking on the option below.
This process gives you the data for all your playthroughs in a handy little .csv file. I converted this to a .xlsx file to allow me to format it and have multiple tabs.
--
Reconciling the backlog
Step 1 of this process was to go through the existing list and mark up the following:
- Games where I no longer felt like keeping them in the backlog, or where there was actually no way to 'beat' the game in my eyes
- Games where they are in the list, but the expansions or DLCs are missing from the list (and potentially from the site)
This actually enabled me to identify some more entries that I needed to add to the site, so overall this was a good process. It also helped me identify where there were games that I had put on the list a while ago but did not actually ever intend to beat as part of this process.
The second part of this process was logging into all the various accounts I have (Steam, EA, Ubisoft, GOG etc) and making sure that the games that I had actually intended to play were properly recorded in the reconciliation itself. This process identified 33 new entries that I had intended to play but never put into the backlog before - although to be clear this also included a lot of DLC and expansions, so perhaps I hadn't missed quite as much as I'm worrying about.
As you can see I also recorded the gameID from HLTB for the missing games so that I could quickly add them in afterwards by just changing the URL.
--
Wishlist
Now you may be thinking... why when you've got quite so many games would you need to also have a wishlist? Well, I've talked before about how I really just stopped buying games mostly after 2015 (although there are many exceptions to this) and so basically there are about 6 years of gaming history that I've paid no attention to... and a few before that where I didn't really pay attention either as I was focused on buying older games.
So what I did was search Wikipedia and HLTB for games releasing every year since 2008 and then just spent an evening going through and ticking off things I would one day like to play. I used a custom list on HLTB to record these games (which you can see on my profile). This list has 53 more games on it but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy them right now - it's more of a future intent to get round to them once the actual backlog itself is looking a little lighter.
--
Shared games
So me and my partner have Steam Family Sharing enabled and he has used my account to play through some of the Metro games and it got me thinking that maybe I should go through his library and make note of anything I don't own but would like to play at some stage. So I have made another custom list for these shared games - of which there are 25.
I wanted to keep this list separate after having a really good chat on the Discord about this (I remember Dune being involved in that conversation but also thanks to anyone else who was!) a while back and how recording these things in the backlog could end up being a slippery slope. Having them in a separate list means that I've kept track of it somewhere and could pick a game up off the list, but doesn't count it as part of my backlog... which is my own doing.
--
The NEW number!
So when I started this process, 'the number' was at 169. Now, after the reconciliation, identifying the new games and scrapping some of the ones I'm not feeling I have ended up at...
212
This number excludes the 8 things that are currently in my "playing tab" (it's a mix of games and DLC's, it's still just the 6 categories) so I guess it's technically 204. But yeah... this process has ended up just extending the backlog, but honestly I'm happier with the new number because it's more reflective of the actual amount of games that I would like to hopefully some day play through that I own.
At last year's rate of 37 games beaten, that's going to take me a grand total of...
5.51 years
Heck.
Guess I'm in this for the long run folks!!
--
NEXT UPDATE
Tomorrow I will be posting a normal update to the blog, apologies for missing Late February's post, but I didn't manage to complete a whole lot in that time so actually it was probably a good thing!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Game completed: House of Da Vinci III
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 8h 14m
Review score: 95%
I have been playing the House of Da Vinci series with my partner over the past month or so and honestly it has been a blast. Not only are the puzzles interesting, and sometimes just really clever, but also I just enjoy the whole story and getting a glimpse into Blue Brain Games' re-imagining of Leonardo Da Vinci. The games are basically like virtual escape rooms, and I like that the game doesn't pressure you with lots of time limits and things like that.
The House of Da Vinci III is the final game in the series, and it was really quite special. You can really see the differences in terms of polish between the first and third games. The game looks pretty, and is a really nice little game to play with a cup of hot chocolate next to you. I won't spoil much of the story (as you've got a whole trilogy to play!) but this game does take you to a wider variety of locations than some of the previous entries in the series, and the puzzles also feel more varied to me!
I've seen some Steam reviews for games in the trilogy where people are frustrated as they've been unable to immediately solve all of the puzzles, but I don't think that's such a bad thing! It would be too easy if the answers were immediately obvious, and whilst the game's hints can sometimes be slightly unhelpful, eventually it always gives you the nudge in the right direction. My advice is always to just take it a little slow with these games, enjoy the puzzles, look at a guide if you are really stuck - there's nothing wrong with that! Especially as we all used to do that with point-and-click adventure games back in the day anyways!
My partner and I have enjoyed these games so much that we've already wishlisted the next game in the series, House of Tesla, which I'm sure will be just as intricate and fun to play through! I highly recommend the series if you like puzzle games / escape rooms. It's far more interactive than a hidden object game, so don't be fooled :)
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 8h 14m
Review score: 95%
I have been playing the House of Da Vinci series with my partner over the past month or so and honestly it has been a blast. Not only are the puzzles interesting, and sometimes just really clever, but also I just enjoy the whole story and getting a glimpse into Blue Brain Games' re-imagining of Leonardo Da Vinci. The games are basically like virtual escape rooms, and I like that the game doesn't pressure you with lots of time limits and things like that.
The House of Da Vinci III is the final game in the series, and it was really quite special. You can really see the differences in terms of polish between the first and third games. The game looks pretty, and is a really nice little game to play with a cup of hot chocolate next to you. I won't spoil much of the story (as you've got a whole trilogy to play!) but this game does take you to a wider variety of locations than some of the previous entries in the series, and the puzzles also feel more varied to me!
I've seen some Steam reviews for games in the trilogy where people are frustrated as they've been unable to immediately solve all of the puzzles, but I don't think that's such a bad thing! It would be too easy if the answers were immediately obvious, and whilst the game's hints can sometimes be slightly unhelpful, eventually it always gives you the nudge in the right direction. My advice is always to just take it a little slow with these games, enjoy the puzzles, look at a guide if you are really stuck - there's nothing wrong with that! Especially as we all used to do that with point-and-click adventure games back in the day anyways!
My partner and I have enjoyed these games so much that we've already wishlisted the next game in the series, House of Tesla, which I'm sure will be just as intricate and fun to play through! I highly recommend the series if you like puzzle games / escape rooms. It's far more interactive than a hidden object game, so don't be fooled :)
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Game completed: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 9h 48m
Review score: 75%
It's honestly surprising to me that despite being a massive fan of GTA games since the days in my childhood playing GTA: San Andreas on PS2 that I've not really completed many of the games through to the end. Although, I expect that many of us (especially those who played the game as kids) just used to play GTA to go around causing chaos rather than for the story!
Earlier in 2024 I completed GTA III and it ended up taking me a long time. Not in terms of actual playtime, but more so because I found it really difficult to sit down and play it for extended periods of time as the game (especially its controls) have not aged particularly well. Of course Rockstar have tried multiple times to reboot the '3D Universe' GTA games, but I still wanted to play the originals. I managed to find the Definitive Edition modpack, which actually came out way in advance of the actual Definitive Edition of the games. It pretty much adds some more modern features, allows the game to run better in fullscreen and with a modern controller. I also completed all of the side missions from the Cubans, Haitians etc but I didn't go as far as collecting hidden packages and completing all levels of 'asset' missions.
Vice City is really special. The whole atmosphere of the map, the setting, the cars, the outfits and especially the music (Particularly for me Emotion FM with Fernando Martinez) hit such a nostalgic vibe for many and honestly games covering the 1980s are still few and far between today. This is why I think that Vice City has remained in such high regard with people to this day, because the game looks and feels cool, and I imagine was a breath of fresh air for people compared to GTA III's dark and dreary Liberty City.
I mentioned earlier that I often didn't play the missions when I was younger, and this playthrough sort of taught me why. If we're being honest, at its core there are very few missions in Vice City which really stand out, or are really particularly exciting. Very often the missions are short and basic, with there being some frustrating elements thrown in there from time to time (RC Helicopters and boat controls anyone?).
I also found the pacing to be really strange in Vice City. The story was progressing at a pace that felt right (if slightly fast) with Tommy re-establishing himself and continuing to unpick what had happened. Then suddenly, maybe two thirds or three quarters of the way through the game, the game pulls the handbrake and the pacing absolutely dies. You are required to acquire 'assets' (basically businesses around Vice City) and complete missions to fully acquire the assets. For me this just became tedious, particularly as you had to grind money from the businesses you acquire to obtain others. Once you've acquired enough, the last two missions of the game go by so quickly that it almost gives you whiplash in the opposite direction.
That's a strong few paragraphs of criticism, but look, this game is a classic, the vibes are spot on, and you will enjoy playing this. It's much better than GTA III in all aspects.... but just go in with realistic expectations because parts of the game really have not aged kindly! Perhaps these have been fixed in the Definitive Edition, particularly as the game has been improved in recent patches.
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 9h 48m
Review score: 75%
It's honestly surprising to me that despite being a massive fan of GTA games since the days in my childhood playing GTA: San Andreas on PS2 that I've not really completed many of the games through to the end. Although, I expect that many of us (especially those who played the game as kids) just used to play GTA to go around causing chaos rather than for the story!
Earlier in 2024 I completed GTA III and it ended up taking me a long time. Not in terms of actual playtime, but more so because I found it really difficult to sit down and play it for extended periods of time as the game (especially its controls) have not aged particularly well. Of course Rockstar have tried multiple times to reboot the '3D Universe' GTA games, but I still wanted to play the originals. I managed to find the Definitive Edition modpack, which actually came out way in advance of the actual Definitive Edition of the games. It pretty much adds some more modern features, allows the game to run better in fullscreen and with a modern controller. I also completed all of the side missions from the Cubans, Haitians etc but I didn't go as far as collecting hidden packages and completing all levels of 'asset' missions.
Vice City is really special. The whole atmosphere of the map, the setting, the cars, the outfits and especially the music (Particularly for me Emotion FM with Fernando Martinez) hit such a nostalgic vibe for many and honestly games covering the 1980s are still few and far between today. This is why I think that Vice City has remained in such high regard with people to this day, because the game looks and feels cool, and I imagine was a breath of fresh air for people compared to GTA III's dark and dreary Liberty City.
I mentioned earlier that I often didn't play the missions when I was younger, and this playthrough sort of taught me why. If we're being honest, at its core there are very few missions in Vice City which really stand out, or are really particularly exciting. Very often the missions are short and basic, with there being some frustrating elements thrown in there from time to time (RC Helicopters and boat controls anyone?).
I also found the pacing to be really strange in Vice City. The story was progressing at a pace that felt right (if slightly fast) with Tommy re-establishing himself and continuing to unpick what had happened. Then suddenly, maybe two thirds or three quarters of the way through the game, the game pulls the handbrake and the pacing absolutely dies. You are required to acquire 'assets' (basically businesses around Vice City) and complete missions to fully acquire the assets. For me this just became tedious, particularly as you had to grind money from the businesses you acquire to obtain others. Once you've acquired enough, the last two missions of the game go by so quickly that it almost gives you whiplash in the opposite direction.
That's a strong few paragraphs of criticism, but look, this game is a classic, the vibes are spot on, and you will enjoy playing this. It's much better than GTA III in all aspects.... but just go in with realistic expectations because parts of the game really have not aged kindly! Perhaps these have been fixed in the Definitive Edition, particularly as the game has been improved in recent patches.
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Game completed: Cities in Motion: Paris DLC
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 10h 39m
Review score: 75%
So I'm going into writing this knowing that this game, and DLC, will not be everyone's cup of tea!
Cities in Motion is a transport management game made by Colossal Order - the people who went on to make Cities Skylines. Whereas the transport management in Cities Skylines is relatively surface level, Cities in Motion is hardcore, with you having to manage the individual routes, types of bus, tram or metro that are operating each line, ticket prices and staff wages. Think of it like Rollercoaster Tycoon but for transportation. I actually like that it goes into this level of detail, because it allows the player to create a distinct feel for their transport networks across the city. For instance, I like using little hopper buses for services that connect small residential areas together, and bigger double decker buses for higher capacity urban areas like you would see in real life.
The game takes place across a number of real life cities and you build transport networks that grow with the cities themselves over time as they develop. As someone who loves the base game, but has never previously played the campaign through (only sandbox) I wanted to go through and complete the DLCs first to give myself a sense of some progression as the main campaign is absolutely massive! The Paris DLC is technically the third of these that I've completed (following Ulm and US Cities) but this will be the first one that I have written about on this blog.
The Paris map itself is massive, and really pretty covering all of the iconic landmarks that Paris is known for, like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. The map is also quite densely packed, really focusing on the core city, with some (albeit limited) surrounding suburbs and industrial areas. This sort of sets a tone for the rest of the campaign, as most of what you're dealing with its dense urban transit, rather than the more mixed dynamic of some other maps. The campaign itself includes three missions, covering different timescales within Paris' history.
The DLC overall was good, and as you can see I got about 10 hours out of it (not bad considering that it maybe costs £4-£5 when not on sale and very regularly is on sale! The map was however slightly buggier than some of the other DLC maps, with this one crashing a few times during my playthrough (which is soul destroying considering the game lacks any kind of autosave). It's easy for the three missions to very much feel like repetition, as you end up basically removing the original infrastructure and starting again. Honestly I think they could have (and should have) got away with just doing two missions and letting players have the map for sandbox (which is absolutely how most people will use it!).
Definitely better than US Cities, and honestly worth buying if you've previously played CiM and want to have a go at some different content. I haven't yet decided which DLC I'm going to play next, but there are still four (London, German Cities, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg) to go before I start on the main campaign. This is a good reminder that I've not added St. Petersburg to this website yet and should probably do that soon!
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 10h 39m
Review score: 75%
So I'm going into writing this knowing that this game, and DLC, will not be everyone's cup of tea!
Cities in Motion is a transport management game made by Colossal Order - the people who went on to make Cities Skylines. Whereas the transport management in Cities Skylines is relatively surface level, Cities in Motion is hardcore, with you having to manage the individual routes, types of bus, tram or metro that are operating each line, ticket prices and staff wages. Think of it like Rollercoaster Tycoon but for transportation. I actually like that it goes into this level of detail, because it allows the player to create a distinct feel for their transport networks across the city. For instance, I like using little hopper buses for services that connect small residential areas together, and bigger double decker buses for higher capacity urban areas like you would see in real life.
The game takes place across a number of real life cities and you build transport networks that grow with the cities themselves over time as they develop. As someone who loves the base game, but has never previously played the campaign through (only sandbox) I wanted to go through and complete the DLCs first to give myself a sense of some progression as the main campaign is absolutely massive! The Paris DLC is technically the third of these that I've completed (following Ulm and US Cities) but this will be the first one that I have written about on this blog.
The Paris map itself is massive, and really pretty covering all of the iconic landmarks that Paris is known for, like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. The map is also quite densely packed, really focusing on the core city, with some (albeit limited) surrounding suburbs and industrial areas. This sort of sets a tone for the rest of the campaign, as most of what you're dealing with its dense urban transit, rather than the more mixed dynamic of some other maps. The campaign itself includes three missions, covering different timescales within Paris' history.
The DLC overall was good, and as you can see I got about 10 hours out of it (not bad considering that it maybe costs £4-£5 when not on sale and very regularly is on sale! The map was however slightly buggier than some of the other DLC maps, with this one crashing a few times during my playthrough (which is soul destroying considering the game lacks any kind of autosave). It's easy for the three missions to very much feel like repetition, as you end up basically removing the original infrastructure and starting again. Honestly I think they could have (and should have) got away with just doing two missions and letting players have the map for sandbox (which is absolutely how most people will use it!).
Definitely better than US Cities, and honestly worth buying if you've previously played CiM and want to have a go at some different content. I haven't yet decided which DLC I'm going to play next, but there are still four (London, German Cities, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg) to go before I start on the main campaign. This is a good reminder that I've not added St. Petersburg to this website yet and should probably do that soon!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Backlog Update - January 2025
Hi folks! I have tried to re-create my old graphic and so please find this for January 2025!
I've already spotted a few nitpicks in the graphic that I need to fix, but I'll sort that in February!
There have only been two completions in January, but this is mostly because I'm still in the process of changing jobs (and starting an MA programme - Business of Motorsport if you're interested!) so haven't had as such time to play games as I'd have liked.
Homefront is the game where I'm making the most progress, and I'm really enjoying the story. It's so heavy and so gritty. I think one of the things I like most is that whilst there's an obvious "bad side", both sides make errors (as would be the case in war) and you kinda have to stomach the mistakes of the resistance for the greater good, even if that's an incredibly uncomfortable position.
Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a game I want to complete when I know I can give it a proper go, because I know I'm going to love that game, and I don't fancy playing it in small parts.
The Xbox 360 games are on pause, because I need to change my TV... but I'm waiting for the new job to sort that out as those things are expensive!
Hi folks! I have tried to re-create my old graphic and so please find this for January 2025!
I've already spotted a few nitpicks in the graphic that I need to fix, but I'll sort that in February!
There have only been two completions in January, but this is mostly because I'm still in the process of changing jobs (and starting an MA programme - Business of Motorsport if you're interested!) so haven't had as such time to play games as I'd have liked.
Homefront is the game where I'm making the most progress, and I'm really enjoying the story. It's so heavy and so gritty. I think one of the things I like most is that whilst there's an obvious "bad side", both sides make errors (as would be the case in war) and you kinda have to stomach the mistakes of the resistance for the greater good, even if that's an incredibly uncomfortable position.
Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a game I want to complete when I know I can give it a proper go, because I know I'm going to love that game, and I don't fancy playing it in small parts.
The Xbox 360 games are on pause, because I need to change my TV... but I'm waiting for the new job to sort that out as those things are expensive!
10 Yrs✓#
commissartommy10 Yrs✓#
Game completed: Homefront
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 4h 8m
Review score: 80%
What a massive change of pace from the previous completion! From a calm city transport management game to a gritty shooter about a unified Greater Korean Republic taking over the US. In Homefront you play as 'Jacobs', a resistance fighter and pilot who finds himself in the middle of a GKR occupation of the US. The game opens with an incredibly gritty sequence where you see GKR soldiers murdering civilians in the street, including one particularly brutal scene where a child is forced to watch his parents be executed.
The game does an incredibly good job of making it clear who the 'bad' guys are, and making you really feel that hatred towards the GKR, and sympathy for the resistance straight away. However, one of my favourite things about Homefront is that it also shows how messy war is. The game often shows the resistance making mistakes, like the accidental deployment of a white phosphorous round on resistance fighters, or Connor's morally questionable decisions. Indeed, at one stage you're confronted with an group of Americans who have decided to go completely rogue, and are killing both GKR and resistance fighters, making for a whole mission where your enemies are fellow Americans.
The game came out in that era where Xbox 360 games were quickly ported over to PC without too much care, and sadly some of that does creep its way through. For instance there's no FOV slider (except for in the defunct multiplayer mode), the controls are a little janky / clunky and the game jitters and lags from time to time as it hasn't quite been optimised. But honestly I can look past all of these things, because it's got a gripping story, and the whole idea of pushing back GKR soldiers through iconic US suburban landscapes, big box stores and eventually San Francisco is really quite something.
It's just such a shame that the game is so short! Seven missions in total, and some of them are quite short themselves. I finished the game wanting more, and I suppose that's good for setting up a sequel, but at the same time shows that they could have covered so much more ground in the campaign. Indeed some points skip quite far ahead from where you were before, and there's so much potential that could have been tapped into in between.
The game sells for about £15 - £20 when not on sale on Steam, and I'll be honest - it's probably not worth it at that price, but if you like shooters and you find this on sale for more like £5 - £10, then I'd say give it a go!
Platform: PC
Time to beat: 4h 8m
Review score: 80%
What a massive change of pace from the previous completion! From a calm city transport management game to a gritty shooter about a unified Greater Korean Republic taking over the US. In Homefront you play as 'Jacobs', a resistance fighter and pilot who finds himself in the middle of a GKR occupation of the US. The game opens with an incredibly gritty sequence where you see GKR soldiers murdering civilians in the street, including one particularly brutal scene where a child is forced to watch his parents be executed.
The game does an incredibly good job of making it clear who the 'bad' guys are, and making you really feel that hatred towards the GKR, and sympathy for the resistance straight away. However, one of my favourite things about Homefront is that it also shows how messy war is. The game often shows the resistance making mistakes, like the accidental deployment of a white phosphorous round on resistance fighters, or Connor's morally questionable decisions. Indeed, at one stage you're confronted with an group of Americans who have decided to go completely rogue, and are killing both GKR and resistance fighters, making for a whole mission where your enemies are fellow Americans.
The game came out in that era where Xbox 360 games were quickly ported over to PC without too much care, and sadly some of that does creep its way through. For instance there's no FOV slider (except for in the defunct multiplayer mode), the controls are a little janky / clunky and the game jitters and lags from time to time as it hasn't quite been optimised. But honestly I can look past all of these things, because it's got a gripping story, and the whole idea of pushing back GKR soldiers through iconic US suburban landscapes, big box stores and eventually San Francisco is really quite something.
It's just such a shame that the game is so short! Seven missions in total, and some of them are quite short themselves. I finished the game wanting more, and I suppose that's good for setting up a sequel, but at the same time shows that they could have covered so much more ground in the campaign. Indeed some points skip quite far ahead from where you were before, and there's so much potential that could have been tapped into in between.
The game sells for about £15 - £20 when not on sale on Steam, and I'll be honest - it's probably not worth it at that price, but if you like shooters and you find this on sale for more like £5 - £10, then I'd say give it a go!