2014 CYE Backlog Throwdown

[fatty]

Alright, I'm determined to knock out some of my games that I've been meaning to play that are collecting dust. So here's the deal, games you beat finish in 2014 post them here. As you play them feel free to post impressions, pictures, reviews, whatever.

The games do not have to be started in 2014, just finished. So any games that you've been meaning to get back around to, even if they are almost complete, they're game (pun intended).

The games do not have to be 'beaten'. Just played enough to where your enjoyment is fulfilled and you have no desire to play it anymore (unless it is to do a complete replay or something like that). You guys be the judge to determine what you consider finished.

I will post everyone's name in the OP and as you add games I will add them to the OP under your name, hopefully we all can get a pretty decent list going under each of our names.

Let's do this!  Also, post the hours it took to beat the game if you know/have it. That will give others an idea on how much time might be needed to invest in that game if they choose to play it. I guess we could always check www.howlongtobeat.com/ but this might be a good discussion topic, who knows.


dschroll
,,,,,,,,,,,,,



fatty
,,



jincman




nothru22
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,



oldskoolboarder
,




reaper
,,,,,,



Usualnoise
,,,,, ,,,,,,



vado



Good luck, everyone!

[oldskoolboarder]

I'll put a dollar in now. I bet no one gets past 10. And there'll be at least one ZERO. Eh, could be me.

[fatty]

I'm hoping to get past 10. I've got probably about 5 now that are more than half way finished...problem is that they are from the last few years.

[NoThru22]

I'll get past 10. I predict I'll 100% ten Playstation games in the next year, being Vita, PS3 or PS4 games. IT'S ON BITCHES!

My backlog is massive since I was banking all of those PS3 games last year when I had PS Plus for only my Vita.

[dschroll]

I'm in. No clue how many games I will finish in 2014, but anything to motivate me is a good thing.

[UsualNoise]

Me too. I predict I'll finish about 1/2 as many games as I purchase in 2014.

[oldskoolboarder]

Do I need to add my kids' backlog? He just got Swap Force yesterday for a great deal at Target Ugh. I told him I will not be buying action figures, he has to get them himself.

[fatty]

You say that now, but then you will see a great deal on some Skylander figures and...

Also, if no one objects I say we go ahead and include any games that we beat until the end of the year. Since some will be taking off some time around Christmas and may want to get some game playing in. Since the goal is to play some of these games, anything that helps motivate, right? (I'm hoping to beat Luigi's Mansion pretty soon)

[dschroll]

Sweet! Sounds great. Here I was thinking I'd have to sandbag things and play up until the end and then just wait til 2014 to beat them

[oldskoolboarder]

HA! My son had his friend come over last night w/ his box of Skylanders. They entered the game console time machine for 3.5 hours until I had to pry them off.

I still ain't buying them, I told my son he'd have to use his own money. I also suggested he buy a big stash of them on ebay so he could at least use the older characters to open levels. Apparently, I can't get him off the Swap Force train...

[reaper]

Well, I just finished a game. Can I get in on this as a pre-season opener? Or am I disqualified because it's not quite 2014 yet? I just finished Killzone: Shadow Fall for the PS4. Let's see. What can I say about Killzone? Well, it's pretty. Hot dang, it's pretty! It's one of those next gen showpieces that you want to toss in when your friends come over. The materials are just amazing. Metal reflects and shines like metal. Cloth seems to have actual texture and looks soft. Oh my the stones. Then there's the god rays, and dust in the air, the scale and the sky boxes... just a phenomenal showpiece! Here's a video I captured where I was just gawking at the beautiful technical minutia.

www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202654149219370&l=5831083166924690784

On the downside, I have to admit that I did not find the gameplay very fun. In fact, I found it rather UN-fun. I often was unsure where to go or what to do. Stealth more often than not turned into all out war or a trial and error fail fest. And the basic movement in the game felt sluggish now that I am used to games like CoD and Halo.

The story was decent but I couldn't help but feel like I came into the middle of something massive here. I've never played a KZ game before. The game did a good enough job of bringing me into a small story even though I didn't know the big picture. The characters were engaging enough. But ultimately, it was a thinly veiled vehicle to get me back into gawking at the graphics.

I did have a few moments with the game and the graphics were so good, I do not regret the purchase. But I'd give it a solid 7/10 or so and I hope to sell it back and get something different while it's still worth $40.

[fatty]

Got you updated in the OP, reaper! Clicking on the picture links to your review as well.

So I clicked on the video thinking "he's really posting a video on water??"...and then I proceeded to stare and admire the reflection effects lol. It is amazing how far technology has come.

Your review brings up a few memories I had when I played Killzone: Shadow Fall for the few minutes I did. I agree and also didn't find the game that fun, but at the time I didn't pass judgement on it since it was only a few minutes of gameplay. I liked the visuals but, if the gameplay isn't kicking it, I don't care how pretty it is I am probably not going to stick with it. Flower is another game that fits into this category for me (I know dschroll will strongly disagree here). To be fair, these are both games that I didn't play for a long time so it could be that I didn't give them enough of a chance.

It's weird, Final Fantasy XII was one of those games that I continued to play the first few hours even though I didn't really care for it, but more so because it was Final Fantasy, and I've played almost all of the Final Fantasies. But in this case I'm glad I stuck with it because it became one of my favorite Final Fantasies, actually one of my favorite games.

Thanks for the review, and congrats on being the first one to post their completed game.

[UsualNoise]

Do replayed games count? I ask because besides working on my backlog I'm playing through the Zelda series with my brother and will be knocking off quite a few games I've beaten before.

Also, does 2-player completion count? Just finished Super Mario 3D World on 12/24 w/ my brother. Also finished (yesterday) Picross-e for 3DS (eShop game).

[oldskoolboarder]

Eh, count 'em ALL!

[fatty]

Yep, I agree, count em. Anything that you want to post, go for it.

[NoThru22]

Just finished Walking Dead by Telltale for the first time. Also ACIV and now am working on the DLC/platinuming the game.

[fatty]

I think I have the OP up to date, let me know if I'm missing anything. That's reminds me though, I need to finish Picross DS (such a good game).

[dschroll]

My daughter and I button mashed our way through the X-Men arcade game on XBLA.
Its fun that she's old enough now to start playing some games with me.
Can't wait to start getting her into Rock Band

[dschroll]

Finished Season 2 of Walking Dead Ep. 1 today.
The other eps aren't out yet, so will add those to this list as I complete them.

Pretty good so far, but not as good as season 1 IMO.

[fatty]

Ok, finally finished the Mass Effect trilogy by completing the third installment this past weekend. Overall, very great experience. When it was all said and done I logged in about 35 hours on Mass Effect 3 finishing all of the missions (but no DLC).



Over the length of the series it did a great job of keeping track of different choices I made, and how they impacted my game later on, even 2 games later. A decision could cost someone's life, even one of your crew who would or wouldn't be in your squad on a later game. I liked this aspect, because it seems like the choices you made really mattered. What I didn't care for was the Paragon/Renegade points your character would get when picking a response for your dialogue. It was pretty black or white to if you wanted to choose a heroic response or if you wanted to rebel more. But because of the way the game levels you up, it only encourages you to stick with that particular path. If you didn't, dialogue responses wouldn't be available because your Paragon/Renegade levels weren't high enough. Bah. That being said, this is the game that does the best job of telling an interactive story that I've played.



Combat was very fulfilling. As some of you may know, I'm not the biggest FPS guy. COD:Modern Warfare was fun for me, but I get tired of it pretty quickly. With Mass Effect, I get enough COD fix, but with the added abilities of leveling up my character. With Mass Effect 3, I was an Infiltrator class, with a heavy emphasis on sniping ability. So I would choose to level up headshot damage and other sniping effects as much as possible. Add in abilities like ammo that freezes your target so they explode after shooting them...so good. I can't tell you how much fun I had when my squad partner who had the ability to immobilize and float enemies in the air, and then I could use my sniper rifle to take target practice. And freezing my targets and hitting them with a head shot from a distance and watching them shatter like a block of ice was so rewarding lol.



Boss fights could be hectic and very intense but I do wish the scale of the boss was amped up a bit. The first time I encountered some of them it was pretty intimidating but towards the end you just had to handle more of them at the same time. Don't get me wrong, it is still very intense, but I was wanting a little more variety. One thing I love about Zelda and Metroid Prime is the sense of scale of some of the bosses you had to go against. Mass Effect had a bit of that, but it was more throwing a bunch at you at once. I would have liked those encounters to be a little more epic.

If any of you are on the fence or curious about this game, I would really encourage you to experience this game. I put it up there with a Zelda/Mario/Final Fantasy, one of those series that should be experienced.

Now for some slight spoilers, if you don't want to know anything about the game stop reading here.

There was a lot of controversy about the ending of Mass Effect 3. So much so that the second thread about the ending at Neogaf reached 313 pages! I knew a little about the underwhelming ending before playing the third game so I knew not to expect much so I wasn't as disappointed. But going back and reading some of the responses, it is pretty funny. To give you another warning, if you read further, you will get some spoilers, but if you're not too strict on reading spoiler material I will still try to say my 2 cents without giving away too much. Here we go.

With as much thought that was put into the story and the multiple character paths, the ending still turns out to be very similar for any scenario you choose, and on top of that it doesn't make much sense. What ticked off people so much is that they invested so much time into the series and they feel robbed. Some people were even able to get a refund from the game which I find pretty crazy.

Here's an excerpt from a inteview with Casey Hudson, the Executive Producer of Mass Effect

Interviewer: [Regarding the numerous possible endings of Mass Effect 2] “Is that same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?”

Casey Hudson: “Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game.

That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them.”

Thing is they didn't have an A, B, or C ending, it was even worse, it was R, G, or B (red, green or blue).

Check out this video of a side by side comparison of all the endings. This is very spoilery (new word), so if you have any interest in not knowing don't click on the link.

Comparison of Mass Effect 3 endings

So I didn't take too much stock in the ending but after reading some of the responses, which I found pretty funny, I realized that the ending didn't really make sense at all. If any of you guys have finished the game, here is a decent video I feel that breaks down why the ending was bad.

10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3's Ending

Anyways, since then Bioware has released an extended cut DLC that is free that has new endings, but I will watch them later. Again, I really enjoyed the series, and afterward I had a good time reading all of the reactions. If any of you get around to playing it let me know what you thought.