Weekly Game Update: May 18th - May 23rd, 2022
Last week I continued to hack away at Pokemon Picross and Ys IX. COVID somewhat restricted my ability to actually stay awake and play games, but I still managed to make some good progress regardless. I also started a new game… and promptly retired it lol. And for some reason I have a lot to babble about regarding the backlog…
Oh and I’m feeling a lot better now :) Still have a little bit of a cough, but I’m definitely through the worst of it. Hopefully the cough won’t stick around for too long though!
What Happened This Week?
New Games:
None!*
*Well, I didn’t purchase or receive and new ones lol… Still added some games I already owned (but forgot to put in my list) and I also started adding in games from some gaming subscriptions that I have. So uh, my backlog numbers are just going to go up for a while as I add stuff in lol. I should be caught up with games I actually own though at least. Finally!
Started:
Drawn to Life (DS)
Retired:
Drawn to Life (DS) - 1:01
Finished:
Nothing lol
Current Games:
Pokemon Picross (3DS) - 64:32 (+7:38)
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PS4) - 15:56 (+5:57)
Progress Updates
Drawn to Life
This is another game I rolled for (roll #2!), and this one feels like a rough one for me to talk about.
Going into it, I didn’t really know much about it. I knew that you could draw stuff and that was pretty much it. I didn’t even really know about how liked/disliked it was, so I went in with a pretty neutral set of expectations. Normally I would know a bit more about a random game in my collection/backlog, but this is a game that my husband had as a kid. I feel like I can give that a pass this time, since I didn’t purchase it myself, nor did I receive this as a gift lol.
Anyway, after booting up the game, it didn’t take long before I had some problems with it. You start off with a story that seems too talkey for how simple the plot really is (stop bad guy and collect all the mcguffins), and then you create a character with the drawing mechanic. It’s pretty basic and it’s hard to make anything look nice, but since it’s the DS I’m not too surprised and I’m not bothered by that.
Didn’t really need it, but I still saved the roll screenshot!
Once the first level starts, THAT’S when all the issues start popping up. The levels in the game are platforming stages where you have a goal to collect X number of mcguffins (I think it was only 4 in each of the levels I played), while doing the standard avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies. Now I didn’t get very far in the game, but the levels are incredibly dull and way too lengthy for how simple they are. I played about 1 hour of the game, and I only beat the first three levels! That’s about 20 minutes per level! Sure some of that time was spent with the story and creating a character, so it’s not quite 20 minutes per level, but most of that time was spent doing the levels. I wasn’t even exploring that much and was focused more on getting to the end.
The controls are also very awkward. You do use the d-pad and buttons to get through the stages, BUT you also frequently use the stylus as well. I had to use the buttons while holding the stylus in the same hand, which may be possible for some, but is really uncomfortable for me. Some of the other controls are awkward too, like butt stomping (you have to hold both down AND the A button. Why not just down when you’re in the air?), and aiming your snowball gun thing is incredibly annoying and slow.
In each of the levels, you also need to draw various things to continue. It is the main gimmick of the game, so that makes sense, but the problem is that you do a bunch of platforming and then you very suddenly have to switch to drawing whatever you need to draw. It’s tricky for me to explain this in words, but it feels like the game tells you to STOP! DRAW NOW!, instead of it meshing with the platforming parts of the level. The drawing parts are so simple and limiting anyway that it’s not even switching to a fun thing. Plus you’re just drawing what the game tells you to, instead of using it as an opportunity for a puzzle to solve. Just “Oh, gotta draw a white fluffy cloud now cause that’s what the games wants”, instead of “Hmm, what to I need to draw next to solve this puzzle”.
The last big gripe I had while playing, is that the camera just is in a really awkward position. I’m not sure if it’s too zoomed in (gotta see the drawings you made I guess) or if the positioning isn’t quite right, but there were quite a few times that I couldn’t see enough of what was ahead. The level that was the most impacted by this was one where you have to climb a mountain with an active avalanche (represented as giant snowballs). The slope is pretty steep, and the camera positioning just makes it nearly impossible to see any upcoming snowballs. You have to wait in little safe spots to wait for them to pass, which could have been ok, but they don’t seem to go down the mountain in a consistent pattern. It ends up bring very risky to proceed up the mountain even if you go right after a snowball passes, as sometimes there was another one right behind it that I couldn’t even really see. I actually died once because of this, which added some additional annoyance since I was sent back fairly far in the level.
So yeah, that’s a lot of negatives… Any positives? Not many for me, unfortunately. The pixel art for the non-player drawn things all look nice, but that’s all I can really think of.
It’s a shame, since it’s a really interesting concept. I can see others potentially enjoying the game, but it just really didn’t work well for me at all. However, there does seem to be a fairly new entry in the series on the Switch (and maybe other platforms) called Drawn to Life: Two Realms. It’s technically not by the same dev company, but apparently many of same devs for the first game return in this new entry. I’m not sure if I’d enjoy it or not, but I did see someone mentioning that the levels are short. Sounds like that’s at least one improvement. It might be worth checking out at a later time, but it’s definitely not high on the priority list.
Pokemon Picross
Not a whole lot to update to be honest, cause it’s just do the puzzles at this point.
I think I have about 4 or 5 more areas with puzzles to clear. Each area takes ~1 game session for me to finish, so it shouldn’t be too long before I’m done. It would definitely take much longer if I tried to 100% complete all of the challenges, but no way am I completing some of those. I particularly don’t like the ones that have a strict time limit AND forbid the use of Pokemon abilities (which can greatly help in puzzle solving). I do the puzzles for a chill time, not as a speedrun! Regardless, I think it’s possible to finish this before next weeks update! :D
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox
Currently on Chapter 6, and since I think there’s 9 chapters total, that means not many more to go!
Still having a good time, particularly since I’ve started to branch out and use some of the other characters instead of only really using Adol. They don’t play drastically different from one another, but it’s enough to change it up a bit. A bunch of areas opened up as well, which is something that still hasn’t gotten old for me. I just love being able to run around the areas, especially since the various abilities you unlock are just really fun to use! Some of those areas are much less gray and dreary, so that’s always a plus. Still pretty gray… just less gray. Not really a whole lot of new story revelations, although it’s possible that COVID brain reduced the impact of any big story beats lol.
Not sure if I’ll have this beaten for next week’s update or not, but the week after seems very likley…
Backlog Update
Backlog: 1028 (+54)
Time to beat: 685 days, 23 hrs (+7 days, 22 hrs)
So yeah, as I mentioned earlier, while I didn’t purchase or receive any additional games, I spent some time adding games that I already had access to.
A majority of those were ones I failed to add in previously, which definitely should have been in the backlog already. Most of those were also part of a collection, and I only just now added each individual unbeaten game instead of having the collection as a whole listed as a single entry. The two collections I added were NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol 1 and Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle, both for the Switch. While both collections mainly feature fairly short retro games, there’s a good number of games on both so it does add up. I think about 28 of the added games were from those two collections alone. I did remove the two individual collection entries from the backlog list (plus I removed a few duplicate game entries) but obviously that doesn’t affect the totals all that much, given just how many games are on both.
The rest of the additions came from the two game subscriptions that I am signed up for; Nintendo Switch Online (just the base version) and Xbox Game Pass (just the PC games only tier). I also plan on adding a bunch of games I have from various itch.io bundles, but I haven’t quite started doing that yet.
There are many more games from both subscriptions that I still want to add in, as I plan on adding most of the games included with them, but this week was just the start of that project. I could have just added them all in one go, but I decided it would be better to pace myself so I don’t get burnt out lol.
Now, I’m sure that some may be wondering:
Why would you add games from subscriptions when your backlog is already so big? Shouldn’t you focus on what you own already?
I think that’s a perfectly reasonable question, and this is very likely a very silly thing for me to do, but I do have a few reasons for wanting to do this.
I want to use these services, but I’m terrible at remembering that they exist. I just tend to forget about stuff that doesn’t have a physical thing for me to look at and hold in my hands lol. While the HowLongtoBeat list also can have that problem (it is digital after all), it’s currently my easy, one stop shop for anything backlog related. Having the games all in one list that is so easy to access just really helps mitigate my forgetfulness. Can’t remember what’s in the subscriptions? Just go to the list! You can filter by how you have access to the games (such as if it’s physical, what storefront you own it on, or what subscription it’s part of) and there you go! That feature wasn’t there when I first started using HowLongtoBeat a long while ago and I don’t know when it was added, but it’s certainly a welcome one!
There are games I want to try, but they’re a bit outside my comfort zone. Obviously these two subscriptions don’t have every game that I’m interested in trying out and they never will, but they both have plenty of games that fit this want. For the Xbox Game Pass, it has both a bunch of indies that I’ve heard very little about, and bigger games that have lots of praise, but are very different from what I normally play. In both scenarios, I would probably pass on purchasing the full game, but it’s a lot easier to justify trying out these for a small subscription fee. Assuming that I actually use the service of course lol.
For Nintendo Switch Online, there’s a ton of well-loved classics that I either haven’t played much of, or that I haven’t played at all. Stuff like Super Mario World, the Metroid games, F-Zero, the Donkey Kong Country games, and basically almost everything else on the service. Since I unfortunately have so little experience with older, often more challenging games, I’m so often intimidated by the potential difficulty, that I scare myself off of playing them at all. It creates this sort of negative feeling of “Oh no, I can’t play retro games cause they’re difficult and I’m bad at them”, but I can’t get better at them if I never play any! Not only that, but getting physical copies of some of the games and getting a retro setup together that works nicely on my modern TV is a whole ‘nother can of worms. I don’t even have a functional NES or SNES, nor do I have the space to put them anywhere regardless!
Sure I could just emulate them in a questionably legal manner, but I don’t really have the physical space or the mental bandwidth to put together some sort of emulation machine for my TV (my preferred place to play games). I’m not particularly keen on setting up emulators and sourcing ROMs anymore anyway, as I often would do as a kid with no spending money. I’m not against emulation, and I most likely wouldn’t be against doing so again if there’s something I desperately want to play but otherwise can’t (like when I can’t reasonably get a legal copy or I need a translation patch to understand the game), but the extra setup and troubleshooting isn’t really appealing when I’m already intimidated by a particular game. I’m sure that doing all this is incredibly quick and easy for many, but for me it can quickly become a slow and tedious adventure. Nintendo Switch Online is just a nice solution and a very easy and cheap way to get a nice sampling of games.
Adding them all (or nearly all) into the backlog list means I don’t waste as much time deciding whether I should try the game or not. I often spend a lot of time humming and hawing about which games I want to purchase. I learned to do this a lot more once I realized that buying games or bundles of games solely because they’re cheap, is really not a smart idea. I still intend to continue thinking about where I spend, as I really don’t want to waste my money on games (and just things in general) that, with only a little thinking, I can clearly tell are not ones I’d enjoy. However! If it’s a game that’s part of a subscription that I already paid for, this doesn’t matter! I’m not paying additional money to play the game(s), so why not just try the dang game! Go crazy! Or at least, that’s what I want to do more of.
Having games separate from my backlog list puts a sort of “barrier” on trying them out for some reason. It feels like, “Oh I shouldn’t play that because I already have plenty on my backlog” and then I feel guilty if I do play one of them anyway. Or I just spend so much time thinking about whether to play it or not that I just waste a ton of time and end up playing nothing. Or my brain just decides to come up with a bunch of random reasons why not to play the game. However, I think that if I add these games onto my backlog list, I can trick my brain into feeling less guilty and spend less time coming up with weird justifications on why I shouldn’t play something.
I know that it’s a silly brain thing that logically doesn’t really change much more than adding additional entries on a list and increasing some big numbers that really don’t matter. But if it helps change my mindset a bit and decreases the wasted time thinking about if I should play the game or not (As I do plan on trying as much of my backlog as I can!), then does it matter?
Yeah I will be spending time adding those games to the backlog list in the first place, but that’s mostly an upfront cost. Once I add everything I want to add, I only need to do a quick update with any games coming to or leaving the service. I also will end up spending time trying out games that I end up not enjoying, which you could consider that to be a waste of time. However, I don’t consider spending time to confidently figure out that I don’t like a game as “wasted time”. Trying out new and potentially interesting ideas or concepts is also not a waste. I know I’ve seen others state how it’s a waste because they “could have been playing some other, much better game”, and yeah I agree that it sucks to get interested in a game, only for it to not meet your expectations. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where you played a game that you had a blast playing, instead of that one that you didn’t like. But in the end, you have very little idea if you’d actually enjoy said game without trying it out in the first place. Heck, you don’t even really know if this unplayed game in your “What if I didn’t waste any time” scenario would be so much better anyway.
That being said, I’m certainly not immune to this way of thinking. I’ve had plenty of instances where I would be so anxious about the possibility of doing something that would end up being a “waste of time”, that I would end up doing things like doom scrolling social media. I would almost certainly end up something that is much more in the “wasteful” category than anything I’ve ever been anxious about wasting time on! While I’m confident that I will inevitability fall into this trap again in the future, I’ve been able to significantly reduce this way of thinking. Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, and I still have plenty of room to improve, but I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made on that front. I still need a lot of work on getting past the “difficult games are scary” mindset I often struggle with, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually :)
Phew, that was a lot of rambly words, and I probably could have gotten to the point of why I’m doing this in a much more concise manner. Who knows if all that was even interesting lol. Oh well! I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about the backlog in general, and I spent a lot of time getting these thoughts together, so I’m leaving all of this in regardless of interest. XD
Anyway, that’s all of the updates for this week! Next week I’ll definitely be adding more of the subscription games onto my backlog list, and hopefully I will be able to finish up one of my current games too! :D