Topic: Backlaugust 2023! (Forums Aren't Dead Yet?) Edition

[M.K.Ultra]

I have one (or two) more to get in before the month closes.

I did roll the credits on Yoshi's New Island on 3DS. I had been playing this for a while, mainly when traveling. I was 100% completing each level as I beat it but when I started running out of time with this month decided to skip the special levels in worlds 4-6. I also still need to beat the final boss level with full health. If you are not familiar with Yoshi games, this one has the usual three challenges: find the 5 flowers, collect the 20 red coins, and complete the level with full health. In the beginning I kept trying to do all three in one run, which feels great when you can, but for the more difficult levels it is better to focus on health or collectibles. The stereoscopic 3D looks great on this game and overall I had a great time. I would probably put this between Wooly World and Crafted World in terms of my personal ranking.

I also played Shadow Archer on Wii U. This is a high score game with no actual end as far as I can tell. There are new enemies that appear when you get to 5000, 10000, and 15000 points. At 15000 points you see Master Manny and once you have defeated him I would say you beat the game. Of course the game keeps going and Manny will appear again. Your only weapon is arrows, but there are four different types of arrow and you do have limited ammo. The game works well enough and while you are still seeing new enemy types, there is a real desire to push further in the game. Unfortunately, once that progression ends, so does the motivation to keep playing. My highest score was around 34,000 points. Like the other UltraDolphinRevolution games these are all locked on Wii U so you either have them now or you can't play them.


I have been playing LoZ:TotK like many of you but I could not even come close to finishing that. I think I am right before the fight with Gannon in the main quest, but I still have side quests and shrines to complete. I am getting near the end of the side quests (I think). I thought I was getting near the end of the shrines but apparently there are more than I thought. I want to at least complete those two categories before hanging up the towel.

I am also playing Sunset Overdrive on XBoxOne but I need another few weeks to wrap that up as well.

Hopefully Khushrenada and Rabicle magically reappear at the last moment with a long list of games to make us collectively look good this month  .

[Mop it up]

These games show an issue with the Genesis controller having only three main buttons, as whether or not Shinobi tosses a shuriken or slashes with his sword is based on distance to enemy, but it feels inconsistent and often still throws a shuriken at slash range. Having a separate sword button would have been ideal.

So jump is one button and shuriken/sword is another. What is the third button used for?

Magic! There are a few different spells, but it can be used only once per stage. They're not particularly useful, but can help at certain spots.

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Closing out Backlaugust is Tunic, just in time! It sometimes reminded me of one thing I liked about Outer Wilds, where sometimes progression is tied to simply gaining knowledge of how to do something or get somewhere. Collecting game manual pages is a unique and interesting way of tying puzzles together. I liked exploring the world and figuring things out, though the final set of puzzles was too technical for my liking, similar to stuff like sudoku. Conversely, I disliked the slow and tedious combat. I don't think I'll elaborate any further, so as to not invoke the wrath of its fans any more than I may already have!

[TOPHATANT123]

This backlaugust I completed... nothing!
I took some days off of playing anything at all and most of my time was split evenly between Fire Emblem Engage, Pokémon Scarlet and Tears of the Kingdom. I would say I'm at like 80%, 60% and 30% respectively.

[Luigi Dude]

Well i came so close to finishing Tears of the Kingdom.  Just a few more shines and major side quest left before I call it quits.  Now I did technically beat Ganondorf and watched the end credits, so I kind of beat the game, but I'm still playing because I want to do all the Shrines and most of the side quest, so I cant really cross it out of my backlog yet.

[broodwars]

As I expected, I didn't end up finishing Mechwarrior 5 in time, though it is out of my backlog since I'm actively playing it, so I guess that's a win. It's a very long and VERY grindy game.

I ended up 100%ing Death's Door and Balan Wonderworld instead, which hit PS+ and the $10 bargain bin, respectively. Been meaning to play both, but neither was in my backlog so that's not really revelevant here. Suffice it to say I really didn't like the former, and I think the latter is really just mediocre. It's only actually terrible if you try to collect everything...which I did, so...yeah...

[Khushrenada]

after clearing out another recent release with Process of Elimination (one of the strangest visual novel detective adventure games I've ever played, but a recent release so it doesn't count here),[/u]

Too bad! I'm counting it! Like I've said before, I don't care too much about when a game released. If you beat a game during August, it pretty much counts. (With the caveats you haven't beat it on that system already and you didn't already beat the same game during this month on a different system). Gotta get these forum numbers for games completed up somehow!!!

Well i came so close to finishing Tears of the Kingdom.  Just a few more shines and major side quest left before I call it quits.  Now I did technically beat Ganondorf and watched the end credits, so I kind of beat the game, but I'm still playing because I want to do all the Shrines and most of the side quest, so I cant really cross it out of my backlog yet.

Too bad! I'm counting it also! Like it mentions in the OP, "Mark a game off your backlog when you've seen the ending or end credits". And you, Mister, have seen the end credits so this can count for Backlaugust. I've had games that I've beat in Backlaugust in which I rolled the credits but then went back to after the month was over (or even later down the road) to then fully complete to my satisfaction. I'm marking you down for this game whether you like it or not!

This backlaugust I completed... nothing!

How can I boost numbers with that?!

I did roll the credits on Yoshi's New Island on 3DS. I would probably put this between Wooly World and Crafted World in terms of my personal ranking.

Nice flex with the Yarn Poochy Amiibo. Blew my chance to get one back in 2017. I thought it and the Woolly World 3DS port were going to go on sale like the Chibi-Robo Zip Lash game and Amiibo did. There was a Toys R US with like 35 - 40 of those game bundles just taking up a large section of shelf for months. Then I went in one day and they were completely gone. Either they sent them back to Nintendo or I did miss a sale or some people decided to grab and horde them all. Not sure what. Now it is one of the most expensive Amiibos out there and less likely to get a reprint. Oh well.

Yoshi's New Island. The second game I beat in the first Backlaugust. (But this poster did fully complete the game when adding it to his Backlaugust total so a little flex of my own there. ). You seem much more positive on the game then I was. Aside from maybe the bonus levels, I found it very derivative and unoriginal when compared with other games that had come before it. Not going to rehash that now but in the Yoshi series, I slot it at the bottom. Yes, even lower than N64's Yoshi's Story. However, I can appreciate that opinion on the game can vary depending on how much a person has played of previous games in the series or of the first Yoshi's Island in particular so I'll quit raining on your parade and enjoyment of it now.

Hopefully Khushrenada and Rabicle magically reappear at the last moment with a long list of games to make us collectively look good this month  .

Oh no!! What kind of pressure is this? I've been trying to get the forum numbers up anyway I can. Why do I have to now be the one to have played some games during the month...?

[Khushrenada]

So, Backlaugust is at end. This year's Backlaugust has made clear to me that I'm just not in a gaming mode these days. Part of that could be what I've been playing but, compared to the last few years before this one, I'm just finding it hard to get enthused about turning on any system to play a game. My attention and enthusiasm is elsewhere in different things. At the time I last posted on August 10, I ended up not doing any gaming until Aug. 21 and that was just to play Fortune Street with some old friends of mine who were in town visiting. We used to play that a lot together. I forgot how great that game is. I didn't really get back to my Backlaugust stuff until Aug. 25.

Instead, I continued to watch a bunch of movies and ended up going through all 12 episodes of the show Slow Horses and just about all of Ted Lasso. I'm halfway through the second to last episode of the series so will probably wrap that up tonight. Been reading some books and doing some organizing in my place. Just so many projects and tasks I've wanted to do or need to get done.

When I last posted in this thread, I had just begun the opening of the last chapter in the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I was into the 3rd world of Mighty Milky Way and at least halfway through Maestro! Green Groove. The way things were going, I was wondering if might get as high as 20 games beat during the month. However, I just wasn't feeling that engaged with most of what I was playing and it felt more like a chore. Plus, it just didn't seem like there was much interest with other users this year for the event which further sapped motivation to stay focused and keep playing through stuff.

Seeing other users start to post more later on started to get me feeling more like getting back into the event. Although learning that we may have split participation with Discord when RABicle posted about it here was sort of disappointing. Looking up that thread on Discord, it seems like we've created two small threads now instead of having one big one like usual. This fracturing of media has got to stop people! Yet, after seeing some posts and getting a spark to get back on the Backlaugust train I'd start thinking about playing through the same 4 songs in Maestro! Green Groove or chipping away at more puzzles in Mighty Milky Way or watching the next episode of a TV show I was enjoying, and gaming was losing that choice every time. Playing Fortune Street didn't help because all I wanted to was just start playing more of that again. It may be the best thing I played this month. Nothing like in person multiplayer.

In the end, as the deadline for the month approached, I finally got back at things. Played through more of Ace Attorney Chronicles on the 25th and probably got a third of the way through that chapter. On the 27th, I got back into Mighty Milky Way. Beat it on the 28th. Then returned to Maestro! and played through the last quarter of that game to beat it. I then booted up Kirby's Blowout Blast just to give myself a different flavor of gaming. It was a nice palette cleanser for what I had been playing up to this point. Beat it in a couple days just pretty much storming through the main levels. Will have to go back to it and complete everything. Finally, I went back to Ace Attorney. Played through a large chunk on Wednesday and yesterday, right around 10:30 PM, I rolled credits on it beating it and letting me just reach double digits for the month with 10 games beat. Still have some Accolades to acquire though.

And that's it for the month. Not sure what I'm going to do next my for my gaming. It's just unfocused right now. A big part of me wants to go back to XCX. It's been so long (two years!) since I took a break on it but it's what I most feel like playing and getting back into. Ready for more grinding there and wrapping up the main story at least. And yet, I've got a bunch of movies on tap I want to watch and TV shows to check out. I've got Netflix and Apple TV both for the first time in my life and working my way through a bunch of things on those services. I did a tally and I'm now over 150 new movies I've watched for the first time this year. I'm just a media consumer right now, it feels like. Must consume more content. Everything but games it is feeling like. Wasn't this a fun post to read.