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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 13, 2026, 06:37:59 PM »

Lastly, I finally rolled credits on the True Ending of the Road Trip mode of Kirby Air Riders.





Been chipping away at this one for a while now, as you have to beat Road Trip mode at least a few times in order to obtain all the vehicles needed to trigger the last segment of the story. And yes, after a really bad initial experience trying to win single races in Air Riders against the CPU, I did Road Trip on essentially Easy difficulty. I'm glad I did, too, because I was just not having fun with Air Riders outside of Stadium mode until I did that.

Overall, Air Riders is good. It's certainly better than that PoS Mario Kart World, though that's damning with faint praise. But I'm really not good at it, and I'm not altogether sure WHY. I did all the tutorials, I get the basic flow of the game, but when the races start I just can't get any consistent speed.

It doesn't help that the combat is legitimately terrible, especially since your main form of attack is done by...wiggling the stick you use to steer. It's Wii-era waggle all over again, which makes sense when you consider this is based on mechanics introduced in a late-era GameCube game. There's no real form of lock-on with most attacks, so trying to attack an enemy basically results in driving at them and praying that the camera won't screw you over as you two consistently just zoom past each other like Medieval Jousting Knights. It's especially bad in boss fights, where the camera is forced to lock-on to the boss so you're stuck controlling your character in a 2nd person perspective that never feels good.

That said, with the difficulty turned down, I really enjoyed the variety in what Air Riders is doing, which most prominently comes through with Road Trip's rotating series of events. One moment, you could be running around hitting trying to gobble up food or trying to hit more buttons than your opponents. The next, you could be in an extremely chaotic race or hitting targets. If you don't like one mode, you'll be something different just minutes later that you might like instead. You can very much see the Smash Bros. DNA at play.

As for the story, for all the expensive CG cutscenes at play I'm not sure I really understand the point of it, especially in the Normal Ending. I get the idea behind what Neo Dededee is doing and why...but why do I fail the story if he beats me to blowing up the ship at the end? Kirby blows it up, too, if he gets there first, and I had to do that last race several times because there's a LOT of rubber-banding at play AND attacking him kicks him forward a bit BEFORE knocking him back a lot. And why did the Fountain of Dreams grant that thing's wish by subcontracting the wish to a being that turned him into a Doomsday clock? I just...look, it's a Kirby game, so who cares, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Definitely a game I might pick up and dabble with in the future just for the hell of it, but i feel content having gotten my 8-10 hours of SP "story mode" play out of it for now.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 13, 2026, 06:17:48 PM »

Alright, I have 2 games to add tonight, and I think I'll start with a game I picked up earlier this year due to our imminent Shiny Digital Future (TM):



Star Trek: Resurgence is a game you can no longer buy. It was de-listed earlier this year due to the Star Trek license expiring after a whole 2 years, so if you want to experience it the only way you can is through physical copies (mine came from the EU).

Created by a team of former Telltale developers, Resurgence is very much the quintessential Telltale Narative Adventure game, with all the good and bad that entails. The tech is at least 2-3 generations behind even the likes of Supermassive's Adventure games (shimmering and stuttering are abundant), the "gameplay" is so poor it makes early PS2 games look polished...and yet it's kind of balanced out by generally-excellent writing, decent cinematography, and a clear love for the source material.

Without going into Spoilers, the game resolves around the crew of the Federation Science Vessel USS Resolute as it embarks on a diplomatic mission to ease tensions between 2 non-Federation alien species in a dispute over Dilithium mining rights while an unusual Ion Storm surges throughout the area. Throughout the mission, you switch between playing as the ship's new First Officer, half-Kobliad Commander Jara Rydek, and the "Lower Decks" Engineering duo of Carter Diaz and Nili Edsilar.  As you would expect, it doesn't take long for this seemingly-routine mission to spiral out of control as the game unveils the truth behind the mining uprising and a sinister conspiracy operating in the shadows that threatens the entire quadrant.

Overall, while Resurgence has the formatting of a TNG-era Star Trek show, it's definitely trying for something in the area of one of the TNG-era Star Trek movies with its story, with shades of Wrath of Khan; The Undiscovered Country; and First Contact at times. In general, though, I definitely felt the Diaz and Edsilar segments of the game were the stronger ones, as characters in them tended to act in a more consistently logical manner and everyone is a professional. It certainly helps that voice actors Josh Keaton and Stephanie Sheh are industry legends and very naturally deliver the material. By contrast, the Resolute Bridge Crew generally come off as irritating children, whining and complaining over the remotest slight just for the sake of "X will remember that" type moments where characters just will not let go of you not going with their idea several days ago. One character in particular does something insanely stupid just for the sake of impressing Rydek, only to spend the rest of the game blaming her for doing it.

The game ends on a very "Star Trek" note of reconciliation and cooperation (and one surprisingly free of walk-back "makes it easy" B.S.), and it's very clear that the developers love the franchise in a way that the creators of the more recent Star Trek TV shows clearly don't. Diaz and Edsilar's story ends on a particularly poignant note. You don't make a game that basically acts as a sequel to a TNG SEASON ONE episode if you don't care. Hell, the game makes no attempt to explain the Bajorans, and yet when the Bajoran helmsman of the Resolute is terrified, he exclaims about the Prophets. The script is full of little references like that to other Trek shows. I very much appreciated the nod to Enterprise with a character deciding to "polarize the hull plating" once the Resoute's shields stopped being effective. I do wish, though, that the game's subtitles paid more than a passing resemblance to what was being said on-screen.

So, spoiler time: This game is basically a sequel to TNG Season 1, Episode 3: The Last Outpost. Yes, the one that introduced the Ferengi as a bunch of chittering, sex-crazed chimpanzees and featured a representative of the long-dead race The Tkon stepping in to pass judgment on everything, because apparently Q doing that already wasn't enough. It's revealed that the Miners discovered a stockpile of Tkon tech that basically resulted in their bodies being permanently hijacked by the memories and personalities of long-dead Tkon, and they are now using that tech to body-jack everyone they can find in an effort to revive the Tkon Empire and take over the galaxy once more. This eventually leads to the Resolute returning to the site of The Last Outpost to recruit Portal 63 in a race against time to find an ancient Tkon superweapon that can mass-convert entire civilizations into body-nabbed Tkon in a single shot.

On my first playthrough (I had to do 2 for the Platinum), I enjoyed the story, but on reflection I find it somewhat amusing that despite TNG-era Trek (especially Voyager) really driving the Borg into the ground, even here we're still basically doing a Borg story. Yeah, the Borg aren't involved at all, but we're still doing a story about people having the entire being permanently overwritten by an alien race, and questions about whether the original person is "still in there" and can be reached even as they point a gun at you and try to make you one of Them. That said, I really appreciate that the game didn't cop out and just magic a solution, and the writers made a particularly inspired choice by making Edsilar an unjoined Trill, which gave her some unique perspectives on the Tkon situation. The people who get "bioformed" are gone, leading to certain tragedy in Diaz and Edsilar's case.

On a really strange note, the game makes a big deal about Rydek's dependency on regular Deurideum injections to stay alive. You can just hear Chekhov's gun being loaded and put in place to be an issue right when everything goes to hell. It's never an issue the entire rest of the game, despite other characters bringing it up. It's basically just used as a pretense for Rydek to have regular scenes with the Chief Medical Officer. That's just odd.

Where the game really falters, though, is with the gameplay. Most of the game features Telltale-standard walking around, clicking on stuff, and talking to characters. Frequently, you'll be asked to scan objects with your tricorder, which feels really half-baked and clunky. You basically click through viewing modes to find other things to click, and it's not terribly interesting. Hell, the text on the Tricorder is so poorly formatted it doesn't even fully fit in the Tricorder's viewing area. A couple of times, you fly a shuttlecraft, featuring the return of everyone's favorite: flying through rings! 

But by far the most frequent non-QTE gameplay segments (and the ones that feel the most tacked-on) are the cover-based shooting sections. Some gaming executive always thinks that cover-based phaser shootouts are the cornerstone of the Trek experience, and it never works. At times, you'll be asked to crouch behind cover and take turns shooting at people shooting at your allies while they try to do something else. It's frustrating because you can only take a few hits before failure and it's really not clear at times when you're safe to take a shot or if you're even hitting anything. Much like the similarly-tacked on stealth sequences, I'd say it feels like a remnant of an early PS2 game, except that I'm pretty sure those did this better.

Speaking of early PS2 games, though, on an amusing final note, the characters in this game just seem to have a bizarre fetish for cocking their head and raising a single eyebrow to emote any given scene. Their faces move so mechanically, with facial features rigidly slotting into position before shifting the head and watching all those features slot into a new position like clockwork. It's like watching a Disneyland animatronic from the 1960s attempting to recreate a Sly Cooper cutscene. You can't unseen it once you notice it. I don't know who told the character animators that this was a good decision, but it makes the game unintentionally hilarious at times.






And yes, Jonathan Frakes does return to play Captain Riker.

All in all, I'm glad I set aside the time to play this one, as laughably bad as it can be at times. It's been a long time since I watched a Trek product that actually felt like someone gave a damn.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 10, 2026, 06:46:03 PM »

Hey all, long-time lurker, first-time (in ages) poster. Can I get in on this? I'm making an attempt to complete OG Hollow Knight. I played it long ago but never quite finished it. I'd like to get through all of it including the DLC if possible.

I 100%'d Silksong earlier this year, including steel soul/heart, and had a great time doing it, so feel like it's time to check the original off the list.

Anyone is welcome to contribute at any time during the month. The main goal here is to get people talking on the forums.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 09, 2026, 03:04:07 PM »

2. Kill swarms of enemies under a strict time limit.

I was not a big fan of the time limits. I understand the need for them in Salmon Run, but they were too restricting here. I actually didn't upgrade my health at all until the very end and only really failed missions because of the time limits. I think the power ups could have been a little better too, they really didn't seem to make much of a difference. It was the classic, 5% increase in this area that you don't really notice.

Same here. I was maining a Tactical Build for most of the game with Turrets and floating bombs as my Gadgets, and that served well enough for most of the game but I really wasn't getting the DPS I needed until I lucked into a Level 40 gun with a low chance of freezing and debuffing enemies. Even then, I only just barely had enough DPS to clear that last gauntlet before the final boss.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 08, 2026, 03:15:01 AM »

Decided to just lock in and finish the main campaign of Splatoon Raiders myself. Cleared the game at Level 40 with all Ink tanks fully upgraded. I did not do the bonus levels, and I'm not sure I will considering the "True Ending" is locked behind 100 floors of pure grind.

Gonna hold back on the image on this one, as in retrospect the one I posted to social media is a minor spoiler.

In general, I think the game's just OK. The shooting was never what made the Splatoon games interesting, so you would hope that the developers would have come up with some great ideas for how to make it interesting over the course of a 10-15 hour campaign.

They did not. The devs had exactly 2 ideas for the encounter design, and man do they outstay their welcome:

1. Kill swarms of enemies.

2. Kill swarms of enemies under a strict time limit.

That's it. That's the extent of Nintendo's creativity. Even the final boss is just 3 rounds of defeating enemies under a time limit while it spams Dragon Ball Z energy beams at you, which is especially tiresome because you have to slog through 19 floors of "kill all the enemies under a strict time limit" just to GET to the final boss (and I had a lot of trouble with that last floor 10-19 gauntlet, so I had to do it several times before I cleared it). Yeah, some levels may have you run through big empty corridors on your way to the enemy arenas, but that's it.

Previous Splatoon games have offered variety by forcing the player at times to clear levels using only certain weapons, which are relegated to one-off training courses in this game you have to unlock. That basically meant 10-15 hours of using the same gun type to kill the same enemies in the same same-y arenas, because there was really no reason not to outside of stats.

I just can't agree that this is the best Splatoon SP game, not when other games in the series (+ their DLC) had better variety and placed more emphasis on the unique movement options that make the series special.

That said, it does make for a good portable game. Performance in handheld mode is excellent, and the stages work well in short sessions. The enemy variety itself is decent, even if the game resorts to just throwing in armored versions of every enemy to add difficulty and double the roster. The online co-op works very well, though I wish you had some form of control when "offering help". It being purely random means you will often get matched up with players dramatically higher level than you, which means the enemies are scaled to them and you're not really "helping" at that point when you're getting 2-shotted.

It's not a bad game, just kind of a...boring one, after a while.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 07, 2026, 06:05:12 PM »

Late to the party as usual, but I am ready to get put up on the leaderboards. I rolled credits on Splatoon Raiders on Switch 2 yesterday. I mostly just moved through the main campaign and it took me about 11 hours. For folks not aware of the game it is like the single player campaigns in the mainline Splatoon games with a few exceptions. One difference is the focus on the gameplay from the Salmon Run. The other is the way the multiplayer is handled. You get one member of Deep Cut as an NPC companion on your team and you can request help from others online. I got stuck on some of the final levels since I was a little under leveled and it actually worked great to have some randos come help me. You can of course volunteer to help others as well though I didn't try it. Overall the game was really fun and I liked it more than the single player modes in the 3 mainline games. There is still plenty to do and I will probably come back and complete it some day.

I'm about halfway through Splatoon Raiders, myself. I only just beat the 2nd story boss, but I've also been playing it in short sessions, mostly my lunch hour at Work, and I've been trying to do the Spicy missions, too.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 03, 2026, 08:41:47 PM »

Next up for me is Mouse: P.I. For Hire, the game made famous because IGN assigned someone extremely pretentious to review it.

Unfortunately, I have to largely agree with IGN's now-legendary 6/10 review, though I would argue it's not so much "too much cheese" as it is "too little creativity. It's a 1st time effort from a team of developers who were previously animators, and it really...really...REALLY shows with how slapdash this game feels at time.

I really wanted to like this game coming in. I love vintage noir stories, having spent a considerable amount of time over the years listening to 1930s radio dramas of The Shadow and Sherlock Holmes. I adore quality 2D animation. I quite enjoy Troy Baker's voice acting. So why do I find a game that combines all of these things in a shooter experience to be somewhat tedious and dull?

Well, it doesn't help that this game has exactly one design philosophy: you enter a large arena, doors open, and a bunch of goons swarm you in waves. I didn't enjoy this format when Uncharted was doing it, and I find it just as annoying here because outside the boss fights the game never really CHANGES. And perhaps more than any other genre, shooters rely on combat & level design variety since there's only so long you can make "shoot them in the head" interesting. Unfortunately, the enemy types are very limited, and certain weapons like the Varnisher are so ridiculously overpowered (one shot from it will kill most enemies, and the ammo is common) that there's really no reason to use more than 2-3 of your 12 weapons. You can easily coast through the entire game using just the Varnisher; the (Tommy) Gun; and your pistol.

Level design really feels like a first draft: corridor -> arena -> room -> corridor -> arena, etc, with invisible walls and visual bugs all over the place. The game didn't even let you replay levels for missing collectibles and side quests until a very recent patch, baffling for a game that places as much emphasis on them as it does.

And it REALLY doesn't help that this is an around 20 hour game presented (with one lone exception) entirely in Black & White. Yes, it's a unique visual aesthetic, but I don't want to look at it for the entire length of Chrono Trigger. There's a reason I was switching between this game and Kingdom Hearts 1 for a while in July before I eventually just gave up on Mouse P.I. and put it down 3 hours in. But beyond the eye strain of looking at the game, the entire game being shades of gray also means that it's a lot harder for the devs to draw the player's attention to things like collectibles or even the critical path. So much of the game is just a sea of gray and white that it's very easy to get turned around at times. I have a feeling the D-pad button press that lets the game show you at any time where the path forward was added very late in development to address this problem.

Overall, the game's not bad. It's a perfectly serviceable, average arena shooter (or "boomer shooter"), but it feels like it needed another 6+ months in development to fully cook. The story in particularly doesn't feel fully fleshed-out, considering how much emphasis the game puts on it. I can't remember if the game's final boss was even mentioned before his appearance in the 2nd to last level. And so much of the writing is "hey! here's a reference to something famous!" without adding anything clever or interesting to the joke.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 01, 2026, 02:14:51 PM »

So, I guess I’ll count my first finish, as I was up until 12:00 am last night closing it out: I just completed a “good ending” run of UNSIGHTED, which I had not done previously. This involves a late-game quest and new boss fights that are particularly brutal. I won’t lie- I did kick on “Explorer Mode” for additional stamina and more forgiving combat, as the game’s reliance on perfect parries and additional mobs in the final boss phase were a bit too much for me to handle. I have no qualms in admitting this.

I’ll circle back to my initial rating of the game in my own thread, but to be honest, I doubt it will change much.There’s some post game features that make the whole thing even more appealing from a NG+ perspective, and some extra modes that unlock as well (roguelike dungeon crawler mode?! Completely unnecessary but amazing) that make this easily one of the best top-down Metroidvanias (maybe also a Zelda-like?) I’ve ever played.

Might pick this one up, myself. It's on sale on PSN right now for $8. Concerned about the game's description referencing a time limit, though. I don't generally enjoy speedruns.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 01, 2026, 11:52:11 AM »

So, for my other game I've been in a bit of a Kingdom Hearts mood lately. The game I've really been wanting to replay was Kingdom Hearts 2, as it's the only game in the series I've never played in its HD form. I've always felt like I should replay the other games in the timeline first, so last month I finally sat down and did my Proud Mode run through KH1 to complement the Never Change Equipment + Speedrun + Never Die run I did a decade ago. After that, I reloaded my decade old save and finished 100%ing the game for the Platinum.

With KH1 out of the way, that only left 1...huge annoyance...in my way of getting to KH2.




The GBA version of Chain of Memories was my first-ever Kingdom Hearts game, and I remember finding it OK at the time but very confusing since I'd never played the original. Years later, Square-Enix remade the game using KH1 assets, and gave...some...of the cutscenes voice acting. I hadn't played it since back on the PS2, but I'd been dreading coming back to this one because...

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories fucking sucks. It sucked then, and it sucks now, and it ESPECIALLY sucks after having just dumped a ton of time into KH1 so you can really see just how lazy and thrown-together this remake is.

Every bad story habit the KH series ever developed either started or got considerably worse in Chain of Memories:

1. Making spin-off games on other consoles required reading for understanding the plot of the MAIN games.
2. Endless cutscenes featuring dudes in cloaks spending minute upon agonizing minute just standing stiff as a board in empty rooms and talking absolutely meaningless **** AT people.

Or to put it another way...



3. Really terrible voice acting from the KH-original characters.

4. Disney worlds where the plot is ultimately a complete waste of time.

And on top of all that, you have a card-based battle system that is both irritating and completely broken. The devs wanted to have their cake and eat it: they wanted the button-mashy combat of the original Kingdom Hearts, but they also wanted the player to stragically play the card game WAR at the same time. The 2 just don't go together. Enemies attack too frequently to really make it practical to take your time shifting through your cards, and yet unless you set your deck up with high value cards trying to button mash is just going to result in constant broken combos.

Progression is reliant on drawing random map cards with particular values, but if you care about leveling-up and acquiring rare enemy cards, you'll only use a handful of map cards so what's the point of having the rest?

And I feel like whoever designed the Sleights system in this game wasn't talking to the rest of the dev team, because you can absolutely embarrass just about every boss in the game (except Vexen, who loves his 0 cards) by just setting your deck up for sleights like Sonic Blade and Megaflare to stunlock them all to death.

And if you want the full experience, you have to play the game as both Sora and Riku. Riku uses fixed decks and can't use healing cards, so his is definitely the harder experience, but that's really not saying all that much. At least this isn't the PS3 version of COM, where you had to beat the game 6 times for the Plat (3 as each chacter, 1 for every difficulty level).

And what is all this tedium in service of? A story that is both critical to understanding Kingdom Hearts 2, and yet utterly pointless. SDG don't even remember it happened by the end. The main purpose the game seems to serve is to explain why half of Organization XIII is dead by the events of KH 2, and it seems to me Nomura could have just set aside his 13 obsession and just made the Organization...not contain 13 members (and yes, I know there are actually 14, and it's stupid).

Oh well. At least the game is done and I'm clear to finally get to KH 2 Final Mix by the end of the year. I still have to go back and finish-up my Platinum runs (plural) on Birth By Sleep, but as that's generally considered the hardest game in the series to Platinum (since you have to 100% the game as all 3 characters) and it's a prequel, I feel content letting it wait until after KH 2.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: August 01, 2026, 11:23:30 AM »

I'll go and throw a few of mine in that I finished this morning, both of which have been in the backlog for a very long time:



The Legend of Zelda (NES) - For around 40 years, I've been trying to get through this game, but for the life of me I could never stand to play this game for more than few dungeons. Ironic, really, considering that up until Breath of the Wild, Zelda was my favorite gaming series. Well, figured I'd finally take advantage of Switch Online and get it done.

Yeah...I'll give the original Zelda credit that it's much more fully formed than something like Metroid or Kid Icarus, but this game's execution is a real mess. You pretty much need a vintage Nintendo Power or the modern internet just to figure out how to progress in this game, and to my surprise that's not really due to needing to bomb every wall or burn every tree. Yes, there are a few secrets hidden that way, but only 1 dungeon and no progression-critical items. That said, I didn't appreciate this game having a fast travel system, but it's hidden behind a bracelet hidden underneath an armos I didn't know existed until I was trying to track down the last few items in my inventory.

The biggest hurdle to progression is just how the dungeons seem to be randomly scattered around, with no regard as to what players will have available to them, and the pure moon logic required to access some of them. For instance, there's one dungeon you can only find by playing the whistle in front of it, which is a dungeon item you might not have found and up to this point you've maybe only explicitly used to deal damage to one specific enemy. And in the overworld, this whistle largely works as a fast travel system, teleporting you to a random dungeon entrance. Who the **** would think that playing the whistle in front of a pond would do anything? The only hint an NPC gives you about it is "Ponds without Faeries hide secrets" or some such thing. Considering that pond is patrolled by a random Moblin, I thought this was where you maybe used the meat. Thank god for rewind.

You can definitely tell in the dungeons that this is a first attempt, as there are just some boneheaded design decisions. For instance, enemies seem to have fairly random movement patterns (especially the Wizzrobes) and hit like a truck (again, especially the Wizzrobes), and yet they almost never drop hearts. It's almost always nothing; ruppees; or the occasional bomb. You're basically required to find the item that unlocks the ability to buy potions from the witch by the 4th or so dungeon, because you just won't have the health. One of the dungeons (#4, I believe) has more locked doors than there are keys, so if you explore you'll actually run out of keys and will have to leave the dungeon to go find or buy more.

And why do you need to kill all the enemies in a room before moveable objects become moveable? It doesn't work that way in any other Zelda game.

And don't get me started on the cluster**** that is Dungeon 9, the final dungeon. I probably spent more time in that dungeon than the other 8 combined just because it's huge; full of bombable walls you need to open to proceed; and it loops back in on itself multiple times with one way doors and hidden stairwells. I never did find the ring that gives you the 75% damage reduction, but I sure did find Ganon before I found the Silver Arrows required to kill him or the map and compass that would have told me where he was. THAT sure was a fun discovery!

Overall, I'm glad I finally finished it, but like most NES games it really is more of a proof of concept.

And no, I've never finished Zelda 2, either (though I have gotten close) but I also really don't want to.

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TalkBack / Re: Splatoon Raiders Fixes My Biggest Problem With Splatoon

« on: August 01, 2026, 06:24:34 AM »

I'll admit that I haven't really kept up with the news on this one too much. But is Raiders supposed to be like a Roguelike or Roguelite game?

Not in the slightest. You have a persistent character level with skill points, perks, and gear you unlock. The only thing vaguely Roguelike about it is that the game's kind of hard when played Single-player (but extremely easy when played in co-op), so it's easy to get overwhelmed by the swarm and lose your lives. Losing all your lives kicks you back to your ship with everything you'd already gathered up to that point, and you have to start the level over.

This game is a looter shooter, like a level-based version of Borderlands.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: July 31, 2026, 09:09:38 PM »

I am super excited for Backlaugust this year! I have mostly cleared the decks, though there is a game that will just cross the finish line tomorrow. I have been focusing on playing new releases as they come out instead of putting them at the back of the queue. To that end I am planning to play Rhythm Heaven Groove and Splatoon Raiders this month. I also got the switch 2 version of Xenoblade and as much as I want to play that now, it would really hurt my stats. Plenty of other games lined up that I will talk about as I get to them. Time to put Star Fox multiplayer on hold and just focus .

I'm definitely leaning into what would be called "retro" this year, which to my disintegrating eyes' dismay includes games that came out just after I graduated college. In particular, I want to tackle a game that's been mocking me from my backlog ever since the PS4 came out and I gradually retired my PS3: Puppeteer. I loved that game when it came out, but for whatever reason I never finished it. Naturally, I'll be restarting it this time. I have hundreds of other games on my PS3 I could play at this point as well, including some PS1 games I forgot I even owned like the Parasite Eve games.

In more modern gaming, I'm also playing Splatoon Raiders and I really should get around to finishing Kirby Air Rider's Road Trip story mode as well as playing the Star Fox remake at all. I abandoned Mouse P.I. in July to finally get around to doing my Platinum run on the 1st Kingdom Hearts game, so I should get back to that 6/10 Too Much Cheese game.

And yes, I have 2 games set aside that I intend to finish line tomorrow to start things off, myself. All in all, it should be a good spread this month.

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General Gaming / Backlaugust 2026 - (Splatoon) Raiding the Backlog

« on: July 31, 2026, 07:24:36 PM »

Well, as one of the few still using the forums these days and one of the bigger contributors to this event each year, I figured I'd step in and do hosting duties this year while the regular hosts are otherwise occupied. Figured I might as well post the thread a little early, or I'll just keep putting it off.

It's been an eventful year so far, and certainly one fit for reflecting on the road not traveled as we see companies like Sony lining up to strip us of one of the things that allows us to do this event every year: physical games. In fact, I hooked up and updated my PS3 a few weeks back in anticipation of defending my 2 time Backlaugust title, so bring it on! I have a few games lined up already to kick off the festivities. 

The points don't matter and the rules are arbitrary, but here the usual ones with some modifications:

1. Play whatever you want, wherever you want. - If there's a game you want to play, play it. It can be any console, PC, main game or DLC.

2. You are done when you feel you are done - If you want to call it when you roll credits, great. If you want to be a lunatic like me and 100% it, welcome to the club.

3. Please keep it on the forums if you care about your completion scores - You're welcome to chat about the games you're playing on the Discord and elsewhere, but if you want your game to count towards the overall completion count, please post about your games in this thread. It's easier to keep track of that way.

This thread will be updated with a running tally of the completed games as we go along. Let's have some fun and get around to those games we've been putting off!

BACKLAUGUST 2026 GAMES

1. UNSIGHTED - Evan_B
2. The Legend of Zelda (NES) - Broodwars
3. Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories - Broodwars
4. Caravan SandWitch - Evan_B
5. Mouse: P.I. For Hire - Broodwars
6. Splatoon Raiders - M.K.Ultra
7. Splatoon Raiders - Broodwars
8. Rhythm Heaven Groove - M.K.Ultra
9. Pokémon Pokopia - Mop It Up
10. Star Trek: Resurgence - Broodwars
11. Kirby Air Riders - Broodwars

Backlaugust 2026 Total: 11 Games

Backlaugust 2026 Leaderboard

1. Broodwars - 6 games
2. Evan_B - 2 games
3. M.K.Ultra - 2 games
4. Mop It Up - 1 game
5. X

14

TalkBack / Re: Splatoon Raiders Fixes My Biggest Problem With Splatoon

« on: July 30, 2026, 11:56:28 PM »

I would argue that the Splatoon 2 and 3 DLC is the best content in those games, far outstripping what the main SP campaigns were doing (and certainly better than the MP, but I've never been a big Splatoon MP guy).

Playing through Raiders, I'm not loving that pretty much the ENTIRE focus of the game is on the not particularly special Splatoon series combat instead of the platforming, but the game's been decent enough so far.

15

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch 2

« on: July 24, 2026, 01:31:56 PM »

That said, I know I'm going to be busy the first week of August doing anything but gaming due to the way things have worked out this year so if you want to take on the role of host again, M.K., then you are welcome to do it again. You did great with it last year as I once again flopped hard in doing any gaming or contributing much which wasn't my plan going in at the time. Just reply here if you want the job. Otherwise, I'll still get things rolling.

I am also busy in August so why don't you take the reigns this year!

If Kush is going to be busy in early August, I might take a crack at creating the thread this year.

16

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch 2

« on: July 22, 2026, 06:45:59 PM »

I found Bananza pretty "mid", myself, but the game really got on my bad side with just how many times I'd ping a Banana on my radar, dig down to it, and then turn around to find out that just casual exploration resulted in me skipping an entire crafted platforming section. Considering just how MANY Bananas in that game are just buried in the fucking ground and walls, it felt like really bad design to also put planned experiences in places you can just dig to.

But yes, it does have a pretty good final world or so.

I, like many it seems, had Splatoon Raiders set to arrive tomorrow, but Amazon delayed the order until next Wednesday. Guess that makes it a Backlaugust game, then.

17

TalkBack / Re: Octopath Traveler I And II To Come To Switch 2 On October 1, With No Upgrade Or Save Transfer

« on: July 15, 2026, 09:26:56 PM »

Is there a reason why so many third-parties refuse to offer upgrades? Is it a complicated process? Is it easier to do on PS5/Xbox Whatever?

There are several possibilities:

1. Nintendo is discouraging upgrade paths and save transfers compared to the likes of Sony & Microsoft.

2. Sony & Microsoft are providing incentives behind the scenes for companies to offer those upgrade paths and save transfers, but Nintendo does not.

3. 3rd parties (but especially Square Enix) are choosing to combat recent economic downturns by pulling up the drawbridge and removing any costly QoL incentives for users to cut costs and maximize returns. Nintendo owners aren't exactly known for buying 3rd party games as it is.

There's probably more, but the most likely reason is some combination of 2 & 3. With how quickly Sony is burning every bridge they can find lately, I wouldn't be surprised if we stop seeing upgrade paths/perks with games on their consoles as well.

18

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Star Fox (Switch 2)

« on: July 13, 2026, 08:58:32 AM »

Heh. Figures. I skimmed through the topic, but I didn't see that. Oh well. You may resume the pummeling, then. 

19

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Star Fox (Switch 2)

« on: July 13, 2026, 12:08:23 AM »

*deleted*

20

General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: July 07, 2026, 10:55:54 PM »

Whoever decided that the Dualshock 3 should only charge from a USB charger with an active data connection should be thrown into the sun.

It sure makes safely charging the things a gamble in one of the biggest lightning sites in the world in the middle of the summer storm season, that's for sure. Didn't think I'd ever miss Rest Mode this much.

21

General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: July 05, 2026, 12:27:25 PM »

Following this announcement, I brought my PS3 out of storage; hooked it up; and got it updated and ready to go again. Think I'm going to get some playtime in for Backlaugust in a month. Some words of warning to anyone else thinking of doing this:

1. Remember, the controllers used USB Mini cables, and the ones you have probably don't work as well as you would like. That's certainly been my experience trying to charge my Dualshock 3s back up.

2. Signing into PSN on a PS3 in 2026 is...an experience. You have to get a device code from your account manager to do it, and use that as your password to sign into your account.

3. You cannot buy games from PS3 PSN using a credit card anymore. You HAVE to use gift card wallet funds. Coincidentally, those seem to be a hot seller on Amazon right now.

4. As a corollary to 3, even if you DO add funds to your wallet with a gift card code, the PS3 PSN STILL won't let you buy anything because it wants you to confirm your CC details. Nothing I entered worked, so I had to delete my CC off my account before the PS3 would just bypass the CC check and use the wallet funds.

5. The PS3 is way, way, WAY slower than you remember to do anything online. You can basically watch an entire Extended Cut LOTR movie in the time it takes to download ONE PS2 game. And the PS3 store always was and always will be a colossal PoS with an incredibly clunky interface.

6. Consult these wikis to see what PS1 and PS2 games we're going to be losing once these stores shut down:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_downloadable_PlayStation_games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_PlayStation_2_games

There are a LOT of PS1 & PS2 digital games I bought back in the day and completely forgot about. For instance, I forgot I owned Fatal Frames 1 & 3 and both Parasite Eve games. That ****'s never getting re-released; remastered; or remade. I have both Digital Devil Saga games. Those might get remastered...someday...if Atlus can give a damn, but it's not likely.

22

General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: July 01, 2026, 09:28:02 AM »

So, Sony's just having a winning week.

First, they yanked hundreds of digital movies from customer's libraries due to expiring licenses.

Second, they're shutting down the PS3 and Vita PSNs in 2027, with owners temporarily able to redownlod games for now.

Finally, they announced no more disc games for PlayStation after next year.

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/

Well, I guess the PS5 is my last Sony console. I understand that these companies want to go digital, but physical options give the consumer options and Sony is so far the ONLY console manufacturer with a history of stealing digital content from people who purchased them. I don't trust them AT ALL with my digital games.

**** you, Sony. I hope the crash takes you and Xbox with it.

23

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What's Next For The N64 Expansion Pack?

« on: June 30, 2026, 07:14:26 PM »

I didn't know Donkey Kong Racing was on the box for the GameCube. Do you have an image of that?

While we're at it, we might as well go mop wild and have them release whatever was completed for Conker before all the raunch was added. We can never have enough of these scraps!

Ask and ye shall receive.

24

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: June 29, 2026, 11:25:06 PM »

Kirby Air Riders - Traded in a bunch of games I was never going to play again (little did I know at the time Mario Kart World should have been one of them), and grabbed this one on a whim for basically free.

Let's get the bad out of the way first: this game makes an extremely poor first impression with how it basically gives the player homework right at the start with a lengthy serious of generally pretty terrible tutorials that somehow break the game's mechanics down on an incredibly granular level while teaching the player next to nothing useful about the actual process of playing the game. I did all the tutorials in a row, and then went right into the SP Air Ride mode and proceeded to get my ass handed to me by the CPU over and over again despite doing what the tutorials drilled into me to do. Time after time, though, I'm still getting at best 2nd place.

And that's really the part of the game that frustrates me: I really enjoy this game's sense of speed when I CAN get boosts of speed, but I feel like I'm really bad at this game and I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm boosting on turns; I'm drafting behind opponents; and I'm attacking where I can. And yet I can never seem to get the consistent blasts of speed I KNOW the game wants me to do. It certainly doesn't help that attacking is relegated to either holding the Boost button (which also slows you down) or wiggling the stick. Why couldn't this have been an optional button press? I wish that acceleration was the feature mapped to the one button instead of what's basically the brake doubling as a boost. When I'm not boosting the game feels very slow, but when I hit the brake to boost it feels like I'm not making meaningful speed. Again, I feel like the game could make it a lot more clear what I'm doing wrong here. It really doesn't help when some challenges and entire courses feel like they were designed for only 1 vehicle to be viable, and it's never the one I'm using.

However, where I somewhat turned a corner on this game is when I started dabbling in the other modes, particularly Top Ride; the Stadium challenges; and now Road Trip. I'm surprised at how much I'm really digging the Road Trip mode, though I wish I could tweak the AI just a little bit more. After how the AI was routinely kicking my ass on the default settings in Air Ride, I kinda wish there was an middle ground setting between "Casual" and "Normal" in Road Trip. "Casual" just feels like the game's giving you a pat on the head and an automatic win, but I'm wary about dialing up to Normal until I'm remotely better at the actual racing. But with the constant cycling of modes and challenges, this is definitely the part of Air Riders that appeals to me and I'm glad I gave the game a chance.

Currently also making my way through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but I'll save my thoughts on that...mess...for another time.

25

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: June 29, 2026, 11:08:44 PM »

Alright, how about a trio of Racing games?

Mario Kart World - Well this game is just utter trash. I'm not here for the online, just for the Grand Prix experience and boy is that lacking here between the lack of multiple laps on all but the 1st track and the general underwhelming nature of the tracks in general. It really doesn't help that the tracks are as wide as they are to accommodate the expanded roster count. I was just kind of bored racing through the Grand Prix races, though not nearly as bored as when I dabbled in the extremely empty open world full of nothing of value to do.

This game is the very embodiment of that "I don't know what I expected" meme.

Sonic Racing Crossworlds - Been holding onto this one for a while now, basically waiting for Sega to finish making the game, but now they've announced an entire 2nd season of DLC content so that'll be a while. Played through the first 3 or so Grand Prix tracks, and I have to say I really dig this one. Compared to something like Sonic Racing Transformed, the roster is pretty bad since it's largely Sonic & his terrible friends. But roster gripes aside, the tracks I've experienced so far have been pretty stellar...aside from this one Crossworld track I've seen a few times that's really hard to read beyond just being an explosion of neon color. The rubberband AI is pretty damn tenacious, too, even on the lowest difficulty. Been a while since I picked that one up, but I'd definitely recommend it. And the DLC tracks are surprisingly excellent so far.