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61

TalkBack / Re: Gamescom Opening Night Live Unveils New Information On Switch 2 And Switch Games

« Last post by sisohex on August 29, 2026, 10:31:32 PM »

The Witcher 3 upgrade is probably the biggest news for me here. Getting the Switch 2 version as a free upgrade is a pretty nice deal, especially with the expansions included. Hopefully the performance and image quality are a meaningful step up from the original Switch release.

I’m also glad to see Onimusha: Way of the Sword getting a demo. That’s one I’ll definitely try before deciding whether to pick it up.

There’s a surprising amount of stuff announced for 2027, though. Worms: Galactic Tactics and 1001 Threads of Mizan both sound interesting, but it feels like Switch 2’s release calendar is increasingly becoming a waiting game for next year. Still, having more third-party support can only be a good thing.

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

« Last post by broodwars on August 29, 2026, 08:13:09 PM »

Been busy running family errands and chopping up fallen trees today to post or play anything, but I might as well add this one now that I've been working on for a few days and finally finished:







It's been a while since I played a Far Cry game, and even longer since I played Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. A few years ago, Ubisoft released a "Classic Edition" remaster on modern consoles that was widely criticized for running at 30 FPS. Well, as Ubisoft is wont to do, they recently put out an update to unlock the other 30 frames, so I've finally gotten around to playing this remaster.

The setup is simple enough: you are Michael Beihn, a cyborg supersoldier, and you're tasked with taking out a rogue cyber commando who has taken over an island with his army of cyber soldiers, cyber dogs, cyber sharks, and the deadliest creatures of all: the laser-spewing Blood Dragons. Perhaps you're sensing a theme here. You wander the island, capture garrisons, do brief missions where you take out enemies with particular weapons or free hostages. There are only 7 story missions, so it's a quick ride if you want it to be. I, of course, had to run around collecting all the VHS taps, CRT tapes, and complete all the side missions.

Overall, it's still a good game, though it's worth noting both that this game was made during the height of the 80s nostalgia boom and Ubisoft's "subversive" era. As such, the theming of the game can be a bit overbearing at times, and the humor can be both pretty tired and depressing at times...considering a lot of the jokes are at the expense of Ubisoft game design, which has not improved in any meaningful way since Blood Dragon's original 2013 release. It doesn't help that Michael Beihn was never the greatest actor, and he seems to alternate between completely phoning his lines in and just being...Michael Beihn.



It's not funny when modern games are basically just doing that now.

Blood Dragon walks a very careful line between absolute sincerity to the bit and absolutely no shits to give, particularly in the retro cutscenes. And the game is basically over once you unlock the explosive rounds for your sniper rifle, as nothing in the game can stand up to a semi-automatic sniper rifle shooting grenades. If you're not a fan of 80s movies, you'll find this game's style grating.







What does absolutely elevate this game, though, is Power Glove's outstanding soundtrack, which was clearly inspired by the likes of the original Terminator, Predator, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHcFO7pUi9Y&list=PLu6_FOgZp3ehDEMebGB4uDbN5yMYOthnP&index=25

This game also has one of my all-time favorite game trailers. Say what you will about mid-2000s Ubisoft, but they definitely had the passion at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dofacvjRkc

I wouldn't get too comfortable at the top of the leaderboard there, Khush. I still have a card or 2 to play before this is all over. 

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

« Last post by Mop it up on August 29, 2026, 07:57:53 PM »

I'm back by unpopular demand! Maybe I'm just getting used to how these games work, or maybe they're short, but I've trailed through two more Game Gear titles with Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble and Sonic Blast. Not to be confused with Sonic 3D Blast, as I was. Finally getting to some games that were developed for Game Gear, surely these will have less of a screen-crunch issue, right? ...Right? Oh, how naive I can be at times. Sonic Blast in particular, has huge sprites, I can barely see a thing! I chose Knuckles for a change of pace, and I'm glad I did as his wall-climbing and gliding came in handy for the increased verticality of these mazes. Especially the one water maze level, which had a lot of paths that looped back on themselves if you fell. Triple Trouble also has a lot of springboards in it, so I guess it's a sequel to that other one. The first boss was probably the toughest one of the game, since it requires mastering the timing of ballin' in the air, a technique that wasn't present in the previous games. There's even an auto-runner stage here, back before it was cool! I s'pose this is a smarter way to handle an auto-scroll stage for Sonic.

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

« Last post by Khushrenada on August 29, 2026, 03:09:30 AM »

Aero Porter Started playing this a bit last weekend. Wasn't sure how it might go but thought it had a chance of being beaten quickly. There's not much FAQ information and the game is also pretty minimalist in information and presentation. The game can be pretty hectic and frustrating with the amount of spinning plates it wants you to keep an eye on. When I last played it on Sunday or Monday, I'd had a case where a explosive device went off ending the "day" or game and set it aside. On returning to it today, I discovered this had caused the power to be pretty much out for the in-game luggage sorter that you control so everything was moving pretty slow and I had low funds. As a result, I couldn't seem to buy an item to give me more power for the sorter and then I kept missing getting luggage on some flights causing me to get penalties and reductions in the amount of my money I had banked. At one point, I was down to zero and wondering if I had to reset the game because it just didn't seem like I could get out of this slow-moving hole or that I'd ever reach the request of seeing over 6,000 customers go through my airport. Fortunately, I kept chipping away and after awhile was back on track and getting better. Had a run in which I exceeded that 6,000 customer request while also correctly loading up the President's luggage on Air Force One and disposing of a bomb thread properly in one go. That upgraded my airport to a spaceport and unlocked Air Force One if the hangar for the game. Not sure how much of this is making sense if you haven't played the game before but I didn't come here to explain it.

It made me wonder if there was more that I could grow the airport out to be or what might trigger the credits to play. When I searched about credits for the game, Google AI posted that "Unlocking the Spaceport and Air Force One represents reaching the final high-tier milestone or maximum airport level in the progression loop." Also, "Once everything is unlocked, the game continues infinitely in an open-ended fashion rather than triggering a staff roll or conclusion screen." I wanted to see the source that it was getting this answer from but I couldn't seem to find that out when I looked up the "About the source" option. Still, based on the messages the game gives me on the title screen, it does seem like I've "beaten" the game even though it is more of an arcade-like game. Right, Google AI? "Endless Design: Aero Porter is structured as an arcade-style puzzle and simulation game rather than a narrative adventure." While I see there are other planes that can be added to the Hangar for some Streetpass nonsense, it does seem like I've hit the final upgrade and goal milestones meaning the game is now beat in that regards.

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

« Last post by Khushrenada on August 29, 2026, 03:09:21 AM »

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? I'd bought Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy years back on Switch when they kept popping up on sale on the eShop. I've bought other Jeopardy games for some past consoles in the last few years also because I like watching those game shows and I like trivia and seeing how much I can answer. After getting Jep and Wheel, I'd then noticed Millionaire and thought about picking it up when it would come on sale but kept putting it off as I'd rather get a physical copy and I did around December of last year for a bargain when buying a bundle of some Switch games. Never got around to actually playing and testing it out... until now! Shocker! It's a pretty barebones experience. Not as barebones or minimalist as Ubisoft's Jeopardy! for Switch but still pretty basic. When playing Solo, there's an Easy Mode and Normal Mode. From trying to find information online, that's it. There's no unlockable Hard or Expert mode. In a bit of irony, the Easy mode I found harder than the Normal mode. The Easy mode is designed to be a bit more family friendly to allow children to compete with mom and dad. Except some of the questions that I guess they feel kids would know were some things that tripped me up. I lost a few times so then I thought I'd switch ( ) it up to Normal mode which was much closer to the regular type of questions you'd see on the game show and if I didn't win the million on the first try then I got it on the second. Can't quite remember now because I decided I'd also try to win it on Easy mode which took a bunch more tries. On the game I did win, the $500,000 was something like "Which of these names is not a member of the eSports team e-Velocity?" or something close to that. Burned through a bunch of lifelines but it was still a 50/50 guess in the end that I ended up on the right side of. The $1,000,000 question was then something like "Which of these names was never President of the United States?" which was super easy to me.

There is a little bit of a point system you can earn from winning or walking away with some amount of money to spend on additional categories to have questions pulled from. The problem there is that of the 7 or 8 subjects that can be unlocked, there's like half of them I'd never want to unlock. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Manga are some of the subjects. I know so little of Harry Potter having never read the books and only watching the movie series for the first and only time two years ago. Likewise, I just don't read Manga or follow much in anime. As for Star Wars, I don't know who deep some of those questions may get but I'm not someone who has followed all these minor characters or expanded universe stuff and even the sequel trilogy I've only seen once aside from The Last Jedi. What is the name of the yellow alien with the big eyes in The Force Awakens? No clue.

However, what the developers really want is for one to buy some expansion packs for more questions with a link to the eShop being part of the main menu of the game which explains the low amount of unlockable categories. I may still mess around with the game some more to see if I can pull off a few more wins and maybe I do unlock everything since I can always unselect categories for questions to be pulled from so I wouldn't have to worry about some million dollar Harry Potter question. In the meantime, having won the grand prize in both Easy and Normal, I'm saying this game has been beaten.

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

« Last post by Khushrenada on August 29, 2026, 03:08:48 AM »

Currently, the amount stands at 52 total games. Well, make that 55 as we are now 1 game shy of tying that 56 mark.

Mega Man IV - I decided to go for another helping of Mega Man and cross off another title from my 3DS GB VC backlog. Quite the acronym grouping there. Having found Mega Man III a better experience from II and the first one of Dr. Wily's Revenge, I went into this one hoping it might prove to be similar to III in which I didn't have to quite force myself to keep play. Well, it met that bar and surpassed it. This has been about the best Mega Man experience I've had yet. At one point as I was playing this on Wednesday night, I was even thinking to myself, I could see myself replaying this game again. With the other three games I'd played, I had imagined myself having those games and playing them on my Game Boy pocket and getting so annoyed and frustrated with them at having to likely have to replay stuff over and over again to progress in them. Not so much with this one. In fact, I'd sometimes be into the game to not bother with creating new save points which could backfire when I did suddenly fall into a pit or hit some spike and die and then I would have to replay a chunk of the level over again. It seems like the developers had really gotten a handle now of the Game Boy and how to make things play well on it. I went through all 8 of the Robot Masters and defeated the Ballade robot twice. After that fight, I died as the level suddenly surprised me with a self-destruct sequence and ran out of time moving forward. I decided to pause it and call it a night there even though I felt I was pretty close to now facing Wily and finishing the game.

How wrong I was! Figuring out what to do and how to get through that self-destruct level took longer and was harder than I expected. Then after that, one still had to play through a bunch of levels and minibosses on Wily's spaceship and then you had to fight all 8 of the Robot Masters again before I could finally face Wily and then figure out what to do in his boss fight. That last act of the game from the self-destruct sequence to the Wily fight really ruined the goodwill the game had earned up to that point. It just seemed to be a lot of padding to extend the ending for whatever reason. I didn't time myself but I'm sure it took at least two hours to go through that whole end portion of the game. I would have hated trying to experiment with different weapons in the hopes of figuring out what would be effective in some of those situations and having to keep dying and replaying and testing if I was doing it with the original hardware. And they had done so well with the game up to that point.

I might have mentioned this in a previous backlaugust but I got the Mega Man games from the 3DS VC since they were a third party title and people were unsure if Capcom might release them onto the Switch particularly since they really hadn't done much with these games until the 3DS VC re-release of them. Of course, now we know there is a GB NSO app and Capcom did let all 5 GB Mega Man games on it. I probably wouldn't have bothered then if I had known that. Still, because I did get them and add them to my backlog, it did give me some incentive to actually play them. I still may not have played any of them yet if I'd just waited for them on NSO. There's a bunch of titles I have been curious to try and still haven't bothered with on a lot of the NSO apps like the SNES and Sega Genesis. As it stands, there are now just three games left in my GB VC backlog. Mega Man V, Mole Mania and Metroid II. That's a lot of ehms. I really need to get around to playing Mole Mania. It was highly recommended as a good GB game but I've put it off to try and save something good for last and beating Mega Man V would likely accomplish that and I'd tackle Mole Mania after. But if I do that and it now leaves just Metroid II as the last GB VC game then I may actually go back to further play that game and actually beat it to complete that whole section of VC purchases.

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

« Last post by Khushrenada on August 29, 2026, 01:41:45 AM »

Backlaugust 2020 - 44 games total*
Backlaugust 2021 - 39 games total
Backlaugust 2022 - 56 games total
Backlaugust 2023 - 36 games total
Backlaugust 2024 - 18 games total
Backlaugust 2025 - 30 games total

This is the 7th Backlaugust event. I wanted to go back and review what the totals were for each year. Those are the amounts that users reported making some progress in their backlogs with games either beat or complete. It's funny. In my mind, I thought that the first Backlaugust was the highest total we ever had but it was actually the third which surprised me. Felt like this event often saw lower and lower numbers of games finished but that's not the case. It's down, up, down, down, up and now up again. In fact, with the way things are going, it is likely we can set a new Backlaugust record here which is not something I was expecting to see happen when we were talking about who might host this year and based on the last couple years turnout. Wild but welcome stuff. Who knows? Maybe there's still a few lurkers out there who have something to contribute but haven't posted yet. Perhaps having more of a competition for the leaderboard has also had an effect. It has reminded me at times of the first event when I start trying to catch up to RABicle. That was a good battle and Broodwars and Mop it up are definitely keeping me focused these last couple weeks as well.

*I've never been confident about this total of 44 because of Luigi Dude and the Castlevania games he was playing that month. There's like 11-12 games that he beat but some of them he sort of dismissed as not counting on his backlog because he had played them on different consoles before so the 44 comes about based on what he put forward to be submitted to the total but I can't help but feel there was more that could have been or should have been counted. Still even if we error with caution and add another 12 games to that total, it would only tie 2022 and we still have the chance to beat that 56 mark this year.

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

« Last post by M.K.Ultra on August 28, 2026, 01:05:26 PM »

On Wednesday I beat the main story of Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4. That is right, I went back to Insomniac for another shorter game. I actually don't have a time estimate (or trophy count or screenshot) since I am also on the PSN blackout. I remember picking this game up when I was really overbuying PS4 games. These days I am skipping all the Marvel games. I also was not really that into the recent Spider-Man movies, just watching them for the 3D. However I really liked Brand New Day and this was a great follow up as I really enjoyed this game as well. For a PS4 game it looks great and traveling around the city is quite fun, though I still ended up using fast travel. I tried to focus on just the main mission but did pick up some collectibles along the way. The combat reminded me of the Arkham games by Rocksteady but a little lighter. I think I enjoyed the story and acting most of all. Still probably won't pick up the sequels but I think I will return to this for 100% completion later on.

I am not sure if there is time for another short game or not but I will give it a try if I can.

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

« Last post by broodwars on August 28, 2026, 12:40:37 PM »

Against my better judgment, I next tried out Sonic Drift for the Game Gear. I played and won all three of the GPs which rolled credits, so I s'pose that's a completion for this title. Why is Sonic in a car? Wouldn't he be faster without it? I guess he needs to make it fair for everyone else.

I think Sonic would prefer we forgot about that time he did a racing game without a car. 

https://youtu.be/k6vgKfRsmI0?is=N1vNyNKnryeFYTnN

Also, Sonic All Star Racing Transformed and Sonic Racing Crossworlds are great, and he uses a car in those.

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

« Last post by Mop it up on August 28, 2026, 12:14:31 PM »

Against my better judgment, I next tried out Sonic Drift for the Game Gear. I played and won all three of the GPs which rolled credits, so I s'pose that's a completion for this title. Why is Sonic in a car? Wouldn't he be faster without it? I guess he needs to make it fair for everyone else. Surprisingly enough, this doesn't appear to have any rubberbanding as was common in 90s racers, so all I needed to do was get by the wide-load CPUs and it doesn't take much to keep a lead. With its wonky controls and bouncy visuals that are hard to look at, I probably wouldn't have bothered playing this if it weren't so easy. Personally, I've always felt that racing games were never really worthwhile until the advent of 3D and analogue sticks.