BEAT:
I finished up Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 a little bit back. I really enjoy these games, even though there's so much recycled content in each one (I swear I've done the same few dungeon layouts with the same enemies many times across these games).
But there's something uniquely satisfying about leveling up to get your best combos even though you know what they are, or adding your favorite CPU, unleashing your favorite flashy EXE Drive (as loyal as I am to Iris Heart, I've gotta say I really love Vert's EXE Drives).
PLAYED:
I also started Panzer Dragoon Saga. For some reason I'm usually hesitant to start games that are recommended to me so highly or have such great acclaim. I'm experiencing this a little bit now with the Trails in the Sky games and will probably put them off for a bit. (maybe it's because thus happened once with a terrible game, Oblivion, and now I have trust issues). But my 8 slot system finally served it up to me.
I have to say it's a pretty neat game. I didn't know much about it beforehand - the first Panzer Dragoon game I ever played was Orta on the original Xbox, but I thought it was a really neat game. I knew that Saga was an RPG and somehow got the impression things were turn-based fights while riding a Dragon rather than the normal rail-shooter gameplay. I also somehow got the impression that there would be a lot of "on-foot" gameplay using the clunky reticle to target objects "near" and "far" to unlock some annoying puzzles that would resemble a point-and-click game.
I'm happy to say I'm wrong and kind of right about a few of those things. While I definitely prefer traditional turn-based RPG's, Saga is kind of in-between. Basically you activate skills based on a meter that fills at a set rate. This meter freezes when you're re-positioning yourself (but your enemies' doesn't!). Thankfully the entire battle seems to freeze when you try to find a target for shooting your gun. There can be a lot of target on screen and trying to cycle through to the one you need can take a while. It would be infuriating if your enemies kept re-positioning you while you were trying to target someone.
It doesn't seem too puzzle heavy. They actually do feel a little "point-and-click" style, but so far they've been so straightforward that it hasn't been a problem. Bonus: It seems like you won't normally do these on foot, most of the ones I've encountered I still get to fly around on my dragon. Yay!
Cutscenes are a little painful to view, but man, this is probably the coolest looking Saturn game I've played when flying around. I guess the other Panzer Dragoon games look kind of similar, but being about to freely fly around makes it a lot more fun.
Which brings me to my next point: Linearity. This is a HUGE plus for me. I hate open world games. A lot. Give me linear, please. Final Fantasy XIII isn't a masterpeice because it's story was kind of flat, but the gameplay itself was actually a ton of fun. Everything seems to be very linear so far. Sometimes you'll get dropped in an area to fly around in, but they aren't massive. You can explore to whole rectangle in just a couple of minutes. It's not like you have to slowly drag yourself across a massive world or anything (you pick points from an overworld map acting more like a menu). Which is beautiful. I love it. If you like open world games where you have to walk halfway across the earth while being lost I'm not sure I can understand what you enjoy about that. Levels and level selection are king.
NEW GAMES:
Okay, so I mentioned having a lot of stuff forthcoming in the mail before I switched to the new, backlog-aware me and said that I wouldn't count those. That's still true, there are some things still coming, but I've definitely gone astray and added even more things. Something about trying to restrain myself seems to always end in me going hunting for new things to "buy later". But then I invariably find some reallllly cool things I want now for a good price and pull the trigger singing the "buy now, regret later" mantra. I'll save the long list for now and post as things arrive, but it's a pretty spectacular mix of items at this points. Collector's Edition books, posters, modern-day dreamcast games, import games, reproductions, and new limited edition releasing are all involved and it's more than a little crazy.
BACKLOG METHODS:
This brings me to thinking more about my methods again. Waiting to beat 8 games before buying 1 new one is madness. I can't live like that. 4 is still too much. Maybe I could work with 2, but I think there'd be too much fluctuation. Playing a lot of short games would still result in buying a lot in a short time.
I'm considering something more like a dollar amount allocation. Somewhere in the range of $30-$50 a week, and then spending it whenever I want. This wouldn't just be limited to video games though, but would probably also include manga, anime, figurines, etc. Basically it's just a good old fashioned budget. Even better, don't allow myself a dollar allocation for my vices until I also put a certain (higher, definitely) dollar amount away in savings. ~$200-250 sounds about right.
I still very much like the idea of progressing on my backlog, but a budget may be more maintainable for me at this point. I haven't decided in either direction yet for sure, so I'll continue to think about it.
Beat 2, buy 1 could be a ton of fun. Especially if I require in the next cycle that one of the two games be the most recently acquired one. ie, Beat two games -> buy a new game -> Beat the new game, plus one backlog game -> repeat.
But I don't think it'll have quite the flexibility I need being a game collector. I can't pass up a short pre-order opening for something like the Fire Emblem Fates SE just because my backlog rules haven't caught up yet since it would probably be out of stock the very next day. Similarly, there are some games I'm hunting that I just can't FIND yet. Their secondhand appearance on the internet is really just that rare, and when it pops up I'd probably grab it. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in 6 months.
There are some other backlog problems I'd like to address. For example, there are some games I've beaten but would still like to come back and play. This mostly seems to be fighting games. Dead or Alive, Bloody Roar, etc. I beat them, but they're easy to jump back into and play a little bit more. With such a mechanical approach to my backlog I'm really limited in my approach to games I've already beaten. This also applies to something like World of Warcraft, which I really enjoy but obviously if I want to clear my backlog I can't spend too much time in it.
Possible solutions could be to dedicate a day of the week to replays, do a replay after a certain number of backlog games beaten, etc. Functionally it would work, but it doesn't sound appealing. I'll have to think on it. Or, I could set post-beat goals for a game and create them effectively and "things in my backlog to do" for example, I could say that getting an alt to max level in world of warcraft is a backlog goal and then just cycle it in somewhere like everything else. When it comes up, level up the alt, grind out the honorable kill count, etc and then move on to something else. For a fighting game it could be to play a certain number of matches, unlock some costumes or something. Not sure, but I'm leaning more toward something like this. The problem of course is that my slot rotation would be a bit weird for arbitrary tasks rather than a game. Not to mention adding it to something like Darkadia. I think in Backloggery this would be easy. You could just make World of Warcraft a compilation and then treat each goal as a "game".
Which brings me to some other thoughts. Jumping all over the place with the slots is great since I couldn't stick to just one system of "newest first", "longest first" etc. but I still long for that sometimes. I'm leaning more toward "marathoning" in my backlog. Like, let's crank out some final fantasy games. Or, let's take those 8 game slots and only do original Xbox games. Or, forget the slots this time let's only play 8 newest games by release date or something.
Rough draft cycle could be something like:
8 slot mix of 5-star games: NEW, RANDOM, OLD, LONG, A-Z, Z-A, LOWEST, HIGHEST
8 new games
8 random games
8 old games
8 long games
One game from every letter of the alphabet
8 lowest critically acclaimed games
8 highest critically acclaimed games
8 games from one platform (this could be random, a choice, or the platform with the most unbeaten games)
8 Genre-specific games (this could be random, chosen, or could even do a rotation for each genre. "action game marathon, RPG marathon, Racing game marathon, fighting game, rhythm game" etc.
This doesn't solve the "how to do I decide when to play games I've already beaten?" problem at all, but calling each it's own marathon with a start and finish sounds like a blast. 8 is probably too many, admittedly. I think we'd be better off with something like 3-5.
Another downside is that in order to get some of the information, like game length, would require me to put all of my games into howlongtobeat again. It's a feat that would take a long time, and I'm thinking I'd like to avoid it. Darkadia would be much simpler, but it doesn't have a game length estimate / sort.
I've also considered opening up "RANDOM"'s to include games that've already been played but I don't think it would work. There are only a handful of games I want to play more of, opening it up to everything would be a mess.
I more like the idea of adding things to my backloggery that start with "TASK: Unlock more costumes Dead or Alive 5" "TASK: Get 100,000 honorable kill in World of Warcraft"
The "TASK:" at the beginning is a must. My backloggery is an extremely accurate representation of my game collection that I wouldn't want to wreck in a way I couldn't undo. With a prefix if I changed my mind I could come back later and search for the "TASK" string if I wanted to delete all of these entries.
Backloggery sure could use a way to mark a game I have, haven't beaten, could beat, but just don't want to play without completely removing it from all the site's statistics like "NULL" does.
The more I start to think about backlog as a set of goals and breaking them into tasks the more it starts to feel like a bit similar to corporate management / issue tracking. So a new hobby of mine is to kind of take productivity blogs / tips and apply their ideas to playing games. The result is both part hilarious and actually kind of useful.
I'll save the elaboration from each bullet point (not to mention the whole article this was summarizing), but taking this list and adding a gaming spin for example is pretty amusing:
1. Develop Self-awareness - Realize you're not making enough progress on your backlog and try to play more
2. Give a Shit - You have to care about beating your backlog! Otherwise the apathy and shrink-wrapped games will consume you!
3. Minimize Uncertainty - This was about avoiding poorly defined goals and making them clear. (I'm a bit guilty of that in this very article)
4. Commit to Getting Something Done Every Day - Obviously beating a game every day would be nuts, but I think everyone would be happy to make sure there's a little game time every day
5. Never say "I'll finish it up tomorrow" or "I'll make up for it by coming in early/staying late/working the weekend". - This one actually doesn't translate well at all. You should absolutely shuffle around your leisure time this way if you feel like it (one caveat: sleep is important)
6. Do Not Overpromise to Make Up for Poor Productivity - If anyone does this, it's probably not healthy for a gaming backlog. "I didn't beat my game on time! Now I need to punish myself and do more!". No, stop. This is where you should remind yourself a backlog isn't a job.
7. Have an Objective Productivity Metric - This is pretty straightforward. Weekly, monthly, blah blah blah, look back on what games you've played / beaten.
8. Accept That "The Grind" Is Part of the Job - Yes? No? Maybe? If something isn't fun, you should stop. But even great games you love may have some annoying things you hate.
9. Screwing Off - Originally this was about still finding time to waste time on Facebook and the like. I guess it also applies. You aren't always racing. Find some time to screw around in the game, or go do something else like watch some videos. Productivity in the war against your backlog doesn't have to consume your life!
To sort of summarize all of this section in a few points:
I'd like to do some 'marathons' like the ones I listed above.
I'd also like to find a sort of mechanical way to complete some tasks in games I've finished.
I need to decide what my end goal to control is. Budget? Or backlog? Leaning budget, but maybe I could do both.
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