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List of Shame 2022: Twenty-Twenty-Rue

They should call these the Snoring Twenties, because I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to get out of bed every morning. One of those reasons is video games, however, and with the recent handful of strong years for releases at least my backlog is as hale and hearty as always. If we're going to spend another twelve months indoors evading Microscopic Koosh Balls of Death it's for the best that I've got a stockpile of interactive delights on hand. All they need to do now is invent video games that can double as toilet paper. Besides Balan Wonderworld.

We're sticking with our "Run BWC" format, because it's like that and that's the way it is:

  • [B]acklog items are those I presently own but have yet to play, with this year hopefully being the time to do that. (20 of these.)
  • [W]ishlist items are those I do not own but hope to purchase and play this year. I've split them up into two groups: 2021 highlights and older holdouts I still need to get around to. (15 each of these.)
  • [C]ompleted items are those from the former two categories I did actually complete in 2022, with the completion dates included.

To befit what will no doubt be this year's ongoing theme transmitted over from last year, each item on the list will be given a Greek letter that corresponds to its priority status: Alpha (A) being the highest priority and Epsilon (E) being the lowest.

(Be sure to check out last year's List of Shame to see how I did! (Spoiler: I did OK!))

List items

  • [B] Priority: Alpha.

    Not holding my breath for any sales though. Nintendo's not exactly the most generous developer out there. As soon as they start emulating Wii games the Switch Online price will go up yet again, and all they'll have for the first three months is P.T. Boredom's Carnival Games and Wipe My Ass Simulator '09.

  • [B] Priority: Beta.

    I have a Tales game in reserve so I can wait a little longer for the newest entry to dip in price, but it's another like Psychonauts 2 where I feel like many more people are talking about the game than I ever would've expected. It's encouraging. Very encouraging.

  • [B] Priority: Gamma.

    Currently the third most pressing Soulslike in my backlog. Anime vampires. I'm curious if that means their personalities change depending on which blood type they just drank.

  • [B] Priority: Gamma.

    On the one hand it's Dragon Quest but on the other it's Musou, so while I'm a little hesitant to get started on it I remembered having a fine enough time with the first Dragon Quest Heroes some years ago. I played two Dragon Quest games in 2021 though so I might have my fill of grinning slimes, at least for the first half of this year.

  • [B] Priority: Gamma.

    Another beefy CRPG though one I only own on PC. I managed to get through the Obsidian IE throwbacks just fine on this ailing laptop, but it's still a gamble I'm worried to take. However, since there's been another, even better Pathfinder game released in the meantime I'm more anxious than ever to get caught up.

  • [B] Priority: Gamma.

    I picked Xillia 2 up just recently because copies of this PS3 Tales have been relatively sparse ever since it was mysteriously removed from the European PSN store. Bamco aren't the biggest fans of making their tentpole anime RPGs accessible, even after the surprise mainstream success of Arise. Well, I own it now, and I'll want to polish off any remaining PS3 games I can before it's time to pack that curvy customer away.

  • [B] Priority: Delta.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited to play the continuing adventures of Detective Man Who is So Handsome His Talent Agency is Afraid of Hackers Putting Him in SFM Porn, or Yagami for short, but Yakuza 7 is probably going to take the one slot I reserve per year for a Yakuza playthrough. I can beat up all those highschoolers some other time.

  • [B] Priority: Delta.

    Sometimes I sweep up JRPGs in sales just because they're super cheap without having any clear notion when I'll find the time to play them. I've been curious about the latter-era Shining games for a while - their localizations dried up shortly after the Genesis and Saturn generations - but I'm not exactly short on 50+ hour RPGs here.

  • [B] Priority: Delta.

    I've heard the single-player campaign is great. Many times, in fact. Yet I'm never in a mood for an FPS for some reason. There's just very little that interests me from the genre's mostly online-only offerings that I've grown apathetic with the whole 360 no-scope biz. (Also it's been so long since I FPS'd that these days I'm probably more of a 360 no-hope, if you will.)

  • [B] Priority: Epsilon.

    I feel like I make the same promise every year to finish off the few 3DS games I've got lying around and then never do. My 3DS runs out of charge the moment it notices it's out of its cradle, like an infant that can't remember why it was crying, so I probably should get a move on if I ever want to play these holdovers.

  • [B] Priority: Epsilon.

    See above. I forget how many Layton games I'm behind on now. Trying not to imagine all the matchsticks I've missed out on.

  • [B] Priority: Epsilon.

    I still want to know what this Parisian 1930s JRPG franchise is all about, as something that's been trucking along for years in its native Japan without so much of a hint of a localization until this most recent entry, but like Shining Resonance Refrain I'm thinking I should stick to the rivers and lakes that I'm used to. At least until I run out of RPGs. Which I'm starting to think is "never."

  • [B/W] Priority: Various.

    I'm dedicating this slot to the many remnants of the 2017 "Dredge of Seventeen" project I didn't get around to last year. They'll now be integrated into IGotW throughout 2022. Here's the few I started the year with, though I'll probably collect others as they pop up in bundles and sales: Children of Zodiarcs, The Lion's Song, Paradigm, Pyre, River City Ransom: Underground, Seven: The Days Long Gone, A Robot Named Fight!, A Rose in the Twilight, Sonic Mania, and Splasher.

    [C] Completed 15/01. (MagiCat, IGotW 252)

    [C] Completed 27/01. (A Robot Named Fight!, IGotW 254)

    [C] Completed 09/02. (Children of Zodiarcs, IGotW 255)

    [C] Completed 18/02. (A Rose in the Twilight, IGotW 257)

    [C] Completed 25/02. (Paradigm, IGotW 258)

    [C] Completed 12/08. (The Lion's Song, IGotW 282)

    [C] Completed 25/08. (Macbat 64, IGotW 284)

  • [W] Priority: Alpha.

    Hope to soon meet Herlock Sholmes, Dr. Wan Jotson, Percule Heirot, Bolumco and all the gang in this pair of 100% accurate historical law simulators. Was Phoenix's ancestor as big a weenie as he is? Possibly!

  • [W] Priority: Alpha.

    I was a big fan of Psychonauts 1 and hearing how many more people loved this sequel is giving me the warm jitters. (That's a thing, right? Warm jitters? Should I get a blood pressure test just in case?)

  • [W] Priority: Beta.

    The dog-girl graffiti game is apparently as wonderful as its title suggests, painting a meta story about working together with one's community to fill the world with color, joy, and crude penis art. I have crude penises to draw all over on the walls at home, but... if enough people tell me Chicory's worth it, who am I to disagree?

  • [W] Priority: Beta.

    This is the other explormer that's been recommended to me. The top-down Zelda-ish one is getting some strong word of mouth from our own Jan "Jan the Man" Ochoa. You know what else is a strong word of mouth? "Estuary." Very classy.

  • [W] Priority: Gamma.

    While I have my eye on the select few 2021 explormers above, there's many more I'd be curious to try. Along with this Axiom Verge sequel that people stopped talking about pretty quickly there's also F.I.S.T., Grime, Recompile, Lost Ruins, Greak: Memories of Azur, Custodian: Beginning of the End, Transiruby, and the out-of-early-access version of Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-. So many maps to fill in, so little time.

  • [W] Priority: Gamma

    While I'll be lighting candles and praying to totems to make Metroid Dread fall in price ever, I'll have a smaller side-shrine going for the less recent Pokémon Snap remake. Big fan of the first game and though this one's filled with late-gen Pokémon I've never heard of that are more conceptual than based on actual living creatures I'm ready to relive a period of my life where all I had to worry about was throwing apples at monsters until they did something cute.

  • [W] Priority: Gamma

    There's always a few Wadjet-produced adventure games I've yet to discover, and Strangeland from the Primordia devs is high on the list for 2022. Love this studio and happy to support their efforts to drag everyone back into the 1990s.

  • [W] Priority: Delta

    "This is the Life is Strange you fell in love with," I've heard, and I'm prepared to once again get hit in the face by a flying brick with the word "emotions" written down the side, but True Colors might have to wait until I've played Life is Strange 2. Not that the order matters too much, just that I suspect the latter will be cheaper to enjoy.

  • [W] Priority: Delta

    ZombiePie, ZP, Ol' Mr. Zoop, The Zipper as we in the mod team variously call him has been singing the praises of the new Pathfinder, as has fellow CRPG dork ArbitraryWater (nicknames pending), but I'm in no hurry to grab it with Kingmaker still around to deal with first. Truly, will I ever find a path to these games?

  • [W] Priority: Epsilon

    I've no doubt the new Ratchet & Clank is a fine piece of entertainment media and/or the shit, but I'm not exactly flush in PS5 consoles right now. The closest I've ever come to owning a PS5 was printing off all those empty PS5 boxes that I filled with coal and donated to orphanages last December. Maybe in 2022, though more realistically in 2028 when the PS6 will be ready to go.

  • (2019)

    [W] Priority: Alpha.

    A crime story where the final boss, and every other boss, is your own brain worms is a little too on the nose for my sake but a combination adventure/CRPG that even non-CRPG fans are crazy about is too promising to pass up. Its "The Final Cut" edition is on consoles now and sees some mighty discounts from time to time, so this might be the year I hang out with Kim Kitsuragi and solve a gritty mystery.

  • (1997/2020)

    [W] Priority: Alpha.

    One fortunate by-product of the runaway success of Toby Fox's Undertale is that all its weird-ass influences suddenly received a lot more attention, enough to convince oddity-peddlers Onion Games to rerelease this old PS1 game about winning the day with love instead of violence. I'm always down for an officially released piece of video game history.

  • (2019)

    [W] Priority: Beta.

    A roguelike Zelda is almost lower on my list of dream combinations than Musou Zelda, but I'm willing to give the NecroDancer guys the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, I'm happy to encourage Nintendo to lend their prize Epona out to other, smaller devs for a ride.

  • (2018)

    [W] Priority: Beta.

    Arbitrary's been trying to get me onto this hybrid action/turn-based RPG and even though my PC proved insufficient to the task I'm hoping to have better luck on consoles. I'm not sure I can trust everything that guy commends, given how much he likes his "dubious" offerings, but it's worth a shot.

  • (2020)

    [W] Priority: Beta.

    This would be the high-falutin' remake rather than the emulated Seiken Densetsu III found in the Mana Collection. I'm glad I held off on this SNES game lo these many years if it means being introduced to it in a modern context. Of course, I still need to buy it for that introduction to happen.

  • (2020)

    [W] Priority: Gamma

    This 2012 visual novel was finally localized in 2020, along with its bonus campaign featuring a popular Steins;Gate character, and the double-pack often threatens to drop to something reasonable when the sales hit. Now that I've conquered Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0, and Chaos;Child, this is the only Science Adventure VN within easy grasp.

  • (2018)

    [W] Priority: Gamma.

    If Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is getting a surprise announcement early this year like Jeff Grubb, The Grubbnosticator Himself, seems to think then I should try to knock out this expansion campaign for the second game tout de suite. It had its flaws, but XC2 was a fantastic open-world RPG and I can't imagine anything changed for this add-on.

  • (2018)

    [W] Priority: Delta.

    I still love those trippy visuals but hearing everyone talk about how it's the second coming of the SaGa franchise just fills me with an atavistic fear that makes it hard to find restful sleep. Whatever, I've grappled with old Square scenario-based RPGs before now, I can do so again. Let's hope that Steam version continues to see bigger discounts now we're four years removed and counting.

  • (2017)

    [W] Priority: Delta.

    One of the few 2017 games I couldn't procure in time for the Dredge of Seventeen feature from last year, this delightful puzzle game has some real Scribblenauts "just try anything that comes to mind" vibe to it. It might not live up to its full potential without someone to play it with, but that's never stopped me before.

  • (2019)

    [X] Priority: Various.

    I've many more smaller Indies I'd like to get around to in 2022, including this open-world 3D collectathon/Zelda-like that has a surprising amount of acclaim. Others include, well, a whole bunch of non-2021 explormers (to go with the 2021 explormers above) and the usual RPGs, adventure games, picross games, and other garbage that inevitably find their way to Indie Game of the Week. Too many to name here, but I might edit this spot to include all the Indies I've discovered and loved as 2022 progresses. Hopefully Supraland is one of them.

    Supraland: Completed 26/11.

  • [C] Completed 06/01. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 19/01. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 01/02. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 05/03. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 12/03. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 16/03. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 28/03. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 02/04. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 01/05. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 24/07. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 30/07. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 13/08. (Priority: Alpha.)

  • [C] Completed 17/09. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 28/09. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 16/10. (Priority: Beta.)

  • [C] Completed 01/12. (Priority: Alpha)

  • [C] Completed 31/12. [Priority: Delta.]
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