I did it, guys. I actually went and did it. Those of you who've been following the Backlogtober 2015 blog series since it began will recall that on the last day of September I set out a list of ten games I intended to beat in the month of October, all in the name of cutting down my colossal Pile of Shame. Well, last night I beat Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the tenth and final game on that list. Throw in the unscheduled time with Lara Croft Go in the middle of the month, and that takes my total number of games beaten this month to eleven. That's eleven games, in twenty-eight days - an incredible record, and one I'm not sure I'll surpass any time soon. Let all the nay-sayers (mainly me, I think) hang their heads in shame!

A quick aside before I get stuck into talking about Uncharted 2 in a little more detail. A couple of months back I posted a blog detailing my thought process for deciding which next-gen console I'd end up purchasing before the year was out. After leaning over either side of the fence to get a good look at what each camp is offering, I think I've finally chosen the PlayStation 4, which I'll be ordering when I get paid on Friday. A big swaying factor was discovering this bundle on Amazon, which includes a 1TB PS4 with Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Watch_Dogs, The Nathan Drake Collection and a PlayStation TV, all for just £30 more than the base 1TB console. AC Syndicate looks like the best Assassin's Creed game in a long time, and the PlayStation TV would open up the possibility to look into (an admittedly small percentage of) the Vita's library without needing to fork out for a console, as well as enabling me to play my digital PSP games on the big screen. Watch_Dogs wasn't brilliantly received, but it's hard to argue with in the context of the bundle if you think of it as a free bonus.

That just leaves The Nathan Drake Collection, which, if my experience with Uncharted 2 is anything to go by, is a very worthy inclusion in the offer. When I played the original Uncharted: Drake's Fortune a couple of years ago, it seemed like a competent action-adventure title with pretty visuals and a ton of the trademark Naughty Dog charm. I enjoyed it, but couldn't help feeling like the whole thing felt a bit like a playable tech demo, a foundation that teased players with a glimpse of what might be built upon it in the future. Having finished Uncharted 2 last night, I can honestly say that it delivers on the original's promise, iterating upon the first game's solid mechanics and hiking up the production values exponentially to deliver a tight, thrilling experience that kept my heart lodged in my throat for pretty much the entirely of my eleven-hour play-time.

Where Uncharted 2 really excels beyond its predecessor is in its action set-pieces. Sequences like traversing a moving train, or contending with an attacking helicopter on the rooftops of Borneo, provide the game with a level of spectacle that was largely absent from the original Uncharted. These scripted action sequences are thrilling to play, awe-inspiring to watch, and impossible to forget. Uncharted 2 feels like it deservedly earns the moniker of 'interactive movie', and I don't use that term in a derogatory way either - it's this element of interactivity that makes them so genuinely thrilling to experience.

As great as the huge set-piece moments in Uncharted 2 are, possibly my favourite thing about the game is the comparative subtlety of some of its character-driven moments. Nolan North delivers another fantastic performance as Nathan Drake, but it's his interaction with the other voice actors (particularly Emily Rose as Elena Fisher) that really drew me into the story of Uncharted 2. There's a natural flow to the game's dialogue, and the characters talk over and play off each other in realistic, believable ways that I don't typically associate with video games as a medium, which so often take an unnatural 'one-line-at-a-time' approach to dialogue. These performances lend the whole experience an authenticity that I've only seen in a handful of other titles, and none of those have done it as well as Uncharted 2 does.

That's not to say the game doesn't make any mis-steps at all. Combat, while functional, still doesn't feel quite as tight as other games of this ilk, a fact that's particularly noticeable coming into this off the back of the smooth-as-butter experience of playing Metal Gear Solid V. The shooting feels a little too loose and imprecise, and the enemies are pretty bullet-spongey (although this may have been a side effect of me opting for the Hard difficulty for my playthrough). While the game's traversal-based puzzles are fantastic, I do wish it had leaned a little more heavily on proper puzzle-solving at times, rather than offering obnoxiously plain solutions to the few genuine puzzles present through Nate's handy-dandy journal. These gripes are minor in the grand scheme of things, though. The combat is still more fun than frustrating, and I can appreciate that dropping more demanding puzzles in Drake's path might have damaged the game's largely perfect pacing.

I unreservedly loved almost every second of Uncharted 2. Even now, almost twenty-four hours after finishing it, I'm still thinking about those memorable set-pieces and asking myself over and over again why I left it two-and-a-half years to finally get around to playing through Drake's second adventure. I'm not sure if I'll be playing the next chapter in the Uncharted series on PS3 for the sake of continuity, or making the switch to the next-gen versions when my PS4 arrives, but one thing's for certain - I sure as hell won't be waiting another two-and-a-half years to check out Drake's Deception. It's also rekindled my interest in the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I'll most likely pick up the Xbox 360 version of at some point shortly after release - I'd sooner play a last-gen version than wait a year for it to come to PS4, and the 2013 reboot played just fine on 360 so I've no reason to think the same wouldn't be true of Lara's next outing.

I'm still not sure what the last few days of Backlogtober will bring. Part of me wants to revel in the victory by cracking open a hundred-hour JRPG and losing myself in it for a month or two, but the other side of my brain is thinking I could put these final days to better use and keep to the spirit of the initiative by beating something else. Right now the likeliest candidate is Burial at Sea, the two-part story DLC for BioShock Infinite that I downloaded earlier this year but still haven't played yet. Regardless of the path I decide to take through the rest of October, I'll probably throw together an end-of-month retrospective looking back on the whole Backlogtober experience, which you can most likely expect one day this weekend. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)

We're almost at the end, guys. Backlogtober 2015 is finally winding down, and frustratingly, I seem to be winding down with it. My latest conquest, Zeno Clash, was projected to take me just one or two days to blitz through, but ended up taking me four. This was partly due to delays in starting the game, but predominantly because of a very busy schedule through the back end of the working week. Between all-day work, band practice and other commitments, it turns out that Thursdays and Fridays are not good days for me to plan to do stuff. Still, I was able to beat Zeno Clash yesterday morning, and I think I've had just enough time to process the sustained assault of craziness the game put me through for five or six hours.

If there's one thing Zeno Clash does well, it's combat. The core of the game is built around an easy-to-understand brawling system - slow, heavy punches to break your opponent's guard; quicker, light punches to deal damage to unguarded enemies; and an all-purpose block-and-dodge to deal with incoming fists and feet. Time your block or dodge perfectly and your opponent will be left open to a counter-attack. The beauty of the system is its relative simplicity belying its difficult-to-master nature - each enemy you fight is unique, and they all have their own unique tells and attack animations that you have to learn in order to overcome them. It's sort of like Punch-Out!!, except you're slightly more mobile and the enemies are several more shades of fucked-up than the likes of King Hippo and Soda Popinski.

I could see others hating the segments of the game that involve guns, but I personally loved them. Not only do they break up the mêlée combat, which I could see getting tedious in sustained play sessions, but I appreciated the way they look and feel to use, too. Every firearm in Zeno Clash, whether it's twin pistols, a single-shot rifle or a grenade launcher, does impressive damage but is painfully slow to reload. Choosing to bring a gun to a fist-fight thus becomes a risk-versus-reward situation, where you're lethal in full-flow but painfully vulnerable while reloading. The ability to put your currently equipped weapon on your back and switch to your fists at any time means it's a viable strategy to switch between gunfire and brawling, which further expands your combat options. The reload down-time and imprecise feel of the ballistic weaponry will doubtless put some folks off, but they provided me with some of my favourite moments during my playthrough. There's a handful of mêlée weapons too, but they're incredibly slow to wind up and really only practical for fighting the lumbering heavy enemies who can't be harmed by fists alone.

Zeno Clash has also got one of the most striking and unique visual styles I've seen in a video game for quite some time. A lot of the game's art design was evocative of time spent with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to me, particularly in the case of its environments and fauna. There was just something about the experience of travelling through the varied environments of Zenozoik that took me back to the island of Vvardenfell, with its distinctive architecture and weird and wonderful wildlife that somehow manages to be analogous to our own while still managing to look like nothing you've ever seen before. The story is suitably off-the-wall, too, and complements the 'feel' of the world brilliantly, even if the voice acting from protagonist Ghat and companion Deadra leaves a little to be desired.

Most of my criticisms of Zeno Clash can probably be boiled down to my general lack of familiarity with mouse-and-keyboard controls. I'd originally hoped to play the game with my wired Xbox 360 controller, but abandoned that plan almost immediately when it became apparent that the left stick's horizontal axis was mapped to turn rather than strafe. With no obvious fix to be found in the game's menus, and unable to locate Xpadder on my hard drive, I opted to do things the hard way, and I think my experience suffered for it. As I say, this is purely a personal problem, and had I played the Xbox Live Marketplace version I probably wouldn't have had any control issues whatsoever. But, as it stands, I feel like I need to acknowledge that the control situation did hamper my enjoyment of the game a little.

So that's my experience with Zeno Clash, a largely positive one on balance. It's certainly left me interested in picking up the sequel at some point and seeing how ACE Team went about expanding on the mechanics and mythos of the crazy world of Zenozoik, although if I do I think it'll be on my PS3 or 360 with the added comfort of a familiar controller in hand. Next up, and potentially last depending on how my time falls this coming week, is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I've got a contingency plan in place just in case I manage to beat it ahead of time, but to be honest I may just deliberately slow my pace from here on out. I feel like Backlogtober needs a big send-off, and Nathan Drake's best-received adventure seems like the perfect way to bring things to a close. I'm hoping to have it wrapped up by Friday so I can throw up some kind of retrospective for the whole month on Saturday. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)

Dagnabbit, am I really writing another one of these already? It's barely been two days since I waxed lyrical on Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season Two, and here I am with another beaten game to discuss in another Backlogtober update. In case you're late to the party and haven't seen any of my previous updates (seriously, where have you been? I've done, like, ten of these now), allow me to explain - Backlogtober is a self-imposed drive in which I attempt to beat as many games from my insurmountable Pile of Shame as possible during the month of October, in the hope it might make it seem a little more... surmountable. Since the month started I've managed to beat nine distinct titles, and have been chronicling my progress through regular blog updates here on Giant Bomb.

While I may well be metaphorically "on fire", this update focuses on a game with a protagonist who is literally on fire - it's 'Splosion Man, the zany platformer from indie developer Twisted Pixel. I went into it thinking I probably wouldn't get much out of it, a preconception born from a poor initial impression of the game when I tinkered with it a few years back, and having been burned by an indie platformer once already this month. Similar to And Yet It Moves, 'Splosion Man is hinged on a single mechanical distinction, and I was worried that it would also fall into the trap of tiring its gimmick long before its end. After all, how much mileage can you get out of your protagonist being able to explode at will?

Once I actually started digging into what 'Splosion Man offers, though, I found myself really warming to it. While 'sploding may be its core mechanic and gimmick, it isn't the focus of the game in the same way as And Yet It Moves' world rotation. It's something more akin to Mario's jump, or Sonic's spin-dash, an all-purpose utility move that plays into navigation, combat and puzzle-solving. With that established, the real star of the game - its excellent level design - comes to the fore. 'Splosion Man features fifty single-player levels (and the same again in its co-op component, I believe), and almost every single one of those levels is a blast to play through. There's a surprising amount of variety on offer too, with some levels focusing on sheer speed and reflexes, and others challenging the player to solve some kind of puzzle to proceed past the next force-field door. What's really commendable in all this is how the game always manages to keep your next step in plain view, whether it be a clear wall-jump opportunity or a green barrel that'll propel you to a new objective. Nothing ever feels unachievable, or like a leap of faith, and that feeds back into a 'one-more-try' mentality that kept me playing even when I was repeatedly getting my ass handed to me on some of the later levels.

Another thing that won me over with 'Splosion Man was how evocative it can be of some of my all-time favourite 2D platformers. Some levels generate a blistering sense of speed and momentum that took me back to my earliest days playing video games with the original Sonic games on the Mega Drive. Other levels throw unforgiving, perfect-timing jumping puzzles at you à la Super Meat Boy. Others still ask you to put together the pieces of a multi-part puzzle to progress, reminiscent of Portal (which... isn't 2D, but my point still stands). All of these different approaches lead to increased variety, which helps combat player fatigue, but it also makes the game feel familiar in a ton of different ways. 'Splosion Man is a game that wears its influences proudly upon its smouldering sleeves, and pretty much every one of those influences is something that I can relate to on some level.

Where the game really stamps its own identity on things is with its zany sense of humour. The game has an appropriately madcap art style, complemented by the overblown animations and other distinctive visual touches (I don't think I'd ever get tired of turning the enemy scientists into assorted cooked meats). Much of 'Splosion Man's character is portrayed through tiny sound-bites, usually incoherent babbling, that go a long way towards painting him as mischievous and playful. At no point while playing did I ever feel like I was doing anything out of malice - 'Splosion Man chooses to 'splode simply because it's fun. That feeling of fun in turn translates to the player experience. It certainly won't be for everyone, but the silly irreverence of 'Splosion Man is something I can definitely get behind. Finally, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't mention 'the Donut song' that plays whenever you pick up a hefty scientist. That ukulele-backed tune is happiness and warmth distilled into musical form, and I know it's going to be my ear-worm for the foreseeable future. I mean seriously, hit play on the video below and tell me honestly that something inside you doesn't melt into warm squishy contentment.

From here the last ten days really start to look like the home stretch. Next up to play is Zeno Clash, the bizarre first-person brawler from Ace Team. All estimates point to it being a short but rewarding experience that I can probably blow through in two or three sittings. After that, I plan to turn my attention to the pièce de résistance of Backlogtober - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I realise there's a pretty high probability that I'll wrap up both of those before the month is out, especially if I can maintain the pace I've kept up so far. Should that happen, I have a couple of contingency plans that I can fall back on in order to keep Backlogtober moving toward the finish line. My next update is likely to land this weekend, when I'll hopefully be sharing some thoughts on a recently-completed Zeno Clash. Until then, thanks for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)

Hey guys. I feel like we've got to know each other pretty well over the last few weeks, so I'm going to level with you folks. When I started this Backlogtober initiative, I thought I'd maybe clear half a dozen games from my onimously stacked Pile of Shame before falling off the wagon and... I don't know... replaying a Pokémon game, or something. Instead, here we are - a little over halfway through the month with a whopping eight games cleared to date, and a little less than two weeks left to keep adding to that tally. I've surprised even myself with the level of commitment I've applied to this thing,and I'm determined to keep this momentum going through the back end of October. At this point I'm feeling pretty good about beating the remaining three games from the shortlist of ten titles I put together before Backlogtober began. Heck, if I can beat eight games in eighteen days, I should be able to clear 'Splosion Man, Zeno Clash and Uncharted 2 in thirteen, right? There's a decent chance I might even clear the list with time to spare, in which case I have one or two other titles in mind to round out the month.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now my focus is on the two latest titles to be added to my list of games completed this year. Most recently, and less importantly in the context of this blog, I saw the 'true' ending of Metal Gear Solid V yesterday afternoon. By this I mean I wrapped up all the story stuff, saw the end of Quiet's arc, beat Mission 46 and watched the full credits roll for a second time. I have a lot I want to say about that game, but I also recognise this isn't the place to do it. I need to write a dedicated blog, free from the confines of Backlogtober, where I can go to town with spoilers and talk in-depth about how the experience of playing the many various aspects of that game made me feel. The short version that I'll present here is that I loved every single damn second of the 105 hours I've put into it these past seven weeks, to the point where even though I'm done with it from a story perspective, I'll probably continue playing it in dribs and drabs for the remainder of 2015. Damn, that's a good video game.

The primary focus of this blog is the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead, which I worked my way through last week. I've been meaning to get round to it since finishing the first season back in 2013, but have been holding off from it - initially I was waiting for the whole season to be available, and then once it was I decided to wait for a decent opening of time to play through the whole thing. The Backlogtober initiative, coupled with a week of annual leave, conspired to create perfect conditions to witness the continuation of Clementine's story. So I jumped into it last Tuesday, managed to restrict myself to an episode a day (just about), and saw the final credits roll on Saturday night.

Even now, a full two days after the fact, I'm struggling to articulate my feelings about The Walking Dead: Season Two (hereafter referred to as 'TWD2', for brevity's sake). I know I didn't like it as much as Season One, but it's difficult for me to explain precisely why it didn't grab me in the same way. On paper there isn't a huge difference between the two - it's still a narrative focusing on a band of men and women trying to survive in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. It still draws most of its impact from the interactions between those characters, and it gives the player a degree of agency in those interactions so that they might influence the outcome. Maybe that's part of the problem, that it leans so heavily on the first season that it struggles to establish its own identity as a result. Telltale effectively bottled lightning with the first season of The Walking Dead, and it was always going to be a near-impossible act to follow.

But I don't think that's entirely it. TWD2 feels like all the pieces are there, they're just not put together quite as well as they could be. The gameplay balance felt slightly off, more skewed towards quick-time events than bona fide action sequences, and with an almost complete absence of puzzle-solving. The new characters felt more expendable than the cast of Season One, usually dying before I could get a decent handle on who they really were (Luke and Jane are the notable exceptions here - it's no coincidence they were my favourite newcomers to the cast). Perhaps most frustrating of all was how most of those new characters reacted to Clementine - after I praised the original season for the way it re-shaped the notion of player choice in video games by eschewing the power fantasy in favour of a more realistic approach, Clem felt like she had far too much sway on the others around her, especially when you consider she's just a kid. Don't get me wrong, I love her as a protagonist, and I think the way her character arc develops through both seasons is possibly the games' strongest narrative suit. I just wish some of the other characters had been more dismissive of her, at least some of the time.

Another big problem for me was the fact that the overall narrative arc for the season reached its peak in Episode Three, and from there the story didn't really have anywhere to go but back down. The intense showdown between Clem's troupe of survivors and Carver's cult of personality is incredibly climactic and arguably the series' best moment, but there's still two whole episodes to fill after that, and for the most part what comes after feels incredibly weak. The final scenes of Episode Five go a long way towards redeeming the game, but by then the bulk of the damage has already been done, meaning the game has to really ramp things up really quickly at its conclusion. The whole pacing of TWD just feels 'off' as a result, charting more like a bell curve than the steady progression towards climax and release that the first season pulled off so wonderfully.

I don't want to come across as too down on TWD2. In spite of the negative feedback above, I still think it's a great game cast from the now-familiar Telltale adventure mould. It's well-written, particularly in the case of the dialogue, and some of the choices it presents you with have a huge impact, especially when you see the ramifications of those choices play out. When it's good, it's very good. It's just a shame that it had to live up to Season One, because unfortunately it doesn't hit the highs anywhere near as frequently. I'd still like to see another season set in the Walking Dead universe, but it's not as high on my wishlist as a second season of The Wolf Among Us, which could honestly be my favourite Telltale adventure series of the lot after I played through it earlier this year.

I feel like I spent a decent amount of time dwelling on what's still to come for Backlogtober at the very start of this blog post, so I'll refrain from repeating myself here. I will say that my main focus has now shifted to 'Splosion Man, Twisted Pixel's 360-exclusive indie platformer from 2009. I'm a bit reluctant heading in, since my previous experience with the game didn't do much to grab me and I haven't had the best of track records with platformers so far this month. Still, I'm willing to persevere and see if I can make it through - after all, with the exception of a particularly nasty house spider, nothing has beaten me yet this Backlogtober. You can probably expect the next Backlogtober update some time towards the end of this week. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - 'Splosion Man (X360)

I'm now almost two weeks into my Backlogtober initiative, and I can't believe how much progress I've made in that time. Since my last update three days ago I've managed to beat two games, and decided to cut a third from my Pile of Shame altogether. This is also the first of these updates that I've ended up writing a little later than I'd expected to, for reasons that will become apparent in a couple of paragraphs' time. Both of this update's games have a distinctly Tomb Raider-ish flavour to them, despite neither of them being bona fide Tomb Raider games in their own right. So grab your grappling hook, holster your twin pistols, and join me as I dive into the underground passages of my latest gaming conquests...

My primary focus since the last Backlogtober update has been Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which I've been playing through on Xbox 360 since the late hours of Friday night. It's an interesting take on the established Tomb Raider formula, presenting its mix of exploration, puzzle-solving and combat from an isometric perspective. The other noticeable difference is that it moves much faster than any of the 'real' Tomb Raider games, probably due to its more linear environments and dual-joystick combat controls. The developers seem to have been aware of this, since the game features target times for each level that challenge the player to beat them in a handful of minutes rather than the twenty-to-forty they typically took me. The game is packed with these kinds of optional objectives and they aren't all time-based, ranging from attaining high-scores to picking up collectibles and completing level-specific challenges. It gives each level multiple focuses beyond simply reaching the end goal, providing a huge amount of replay value.

By all accounts, I probably should have finished Guardian of Light late on Sunday and written about it yesterday. However, my time with the game came to an uncomfortable and abrupt halt on Saturday night when an unwelcome visitor trespassed upon what I'd come to consider hallowed ground. There I was, minding my own business and playing video games when an enormous house spider, quite possibly the largest I've ever seen, marched boldly across my bedroom floor and under my television unit. I freaked out. I stood up on my bed, almost cracking my head on the ceiling, bellowed like a dying moose and bolted straight out of the room, shutting the door behind me. I didn't even stop to turn off the 360, I just downed tools and fled. I spent Saturday and Sunday night sleeping downstairs on the sofa in the living room because I couldn't bring myself to step back into the room for fear of seeing it again.

In case you haven't gathered from the paragraph above, I have an intense phobia of spiders. I'm without a doubt the worst arachnophobe I know. Just the simple act of writing the sentences above was enough to make my skin crawl. I'll bet most of you are readying comments calling me out for behaving in a pathetic and irrational way. And to you I say, you're absolutely right. But here's the thing - it's a phobia, an irrational fear by definition. I know I have nothing to fear from them, I know they pose no threat to me, but I still can't be in the presence of a spider without feeling nauseous. To that end, I go to incredible lengths to keep my room spider-free at all times - I move things around regularly, and dust behind and under things to make sure nothing has a chance to set up home in my company. To have that security compromised in such an open way made things even harder to stomach than your average encounter.

In exile from the comfort of my habitual gaming environment, I managed to get my fix of isometric tomb-raiding action from an alternative source. Remembering the site's recent Quick Look, I opened the Store app on my phone and downloaded Lara Croft Go on Saturday night for a modest £3.89 (I realise buying new games kind of goes against everything the Backlogtober initiative stands for, but with my entire game collection held hostage by a vile eight-legged monster my options were somewhat limited). I played through the game on-and-off in short twenty-minute instalments over the following couple of days, and reached the end of it while riding the bus back from a shopping trip yesterday morning.

The game does a great job of easing the player into its distinct brand of grid-based puzzle solving, presenting each new obstacle in isolation to illustrate how it behaves before combining it with other established elements to deepen the level of strategy required. As a long-time fan of the series who's been following Lara since her very first outing, I was surprised and thrilled to see so many little references to the old CORE-developed games. Things like the characteristic 'secret chime' that plays every time you locate one of the game's hidden collectibles, the little handstand animation that plays out when Lara reaches the top of a climbing wall, and even the rotating menu of icons that appears on start-up, all come together to evoke feelings of nostalgia for those old games, giving Lara Croft Go an identity that's rooted in both those classic experiences and the series' new-found second wind of relevance off the back of 2013's excellent reboot. It's a little short (I'd be surprised if I put more than three hours into it overall), but hopefully the fine folks at Square Enix Montréal are already hard at work on new levels, either as an expansion for the existing game or for a bona fide sequel.

Last night, finally content that the arachnid menace had vacated my game-space, I returned to both my room and my unfinished business with Xolotl in the Temple of Light. I wrapped up the game's remaining six levels in a couple of hours and felt satisfied as I watched the credits roll. There's a part of me that feels like I may have missed out on the full experience by playing it solo rather than co-operatively with a friend, but given the nature of the Backlogtober initiative it probably would've been difficult to schedule a co-op playthrough at breakneck pace on short notice. As things stand I enjoyed the game for what it was, and may even return to it at a later date to attempt more of the level-specific challenges and earn myself some more of the game's myriad unlockables.

So that covers the two games I've played and beaten, but what about the one that I've decided to drop? Well, that honour goes to Gish, a puzzle-platformer of sorts (can you really call it a 'platformer' if the protagonist can't jump?) featuring artwork from Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac fame. I dabbled with it early last year and wasn't particularly impressed with it. While the concept of controlling a ball of tar by manipulating its state rather than moving it directly seemed cool in theory, I found it imprecise and frustrating in practice. Following on from my lacklustre experience with And Yet It Moves, I decided that it was unlikely I'd get anything overwhelmingly positive from the experience of playing Gish, so I've cut it from my Pile of Shame completely. It feels good to be able to make this kind of cut, given my usual reluctance to do so. Maybe we're witnessing the start of an era where I can detach myself from some of these games more readily, without feeling too guilty.

The mid-point of Backlogtober is now almost upon us, and thus far I've managed to beat five out of my list of ten titles, as well as an unscheduled sixth game. What's more, the next game on the agenda is Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season Two, which feels like it's landed at the perfect time of the month. The plan is to devote a couple of hours each evening to it, clearing an episode a night for the next five nights, eventually wrapping it up on Saturday night, and squeezing in time with Metal Gear Solid V and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire during the day. This plan means that the next Backlogtober update will likely arrive on Sunday, with some detailed thoughts on the continuation of Clementine's story. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (3DS)

Hey folks, Dan here with another update on my progress through Backlogtober, an initiative that's seeing me try to clear as many games as possible from my Pile of Shame this month. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting to be writing this blog today. After spending ten-and-a-half hours at work, I figured when I got home that after eating and sorting out some other stuff, I'd have maybe sixty to ninety minutes to devote to And Yet It Moves, which would probably be long enough to re-familiarise myself with the mechanics and controls before returning to it today and wrapping the whole thing up. That was before I remembered that Steam cloud saves are a thing. In reality, I ended up resuming my progress from my brief stint with the game way back in January 2014, and beat what remained of it in a couple of hours.

And Yet It Moves is the first game I've beaten for Backlogtober that I didn't enjoy overall. That's not to say it doesn't have redeeming qualities, mind. I didn't think much of it last year but it's grown on me since then, probably because the environments became a little more detailed and varied once I escaped the brown expanses of its first chapter. The central world-rotating mechanic which everything else in the game revolves around is a fantastic conceit, and when it works well And Yet It Moves can be a joy to play. There are some neat physics-based puzzles, too - there's one in particular involving manipulating fire in Chapter Three that had me scratching my head initially, but provided a really rewarding moment of epiphany once I put the pieces together and solved it.

Unfortunately those, along with its brevity, are the only compliments I want to bestow on the game having now played it to completion. My biggest complaint with And Yet It Moves is that the world-rotation, while a great concept, is pretty much all it has. Its novelty makes the first few levels challenging to traverse, but beyond that the game's puzzles seem to devolve into a glorified marble maze simulator, turning the world purely to squeeze the hand-drawn protagonist and other physics-governed objects through gaps and into holes while avoiding insta-death obstacles and arbitrarily perilous fall-heights. The late-game does attempt to mix things up with platforms that alter depending on the world's orientation, but they're introduced so late that their unpredictability ends up being more of an annoyance than a challenge. Even in spite of its brief running time, And Yet It Moves seems to run out of ideas as to how to keep its core mechanic interesting and relevant, and that was a problem for me.

The mechanics themselves also didn't sit right with me at times, although I think that's more due to my instinctive expectations than any objective fault of the game itself. I had a major issue with the way And Yet It Moves handles momentum - when you rotate the world, rather than maintaining momentum in the direction of movement, the momentum will shift to suit the new orientation of the world. This means certain objects, like the springboard vines in Chapter Two, don't behave the way you'd expect them to. As someone used to dealing with Portal's momentum-based physics model, I found this hugely frustrating. I also struggled with the fact that while in rotation, the character will freeze but the world around him won't. This became a huge issue towards the end of the game, when platforms start appearing and disappearing on a timer. I frequently found myself attempt to quickly correct my course towards a platform, only to dash myself to pieces on it or miss it altogether.

There's probably more I could say about And Yet It Moves. I could chastise it for its terrible ambient soundtrack, or ponder why it takes such a strange and unexpected tonal shift in its final chapter. But I feel like I've given it enough of a hard time already. It's not a bad game, I just found it to be spread quite thin in terms of its mechanics, and wasn't all that taken by the implementation of those mechanics. If you're really into puzzle platformers then there's probably a lot more in this thing for you than there was for me. As it stands, I'm glad it's over so I can score it off my Pile of Shame and move on to something new.

At this point I'm nine days through Backlogtober and four games down on my list of ten titles to beat. That's pretty incredible progress, even if I do say so myself. Admittedly, the month was a bit front-loaded as far as shorter games go, and from here on out there's nothing else on the agenda quite as fleeting as And Yet It Moves or Brothers, so I expect progress to slow a bit from here. Next up is Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, the isometric Tomb Raider-that-isn't-a-Tomb Raider that Crystal Dynamics put out all the way back in 2010. As a fan of the series I'm feeling pretty confident I'm going to enjoy this quite a bit, especially if the first couple of levels are anything to go by. Expect an update on my progress through it some time next week. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (X360)

The first week of Backlogtober has come to an end, and I'm really happy with the progress I've been making so far. Since my last update posted on Sunday, I've managed to put another pair of big dents in my challenge for this month. The first of these was reaching the end of Chapter 1 in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. I must have put over eighty hours into this thing by now, and thankfully I still haven't hit burnout point yet. I've now started gradually picking my way through the remaining missions and side-ops, and hopefully I'll continue to make decent progress and wrap up the whole story by the month's end. I'll refrain from posting anything more substantial about the game right now, as I'd like to save that for a dedicated blog post in the future.

What I've mainly come here to talk about is the other big Backlogtober achievement from this week - the fact I beat the campaign in Halo 4 last night. I was in two minds about playing through Master Chief's most recent adventure solo, given I'm supposed to be working through the entire franchise co-operatively with my good friend Duncan. However, that endeavour has been punctuated with a joint playthrough of the original Borderlands, which itself has been on hiatus for quite some time, so I decided to bite the bullet and go it alone for now. I also figured that playing through a game one of Microsoft's flagship series might help me finally make a decision as to which current-gen console I'll be opting to pick up next month (in the interest of fairness, Sony will be getting a chance to shine later this month with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves).

From a campaign perspective, I genuinely think Halo 4 might have the best single-player component of all the numbered entries in the series. The action flows brilliantly, providing an expertly-paced blend of standard FPS combat with tense exploration and the series' hallmark vehicle sequences. It even throws in a Star Fox-esque on-rails fighter jet section near its end which I thought I'd hate but ended up really enjoying. I still don't believe it attains the lofty heights of Reach, although it does come pretty close in spots. It offers up a pretty strong story, too, accompanying the expected epic space-opera trappings of an interstellar threat to the future of Earth and humanity with a much more personal story strand centred on the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana that ended up hitting me a little harder than I was expecting it to. Everything I saw through the game's story missions led me to believe that the Halo series is in very safe hands at 343 Industries.

While the overall experience was a very positive one, there were some particulars that bothered me a little. The new Promethean enemy types, for instance, were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed fighting the dog-like Crawlers with their skittish movements and clear weak points, but the humanoid Knights frustrated me greatly. I'm not even sure why, because conceptually they're no different to the Covenant Elites - wear down their shields, then aim for the head. Maybe it's because of their ability to revive thanks to the assistance of another new enemy type, the Sentinel-esque Watchers, or perhaps it's because they seem even more bullet-spongey than their Covenant counterparts. Their associated weaponry was also a point of conflict for me, as conceptually I loved the weapons' aesthetic design, but in practice found them to feel a little too much like re-skinned versions of already-existing weapons. Some, like the rapid-fire Suppressor and powerful Lightrifle, were incredibly useful whereas others, such as the pistol-like Boltshot and Promethean grenades, left me underwhelmed. Most tellingly, nothing that I picked up prompted me to try and alter my play-style or deviate from my standard loadout of an automatic weapon and something with accuracy and power at a distance. There's not even a Promethean equivalent to the Energy Sword or the Gravity Hammer to encourage you to get in close and partake in some melee combat.

It feels lazy to describe Halo 4 as 'more Halo', especially when various sources have been using that phrase to describe every game in the series since Halo 3, with both positive and negative connotations. Having said that, it feels like the best way to sum up the experience for both better and worse. The quintessential Halo 'feel', the nebulous quality of how every aspect of the game is balanced, is intact. The new enemies and weapons fit comfortably into that balance, although I suspect that's more down to how closely they mimic the established enemies and weapons than anything else. Halo 4 doesn't re-invent the wheel, it doesn't do anything too far out of the series' comfort zone, it doesn't push boundaries. What it does do is deliver a fun, tight, challenging eight-level campaign that I enjoyed from start to finish. For me, that was literally enough - it didn't leave me dissatisfied, but it didn't particularly leave me wanting more either.

So that's where we're at - seven full days into this crazy challenge and I've already managed to burn through three games and make significant progress in a fourth in the background. Next up on the list of games to get through is indie puzzle-platformer And Yet It Moves. I've got it installed and ready to run on my laptop, although it's unlikely I'll get to start it today - I'll be heading off to work after posting this, and then I'm straight back out tonight for band practice. Still, it's something to look forward to for tomorrow night, when I'm hoping its ambient soundtrack and charming aesthetics will prove a decent remedy for a long day at work. If all goes to plan and I manage to beat And Yet It Moves in the handful of hours projected, I'd say to expect the next Backlogtober blog at some point this weekend. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)

Hey duders, Dan here once again with another update on my Backlogtober shenanigans. In case you missed some of my earlier posts on the subject, allow me to explain - Backlogtober is an initative I've taken up to try and clear a sizeable chunk of my Pile of Shame through the month of October. I got off to a cracking start by beating Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on Day 1, and I can report that I've managed to carry that form over to Pokémon Snap, seeing the credits roll in four sittings across two days. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Brothers, but it proved to be an interesting curio and a welcome diversion from the kinds of games I usually play.

I'd never played Pokémon Snap until recently. I was a kid when the original craze hit, and I spent a decent chunk of the summer of '99 playing through Pokémon Blue on my yellow Game Boy Pocket, but I missed out on the bigger 3D experiences like Snap and Pokémon Stadium because I didn't own a Nintendo 64. Fast forward to 2014 when I bought a Wii (mainly to get my Zelda fix with Skyward Sword), and I was finally able to get my mitts on this cult classic through the magic of the Virtual Console. How do I think it holds up? I'd say pretty well, for the most part.

I think one of the most impressive things about Pokémon Snap, even today, is how reactive its environments, and the Pokémon that inhabit them, can be. This is doubly impressive given the level of player interaction is rather limited. You start out only being able to take photos, but as the game progresses you unlock access to a handful of items such as Pokémon food and Pester Balls, which can be used to facilitate better photo opportunities. Most of the fun I derived from the game came from using these limited tools I had at my disposal and seeing how I could use them to manipulate the world and the Pokémon around me. When I hit on something remarkable, like getting Pikachu to hop on a surfboard or helping the legendary birds to hatch, the better pictures I was able to capture felt like a real reward for my willingness to experiment.

If I had one real issue with Pokémon Snap, it's that there isn't more of it, or perhaps more accurately that it's never had a sequel. The core experience of Snap is fun and rewarding, but as I've said, it's also very limited and incredibly short - the game features sixty-three photograph-able Pokémon, of which I managed to encounter fifty-seven in a not especially thorough playthrough. I think it presents an excellent foundation for something bigger and with a wider scope (no pun intended). A few more courses, a lot more Pokémon, and some more neat ways to interact with them could have gone a long way. As it stands, there's just not a huge amount of stuff to see and do in the game, and I can understand why people who bought it for full price at launch might have felt a bit burned by the dearth of content.

But in light of the wider context of my playthrough, that's probably an unfair thing to call the game out on. I enjoyed my short time with Pokémon Snap, and under the circumstances I'm glad it was a short time. At some point I might be tempted to go back to it and try to track down the six Pokémon I missed, but right now I'm satisfied and happy to move on. I would like to say it's inspired me to check out some similar games from my Pile of Shame, but to be honest I'm not sure there are any. Beyond Good & Evil has some photography in it, right? So maybe I should check that out some time? Or maybe I should boot up Gran Turismo 6 and take some pictures of all my nice shiny cars? All joking aside though, I could see myself enjoying more games of this kind. Whaddaya say, Nintendo? Pokémon Snap 2 on 3DS using the camera to capture critters in real-world environments? Make it happen, and you can have that idea for nothing.

I'm still only three full days into Backlogtober, and I'm already two games to the good. On top of that, I've made decent progress in Metal Gear Solid V and my ongoing Egglocke through Pokémon Alpha Sapphire. That's pretty stellar progress, especially by my usual methodical standard. Next on the agenda is Halo 4, and since I've made good time so far, I'll probably end up taking this one a little slower. With the weekend winding down and another working week on the horizon, I'll probably be restricting my game time to an hour or two in the evenings for the next few days, so that will slow my progress too. As a result, I wouldn't expect the next Backlogtober update to land until towards the end of the week. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Hey there folks, Dan here with my first proper update for Backlogtober 2015. I'm pleased to report that so far I'm one for one in one day, which is about the best sort of progress one can hope for in an initiative such as this. As predicted, I ended up finishing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in one day, across two ninety-minute sittings (one before work, and one after). It's a stunning game that makes a huge impression in spite of its short running-time. In that spirit, I'm going to do my best to articulate the impact it had on me in a reasonably concise manner.

The first thing that struck me on booting up the game was its beautiful aesthetic. Maybe that's because I've just acquired a new, much larger TV which makes a lot of the smaller details more noticeable, but I don't think it's up for dispute that Brothers is a gorgeous game. Its environments in particular are breath-taking, and I found myself stopping at every bench I passed just to sit down and drink in the atmosphere of each new vista. What impressed me even more than the game's pure beauty, though, was how the aesthetics of its world are almost wholly responsible for revealing its workings and dynamics. From caverns filled with rusting machinery to the aftermath of a battle fought by giants, the locales that the two eponymous protagonists explore go a long way towards fleshing out the game's world and lore through inference alone. The world of Brothers is one of the most beautifully realised I've visited this year, and the game achieves that without ever having to fall back on explicit, verbose exposition.

This approach extends to the game's characters too. Given that the two brothers under the player's control speak an incomprehensible language reminiscent of Simlish, it was vital for developers Starbreeze to build their characters in other ways, and I think they definitely succeeded on that front. The lads obviously have different strengths and abilities from a gameplay standpoint - Older Brother can swim and is strong enough to pull heavy levers, while Younger Brother is small enough to squeeze through narrow gaps - but they also interact with the world around them in very different ways. Older Brother is usually much more serious and focused in any given situation, while Younger Brother behaves in a much more mischievous, childish fashion. Whenever I happened upon a new object or person I could interact with, I invariably did so with both brothers in turn. This difference goes a long way towards building these borderline silent protagonists into fully-fleshed characters, and does a brilliant job of establishing the dynamic of the relationship between them.

I applaud the game for doing something special with its control scheme, too. Other games which involve taking control of multiple protagonists at once typically involve a mechanic whereby players can switch between those protagonists on the fly. Brothers doesn't do that, instead opting to give the player simultaneous control of both playable characters by mapping the brothers to different sides of the same controller. This makes for a really fluid experience, particularly when having to combine the characters' unique strengths in order to solve some of the game's environmental puzzles. Where it really pays off, though, is at the very end of the game. I don't want to say too much in the interest of avoiding specific spoilers, but the last few minutes of Brothers showcase the game's control scheme in order to drive home one of the strongest aspects of its narrative in a (quite literally) palpable way that more conventional methods of storytelling would struggle to equal.

I loved every second of the short time I spent with Brothers yesterday. Part of me wishes it wasn't over already, but there's another part of me that's really glad it didn't try to outstay its welcome. The whole experience was overwhelmingly evocative of ICO, with its gorgeous art direction, and the decision to forego a more conventional narrative in favour of building atmosphere and empathy through its mechanics and design ethos. If nothing else, it's got me incredibly excited for The Last Guardian, which rocketed back up my list of most anticipated titles following its resurfacing at this year's E3. Here's hoping that manages to hit its speculative 2016 release window.

That's one game down, and hopefully nine to go. It's around 11pm here, so I'm not sure if I'll be starting Pokémon Snap tonight or if I'll wait until tomorrow to get my capture on. Either way, it'll probably be a couple of days before I'm ready to weigh in with some thoughts on the gotta-snap-'em-all cult classic. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)

Tomorrow marks the true start of Backlogtober 2015, my upcoming effort to blitz through a significant chunk of my Pile of Shame through the month of October. I've posted a couple of blogs in the run-up to this crazy initiative, but none of them have dealt with arguably the most important aspect. The running order, the schedule, the agenda... Call it what you will, they all amount to the same thing - which games am I going to play? Well, I've spent the last couple of weeks whittling a list of almost two-hundred video games down to a shortlist of just ten titles. I've put them in what will most likely be the running order, and laid them out in reasonable detail below. Duders and duderettes, I give you the games of Backlogtober 2015!

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Taking the recommendation from fellow Giant Bomber @slag, I've decided to kick off Backlogtober with this indie darling from 2013. My records show I picked the game up in February of this year, when it was given away free as part of Xbox Live's 'Games with Gold' initiative. Since then it's been sitting unplayed on my 360's hard drive. It supposedly clocks in at a very reasonable three hours in length, so it should be feasible to wrap this up in one or two sittings and get the month's endeavour off to a strong start.

Estimated Time: 1-2 days

Pokémon Snap

Following on from a recent critical success will be this retro cult classic. I was big into Pokémon as a kid (in many ways, I still am), but not having a Nintendo 64 meant I missed out on the experience of playing Pokémon Snap. Years later I acquired a copy through the Wii's Virtual Console and I've dabbled with it a little, but I'm still yet to give it a proper shot. With an approximate running time of five hours, I should be able to zip through this one in a few sittings and see most of what it has to offer.

Estimated Time: 2-3 days

Halo 4

The pattern I decided to establish with my planned schedule for Backlogtober is best summed up as 'two small, one large' - a couple of shorter titles back-to-back, with a larger experience at the end of each double-bill to wash everything down. Halo 4 is set to serve as my first palate cleanser, providing a longer experience I can get a little more involved in. With an estimated nine hours of gameplay to be had in the campaign, I expect this one to keep me busy for a little longer.`

Estimated Time: 4-5 days

And Yet It Moves

Once I've finished getting reacquainted with Master Chief, it'll be time to dive into the dark depths of my Steam library to tackle And Yet It Moves. I was quite impressed with the game when I played through its opening levels last year, so it makes sense to me to return to it and finish what I started. Its length is listed at around three hours, which means I should be able to push through it in one or two sittings and quickly tick it off the list before moving on to something else.

Estimated Time: 1-2 days

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Another of my many Xbox Live acquisitions, this top-down adventure title joined my Pile of Shame in 2014 when it was on sale for just a few quid. As a long-time fan of the Tomb Raider games I would be remiss not to include Lara in this run-down, and this different take on the series' trademark combination of combat, exploration and puzzle-solving should make for an action-packed challenge following the more contemplative pace of And Yet It Moves. Sources recommend I set aside around seven-and-a-half hours for this one, so I should be able to get through it in a few days' worth of sustained play sessions.

Estimated Time: 3-4 days

The Walking Dead: Season Two

I've been meaning to dig into the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead ever since the fifth and final episode landed in August of last year. I like to play these episodic adventure games in five-night stints, playing an episode a night for five consecutive days, so that's probably what I'll end up doing with this one as well. I still have my save data floating around from the first season and its 400 Days expansion, so it'll be great to see that story continue with this second season. Estimates say this takes around nine-and-a-half hours to play in its entirety, which averages out to around two hours a night.

Estimated Time: 5 days

'Splosion Man

I own a lot of indie puzzle-platformers that could have taken up this space on the list - Braid was a strong candidate, and I did toy with the idea of pushing through Toki Tori, but ultimately 'Splosion Man won out. To be honest, I think that's because this is crunch time for this quirky Xbox Live title - if I don't make it through 'Splosion Man this month, I probably never will. Sources state the game is around ten hours long, which seems a bit on the long side for an indie platformer of this ilk, so I'll be sure to set aside a few evenings to get through it.

Estimated Time: 3-4 days

Zeno Clash

When I'm all 'sploded out, I plan to return to Steam and get stuck into Zeno Clash. I've owned the game since 2011, but it didn't really move to the forefront of my interest until fellow blogger @Mento covered it as part of his 2013 May Madness initiative. Since then I've tried to get into it a couple of times, but have been held back by my inexperience with mouse-and-keyboard controls and a rather terrible affair with an Xbox 360 controller. I've vowed to make it third time lucky for Backlogtober, and finally push through its four-hour campaign to see all it has to offer.

Estimated Time: 1-2 days

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

The pièce de résistance of my Backlogtober 2015 is set to be a long-overdue playthrough of Giant Bomb's 2009 Game of the Year, Uncharted 2. It's been high on my list of priorities ever since I played through the first Uncharted back in 2013, and at one point last year I even started working my way through it, right up until a hardware failure bricked my old PS3 and cost me the (admittedly little) progress I'd made. I'm now committing to return to it, and see this second chapter in Nathan Drake's adventures through to its conclusion. I just hope I'll have the twelve hours I'll apparently need to get through it before the month ends.

Estimated Time: 4-5 days

So that's the plan, the order of service for all Backlogtober proceedings. I'm sure you'll agree that working through these ten games will be... Wait, what do you mean there's only nine titles listed above? Well, I can't be doing with that. This initiative demands the harmony afforded by a round number. Now, where am I going to source a tenth game, and find the time to play it?

Ah, of course...

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

After a full month and almost seventy hours of game time, the end of Metal Gear Solid V still doesn't seem like it's anywhere in sight. I'd hoped to route-one my way through the game's main missions and see some credits roll before the month's end, but the myriad distractions and emergent experiences that the game presents have rendered me completely unable to do that. The plan is to keep playing it on the side throughout October, doing a mission here, some Mother Base management there, and maybe I'll be lucky enough to see the end of it at some point in the month.

Estimated Time: God only knows...

So there you have it. Thirty-one days, ten games, one outrageous initiative - Backlogtober 2015 officially starts here. The original plan was to post updates on my progress daily, but now I've had time to reflect on that, I've decided that might be a bit overkill (not to mention it'll eat up time I could be using to bust my way through these here games). I'll probably just end up posting updates as and when I beat each game, sharing a few brief thoughts on them, and how the overall experience affects my outlook on having a backlog and how to tackle it. I'll be back in a day or two with some thoughts on Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Until then, wish me luck! Thanks for reading guys, take care and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)