Hey there folks, and welcome to a massively overdue edition of the Backlogbook, my usually-weekly breakdown of what I've been playing and what I'll be slaying in a bid to bring my enormous Pile of Shame down below two hundred titles by the end of the year. I say "usually weekly" because I haven't been able to find the time to write one of these for the last two weeks. The main reason for this is that my mum has been pretty seriously ill in hospital during this time. So instead of taking a day or two out of my schedule to put one of these together, I've instead been travelling back and forth to the hospital to visit her. Thankfully she's doing much better now, has been discharged and is making slow but steady progress back at home. Now that she's out, life is starting to get back to normal for the rest of us, and that means I can resume a normal writing schedule again. I've got three weeks of activity to document, and a whopping six games to cut loose from my backlog. Let's do this, shall we?

The Last Three Weeks' Logs

I may not have put together a Backlogbook blog for a few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been playing video games. On the contrary, they've provided a lot of solace for me in recent days, giving me somewhere to escape for a few hours a night and just unwind from all the real-world stress I've been under. To that end, the last three weeks have actually been incredibly productive from the standpoint of actually getting stuff finished - I've seen the credits roll on five games in the last twenty-one days. Admittedly only two of those actually count towards whittling down the backlog, since the other three are games I've played through before. Even so, it feels good to have finished some stuff. Hopefully I can start carrying that momentum into games I'm yet to play and keep bringing down that enormous total. Let's begin where we usually begin, this time for the final time, with none other than:

Grandia

It feels weird to think that (end-of-year awards notwithstanding) this is likely the final time I'll be writing about Grandia on this blog. The twenty-year-old Japanese RPG has been a staple feature of the Backlogbook since its inception at the start of the year. But, like all good things, its tenure in these blogs had to come to an end eventually. On February 28th, my twenty-seventh birthday, after sixty hours of play across eight weeks, I finally saw the credits roll. I've already talked at length about almost every aspect of Grandia over the last two months, so I'll try to keep this week's entry fairly brief. Be warned that there'll be some end-game story spoilers moving forward, as I discuss the ending of Grandia. If by some chance you're in the same position I was in two weeks ago, you might want to skip over this part of the blog.

Grandia's story really ramps up through its final third, something I was worried wouldn't happen given its propensity for delivering isolated vignettes of story through most of the first disc. When the story turns at around forty hours in and becomes much more focused on the motivations of the Garlyle Forces and General Baal, things start getting a lot more interesting. The reveal of Feena and Leen (still far and away my favourite characters from the whole game) as Icarians, and of Gaia as the primary threat, take the overarching story to some great places through its last ten hours or so. It almost feels like you're playing a different game once you switch from the first disc to the second. There's a little bit of frustrating backtracking through the late-game areas, but that's somewhat mitigated by the presence of some tougher enemies (and any excuse to engage in more of Grandia's awesome combat is a welcome one).

I do have a couple of little issues with the execution of the game's final hours, and one is a by-product of the other. First, it was kind of annoying seeing Justin have to go through the typical anime "friendship is my strength" realisation in such a rushed, forced way through the last two or three hours. That's something that probably should have been done gradually, over the course of the entire game, rather than hastily shoehorned into its closing moments. The by-product of this is that a lot of the game's final few hours feel unnecessarily drawn out, just for the sake of squeezing yet more run-time out of an already lengthy journey. Thankfully the final dungeons, bosses and story pay-off that follow are more than worth enduring this bump in the road.

I'm not sure where I'm going to go now that I've finally ticked Grandia off the list. It's been such an ever-present fixture in my gaming schedule this year that moving on without it is going to feel weird. I'm thinking about replacing it with another Japanese RPG that I can play on the go, and right now the odds-on favourite is Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation, which I own the Android version of. I played through the first two Dragon Quest games last year and found a lot to like about them, so it would make sense for me to press on with exploring the series. Will I ever check out Grandia II? I'm definitely not ruling it out. It looks pretty cool, and is readily available on Steam should I ever get the itch. That being said, this whole blog is dedicated to the idea of whittling down my Pile of Shame, so I probably shouldn't openly entertain the thought of buying more games. Whatever happens next, I can safely say that I've had a lot more fun with Grandia than I ever expected to. It's got a phenomenal battle system with some interesting takes on traditional character development, a likeable enough cast and a story that might initially be a slow burn, but eventually goes to some really cool places. Thanks for the memories Grandia. It's been awesome.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

A couple of days before putting a bow on Grandia, I reached the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider. I said pretty much everything I had to say about it in my last instalment of the Backlogbook, and all of that still stands - I love the action, the exploration and the challenge tombs, but I'm slightly less keen on the more convoluted upgrade system this time around. I'm also significantly less sold on Rise's story than I was with TR2013's. That game had a better balance between character building and world building, perhaps to the detriment of its supporting cast, but the end result was a tightly woven narrative that built up the character of Lara Croft just enough to get the player invested. Rise just leans way too heavily on family melodrama for my liking, so much so that it detracts a lot from the plot surrounding the lost city of Kitezh and the Divine Source hidden there. I get that Crystal Dynamics are trying to humanise Lara and make her relatable, but it just didn't work for me. Thankfully the gameplay was more than enough to keep me hooked right through to the end.

Since finishing Rise's story I have been back a couple of times to sample more of its DLC (the 'Blood Ties' mission set in Croft Manor does a much better job of building Lara's character than anything in the main game) and explore its gorgeous environments a little more. My completion percentage currently stands at 84%, but I'm not sure whether I'll be going back any time soon for the coveted 100% marker that I seem to be seeking out in so many titles so far this year (I still blame LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga for awakening that force within me). I'd rather throw myself into other titles right now and keep ticking the backlog down. Next on the home console agenda is Horizon: Zero Dawn, which I picked up on release day last week but am yet to get properly stuck into.

Borderlands

I've mentioned Borderlands a couple of times in the Backlogbook, with reference to an incredibly long-running co-op playthrough of the game alongside my good friend Duncan. We originally set out to play through the entire game together way back in November 2014, and although various real-life happenings forced us to take a couple of lengthy hiatuses along the way, we finally opened the Vault and defeated the final boss on February 20th. I've been playing a Siren this whole time, wielding a bevy of elemental sub-machine guns and my powerful Phasewalk skill to deal with the Skags, Psychos and Spiderants of Pandora, while Duncan has stuck with Mordecai's sniping skills and pet Bloodwing. We made a pretty good team, with him picking off enemies from afar while I'd get up close and personal with Phasewalking.

If there's one thing I regret about our time in Borderlands (besides the prolonged breaks in our progress), it's that I wasn't more diverse with my equipment and approach. As with my original playthrough of the game seven years ago, when I chose Roland as my character, I ended up placing the emphasis of my build on survivability, leaning very heavily on shields that regenerated health and Transfusion grenades that transferred enemy health back to my character. It's a sensible way to play when you're alone and don't have the support of a friend (I know Jeff advocated as much when he reviewed the game on its release), but I wish I'd experimented a bit more with my loadouts this time around. I also maybe should have invested in a shotgun or two to match up with my up-close combat approach, but I ended up favouring the SMGs for their better elemental properties (my logical reasoning being that a higher firing rate means more chances to inflict status effects). These are things I plan to address when we tackle Borderlands 2, as I'll be going down a drastically different route when speccing my character for that.

Since Duncan checked out of Pandora I've been revisiting Borderlands on my own sporadically, to check out all the downloadable content that I didn't buy the first time around, but which comes as standard when playing the game through backwards compatibility on an Xbox One. It hasn't been as fun playing solo, but I've still had a pretty enjoyable time working my way through Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. Although I've played it once before, the Secret Armory of General Knoxx is also on my agenda. Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot isn't, but there'll be more on that later. I highly doubt I'll end up engaging with Playthrough 2 - for as much fun as I had with the game, I'm not sure the draw of higher levels and better loot is enough to pull me back through all the same content a second time. I'd much rather move onto Borderlands 2 with Duncan, which I hope we'll be doing in the near future (and hopefully it won't take us two-and-a-half years to finish this one).

The Walking Dead

Another long-running playthrough came to an end this week, when my girlfriend Alice and I reached the end of the first season of Telltale's The Walking Dead. We started playing it all the way back in June of last year, working through the first episode in a couple of evenings, but various real-life happenings and her university commitments scuppered our progress. We didn't get around to the second episode until October, and then took another long break before playing the third at the end of January. Thereafter we picked up the pace a bit, and saw the conclusion of Lee Everett's story on March 4th.

This isn't my first time through The Walking Dead. I originally played it back in 2013, when I wrote this opinion piece about its approach to player choice. Nearly four years later, my opinion really hasn't changed. The fact it eschews the typical power fantasy omnipotence that so many games still rely on in their implementation of moral choice systems, and replaces it with a world that you're sometimes powerless to influence, no matter which choice you make, remains as bold and profoundly impacting as it was then. Other aspects of it haven't aged so well - the shooting segments from Episode Four spring to mind, and they weren't particularly great back then. It's interesting to see how, in retrospect, some aspects of The Walking Dead (like the aforementioned shooting sequences) are evidence of Telltale still feeling their way through this model they've since become synonymous with the industry's standard of. It's a game that, at times, isn't very sure of itself. In that respect, the fact it holds up so incredibly well is a remarkable achievement on Telltale's part.

Alice seemed to really enjoy the series too - she's a fan of the TV show, so she instantly warmed to the universe. We played with me in control and her making the decisions, and it made for a really fun shared experience. It was interesting to see which choices she made, how they differed from my own playthrough, and the impact that they had on how the story unfolded. We're planning to get around to the second series soon, and after that the mini-series centred on Michonne (I know she's really eager to get stuck into that one, since Michonne is one of her favourite characters from the TV show). We're going to take a little break first though, during which I plan to demonstrate the amazing Shadow of the Colossus to her.

Banjo-Kazooie

Towards the end of February, my good friend Matt announced to our group of friends that he was planning to replay Banjo-Kazooie for the first time in a good few years. Given my soft spot for 3D platformers of the 90s, even though I didn't grow up with Nintendo machines like Matt did, I decided to join him in the endeavour. While he fired up his old Nintendo 64, I turned to my Xbox One and my copy of Rare Replay. Banjo-Kazooie is a game that I've played only once previously, all the way back in the Spring of 2010, so I wouldn't say I was going in cold, but I wouldn't say I was going in particularly hot either. To make the experience run a little smoother, I decided to play along with an online walkthrough to hand, to ensure I didn't miss anything on my trip through Gruntilda's Lair.

As someone with no baked-in nostalgia for the Nintendo platform model, it's nice to be reminded that this breed of game is often the kind that best stands the test of time from this era. Because the mechanics are relatively simple and the graphics are bright and colourful, the experience of playing Banjo-Kazooie still feels reasonably fresh, even almost twenty years after its original release. The levels are pretty well designed for the most part, offering up a variety of challenges to complete in the same vein as Super Mario 64 and other contemporaries. It also has a great sense of character thanks to the vibrant cast (who'd have thought slapping googly eyes on a ton of inanimate objects could make them so endearing?), and a wicked sense of humour to match. Kazooie in particular is scathingly hilarious and quick off the mark in every situation, making her the perfect foil to Banjo's simpler, better-natured demeanour.

The logical next step from here would be to move on to Banjo-Tooie, which I own both on Xbox LIVE Arcade and as part of Rare Replay on Xbox One. I've never played the bear and bird's second outing, although I have invested a lot of time into their reboot adventure Nuts & Bolts (which remains one of my favourite games from the last generation of consoles). The other thing worth bearing in mind is that the series' spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee is due for release next month, so if I fancy something similar with a slightly glossier coat of paint, that's also an option further down the line.

The Lost Pages

At the start of 2017, I made the decision to drastically cut down my out-of-control backlog. One of the ways I plan to do this is by selecting two games each week, games that I'm realistically probably never going to get around to, and cut them from my list. The hope is that by doing this, I'll be able to bring the total number of games on my Pile of Shame down below two hundred, reducing that towering Everest of video game boxes into something slightly less unmanageable. Because I missed out on entries over the last two weeks, I'm now four games in arrears on this project. So, to restore balance and get back to where I should be, I'm cutting loose six titles this week. Let's begin with:

Aliens Versus Predator Classic 2000

I've been thinking about dropping this one for a few weeks now. I've dropped it once before, back when I kept track of my backlog here on Giant Bomb, but it managed to find its way back onto the list when I rebuilt it on the Backloggery. My main reason for wanting to keep it around is that it's spoken of pretty highly by its fans. I've heard that it's aged well, and the fact it has three vastly different campaigns for its three 'classes' of character is an intriguing concept. That being said, I find it difficult to justify its position on the Pile of Shame when I don't really have any love for the franchises that birthed it, especially when the PC isn't my preferred platform for first-person shooters, and I have plenty of other examples of the genre that I'd prefer to play over this one. Sorry AvPC2000, but nobody wins here.

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot

One of the great things about using the Backloggery to keep track of my Pile of Shame is that because all the content is input by the user, it's incredibly flexible for tracking expansions and DLC. One of the arguably not-so-great things about it is that because of that flexibility, any unplayed DLC ends up counting towards my total number of unfinished games. For that reason, I think I'm justified in cutting loose any DLC packs that I have no intention of playing as part of this feature. The inaugural add-on to suffer this fate (although by no means the last, I'm sure) is Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, a Horde-style colosseum-based expansion for the original Borderlands. I've just wrapped up a long-running co-op playthrough of the game with my friend Duncan, and decided to stick around to sample some of the DLC I missed out on the first time through. While I really enjoyed Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, I was left underwhelmed by the time I spent with Mad Moxxi. The removal of character progression and loot drops, the two biggest hooks that drag me through these games, leaves the DLC feeling hollow and kind of pointless. I've more than had my fill of Borderlands by this point, and I don't feel bad about skipping over this one at all.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

A long, long time ago, a precocious young gamer with a thirst for new experiences discovered the point-and-click adventure genre. His first taste was the remastered version of The Secret of Monkey Island, which whetted his appetite for similar games. In the weeks and months that followed, he amassed a sizable collection of the genre's most revered works - Sam & Max, Broken Sword, and perhaps most curiously, a discounted bundle containing some of LucasArts' famous output from the early nineties - The Dig, LOOM, and two titles based on the Indiana Jones universe. But then, a terrible thing happened. The youngster was drawn in by the hedonistic temptations of the rejuvenated open-world genre, and the point-and-click collection was left to gather dust...

That's pretty much how it happened, as I recall. I have every intention to get back to some of those classic adventure games, but with the benefit of hindsight, I also think I need to be realistic about which ones are worth my time. Just as with Aliens Versus Predator above, it's my lack of investment in the franchise, coupled with the fact that there are much better examples of its genre already in my collection, that's going to see the Last Crusade disappear from my backlog. Sorry Indy, but I need to crack the whip on this one.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Everything I've written above can also be applied to this, so this is all you're getting here. Hey, be thankful this is at least some original content. I could have just copied the previous paragraphs and pasted them here verbatim. Now move on to the next game already.

Red Faction II

The second first-person shooter in my Steam library to suffer the chop this week is Red Faction II. I used to own its predecessor on PlayStation 2 and had quite a bit of fun working my way through its campaign. It had a decent arsenal of weapons, a solid story, and featured environmental destruction technology that was a good few years ahead of its time. I remember getting creative with the GeoMod tech to approach combat situations in some pretty novel ways, a primitive precursor to the emergent, reactive gameplay that so many games boast these days. By comparison, what I've played of Red Faction II doesn't even seem like it's from the same franchise. The story set-up doesn't hold my attention, and the GeoMod tech doesn't seem as ambitious or well utilised. Part of me worries that maybe it's a snap judgement on my part, but my thoughts feel vindicated by the games' Metacritic ratings - Red Faction II on PC boasts a rating of just 64, compared with the original's much better score of 78. Everything just points to it not being as good as its predecessor, and I don't want to waste time playing an inferior sequel. I'm sorry Red Faction II, but it's just not happening.

Theme Park

I really like Bullfrog's 'Theme' series of tycoon games. They have a ton of character, a lot of irreverent humour, and solid strategic mechanics that task the player with balancing the books and keeping customers happy by providing quality (and profitable) services. I played a ton of both Theme Hospital and Theme Park World when I was a lot younger, and a few years back I even went as far as to play the former right through to its final scenario. I've not spent a huge amount of time with the PSOne Classics version of Theme Park, but compared to its vibrant, character-driven successors, it seems almost dull by comparison. I know the core gameplay is intact, and that's what should really matter, but I really don't see anything unique to this title that I couldn't get in a more polished and enjoyable form from one of those follow-up Theme games. Sorry Theme Park, but I'm shutting you down.

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And so we finally reach the end of a very long instalment of the Backlogbook. It's taken me the best part of six sittings across four days to write this, so I'm sure it's horribly disjointed and all over the place, but right now it's 1am and I'm too tired to care any more. To be honest, I'll be kind of glad to see the back of this and spend my time playing some damn video games instead.

Moving forward, I'm pretty sure I'll be devoting the vast majority of my game time to Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS4. I've only had the chance to play an hour or so of it thus far, but from what little I have played, it's certainly shaping up to be something very special indeed. I sense it could well be taking over Grandia's resident spot in these blogs for the next few weeks. I'm also still crawling through Pokémon Sun, so the next chapter of the Nuzlocke Challenge should be up for your reading pleasure over the weekend. That should be plenty to keep me busy until next week's Backlogbook. Until next time, thanks very much for reading folks. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)