What's the next target in your backlog?

[McStabStab]

Every holiday season my workload winds down and I'm actually able to pour some serious hours into gaming. When Steam Replay did its thing last year, pretty much all of my gaming hours tracked in December / January.

Gearing up for some time off, I'm trying to make a plan of attack for my backlog. Here are some notable entries:

1. Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Most of the way through the final act, need to finish the job!
2. Resident Evil 4 - Chapter 6 of 16 so far.
3. Dave the Diver - Chapter 3 of 7 so far.
4. Middle Earth: Shadow of War - Chapter 1... gods help me.
5. Aliens: Dark Descent - Only in Chapter 1 but I have not had enough time to sink my teeth into it.

What games are you itching to cross off the list? What games just need one good night of gaming to push you over the finish line? Do you keep buying games during the sale or do you wait until you've cleared some backlog? What games do you know aren't getting crossed off this year?

 

[Johnway]

An excellent question. besides yakuza 3, AOE2: definitive edition i'm not entirely sure. if i'm busy till January i need to pick... a january game. might be some indie game or something. Can't be an action adventure, strategy game or RPG (well, not until i play something else). Not sure what though... Wouldn't be surprised i'll play path of exile: my wildcard game. But heres hoping i don't have to...

 

[Frindis]

Similar game taste I see

1. Divinity: Original Sin 2. I'm playing with my nephews and we just arrived at the third act.
2. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It's scary as hell, but I have to eventually man up and finish it!
3. Alien Isolation. Playing it with my nephews and been a Christmas tradition for a few years now. Might even manage to play through it this Christmas and start doing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard with them instead of soloing that game.

 

[McStabStab]

Similar game taste I see

1. Divinity: Original Sin 2. I'm playing with my nephews and we just arrived at the third act.
2. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It's scary as hell, but I have to eventually man up and finish it!
3. Alien Isolation. Playing it with my nephews and been a Christmas tradition for a few years now. Might even manage to play through it this Christmas and start doing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard with them instead of soloing that game.

Hell yeah! Resi7 & A:I are two of my all time favs!

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm hoping I get motivated to play more Disco Elysium. I do also have a shortlist of games in my backlog I want to play, but I also often find myself playing something else entirely anyway, so I'm not sure what my next target will be if not Disco Elysium.

 

[Brian Boru]

I also often find myself playing something else entirely anyway

Yeah, tends to go that way for me too—a replay of an old friend can often look more relaxing and appealing than tackling an old newbie But on the In Play list:

♣ Iron Harvest—from scratch, forgot I had it.
♦ Sniper Elite 4—dropped it about a year ago, only a few hours into it.
♥ Ghost Recon Wildlands—have bounced off it twice now, and it's definitely worth finishing, or a full play for that matter.
♠ Command and Conquer 3—started a few months ago, got distracted…

On the other hand, smiling seductively from the Replay salon are Crysis, C&C Remastered, FC Primal and Civ4. We shall see…

 

[DXCHASE]

No backlog at the moment, only Dragons Dogma 2 and saving Super Earth! (Helldivers 2)

 

[Johnway]

Assassins creed odyssey has kept me busy for the last 3 months. We're nearing the end (around 65-70% done) and need to think about what i want to play next. Probably a whole load of indie games that take less then 10 hours to blast through. i think i had plans to play Amid Evil DLC content will be in there.

but after that? probably go back to AOE2 and try and complete more SP campaigns. Currently working through the koreans faction le loi's missions.


Then there is of course another Path of exile league starting so i will be playing that. Looking at the rewards i think it will be a shortone. its very unlikely i'll get 36 challenges completed and its looking at the differences between tiers 1 to 3 its minor and not worth busting a gut trying to get them. But that said, a quick glance of the challenges they seem... doable.

 

[Pifanjr]

I wasn't sure what I would be playing after I finish XCOM 2, until I saw that The Outer Worlds is free next week on Epic. I think I already own it and I've heard good things about it, so I think I'll try that out next.

 

[Zloth]

I've got Elex 2 in front of me still. Unfortunately, with the publisher closing up, it might feel more like a funeral than a game. Shipbreaker is in my backlog, too.

(Yes, backlog! I got these before the Christmas sale as part of some Humble special. That means they are backlog. I'm one of you!! Now where's that cake I was told about?)

 

[Frag Maniac]

My next most anticipated games are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Star Wars Outlaws.

And since Alone in the Dark 2024 is getting really bad reviews, Terminator Survivor is taking it's place on my list. However there's no release date for it yet, but some are speculating early 2025.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've got Elex 2 in front of me still. Unfortunately, with the publisher closing up, it might feel more like a funeral than a game. Shipbreaker is in my backlog, too.

(Yes, backlog! I got these before the Christmas sale as part of some Humble special. That means they are backlog. I'm one of you!! Now where's that cake I was told about?)

My next game is going to Brew Barons...but you mention cake. The other day in House Flipper after I cleaned up all the giant footprints, I was looking around and found a wall that based on the rest of the layout could have had open space behind it, so I took out my sledgehammer and tore it down and found the Portal cake just sitting there, and on the wall was scribbled, "The beaver is a lie" so I guess those footprints were from a giant beaver.

But back to the post, I plan to also finish Hades and Cult of the Lamb while playing Brew Barons.

 

[Brian Boru]

where's that cake I was told about?

The cake is a lie

on the wall was scribbled

Hah, snap! Love those Easter Eggs, great timing

 

[Frag Maniac]

Turns out Alone in the Dark's reviews are better than I thought. I was going mostly by what people on the Steam forums were saying, as many said the combat wasn't very good and there are annoying bugs, like your character getting stuck on a lot of surfaces, requiring a checkpoint reload.

There always seems to be a handful of regulars on any of the game forums on Steam that will tear down a game, but the game's actual review rating is currently Mostly Positive. I watched a few gameplay vids out of curiosity, and it does look like some things about the combat are strange.

There are bricks, bottles, and Molotovs placed here and there. The strange thing is, you can't store them on you, and once you pick them up, you walk very slowly with a trajectory arc in front of you. This means, once picked up, you'll have to throw it at an enemy, or use it to distract one when sneaking.

The problem is this leaves you very slowly moving toward enemies you hear, or at times trying to quickly pick one up, and toss it at them. The latter often looks clumsy, as they can be right in front of you by the time you pick one up if they spawn in by surprise. You can run, but your speed slowly builds up.

The dodge mechanic while running is most effective for large swarms, which there seem to be few of. The puzzles can be very easy, or fairly hard, but many have investigation notes with pictures you can acquire here and there to help solve them. The graphics are fairly good, and there are places in various dream settings you go to that are quite spooky.

So I may pick it up at some point, after waiting to see if the bugs will be patched. The getting stuck on things one is one of the most complained about, and I can see how that would be very annoying and take you out of the immersion.