About 3/4’s of the way through my 4th and final playthrough (Hardcore) on Dead Space 3 now and it feels like the home-stretch of a marathon not gonna lie. As I’ve put so much time into it this last week and a half, I fancied a break for my mid-week day off today, so started Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.
It’s obviously pretty old now and pretty janky in places… but I’m quite enjoying it. This is more of what I was expecting from the series, compared to the 2008 reboot I played a few months ago (which in fairness I also quite enjoyed but felt anomalous to my expectations of a Prince of Persia game). Really hoping Ubi put the effort into that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, as I reckon it could be my thing.
@colonelkilgore Prince of Persia is a franchise that I’m surprised has not received more attention recently. Outside of the recent 2D Metroidvania it has been dormant for a long time. It was previously the main jewel in the Ubisoft cache. I think it became the inspiration for Assassin’s Creed, but after it evolved into that franchise, PoP essentially disappeared. What we got was a tidal wave of Assassin’s Creed games, a steady flow of Far Cry, a boatload of Tom Clancy, and then a smattering of all these other attempts like the Division, Watch Dogs, SW Outlaws, etc but no PoP. I respect that they have let the PoP franchise rest for a while and not milk it too much, but that’s not really been their modus operandi for everything else they own. 😅
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution yeah it’s shelving does seem to be as a result of Ubi’s focus on Assassins Creed and there not being enough room for two historic-fiction epics simultaneously. I get it… and do prefer the AC franchise out’ve the two if I’m honest. Still it’s a somewhat illustrious series that I hadn’t played for too long, so has been nice to have finally played a couple… and looking forward the The Lost Crown at some point too.
My final Dead Space 3 run done… really good game, far better than the general consensus would have people believe. The plat did cause me to feel the game out-stayed it’s welcome a bit though… I get one normal playthrough for 100% and one difficulty run but four seems a bit of overkill to me.
@colonelkilgore I was looking at my PS3 collection, and even though it was my primary console in that generation, I really did not complete everything. My current todos:
@colonelkilgore Yeah, there’s probably not room for them to be releasing PoP and AC games in too close succession because of the overlap in genre/setting, but in retrospect I think it might have been wiser to put AC on ice for a couple years and do a PoP follow up in that interim release window 2014-2016 when we got a deluge of 6 AC games.
Edit: Congrats on your Dead Space 3 plat, by the way! Strong work! 🫡
@Th3solution cheers buddy… and I think you’re probably right about icing AC for a bit and releasing a PoP during that time. Can’t help but feel the annual releases of AC have left a sour taste in the mouths of gamers.
@colonelkilgore At least for me personally it was that run of Rogue, Unity, Syndicate, and the Chronicles spinoff series of China, India, Russia all dropping in rapid succession that made me just lose interest. Not until Origins did I feel like I could try the series again.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution sounds a fair assessment bud, personally I just had no interest in the series at all after playing the original at release… felt like the monotony sucked the life out’ve me. So I just never paid the series much attention. And then I gave Odyssey a go… wanting to live out some Clash of the Titans fantasy and it hit me for six! Remains one of my favourite games and just had to check out the rest of the series. Having said that, I still take them piecemeal though… normally playing one per year.
@colonelkilgore I’ve played AC1, all three AC2 Ezio games, AC3, AC4, and Origins. The first one is honestly the absolute weakest of those I played. I didn’t really ever finish it as it was rather boring by comparison. I bought AC2 during the launch period and it included a free digital copy of AC1. So I tried to make it through AC1 but I started AC2 concurrently and there was such a drastic difference in quality that I quickly found it hard to continue with AC1.
I’ve stated many times how AC4 BF was really overrated, in my mind. I didn’t finish it either. I think part of that was just the headspace I was in at the time though.
Honestly, I’ve been frequently tempted to play the early PS4 games, Unity and Syndicate. Maybe Rogue. Never played the Liberation ‘expandalone’ either. But my first priority is to play Odyssey as my next AC game. Maybe Valhalla, depending how burned out I am by then.
As for PoP, I think I played all the major 3D console releases — Sands of Time, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones, and then the 2008 PoP reboot and then the Forgotten Sands. I enjoyed them quite a bit. I’m not sure if I’ll play The Lost Crown. I’m not much of a 2D Metroidvania guy.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution yeah I felt Black Flag was a bit overrated too as it goes. I liked it but it wasn’t everything I’d been led to believe for sure. Unity was the big surprise for me. Went into it expecting very little but I thought it was excellent. Definitely between that and Odyssey for my favourite. Be sure to tag me when you eventually start Odyssey 👍
@colonelkilgore I’ll certainly do that. It’s one that unfortunately has been pushed back quite a few times.
As far as large “Ubisoft-style” open world games I will probably play Horizon Forbidden West first, which may end up being soon-ish… late 2024, or early 2025. Originally I had HFW on the schedule for Q4 of ‘24, but DS2 has taken longer than I expected. So maybe Odyssey in mid to late 2025…? Man, it’s so, so, imposing to get to all these games, especially when many of them are so long. I know we talk about this all the time but, it’s overwhelming when I start to really think about it. There’s just not enough time to keep up with all that I want to play. Something’s got to give. It’s giving me an anxiety attack! 😛
Alright, so I’ve got to vent a little of this anguish — As far as open world games go, they usually run in the 60-100 hour range and I can easily count 10 games in my backlog that I absolutely want to get to in that general category. Realistically, I usually only finish 2-3 of that sized game per year. Maybe 4. I’ve already had to trim down any thoughts and plans to play some of these larger time-sinks. So there was a time when I planned to go back and finish Immortals Fenyx Rising, or play the Watch Dogs series, for example, but I’ve had to just flush any delusions of ever getting to that tier of game. I really don’t have time for games that are “fair” or even “good” anymore if they take over 40 hours. If I’m going to have to spend upwards of 60-80 hours with a game, it has to be “excellent”, GOTY candidate, Metacritic of 80+, “must play” type of games. I just don’t have 80 hours to play “7/10” games. Now, shorter 8-15 hour games, yeah - I can be more flexible and experiment with games that aren’t critical darlings, and I think it’s important to not become too close-minded and just a sheep following the flock and only playing the popular stuff. So a shorter game I don’t mind if it’s mediocre or merely ‘good.’ But at this point, I have to be selective. And I hate that.
I know you struggle with the large and ever increasing backlog, so thanks for listening/reading. 😂 This therapy session has been quite productive.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution mate I get you… I don’t know if you recall but the reason for me even finding Push Square was to ask advice on backlog management back in 2020 (pretty sure you were the first response actually 😁). It used to really get to me but I’ve managed to ‘mentally-gymnast’ it into a positive over the years. I now think of it as always having something available that I want to play… I remember back to when I was quite closed-minded in regards to the type of games I’d play and I’d go months between games releases that I fancied playing. Well ‘that’ and the strange satisfaction I get from scheduling/time-management 😅.
Specifically to HFW and AC: Odyssey, yeah give a large breathing space between them, as the Horizon games do feel very Ubisoft. To give you some idea on completion times, I think HFW took around 75 hours and Odyssey took over 100 (for plats, so if you just want to play through the story it’d be a bit less). Both great games (& I only keep hearing very good things about Immortals: Fenix Rising as it goes) but for some reason Odyssey is one of those games that has aged like fine wine in my memory. Games like it and Days Gone have only continued to ascend my favourite games list since I finished them.
As for Watchdogs I really like them but… they do come off as a poor-man’s GTA (to me at least). So I know from our chats a couple of months back that you’ve never really played a GTA but that you could potentially change your mind given @Yousef- and my enthusiasm… well if that’s the case, deffo give a GTA game a go ahead of Watchdogs.
I probably spent around 10 hours…(maybe?, it’s been a while) with Immortals Fenyx Rising. It felt like I was probably about 30% complete when I fell off it. I was enjoying it though and so you should definitely still keep it in consideration if you are ever wanting more Greek mythology based open worlding. The campy and humorous tone put a lot of people off, but I actually found it a refreshing change of pace from the super-seriousness of most of these open world action games.
But yeah… you mention another sore spot for me — Days Gone. Still sitting in my pile of shame. It was one of those ten open-world games that were off the top of my head. Like AC Odyssey, I’ve been meaning to play Days Gone for years. Perhaps the DG Remake rumors will be enough to make it rise to the top of my list, especially if it ends up being either free or $10 upgrade only.
But man, AC Odyssey, DG, GTA5, Witcher 3 (I feel like I need to give that another chance), Kingdom Come Deliverance, Baldur’s Gate 3, FF7 Rebirth, Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring…. Heck, even GoW Ragnarok is still in the backlog (mercifully not quite over that 40 hr investment and not a true open world I guess). To say nothing of Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei in 2025 which will certainly be games to include in the ‘large open world’ category and could be of enough interest to force themselves in line ahead of some of the backlog. And here’s hoping that Dragon Age Veilguard gets middling reviews. I can’t handle it if it launches into ‘must-play’ levels of reviews. I am actually grateful that Star Wars Outlaws has had middling reception. For now I feel inclined to skip it. 😄
At the end of the day, backlog management is tough and it’s an individual endeavor. But I definitely appreciate advice to steer me when I get lost at sea.
@Th3solution 🍻 indeed mate any time, I love a backlog chat tbh. And thanks for reminding me of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth… the mere thought of its 200 hour, 8/10 difficulty platinum makes me a bit 🤢🤮
@colonelkilgore Even just a thorough playthrough is supposed to be around 90 hours. I think the one main complaint (well I guess the performance mode woes was another grumble) about it was that it dragged a little too long. I believe there’s a lot of mini-games, from the sound of it. Which might be akin to Yakuza, where the sheer weight of side fluff was enough to discourage me. But with Rebirth, I’m already invested this deep, I have to see it through. 😅 But first I need to play Crisis Core.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution same, I want to play Crisis Core before Rebirth too. I’ve committed to playing two FF’s per year moving forwards (1 pixel-remaster and 1 post VII) and VII Rebirth is probably behind all of those in terms of my intended playing order. So, between the time it’ll take me to get to it and the platinum requirements (making it almost mythic amongst trophy hunters) I might save it for #500… which if you have any idea how long it’ll take me to get to 500 plats is frikkin’ hilarious 🤣
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