Cleared: Dungeons of Dredmor

I'm not sure I have ever felt such a sense of triumph after beating a game on easy. It took me 64 hours and I don't know how many times I died, but I finally made it to the bottom of the dungeon and took down Lord Dremor. (Then I deliberately died to him a few minutes later to get the achievement.) Anyway, I think this game probably gets the cost-to-enjoyment ratio award for the last 12 years. (I can't go back to '99, however, because that's when Jagged Alliance 2 was released.) I got this game as part of a humble bundle, and fired it up on a completely random whim. And then it hooked me. It hooked me bad. Getting to the bottom of the dungeon, even without permadeath, was quite the achievement, but it was fun, for several reasons. First and most importantly, the game has a sense of humor, and every bit as important - that sense of humor is clean. (Well, mostly. There's a few double entendres about wands and staves in there, and one monster, but the overwhelming majority of the game's humor comes from wit and ridiculousness. This would be worthless if the game itself wasn't any fun to play, however, and this game was a very satisfying experience. The skill trees always had something cool to offer, the loot was peppered with all sorts of cool things, including literary and media references. And the combat was surprisingly satisfying, given how simple it is. The game rewards cleverness and punishes carelessness, and especially towards the end, I felt like I'd gotten a lot better at playing it. Oh, and did I mention it's turn-based? Interestingly, I'm not sure this is going to get me into the roguelike genre, per se, but I'll happily snatch up any additional content the creators put out for this. It's well worth the full price of the game and its expansion, which, by the way, is only $7.49 on Steam. This is one of those "just go get it already" recommendations. I don't think I've seen a better value in gaming in ten years.

RPG notes: The anachronisms of the setting (vending machines in the dungeon, etc.) would be fun to play with, and the bolt council and its implied machinations are some fun lightweight inspiration for how a morally-ambiguous fantasy guild might operate. Not sure how many of the monsters I'd want to swipe, although a few of the ones on the lowest levels might be cool.

Cleared: Rage

Well, I must admit, I wasn't expecting to knock something off the list quite that quickly! As it turns out, I'd played up until pretty close to the end of Rage before I got around to adding it to the list. The game took me about 14 hours to complete, according to Steam. With a duration that short, I'm glad I got it on sale. That's not to say I didn't like it, though - far from it. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best shooters I've played in a long time. The controls are nice and tight, the weapons are very satisfying (particularly the wingsticks - oh how I love those things) and there's just enough RPG stirred in to enhance the game without bogging it down too much. Even the driving portions are fun. One of the things I also find myself liking was how optimistic the setting was for a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike the Fallout games, it really feels like people are not only trying to rebuild, but enjoying some measure of real success - there are a number of small settlements that seem to be doing fairly well in a small area, and three of them seem like decent places to live. The story itself is also fairly optimistic, which I enjoyed. My biggest gripe was that Id did some technical stuff to lock the frame rate at 60FPS, and my PC didn't always like that. I experienced weird freezes and some tearing (and turning v-synch on fixed the problem, but it wasn't sticky between play sessions - I had to re-enable it every time I fired up the game) but it's worth noting that the game never crashed, and most of the time, it was buttery-smooth.

RPG notes: Rage's setting is a good place to start if you want to make a post-apocalyptic game that isn't too bleak. There are also some fun ideas for weapons and gadgets in the game. Lock grinders, RC bomb cars, and of course, wingsticks could all be dropped into  multitude of modern and/or near-future settings.

Monthly list replacement: since I polished the game off on day 2, I'm going to drop Homefront into the other short game slot.

The Unfinished: Need For Speed: Undercover

Okay, so here's the deal: I am apparently terrible at PC racing games. I have thrown 8 hours into this game, and I have yet to even finish one of the first two missions from the open city part of the game. And not for lack of trying, either. So I've come to a realization: I can either spend an inordinate amount of time getting good at PC driving games... ...or I can stick a fork in trying to finish this and move on. That's not to say it's a bad game, though. I have a lot of fun driving around the open city, doing races and evading the cops, but the missions put you in cars that handle poorly, give you a tight timetable, and army on your tail, and the admonition that the car be in good shape at the end. Uh, no thanks.I think I'll just drive around town in my indestructo-car and run from the law. But here's the thing: that's a lot of fun to do. The game's good, I'm just not. So onto The Unfinished pile with this one, and on to other stuff for me.

RPG notes: Well, on the upside, there will be no spoilers in this, 'cause darned if I can advance the plot in this game! Anyway, the basic premise behind the game (doing wheelman jobs in a modern city and tuning up your car as you are successful) could make for a fun, if somewhat stereotypical game, but imagine porting it to another setting. In a post-apocalyptic game, being a wasteland courier would, frankly, rock. Take a little of The Postman, a little of Id software's Rage, and some Fallout and you've got a world dotted with isolated settlements that need reliable service between them. Also, in a fantasy game, the player could be a an extraction specialist for some Robin Hood style outlaws or a thieves' guild, and instead of a car, could use a magic carpet or even some unusually fast draft animals to get people and things around without being grabbed by the authorities.

The New Idea: Monthly Lists

So now that my Backlog has grown to an absolutely TITANIC size, I'm looking at it for this year and thinking: "What can I do to get this pared down?" Here's what I thought of. Each month, I'll pick 2 short games, a long game, a fiction book, a nonfiction book, two movies, and a TV season. Those items will become the focus of my efforts for that month. We'll see if this bears fruit or not, but here's my set of picks for January. Long games may take multiple months of hammering on to get through - some RPGs are LOOONG, so I'll pick a new one when I finish one. If I punch something off the list for the month, I may replace it with something, or I might just focus on other stuff - If I've learned anything doing this blog, it's that I need to keep it somewhat informal if I'm going to have any success.

Short games: Bastion, Rage
Long game: Dungeons of Dredmor
Nonfiction book: The Art of Manliness: Manvotionals
Fiction book: The Alloy of Law
Movies: Midnight Chronicles, Seraphim Falls
TV Season: The Walking Dead: Season 1

The List, 2012 additions, subtractions, and a new idea to help remove stuff.

Additions: The Steam Sale, some recommendations from friends, and spotting some interesting new stuff at work has increased the size of my list of stuff to consume.

PC Games: I bought some stuff in the Steam Sale, picked up some bundle packs, and dug some old physical media up during some recent cleaning. Here's what's getting added to the list:

AAAaaaaAAA: A reckless Disregard for Gravity
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Bastion
Gothic
Gothic II
Gothic III
Gothic III: Forsaken Gods
ArcaniA: Gothic 4
Arcania: Fall of Setariff
Homefront
Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword
Portal 2
Prototype
Rage
X: Beyond the Frontier
X-Tension
X2: The Threat
X3: Terran Conflict
X3: Reunion
X3: Albion Prelude

And here's what's coming off of it:

Blocks that Matter
Breath of Death VII
Cthulhu Saves the World
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy
Hellgate: London
Need for Speed: Undercover (this is getting a "The Unfinished" entry, however)
Night Sky
Nimbus

TV Shows:  Nothing new to add or remove at this point.

Fiction Books: One addition: The Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson.

Nonfiction Books: An addition: The Brick Bible, by Brendan Powell Smith

Movies: No change to the list.

In addition, starting this month, I'm going to pick something from each category to focus on throughout the month and see if I can use that to pare things down a bit. Watch for the first of those posts immediately following this one.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I hope 2011 was good for you, and I hope 2012 is even better. In the next couple of days, I'll put together a New Year's list of stuff for the backlog, prune out things that I've lost interest in, and so forth. But for now, I'm just happy 2011 is over. That was a rough year.

Steam Holiday Sale: Day 14: Reruns

Steam, as they usually do on the last day of one of their big sales, is running a second round of some of their better stuff. Pretty much everything's good, so rather than cut and paste, I'm just going to trust that you know what you still have on your list, if anything, and get it.