Boogieman11763,365 (47,700)

Post #15 – If the Groundhog Sees His Shadow...

Greetings readers, I hope that you are all doing very well today/tonight/whenever the hell you are reading this.

Summer is almost gone, and that means that summer projects are completed and now I can focus back on my back… *electric zap*… on my backlo… *electric zap*…

Oh right. Destiny is still a part of my gaming life. Sorry to my character who has been keeping me busy as of late, I’ll name him “Bobby McKnifyface” for now. Bobby has pulled me head-over-heals back into Destiny 2 – the Solstice of Heroes and Moments of Triumph events combined with old clan mates coming back into the fold now that Shadowkeep is only a few weeks away have got me nostalgic for that never-ending but ‘I want to play it anyway’ loot grind. It’s the carrot on the end of the treadmill folks, and my happy ass is back on it.

It’s been almost 6 weeks (holy shit) since my last post, and re-reading where I left off feels so very close; the muscle memory for typing, copying, pasting, and submitting this entry felt so right. As I type this, damn it, it’s bugging me that I started to do this on a weekly basis, then it fell off to 2 weeks, and now 1+ month between entries. I’m going to do my best to get back on track, but that hinges on actually playing the games on the backlog.

Backlog Update
Now that’s not to say that I haven’t been chipping away at the backlog – I have made some progress in the month since my last post, but none of it impressive to say the least.



Although it’s an interlude in the main “The Last of Us” story, it still felt small enough to be a DLC, yet heart-wrenching enough to be an amazing story from the team at Naughty Dog. I’m fully in the holding pattern with millions of other PlayStation fans at the eventful release date for the sequel.

Counterspy – Released 19 August 2014
I played and completed this game on the PS Vita in 2015 and have come to my first known cross-platform game on my backlog. Sadly, CounterSpy didn’t take hold of me long enough to really re-engage me, so I completed the tutorial mission and deleted the game from the PS4. That’s not to say it’s a bad game; the mechanics, the cartoony animations, and over the top campiness of the story are really well-done, but it’s just not something I want to re-sink my teeth into.


Damn 2015 feels like forever ago.


Yup, it sure does.

Dust: An Elysian Tail – Released 07 October 2014
Normally, I give Metroid-vania type games a few minutes to pique my interest, but this one got me immediately. The art style was what damned near pulled my eyes from my skull like a magnet; Dust’s introduction, Fidget’s early breaking of the 4th wall, and the different tropes that a Metroid-vania fill were a perfect mix for me. “Dust” is a game that I actually looked for more content after completion and really went into more details with on a wiki – that’s how badly the game’s story hooked me.

The games’ mechanics and display were 9/10 as well – the only reason for not giving a 10/10 is, by the end of the game, you are slow powerful and attacking so many enemies at once that it starts to become blurry as to where you are on screen. Showing 10-15 enemies on screen all taking damage is a magnificent artistic display, but there were a few times when I’d lose Dust on the screen.

Here are a few of my more memorable trophies from this game.


The first of many, many, many….many orbs.


This attack is the cornerstone of the entire game, and it was really wild to see how the screen ‘warps’ when it’s used combined with the art stylings to show the wind.


Dust has a nice blend of dodge, slash, and the ‘wind’ attack, but the parry system was unnerving as all hell. And so satisfying when it worked. :)


A very emotional ending worth playing through. :)

DriveClub – Released 07 October 2014
There are parts of this journey that are great; the ‘diamond in the rough’ that I found “Dust” to be, the beauty of “Transistor”, and the gut-punch story of “Valiant Hearts” are just a handful of examples of games from the middle of this decade that I’ve completely missed for one reason or another. “DriveClub” is another one of those examples. Real-world cars and a really nice feel of driving that parallel with Forza is a nice change of pace while on this cavalcade of action, adventure games that have made up the last few games on my backlog.

And it’s dead. The game is dead. The game will be delisted next year and the development team was shut down by Sony.

And that just plain sucks…. I did enjoy the first few races of the game, but without a longer tail and multiplayer racing not really my style, I felt like I was playing (oddly) an NES game and I was 5 years old again. “DriveClub”, in it’s current state, offered 1 car and 1 track, everything else was DLC. There’s something very basic about that; it felt less like a demo since it had the ability to buy more cars, tracks, even bikes, but the word that describes “DriveClub” best to me is ‘mirage’. “DriveClub” feels like a mirage - the way that the game looks, the promise that it had, and the long tail it never had simply feels disheartening. Obviously, Evolution Studios had development issues, but it’s nice to see where they were trying to go, even though they failed to get there.


Got this with cornering - felt really nice to try to do in-game racing things on a PlayStation console.


One and done, sadly. :(

Styx: Master of Shadows – Released 07 October 2014
I’m very curious about this game, although I feel like I’m at a bit of a disadvantage from jump street. This is the 2nd of 3 games that I worry has some sort of ongoing story. I noticed that during the opening cinematic that Styx is telling a story about the world that seems to indicate that this is more of a recap of events from the 1st game I’ve never played; that bugs me just a bit, but I’m going to reserve judgment on the game until I dig into it a bit. To be fair, I spent 100+ hours in “The Witcher 3” and didn’t know who Geralt was, so I’ll give this a fair shot.

So that's where I'm at - Styx is on the docket, Destiny 2 is on the very, very far left on my XMB, and normalcy is about to return with the yearly screen drooling with the Fall 2018 games coming out, the Euro soccer leagues starting, and the cool, cool air slowly drifting it's way into the evenings. Fun times ahead.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!