Mission Cleared: Backlog #2

Backlog: an accumulation of something, especially uncompleted work or matters that need to be dealt with.

Oxford Dictionary

Week 1 Progress

The first week into this mission down, I now have a more realistic idea of how this will go. The fact that I’m actively working on new release reviews may take a little more time away from backlog work than I anticipated. So here’s my progress from last week’s titles:

• A Plague Tale: Innocence (XGP) – 1%
• Coffee Talk (XGWG) – 80%
• Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour (NS) – 0%
• My Friend Pedro (XGP) – 60%
• Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (NS) – 15%

As for A Plague Tale, I intended to play this to test Project xCloud capability. On my Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite, it was unplayable, as the tablet wifi couldn’t keep up with the needs of the service. My phone, a Galaxy S9, also had trouble–not as significant, but still, for a cinematic single player game, the visuals (the game is pretty) were not consistent and kept me from enjoying gameplay. I’ll definitely play this straight from the Xbox.

So, I must say the HLTB was a bit inaccurate for the Coffee Talk gameplay length, as the game itself has a progress bar and I am about 5 hours in, significantly further than the average on the site said. However, I will definitely be able to complete it this week.

Fairies and werewolves can be friends in #coffeetalk

As you can see, I didn’t even get to touch Duke Nukem, I played through just a couple levels of My Friend Pedro, and only got about a half hour further into Xenoblade (which really doesn’t make a dent). I was correct in assuming last week that Carrion would take up some time–however, I ended up completing the game TWICE, for just under 12 hours of playtime. I did 100% the game and LOVED IT, so I don’t feel bad for taking from the backlog time that I set aside. I also played about an hour of Rogue Company, as I received a couple free version codes suddenly.

Definitely still needs some work #roguecompany

Taking all of this into account, I do intend to play additional games this week, and put a couple on the backburner.

Week 2 – July 27th-August 2nd

LEGEND: XGP=XBOX GAME PASS, XGWG = XBOX GAMES WITH GOLD, NS=NINTENDO SWITCH, NSO=NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE, PC=PC

• A Plague Tale: Innocence (XGP)
• Coffee Talk (XGWG)
• Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour (NS)
• CrossCode (XGP)
• The Long Reach (NS)

There’s two new titles for this week, including the super-short The Long Reach, and CrossCode, which is a somewhat lengthy RPG with a similar graphical style. I fully intend to finish 3 of these titles this week, with the potential for more if everything goes right. I will be playing a bit of Halo MCC and Rogue Company for my multiplayer fix, but I’m feeling good about getting some real work done on the backlog this week.