Tackling the Backlog, Issue 6 — Winter ‘23

Hello and welcome to the final issue of the year for Tackling the Backlog! The games on this list were all quite long, but I had a blast closing out the year with them. Enjoy!

Greetings from the New Year! After what feels like one of the strongest and most interesting years in gaming yet, 2023 has come to a fairly quiet close. I spent my last moments of the year with my loved ones, celebrating my birthday and enjoying the countdown to the ball drop. I managed to finish 14 games this year, starting more than double that, an abandoning about three or four. My “resolution” for this year is to take clearing out my backlog more seriously than before.

The winter itself was a season of games I’ve been waiting for: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Super Mario RPG(SMRPG), and The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC. I spent most of my time in these months playing through Spider-Man 2 before getting to SMRPG as a palette cleanse and revisiting the ninth generation of Pokémon games after a mediocre experience the first time around. The only game on this list that I’m still playing through is SMRPG, but I’m just at the cusp of finishing its short campaign now. So, without further ado, here are the final games I played in 2023.

“Behind the Masks”

Spider-Man 2 was a game that I had been waiting for for years. The cliffhanger ending of the first game combined with Miles Morales releasing to set up for the sequel made for an interesting look into Insomniac’s focus on Marvel superhero games. That said, my hype for this game came and went fairly quickly with its release.

Spider-Man 2’s story revolves around a handful of moving parts surrounding ideas like insecurity and imposter syndrome. Amongst the side characters, MJ struggles with her job as a journalist at the Daily Bugle and her inability to put out a front-page feature. Harry, returning from his medical absence that was addressed in Marvel’s Spider-Man, makes his debut. His problems are seemingly cured and he’s stronger than ever, but all of this is thanks to the Venom symbiote that becomes more a parasite than anything as the story progresses. There are a few other characters that appear in side quests, like Mysterio who is now trying to move on to a life as an entertainer instead of a supervillain, and a really interesting string of missions that involve a now-vigilante Yuri from the first game. Between the Spider-Men, Miles takes his first big steps in the classic superhero struggle of having to balance two identities. As Miles he’s got to worry about college applications, but as Spider-Man he has to worry about the safety of New York, as well as balancing his emotions now that a newly freed Martin Li brings out a desire for anger and vengeance.

In typical Spider-Man fashion, the Venom Symbiote eventually attaches itself to Peter and falls in love with his power. Peter’s personality gets more abrasive and brash, which opens the floodgates for the anger he’s been holding back for years now. All of these story features come together really well to culminate towards an impactful final act that concentrates on the fact that we all have strong feelings that we wish we could let out, but don’t in order to preserve our relationships and our own emotional health.

The gameplay is centered around switching between Peter and Miles. Each of the Spider-Men has their own set of powers in their skill trees that make them stand out, as well as a shared skill tree for things like gadgets and some traversal skills. They also have their own character specific side quests and NPC interactions to make things feel more alive. Switching between Peter and Miles is painless, but despite the smoothness the game brings, I couldn’t help but start to lose interest around halfway through. I like to do everything in games like this, big adventures with dozens of collectibles and easy traversal, so the bulk of my thirty-hour playthrough consisted of completing side quests and finding collectibles so that my map would be 100% filled out. I’m willing to admit that this was probably me burning myself out on this game because I was always doing something — beating up bad guys, doing the Mysterium time trials, solving one of the handful of puzzles so that I could move closer to getting a new suit that I would only wear for a short bit of time, and so on. There are plenty of things to experience in this game, but at some point, they start to blend together when they slow the pacing of everything down.

Overall, I loved the story and world of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The voice acting is top notch, the ending sets up so much more for this universe, and I’m still going to purchase the next DLC or full game installment. Despite my admiration for this game’s story, I worry that Spider-Man’s gameplay formula is getting repetitive, even with having multiple Spider-Men available to choose from. I’m curious to see how Insomniac changes the formula for their upcoming Wolverine game.

“Not like the kid you battled in Kitakami, huh?!”

The last times that I played Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were my initial playthrough, and a Wonderlocke of Violet a few months later. While my first impressions of the ninth generation of Pokémon were that they were the best to come out since 2010, I dropped them faster than any other after beating the champion. My reason at the time was that I just didn’t connect with the games like I had in the past. Nowadays Pokémon games like to put the player into specific roles that fit into the game’s context. For example, Pokémon Sun and Moon see the player going on their journey while the Alola region puts together its inaugural Pokémon League. Sword and Shield have the player registering for the Pokémon league like it was a sport, and Scarlet and Violet see the player enrolling at Naranja/Uva Academy, where the league is sanctioned through the school as way for students to go on their “treasure hunt”, a journey to find something important to them. Gone are the days of going on a journey as a coming-of-age adventure, and now everything has a purpose behind that invests in the world’s lore. While I think this is a fun bit of context to add to the player’s motivations, the school angle that Scarlet and Violet used was lost on me.

What I disliked about SV was that the open world wasn’t truly open. Yes, I could go anywhere I wanted to in the region with relative ease, but the Pokémon and trainers around me didn’t scale their levels proportionally to where I was. I like the new characters and Pokémon, but I felt like Game Freak took a few big steps forward just to take some equally big steps back. The map is wide and dull, Pokémon following you still doesn’t work in a way that promotes use of the feature, the champion battle is underwhelming, and Terastallization (this game’s mechanic that changes the types of Pokémon temporarily) doesn’t work well in the single battle format against NPCs. Perhaps the biggest offense, the lack of compatibility on Nintendo’s hardware — especially when games like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, the Xenoblade Chronicles series, and Pokémon Legends: Arceus all run well on the Switch — is nothing short of frustrating.

The DLC for these games, The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero released in late 2023 and was split into two parts: The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk. Both additions offered a new area to explore, new and returning Pokémon, and stories that involve all new characters. The story of the first expansion is about an academy field trip to Kitakami where the main character interacts with the Blueberry Academy and its students for the first time. The Blueberry Academy is a school similar to SV’s Naranja/Uva Academy, but with a much heavier focus on battling and based in Pokémon Black and White’s Unova region. The story for this DLC is short, leading the player down what basically feels like a tourist trip around the countryside to find signposts and monuments to the Loyal Three, the three new sub-legendary Pokémon.

In all honesty, I couldn’t care less about the story of this game or its DLC for my first playthrough. With the Switch’s Pokémon games I’ve had a hard time giving them my full attention at first, getting caught up in the atmosphere of the new region and what new and returning Pokémon I can add to my team this time around. I can acknowledge that I’m not a kid anymore. I’ll never be 14 again playing Pokémon Omega Ruby in the school gym before classes, and I can live with that. But I can also acknowledge that there are clear design differences that make the earlier games stand out and still be fun as an adult, and the new games have drifted away from that path. There’s less of a focus on being a game where you travel around with pocket sized beasts, and more of a focus on being Pokémon and being more inspired by the identity it’s created for itself. I can tell you that I think that Kieran and Carmine are interesting characters, and that Kitakami has a beautiful OST that trumps the original SV soundtrack in my opinion, but I feel like that’s all the praise I can sing. If I want the game to be more interesting from a gameplay perspective, I need to set up my own set of rules that alter the experience enough to do so. All I did for this first expansion was change most of my team to be Kitakami Pokémon, and while that was a fun change of pace, I couldn’t get wrapped up in the allure of Kitakami.

With all of that said, The Indigo Disk was an extremely welcome change. Not only did it add even more Pokémon to choose from, it also added the Blueberry Terrarium. Battles here are all double battles, and they’re some of the most complex and interesting battles that have been added to any Pokémon game. I play VGC, the official competitive Pokémon format, very casually, so this was a very welcomed addition. On top of that it adds plenty of features and small details, like an item generator/Pokéball lottery machine and throwing styles. The Terrarium allows for Pokémon from the Alola region to finally be available en masse for the first time since Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which is a huge plus for me since it’s one of my favorite regions.

The story in this DLC is a continuation of the first one, focused on how Kieran is tired of being weak and has gone from a timid boy to a mean tryhard. Again, the characters are interesting especially with their callbacks to Unova, but I didn’t give the story a lot of thought. It’s simple, fun, and the terrarium is a feature that I pray becomes a standard in the coming games.

While I have a fairly blase attitude towards The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, I can acknowledge that Game Freak has some ideas that could stand to be staples going forward. Perhaps I’ll enjoy these games more on another full playthrough, or maybe I just need to abandon the newer generation for a while.

“The mustachioed one is strong.”

Despite not completing Super Mario RPG before the end of the year (I’m only missing two of the seven stars), I can say that it’s one of my favorite RPGs of 2023. In a world where the modern RPG is complex, long, and has a very heavy story, it’s nice to have a game like this where I can sit down and enjoy it without getting ready to spend 80+ hours to get the perfect/canon/best ending of the game. The game is simple due to it being a remake of a SNES game from an era where RPGs were a lot more formulaic than they are now. However, it makes itself stand out by having a rhythm-based mechanic where you time button presses with an attack or block for meter gain. Furthermore, every time a character levels up, they get a bonus stat to level up between Physical, HP, or Magic. Character strengths are very apparent from the jump, so it’s easy to “optimize” your party members.

The game characterizes the Mario cast in really fun ways. Bowser isn’t just a villain trying to kidnap Princess Peach, he’s a leader that cares about his minions despite how goofy he can be when he refers to Mario and the rest of the cast as his new minions after he joins the party. This was my first time encountering the popular nobody that is Geno, and I sort of see the appeal. He’s one of the many creative character designs in this game, but he doesn’t seem to do anything important outside of joining the team on his mission to get the stars. I’m not sure what all the hype around him is, but he does look cool.

The game is chock full of Easter eggs and quick gags that add to quirky nature of Mario spin offs. I’ve never been a fan of traditional Mario games, so the funny dialogue and unique characters are something that I’m used to in games like this or Color Splash. Super Mario RPG is cute, colorful, and joins The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening as another cute remake of a decades old Nintendo game getting some HD and creative polish.

Editor’s note: The memories portion of this essay was never written, as none of the games on the list were completed.

Thank you for reading! Writing these has been a fun way for me to sit down and really try to reminisce and understand the games that I play.

In all honesty, there’s one game on this list that I didn’t mention — Cyberpunk 2077. I made a new save file after throwing the game to the wayside a year ago since they announced the Phantom Liberty DLC. While I’ve enjoyed my experience so far, I feel like I haven’t gotten a strong enough grasp on the game yet to really appreciate its intricacies, so perhaps I’ll get to that this year. The first game that I’ve approached in 2024 is Sifu, and that’s been taking up most of my time.

If you’re interested in any of my other work, I’ve been a contributing writer for SUPERJUMP! You can check out mine and other great writers’ work here. I’ve been debating on keeping a personal blog, but I think here and SUPERJUMP will be my main two areas of writing unless something changes. Thank you again for reading!