I guess May 1st has become the day for my annual backlog update, as this is the third year in a row I’ve built up some games to review on this date. This year, though, has been rather thin in terms of games, primarily because of my focus on 2 main time sinks - Maplestory (returned after a 6-year hiatus) and Deep Rock Galactic.

(May 1, 2021- April 30, 2022)

• Rise of Slime - Very limited rogue-like, this not enough cards/variety to carry it long-term. You'll pretty much exhaust all of the upgrades in a single run
  
  
• Spelunky 2 - More of what made the original so great, with plenty of new F*** you moments. Things will fall/fly at you from off-screen to kill you, and/or tick off the shopkeeps, giving them all the motivation in the world to come after you. There have been some nice QOL improvements over the first though, including a way to pacify said shop-keeps if you can manage to sneak past them for a few floors. It is both a satisfying and rage-inducing rogue-like... So working as intended
  
  
• Hades - I returned to Hades after a few months, but my initial review still stands. Amazing game, GoTY. And the post-game content added enough of a challenge to keep you going for easily another hundred hours.
  
  
• The Survivalists - Was expecting something more along the lines of a Don't Starve, but with monkey automation. Instead, got a rather simple survival game where the monkeys did almost nothing. Even late game when you get 15(?), they move incredibly slow and can easily get confused with tasks. The crafting mechanic was also rather grindy, with multi-step processes that would require you to travel to different islands constantly for material. The most annoying part, however, was the item management. You could create dozens of chests for the various materials, but when the monkeys came time to deposit what they had made, it seemed like a crap-shoot on where they would deposit anything, making finding/sorting a massive chore.
  
  
• Dead Cells - I wanted to love this game, especially since the devs have been so active with the game, constantly doing free updates and content patches, keeping this game alive for many years. But one of the key mechanics of the game continues to leave me dumbfounded every time I attempt to play. Every time you pick up a stat increase during a run (brutality, tactics, or survival), you get a bump in damage and health, but so do the enemies, and to a certain extent, if you don't follow a certain pattern with which upgrades to go after, the enemies will out-scale you, allowing them to one-shot you. And with runs that can go an hour, getting killed in a single blow in the final dungeon is extremely disheartening. Helps even less that some enemies do multi-attacks, so even if you somehow survive the first hit, the followups will surely end your run.
  
  
• Swords & Souls - Think incremental idle game, but with slightly more player input and turned into an RPG. Slowly increase stats with mini-games, get new gear, go out and do missions. Lather rinse repeat. Still, oddly satisfying, but then again, I have over a thousand hours in games like Crusaders of the Lost Idols and Idle Champions
  
  
• Far Cry Primal - The first Far Cry game I've finished. I came close to beating FC3, but a game-breaking glitch on the final island prevented that from happening. That said, I actually really enjoyed my time with this title. While it carried the same mechanics of the other Far Cry games, the different setting and animal companion gave it a breath of fresh air.
  
  
• Assassin's Creed Origins - My previous review still stands on this one - too many boring side-missions, not great writing, and definitely felt more like a check-list than anything else. This game is a perfect example of games that are big for the sake of just adding hours to gameplay. I don't mind large games, but at least make the players want to explore more outside of a desire to 100%
  
  
• Watch Dogs Legion - It had potential, but yet again, Ubisoft showed that writing took a back seat. Played the majority of the game in perma-death mode, but near the end, encountered two glitches while flying a drone that caused me fall to my death. I didn't mind losing a spy for being over-zealous with my actions, but when the game freaked out and offed my players, it was time to disable that mode. The game wasn't even that difficult either, I think during the entirety of it, I only ever lost one person from an actual mission, and that was near the end when enemies learned how to go invisible. For the most part, every other mission had me going in with a little drone and doing the tasks remotely. Not very engaging, but when my assassin's lives were on the line, I did what worked. Maybe had I played the game in normal from the start, I would have tried different tactics and had more fun, but that's not how I went about that playthrough
  
  
• Witcher 3 - Another big open-world game, but unlike AC Origins or WD Legion, the writing was actually the strong point in this game. I like to 100% these types games, but the common issue is that I begin to get exhausted by the dialogue and stories they try to tell in the side-missions. That was not at all a problem in Witcher 3. I actually sought out the missions to hear more about the lore and world in which Geralt resided in. The tales of betrayal and what created certain monstrosities actually had me engaged. Why did they curse this person, and what was the end result, I had to know! The only real problem was that since I skipped Witcher 1 & 2, there were some story beats that I missed out on, and despite the game trying to catch me up, I still felt a little lost on certain elements (near the beginning of the game there were even choices to bring in your "save", but without the context of what happened, I had difficulty knowing what I would have done).
  
  Things weren't all positive though, as I did have a few issues with the game. Mostly minor, but still there. Movement was one, and attempting to loot certain things did come with a bit of hassle, trying to get in the right spot. Then the inventory management was a little awkward. The game really wants you to use potions and pick the right ones for each encounter, but going into the menu every time to apply them was a bit cumbersome. Not to mention I couldn't sort them the way I wanted for quicker access (on PS4, no clue if you could on PC). There were some other minor inventory woes I had as well, but they were so minor I can't even remember them now when reviewing it 6 months later. I don't know if I would give it the 10/10 it seems to receive everywhere, but it does come close.
  
  
• Deep Rock Galactic - The best way to describe this is Minecraft without the crafting. There are things to create back at the hub area, like cosmetics, but the game is all about mining for resources and fighting hordes of bugs. On the surface that may not be too appealing, but right now, it is easily my most played game in 2022 (easily over a hundred hours clocked thus far). Four classes to choose from, with a variety of different weapons, and all unique from one another;
  
  I started as the gunner, primarily because he was the tutorial character, and pushed him to prestige first. When first playing him, he felt like the real damage-dealer of the team, but with secondary items like the dome-shield and zipline, he also provided the necessary support for the team to feel well rounded enough to be a main
  
  After getting the Gunner to level 25, it was time to move on to the Driller. In my time as the Gunner, I was envious of the driller's ability to quickly make paths to/from objectives. Alas, starting out he did feel weak, making me yearn for the damage of my Gunner. Once the cryo-gun was unlocked, however, the class morphed into a completely different monster all together, making this character my new main. Freezing waves of enemies in an instant, allowing my allies to finish them up became the most satisfying part of the game. And burrowing around the map as the driller was just as fun as I'd hoped it to be. My only real issue with this class was his grenades which tended to harm my allies more than the bugs. I AM SO SORRY TO ALL MY TEAMMATES I ACCIDENTALLY KILLED! I have since switched to the throwable Axe, which has worked rather well, and saved many of my dwarve allies
  
  Once the Driller was prestiged at 25, I moved on to the third class, the scout. There weren't too many of these playing during my time as the other two classes, so I was curious as to how exactly they played. Right out the gate, there was definitely a skill barrier that needed to be reached to prevent constantly dying from your own zipping about. You want to play him like spider-man, going place to place, but ol' Peter Parker never had to worry about the fall damage like these dwarves. The damage was also fairly low starting out with these guys, but they seemed to be best at going forward and, well, being the scouts. Getting hard to reach ores and kind of being their own solo-characters, not really focused on the rest of the team. Which works, but also puts a bad playstyle in your head when you want to switch to another class, thinking the other dwarves can also break away from the party
  
  Finally, the engineer had his time in the caves. Honestly, this was the one I was most looking forward to, because of his little mini-turrets that he could set up. But as the trend went, outside of the gunner, this character started out rather weak. It wasn't until late-game that I began to really feel his power, doubling up on the turrets with a quick build time to be able to set them up without much need for prep. This was also the first character I unlocked an overclock mod on, which sent him far and above the others in terms of damage and enjoyment to play. An arcing streak of electricity that went between the two turrets created a new line of defense that became my new favorite thing to play around with, at the cost of zapping some fellow teammate. I am less sorry about this than the Driller grenades, only because there is a huge chain of lightning that should be obvious to stay away from.
  
  All in all, amazing game with a whole ton of depth (no pun intended), and easily my favorite game this year
  
  
• Lego Star Wars: Skywalker Saga - Glitchy mess. Let's just get that out of the way early; Crashed dozens of times; waymarkers were sending me to completely different planets; some missions had enemies not spawning, forcing me to quit and retry; and some minikits wouldn't even trigger until done multiple times. Then, the actual story in the game felt rushed, with the level missions feeling more like an afterthought. It seems they put all their time in the 30+ hub worlds, because boy howdy, was there a lot to do in them. I pride myself in being a fan of collect-a-thons, but even this was too much for me. Over a thousand bricks, and over a hundred side-missions. The writing was definitely hit-or-miss as well, getting a couple chuckles out of me, but not enough to want to sit through all the dialogue in the side missions. After a while, I just began to speed through them. The missions themselfs didn't feel super unique either, with many of the same ones repeating over and over. It may have prided itself in being the biggest lego game so far, but like I said for AC origins earlier, size don't mean much when the content itself is boring and repetitive.