Hello again! With Twitter continuing to implode and me continuing my break away from it (more justified by the weeks going on), I figured I’d do another post to showcase my current queue plans and what stuff is being worked on and what sort of games I’ve been keeping tabs on for future reviews: pretty eager to discuss the good, bad, and the hopeful nature that I’ll clear this review queue soon enough!
When it comes to the current Review Queue… I’ve slimmed down a little bit more, and I think I’m happy with two systems in particular. Steam and Xbox Series X stuff were slim enough earlier in the year, and I’ve continued to chip away at them while taking the occasional new game for them as well. Steam stuff is pretty simple to knock out, so as i’m working a bit on Arcade Paradise, I’m also reviewing Front Mission 1st Remake (my first RPG review in a while, and it’s going pretty well!), Gimmick Special Edition, and Fuga 2 in the near future.
Fuga 2 in particular is gonna be a tricky, likely late july/august review… The time codes got sent out + my queue as is meant I couldn’t review it before launch day or in May at all, and I was busy working on one of my pending XSX games to focus on it in June. Still, after how much I adored the first one and was eager for this sequel, I wanna still cover it and give it justice; I feel that will be worth it.
As for the remaining two XSX games… Maravilla Island is up next. I feel that was a simple game I should have focused on back then and my busy schedule led me to being way in over my head on reviewing that one, so now’s the time to give it a proper shake. Nongunz was another game I played when I got it, only to uh, completely be confused by how to discuss it. Even a bit recently when trying it again, I was unable to describe or form a thought on it… So I guess I’ll try again and if I still can’t grasp it after an hour or so, I’ll have to make that a snap-judgment review, much as I dislike doing so. Still, the XSX queue should be the first to be fully cleared, yay!
For the non-recent Steam stuff, Arcade Spirits and TSIOQUE are the remainders, and I *think* by technicality two old IFI ports I redeemed and planned to cover but didn’t at the time (due to the laughably dumb reason of not realizing those games didn’t match my PC specs, which, oops, but now with a Steam Deck I can play them just fine), so I’ll likely get the adventure games out first and if I can verify the two IFI ports were review codes I used, I’ll cover them too to complete my promise of reviewing everything I redeem… no matter how long it takes.
So, back to the big boys. Switch’s queue has been knocked down bit by bit the past year, and I have more in mind. The nearly finished, but redone from scratch Tokyo School Life review will have to be refined and played a bit more for me to refresh my memory, but I wanna get that knocked out soonish. Those three data loss reviews are really unfun to re-write or re-plan to replay to review, especially Omensight, which I took lots of notes for and thus lost all of them, so I gotta dedicate time to playing that… And the less said about Valthian School Arc, the better, but I ain’t half-assing stuff.
Still, for Switch, I should have a few queue reviews nearly finished by the end of August. Citizens Unite, RCG2, (which got a neat new update I waited for to see if it would fix some performance gripes I had), Stick it to the Man (finally, after so many years, this dusty game gets the coverage I neglected to give it back then) and Neo Atlas are my main focuses for the near future. True to my word, while I’ve gotten and covered newer games lately, they’ve been smaller scale and retro focused while the publishers I still owe I have not pestered further since the queue disaster of 2019. A lot of that stuff were bigger games I should not have taken up in bulk, and I’m still working to remedy all that.
PS4? Ooooooh… This is still the trickiest system as little progress has been made on the front at all. Two of the bigger games I worked on reviewing got their near final reviews lost in that data crash last year, as I noted above, and most of these games are RPGs. Yakuza 5 is a lot of fun, but also hella long to understand all the mechanics. Still, AI is a game I’m eager to play more, and Shenmue I/II, while coming up on a five year anniversary… I’m hoping to cover that in time for it and give it a proper review to make up for the ridiculous journey it took to get to that point. Crystar should also be a good fit with the sequel incoming, and Beholder is now at its third game while I haven’t even booted the first. Then, my long-time behemoths of Danganronpa V3 and Cold Steel IV are approaching fast, with V3 being one I just am gonna up and play like I normally would without a single care about hunting down and having time for the damn anime. Yes, that stupid choice on my end to focus on the anime us seriously why it took me so long to play the game. If you’ve seen any bit of it, you’ll know it’s not even that good compared to the actual DR games… Thus, PS4 is the system I’ve almost all but blocked off review codes for since it’s by far the one with the longest investment to go through.
So what about other stuff? Well, as I noted, after the queue is shrunk/cleared, I wanna try more interview stuff. Renovation’s USA branch has a lot of intrigue for me, and maybe reaching out to former staff and learning more about canned titles like Dream Probe would be a good idea. I also really wanna find as much as I can about the canceled prototype for Taloon’s Great Adventure, and maybe interview whoever did the translation for it. The more info I can find about these rare gems, the better!
On the JP interview front, I also want to try and interview Noisycroak about their work on the PMD series, but I’ve been tremendously shy as of late, and haven’t even reached out to Tomie since April. Hope he’s doing OK, and I wonder if his next project will be shown soon.
I’m also debating going into freelance work a bit more and writing lengthy articles for sites, depending on what they seek. Being that I’m considered an obscure game guy and a retro fanatic… Well, might as well get my foot in the door! I do owe someone a certain retrospective on Penguin-Kun Wars, so maybe finally finishing that up would be in my best interest after the queue clears..
Still, I just wanna generally take a break once the queue and allllll the baggage of that rough 2019-2020 period of my life is finally lifted. The fact I’m still bogged down by that period four years later really isn’t good for the site or my standing as a writer, and like always, I sincerely apologize to any game devs/indies I’ve made wait so long, and don’t hesitate to email me if you want to discuss pending reviews and what I can do to try and make up for it. I hope each review I do finally push out is worth the read in the end and maybe will give some of these games a second wind? Some of my late reviews do surprise me in how well they do when they finally come out…
So until next time, take care! No Youtube updates unfortunately; that’s still on ice as my PMD Documentary bombed and has been searchbanned by youtube. Pity. Maybe I’ll return to video making after my queue clears.