10/09 Update on Backwards Compatibility Voting

Welcome to the 12th iteration of Backwards Compatibility Voting.  This week I spent a lot of time exploring the world of Project Spark.  This video game creation tool went completely free this week, including all of the downloadable content.  Even the achievement structure was completely changed which allowed for an easier playing time (and a rapidly declining true achievements ratio if you care about that sort of thing).  Anyway, it is was another dismal week of voting, but in an attempt to spice it up a bit, I changed some things around.  Let’s go and see.

If you would like a copy of the file that these votes are stored in, please click here: Backwards-votes

Top 16

The first thing you might notice this week is that the last 5 are completely gone.  I mean, if you want to download the spreadsheet and look, more power to you..but I’m not going to waste my time anymore highlighting the lowlights.  Also you will notice that I went with the Top 16 this week…and it will continue to be variable from Top 15 to Top 20 each week.  Basically where things naturally drop off among the top contenders.  This week, that number was 1.2%.

The top three still look awfully familiar, and an important milestone was achieved by NCAA Football 14 this week.  It officially made 10,000 votes.  The magic number was met (well according to Snoop Dogg anyway) and hopefully that means we get a nice little surprise in November.  I have been playing my copy on my 360 and making way thru Road to Glory.  I did a pocket quarterback, and currently he’s been averaging about 400 yards a game passing at the high school level, lol.  Heck, most of the time he’s taken out in the 4th quarter by the coach since we are usually up by 30 points.  So I’m well on my way.

We had some familiars in the top 10 including Rainbow Six Vegas II (rising in the polls most likely due to the Siege beta), Crysis 3 (fresh off its GWG run), and Silent Hill Homecoming which is in this top list more often than not.  It was also good to see both Dragon Age games in this list, Origins had not really shown up, it was a consistent middle of the pack percentage wise.  Dragon Age 2 has been here a handful of times and will probably be part of the Top 20 monthly list next week.

Among the oddballs we have to include Lucha Libre AAA, Alex Kidd, Hitman HD, and Record of Agarest War Zero.  Lucha did not even get a vote last week, however that game likes popping in and out of either side of the coin.  When you have only ~180 votes, what do you expect?  Hitman HD was interesting as it was also completely out of nowhere, but that title does show up from time to time, so its curious for sure.

Diablo III shows up in this list again as it does every once in a while.  I did get my 5th level 70 in the game, and I only have the wizard left for all 6 classes and 25 bounties to go until 500.  Then it will be 100% complete, achievements and everything.  As mentioned previously, I am not counting on it being made backwards compatible because Blizzard has went on record before saying they are not updating this title.  Not to mention that the XB1 copy goes for roughly $20-$25 these days.  So expect me to finish everything by the end of the year, I am just taking a break for a couple of weeks to play Project Spark and NCAA 14.

Speaking of Project Spark, I have played it for about 5 hours now and I can say that I wish I would have gotten into this game when the DLC wasn’t free.  (The base game has always been free but not the packs)  The DLC prior to October 5th could be bought with either cold hard Xbox cash or you could work up to it with credits from playing the game.  A really brilliant concept.  I was able to play the game for a couple of days before October 5th.  In that time I had something like 20,000 credits and could have bought a few packs.  I mean there was no reason to but it encouraged you to play the game.

I also enjoyed the treasure trove game while it lasted.  Sure it was just a memory game but they would have a prize (some kind of little DLC block) that you could win and add to your collection.  Of course it went away, and the related achievements were modified but I am glad to say I did get the Winner Winner Chicken Dinner achievement (match the super prize) prior to treasure trove being removed from the game.

Speaking of achievements, the game has 146 achievements equaling 2,225 points.  I am proud to say as of this article, I already have 31 of those achievements for 575 points.  Now sure, my score as with many others ballooned on 10/5, but it is still a nice lift.  Right now, I’m trying to log in everyday to get the Fortnight achievement and I am halfway there.  I am also playing through Void Storm, the included adventure with the game and after I complete it, I will probably also play the Conker one.

As far as creation, I haven’t really created anything.  I am still learning as it were, but I will say that its far easier to mess with than many of the game creation tools of my youth which required knowledge of C++, Assembly, or at least a CAD background depending on what you were doing.  This requires some understanding of If Then statements in a very visual format and a bucketful of creativity.  That’s really it.  I recommend everybody give the game a try, yes you will screw up your completion percentage (if you care about that sort of thing), but if you stick with it like I am (you will regain that completion percentage), you will find an experience unlike any other on the Xbox One.

Anyway, next week is our monthly top 20 countdown.  We are inching closer to November and it can’t come too soon since voting has been dragging the last few weeks.  However, we are hopeful and it will be interesting to see if the games that are supposed to make it end up in the backwards compatibility program.  So, have a great weekend, download Project Spark if you haven’t and let your creativity unfold.  Take care.