Has anyone else seriously chipped away at their backlog?

Ive been used to working well over 50 hours a week for years, and unfortunately lost my job for about a month and a half. I am actually in a better place now, but looking back ive played a TON of games ive owned for years. I would love to know what other bombers have been catching up on. Since April I've seen the credits of:

Blair Witch, Halo 5, Resident Evil (4, 5, 6, and Revelations), Metro 2033 and Last light, Ori and the blind forest, A plague tale: innocence, Hellblade: senua`s sacrifice, Little nigntmares, Night in the woods, Rayman origins, Red dead redemption 2, Far cry primal, Nier: Automata, Superhot, and the Turing test.

The games that reall surprised me were: Blair witch, plague tale, hellblade and the metro games. How bout y`all?

I wouldn't say I've "seriously" chipped away at my backlog, which is massive due to my indulgences in PSN/Xbox/Steam sales and all the PS Plus and XBL GwG games I've accrued, but I've definitely made progress in getting through stuff that I'd been intending to play for a long time. I finally through Days Gone, which had been hanging around since launch, and Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight, which are two games I'd been meaning to play for a long time.

Mostly I finally made progress on playing through some JRPGs, which is a genre I used to love but that can be a massive time sink so I've barely touched over the years. I played Ys VIII (fantastic), Final Fantasy IX and Grandia (two PS1 era games that are still fun today), Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (not technically on my backlog because I never owned a copy for prior platforms but a game I'd been meaning to get to for years and partially bought a New 3DS to play, even if I never picked up a copy of the actual game, heh), and Lost Sphear (eh.)

I will almost certainly never play through 7 JRPGs again in a year (I also played the FF VII Remake, though that wasn't a backlog game) and may not ever play 7 JRPGs again over the course of the rest of my life (though I hope I will) so I have enjoyed the experience. I'm especially happy to have played FF IX and Grandia, two games I've been interested in for like 20 years and managed to avoid getting spoiled on. I've owned like 3 copies of FF IX in various formats since I always meant to play it...and now I have. It's good!

I made a decent dent in mine before I went back to work. Most notably, I played through every Trails game currently available in English (8 of them) over the course of about a month, which was something I'd wanted to do for a while but never had the time or energy to tackle so much JRPG.

I was trying to, then Persona 4 Golden came out on PC and it's all I've been playing...

In December last year my graphics card died, but while i was waiting for a new build i could still use it to play emulated games, so i went through and made sure i finished all the Strike games on the Mega Drive, Ridge Racer Type 4, then played through Headhunter on the Dreamcast which i never finished.
Since then i've done Assassin's Creed Origins, AC Unity, Monster Hunter World, Oddworld Strangers Wrath, played through RE5 again but that doesn't count i just like returning to it, The Forest and Ghost Recon Wildlands, i think that's it for this year so far but i'm currently playing Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 and Serious Sam 2.

Honestly it takes me so long to get to new releases all new games could be considered part of my backlog, i still haven't played Doom Eternal and i have no idea when i would intend on playing Cyberpunk.

Yes! BUT my backlog consists of gaming in eras where I never had consoles...I've been playing NES, SNES, and Genesis games, and going back to trying to beat certain Saturn (my first console) games that I never did as a kid... Call it... Unfinished business ;).

Beating Mike Tyson on NES punchout took all the joy away from that game. Same with beating the final boss of Ninja Gaiden.

I also went back to Rayman Origins for curiosity sake and honestly it is one of the best platformers ever made, up there with Super Meat Boy, Celeste, and Super Mario World.

My biggest backlog game I'm playing right now that has SUPER impressed me and will go down as one of my favorite games of all time is ZeroRanger. It has some twists so careful if you're looking it up. Its a Shmup w some subversive mechanics and story design like say a Nier Automata, or Undertale. Different but along those same lines.

Pretty much! Just like you, I've gone back and beaten games I've owned since high school, like the original Kingdom Hearts (Final Mix) and Tomb Raider 2013 on the PS3. I also took down Guacamelee! Gold Edition in my Steam backlog, Sonic and the Secret Rings which I've owned since middle school and Donkey Kong Country Returns which I got at a convention a few years back.

I'm even managing to sneak in some replays I've been wanting to do. I finally went back and finished Infamous 2 on the hardest difficulty, and I just started a second playthrough of Fire Emblem Three Houses on the side to go through another house. My main game right now is Bioshock, another one that I've owned for ages. Taking down that pile one game at a time!

I've cut through a fair few titles that were in my "To Play" list, yeah. I work from home anyway, so I haven't had any change to working conditions. But the time I would usually be hanging out with friends has been dedicated to finally working through the backlog a bit. Finally started and got halfway through RDR2. Also played through My Memory of Us, Demon's Tilt, Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Overcooked 2, VASARA Collection, Raiden V, SOR4, Slay the Spire, Boling Bolt, GRIDD: Retroenhanced, and a bunch of really short games.

Nope, and never will, most likely. I have so many game that I want to play but I just know it will be either latching on to the newest thing with the best timing, or something like the Trails series which has basically consumed my game playing life now. My back burner is going to eventually cause a kitchen fire and burn the whole place down.

I drastically cut back on the number of games I buy, and that was well before the rona. As soon as things like humble monthly, gamepass, etc started to come out it filled that weird need i have to buy games and never play them.

Nope. Pretty much the opposite for me since lockdown, I've bought way more games than I've played and I don't honestly anticipate I'll even touch half of them.

I've made no progress on by backlog, and in fact probably made it worse. I'm essential, so I never stopped working. Plus there were some strong PlayStation, I got PS Now, and bought a vita.

If backlog means not new but new to me, during lockdown I’ve played:

Yakuza 0

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

I thought that stopping playing Monster Hunter World Iceborne for a bit would let me get to my backlog. Instead I have mostly played Dark Souls II: SotFS (granted I'd only played the original game before but I had played it), Overwatch, Astroneer, and Minecraft Dungeons. The last one being I think the only 2020 game I've actually spent any time with so far. I really should be digging into my backlog but for some reason I'm absolutely not.

I'm finally playing Batman Arkham Knight. I'm pretty sure that I'm brute forcing it to run well, but it's running well, and looking pretty damn good for Unreal 3.

God I wish.

All I've done is chipped here and there. Maybe this holiday weekend I should sit down and finish something.

Steam sales really don't help lol

I'm going to skip the next gen until I can reduce the last two gens worth of backlog down a bit. I say this now though lol...

Yes. For the past few years I've got it down from 50+ to 32. I've been buying way less games over the years which allows me to focus on the ones I've spent money on previously. The way I see it, if I've bought it, I should play it.

Still, that five week gap when lockdown started did nothing for my backlog. I just couldn't be arsed.

Yes, I have made a huge dent in my backlog since 1/1/2020. I've knocked off 49 games. Should be hitting 50 soon with the completion of TLOU 2.

Nope. Not at all. For every game I do beat, it seems I'm adding about 10 new games to my backlog. Either through sales, free stuff, or PS Now and Game Pass. I should really start finishing games more before starting new ones. I think my problem is that I'm more content with knowing what a game is than actually finishing it. I think by the time I get halfway through a game, I go "Yep. I get it. I've seen what this game is going for.", then just move on to see something else.

For once, yeah. I beat like 5 games in recent times that have been sitting around waiting for me. Ratchet and Clank, CoD: Infinite Warfare, Saints Row IV, Halo Wars 2, and a few smaller ones. I had started all of these, but it felt nice to actually finish them.

Next, I'm going for a big one with Horizon: Zero Dawn.

I've been going in the opposite direction. I'm still working full time but now from home and saving way more money since I'm driving and buying snacks way less often. So now I'm spending more on games but not finding new additional time to play them. Geez, I still have games I got around christmas time that I haven't gotten close to finishing.

I have taken the opportunity to finally beat a bunch of games I started or didn't get the chance to play last year.

Last Jedi, Witcher 3 dlc, DBZ fighterz, outer wilds, beating DMC 5 right now. Planning on finally finishing FFXV , Uncharted 4 and Nier Automata B playthrough.

Feel like a real gamer.

I still have games from the late 90s, that I bought day 1, on my "backlog." So, no.

At this point, I just kinda play whatever will make me happy. I've made peace with the fact that for many games that I fully intend to get to someday, I probably just won't, because time is finite.

Not at all, if anything I bought more games I have not put time in.

Yep within the last year I've played:

Borderlands 3

Outerworlds

No Man's Sky

Layers of Fear

Firewatch

Soma

A few small PSN games

A few old PC games

Doesn't seem like much but I take forever to play through a game.

I still have Uncharted Lost Legacy, last of us 1, Fallout 76, Outerworlds, Layers of Fear 2 and Subnautica. So yea I still have a ways to go.

Most of my gaming this year has been backlog. I'll never actually cut it down "substantially" (which is legion) but I have been trying to trim new game purchases in favor of the mountain of games I already have. Luckily I've had good results so far!

No. I just keep buying new games. There are so many. I should stop buying them.

I made some headway this past year, but then I bought the itch.io bundle and well that's got like over 1,000 games so no.

Still haven't gone back to work due to COVID (been out for several months now), but to answer the question, I don't have backlog games necessarily, so no. I mean, there are a lot of games that I have or my brother has that I could play, but I have little to no desire to play them compared to other games so I don't consider them as backlog games as backlog generally means I intend on getting to them at some point but can't for one reason or another.

@ry_ry: I did as well. That Cowboy hacking game was really cool but I haven't tried even five of them. Beat tlou2 this week at least, and enjoyed it quite a lot at that. A real "page turner", as Vinny put it.

Just wrapped up Horizon: Zero Dawn. Played it when it came out for a bit but then Breath of the Wild came out and I moved away, always wanting to get back to it. Real neat game! Enjoyed Aloy and the other characters a lot, combat was fun and enemy variety was pretty neat. Story was good, I particularly likes how much you get into the old world stuff and was largely satisfied with that answers we got. I think I didn't quite care too much about the current day people and cities, but that is an unfortunate consequence of the past events being so engrossing. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel and hoping a few outstanding questions get answered thoroughly.

One pet peeve though. Any game that has a rotating time system, going from day to night, really needs a way to set the time of the day. My night vision is horrible, in real life and in games that are very dark, and so much of my time playing Horizon felt like I was playing at night, resulting in the ability to see almost nothing. Story specific moments that require nighttime were fine, but too much of my random wandering/side questing ended up being during pitch darkness, and really put a damper on my experience, as I just could not make out anything. Hopefully you can rest at a camp or something and choose time of day in the sequel.

honestly i've played alot less than i expected to. normally when i'm unemployed or the like and sitting at home i do play more but lately i've just been in a funk instead and when i do play stuff it seems to be more open ended games compared to normal.

I've beaten more games since March than I did in the entirety of 2019, but then I went and bought a bunch of new stuff during the Steam Sale so I'm right back where I started.

I’m lucky enough to have a steady job that I’m able to do remotely - but this also means that not much has changed in my life in terms of free time apart from cutting out the short commute to the office. Also since I’ve actually retained the exact same workload except now processed through a slower virtual machine conduit, I feel a lot more burned out on staring at monitors at the end of my work day and less inclined to jump right into games.

That said I don’t have much of a backlog to begin with. Each year a few online friends and I exchange Steam games as Christmas gifts so I’ve a few titles like Evil Within 2 lying around that I haven’t touched, but generally I’m up to date on everything I’ve wanted to play. Currently The Last of Us 2 is really kicking my butt in terms of play time. I’m really curious about the story and I’m enjoying the gameplay and performances quite a lot but I can’t seem to play it for extended periods of time. I’m genuinely astounded by the people who bought it release day Friday and were done with it by Monday.

Not at all. I don't think about those games. If they where worth my time i would have played them a long time ago.

I've played more of my backlog now than ever before but unfortunately my frivolous participation in game sales continues to quickly grow the size of my backlog at an unsustainable rate like the U.S. national debt.

Slowly but surely...

Since March when everything went to hell, I've completed a few games...

• Celeste (amazing!)
• Animal Crossing (if you can complete it...although I have one more loan to pay off)
• Super Mario Bros. 2 (had it as a kid, but never completed it, loved it!)
• Gran Turismo Sport (making my way up to Professional League now)
• Close to finally finishing Crash 2 in the remake (only beat the first game as a kid)
• Close to finishing Yoshi's Island (never played it before, love it!)
• Maneater
• Have a LONG way to go in Snowrunner
• started AC: Black flag for the first time, liked it, but then they wouldn't let me progress until I built up my ship...and I sorta fell off after that
• Would still like to start Spyro 3 remake
• Need to finish Full Throttle remaster
• Need to start Thumbleweed Park