Someone save me from this backlog!

I have a lot of games, like A LOT of games. I'm sure most of you have more but damn, I have a lot of games! I have a real problem though, I buy a game, play it for maybe 5 to 10 minutes, then put it down. Before I have a chance to pick it up again, I've already bought a new game and the cycle continues.

In an effort to fix this, to a degree, I've decided to make an organized list of all the games I have yet to play/have yet to put substantial time into, on all the platforms that I purchase games. I've decided to list them by system and in alphabetical order per title. I feel this will better keep the list organized and help me visualize what games there are left for me to complete.

Now I'm not saying I'm gonna stop buying new games (I mean just look at Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze) but I'm gonna make a real effort to complete the ones I have.

So here is, my backlog, in all it's depressing and intimidating greatness.

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160 Total Games to Play/Finish

3DS (includes DS games)

• Amoebattle Grab
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf (continue playing)
• Cave Story
• Dillon’s Rolling Western
• Fire Emblem: Awakening
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• Ketzal’s Corridors
• Kid Icarus
• Kirby’s Adventure
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
• Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
• Mighty Flip Champs!
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (WiiU/3ds)
• New Super Mario Bros. 2
• Paper Mario: Sticker Star
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies
• Pokemon Black
• Pokemon X
• Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask
• Pushmo
• Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword
• SteamWorld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
• VVVVVV
• Zelda: Four Swords

iPhone/iPad

• Anomaly 2
• Another World
• Autumn Dynasty
• Badland
• Beat Sneak
• Blackbar
• Breach & Clear
• CastleDoomBad
• Costume Quest
• D. Grimoire
• Deus Ex: The Fall
• Device 6
• Eliss Infinity
• Gemini Rue
• Ghost Trick
• Helsing’s Fire
• Hundreds
• Hunters 2
• Infinity Blade III
• Kingdom Rush
• Kingdom Rush: Frontiers
• Knights of the Old Republic
• Legends of Ooo
• Limbo
• Little Inferno
• Machinarium
• Magicka
• Mass Effect: Infiltrator
• MysteryRoom
• Oceanhorn
• Paper Titans
• Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
• Plants Vs. Zombies
• Plants Vs. Zombies 2
• Rayman Fiesta Run
• République
• Ridiculous Fishing
• Rymdkapsel
• Shadowrun Returns
• Skulls of the Shogun
• Sorcery!
• Sorcery! 2
• Spell Quest: Grimm’s Journey
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery Ep
• Tales of Monkey Island 1
• Terraria
• The Room
• The Room Two
• Tiny Thief
• Warhammer Quest
• Wolf Among Us (iPhone)
• World of Goo
• XCOM Enemy Unknown
• Year Walk
• Zen Bound 2

MAC

• Amnesia the Dark Descent
• Borderlands 2
• Braid
• Dear Esther
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Gone Home
• Jazz Punk
• Krater
• Legend of Grimrock
• Papers Please
• Portal 2
• Rogue Legacy
• Stacking
• Starcraft II
• Thirty Flights of Loving
• Thomas Was Alone

Playstation 4

• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• Contast
• Don’t Starve
• Flower
• Killzone: Shadow Fall
• Knack
• Outlast
• Resogun
• Sound Shapes
• Tomb Raider

Playstation Vita

• Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
• Dragon’s Crown
• Dustforce
• Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable
• Gravity Rush
• Guacamelee!
• Hotline Miami
• LittleBigPlanet Vita
• Lone Survivor
• MegaMan
• MegaMan 2
• Metal Gear Solid HD
• Mutant Blobs Attack
• OlliOlli
• Persona 4 Golden
• Proteus
• Rayman Legends
• Retro City Rampage
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
• Spelunky
• Stealth Inc.
• Super Stardust Delta
• Tearaway
• The Walking: Dead Season 1
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss
• Unit 13

Wii U (includes Wii games)

• BIT.TRIP Present… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Castle Storm
• EarthBound
• Mighty Switch Force! 2
• Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (WiiU/3ds)
• Mutant Mudds Deluxe
• Nano Assault Neo
• New Super Luigi U
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• Nintendo Land
• Pikmin 3
• Super Mario 3d World
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Super Mario World
• Super Metroid
• Super Smash Bros: Brawl
• The Legend of Zelda
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
• The Wonderful 101
• Trine 2 Director’s Cut

God Damn It! I guess I better play something.

Things like Wonderful 101, The Walking Dead, Phoenix Wright and Teraway should be high priority in my opinion.

I think you can skip a few like Nintendo Land and Stacking

Save some for the Summer Game Drought. Like Persona 4 Golden and Fire Emblem, those take up some major time.

Try to realistically rank the games in terms of how badly your hurting to play them.

Good luck! There are some fantastic games in the backlog.

Set the iPad down for starters and step away slowly.

Next send me some money because you clearly have far too much.

@viciousbearmauling: I've played a decent amount of The Walking Dead, Phoenix Wright, Tearaway, P4G and Fire Emblem, I just have to beat them! Those are definitely high in priority.

@the_tolman: Protip: The second you start feeling like you HAVE to beat things and gaming becomes work then just STOP because It will no longer be fun at that point and will be just that work.

@xalienxgreyx: Budgeting man, its easy to keep up the hobby when you properly budget yourself.

@demoskinos: It's not that I feel I need to beat any of them, I just feel I really haven't given many a chance. You never know what might be your next favorite game unless you give some time to them.

Take a look at that list and one by one play them, starting with the one you want to play the most, then the next, then the next, and so on. Remember, you aren't obligated to play every single one to completion. And if a game comes up that you want to play more than something on the backlog, play that game instead and come back to the back log later.

Really the only thing you need to know is don't force yourself to play something. It isn't worth the time, even if it means you've wasted money on something you won't ever beat. If something isn't grabbing your attention, just move on. Maybe you'll come back to it, maybe you wont

Also, you can 'get your moneys worth' without having to beat a game. I paid 10 bucks for Dustforce and put 19 hours into it. I will never beat that game, but I feel like the purchase was justified. I got the enjoyment Im going to get with it, so I moved on.

I vote randoming the list, as that's what I've done in the past. Or distill it down to the ones you REALLY want to play/say you've played and focus on those first (which is what I'm doing now). The big thing is to just start doing it--otherwise, you'll never even make progress towards finishing.

Maybe you want to start knocking down the shorter games (the walking dead, the wolf among us) for starters. Also you should probably shrink the list to games you absolutely want to finish. The key is to get started because from the looks of it you're just going to make this list bigger and bigger.

You know what would help, streaming, if you can stream anything it might get you the incentive to finish it, with an audience helping you out or just laughing at your own experience.

I'd do the SNES Wii ugames, they are rock solid. Super Metroid is the best 8 hours you'd spend. Guacamelee was my game of the year last year, it's more metroid then castlevania, can be beaten in less then a few sittings, maybe 8 or 6 hours long. I replayed Zelda A Link to the past recently, that's always good refresher before Link Between Worlds. I loved Stealth Inc, highly recomend that, but in that same way as super meat boy, so it might be a while for that.

hmmmmm, if there's one game I don't advice.... it's sadly Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon. I wanted to love it, but damn does it drag out longer then it needs to.

I'll make two recommendations, both of them are short games:

The Room, a really nice puzzle game with a weird quasi-lovecraftian "story" and some really nice visuals. (Haven't played the second, but I assume it's pretty good too.)

Thomas Was Alone. Play about an hour of it, you'll know if you want to keep playing by then or not. I really liked the narrator, the characters, the fairly simple but well constructed puzzles, and the super-smooth platforming. Also, the music is fantastic, and matches the gameplay and story really well.

I don't see Battlefield 4 on there. Buy Battlefield 4. Get into multiplayer. Play other games only when you feel like it. That's how I manage not to care all too much about my evergrowing backlog. Also - I've decided to buy games pretty much only if I also got the time for 'em again. My backlog got pretty huge too, and it's simply not reasonable.

That's how I manage my gaming habit. Have a mainstay game. A game I pursue mastery in. Any revered multiplayer game will do. DOTA, LoL, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Street Figher... you name it. All other games first have to overcome my need and joy to play that game. In the last decade or so, for me that's been either Battlefield or an MMO like World of Warcraft. It ensures that I don't buy and play crap, and that I enjoy all my gaming more.

Competence and mastery in a multiplayer game results in so much more rewarding gaming experiences than merely *beating games*. And what games I do end up playing besides my gaming mainstay, I'll likely enjoy more, for these games are welcome breaks from my gaming routine. Recommended modus operandi.

@seppli: Battlefield 4 is actually one of the only games I've fully completed on my Ps4. I've put about 25 hours into multiplayer and sometimes go back to it. I do need to find my core game though, it used to be Gears and Halo when I had a bunch of friends on Xbox a few years back, but like me, everyone has kinda turned to single player games.

You can safely skip Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

Even Mario & Luigi: Dream Team I can barely recommend. The combat is about as solid as that of Bowser's Inside Story, but Dream Team's writing and environments are just...uninspired. It turns out that making Bowser a playable character/source of constant comic relief in Bowser's Inside Story was a stroke of genius. The villain in Dream Team is basically a stock vampire with a Transylvanian accent and he's just really unimaginative compared to the weirdness of Fawful. Bowser teams up with him, but I've only encountered Bowser maybe like two times, and I'm pretty far into the game.

Also the dream worlds all feel kinda samey, and the basic concept of going into dreams isn't as cool as seeing Bowser's weird physiology. The dreams just aren't crazy enough. It's like, if the area you're in is a forest with totem poles, in Luigi's dreams, the totem poles are walking around and they're the enemies! OoooooooOOOOOOooooooohhh!! This is me sarcastically pretending that's a very interesting or freaky dream. It's not. Basically, inanimate objects in the real world environment become enemies in the dream world. Or sometimes they just palette swap an enemy from the real world, and it's a dream version with crazier powers.

I guess I wanted the dungeons to be weird dreams/nightmares about Luigi's inadequacy and loneliness compared to Mario, and the game very briefly does that when you go into like, the Deep Dreamworld in Luigi's psyche, but it's like a 2-minute sequence. The rest of the dream worlds are just lame reflections of the real world environment.

So yeah, with Bowser not being a main character and Mario and Luigi just saying their Italian gibberish, your time is spent hearing a LOT of Dreambert (prince of the dream world) and the fucking non-character that is Starlow, both just prattle on about saving Peach and stopping the stupid vampire villain, and explaining all of the completely arbitrary and inconsistent rules of the various dream points and dream stones and dream dimensions.

Also:

ACIV is the best next gen game around.

HOLY MOTHER OF ZEUS THAT IS HUGE.

You're screwed.

Meet me behind the KFC, man. I know a guy who knows a guy that'll play your games so you don't have to. He's very discreet. No real names, though, and for the love of god, no eye contact.

Well I have a sugestion ... you probably know which ones are long gaems and which ones are 1 seat to finish them , example Limbo can be done in 1 sitting and something like Deus Ex is at leats 20 hours. So make a list of 2 to 3 short game then put a long one , then play 2 short ones etc. I also had a big to play/finish list and that how I tackled it (ven more so that it had many rpgs in it). Also if you get tired of a genre , just pick something different for the next one.

Well, first off, make peace with the fact that you're never going to finish all of those games.

Second, stop buying iPod/iPad games. Seriously. Pick a few that you like to play for five or ten minutes when you're just standing around; otherwise, they're almost universally not worth your time.

Third, pick a really long game that you want to finish and go for short games when you don't want to play that long one.

Fourth, don't buy a game unless you really, really want it.

Every time this kind of post shows up, I feel it is my duty to tell about the site "Backloggery". It works wonders when it comes to keeping tabs on your backlog. It even has a handy "Fortune Cookie" feature, if you don't know what to play at that very moment.

After I learned about the site, and added all my stuff, I tried to get a 70% "Beaten" rating, but I'm still not there. But once I reach that, my goal will be to never get below it. So no new games until I am done with one of my old ones. My problem is not that the "old" games I have are boring or not appealing, it's that it is so easy to get new games that steal the time I'd spend on the old games.

Anyway, here is my Backloggery page, check it out, join the site and add all your games. If you keep pestering me about finishing something, I'll try and do the same back. Maybe that can be some sort of motivation.

There are a handful of games on that list that you're never going to play or be into unless you end up devoting time to them. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, for instance.

I think your biggest issue here is that you're not very good at budgeting for the amount of time you have. Getting that into order is the first thing you should do.

The second thing I would do is go through the list and ask the question: "Do I really want to play this?" Doing that, you could probably clear away 2/3 of the list, or shuffle it off somewhere else until you get the important stuff in order.

And third, I would stop buying games. You don't need to own everything. Good games don't go away and you might be able to pick them up cheaper when you have time to play them.

I was gonna say chip away at the shorter, potential single-sitting games. But then I saw Symphony of the Night.

Play Symphony of the Night.