Yesterday's backlog session left me with a taste for more. I've got 12 PS3 games on my shelf that I haven't started. Only four of these have trophies. 
 
Let's do it. 
 
Game 1: Unreal Tournament III. I found this on sale and decided to get it for PS3 because of the mod support. Not that I'll be using any mods, though. First off, five minute patch download. Yay PS3. 14 minutes in, "Lock and Load" for killing my sister over and over. Apparently, someone felt the need to give this game a story. Really solid, fast-paced shooter action, though. Some Gears of War-looking dudes (Dom, specifically) in the cinematics. Seems to be pretty nice with the trophies, being multi-platform probably helped with that. Had a quick online match, too. Fun. Much prefer this to Halo. Will be playing more.
 
Game 2: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Installing Game Data. Five minutes and counting. No progress bar. Don't have my hopes too high for this one. Should be some fun explosions, though I feel Bad Company and, in particular, Red Faction: Guerilla have set the standard in that department. First trophy, "School's Out" squarely at the five minute mark. Not a train wreck so far. The first mission was actually pretty enjoyable. Seems like a good discount purchase. 
 
Game 3: Warhawk. Again, it's gonna take a while to patch and install. I like my PS3, but this is semi-ridiculous. I'm too old for this. I played the Warhawk demo and found it enjoyable up to the final Warhawk air combat tutorial. Also, it failed to connect to any multiplayer matches, which put me off the full-price PSN purchase. When I found it in a bargain bin with the headset pack-in, it was a different story. First impression: The music in the menu screens is awesome. I did a quick online match before I resorted to running the ground training to pick up the trophy. There's a bit of a learning curve here, but I managed to notch up a few kills, as well as getting spectacularly shot down in a Warhawk a couple of times. Kind of a Battlefield vibe, must be explored further.
 
Game 4: Resistance 2. Major title update. I've easily spent 40 minutes waiting for stuff to download and install these past hours. Reminds me of the time that I bought Burnout Paradise for my buddy, went over to his house to surprise him, and promptly stared at an update screen for two straight hours. Oh, well. 17:50 into a very action-packed, scripted start to the campaign, first trophy pops up. This is a quality product. I need to go back and play Resistance: Fall of Man before I play this, I think. 
 
I'd love to do a backlog write-up of my other PS3 games as well, as soon as I find an OK way of doing it. First half hour? First level? Tutorial completed? First in-game reward? That might actually be less arbitrary than going for the first achievement or trophy. I'll come back to that. 
 
These are the other PS3 games in my backlog: 
 
Devil May Cry 4 
Heavenly Sword 
Valkyria Chronicles 
MotorStorm 
Lost Planet Extreme Condition 
Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty 
Everybody's Gold: World Tour 
Resistance: Fall of Man 

I've got a bunch of new games on my shelf, some new titles I've got high hopes for, some potentially entertaining games I've picked up on sale. Time to get an overview with a new round of play-to-the-first-blip action. 
 
First up: 
 
Game 1: Wolfenstein. Now that's an old school shooter intro. The premise of this game is, of course, totally ridiculous, but the action seems very satisfying. Can't wait to blast through this. Got my first achievement 18 minutes in for shooting three mysteriously floating enemies. 
  
Game 2: Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Apparently, Ray McCall can take all the bullets in the world, but drop down three feet, and: "Failure! You are dead." This game has an unfamiliar cover system that takes a little getting used to. Quite stingy with the achievements, too. A few seconds past the 29-minute mark, I shot an enemy through a wall, and got the None Shall Hide achievement. Here's hoping the actual western part of the game is better than the civil war introduction.
 
Game 3: The Beatles: Rock Band. I just bought this today, on launch. Still added it to my backlog pile, had to get an achievement or two in for launch day. Feel a bit cheated now, though - it only took 1:40 to reach the end of the calibration adjustment and get my first 5G. Need to play a few songs before I move on.   
 
Edit: I couldn't stop playing The Beatles: Rock Band. It's amazing. Went for the Day Tripper achievement in my first go-around. Can't wait to play it with friends. 
 
Game 4: Dark Sector. Low expectations. Old game dressed up in Unreal Engine 3. The prologue, and with it, the first achievement, took about half an hour. Wonder what this game was like before they made it a Gears clone. Thank God I didn't pay a lot of money for this. The glaive looks like fun, though. If I ever totally run out of games, I might play this some more.
 
Game 5: Tomb Raider Underworld. That was weird. Prologue, 10 minutes. This seems pretty solid. I'm gonna have to play through both Legend and Underworld some day. Today is DiRT 2 day, though. 
 
OK, one more. 
 
Game 6: Batman: Arkham Asylum. Based on reviews, I feel I should set aside some time to do this right. It's too bright in my living room now, though. First achievement: Freeflow Combo 5. First fight after the intro.

I've got about 25 Xbox 360 games on my shelf that I haven't touched. Let's see how many I can do in one sitting if I just play up to the first achievement. I'll be updating this post along the way.

I know I'm gonna have a hard time putting some of these down after the first achievement pops, but hopefully I'll stay the course and get a feel for most of them.

Game 1: Viva Piñata: TIP. First achievement 37 minutes in, for taking 10 photos. Seems like most of the "real" achievements would have taken too long. Man, I could have spent all day playing this game. It's starting to get its hooks into me pretty bad. So goooood.

Game 2: Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, another colon game. First achievement 8 minutes in, "suppressive fire." Didn't really get much of an impression of the game, except the presentation seems really good. Liked the intro movie. Achievements seem to be structured to reward you as you learn the game. Just the way it should be.

Game 3: The Bourne Conspiracy. First achievement, 11 minutes for completing the first chapter. Super satisfying melee combat, haven't fired a weapon yet. This game should be a sweet action flick type ride. Highly polished, by the looks of it. Would really like to play some more.

Game 4: Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. Took 25 minutes to complete the Boot Camp. Seems pretty solid, I haven't played a C&C game since the first one in 1995, and I didn't get too into it back then. I definitely recognise the aesthetic, though.

Game 5: Amped 3. First bummer, achievment-wise. Early 360 title, no established achievement etiquette. Had to grind the build mode achievement for 30G after playing for 45 minutes and realising that it wasn't going to happen organically. Not a bad game, though. On any other day, I would have stuck it out.

Game 6: Prince of Persia. Wow, that was fast. 2:30 in - 10G, seemingly for watching the opening cinematic. This game looks gorgeous. Must play later. Almost feel sort of cheated now.

Game 7: Lego Indiana Jones. 20 minutes to finish the first level. I've played so much Lego Star Wars with my kid now that the Lego games are second nature to me. Love the Indy setting. I'll probably introduce it to junior sooner rather than later.

Game 8: Need For Speed Most Wanted. Man, that was a lot of work for 10G. It took 70 minutes to beat Sonny and get the first achievement. This game is old. Obviously rooted in earlier generations. The framerate is way too sluggish ever to get a decent sense of speed. I like that the cars have weight to them, though.

Game 9: Medal of Honor Airborne. Three achievements in three minutes, just getting pushed off the plane and trying to make the landing. Easy as pie. Got as far as firing my gun before i hit eject. Gun mechanics seem solid enough.

Game 10: Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I've never played a Splinter Cell game before, so the 6 minutes I spent in the training exercise were kinda baffling, really. Got an achievement, there's 40G more for completing the other training mission. Still, that's enough for today. Nearly half way through the pile.

Last week I went out and bought 51 new games.

Fine, I actually bought three discs, but one of them was the recently released Genesis Collection, a whopping 49 games all told. The two other games I bought were Street Fighter IV and Killzone 2.

So I've been playing Burnout Paradise for a week. I haven't even unwrapped the new stuff. Can't bring myself to do it.

Too. Much. To. Play.

Burnout is the ultimate in comfort food gaming for me now. It's become my favorite game of all time. Not bad. I've finished it twice on 360, once on PS3, and now I'm cruising around Paradise on my Macbook Pro as well. It just gets better and better.

So, Crackdown is kinda awesome.

My pile of shame keeps growing. I've got about 30 games I need to play, bought on personal recommendations, high review scores, and good demos. I'm sure if I hadn't spent 160 hours playing Burnout Paradise over the last four months, I'd be about half way into the pile by now, but then gaming is supposed to be about having fun, isn't it?

On a total whim I decided to try out Crackdown for a few hours. 15 hours later, it's still in my 360. It's all about collecting orbs and blowing stuff up, and I'm loving it!

Now for the "game of my dreams" thing. All my life I've been having dreams about walking or driving around normally, then suddenly hitting a steep incline and flying 500 feet into the air. The blinding thrill of hanging in the air for a second anticipating a grizzly demise upon re-establishing contact with the ground beneath me, has haunted me.

Crackdown has made a game around the central mechanics of my dream. I'm addicted to trying crazy jumps, and then falling hundreds of feet before I make it safely down... or not. It's awesome.

One of the most exhilarating gaming moments I've ever had was climbing the Agency Tower and jumping off it into a small pond. The game really gives you a sense of height, and the lack of save points contributes to the feeling of consequence to your actions. Man, so much fun.

So I just got around to playing with my Cagneyfied 360 tonight. After having fun with BC: Rearmed and being totally floored by Braid, I'd been tearing up the sidewalks of San Vanelona for a few days when one of my old Burnout friends suddenly wanted to play. Two hours and all two-player challenges later, I've gotta say that's about as much fun as you can possibly have in online multiplayer. With your pants on. Supposedly.

The Xbox 360 has been out for almost three years now, and there's a lot of quality gaming to be had with its ever-growing library. But Burnout Paradise is the only current-gen game that's got a permanent place in my heart. I love Gears and CoD4, PGR4, DiRT and GRID are all great fun, Civ Rev is a blast, GTA IV is straight up amazing, and a few of the XBLA titles are just too good to be true. But Burnout Paradise gives me a feeling I haven't felt since I was 15 and spent way too much time with my Amiga - a feeling I was sure I'd outgrown by now.

130 hours in, still fantastic. Even more so with Cagney. Burnout Team rocks.

Awesome. Just awesome.

I've played through worlds 2-4 so far, and it just keeps getting better. Once you get the mechanics and the rules down, it's really only up to your logical skills - and that's such a breath of fresh air in a platformer. Speaking of fresh air, just playing an original, well-designed 2D platformer in 2008 is a dream come true for an old-skool cat like me.

Just awesome.