Ah, the post-E3 summer bliss. That special time of year where compelling new releases are few and that pile of unplayed games starts to look enticing. Thanks to a perfect storm of my 30th birthday and sales on PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam, I have irresponsibly grown my backlog to a shameful level. Facing such a large amount of games to play I decided to take a step back to organize the chaos that is my library. As such I made a list of games that I intend to play in the near future. This forced me to ask some tough questions and make difficult cuts along the way. Do I really need to play Ryse: Son of Rome? Has the boat already passed on me getting into Helldivers? In the end I was able to pare the list down to a manageable level (times taken from How Long to Beat):

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  Firewatch (4 hours)

• Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (50 hours)

• Ratchet & Clank (10 hours)

• Invisible Inc.(7 hours)

• The Talos Principle (16 hours)

• Oxenfree (4 hours)

• Twilight Struggle (N/A)

• Alice: Madness Returns (13.5 hours)

• Valkyria Chronicles (31.5 hours)

I don’t expect to fully complete some of these games, and I’m weary of Dark Souls in particular. Seeing it from afar, that style of punishing gameplay doesn’t seem that appealing. But given the effusive praise for the series I felt that I should at least give it a shot. I also don’t expect to finish most of these in the immediate future as some of my gaming time has been taken up by rounds of the ever-wonderful Overwatch. So far, so good. I have a manageable list, reasonable expectations, and a genuine desire to at least try all the games on the list. All's well in Navster’s gaming world.

Then I go and cock it up. I start thinking, “Y’know, this is the summer I knock off some Important games I’ve missed over the years. This is the year I uncover my gaming blindspots!” And so my gaming list grows to include these so-called classics that I’ve managed to never play:

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  Super Metroid (7.5 hours)

• Final Fantasy IX (42.5 hours)

• The Legend of Zelda (9 hours)

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (8.5 hours)

• Day of the Tentacle (6.5 hours)

• Okami (37 hours)

• System Shock 2 (13 hours)

Suddenly my breezy summer list is starting to look like homework. The games listed are all almost certainly worth playing, and I feel that my understanding of games as a medium would be enriched by playing them, but man do those hour counts add up. What previously would have been 136 hours of new or interesting titles now must include a 111 hour history lesson!

The reasonable and sane answer to my predicament would be to jettison those older games and only focus on the games I really want to play. Or even make a concession and reserve a smaller game like Super Metroid or Day of the Tentacle as my “Saturday with nothing else to do” go-to. But that’s not how my stupid mind works. I need to somehow get these games scratched off my wall of shame. Do I really understand Metroid only having played Prime and Fusion? Am I a console scrub for never having played Day of the Tentacle? Or can I definitively say Final Fantasy XII is my favorite if I haven’t played the oft-forgotten Playstation classic? All dumb questions, yet they fuel my gaming anxiety.

As I’m getting close to a year of maintaining this blog, I’ve become acutely aware of a growing imposter syndrome. Who am I to write about games, especially when there are a ton of established writers with a far greater knowledge of the gaming canon? Can I provide incisive and original commentary that people actually want to read? As I created my list I began to see this anxiety creep into my game selection. I mean, who am I to criticize the newest Zelda game when I have never touched the NES original?

Anyway, this was a bit of a meandering post, and I thank anyone who has stuck with it to now. I haven’t come up with a way yet to just let go of this anxiety, and I suspect that I’ll be charging at my list for the next several months as some sort of dorky Don Quixote. Who knows, maybe I manage to make a dent in it in time for the autumn games rush. In the meantime I suspect that I’ll have plenty to write about. Have any suggestions on games to tackle first? Thoughts on backlog anxiety or gaming shame? Let me know in the comments.