That time of year is here again, the time where gamers worldwide lucky enough to still participate in full time education have to put their controllers down and venture outdoors. Afternoons of socialising in the sun and evenings of gaming marathons are pushed aside by the pressures of academia and general school or university life.

The sudden chill in the wind brought on by early September is felt by every young gamer; especially those that failed to reach that last level or defeat that last boss, before the start of the semester.

Without being too dramatic about it, the end of summer sucks. It sucks for all of us still in education gamer or not but seeing as this is ablog about gaming I’ll just stick to talking about how this time of year is one of the most bittersweet in my gaming career.

The summer seems to be the time most gamers reserve for games they just didn’t have time to play the rest of the year, one only has to take a cursory glance at YouTube to see the amount of “Summer Backlog” videos, avid gamers of all shapes and sizes promising to themselves and the internet that they will play their games.

“That 200 hour RPG? Yeah I’ll save it for summer”.

“Ah I still haven’t taken the wrapping off that game I bought last Christmas; my essay is due though…. I’ll save it for summer”

For me and I’m sure many of you out there summer is when I get to kick back for a few weeks and recharge the batteries doing whatever the hell I like, a large part of that for me this summer and many more before it was gaming. I took a long hard look at my game collection and worked out I had around thirty games in various states of completion to tackle. These ranged from “Never played”, “That one goddamn boss”, “Returning to a classic” and “…Dark Souls”.

Never one for organisation though I decided to just play what I felt like, as I felt like it. Three months on however (my university break has been a long one and unfortunately I couldn’t find a job) I’ve managed to get through a large chunk of what I had to play. Having a great time along the way and educating myself of some forgotten classics from my childhood.

I mention forgotten classics because along with the big titles of the year (Sleeping Dogs, Max Payne 3 etc.) I’ve played a significant number of games from my survival horror collection, something I’m really glad I did and that I wouldn’t have had the free time to do if not for this glorious aforementioned summer break. More on that in a separate post though.

Summer break has been such a large part of my gaming life, it was when my ten year old self was able to sit down with the Final Fantasy games for hours on end, where my thirteen year old self first escaped Raccoon City, and where my current self is able to enjoy gaming at my own pace, not fitting it in where I can between academia, my love life and friends. I don’t intend to make this sound like these things are bad however, gaming needs to be enjoyed as part of a balanced entertainment diet in order to be fully appreciated ( too much of anything will become mundane eventually) but summer is definitely the time of year where I enjoy gaming the most.

I hope that all of you guys were able to get some serious gaming done in between getting tans or whatever it is you hip kids do and that your summer backlogs, similar to mine, have been cut down at least a little. I’d love to hear what games you guys were able to see through to the end.

On another note, I’ll consider this post my introduction to the fine folks of the Giant Bomb community. I feel that the whole “introductory post” thing may be a little redundant in my case. The posts I have in mind should explain who I am and what I’m into in a far more entertaining and hopefully thought provoking way, that or at least give me an excuse to do whole posts about the junk I like.

Thanks for reading!