I have a fairly substantial backlog. It started because I began buying every game I was even mildly interested in, and I wouldn't wait to beat whatever I was playing at the time before I made a purchase. I've since stopped that, but between the 360, PS3, DS, and 3DS it's probably something like 30 games deep. I figured I would get to them all someday, and any time there was lull in the release calendar I had something to pull off the shelf.
Then it started to become clear that by the end of 2013 both the PS4 and next Xbox would launch, and that pile of unplayed (in some cases unopened) games started to take up more and more space in my head. I have two concerns. One is that a new console cycle is like a fresh start (I will find any excuse to declare something a fresh start) and I like to put everything from the last cycle in plastic bins, arranged just so, and add it to the stack in the basement. It's hard to feel like a fresh start if half of what I'm packing away is unfinished business. The other thing is that I feel weird spending hundreds of dollars on new gaming stuff when I still have plenty of stuff I already spent hundreds of dollars on that I haven't made time for. So as the new year rolled around (another fresh start!) I separated out all the games I hadn't played and started working through them. I decided to start this blog now, well after I started this project, because I found myself getting distracted with new project ideas and wanted a way to keep myself on task. Specifically, I'm playing Final Fantasy XIII right now and it is rekindling a long dormant love of JRPGs. I began to think maybe I would start playing through all the ones I had missed, going back through the PS2, PS1 and SNES. Maybe I will at some point.
So far I've played through Spec Ops: The Line, Hotline Miami, inFamous, Need For Speed: The Run, I Am Alive, and Fez*. I enjoyed all of them except for NFS:The Run, because it is awful and also terrible. The fact that it is very not good is also a mark against it.
Like I said, right now I'm playing through FF XIII. I had played the first hour or two over a year ago, so I started over and am about four hours in now. I'm liking parts of it. As a part of this project I'm planning to write up my feelings about the games I'm playing although I haven't decided if I should do it as I go or after I have beaten a game.
I'll make up a list of the backlog and post it here to keep track, and hopefully other people will see this and post their own (and maybe even take a run at their's along with me).August 1st is the hard deadline all these games have to be done by. On our about that date I will be working full time, a new baby will arrive (our second), and I'll be back in school full-time (I'm going part-time over the summer). At that point gaming time effectively goes away until Christmas time. I don't even know if it's possible to get through the amount of games I have in two and a half months given the limited time each day I can devote to gaming (usually between 10pm and midnight), but it will be fun and cathartic to see how far I can get.
*I didn't actually beat Fez, even once, but I spent enough time with it that I'm comfortable saying I played through it. I don't have the time it would require to puzzle out all of that game's secrets, and if I beat it the first time using FAQs and message boards I would feel like I cheated (also, at that point, why am I even playing it).
Log in to comment