For Backlog 365 I plan on playing one game on my backlog everyday this year and write about it. For each game I will decide if I want to put it on my "Shelved" list (games that I plan to come back to and play in depth) or put it on the "Retired" list (games that I will delete or sell and move on with my life).

• January 20
• Xbox One
• Time Played: 1 hour 39 minutes

I’ve had Wolfenstein: The New Order for a long time. I bought it shortly after I got my Xbox One. Although, I didn’t have a whole lot of interest this game it was dirt cheap and I heard good things about it. I probably played around an hour of the game when I first got it and remember finding it pretty frustrating. It felt like a slog and I never played it again. I thought about selling it, but wouldn’t get very much for it so I held onto it thinking that one day I might come back to it.

Well, here I am, back to it. But this time I decided to drop the difficulty down to easy. A while back I remember reading someone say that they weren’t liking Wolfenstein until they played it on easy, so I decided I’d follow their lead. Man did it make a difference. I started to really enjoy it. It’s not a challenge at all anymore, but I’m having a lot more fun running around gunning people down in a few shots, then when I felt like I was always trying to fight out of a corner. (Let’s be clear, I am not good a video games. I’m not bad at video game. But, I’m definitely not good at video games.) I really can’t stress enough how much dropping the difficulty down changed my enjoyment of the game. As you can see from how long I played Wolfenstein last night, I got completely absorbed by it. I will definitely be returning to Wolfenstein, and probably sooner than later, it’s been long enough.

Judgement: Shelved

My game of the year that year. I played it on the hardest difficulty and hit some spikes, but running through with duel-machine guns with no cares in the world sounds appealing. Should finish The Old Blood. Had that one since release and only got two hours in.

On a side note, I'm Polish so hearing characters in a video game speak Polish blew me away.

It's definitely worth playing (and finishing). I'm still amazed they managed to have a good story in that game, but they pulled it off. Once I found the silencer for the pistol and tried to stealth as much of the game as possible, I had a way better time with it, but blasting away with the dual-auto-shotguns is pretty great as well. I also need to play The Old Blood.

I need to get back to this, I made it pretty far i think and just stopped playing (i do this with everything). I thought the game was great and the difficulty not to bad once you get used to it.

The game was also my game of the year in 2014 and most likely resides in the top 3 of FPS single player games of all time right after NOLF2 and (perhaps even before) Half-Life 2 for me. The combination of satisfying sneaking and gunning in a fantastic(al), rugged world with characters that you actually grew a fondness for was impressive. Oh, and I loved trying to read the German letters in German with the aid of my middle school studies from 14+ years ago. The only thing that truly bothered me a bit about the game had to do with the engine with its (RAGE inducing) texture pop-ins.

I'm in the last leg of The Old Blood, and even if the combat/sneaking scenarios have been almost as enjoyable as the main game, the overall package is clearly at least a couple of steps below The New Order. Use of the climbing mechanic started feeling trite to me quite early on, for instance. Naturally, but thankfully as well, I played Grow Home right afterwards. The old school dream sequences were a cool idea in the main game but this one has one of them per level. Then again they're optional so that's really not a complaint. If nothing else it has been neat as a reimagination of the early parts of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which I've never played to the end. Time spent on Enemy Territory multiplayer, however... But overall The Old Blood might be worth checking out on sale if you're left yearning for more of Alexenstein.

Ok so I just started playing this game, and holy crap it's fun. Seriously I haven't had this good of a time playing a game in a while. Feels good.