Backlog of Doom

[Rob_Merritt]

Thanks to Target Clearances and a rash of new pc games, my backlog has gotten all sorts of scary. Sitting on my desk are:

Call of Juarez, Crysis, Gun, Kane and Lynch, Lost Planet, Overlord, Quake 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stranglehold, Time Shift, and Universe at War. (BTW are any of these short, like 8 hours or less?)

On top of that there is Gametap, and games I've been wanting to replay like Bioshock and Dark Messiah of Might & Magic since I built a new computer. I've even been itching to load up The Sims 2 and all the expansions and Bridge Commander to give them a whirl. Coming up soon is Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. There just isn't time. :\

[hong]

Wow. My backlog only consists of Mass Effect, Stranglehold and Assassin's Creed.

[Jake Plane]

I'm with you... I have on the back burner:

Mass Effect
Call of Duty 4
Eternal Sonata
Blue Dragon
Stranglehold
The Simpsons Game
Drake's Fortune
World in Conflict
The Witcher

[Gendal]

Heading to the company store^^^^^^^H Target later today myself. Just keep on hauling em home and try not to think about getting older and deeper in debt.

[Rob_Merritt]

FYI those aren't all clearance now, just some that I picked up from the past few months.

[Dave Long]

Universe at War is on clearance!

RE: Debt

I don't buy games to throw on the pile unless I'm doing it with cash. That would be even more insane to put myself in debt for things I never get around to playing.

I usually use the excuse of "research" for buying cheap games and I usually play them and find the playtime helpful in reviews I write later on.

[AndrewM]

RE: Debt

I don't buy games to throw on the pile unless I'm doing it with cash. That would be even more insane to put myself in debt for things I never get around to playing.

It's a line from a song.

[Gendal]

Yes, I am not actually going deeper in debt (of which I have zero), just making fun of myself for feeling despair over a backlog of games.

[metta]

I don't have a backlog of games, at all. On our Xbox, I'm rotating between Culdcept and Call of Duty IV. And Disgaea is monopolizing my PSP.

I have an itch to play Morrowind on the Xbox, but since I played that for years on a PC, it doesn't feel like a backlog title. And Neverwinter Nights 2 comes out this week for the Mac, but I don't have it yet, so that's not a backlog either.

Where I do have a backlog is books. Right now, I'm trying to get to:

The Prince of Nothing trilogy
Perdido Street Station
The Scar
House of Chains
Midnight Tides
The Bonehunters
Reapers Gale
Vengeance
Body Brokers
Fade
The Red Wolf Conspiracy
Matter
...and a couple of others I can't remember off the top of my head.

I don't buy games unless I'm ready to play them. But I buy books all the time. I'd rather buy books than food.

[Gendal]

Sometimes my stack of books to read drops below 10 and that's when I go grab my copy of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die and purchase a dozen or so. That doesn't happen all that often though, me and Amazon's one click button have a long and troubled history.

Read 75% of that list, some good stuff there. Do you know if the Red Wolf Conspiracy is any good? Sounds cool anyways. Oh hell nevermind, stupid oneclick button.

I am a consumer whore.

[nlanza]

And Neverwinter Nights 2 comes out this week for the Mac, but I don't have it yet, so that's not a backlog either.


I'm kinda torn about whether to pick that up -- I both loved and hated the original, and haven't paid too much attention to either the PC version of NWN2 or whether the port is any good.



Perdido Street Station
The Scar


These two (and really anything by Miéville) are among my favorite books ever. If you like them, you should really add Iron Council to the queue, since as fantastic as they both were, the third book is better.

My current backlog of games:

Mass Effect
Halo 3 (I know, I know, late to the party)
No More Heroes
Apollo Justice
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

This isn't counting the half-dozen or more games I'm theoretically in the middle of but got distracted by something new and shiny (Endless Ocean, N+, Rez HD, Phantom Hourglass, Advance Wars Days of Ruin, Mario Galaxy, Metroid 3, etc, etc, etc).

This problem will only get worse when I start into the new Iain M. Banks book, which will probably own my brain for a while.

[wildpokerman]

If you take doom out of your backlog you'll be much better off.

On my desk are sitting Titan Quest and the expansion, Sims 2 Bon Voyage, soon to be joined by the free time expansion, Shattered union, Call of Duty 2, and Bioshock. The steam list includes Half Life and Half Life 2 which I need to finish.

[roguefrog]

Backlog:

Bully
Contact
Gears of War
Gothic 2
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metroid 2: Echos
Okami
Resident Evil - CODE: Veronica X
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Resident Evil Zero
Suikoden III
Final Fantasy 9
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Yakuza
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Playing Sins of the Solar Empire.

[DoomMunky]

I only buy games when I have the time to play them, or I know I'll MAKE time to play them.

Having games I NEED TO PLAY sounds more like work than fun.

[jellyfish]

I only buy games when I have the time to play them, or I know I'll MAKE time to play them.
Having games I NEED TO PLAY sounds more like work than fun.
It is comforting to know that I have a good game or two waiting to be played. I get a little freaked out when I don't have anything lined up for after I finish what I am currently playing. Also I have a few books on my shelf that I haven't read yet, but they comfort me just by knowing they are there. I guess the thought that I could one day be totally bored and have absolutely nothing entertaining to do for the foreseeable future is a bit unsettling. The backlog of doom totally negates that danger. It's like digital prozac. (I went too far there didn't I?)

[Fugitive]

I've got tons of older stuff that's unfinished because I either lost interest, got distracted, or some other reason ("Ooh, Disgaea! Hmmm, looks complicated. Better wait until I can dedicate bigger chunks of time to it." *collects dust*).

Of recent stuff though, I still have to start Folklore and No More Heroes, and have really only barely started Culdcept Saga, Lost Odyssey, PGR4, and DW6.

[MyNameIsWill]

Yes, I am not actually going deeper in debt (of which I have zero), just making fun of myself for feeling despair over a backlog of games.
I thought the same thing.

[malkav11]

Bah. Lightweights.

http://backloggery.com/malkav11/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/main.php?user=malkav11)

Click to see the full list. Great site. :)

[McBain]

Crysis is both short and lots of (sorry Tom) fun. Give it a shot, IMO.

[Enduro_Man]

Call of Juarez, Crysis, Gun, Kane and Lynch, Lost Planet, Overlord, Quake 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stranglehold, Time Shift, and Universe at War. (BTW are any of these short, like 8 hours or less?)
You can rip through the main plot of Gun pretty quickly, with only the final boss battle being a potential sticky point. All of the side missions don't add a whole lot of time to your game clock, either.

Kane and Lynch is another short and straightforward game, even with its multiple (i.e. two) endings. There are a few difficult moments that might take you a few retries to crack, though.

Crysis is shorter than you might think, and well worth playing, especially if your system can keep things running smoothly. During its best moments, Juarez is a very fun shooter, but it can take a while to complete due to some plodding and frustrating stealth/platforming levels. A game-crashing bug makes it hard for me to remember how long I took to finish Quake 4, but I thought the game was much better than you'd think from the press it got.

[Cossix]

Call of Juarez, Crysis, Gun, Kane and Lynch, Lost Planet, Overlord, Quake 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stranglehold, Time Shift, and Universe at War. (BTW are any of these short, like 8 hours or less?)

Stranglehold is like 7-8 hours, Lost Planet is probably closer to 10-12 I think. Overlord is like 25 hours or something. Also it gets really dull and repetitive near the end. Like excessively so.

[BDGE]

I thought Overlord was pretty awesome throughout...except grinding certain minion colors in the castle dungeon arena. Still need to try out the expansion sometime.

Stranglehold and Lost Planet are also on my backlog, but I doubt I'll ever bother. Found neither to be any good for the few hours I spent with each.

Fuck I still have Oblivion to finish...and I've sunk 80-100 hours in easilly since launch.

And hey Planescape Torment too after all these years.

Plus a billion other games.

[BDGE]

Oh and another thumbs up for Quake 4 from me. Game was incredibly shortchanged based on reviews. I had a blast with it from beginning to end, more than I could say from FEAR which I played almost simultaneously that year.

[EvilIdler]

are any of these short, like 8 hours or less?

Yes, you could conceivably play a round of Sins in less than 8 hours on a small map.


Fuck I still have Oblivion to finish...and I've sunk 80-100 hours in easilly since launch.


So you have only just started? It might start to wear you out after 600+ hours.

My scary backlog is across four platforms: Oodles of strategy games+FPS mods on the PC,
a small load of DS games (short period of big import mania included) and then
there's my PS2 collection of JRPGs.
On top of that, I bought a 360 a little over a year ago, pushing the backlogs of the above even further back.
(Someone gave me Lost Planet, another guy gave me Blazing Angels 2..quit giving me work :P )

[unbongwah]

Bet my backlog is bigger and older (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1268305&postcount=16) than your backlog!

I'm kinda torn about whether to pick that up -- I both loved and hated the original, and haven't paid too much attention to either the PC version of NWN2 or whether the port is any good.
I've no idea how well the Mac port turned out, but the NWN 2 OC was a fairly solid RPG. But MotB is much stronger and I don't know when or if that'll be ported.

Oh and another thumbs up for Quake 4 from me. Game was incredibly shortchanged based on reviews. I had a blast with it from beginning to end, more than I could say from FEAR which I played almost simultaneously that year.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who thought Q4 was better than FEAR. Utterly predictable, but still rather fun.

[TurinTur]

Call of Juarez, Crysis, Gun, Kane and Lynch, Lost Planet, Overlord, Quake 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stranglehold, Time Shift, and Universe at War. (BTW are any of these short, like 8 hours or less?)

On top of that there is Gametap, and games I've been wanting to replay like Bioshock and Dark Messiah of Might & Magic since I built a new computer. I've even been itching to load up The Sims 2 and all the expansions and Bridge Commander to give them a whirl. Coming up soon is Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. There just isn't time. :\

I am going to help you. Without giving lengthy explanations :

Call of Juarez, - Yay
Crysis - Yay
Gun - Nay
Kane and Lynch - Nay
Lost Planet - Yay
Overlord - Nay
Quake 4 - Yay
Sins of a Solar Empire - Yay
Stranglehold - didn't played it
Time Shift - Yay
Universe at War - Nay.

[scharmers]

Declare backlog bankruptcy. Admit to yourself that you've purchased games that you really aren't going to play because you just killed the weekend with, say, TF2 and LOTRO. Put the games in a back closet and forget about them. Eventually, the flavor of the month will lose its flavor, and you'll end up pulling one of the backlog games out and giving its due.

Or just stop buying games already, fuck.

[Ch. Hasslbauer]

Ha! Go back to Russia, all of you, where you belong!
MY backlog:

Fable
The Witcher
World in Conflict
Full Spectrum Warrior Ten Hammers
Prey
GTA San Andreas
Soldier of Fortune 1
Warlords IV
Boiling Point
Korsun Pocket
Dawn of War
Europa Universalis
Star Wars: Battlefront I and II

OK, roguefrog officially owns me.

Edit: Wait, I forgot Virus 2000. Does this still count? Will it still count when there's no PC on Earth that can run it?

[Rob_Merritt]

Or just stop buying games already, fuck.

Stop buying games? Thats an option?

[Shadari]

Stop buying games? Thats an option?
Only after years of therapy.

[unbongwah]

Or just stop buying games already, fuck.
What fuckin' drugs are you on?

And do they cost less per month than all the games I buy but never have time to play? Because replacing one compulsion with a cheaper compulsion would be progress...of a sort.

[scharmers]

I never said that I would stop buying games I don't end up playing.

[Chuck]

I keep buying them, starting them and never get beyond a couple of hours with any of them. It's like I'm chasing some high that I'll never reach again. That high I got in the 80's playing RPG's, and again in the 90's with shooters (and looters).

So I'm concentrating on just one: Chrono Trigger. Such a great game.

[RepoMan]

Games I've started but not yet finished:

- finish: PC: Space Rangers 2
- finish: PC: Oblivion
- finish: PC: Quake 4
- finish: PC: Fallout Tactics
- finish: PC: Kohan 2: Kings of War
- finish: PC: GalCiv 2
- finish: DS: Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan!
- finish: Xbox: Psychonauts
- finish: Xbox: Spider-Man 2
- finish: Xbox: Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
- finish: 360: Dead Rising
- finish: PC: Company of Heroes
- finish: PC: Neverwinter Nights 2
- finish: DS: Kirby's Canvas Curse
- finish: 360: Gears of War
- finish: PC: Titan Quest
- finish: DS: Puzzle Quest
- finish: 360: Halo 3
- finish: DS: Advance Wars Dual Strike
- finish: PC: Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich

Games I've bought (or downloaded demos of) but not yet played:

- play: HL2 Episode 1
- play: HL2 Episode 2
- play: PC: Silent Storm
- play: PC: Dawn of War: Winter Assault
- play: PC: Darwinia
- play: PC: Vampire: Bloodlines
- play: Xbox: Dai Senryaku VII
- play: Xbox: X-Men: Legends
- play: PC: Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
- play: PC: Sins of a Solar Empire
- play: PC: Peggle
- play: DS: Phoenix Wright
- play: PC: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- play: PC: Shadowgrounds
- play: PC: Battles of PoP
- play: 360: Assassin's Creed
- play: PC; Depths of Peril
- play: PC: Armageddon Empires
- play: DS: Elite Beat Agents
- play: 360: Marvel Ultimate Alliance

I played a few games of Sins back in beta 3, but haven't even TOUCHED the final game yet :-(

Someday I will be done moving, and THEN, THENNNNN, my backlog will quail in fear!!!!! Actually not really because I still have very young kids. But in a few decades my kids will be all grown up and I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE ON YOU, BACKLOOOOOG! (shakes fist)

[Rob_Merritt]

It is rather sad to see myself bumping this thread after all this time. Things haven't gotten better, in fact things have gotten far far worse.
I really need to stop buying games. At least for awhile. Thanks to the waves of sales from online stores and clearance items at places at Target, coupled with most of my gaming time this past year centering around Fallout 3 and Plants vs Zombies, my backlog has gotten completely out of control.

I have:
On my desk 43 games still in shrink wrap
8 Telltale episodes to play
27 games on steam unplayed
4 games on Impulse unplayed
8 or so games on Good old Games unplayed
12 games on Direct 2 drive unplayed
at least 40 iphone games that I have bought (hey they are a buck) and haven't played
Probably 30 xbox live aracde games I've only played for 10 minutes and intended on playing more.

I knew it was bad but I had no idea.

[metta]

I have:
On my desk 43 games still in shrink wrap

/boggle

You could make a new desk out of them :o

[moss_icon]

I really need to stop buying games.

please don't. it looks like the PC gaming market is depending on you.

[Tim James]

You need a good month to work on 10 games that should be relatively quick to complete. My indie and freeware list got backed up and I'm blowing through about 30 of them. It's like the strategy of paying off debt by tackling the small balances first.

Stop wasting time driving to Target, and only buy the games online you want to play rather than "good deals." I probably pick up less than 1 or 2 games on sale per month because I already own almost everything I want to play.

[Rock8man]

Tim James: Master and Destroyer of the Backlog.

[Tim James]

It helps to be a little antsy, too. If you can't wait to get to that next classic game you'll have less of an urge to spend 200 hours in Plants vs Zombies. Then the struggle becomes finishing games before losing interest, which looks like a problem you might have as well.

One way to stay moving is to play games in parallel. Some people don't like it but it helps with tunnel vision because you realize that other games are just as great as the one you've been playing all year. I'll get sucked in by a game for a week, get bored with it just enough one day to try something else, and surprise myself with how good it is too. And since you're playing in parallel it's not too hard to go back to the original and polish it off.

The other way to stay on track is to give yourself a defined stopping point for open-ended games. You can always come back to them, and with Bethesda titles especially the game will probably look 10 times as good by then with mods and a computer upgrade or two.

[Tim James]

Bah. Lightweights.

http://backloggery.com/malkav11/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/main.php?user=malkav11)

Click to see the full list. Great site. :)What's funny about this post from March 2008 is that backloggery.com's signature image auto-updates, so I'm sure these numbers are much worse than they were 18 months ago. :)

Mine is a little more manageable.

http://backloggery.com/tooler/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/tooler)

[Alistair]

Another strategy is of course ebay them unplayed...

I recently remembered some more unfinished stuff...
Sacrifice, Thief, Longest Journey, Shogun, XCom Apocalypse. Sigh. Oh god, and Ultima IX.
Maybe I'll take my own advice. Maybe.

[Rock8man]

To add to Tim's advice: I've finally decided that only the best classics are worth going back for. Some of the games that I bought but never got around to playing were not in that category. They were decent, but not 'totally awesome' (sorry, too much Brutal Legend last night), so sometimes it is better to play the best of the best, especially if you're going back for them. It's not really worth going back for the mediocre ones, but understand that I use that word subjectively. Obviously one man's 'mediocre/meh' game is another man's "what are you talking about? That game was awesome".

The main games that I still want to go back for, that I think I will find totally awesome:

- Planescape: Torment (Played 3/4ths of it twice, got interrupted by real life)
- Baldur's Gate 2 (skipped because of passionate hatred for BG1)
- Independence War 2 (my ace in the hole, the last great space sim I'm keeping)
- Company of Heroes (still shrink-wrapped - people tell me it's excellent)
- Civilization IV (initially skipped because my machine ran it horribly slowly)

That's about it. I have lots of other games in my backlog if I want to get technical about it, and maybe a couple of classics I forgot to list, but for the most part, it's games that are only good at a particular moment in time, and I've probably already missed that window. (For example, I'm not convinced that Company of Heroes isn't in that category).

[Tim James]

Good is certainly the enemy of great, though for me personally it was about catching up on everything I missed as a kid due to lack of money or other interests. I skipped entire genres that I never would have known were great. I also like being able to understand what all the old fogies here are talking about when they swoon over Sacrifice, for example.

Don't forget that the same applies in reverse with modern titles. I buy very few new games because I want to make sure they stand the test of time. You also spend less money that way (unless you're the type that purchases bargains without thinking) so there's less guilt about wasted games.

Still, I recently looked at 5-10 games I may kick off the backlog. I bought them early on before I had an overall understanding of what I wanted to play, or before I knew how tedious they were. Each one was a couple bucks on half.com, so no real loss.

[Rock8man]

Luckily for me, I started buying games after college, around 97, so there's very few classics that I missed. (For example, I've played through Sacrifice's single player 3 times, and I spent a hell of a long time playing multiplayer with friends).

I enjoy reading your impressions Tim, because I do wonder sometimes how games that I consider classics hold up when viewed by someone playing them for the first time today. And I've usually been very tickled by the fact that you seem to get a similar kind of joy out of a lot of these games today that I got out of them back when they were released.

[krayzkrok]

So what's your oldest backlog game? As in, still sitting in the box unplayed on your shelf? For me I think it's Heavy Gear - that mother has been sitting there for years, nay decades. Another contender is X-Com Apocalypse, although in that case I did at least install it before shelving it to play when I had time.

[Tim James]

I enjoy reading your impressions Tim, because I do wonder sometimes how games that I consider classics hold up when viewed by someone playing them for the first time today. And I've usually been very tickled by the fact that you seem to get a similar kind of joy out of a lot of these games today that I got out of them back when they were released.Thanks, that's what I was going for. I didn't start the thread just to dump my thoughts in like a blog, but hoped people could play along vicariously.

I've yet to nail down why some classics still produce joy 10 years later, while others are great but make me think I missed the boat. Freespace 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 amazed me but unfortunately my heart won't flutter for Planescape: Torment despite loving it.

[Alistair]

Oh, and I-War. Damn.

[Rock8man]

So what's your oldest backlog game? As in, still sitting in the box unplayed on your shelf? For me I think it's Heavy Gear

Heh. I ruled out Heavy Gear around 2001. It had been sitting on my shelf a long time, but when I finally got around to playing it in 2001, I decided that I either wouldn't have liked it anyway, or maybe I just missed the window for when the game would have been fun for me.

Oldest for me is still X-com: UFO defense. Everything I hear about the game tells me I would love a modern remake of it. But I can't get myself to play the old classic itself with its interface quirks, super-low resolution, etc. But every remake that comes out gets lots of complaints by people who love X-com, so I'm starting to think that maybe there will be no perfect remake, and maybe I should just bite the bullet one day and play the original.

[Rock8man]

Another strategy is of course ebay them unplayed...

I recently remembered some more unfinished stuff...
Sacrifice, Thief, Longest Journey, Shogun, XCom Apocalypse. Sigh. Oh god, and Ultima IX.
Maybe I'll take my own advice. Maybe.

Sacrifice: Definitely.
Thief: Definitely.
Longest Journey: Definitely.
Shogun: Missed the boat, I think, might want to play a modern sequel instead.
XCom Apocalypse: Don't know, never played it.
Ultima IX: Seriously? I tried playing this back in the day, and besides the bugs, it just won't be that absorbing now. One aspect that was compelling was playing in a beautiful 3D world. Well, by today's standards it's not going to look like that beautiful a world.
I-war: Boy this one's tough. I love it to death, but like Format mentioned in a different thread, even when I got it to work with the Glide wrapper, it still crashes to the desktop frequently on a modern machine. You might have missed the boat on playing this one smoothly and getting the best experience out of it.

[Tim James]

Oldest for me is still X-com: UFO defense. Everything I hear about the game tells me I would love a modern remake of it. But I can't get myself to play the old classic itself with its interface quirks, super-low resolution, etc. But every remake that comes out gets lots of complaints by people who love X-com, so I'm starting to think that maybe there will be no perfect remake, and maybe I should just bite the bullet one day and play the original.It sounds like you have the personality that doesn't like dealing with old games. I don't seem to mind them unless there is a modern equivalent or they have poor design, but that's actually more of a problem around the turn of the century especially for shooters. For graphics it helps to have a CRT monitor though.

I just played X-COM in 2007. It's fine.

I should qualify and mention that I don't always go with the full oldgames experience. I didn't bother exploring Wasteland for 30 hours but enjoyed following a walkthrough.

[Alistair]

I played all the Total Wars but the first for some reason. U9 is a bit of a low point, yes. It's in the most disappointing games thread too :) System Shock I has just occurred to me too :(

[Rock8man]

It sounds like you have the personality that doesn't like dealing with old games.

Yeah, it can vary a lot. I don't mind dealing with older games up to a point. I still play Star Control 2 and MOO2, for example. I still think MOO2 is more playable than any modern equivalent, like Galactic Civ 2. But MOO1? Way too low resolution. To the point where it's really tough for me to get past. Same with MoM. There's like 8 pixels representing a unit that's supposed to be a wizard, for god's sake! I don't see a wizard in those 8 pixels. (A slight exaggeration, but not by much).

My other pet peeve for old games, besides a super-low resolution is mouse-look. I can't go back to play shooters that don't have mouselook. It's just too....... aggravating not to feel like I'm in control of the movement enough.

But other than those two things, I can usually go back to older games. I've never really tried X-com, so if you say it's okay, maybe I was afraid for no reason. Maybe it's resolution is fine.

[mkozlows]

I have to say, having a bit of a backlog is saving me giant piles of money. In Christmas '07, I bought a giant pile of games and then played them all. In Christmas '08, I bought a giant pile of games, and then spent the entire holiday season playing Fable and Fallout and then got burnt out on gaming, so never really touched the rest.

So all year this year, whenever I feel like buying a game, I ask myself: Do I really think this is better than all of EndWar, Banjo-Kazooie, Gears of War 2, and Prince of Persia?

Fortunately in the last couple of weeks, I've played through GoW2 (which, incidentally, was pretty great, especially co-op). Unfortunately, my son likes videogames and got both Red Faction and Arkham Asylum, both of which I want to play, so I'm further behind now than I was in January.

And Dragon Age is already preordered and will suck up a month of gaming time. And my son is going to get CODMW2 and AC2 for Christmas, and both of those look interesting, too...

[Desslock]

I have an incredibly massive backlog of great games that I've never even installed - I just spend way too much time with my games, and this year has basically been claimed solely by Fallout 3 and Dragon Age, with the end of the year likely being taken by Risen and Drakensang, which I still haven't gotten to, and hopefully some more Demon's Souls.

I'm happy that I at least somewhat chipped away at my backlog this year by fitting in X-men Legends, and I'm getting through X-men Legends 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Also finally played some Gears of War 1/2. Last year I finally got to Crusader: No Regret, lol. The oldest PC game on my backlog list (of games I actually want to play) is now Thief: The Dark Project. Yes, the first one.

Maybe I'll go on a Tim James-type mission. You're my hero for your diligence.

[Spect]

Last year I finally got to Crusader: No Regret, lol.


I'm shocked that you hadn't played that until last year. How did it hold up for you? I'm a huge fan of the Crusader games.

What did you run it on? The best I can do is run it through Dosbox with no cut scenes.

[peacedog]

I'm shocked that you hadn't played that until last year. How did it hold up for you? I'm a huge fan of the Crusader games.

What did you run it on? The best I can do is run it through Dosbox with no cut scenes.

Does that mean no FMV at all? How can you play Crusader without "Weasel's here with the gear".

Good times.

[Tim James]

Maybe I'll go on a Tim James-type mission. You're my hero for your diligence.I certainly admire the depth you put into some of those RPGs. I come back to most of my favorites to play as a new character, but haven't found one yet that makes me want to live in the world for 300 hours.

Which, on a related note, is the other way to keep moving through a backlog: don't play MMOs and watch out for multiplayer games! Company of Heroes 1v1 nearly killed this whole project last year, and if I added MMORPGs to all these single player games it would start cutting into my real life time.

To play along: the oldest game I have waiting is Ultima 4, thanks to that engine remake. Like Wasteland, I doubt I will do the full experience mapping out the game and writing notes, but I'd like to tour it anyway.

[Desslock]

I'm shocked that you hadn't played that until last year. How did it hold up for you? I'm a huge fan of the Crusader games.

What did you run it on? The best I can do is run it through Dosbox with no cut scenes.

I ran it on Doxbox -- Crusader No Remorse (which I also replayed) ran completely fine.

For Crusader No Regret, you had to accelerate the cycle rate for the cinematics or they'd stutter (but you couldn't run the game at that accelerated rate or you'd die very quickly) - so you basically had to anticipate when a cinematic was coming up, or save the game frequently enough that you wouldn't have to replay much if you didn't want to miss one. Bit of a pain, but not so bad once you got into the habit.

I actually really enjoyed playing both of them, and it's definitely worthwhile getting the cinematics going for No Regret, since they actually had a budget for those and used the Wing Commander IV video improvements so they were 16 bit.

[Desslock]

Which, on a related note, is the other way to keep moving through a backlog: don't play MMOs and watch out for multiplayer games!.

Yeah, I was never much into MMOs, although spent a fair amount of time with UO, Star Wars Galaxies and especially City of Heroes. Also a couple weeks with EQ2 and Saga Over Ryzom. Only played WoW for a couple of hours.

Have a bunch of unopened MMOs here: Lord of the Rings Online, Conan Online, Champions Online, D&D Online, World of WarCraft Burning Crusade Collectors' Edition (didn't bother with Lich King or Warhammer)...along with some even older and some defunct ones, including Lineage 2, Asheron's Call 2 (2 copies somehow, lol), an EverQuest 2 expansion, and threw out a bunch of Ultima Online and EverQuest expansions. Probably some more I'm forgetting.

None of those are even on my backlog list, although I might someday play some Conan, LOTRO or Champions, or even WoW, but I'd rather play the good single player stuff I've missed.

[Shimarenda]

Between WoW and Oblivion (230 hours and no sight of the end of the main quest yet), I haven't finished many games this year. My oldest game to finish is Betrayal at Krondor. The oldest I have a hope of playing is probably Fallout, which I've played but never finished.

[Rock8man]

I still remember Betrayal at Krondor for being the game in which I couldn't even make it to the city of Krondor without my party starving to death. At the time I found that both frustrating and yet absolutely hilarious.

(Explanation: As I've explained before in other threads, I never knew the solutions to the chest puzzles in those days, so I never plundered the chests in the game, which meant I never had enough money to buy food for my party and they eventually all starved because of poverty, essentially).

[RepoMan]

Here's my update, which is really not much of an update.

On the bright side, so far this year I've actually finished Prototype, Defense Grid, and Fallout 3 (started last year, admittedly). I played FO3 for about 100 hours, and Prototype for about 50 to 60, probably. So part of my problem is that I don't do any Tim James-like multitasking, I suppose. Still, I'd rather just wallow in something I enjoy until it's all wallowed out :-)

What I started and need to finish (or in Civ 4's case, "complete at least one game"!):

- finish: PC: Space Rangers 2
- finish: PC: Kohan 2: Kings of War
- finish: PC: GalCiv 2
- finish: 360: Dead Rising
- finish: PC: Company of Heroes
- finish: DS: Kirby's Canvas Curse
- finish: 360: Gears of War
- finish: PC: Titan Quest
- finish: DS: Puzzle Quest
- finish: 360: Halo 3
- finish: DS: Advance Wars Dual Strike
- finish: PC: Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich
- finish: HL2 Episode 1
- finish: 360: Devil May Cry 4
- finish: 360: Braid
- finish: 360: Dead Space
- finish: PC: King's Bounty
- finish: PC: Sins of a Solar Empire
- finish: 360: Assassin's Creed
- finish: PC: Armageddon Empires
- finish: PC: Crysis
- finish: PC: Dawn Of War 2
- finish: 360: Wolverine
- finish: 360: Red Faction: Guerrilla
- finish: PC: Civilization 4
- finish: 360: Batman: Arkham Asylum
- finish: 360: Brutal Legend

The above is in order from least to most recently played, so it's a very safe bet that some games at the top will get axed. In fact, I axed a few when making this post. (Am I really going to go back and play Psychonauts on the 360? No, no, I am probably not. And you know what, I didn't enjoy GTA4 enough to think that I will ever really bother to finish it, after getting about 1/4 of the way through. Lesson to me: superheroes are way more fun than street thugs.)

What I have but haven't played yet:

- play: PC: Battles of PoP
- play: PC: Beyond Good & Evil
- play: PC: Crysis: Warhead
- play: 360: Culdcept: Saga
- play: PC: Darwinia
- play: PC: Dawn of War: Winter Assault
- play: PC: Depths of Peril
- play: PC: Empire: Total War
- play: 360: Fable 2
- play: 360: Gears of War 2
- play: PC: HL2 Episode 2
- play: PC: HoMM 5
- play: 360: Lost Odyssey
- play: 360: Marvel Ultimate Alliance
- play: 360: Ninja Gaiden 2
- play: PC: Penny Arcade episode 2
- play: DS: Phoenix Wright
- play: PC: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
- play: PC: Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
- play: PC: Sam & Max episodes 1-3 (sigh, broken!)
- play: 360: Shadow Complex
- play: PC: Silent Storm
- play: PC: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- play: PC: Supreme Commander
- play: PC: Vampire: Bloodlines
- play: PC: World of Goo

And the real problem, of course, is that I've already preordered Borderlands and Dragon Age, and Assassin's Creed 2 is looming. (Beatles Rock Band is coming for Christmas, too, which is certainly going to take a bite out of something!) So the ol' backlog is in no danger of getting any shorter.

Edit: At one point Champions Online was on the list. But even if everyone was swooning over it, which they're not, the fact is that MMOs and serious strategy games just don't fit my lifestyle, maaan. I like playing games with an ending. (Strat games are fine once in a while, but not in a year-consuming, dozens-of-iterations kind of way.)

[Fugitive]

I really need to kick the WoW habit if I ever want to make a dent in my backlog, which is only getting worse. Even just going through the dailies chews up enough time that I could have completed another game or two a month instead. It's probably not coincidental that I completed a lot more games last year, when I wasn't playing WoW for most of the year.

My current goal is to work through the whole Gothic I/II/III series and then Risen one right after another, and they'll probably take enough time that I really don't need WoW distracting me. But dammit, I'm so close to the Loremaster achievement...

[Tim James]

If you are really bad at backlogs and won't sit down to finish a handful of titles quickly, it might be time to triage the best games and do those first if that is your goal (as opposed to just zoning out with a random new AAA title that is "fun"). Ask yourself whether you'd rather see Bloodlines and Silent Storm or another Prince of Persia and Dawn of War game.

In further contrast to spending a lot of time in a single game, I've recently started putting some games on the back burner rather than finishing them. Sometimes I don't want to get burned out by cranking through to the end. Age of Wonders Shadow Magic is a great game, but all of the campaigns play out the same. I'd rather hold off for a month than get annoyed by it.

[Marcin]

I'm fairly proud of myself, as I *finally* got into Silent Hunter III which I've had FOREVER, and am on my 5th patrol in a brand spanking new Type IID with its ridiculous fuel capacity (after the IIB which was rather painful), with no signs of getting either tired or bored with it.

Ditto Gothic II (the finally getting into it part, not as much the fuel capacity part). In fact, if I get to a decent point in both SH3 (say, getting a Type VII boat) and in Gothic 2 (Chapter 3 and some real armor) I'm consigning the rest of my backlog to the void. These two have been in my "embarrassing I haven't played yet" pile for years.

I mean, is it a backlog if you occasionally pick it up and get a few levels/new kit? :D Midnight Club LA, Stalker CS, Banjo Nuts & Bolts, Fallout 3 all fall into this territory.

[malkav11]

What's funny about this post from March 2008 is that backloggery.com's signature image auto-updates, so I'm sure these numbers are much worse than they were 18 months ago. :)

Mine is a little more manageable.

http://backloggery.com/tooler/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/tooler)

Oh, much worse. In that time I went from 16 hours a week of work to 40 (by way of 30), with $4+ dollars / hr in salary upgrade. So, suddenly I have plenty of money to buy games, but I have a lot less time to actually finish them.

I also got a PS3, which opened up a couple new game purchasing fronts. And digital distribution services went absolutely fucking berserk with sales. I bet well over 50% of the games I've bought in the last year were dirt-cheap purchases on DD services. Hell, D2D alone got me about eight new games last month.

To be honest, though, it doesn't bother me that much - I'll get to some percentage of these games sooner or later, and having them as options is much better than not. Especially given that it's not uncommon for many games to all but disappear within a year or two.

[Omniscia]

I don't even want to think about my backlog. It's daunting to say the least.

Naming just those I can see from here:

F.E.A.R. 2
Civ 4: Colonization
The Witcher
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Scarface
Far Cry 2 (got into this, but haven't touched it in months)
Gothic II
Gothic III
The Political Machiune 2008
Timeshift
Crysis: Warhead
Sins of a Solar Empire
Mercenaries 2
Dungeon Siege
Space Siege

And that's barely scratching the surface. There are a heck of a lot of console games on the list, as well, including both God(s) of War, and Shadow of the Colossus. But the PS2 games can be explained away by a flaky console.

[BlueJackalope]

I have some time off next week, I'd like to hit

Batman
FEAR 2
Red Faction
MUA:2

Or I could keep on the Battlefield 1943/Madden10/Williams Pinball treadmill that has kept me ridiculously entertained for the past few weeks...

[interman]

My list is so long that I made my own web app to keep track of it. The problem is that after I made it I bought a 360 and got addicted to achievements, so I'm a lot better at playing new stuff than I am at catching up.

[jfletch]

I have been moving through a game in my backlog that I wouldn't have even considered in my backlog.

I was sick in bed for a big chunk of last week. I really felt too crappy to go into the office, sit on the sofa, and play Xbox and PS3. So I picked up my PSP and started playing through Daxter, which I got with my PSP 2000 in 07.

It's really good! A very fun little platforming adventure. I'm about 80% done with it, playing a bit every night. So I'll wrap that up soon. I also finished Fable 2 recently.

[Alistair]

Just finished Risen, and Total War still crashes on me, so in prime backlog mode... but they're all in storage quite a few blocks away. Grr.

[Rob_Merritt]

Ok, I need help. Serious help. I'm not bragging, this has become a problem. If I play 2 games a week, I could go into 2011.

I have:
On my desk 51 games still in shrink wrap
6 Telltale episodes to play
38 games on steam unplayed
3 games on Impulse unplayed
5 or so games on Good old Games unplayed
12 games on Direct 2 drive unplayed
And I'm not even looking at the iphone or xbox aracde for games anymore.

[Paul_cze]

I have the same problem.

If game industry collapses for a few years and no game comes out in that time, I am fine with it.

[Mysterio]

Ok, I need help. Serious help. I'm not bragging, this has become a problem. If I play 2 games a week, I could go into 2011.

I have:
On my desk 51 games still in shrink wrap
6 Telltale episodes to play
38 games on steam unplayed
3 games on Impulse unplayed
5 or so games on Good old Games unplayed
12 games on Direct 2 drive unplayed
And I'm not even looking at the iphone or xbox aracde for games anymore.

Think of yourself as mainly a games collector, and you won't stress out...as much. It works for me!

[intruder]

Part of me has given up to ever be able to catch up with my backlog.
Right now I can clear some games per month if I stay away from WoW but if I ever start a family this will be impossible.

Since I aknowledged that I happily buy games I want + play my games.

[sam and the firefly]

Think of yourself as mainly a games collector, and you won't stress out...as much. It works for me!

That's the approach I took with my PS2 collection. I have going on 200 games for that system, because they are so cheap, but hell if I'll ever play half of them.

For more recent consoles, I play basically everything I buy quickly enough, but never get round to finishing 90%. Endless stuff like FIFA 10, music games and GTA episodes take up far too much "new game" time, which should probably be spent finishing things like Bayonetta.

[WarrenM]

Some of these backlogs honestly are starting to sound a little mental problem-ish. Like, OCD type stuff or behavioral malfunctions. Seriously, 51 games sitting in shrink wrap? That sounds like uncontrollable urges to me.

And I'm willing to bet that it's not the pure love of gaming that you likely use to justify it - it's something in your psyche that compels you to buy whatever it is that is new that week. It just happens that games became the focus.

[Dave Long]

These guys keep you in business. I think there are a lot of "collectors" out there. Too much money and no idea what to do with it, so they buy lots of videogames they'll never have time to play.

The real question is, will that bubble ever burst?

[WarrenM]

They're customers, sure, but I doubt that it's the collectors who keep us in business. There are millions of Gears players who have actually played the game (we have stats on them so we know they've opened the shrink wrap). :)

[Dave Long]

Oh yeah, I'm not saying they're the sole reason you're so successful, but I think they make up a large enough number of players to create a bubble effect for videogame sales.

Their effect is larger when a game isn't among the top sellers.

[intruder]

They're customers, sure, but I doubt that it's the collectors who keep us in business. There are millions of Gears players who have actually played the game (we have stats on them so we know they've opened the shrink wrap). :)


+Gears of War PC (shrinkwrapped)
+Gears of War 2 Xbox 360 (shrinkwrapped and I don't own a Xboc 360 yet)
+Unreal Tournament 2004 Collector's Edition PC (unplayed (opened to check content since something was missing / broke in some of them as I recall))
+Unreal Tournament 2007 PC (shrinkwrapped)

[WarrenM]

Not sure what your point is. Really, we'd prefer people were playing the games and having fun rather than using them as shelf fillers but whatever floats your boat. Thanks!

[Slainte Mhath]

For a long time I controlled my backlog by putting a strict "I won't buy anything until it reaches the $25 price point" rule, which I broke only for Elder Scrolls games and a couple of MMORPGs. That worked great right up until the past couple of years when digital distribution sites like GoG, Impulse and Steam started shoveling titles out the door for $10 and less, then places like Amazon and GoGamer got into the mix by drastically reducing prices on older titles. I'm now totally screwed, as who can resist a Gal Civ bundle download for $5 or Prince of Persia new in shrinkwrap for $2.50?

So, my backlog of recent (and cheap) untouched purchases includes:
Prince of Persia
Sins of a Solar Empire
Maelstorm
Battlestations Midway
Call of Juarez
Company of Heroes
Galactic Civilizations I Gold
Space Rangers II
Left for Dead 1

I have started but not nearly finished with the following as well:
Fallout 3
Neverwinter Nights 2 - with both expansions
Third Age mod for Medieval 2:Total War (I go back to M2:TW all the time, love the game)
Age of Mythology - Was a long time backlog denzien, I'm 2/3 of the way through now.

Nevermind the fact that I haven't touched my Lord of the Rings Online account in nearly 3 months. Also pay no attention to the REALLY old titles on my PC gaming shelf that I either did not play or only started playing over the past 15 years, that's a backlog that would require DosBox and an eternity to slog through. I've convinced myself I'm "collecting" those titles.

Also, I just bought and started Dragon Age, which takes precedence over everything above.

So as you can see, with only maybe 2 hours a night to get my game on, I'm pretty much screwed. And every day I see more great deals on games I know I want to eventually play, so by January I expect the untouched backlog to have half a dozen new additions. I really need to win the lottery so I can retire and play video games all day long.

[Rob_Merritt]

Not sure what your point is. Really, we'd prefer people were playing the games and having fun rather than using them as shelf fillers but whatever floats your boat. Thanks!

Well I am playing games all the time, Its just when Target, or Go Gamer, or steam puts something on sale at a low price, it is hard do say no. Like Slainte Mhath, any system I had in place is just broken. The kicker is, I'm fairly sure I'm spending less on games now that I was a year ago. I imagine myself back into an 80s arcade. If I saw that game, I'll put $2 into it. Well now I pay $2 and I own it. I use to spend $100 to $150 a month. Now I'm below $100 easily and I'm buried in games.

[Tim James]

Hmm, a bursting videogame bubble is an interesting concept. Has the bubble ever burst on inexpensive impulse purchases though? I'd imagine DVD communities are just as bad as niche people like us who buy videogames.

[RepoMan]

I'm easing back myself. I've totally cut out purchasing games at discount. It's stupid to do. I have enough fun with the irresistible day-one AAA games (and enough problems getting them off my backlog) that jumping on the latest $5-special-of-the-day doesn't bring any real joy to my life; it just adds another gratuitous backlog item. I still haven't even touched Penny Arcade episode 2, or World of Goo, for instance.

So this fall I bought only about five games -- Batman: Arkham Asylum, Brutal Legend, Borderlands, Dragon Age: Origins, and Assassin's Creed 2. I've played the first four quite a bit (Borderlands to completion, and ongoing co-op as well), and I will almost certainly finish them all. It will take me until end of January, most likely, and I'll be blissing out the whole time :-D

I may not be denting my full-sized backlog, but I'm playing the hot newnesses to smithereens, and I'm having a blast. I'll probably be unable to resist Mass Effect 2 on day one, which will further postpone real backlog progress. But I strongly doubt I'll get any other games until after I'm fully done with the above five AND Mass Effect 2. The spring doldrums next year will be BACKLOG-O-RAMA!

[WarrenM]

I think it's fine to have a few back up games in case the new hotness dries up for a period of time - which I have and which it does. I buy a few bargain games that sit there and wait for quiet periods where I can get to them and try them out. But if I had 50 unopened games, I might start to ask myself some questions.

[Blackadar]

My backlog is actually getting pretty low.

Civ 4 and WoW are always in my rotation and I occasionally go back to SimCity 4, Colonization and Gal Civ II. I could resubscribe to LOTRO, EQ2 or WAR, but those don't really count.

So for unfinished games, I'm down to:

Batman: Arkham Asylum (and I probably won't finish that since it gives me a touch of motion sickness)
The Witcher
Sacred 2
Torchlight

I think that's about it. Since I just played through DA:O and NWN2, it looks like I'll be approaching RPG burnout soon.

[Rock8man]

Yeah, I'm with RepoMan. That sounds like a great idea. Just stop the purchases of older titles just because they're cheap, and only buy the newer games. I've done the same this holiday season, and have almost no backlog from the big releases this season. It's not the most economical of solutions, but psychologically it seems to work the best for me as well. It's only when I try to get back to older titles that I meant to play that I get a bigger and bigger backlog.

Back when I was a student and didn't have a job, there was also a lot more time to play games, so there was time to go back and play older titles that I missed, or even older titles that I'd played and wanted to play again, but with only about 10-15 hours of gaming a week at my disposal for the last few years (except on certain Holidays), it's become increasingly clear that going back to older titles is increasingly impractical. And why not focus on the new hotness? The new games coming out the last few years have been pretty awesome.

[intruder]

Hmm, a bursting videogame bubble is an interesting concept. Has the bubble ever burst on inexpensive impulse purchases though? I'd imagine DVD communities are just as bad as niche people like us who buy videogames.


Not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983) as if it happened before...

[Tim James]

And why not focus on the new hotness? The new games coming out the last few years have been pretty awesome.For one thing, they might not stand the test of time. I'd rather discover Freespace 2 than another third person shooter that has a lot of buzz for a month. If you've lucked into some great ones though, then no worries.

I've said before you don't have to stop buying old games and bargains as long as you have a plan for what to play, and keep the good from getting in the way of the great.

[Rock8man]

For one thing, they might not stand the test of time. I'd rather discover Freespace 2 than another third person shooter that has a lot of buzz for a month. If you've lucked into some great ones though, then no worries.

This is a good point. Luckily, I've already played most past classics. I don't really have a Freespace 2 to discover, because I've already played it. There are some older classics that I haven't played like X-com and non-mouselook 3D games like the first System Shock, but as we've discussed before, I can't get into those anymore because of the graphics/control barrier. I've played most classics from the mid-90s onward though.

The big ones I missed out on that are agreed to be classics by most people nowadays are:
Baldur's Gate 2,
Second half of Planescape: Torment,
Independence War 2.

I do plan to go back to those, but where it gets fuzzy are more recent games that I never got around to because I missed them near launch for one reason or another. Games like Stalker, Company of Heroes, Brothers in Arms games, and so on. These are games that I consider to be on my backlog, and yet, I never have too strong a desire to actually play them. Perhaps it's because I'm not entirely convinced that they're worth going back for. Are they classics? They certainly have their cheerleaders on this board. Maybe it's better to write them off and move on though; maybe come back to them if people are still talking about them 10 years from now?

[Tim James]

That's why you start a thread and ask which games are worth playing out of all the shit. It's what I do!

[Rock8man]

Also Tim, I think one of the things to be gained by playing "non-classics" that are the new hotness, is that even though they're not destined to be considered classics, they are still good in that specific time-frame. For example, Lizard King often brings up the good things that Scarface did on the last gen consoles (Xbox, PS2) that were kind of unique to it in terms of open-world games. If you enjoy open-world games, that might be worth experiencing at that time, even though it's not necessarily good enough to want to go back for once you've missed that window. I don't think (but I could be wrong) Scarface is good enough to go back for, now that we've moved on to the next generation of games, but it might have been interesting to experience in its time.

[malkav11]

Nobody's really followed up on a lot of what I liked about Scarface. Certainly not GTA.

[intruder]

Scarface was worth buying for Tony's constant swearing alone.

"Resevoir Dogs" is not a good game but the fact that you can slam hostages into walls to make police drop their weapons is pretty unique, too and made me pick it up cheap.

[RickH]

Scarface was worth buying for Tony's constant swearing alone.

There's something special about a game that slaps "You Fucked Up!" on the screen when you get yourself killed.

[mkozlows]

Back when I was a student and didn't have a job, there was also a lot more time to play games, so there was time to go back and play older titles that I missed, or even older titles that I'd played and wanted to play again, but with only about 10-15 hours of gaming a week at my disposal for the last few years (except on certain Holidays), it's become increasingly clear that going back to older titles is increasingly impractical.

Really, the key is to realize that whereas you used to be money-limited (and therefore it was sensible to buy games on sale or when they were good deals), you're now time-limited, and that time is the resource you need to optimize for, not money.

I've done a very good job keeping my backlog down this year: Thanks to Fable and Fallout, I didn't get a chance to play too much of last Christmas's non-RPGs, so every time I think about buying a new game, I ask myself if I want to play it more than Banjo-Kazooie, Endwar, or Prince of Persia. The answer is usually no, so I just wait to buy it until such time as I want to play it more than my existing unplayed games, if that ever happens.

That said, my successful backlog management is limited to videogames. In areas where a) things don't go obsolete, b) they don't get cheaper over time, and c) they frequently go out of print quickly, I'll buy things if they look good. Which is why I have 100 or so unplayed boardgames (out of the 250 or so I own, so it's not that bad), and 600-800 unread books (out of the 2500 or so I own).

[WarrenM]

See, 1000s of books, another one I don't get ... My wife has a few hundred stashed around the house and it drives me insane. If you're never going to read them again, punt them!

[Mysterio]

See, 1000s of books, another one I don't get ... My wife has a few hundred stashed around the house and it drives me insane. If you're never going to read them again, punt them!

You have heard of personal libraries in homes, right?

You seem to have major issues with people who collect games. Why so judgmental?

[slikster]

After perusing this thread, I was thinking it was a nice causionary tale of overindulgence. With my own backlog busting at the seams, I was feeling satiated. Lo and behold, as soon as I click back, I subconsciously start looking for the bargain thread. What? Really?

/facepalm

[Tim James]

See, 1000s of books, another one I don't get ... My wife has a few hundred stashed around the house and it drives me insane. If you're never going to read them again, punt them!That's a clutter problem. I've mentioned before my PC games collection sits in a couple of 3-ring binders or through digital distribution. I'll grant you that piles of boxes, CD cases, manuals, and other crap is bad, and there are still mental hangups to tackle here for some people regardless.

[malkav11]

Games don't go obsolete, imho. At least, not the good ones. But they do leave shelves sooner than you might think. This has a lot to do with my backlog of physical games. I don't want to have to pay some eBay extortionist a couple years down the road. My digital backlog, on the other hand, is 100% being a sucker for big discounts.

[Fugitive]

Games don't go obsolete, imho. At least, not the good ones. But they do leave shelves sooner than you might think. This has a lot to do with my backlog of physical games. I don't want to have to pay some eBay extortionist a couple years down the road. My digital backlog, on the other hand, is 100% being a sucker for big discounts.
Yeah, I think I at least partly got into the habit of snapping up games I didn't intend to play right away soon after I got a PS2, and felt like I had to grab some games when I could or if they were on sale because it would probably be a pain to track them down later on. But when it comes to digital distribution, I need a little angel on my shoulder whispering "It's not going anywhere... It'll still be there two years from now and probably even cheaper..."

[Creole Ned]

I think my backlog officially began in 1996 when I bought Quake. I didn't play it right away because I was waiting for the GLQuake patch to play it with my swanky Monster 3D card.

While the backlog is now a huge and frightening thing, I am getting better. When I see deals on Steam or other services the game has to either have an absurdly low price or be something I've been waiting to get for some time before I bite. I'll make a few exceptions here and there but I'm not as liable to follow the siren song of the hivemind anymore.

[Alex Pirani]

My backlog is getting bad lately. I still need to finish Far Cry 2, all the HL2 Episodes, Borderlands. I know there's about 19 others that I'm forgetting...



Have a bunch of unopened MMOs here: Lord of the Rings Online, Conan Online, Champions Online, D&D Online, World of WarCraft Burning Crusade Collectors' Edition (didn't bother with Lich King or Warhammer)...along with some even older and some defunct ones, including Lineage 2, Asheron's Call 2 (2 copies somehow, lol), an EverQuest 2 expansion, and threw out a bunch of Ultima Online and EverQuest expansions. Probably some more I'm forgetting.
That unopened Burning crusade collectors edition has a code for an exclusive in-game non combat pet. You could probably sell it on ebay for a few bucks. Since vanity items are apparently the most important thing to people who play WoW (for example, there's a spectral tiger mount selling on ebay right now for over 500 dollars with 4 bids and reserve not met, what the fuck.)

[intruder]

That unopened Burning crusade collectors edition has a code for an exclusive in-game non combat pet. You could probably sell it on ebay for a few bucks. Since vanity items are apparently the most important thing to people who play WoW (for example, there's a spectral tiger mount selling on ebay right now for over 500 dollars with 4 bids and reserve not met, what the fuck.)

Originally you needed to use the Collector Edition's key when installing it to get the pet in-game (in the mailbox at first logon after the expension went live). The European version didn't work that way. Due to some key problems you had to mail in the key + recipe to Blizzard in France. This was however deadlined.
No idea how / if you can get the pet these days.

Tigers are nearly impossible to get on Horde side besides a lucky boss drop from ZG. The only thing I miss from switching from Ally to Horde some years ago is indeed my tiger mount (Nightelf). The riding animation is one of its kind (like a wave) and I haven't seen any mount on Horde side that does resemble it.
I would never pay $500 for a virtual item though!

[RickH]

(for example, there's a spectral tiger mount selling on ebay right now for over 500 dollars with 4 bids and reserve not met, what the fuck.)

It *is* a pretty cool tiger mount, and if I could get it in-game I would.

But really, do we expect the enhanced desirability of rareness to decrease when we enter a virtual world? People are still people.

[malkav11]

I think the prices of spectral tiger mounts are nuts, but do realize that's an uber-rare card from the trading card game and there is no other way to get that mount except that card.

Combine that with high disposable income and a lot of people that play WoW and mount-hoard obsessively but don't play the TCG or don't get lucky when they do, and you have obscene auction prices.

I would guess there are probably Magic cards that go for more.

[John Sansker]

Another thing with the mounts is, there are in game achievements for getting 50 and 100 mounts.
Some mounts are extremely rare drops. ( few dozen or up to 100 or so runs of Stratholme and I've only seen the Baron's mount maybe once)
So, some people would have no problem at all spending real money for a virtual item that is otherwise impossible to get. ( saw a guy on one of the Acme lookin rockets and found out how to get one and that made me a bit sad)

[prolix]

See, 1000s of books, another one I don't get ... My wife has a few hundred stashed around the house and it drives me insane. If you're never going to read them again, punt them!
He probably likes McDonald's too.

[WarrenM]

You know who else liked McDonalds? Hitler.

[RepoMan]

Hitler should be ashamed. Of being Hitler. And of liking McDonald's. And of not letting people take pictures of him.

[forgeforsaken]

So post Christmas my backlog has become pretty scary. I got New Super Mario Bros, Assassins Creed 2, and a PS3 with both Infamous and Killzone2. I also, just before xmas, grabbed some stuff cheap on Steam like Trine and Darwinia, and I still haven't finished Dragon Age. I'm looking all set for a while, but there's also a bunch of stuff coming out in the next few months, of which at least one game, Mass Effect 2, I will be getting release day.

[Blackadar]

Yep, the ole' backlog is a-growin'.

Currently in Heavy Rotation

LOTRO
Football Manager 2010

Currently in Light Rotation

EQ2 (perhaps dropping out of the rotation altogether)
Civ 4
SimCity 4

Backlog O' Doom

Railroad Tycoon 2 (Steam sale)
Sword of the Stars Complete (Steam sale)
Sacred 2
The Witcher (can never seem to get to this one)
Spore (doubt I'll try it again, but who knows?)
Planescape: Torment (yet again)
Torchlight (resumption of previously played and uncompleted game)

Waiting in the Wings

WoW (yet again)

[RepoMan]

Assassin's Creed 2 finally made it into the 360 last night, after arriving on Christmas. And holy fuck, did it ever grab me instantly with all its open-world gotta-catch-em-all goodness. So now just the AAA portion of my backlog stack is:

Assassin's Creed 2
Dragon Age: Origins
Brutal Legend
Batman: Arkham Asylum

Each new game causes the previous hotness to get buried one deeper....

Borderlands isn't helping by being so much fun that it keeps sucking one or two game nights per week in co-op with my old friend in the city.

And then there's the REST of the backlog, already posted (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=1926399#post1926399) earlier in this thread. Still, at least I managed to totally avoid the Steam and other download-service holiday sales this year, which means I only added a handful of titles to the backlog rather than multiple handfuls and footfuls. So that's progress. Of a sort.

[Jarmo]

Malkav11, thanks for introducing The Backloggery to me! I like it as a handy online list of my games. It was quite a job compiling the list but it was a nice reminder of all the games I've got laying around waiting to be played. Some day.

http://backloggery.com/jarmo/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/jarmo)

[Rock8man]

I finally signed up for that site too, since it is the start of a new year and time for resolutions and all that.

Boy, that is going to be a lot of work, if I want to also enter in games I've finished. For now, I just started with my basic list: I-war 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Thief 2, Thief 3, and a few 360 games that I'm currently playing. I'm hoping the site will be a nice way to remind myself to come back to the older games instead of buying new ones this year.

[malkav11]

Yeah, well. Y'ain't seen a lot of work yet. Check this out:
http://backloggery.com/malkav11/sig.gif (http://backloggery.com/malkav11)

:)

[Tim James]

Boy, that is going to be a lot of work, if I want to also enter in games I've finished.I decided not to do that, just games I've played or plan to play since I started back up in 2007. Seemed a little too much like obsessive list making and organization, even for me! You could put some recent ones in there to get you moving though, whatever works.

[RepoMan]

Yeah, I'll stick with my text file, thanks. Plus, Backloggery doesn't distinguish between "unfinished" and "unstarted", which is key for my personal neurotic tracking inclinations.

[Tim James]

Technically you could use the Null category, but yeah, I usually try to finish what I start at least to a point.

[malkav11]

I use the notes field to indicate my progress in the game, and so if a game has notes I've started it. Of course, I might not have remembered where I was in a game that I added in my initial pass, so there's probably some in there that I have started but don't have notes. But I don't really care, to be honest. If I don't remember where I was I should probably start over anyway.

[Desslock]

Yeah, I use an excel sheet, which is sadly into the hundreds now. I wanted to try to play a game or two over the holidays, but ended up not having any. January is looking slow though, so I'm going to try to get through at least one or two of these:

Demon's Souls
Gears of War
Batman AA
GTA4
Risen
Half-life 2 episodes
Dead Rising
Red Faction Guerilla
BioShock
Crackdown

Suggestions?

[DoomMunky]

Which ones are you having fun playing? You should play those.

[malkav11]

Crackdown's a pretty fast play. And very explodey. Demon's Souls is awesome but I wouldn't really recommend trying to play straight through and beat it inside a month. I guess you might be able to if you're good enough, but it -is- pretty darn hard. You really ought to at least try Bioshock.

[WarrenM]

Which ones are you having fun playing? You should play those.
Seriously, some of you guys talk about playing games like it's a job or a checklist that you have to slog through. Play the ones that you find enjoyable.

[Tim James]

Yeah just play WoW for 5 years straight, don't bother with any other games.

[Rock8man]

Those are all good games Desslock, I don't think you'll really go wrong with any of them. It's not as if you have a Killzone 2 or something atrocious like that on your list. I personally couldn't get into Gears of War at all until I played Gears of War 2's Horde mode. Once that spiked my interest, I actually went back to Gears 1 to play its campaign. Until then I used to think Gears was a pretty terrible game. But once you get further in the campaign its a lot better than I initially gave it credit for.

Crackdown is probably the most joyously fun game of the lot. It's even better if you can find someone on your friends list to help you get through some of the harder bosses.

[fuzzyslug]

Yeah, I use an excel sheet, which is sadly into the hundreds now. I wanted to try to play a game or two over the holidays, but ended up not having any. January is looking slow though, so I'm going to try to get through at least one or two of these:

Demon's Souls
Gears of War
Batman AA
GTA4
Risen
Half-life 2 episodes
Dead Rising
Red Faction Guerilla
BioShock
Crackdown

Suggestions?

Bioshock is one of my top 5 games ever, so I'd play that first.

Outside of that, I'd play the Half-life episodes because I'd be worried about them aging and I'd hit Batman: AA to see one of the top 3 games of this past year.

[Reed]

Demon's Souls
Gears of War
Batman AA
GTA4
Risen
Half-life 2 episodes
Dead Rising
Red Faction Guerilla
BioShock
Crackdown

Suggestions?
Damn...can't go wrong there.

I'd say it depends on what type of game you feel like playing. Open world? Red Faction. FPS? BioShock. RPG? Demon's Souls. Coop? Crackdown. Multiplayer? Gears of War. Something to finish relatively quickly? BioShock, Batman or Gears.

[Desslock]

Which ones are you having fun playing? You should play those.

That's the list of stuff that I really, really want to play, and am really looking forward to playing them all -- have lots of stuff I'm less interested in that I haven't played. the game that probably personally interests me the most is Risen, but I might take a non-RPG break for a change. Basically played Dragon Age for 4 months.

o.k., going to play Demon's Souls on console and BioShock on PC. Can't tie up the TV all the time, so I'll play them concurrently. Yay, good games.