This year, one of my passive resolutions is to really make a dent in my gaming backlog…and it’s May already, so this might not land!
My backlog exists simply because I am notorious at buying games and not actually playing them. Playing videogames as an adult is having more money than spare time; the complete reverse problem of having more time than spare money as a youngster. And on that note, embarassingly, I still have purchases from 2008, the Playstation 2 era, yet to play.
I’ve been using Letterboxd for a few years now to track all the films i’ve watched (2021 wrap up here), and a poorly updated Goodreads account for similar logging with books. Now i’m giving GG a shot for games.
Last year I only completed five games in total, so i’m looking to make a lot more progress this time around. I made a list for tracking everything i’ve completed as I go, as well as a list of everything i’ve played. Some games are only multiplayer, service-based, or there just for dipping in and out of, so this list will catch the rest of the games that aren’t necessarily completeable. My “completed this year” list is here.
This year already, Sonic Mania and Streets of Rage 2 are obvious redos, but Horizon: Zero Dawn and it’s DLC are first plays. I’ve had both of the latter since launch, five years ago. I greatly enjoyed both, giving them a proper chance outside of release hype, rushed launches, and the competition of other games, but it frustrates me too that I basically left something awesome like that on the shelf for as long as I did. It was really fun hunting and shooting arrows at Robot Dinosaurs in a lush techpocalype vastness, probably to the surprise of no-one at all. I planned to write a bigger post about Horizon earlier this year, but hopefully this is something I can actually do with the other titles when I start digging into the backlog.
There’s already a few things that i’ve really got circled on that backlog. Pikmin 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 4…lots…more. Catching up on everything I already own but missed, and just playing more outright, that’s the objective. Hopefully by the end of the year i’ll have some good news to report!