JonCole

Backlog Busters

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I used to keep good track of an ongoing backlog of games to finish, but at some point when I started getting old and having more responsibility it no longer felt like a to do list so much as a "things I've failed to do" list. I try to play what I want to play at any given moment and do my best not to think about it all anymore.

It's usually the big Nintendo games (Mario, Zelda, and Metroid) that I somehow seem to make time for and blow through as soon as I get them, but everything else is really a case by case basis.

I will never beat Turok 2 and I don't know why that still bothers me.

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Hmm, yeah... my backlog is so big that I don't really even want to think about it. I propably never reach the point where I have played all my backlog games, but here goes... this is a kind of quicklist.

Games that I have in my "near future" backlog list:

  • Far Cry 2 (Haven't played this at all in about two months now)
  • Ghostbusters (Also haven't played this in a long time, I think I'm in the third mission now)
  • Braid
  • Chronicles of Riddick & Assault on Dark Athena (Bought from Steam, haven't played yet, though I did play Butcher Bay through originally)
  • The Conduit (90% through, one more mission and this is done)
  • Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 for Wii
  • Around 10 other games for Wii
  • Various stuff I bought from Steam sales
  • Secret of Monkey Island special edition

The following games I don't know when I can get to these:

  • Bunch of Dreamcast games, now that I have the system up and running again
  • Sam&Max Season 1&2 (I have played until 1x04 a long time ago)
  • Tales of Monkey Island
  • Dreamfall
  • Beyond Good & Evil (Never completed it, have to start from the beginning again with this one)
  • Many big boxes full of old PC games that I bought and collected until 2006
  • A box full of Amiga games
  • A box full of Commodore 64 games
  • A box full of Sega Saturn games
  • Totally forgot that I have a bunch of DS games that are waiting to be played also

Edited by Kolzig

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Also, I signed up to the backloggery, and I got about 5 entries end before I realized I would waste way too much time trying to categorize it all.

Hahaha, yeah I see what you mean. Almost like that time could be spent actually playing the games instead.

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Beyond Good and Evil is soooo good... that and Psychonauts.

The only recent game that reminds me of them is Ratchet and Clank, just finished the last one, it was a fine game as well.

In the end, I really like when a game gives you a sense of progression and you have an idea of how far to the end you are. When that doesn't happen, I'm always fumbling around to know how long most people take to finish the game, otherwise I'll just lose focus and go back to comfort games like TF2.

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I just finished logging my PS3, Wii, and GC games... felt a little cumbersome, but that's not too bad. But adding my DS, PC, and 360 games... that might be a real job. >.<

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I didn't add them all in one go...

One day I added all the GameCube ones, another day I added all the Game Boy ones... and so on and so on... But it has to be done, you have to be aware of how many games you have unbeaten... :blink:

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I tried Backloggery for a while, but it was too barebones for me. They don't have a database of games -- each entry is just a text field for the game name, and some additional info -- so there was no way to look up games, or show the boxart next to it, and it didn't check for duplicates.

I looked at a few other sites, and ended up going with Giant Bomb, which has a generic list implementation, with search capability and box art. Although, it uses manual sorting (I think it was intended for Top 10 style lists), so I had to write a greasemonkey script to get alphabetical sorting.

(There is a whole lot more that I want from a "List of Games" app, but since the one I've started and stop numerous times in the last 2 years never actually materializes, GB is good enough, for now.)

As for my actual backlog:

  1. Left 4 Dead 2
  2. Overlord II
  3. Jade Empire
  4. BioShock 2
  5. Far Cry 2
  6. The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
  7. Too Human
  8. Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
  9. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (GOTY edition)
  10. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
  11. Baldur's Gate (with expansion)
  12. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (with expansion)

It used to be much longer, but I took off a several games that I don't actually like (when a game feels like work, it's time to stop playing), and I've finished several games lately.

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Games I have played pretty far, but have stopped playing for one reason or another:

  • GTA IV
  • Episodes from Half-Life 2
  • Hitman: Blood Money
  • Empire: Total War
  • Metal Gear Solid 4
  • Uncharted
  • Uncharted 2
  • Torchlight
  • Red Alert 3

Games I bought because they were on sale but didn't really have time to play that much earlier because of my studies:

  • Flotilla (beat it several times)
  • Trials 2
  • Trine
  • Zombie Driver
  • Civilization IV Complete
  • Tropico 3
  • Far Cry 2

Games I would like to play:

  • Batman: Arkham Asylum
  • Red Dead Redemption

So I guess I know what I will be doing this summer. Some of the games, such as Torchlight, are easy to jump right back into. I have a feeling that if I'm ever going to back to GTA IV for instance, I would have to replay it from the beginning.

Edited by Nappi

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So I guess I know what I will be doing this summer. Some of the games, such as Torchlight, are easy to jump right back into. I have a feeling that if I'm ever going to back to GTA IV for instance, I would have to replay it from the beginning.

Man, I know how you feel. I have to restart any long games if I haven't played for a while... was a total pain in the ass to get back to Fallout 3 after seeing my old character that had 15 hours invested.

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I just busted Red Faction: Guerilla. What an awesome game. Not sure what I'm gonna play next, though. I already also beat The Bard's Tale (the new one) and SiN this month. Don't know what I'm in the mood for next!

For shiggles and gits: my backloggery

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I've decided on a rule: If I stop enjoying a game, it gets deleted from the backlog.

I loved Osmos at first, but the later levels get so hard so fast that I felt the difficulty was completely at odds with the aesthetic. Nothing with music that calm should make me so irate, but trying to micromanage orbits at such tolerances became a horrible mixture of difficult and dull. :violin:

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I've decided on a rule: If I stop enjoying a game, it gets deleted from the backlog.

I loved Osmos at first, but the later levels get so hard so fast that I felt the difficulty was completely at odds with the aesthetic. Nothing with music that calm should make me so irate, but trying to micromanage orbits at such tolerances became a horrible mixture of difficult and dull. :violin:

Yup, this is exactly what I did with Call of Duty 2. I mean... otherwise, I would have probably removed it from my backlog by breaking the disc in half.

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Out of curiosity, which levels are you talking about? I loved the whole game, personally. Especially the more puzzle-like ones, where you start out super tiny and have to navigate between the big ones. It was never frustrating to me. Challenging, yeah, but not frustrating.

I did just beat Dead Space, as well. Knock one more off my backlog of a couple hundred. :3

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Particularly the harder levels with attractors. I frequently play one for five to ten minutes, then reach a threshold where I could win, except the reaction mass needed to get to something, even slowly, is often enough to reduce me to prey just before I reach them.

I understand that movement is about restraint, and am content to make small adjustments and wait when it's necessary to, but it gets really dull. I'm sick of doing everything well for many minutes at a time, then one hurdle near the end of a level undoing it all in seconds :tdown:

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OK.

I know this thread is old but I need to make a vow.

Here it is.

Kromsy's gonna clear-out his backlog.

:gaming:

I think I'm going to write-up Actual Thoughts into some sort of blog as I check games off of my list, instead of the stream-of-consciousness junk I spill on here when I'm feeling talkative. I'll see if I can be bothered.

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That's spooky. Just the other day I started updating mine. Still missing a few generations (namely N64 and DOS/early Windows), but it's really bloody staggering just how many games I haven't completed over the years. :getmecoat

http://www.backloggery.com/noyb

Good luck, Kroms!

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If you do document it, make sure to 'plug your shit' I always like having more to read.

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Aargh. I'm kind of burned out on games now, after the Steam sale. I played over 20 games, even if some for a really really short time, in order to get the achievements. Yikes!

I also grew my backlog. So not counting any earlier backlog (which is still rather long) only including things I got since September or so, I have these to finish:

Skyrim - 100 hours played, expecting at least 50 more

Witcher 2 - want to finish a second playthrough joining the other side

Dead Island

Batman: Arkham City

Red Dead Redemption: The Zombie Expansion

SpaceChem - I think I'm almost half way through, getting really complicated now

Cargo - Quest for Gravity

Toki Tori

The Cronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Trine 2

Divinity II

L.A. Noire

P.B. Winterbottom

Orcs Must Die!

At least some of them are something I'm not compelled to finish and I'll probably just nibble on occasionally:

Dungeons of Dredmor

Cthulhu Saves the World

HOARD

Avadon: The Black Fortress

Super Meat Boy

Binding of Isaac

Flight Control HD

Universe Sandbox

EDGE

Oh god... It feels like this will take a whole year to conquer. I hope 2012 won't see any new games released.

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You don't even want to look at mine after the Holiday sales...

Cthulhu saves the World is a very short game, you can beat it in an afternoon and Universe Sandbox is more toy than game, there is no "win" scenario, you just mess around with the Universe.

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My list somehow grew from 150 items to 240 over the past year. At the rate I currently play, it'll take me 24 years to finish everything. I don't mind, so long as I get to have fun. Rushing things means I don't get to appreciate all the games I have the way I grew to appreciate the Monkey Islands or Ico or so on.

I'm currently into Final Fantasy IX's final stretch - a quick walkthrough I checked tells me I've finished 35 out of the game's 43 parts; that only took two years, but hey, whatever - and I've finally started Morrowind proper. My progress in that one involves a lot of dying. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be the dude who saves the world, but if I am, then I hope the last boss isn't a rat: those little shits have downed me time and time again. A battle with a fucking leech took so long the music reached a crescendo. If I was the leech, I'd have thought the music was playing to encourage me against this idiotic tiger with a sword fize sizes too big for him.

I spend more time reading dialogue and picking-up the lore than actually playing. Less chance of dying, except by paper cut, probably.

Edited by Kroms

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Sheesh! And I though I had backlog problems! :eek:

With a backlog that big, I wouldn't "rush it", but I would cheat like crazy in any game I could! Or at least, if it's a whole series beat the first game or first few games normally and cheat on the rest of the series because you already proved you can handle these games.

At least, get yourself some sort of a cheat device for the JRPGs, using an experience cheat won't rob you of the fun... unless you like grinding that it? Or at least blind grind!:(

Remember, it's never wrong to use "anti-grind" cheats!:tup:

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I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be the dude who saves the world, but if I am, then I hope the last boss isn't a rat: those little shits have downed me time and time again.

I always thought it was dumb when rpgs start out with rat slaying, until I faced an actual beady-eyed and hateful rat. Now I think games should show you the victory screen if you don't give the rat your lunch money.

Anyway I am moving the goalposts. I will now try to play at least 5 hours of all games I believe to be worthwhile. Dungeons of Dredmor finished, VVVVVV up next.

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I generally keep my backlog fairly manageable, and outside of games i've just given up on ever playing, there's maybe around ten games i want to get back to. If i buy a game, i mean to play it, i play it, and i put it away. I don't usually let myself stop in the middle unless i'm really just not into it.

Anyways, i just cleared through a bunch of my backlog a month or two ago. Nier, Resonance of Fate, and El Shaddai, all pretty great games.

For games i intend to get back to, i still want to do the DLC for Borderlands, Mass 2, and GTAIV. I also have copies of Enslaved and Lost Odyssey that i've been meaning to play. There's also handful of handheld and download games that i mean to finish some day, but... ehh... Those aren't as much of a priority. (My unfinished playthroughs of Okamiden, Infinite Space, and Ocarina 3D particularly eat at me.)

Also: Morrowind -

Stamina/fatigue has a big impact on the combat and you can really feel it at lower levels, you will miss strikes a lot. (Additionally, then, heavier and better weapons drain your stamina/fatigue faster, and counter-intuitively can make combat harder at low levels.)

If none of your starting weapon skills are sitting at around 30, it's going to be rough starting out.

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Remember, it's never wrong to use "anti-grind" cheats!:tup:

In all honesty, every game I ever bought, I bought to experience fully, and to analyze and think about later. I don't mind the grinding, or anything, so long as I come away with solid footing to base my opinions on. I did the same thing with LucasArts and Sierra adventure games, and it's paid-off.

It's especially important to approach RPGs that way. RPG players can be so picky, and I really want to see whether their opinions, especially those about things staying the same, have any substance to them. Old school adventure gamers are fond of saying that their games took them months to solve. From my experience, that's 1. bullshit, 2. not a good thing at all. I want to see what aspects of RPGs work and what don't.

I always thought it was dumb when rpgs start out with rat slaying, until I faced an actual beady-eyed and hateful rat. Now I think games should show you the victory screen if you don't give the rat your lunch money.

I agree. You ought to start with something feasible, but Morrowind's cave rats are the size of fucking dogs. They chewed me up and spit me out.

If none of your starting weapon skills are sitting at around 30, it's going to be rough starting out.

I'm at 8! That would explain it.

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