As any good gamer who spends some money helping out people that are willing to be in the Steam Holiday Sale I have a large backlog of computer, console, and (not related to Steam) board games. For the last couple years I’ve been putting things like playing music, leaving the house, spending time with my wife and cats, and other such things ahead of gaming. What gaming time I did have was going to MMO’s and other competitive games. At this point in time I’m getting less satisfaction from those games types and more from picking up the controller connected to my tower, or booting up my PS3 to see what is free this month, playing those games for a few minutes to make some progress and get on with my day. Before the giant list is created I’d like to talk about what getting through a backlog means for me.
When I go to play a game it’s not always about “beating” the game; more than likely it’s about enjoying the game. Some games I play just for the mechanics (RTS, Rogue-like, some FPS, sports, racing), some for the story (RPGs, action or turn based), some for the unified experience, some for nostalgia, or just to check out what every one else has been talking about. There’s definitely a set of games that can’t really be beaten at all, things like city simulators or online only games. Then there’s some games that are really just about a single gimmick and once you’ve mastered it the game becomes either lifeless or you finally get to enjoy the game and not struggle with the gimmick. All that to prep this statement: this isn’t a list of games I want to beat, just a list I want to enjoy. It’s taken me a long time to get to understand that idea; I’ve spent most of my life in the “must beat everything on the hardest difficulty” camp.
With that out of the way, here’s the list! Many of these games I’ve started but had to abandon half way through (Borderlands, Trine, and the Valve games are the biggest culprits of that). In a future article I’ll talk about MMO and MOBA goals, and in another one I’ll touch on time management to get all of this done, work, go out with my wife, and play bass trombone three days a week!
2013 Backlogged Video Games to Play List in No Real Order:
- Bastion (complete 2013.01.08)
- Lego Batman 2
- Borderlands 2
- Trine
- Trine 2
- Dungeons of Dreadmor (completed 2013.08.21)
- Plants vs Zombies (completed 2013.01.25)
Space Trader- P. B. Winterbottom
- inFamous 2
- Torchlight 2
- Recettear
- Gish (completed 2013.04.20)
- Deus Ex
- Quantz
- And Yet It Moves… (completed 2013.08.23)
- AI Wars
- Valkyria Chronicles
- Golden Sun 2
- Shadowgrounds
- Left4Dead 2
- Half Life 2
- Lego Lord of the Rings
- Endless Space (finished 2016.04.10)
- Gemini Wars
- Skyrim – Dawnguard (Finished in the past…)
- Skyrim – Dragonborn (Finished in the past…)
- Space Marine
- Darksiders
- Darksiders 2
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Batman: Arkham City
- Nuclear Dawn
- FTL (re-completed 2013.08.25)
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD (completed 2013.01.25)
- Tropico 4 (“finished” 2014.05.27)
- Sins of a Solar Empire
- Cities in Motion (satisfied somewhere in the past)
- Revenge of the Titans (completed 2013.02.07)
- E.Y.E.
- Railworks 3
- Dungeon Defenders
- Scribblenauts Unlimited (“completed” 2013.08.24)
- Civilization V (“completed” 2013.01.29)
- Defense Grid – You Monster (completed 2013.02.02)
- Defense Grid – Containment (completed 2013.04.06)
- StarCraft: Heart of the Swarm (Didn’t take more than a day after launch…)
- Pokemon Black 2 (completed a long time ago…)
- Pokemon Y (completed 2 weeks post launch)
- Zelda: A Link To The Past 2
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