Love Your Backlog Week — 2020

Kim from Later Levels has brought back Love your Backlog Week for 2020. As the title might suggest, it’s a week about recognising that not only is it OK to have a backlog but actually it can be something to be loved.

I wouldn’t say this is something I ‘struggle’ with. By and large, having a backlog capable of lasting from here to the end of time doesn’t really bother me. Not in and of itself. Occasionally feelings that I ‘should’ do better with it arise. I noted such back near the beginning of November last year, when I was attempting the ‘Five Game Challenge‘. A couple of posts came up within days of each other, both tackling the topic of extracting value from their personal catalogs of games, in different ways.

At the end of my own post contemplating extracting value from our games my conclusion was simply that… I needed to give it some more thought.

And I did!

The end result being that I started playing around with the concept of setting goals each month. Nothing insanely ambitious. I have no desire to make a ‘job’ of playing games. But just enough to add another layer to the experience without it being onerous.

Beyond that? I am content to accept that my backlog is not likely to ever shrink. Even though I’ve been pretty well restrained on new purchases, Humble Choice alone is going to see to that.

So! In celebration of the almighty backlog… Here are the questions Kim poses. And if you’re so inclined, feel free to join in answering! :)

• A game you’re eager to play, but haven’t yet started
  Greedfall. I was quite interested already when it came out. It looked like Spiders (the developer) might finally have cracked the necessary elements of an awesome RPG.
  
  Still. They were known for incredibly janky, great-in-concept but poor-in-execution titles prior, and there was just enough doubt in my mind that I held off purchase initially.
  
  Well… Try as I might, I’m still a sucker for Steam sales every so often. I picked it up over Christmas and have yet to touch it. Belghast recently had quite nice things to say about Greedfall (in that, and other posts too) and it has certainly renewed my desire to jump in there and give it a go!
  
• A game you’ve started several times but haven’t yet finished
  Pillars of Eternity. I’ve started full play throughs no less than three times now, reaching very similar points into the game and then not progressing past for some reason or another.
  
  I have Pillars of Eternity 2 in my backlog too. So one of these days… I’ll need to tackle this. ;)
  
• The most recent addition to your library
  Hrm, well, technically this would be one of the recent titles I picked up in the February Humble Choice pack. I bought it early this time. But I feel like this is less interesting as an answer.
  
  So the last title I bought, stand alone, was Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC on the 5th January 2020. So I guess I’ve at least made it a full month without buying an individual title? xD
  
• The game which has spent the most time on your backlog
  Oh my. This is a difficult one.
  
  I don’t know if this is strictly speaking true — there might be older ones. But the oldest one that still occasionally comes to mind? Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. This was pretty much a day 1 purchase for me. … All the way back in February 2014, when it came out.
  
  I’ve still not started it. I bought it because I was playing and loving the everloving heck out of it’s predecessor, having gained a copy on PC. I actually did finish that one if I remember rightly, I just never carried on!
  
• The person responsible for adding the most entries to your backlog
  I’m not entirely sure I can finger point too much past myself here! I’m altogether way too susceptible to being talked into picking up this, that or the other. It doesn’t take much of an arm twist at all.
  
  But certainly, if a blogger in our community starts talking rather passionately about a title — even if it’s one I’d previously discarded as ‘likely not being for me’, then my interest can be piqued anew.

Now… Of note is that this Love your Backlog thing doesn’t end with this week. Kim has suggested that we also contemplate playing that longest standing on the backlog title and posting about the experience in March.

I think I’m up for that. Even just looking at the screenshots and the trailer for it though, it is amazing to see just how far graphics technology has come since the dark ol’ days of 2014. It will be interesting indeed. :)

PS: For those interested, I think this will link a publicly viewable list of my entire Steam game catalog!