Backlog Busters

[JonCole]

I figured I'd make this topic at least for myself, but also for anyone else who finds their time much more plentiful due to the glory of summer break. My conundrum is one of the best possible kind - way too many great games to play. As a result, I just don't know where to start in my huge-ass backlog... so hopefully some of y'all can help. All that I ask is what games would you absolutely insist I play before the others:

- Batman: Arkham Asylum

- Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

- Metal Gear Solid 4

- Lost Odyssey

- Secret of Monkey Island

- Zeno Clash

- Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

- Tales of Vesperia

Again, there's no real connection between that stuff... just things that I have on my shelf that I haven't played and am currently interested in. Any help would be much appreciated!

[Rueler]

Why don't you go from oldest to newest? Start with Monkey Island. I believe that MGS4 would be next, etc.

[Fuzzy Lobster]

Lost Odyssey is really long, and save points are few and far between, if I remember correctly.

I'd recommend playing it over a long break if you want to get through it at all. Obviously, other people may approach huge RPGs entirely differently than I do, but I find that I will never go back to most of them if I don't play them more or less in one shot. Trying to split it up around work and whatnot was a total death sentence for that game, at least for me.

I haven't played most of the other games you list, but they might be a little easier to play and enjoy in shorter sessions.

Hope that's of some value to you.

[Patters]

  Fuzzy Lobster said:

Lost Odyssey is really long, and save points are few and far between, if I remember correctly.

I'd recommend playing it over a long break if you want to get through it at all. Obviously, other people may approach huge RPGs entirely differently than I do, but I find that I will never go back to most of them if I don't play them more or less in one shot. Trying to split it up around work and whatnot was a total death sentence for that game, at least for me.

I haven't played most of the other games you list, but they might be a little easier to play and enjoy in shorter sessions.

Hope that's of some value to you.

This is exactly how I see it, I'm half way through lost odyssey 2 years after I got it, the best way to play it.

On the subject of backlogs/unfinished games, I made a list of my entire library of games present and past (some have been given away or sold), those finished are stricken through. http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AarfYUC3XVN_ZGZ3amd6bmtfMHhwYzh0cmhi&hl=en

[Forbin]

Batman and Monkey Island above all others.

[JonCole]

  Patters said:

On the subject of backlogs/unfinished games, I made a list of my entire library of games present and past (some have been given away or sold), those finished are stricken through. http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AarfYUC3XVN_ZGZ3amd6bmtfMHhwYzh0cmhi&hl=en

This is madness.

[Patters]

  JonCole said:

This is madness.

Yeah, I did a little reading into it. I hit my peak of finishing games in the Xbox/Gamecube generation, when I guess I became better at games and could stick at stuff more. it's mostly split into specific platforms. This is what 17 years of gaming has reduced me to.

It's not surprising my mum thought I was autistic, when I can remember stuff like this.

[syntheticgerbil]

I don't beat Patters, but I must seriously have 110 games to finish and no interest in listing them all. These are games for NES, SNES, Playstation 1, 2, and 3, Xbox original and 360, Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, PSP, GBA and other Game boy, DS, Mac, PC, Amiga, Oric (or whatever the hell this is), MSX, and some Nick Bruty designed Commodore 64 game.

I just don't want to know how many there are outside of each system. They just sit in a pile. I expect to spend 5 more years finishing them all.

But on my current playing list is Donkey Kong Game Boy, Metal Gear Solid Substance, Infamous, Pajama Sam, and Boy and His Blob. I tend tackle 4 or 5 at once.

To be fair, some of the games I have on the list, especially the old ones, may take less than an hour to finish, while some might require me to sink up to 60 hours of time in them.

[toblix]

My only shame is never completing MGS4, which I hope to do this year.

[mikemariano]

JonCole, Spirit Tracks is solid DS Zelda and I had a lot of fun with it. Meanwhile, I just watched the YouTube videos for Metal Gear Solid IV and even that felt like a waste of time.

Meanwhile I have a huge backlog; I have to stop buying games:

Wii

• Metroid Prime Trilogy
  
• Sam & Max: Season 2
  
• Castlevania: The Adventure - Rebirth
  
• Mega Man 10
  

Xbox

• Fallout 3: Broken Steel and Point Lookout
  
• That Mass Effect 2 expansion that looks really stupid.
  

DS

• Scribblenauts
  
• Chrono Trigger
  
• Final Fantasy V
  
• Final Fantasy VI
  

What I'm actually playing:

• The New York Times Crossword puzzle on the DS
  
• GTAIV Achievement Whoring (I have to get Brucie and Packie to like me at 90%!)
  

[JonCole]

  mikemariano said:

Xbox

• Fallout 3: Broken Steel and Point Lookout

You should definitely check this stuff out if you were into Fallout 3; they're practically a whole new game on their own.

[Tanukitsune]

I had about.... 200 unbeaten games a year ago now I only have...

This may seems impossible, but I had lots of arcade compilations, not to mention lots of my PC games refused to work on Vista...

But yeah... I eat backlogs for breakfast.... Very long breakfasts...

-Beat it, don't complete it! If a game takes 30 hours to beat and 100 hours to get 100%... DON'T get 100%... SPECIALLY if you have a huge backlog!

-Play the shorter games first! But also play a few of the longer ones in the middle or else you'll just have a bunch of 80+ hour games to beat.

-You don't have to play them all! If you have a huge backlog.... You probably have at least ONE games that's not worth your time... SKIP IT! But at the same time.... I also think that a bad game every once in a while reminds you how awesome the rest of your games are...

-Stay away from MMOs and don't play too much multiplayer! I like how we have a specific time to play L4D, it's better to play an hour or two of multiplayer a week then 20 hours straight...

-Replays are banned! Stop playing Zelda every month! It's not fair to your unplayed games!

-Blind grind! Grinding is the worst... but in many games you can "blind grind" which means you can grind with barely looking at the screen and that you're doing something else while grinding... Reading, browsing the web, exercise... Anything is good!

-Unless it's an adventure game, don't be afraid to use guides! The important thing in action games is having the skill necessary to beat the boss, so it doesn't matter that you looked up how to do it. Don't forget that there are many guides and Let's Plays on YouTube!

-And... use "time cheats" if you can! To me there are three kinds of cheats, the "silly ones" that only make the game look or sound different, like Disco mode, the "skill ones" which are the standard infinite lives or energy cheats and finally the "time cheats" which are cheats that only save time... and I don't think anybody should feel bad for using them...

"Time cheats" are simply money or experience cheats in games where getting them in a matter of time, not skill...

You won't save that much time if you use skill cheats on a western RPG, but doing so on a JRPG makes the 80+ hour game into 15+ hour one! Which goes to show how much fluff they have....

I'm kinda excited that I only have one game left... I kinda feel like rewarding myself when it's over, but I don't know how!

[Nachimir]

Hmm, in the past year or so I've committed to not buying games if I'm not going to have time to play them. However, I thought this wasn't going to be so bad, but if I include uncompleted:

PC

• Osmos
  
• Plants vs Zombies (Already played it on the iPhone, not sure where this came from. Probably a ridiculous sale or something)
  

Wii:

• Madworld

360 (Top two both from Toblix, thanks! Brütal Legend was ace.):

• Splinter Cell: Double Agent
  
• Tomb Raider: Legend
  
• Dead Rising (Got bored on getting to the clown a few times, dying, then realising I didn't have a recent save. Also, no HDTV when I first tried playing this, which actually made a lot of the text impossible to read)
  
• Blind Girl (by GLPeas)
  
• Carcophony
  
• Rez HD
  
• Pixel Boarders (I really love this game, but crappy garbage collection frequently slows it down to an unplayable crawl)
  

iPhone:

• feelforit
  
• Angry Birds
  
• Eliss
  
• Rolando
  
• Tumbledrop
  
• K Shogi
  

There are only six games I haven't even touched in that list, but still: :getmecoat:getmecoat

[syntheticgerbil]

Wow, Tanukitsune, I was waiting for your list in this thread, but it looks like you've been knocking 'em out pretty damn well. I can't believe it.

I have to 100% every game because of a powerful drive I can't extinguish, but you gave some great pointers for finishing stuff. Definitely using guides for action games with tedious crap like finding a certain amount of object A or doing x for the nth time can drastically cut down your play time. Some people are against those kind of tactics, but I have other games to play.

Edited May 11, 2010 by syntheticgerbil

[dpp]

My current backlog:

-Batman (~30%)

-Bioshock 2 (just started)

-Infamous

-Demon's Souls

-FF13 (18h in)

-Halo 3 and ODST

-Gears 2

-Resident Evil 5

-Metro 2033

-Bayonetta

-Fable 2

-BFBC2 campaign

-MGS4 (sigh...)

That's a lot of quality games, but lately I just feel like playing XBLA/PSN games, Picross 3D and TF2.

[Tanukitsune]

  syntheticgerbil said:

Wow, Tanukitsune, I was waiting for your list in this thread, but it looks like you've been knocking 'em out pretty damn well. I can't believe it.

I have to 100% every game because of a powerful drive I can't extinguish, but you gave some great pointers for finishing stuff. Definitely using guides for action games with tedious crap like finding a certain amount of object A or doing x an n number times can drastically cut down your play time. Some people are against those kind of tactics, but I have other games to play.

Yeah! I'm surprised myself! I'm half expecting Steam to release a special bundle with every game I want for 1$... except I think I own every game I want on Steam?

[elmuerte]

My imminent backlog:

• Dragon Age
  
• Borderlands
  
• LittleBigPlanet
  
• Eat Lead
  
• Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
  
• Killzone 2
  
• Dead Space
  
• Spirit Tracks
  
• M&L Bowser's Inside Story
  

I recently picked up programming again in my spare time (Unreal Development Kit stuff), so that's going to hurt my backlog even more.

[mikemariano]

  dpp said:

-FF13 (18h in)

Oh man, I can't even imagine trying to pick Final Fantasy XIII up again after a long absence. It really doesn't seem like a game that will reward your patience in the slightest.

  dpp said:

-Halo 3 and ODST

Halo 3 has some rewarding combat, but don't expect any crazy plot twists or satisfying resolutions that the weirdness of Halo 2 seemed to promise. Plus there's still way too much Flood! The game is skippable if you're not inclined to pick it back up. I don't know about ODST.

[Squid Division]

Games I need to finish/start playing:

Forza 3

Batman AA

Dead Space

Borderlands (kind of damned hard by yourself)

Mass Effect 2 renegade/DLC playthrough

Uncharted 2 (apparently it gets better after that fucking museum part)

Napoleon Total War

STALKER CoP

Bioshock 2

Deus Ex

Dragon Age

suggestions?

[Tanukitsune]

  Squid Division said:

Games I need to finish/start playing:

Forza 3

Batman AA

Dead Space

Borderlands (kind of damned hard by yourself)

Mass Effect 2 renegade/DLC playthrough

Uncharted 2 (apparently it gets better after that fucking museum part)

Napoleon Total War

STALKER CoP

Bioshock 2

Deus Ex

Dragon Age

suggestions?

Uncharted 2 and Batman AA are the shortest, so tackle those first!

Borderlands isn't that hard, right? I mean, I BEAT IT! How hard can it be?

[JonCole]

  Tanukitsune said:

Uncharted 2 and Batman AA are the shortest, so tackle those first!

Borderlands isn't that hard, right? I mean, I BEAT IT! How hard can it be?

Yeah, I think I'm gonna tackle Batman this week before Red Dead comes out, since it's as short as it is. As far as Borderlands goes, if you have it for PC, Squid, I could hop in if you have any particular trouble. It's been a while, but a couple of my characters are sufficiently built up to help with at least the first half of the game or so.

[twmac]

Yeah, we have a number of backlog threads in the forums.

Again, for formalising this process I recommend The backloggery:

http://www.backloggery.com/

Which is Tanukitsune is using.

I just looked at my list, I have 50 unfinished on there right now (and I have finished almost 20 games this year already)

[JonCole]

  twmac said:

Yeah, we have a number of backlog threads in the forums.

Again, for formalising this process I recommend The backloggery:

http://www.backloggery.com/

Which is Tanukitsune is using.

I just looked at my list, I have 50 unfinished on there right now (and I have finished almost 20 games this year already)

I don't like digging up 6 month old threads and that's all I could find after a quick search. I'll definitely consider using that site, though... looks useful, at the very least to put things in perspective.

[Squid Division]

No I have Borderlands for 360. I don't know what it is, but that game just kicks my ass.

I'll go with Batman since I'm already a decent amount through it.

[syntheticgerbil]

  JonCole said:

I don't like digging up 6 month old threads and that's all I could find after a quick search. I'll definitely consider using that site, though... looks useful, at the very least to put things in perspective.

I think as long as they aren't locked, they are up for grabs. Certainly many threads have been dug up here years after even sometimes. Sometimes a game gets discussed before release and months later we'll start talking about it again.

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

Edited May 12, 2010 by syntheticgerbil