Final Tally
Completed: 20
Bailed: 4
Backlog Bingo Round 1 finally, finally came to a close this week. I don’t know if there will be a round two. It was obvious from the start that I bit off more than I could chew, and I honestly wanted to quit several times throughout the process. Twenty-four games is a tall order, and giving myself the end-of-summer deadline probably didn’t help my cause much. I knew that the beginning of Fall would bring with it an avalanche of gaming goodness, and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck with the task of playing a bunch of old stuff that I sometimes really didn’t want to play.
I didn’t complete all of the games on the list. Some of them I removed for legit reasons, and one of them I removed because seriously, fuck that game.
The Ones I Bailed On
Three of them were removed for legit reasons, with Elder Scrolls Online being the first. The game just didn’t really have anything left for me to accomplish. I don’t even really know why I put it on there in the first place. I regret that I didn’t choose a different game instead. The thought had crossed my mind to retroactively swap it out, but I figured I should stick to what I chose. But after running around aimlessly doing whatever for an hour or two, I realized just how much time I was going to be wasting on this one. So off it went. The Witcher 3 was supposed to be a quick finish, and when I realized I’d have to start over, it just took the wind out of my sails on the spot. That is a long, long game. Plus, that game, along with ReCore, will be much more fun to play with the Xbox One X upgrades we should be seeing this November. The only game that really defeated me was Mega Man Legacy Collection. I knew this was going to be the game that gave me trouble, and sure enough, after rage quitting for the fourth or fifth time, I figured enough was enough. I conceded, and removed it from the board. Actually, it felt pretty damn good. The only problem with digital versions of games is that you can’t use them as clay pigeons. The last thing Mega Man would’ve ever heard was “PULL!”
The Ones I Completed
I learned a valuable lesson during this whole experiment. It’s easy to start hating the games you’re playing if you are forcing yourself to play them. It explains a lot of the jaded gaming journalists I see and read from nowadays. In the presence of a deadline, even the smallest of nitpicks in a game can become monstrous annoyances if you just need to get it done already. Whether it was a tiny obstacle in a stage that just seemed to get me every time, or a legitimately tough section, it was amplified times a thousand because I just viewed it as something I needed to get past. And that’s just not a fun time. Darksiders and Darksiders II were victims of this.
On the flip side, there were a lot of the games on the list I thoroughly enjoyed, and am glad I finally did sit down and force myself to play them. Layers of Fear is a game I admit I would’ve probably passed over and eventually just deleted, but once I got past its slow start, it really did get interesting. Murdered Soul Suspect is another one I never would’ve given the time to, but was glad I did. Dead Space 2 was great, and I know that’s no secret by anyone who has played it, but I had always found Dead Space to be kind of a downer. DS2 could’ve dwelled on my hard drive for years after I grabbed it on sale if not for the Backlog Bingo. I also really liked Crime and Punishment: Sherlock Holmes, which is the perfect example of the type of game I like to play, but would never pay for. I’m a replay value kinda guy, and those games just don’t have it. This, for me, is where the value of programs like Microsoft’s Games with Gold, or Sony’s PS+ games come in handy. It’s not about the big blockbuster games we know we either going to play or aren’t, it’s about the smaller ones that we may not have noticed otherwise.
Most of the other games didn’t offer surprises one way or the other. I went into them with a pretty good idea of whether I would enjoy them or not. Some of them I had no expectations for, like Dark Void and Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, and they did a good job of neither impressing me or infuriating me. Others, like both of the Lego games and Saints Row Gat out of Hell, were torturous experiences that never raised any excitement. They were content to just exist.
The one that almost got me, the straw that almost broke the camel’s back, was Bioshock 2. The game, while entertaining and interesting, was starting to drag a bit due to the unreliable shooting mechanics. I say unreliable, because the aiming circle is so large that if you aimed at a Splicer’s head, the circle could cover half their body, depending on how far away they were. This made landing those very important headshots pretty damn challening. What I found myself doing was placing the center of the circle above the Splicer’s head, so that their chin was touching the bottom of the circle. This was the only way I could almost guarantee a headshot. Of course, with the Splicers running and jumping around, that was challenging enough in itself. If I were to resort to body shots, the damn things would just soak it up like a sponge. Everything in the game was a bullet sponge, except of course, for your main character.
But that wasn’t even what had me pulling at my sideburns. It was the crash bug that exists about half way through the game. It first corrupted a game save and made me re-trace my steps through a good chunk of a stage, but then it just kept crashing. I had to start over several times before I got tired of the difficulty and lowered it to Easy, just so I could get through the area quicker. I also had to go old-school and save my game to a new save file every five or ten minutes, or every time I did something important. I eventually got through it though, but it was through sheer willpower and the desire for my last game on the board to not be a DNF.
What’s Next?
As I mentioned earlier, I had originally conceived this to be a series, where I changed out the background and added a new list of backlog titles, but that was before I learned what a monumental task this could be. I can’t see myself doing this again any time soon. Perhaps it could be an annual thing? Maybe next Summer, if PopCult & Pinups is still a thing that exists, I can do another Backlog Bingo made out of all the big holiday games I know I will not be able to get to. I enjoy the interactivity, and in my opinion it’s a great way to talk about older games that might still be worth a look.
Besides, until either I am wealthy enough to buy all the major titles the second they hit the shelf (unlikely), or we’re a big enough deal that publishers send us review copies (highly unlikely), fresh reviews of the latest and greatest isn’t a viable option for us. We are not journalists, either, and being that we are based in Texas, it’s not likely that we’ll be privy to any of the breaking news until after it’s, well, broken.
So this gaming blog will probably always be just a gaming blog. But I am aiming for us to at least be a fun gaming blog, that people can depend on for entertainment after they’ve already consumed everything on the larger, legit gaming sites and they’re just looking for something to tide them over until the next day’s news.
There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?
