My Back. My Log. My Backlog. (Part 1)

Welcome to the “Year of the Backlog!” I’ve got dozens and dozens of games in my collection that, for one reason or another, got away from me. I’m not particularly interested in any of the newer releases out there, so I’ve taken it upon myself to hook up all my old systems and start knocking these off the list!

I would love to share the journey with all of you, so I’ll be spending the next few posts logging the games (from newest to oldest) that I’d like to revisit – and I’ll even include some of the reasons I stopped playing in the first place.

See anything here that you think I should make a priority this year? Let me know in a comment, and perhaps I’ll give it a shot!

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Currently playing:

Final Fantasy XII
(PS2, 2006)

Reason I stopped playing: I began my Final Fantasy XII journey sometime in 2012 and invested a solid 60 hours into the story before suddenly stopping. I was relatively close to the end, and I think I was just intimidated by the sheer of content and grinding I could have tackled before wrapping up the main quest. If I check my stats, it looks like I put it aside to play stuff like Banjo Kazooie, Luigi’s Mansion 2, and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. Then Link Between Worlds came out and I was just too far removed from FFXII to go back to it.

I’m proud to say I’ve been regularly playing it again and am now just one or two dungeons away from the ending. I’m really enjoying the world, and it took no time at all to remember how to play. I can also appreciate the fact that I’m a more seasoned gamer who can take better advantage of the game’s key features which I failed to optimally utilize the first go around. I’m looking forward to seeing the conclusion!

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2020’s (10 Games):

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
(Switch, 2025)

Reason I stopped playing: When I purchased Metroid Prime 4 in December, I was already on another self-proclaimed mission to finish all the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games. Then, the new year came along and my New Year’s Resolution had to take precedence. I set aside my one remaining game, Final Fantasy 6 (a game I had already beaten twice in my life anyway), and hooked up the Wii U so I could truly begin the Year of the Backlog!

Dragon Quest 3: HD-2D Remaster
(Switch/Various, 2025)

Reason I stopped playing: I’m pretty sure I was deeply committed to Nier: Automata when DQ3 came out. Before that, I was on somewhat of a Dragon Quest, excited at the prospect of this HD 2D remaster which looked absolutely stunning. When I finally got the game, I played about an hour or so and found the battle system to be incredibly finicky. My characters were so weak that they’d almost always miss even on the first two or three battles of the game. I decided to wait for the game to be patched before I’d try it again.

Spidersaurs
(Switch, 2022)

Reason I stopped playing: Spidersaurs is a decent game. But, like any Contra-esque type of game, it requires memorization and practice to make any progress. I’ll need some weeks of dedicated focus to make it to the end of this one.

It Takes Two
(Switch/Various, 2022)

Reason I stopped playing: My friend Mandikat and I started this online co-op journey roughly 3 years ago. We were making steady progress but the game is just so long! Not to mention, she lives in Scotland so our schedules are vastly different from each other. We both would like to go back to it, and we’re just waiting for our clocks to align.

Glyph
(Switch, 2021)

Reason I stopped playing: Again, another perfectly fine game but also incredibly long – with some moments of tedium. If you make one little mistake bouncing your ball around, it means having to start a level over completely. I’m to a point in the game now where if I want to unlock new levels, I have to gather some of the harder collectibles in order to open them. Perhaps I’ll just try to finish the story and call it good.

Outer Wilds
(Switch, 2021)

Reason I stopped playing: This was a game I had started on an airplane. I was totally into it, but the airplane made it a little disorienting. I’m certain I was also in the midst of another game (probably one of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters or Dragon Quest) when I started, so when I tried to come back to it later, I had no idea what I was doing. I may have to start over completely rather than pick up where I left off.

Cyber Shadow
(Switch, 2021)

Reason I stopped playing: This title kept popping up in a series of YouTube videos I had been watching. It looked like the fast-paced classic NES action that I enjoyed in games like Ninja Gaiden. But, like many of the other games on this list, it ended up being an impulse eShop purchase at the beginning of December 2022 when it went on sale – which meant I was about to enter Christmas concert season with my music groups. I also bought Skyrim 9 days later, so…

Blaster Master Zero 3
(Switch/Various, 2021)

Reason I stopped playing: I fell hard for Blaster Master Zero, an incredible update to a childhood game where I could never make any progress. The gameplay was so encapsulating that I achieved 100% and then immediately did the same for the game’s sequel. I had fully intended to go three-for-three, but I found the third game to be much more challenging than the previous two adventures. Namely, the map was hard to navigate due to a dual-world mechanic à la A Link to the Past. If I wasn’t in the right “world,” I couldn’t move forward, and it was just too much to track to make it a smooth experience.

Hades
(Various, 2020)

Reason I stopped playing: Hades was one of my first purchases after I got my Switch – such an early purchase that we still didn’t have a tv in our apartment! So, I was playing everything in handheld mode. Now, I’m no stranger to small screens; I even beat Metroid Dread via handheld mode, but it was just too hard to keep track of all the action from room to room. I tried the game again after we got our big screen tv, and…I’m also just kind of bad at it. I had to look up some strategies to beat the first boss. This is a game that needs some serious dedication in order to feel good about progressing.

Moving Out
(Various, 2020)

Reason I stopped playing: I bought this game after seeing it praised on a Nintendo Life video, and I had hoped it would be a nominal cooperative adventure that could be shared with my girlfriend. Despite its zany and chaotic nature that I thoroughly enjoyed, my girlfriend didn’t quite click with it. So, we put it aside, and perhaps I’ll pick it up again someday with another friend who might enjoy it better.

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Games Finished So Far:

Assassin’s Creed 3
(Wii U, 2012)

Reason I stopped playing: I bought Assassin’s Creed 3 at a Gamestop the same time as Batman: Arkham City. Needless to say, Batman had my full attention. I tried AC3 for about an hour and found the controls to really clunky compared to the dark knight. And that’s the end of that. I’m glad to have finished it all these years – but there’s some serious jank I had to work through in order to make it happen! You’ll hear about it in my “Gaming Year in Review” post in December!

Bioshock Remastered
(Switch, originally released 2007)

Reason I stopped playing: Bioshock is legendary in the gaming community, mentioned constantly in many of the podcasts that I follow. I knew I had to play it someday. When it went on sale on the Nintendo eShop, I grabbed it right away. The thing that stopped me was the difficulty – I am not good at FPS games on a console and I found that when I died in Bioshock, I lost a ton of progress/ammo as a result. So, when I came back to it recently, I threw the difficulty onto “easy” and decided to just enjoy the story for what it was.

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Thanks for stopping by to read my post, and stick around for the next parts in my backlog series! Do you have any games in your backlog that you’re trying to finish this year? Are there any games that you’ll never pick up again? Share your thoughts with me. Also, please “like” and follow if you haven’t already.