The Backlog is Crumbling...

Note: The following post is related to video games so if you have no desire to read about them then rest assured the "Now Playing" column will resume shortly.

It won't last past this coming Monday (aka Christmas 2006) but for right now my console backlog is nearing completion. I finished off Voodoo Vince this past weekend and now my backlog sits at five titles.

Five. Four of which are for the PS2. The lone Xbox title is Jade Empire which I'll confess to a reluctance to burn off if only because it puts me to sleep whenever I play it. Of the PS2 titles though, two of them are role playing games and at least one (Dark Cloud 2) is known for being looooooong. So that one will definitely not be started until sometime next year.

I'm worried though that 2007 is going to turn into the RPG Year of gaming for me which will automatically cut down the number of titles I'll finish. I added up my completed list of games for this year and the number stands at 34. Please understand that prior to two years ago I was lucky to finish five. Hitting double digits was unheard of and I sure as heck would never have imagined completing upwards of 30 games in a single year without actually buying near that many.

I'm not sure what triggered it. Maybe it was something My Fair Lady said in passing, or perhaps it resulted from a heart-to-heart conversation that my brain obviously tuned out of. But two years ago I made the conscious decision to stop buying games for the sake of buying them and actually play through the ones I have.

Working for a gaming website sort of burns you out on the hobby atfer a while. I've very few regrets of my time with Gaming Trend but one of them is having to run the gauntlet of mediocre to awful titles each year. Any fool on the street can spot that Reservoir Dogs is going to be awful, but actually being the one to play through and review it tends to kill one's enthusiasm for the hobby as a whole. I think my goal in finishing off my backlog is to be able to game because I want to. At present, I feel like I have to especially because I've recently developed the attitude that if a game is sitting out on my shelf then it must be completed at all costs.

The result of this is that my wallet no longer suffers flagrant abuse, but the downside is I walk into my house and immediately hang an albatross around my neck. This is to say nothing about my DVD library but that's a different animal altogether. Each film takes around two hours to watch compared to the 8-15 hour window most of my games require to complete.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have asked for one specific title for Christmas (Final Fantasy XII) because I know it'll kill me. But I'll wait on it until next year should I get it. In the meantime, I'll burn off the next title I receive for the site (which should come in tomorrow) and then I'm done with 35 completed console and PC games for the year.

Almost got 'em...