Am I the only person buying more games than I can play?

I think everyone has a huge backlog. so many games out there. so many sales. I picked up some great titles at amazing sales that are still shrinkwrapped or some XBLA titles that I haven't even touched yet.

I'm actually making a concerted effort to finish these games and get caught up but it's a losing battle due to lack of time. especially since some of these games are grind fests like Assassin's Creed. so i'm bouncing back and forth between the newer and the older games.

which on a tangent, Assassin's Creed has to have some of the most ridiculous gameplan mechanics. okay, so i'm supposed to skydive into a bale of hay and survive? i can be chased by guys and jump into a tent and they don't even bother to look in the tent that's right in front of them. i can be chased but as soon as I trigger certain cutscenes, they forget about me? if i'm walking normally, I'm exposed and out there. but if I clasp my hands and bow my head while walking, I'm practically invisible? So many things I can ding AC for. I can't believe reviewers didn't crucify this game more.

That's because they have a good story and they're actually fun. God forbid.

I absolutely have a ridiculous backlog! That's ALL I have. I generally swing between playing through new releases (working on AC III right now) or older games I never got around to (still haven't finished ME 3. Still haven't finished freaking Bioshock!). And throw in the odd XBLA game here and there (Mark of the Ninja is great. Skulls of the Shogun is out today and I can't wait to play it!)

You're playing the first AC?! I don't know why reviewers would fault those aspects. Those are the game mechanics and they're just part of the world of the game. Nobody dings Halo for taking place on an enormous ring in space. Same thing here, even though it doesn't seem like it. I will say that the first Assassin's Creed is probably the worst one. AC II and Brotherhood are incredible.

I will ding any game where you stand in front of a bad guy and he doesn't even recognize that you're there. that's bad scripting. that's something you expect for a game from the 90s where you have to step into a specific area in a room for the enemies to realize that you're there.

I could kind of forgive AC if it had a good story. I'm near the ending and it's a convoluted mess of a story. And the clues you pick up from the informers, the pickpocketing, etc. don't really mean anything. they just take up time until you do the assassination.

As for comparison to the Halo ring in space, that doesn't even make sense. You can set the story up any way. You can set the mechanics any way. But the mechanics have to kind of make sense.

I have AC2 in my backlog and can't wait to get to it. But I wanted to do AC1 first.

And just why is the Halo ring preposterous? that's one of the designs that was thought of for future human colonies. a way to get artificial gravity. modeled after the Stanford torus design:

So, are we to believe that you've played through 4 AC games, all of which have the same basic mechanics, and are just now figuring out that you don't like it? I'd suggest you move on to something else in that backlog...

Finished Max Payne 3 and Black Ops 2...still haven't finished Halo 4.

Backlog includes Assassain's Creed 2, Bayonetta, Vanquish and DLC for Mass Effect 2 & Fallout 3

Looking forward to Crysis 3, Metal Gear Rising: Revengance and Dead Space 3

Things are getting hectic....Not to even mention Multiplayer...

someone's a little sensitive. who said I played all 4 games in the series? I've had AC1 and AC2 in my backlog. finishing up AC1. not saying that it's an awful game. just the mechanics are incredulous. just yesterday, I start to pummel a guy for the interrogation. some guy starts to wail on me. I ignore him and keep hitting the guy being interrogated. As soon as the guy begs for mercy, the cutscene happens. the guy wailing on me walks away as if I never existed. I started it because people raved about AC2 and I like to start a series from the beginning.

I'm a victim of buying more games and not completing them. However there are some titles I don't do that for, like Halo 4. Bought it and beat it within a week or 2 and I will do the same for Gears of War Judgement because those are must plays in my book. However, just this past week, I completed Fable 2 for the first time! So my backlog goes back fairly far. I want to say that I have about 10-15 games in my backlog and I'm trying to get through them one at a time. So far I've completed 2 of them....

I've definitely made some efforts in the past few years to keep it short. I still buy a few too many games on sale, but I buy almost nothing during its $60 release window unless its an absolute must have. So I've got a 3-4 month delay on most big games, so I really start getting into the big nov hits around feb. Until then I just play a whole lot of call of duty.

As my game time is dwindling as I get older, I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity. A lot more games are just not getting played, those B level games that are just good, but not great. There's more than enough A level games to completely fill my time.

I did really good until late last year as the $20 sales kicked in. Right now, I'm sitting on Dark Souls, Uncharted 2/3, Dishonored, Halo 4 (New Spartan Ops), SSX, & God of War Collection and I'm sure others that I forgot that I have purchased. I also have Skyrim to finish, more Halo MP that I want to play...

(And I couldn't make it half way through AC1....)

Currently working on Skyrim (I ahve to stop exploring so many damn things and taking side quests and just finish the game )
I have Far Cry 3, Black Ops 2, Uncharted 2/3, God Of War Collection, Dead Space 1&2, BioShock 2 all collecting dust in the original plastic. At least I got most of them very cheap since they were older already

-Evangelo2

I know what you mean, I have Far Cry 3, Skyrim, Prototype 2, Infamous 2, and Bioshock 2 still to finish. And I just picked up Ni No Kuni, and plan on getting the new God of War, Tombraider, Gears, and MLB The show in March, plus GTA when it comes out.

Edit: It looks like I don't have to worry about GTA since it just got pushed back until September 2013.
Edited by americangunner - 1/31/13 at 9:41am

I'm in the same boat as the rest of ya! Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2 pretty much took up most of my gaming time last year. I mean I still haven't finished Gears of War 3!

My current backlog consists of:

Gears of War 3
Batman Arkham City
Max Payne 3
Dead Space 2 (at last boss battle)
Far Cry 3
Halo 4


I know I will be picking up Dead Space 3, Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us and God of War: Ascension so things are only going to get worse

Not even remotely! I ventured off into MMO la-la land for a bit which is why some of these are so old, but here's my list:

Red Dead Redemption
Bioshock 2
Skyrim
Battlefield 3
Halo 4

Along with several others I've played some, but not enough.. :/

Damn, I forgot about the new Tomb Raider too!

There's also the new Bioshock coming out in the spring too.

I'm majorly backlogged. Big time. I have a couple hundred games, and I think I have 20-30 of those I haven't even open the package yet and some of them are really old now (2-3 years old!) Sometimes I trade them in still unwrapped towards new ones I want, and then I don't end up getting around to opening those either! Man I sound like an idiot. Basically it's because I want the game, I want to have the time to play it, I convince myself I will find some time to play it here and there so I buy it, then I never have the time LOL. Starting last year I recognized this and have limited myself to only the top 1-3 blockbuster titles each year. Right now I'm only looking forward to the new GOW and that's it for 2013. I miss a lot of good games. I guess when I'm retired I'll have something to do for a few years haha.

I get what you're saying about bad scripting. That annoys me in games too. Maybe we just have different standards of immersion. Jumping into haybales (which yes, is completely crazy) doesn't bug me. And I generally like the AC story, overall. But again, that's just me.

And I don't mean that the Halo ring isn't ever possible. I was just trying to pick a popular (but admittedly bad) example of a thing that doesn't exist in real life but is completely acceptable in a game.

Same. I put in a bunch of hours a few months back, hitting things and letting them hit me so I could get points to max out Alchemy and thereby make the best weapons and (light) armor I could, then put it away before finishing even the main quest. Too many other games kept becoming attractive nuisances...

You're not alone...across 360, PS3, and PC, my backlog is about 100 games.

I used to have a large backlog (for many years) but having a child changed my gaming time in a major way. I'm currently working on L.A. Noire (love it!) and Mass Effect 3 is up next. I also have Forza Horizon but that's not a game I plan to complete, more just play it a bit. I also have Red Dead Redemption but I just can't seem to get into it (I'm about eight hours in). Next up is Bioshock and GTA 5 for certain. I think I also want AC3. This is the first year I skipped COD due to the significant online time investment involved, along with simply getting tired of the series.

actually, I'm halfway through AC2. and they addressed every fault I mentioned in AC1 from a game design standpoint.

now, they'll poke into the tents and the bales of hay so it's not an automatic hide status like it was before.
there's no more of bowing your head to instantly be hidden.
they entirely removed many game mechanics of AC1 (ones that didn't make sense like the situations I listed before like having enemies forget about you once the scripted cutscene happens) and replaced them with new game mechanics that make more sense.
they got rid of AC1's pervasive big brother element which was way too overpowering. how does the entire city and populace recognize a single individual? all these common people can recognize me just because of the people I rescued? but yet I can't be found by the bad guys even though I'm a marked man? but yet sometimes, all the bad guys know I'm their enemy even though I really didn't do anything to provoke them. in AC2, you have a lot more notoriety and the whole idea of all the common people providing cover for you is gone and unnecessary. just the sheer mass of people in a population is more enough to keep you in cognito.

I like how you can now climb upward even if there is an awning or overhang above you. in AC1, you had to move out from under it in order to climb upward. kind of ridiculous considering how able Altair was. but fixed in AC2.

most of all they improved performance a lot. it wasn't such a struggle doing very basic things. the frame rate was terrible when you needed to escape in AC1 and had a hard time navigating once it was time you really needed to ascend or grab ladders.