The Backlogs #1

When I was a kid, I got a PlayStation game for Christmas and another one for my birthday, which conveniently happen to be roughly six months apart. Between those two occasions, I usually just played the same game.

Except for one Christmas when my grandmother gave me GTA 2 on the original PlayStation. I played that thing for basically an entire year. Questionable decision giving GTA 2 to a kid in elementary school, but different times I guess.

As I got older and somewhat settled into adult life, I accidentally ended up with better gaming equipment and more importantly money burning a hole in my wallet.

Gaming has followed me since before I could walk, so naturally I always think it’s a brilliant idea to buy another game that has a less than 10% chance of ever actually being played.

My Steam library has now reached the point where I don’t even know what games I own anymore. First-world problem but it is what it is.

Recently, though, I went digging through the backlog and found quite a few games that I genuinely want to play. So instead of letting them rot peacefully in my Steam library forever, here are some of the games I’m hoping to finally get around to.

Dark Souls 2

This is the kind of game I should have played a few years ago but never touched. It’s weird because I’ve played the other two games in the series multiple times, and I can honestly say they’re some of my favorite games.

The reason I haven’t touched Dark Souls 2 is pretty simple: the hate it gets online. I’ve seen so much negativity around the game that I’m genuinely afraid it’s going to ruin the Dark Souls series for me.

But I’m also really curious about why the hate for this game is so strong, and I keep thinking it can’t be that bad. So for me, Dark Souls 2 should be pretty high on the priority list.

Control

There is absolutely no reason I shouldn’t have played Control already. It has gotten fantastic reviews and seems to be loved by pretty much everyone. But it’s one of those games where, for some reason, the more praise it gets, the less inclined I am to actually pick it up.

Control has been sitting in my library since the day it was released, and it’s a shame I’ve never really given it a chance. The underlying reason is probably that I’ve spent so much time focusing on Soulslike games, and that mindset has most likely caused me to put off a lot of other great games.

And that’s actually one of the reasons I launched Second Phase Gaming: to drag some of these games back to the surface and convince myself to try something different.

Kristala

Despite the reviews telling me this is a jank fest and an unfinished game, I think it’s my duty to play it because, well… cats.

And yeah, I’ve been unstoppable when it comes to Soulslike games this past year. So I’ll keep a close eye on Kristala, and maybe with a few more balance patches and some polish, it’ll move up the list.