It's (back)log (back)log (back)log!
Like the rest of you, I own more video games than I've played. Probably by a factor of two or so. I buy games before I finish playing the one I'm currently involved in, then it gets added to the backlog where it lives until...well...forever. So I decided to spend this year really digging into my backlog. Getting in there and cleaning out all the cobwebs in my Steam account, and my Xbox shelf, and my Playstation shelf, and my Switch shelf, and my free Amazon Prime games shelf and...then realizing I have too many shelves.
Okay so clearing out the backlog was an anxiety-inducing idea, but it was still a fun idea to only pickup games that I already owned and haven't finished, or likely even started. It also saved me a decent amount of money this year because it wasn't worth buying a game if I knew I wouldn't be opening it until next year at the earliest.
I spent a lot more time with the games that I played this year; I assume because I didn't feel the pressure of completing it before the next big game came out. I've wanted to be a "Patient gamer" for awhile but Nintendo just keeps putting out new Zelda games and damn am I a sucker!
Because of all the extra time I spent with these games I didn't get nearly as deep into my backlog as I had hoped. What I did get, though, was pretty intimate with a small handful of games that I hadn't been able to properly introduce myself to in the past. I was able to really explore, but also play a bit more at my leisure. I don't have the free time that I used to have so time to play games is hard to come by, and time to do anything outside of main storyline quests is even more rare. This past year, though, gaming felt like less of a chore and more of a hobby again, and resulted in a lot value out of games that I paid for a long time ago (or were gifted to me!)
Here are the games that I played this year, with non-affiliated links, in no particular order:
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Death's Door
30XX
Live Alive
Hades
Sonic Frontiers
The Witcher 3
Solar Ash
Some of these games I didn't spend much time in for various reasons, but others I put way more than the average amount of hours into.
The first game I dove into was Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. I actually had this sitting on my shelf for months and completely forgot about it. I was seconds away from dropping whatever the cost for it was on the Nintendo Store when a little Birdo whispered in my ear "Check your game shelf, you idiot." And so I took that insulting remark, checked my shelf, and pow, I saved a few dollars. Take that, Nintendo!
I had played the demo of 'Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker' a few times before so I already knew that I was going to enjoy the game. It took me years to realize, but I've always been a fan of puzzle games. Be it Bust-a-Move, Bejeweled, or the incredible intricacies of modern Pokemon resistances and weaknesses, I've always been drawn to puzzle games for a good cool down.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker mixes in some traditional Mario elements into it's formula. It's not a puzzle game like Tetris, or Super Street Fighter, or some slow-moving point-and-click style game. Instead, Captain Toad has to do a little action! You'll have to spin the stage to see things from different angles, time your falls properly, rip some stuff out of the ground and throw it, and collect a very Nintendo amount of collectibles. As someone with (actual) OCD, being able to spend the extra time with a game with so many collectibles is incredibly satisfying. There are some levels where missing a collectible means playing that level again to get another chance to grab it. In a game where collectibles open further stages, not being able to replay stages could eventually mean having no more further progression. And boy did I ever replay some of these levels. There were a few sessions where I played a single level for over an hour just to pick up all of the collectibles. Each collectible a pixelated representation of the value I was getting out of this title.
After finally giving Captain Toad a break from his digital deja-vu, I next moved on to 'Death's Door', an action adventure/platformer published by Devolver Digital, and developed by Acid Nerve. 'Death's Door' is the second game that I've played start-to-finish on my Steam Deck. This game ran and controlled so perfectly on the Steam Deck you would think it was designed specifically for it. 'Death's Door' was a gift from a friend so it was even nicer to get some real value out of something that was given to me from someone else. 'Death's Door' stars a little crow with a glowing red sword, and a bit of a vague story, in a pretty bleak looking universe. I remember starting the game and thinking to myself "So when does the intro end?" for an hour, and then another hour, and then probably one more hour before realizing that I was pretty deep into the game at this point. Do not take this as a downside though. This feeling speaks to the duality of both emptiness and entropy that exists here. As a crow you are essentially a corporate reaper of souls. Diligently doing your duty as depositor of departed souls, your first mission in control of the little crow is a bit of a wash as the soul you've gone to collect is stolen right out from under you. In return you're left with the beginnings of a conspiracy theory involving your eternal employer. This leads the little Corvus (that's you) onto a journey of magic, puzzles, new weapons, clue collecting, and some very verbose bosses. Being a fan of Zelda-likes, and generally depressing atmospheres, 'Death's Door' was perfectly up my alley. It's not common for me to put off completing parts of a game because I just didn't want it to end, but that is very much how I continued through 'Death's Door'. I was excited to play, but I knew that every completed objective meant that I had one less thing to discover, and I just wanted to spend forever in this world, finding new pieces of the backstory, new enemies, new passages. But alas, despite refusing to run through the game as the crow flies, I eventually reached the final destination. In the end I clocked just about 44 hours in a game that, according to howlongtobeat.com, should take a max of 29 hours to beat. But maybe I'm just bad at video games. Once I had finally walked through Death's Door for the last time, I chose life, went back to my Switch, and loaded up 'Live Alive'. I had been interested in this game since the remake was announced, considering it's close development ties to one of my favorite games of all time: Chrono Trigger. Live Alive was released in 1994 for the Super Famicom and was initially considered a failure. Understandably, I had never heard of this game until the remake on Switch. I was very hesitant to start it initially because I rarely finish RPGs. After filling several boxes in Bill's PC with level 100 Pokemon in Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Diamond, and Pearl, I had lost all of my patience to grind somewhere around 2007. But alas, I pushed on and began the journey in Live Alive. I didn't have any background on this game except that all of the stories would tie together at some point in a satisfying way. Live Alive takes a cool approach to RPGs. There is very little, if any, grinding required. It's not a particularly difficult game, preferring to focus more on the story, which is broken up into 9 shorter stories, with different main characters. Regardless of the order you play the stories, Live Alive gets more heart-wrenching as it goes on and you begin to connect dots. Still, I was unprepared for just how emotional the ending of the game would make me. A very rare satisfying ending for such a strong story. I'm so glad I gave Live Alive a chance and spent so much time with it. The characters were loveable, the story was easy to follow, and each character's individual story was short enough that it broke up any possibility of monotony. I somehow managed twice in a row to pick up games that I didn't want to end. I wanted to keep experiencing something new. Time moves on though, and I had eventually jumped into the next game in my backlog, hoping for the perfect game turkey: Sonic Frontiers.
Sonic Frontiers sucks.
After giving up on Sonic Frontiers, which was painful because I wasted a $5 Best Buy certificate on it, I moved onto the Witcher 3. I spent less time on this game than I did in Sonic Frontiers. I don't know if I set my expectations WAY too high, after years of it being hyped by everyone, or if I was intimidated by the sheer scale, but I don't even think I made it through the tutorial of this game. I just couldn't find myself caring about anything going on, and in a time when I don't have a lot of time to play video games, I need something that entrances me pretty quickly. I'm part of the short-attention-span generation and so the Witcher 3 was lost on me. I hope none of my friends read this. (Just kidding, I know they don't.) Moving on from two flops was disheartening. I didn't know what to play next. I filled in some time with Borderlands 3, but it's hard to justify that as a backlog game after cracking 100 hours. To tear myself away, I went pretty hard into something different and decided to revisit Hades. I had put quite a few runs into Hades around the time it came out, but ended up putting it down before I completed it. Getting demolished by Theseus so many times took it's toll on me. Coming back, though, was like visiting an old friend.
Dying is built into the story progression in Hades. So as painful as it can be, unless you're fun-ruining crazy person on YouTube, dying is a necessity.. It's canon, even. It's a requirement for getting stronger and doing better next time. It's a requirement for upgrading yourself, your weapons, and your relationship with others.
Just like in real life, right?!
One thing that really struck me with Hades is the incredible amount of voice acting in this game. After ~80 runs, there is still new story dialog, and nothing has been repeated. Every line recorded. The only dialog I've heard more than once are the mostly-passive things said by Zagreus himself during battles. Actual story conversation is new and fresh every time and it blows me away. It's a great way to increase the replay value of a game because it really makes the story feel worth it. Eventually I had to give up on that, and after completing1 Hades, I moved on again.
Again I felt lost after Hades. I didn't know what to jump into next. What could fill the void?
Enter a friend2 of mine that gave me a code for a month of Xbox GamePass Ultimate. And thusly it seemed as though my backlog year was over a little bit early. I didn't want to waste my short subscription so I downloaded a few games with cool color schemes and jumped in.
I started off my GamePass month with "Solar Ash". I had never heard of this game before, but very much judged a book video game by it's cover when I downloaded it. A quick wiki search taught me that Solar Ash exists in the same universe as the game Hyperlight Drifter. Hyperlight Drifter is a lovely game that I didn't get to appreciate much until they added an easy mode. The two games share nothing in common outside of a color scheme and a universe. There is no overlap, but it's fun to image what tie-ins there could be in the future.
I loved Solar Ash overall. The gameplay was somewhat repetitive, but the length was short enough that it didn't get old. It has a very N64 - GameCube era feel to it, which is a great thing if you remember the kind of world building that came to be on those platforms.
In Solar Ash you play as the Voidrunner Rei. Voidrunners are groups that are tasked with saving their planet from blackholes that threaten to swallow them hole. With a hard light sword, and a pair of shoes with grind plates from the early 2000s on them, you traverse the world you find yourself on, attempting to stop the Ultravoid and find out what happened to your other Voidrunners that started the mission before you. There's a lot of story, a lot of grinding (just on those grind plates I mentioned), and some surprisingly memorable characters, but you still feel incredibly alone for every moment of Solar Ash. Despite everyone that you meet, every enemy you slay, you are alone on the mission to find your counterparts, and save your entire race.
The ending of Solar Ash turned out to be one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I've experienced in a video game. The game is 4 years old at this point, but I won't put any spoilers out there beyond this vague one: it's an incredible and relatable mixture of sci-fi, introspection, and hopelessness. Just make sure you do both endings.
Once I had finished Solar Ash we were most of the way through December, and I didn't want to waste my last couple of weeks of my Game Pass trial. I downloaded a bunch of games that seemed cool and tried to squeeze out what I could until the end of the year, but I could not find myself interested in anything. Ultimately I ended up downloading the Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remaster and doing some fun, leisurely, sports-car-destroying races through places I've never heard of before. It actually turned out to be a great way to close out the year. When you already know you suck at a game (driving with joysticks is just nonsensical), you don't get too upset when you slam into any turn tighter than 170 degrees.
And there you have it. We're almost halfway through 2025, and I finally completed my story about 2024. I strongly recommend the backlog year. With so many games coming out so frequently its rare to find yourself ready to take on a game that you've been putting behind you for months or years. A purposeful act of ignorance gives you a ton of excitement for the following year, way less guilt about your backlog, and perhaps most importantly saves you some damn money because there is no point in buying games right after release!
Now, if you'll excuse me, this post window is blocking me from refreshing my Switch 2 pre-order status. 🫡
1It's a roguelike so....
2Shoutout to Kiri ❤️