It's Not You, It's Me: The Great Video Game Break-Up

Even eight years after its original release, The Witcher is still pretty cool

It's been a few weeks since my last blog here on Giant Bomb. There are a few reasons for that, some of which I won't go into, what with this being a video game website and all, but the main cause of that inactivity is that I just don't really have anything to write about right now. At the time of writing this I'm playing through two RPGs side by side - the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher, which I've just reached Chapter III of in a little over twenty hours of play, and Pokémon Omega Ruby, which has just shy of sixty hours on its clock as I approach the Elite Four. They're radically different styles of RPG, with perhaps their only shared value being the fact they're both demanding huge chunks of what little free time I've had so far this month. While I'm enjoying both of them just fine, I don't feel compelled to write anything about either of them (although I did come close to penning a rant about the impasse I reached towards the end of Chapter II of The Witcher, but don't worry, I'm over it now).

But today is Valentine's Day. A day dedicated to celebrating love and commitment in all its forms. So, I thought, what better way to celebrate this amorous occasion than by breaking up with a ton of games and forever eradicating them from my towering Pile of Shame?

Regular followers of the blog will recall that I did something similar to this in the run-up to Backlogtober, my ill-advised (and yet somehow successful) effort to blow through as many unbeaten games as possible last October. This latest effort has been inspired to some degree by fellow Giant Bomb user @phishyphishy, whose Backlog 365 blog initiative is seeing him work through his own mound of unfinished titles one game at a time and determining which games to shelve for a later play-date, and which ones to retire from his backlog forever. It's a really cool little series that I recommend you check out, and perhaps even offer the duder some support by way of a follow or some supportive comments.

I've stuck with the same selection process that I used last time, which basically involves me looking my entire Pile of Shame up and down and asking myself one simple question - "do I really want to play this video game?" Last time I did this I was able to excise eleven games from my backlog in one fell swoop, and I've tried to be even more ruthless this time around. The resulting casualties this time number a whopping twenty-seven titles. Below is a cross-section of the games that didn't make the cut this time (their titles are in bold font), along with some of the reasons why:

Click Off And Die

Guess I won't be spending any time in hand-drawn Paris after all

I own a lot of point-and-click adventure games that I've never played. I vowed to delve deeper into the genre some years back, following positive experiences with the remastered version of The Secret of Monkey Island and Telltale's first season of Sam & Max. I continue to enjoy point-and-click games, but it's time to face facts and admit that I own more of the damn things than I'll ever play. That's why I'm using this opportunity to say goodbye to some of them, including the charming-yet-derivative Jolly Rover, and archaic LucasArts classics LOOM and The Dig. By far the most difficult ones to say goodbye to are the first three Broken Sword games, The Shadow of the Templars, The Smoking Mirror and The Sleeping Dragon. They seem like well-made adventure games and I know they're revered by the gaming community, but next to more recent titles like Telltale's Sam & Max (which I still have two more seasons to get through) and Double Fine's Broken Age, I can't see myself prioritising them, and so I'm cutting my ties.

Past Their Prime

The only error I see is this game still on my Pile of Shame

As a self-professed collector of video games, there are a number of titles that I've picked up over the years due to their perceived historical value to the medium as a whole. Unfortunately, that cultural significance often does little to mask the fact that these games just aren't a whole lot of fun to play any more. Games that fall into this category include the Western-themed GUN, World War II FPS Medal of Honor Underground and open-world destruct-a-thon Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, all games that don't really have a justified place on my list in a world that's seen the likes of Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty 4, and Just Cause 2 improve on all their respective mechanics. Also falling into this category are Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, one of the series' few mis-steps that hasn't aged well at all, and Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, games that may have turned heads on the Dreamcast back in the day but feel nigh unplayable fifteen years after the fact.

Why Have Cotton...

Who needs Assassin's Creed on PSP when there's still Black Flag to be played?

...when you can have silk? It's a question that has puzzled humanity (and more specifically those in charge of marketing campaigns for chocolate bars) for many years. In this context, I'm talking about games I own that do something well, but not as well as other games that are already on my list. Things like Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines and Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, games that are impressive in light of successfully translating the franchise to handheld platforms, but probably aren't worth playing over any of the main series titles. Or Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II and The Temple of Elemental Evil, all perfectly serviceable D&D-based computer RPGs that nonetheless feel obsolete on a list that also contains both Baldur's Gate titles. Other games in this category include Prototype, a game that feels like it's been called "the poor man's inFamous" since before either of them even came out, and Perfect Dark Zero, an all-style, no-substance first-person shooter that I'd struggle to prioritise over the likes of Crysis and Far Cry 3.

Indie Gone Gone

I wanted to like Half-Minute Hero, but something about it didn't meet my expectations

We've all done it, right? I'm talking about buying critically acclaimed games to support their indie developers, but with a laissez-faire attitude to actually playing those games. For me the biggest offender here is perhaps FTL: Faster Than Light, a game I bought based on reviews and public reception, all the while knowing full well that I don't particularly enjoy roguelikes and would likely never play it. Other games listed under this heading include Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax and Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, games built around concepts I really admire but with execution I just couldn't warm to, and Toki Tori, a charming puzzler that I had my fill of years ago and have never really had any intention of returning to.

And The Rest

He's a wise-cracking suit-wearing zombie-brain-guy-thing... Nope, I don't know either

A handful of tonight's cuts don't fit comfortably into any of the pigeonholes above, and so must appear in this dedicated section of miscellany. First up is Dead Head Fred, a PSP game I bought on recommendation from former Giant Bomb user Jayge (anyone besides me remember that duder?), but which unfortunately didn't grab me in the hour or so I spent with it one afternoon last year. Despite there being several Japanese RPGs of arguably average quality on my Pile of Shame, Chaos Rings and Rune Factory: Oceans are the ones most associable with mediocrity, and thus the ones I feel most comfortable about letting go. Finally, Wasteland 2 seems like an awesome post-apocalyptic tactical RPG, but it's time for me to face facts and admit that this laptop is never going to run it, not in a whole year of Sundays.

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So that's the results of my latest hard look at my Pile of Shame. This cull takes the total down from one hundred and eighty-seven (187) titles to a comfortable, round one hundred and sixty (160) remaining games. Don't get me wrong, that's still a shit-ton of unfinished video gamery right there, but it's mighty satisfying to see that number a little smaller than it was this morning. I know I could have cut even more games, and spent a long time thinking about some titles I was on the fence with, but ultimately decided that twenty-seven is a pretty substantial cull already (around fifteen per cent of my total backlog, all told). There's nothing stopping me from coming back and reassessing the lists to make further cuts at a later date, and I may end doing just that at some point in the future.

As always, thanks a lot for reading. I apologise for the delay in writing anything since my Stranger's Wrath blog a few weeks back. Hopefully whatever goes up here next will be something a bit more interesting and insightful. Until then, feel free to sound off with your thoughts on my latest video game break-up in the comments below. Maybe there's something mentioned above that you don't think I should have cut, and you want to defend it. Or perhaps you've spotted something else on my Pile of Shame that you don't think is worth my time, and want to argue for its removal from the list. Whether you get involved in the conversation or not, I want to thank you all once again for taking some time out to read these ramblings. Take care guys, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (PC)