Never catching up with the present

Welcome to my gaming blog, From the Backlog. As the title should suggest, the video games I'll be focusing on are typically older, some of them by a few months and others by years. A while ago, I committed to playing only one major game at a time, which means awesome games come out, but I ignore them until I am finished with what I'm doing. (If someone wants to send me a review copy of a new game, I'm all ears.) Some people may be better adept to playing a few games at once, but I know that if I truly want to finish a game, I have to focus on it solely. Another reason I am behind the times is because I bought a Playstation 3 a few years after it came out, which means there were all kinds of games for me to play excluding new releases. Unless I quit my full-time job, I have games and will have games to play continuously for years. I also try to be frugal, so if I am only sort of interested in a new game, I will typically wait until it goes on sale for a price that meets my interest. (I will confess, I am a sucker for Steam sales.)

Beyond: Two Souls - One of those games I wouldn't mind receiving a review copy for.

Moving on, I'd like to note the kind of posts you should be expecting. Given that I will be playing games behind the times, I am not sure how relevant reviews will be by the time they go up. Instead, I'd like to offer up something possible more engaging: episodic blogging about my games, a subject discussed in this blog, which goes into why it is harder to review games in the same way one reviews movies. I often have a lot of insights into the games I'm playing, but I am not continuously taking notes. It would actually be easier for me to talk about the last couple hours of gaming as if I'm talking about my day. However, depending on how short a game is, I may still post reviews or post-mortems at the very least.

There are some games, which get me hot enough to buy them new and play them right when they come out. This year, I picked up The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: Enhanced Edition, which was just amazing. Seriously, it is one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and compared to a lot of games you see in this HD era, the absolutely gorgeous graphics were the icing on the gameplay cake. More recently relevant, I played Quantum Conundrum, developed by Kim Swift, who developed Narbacular Drop, which laid the groundwork for the amazing Portal. The game was certainly entertaining, though it invites comparisons to Portal that end up becoming unfair; it's possible the game was marred by being shoehorned into a smaller digital download production, but I still would not play down its entertainment value. Games still to come that I am looking forward to playing upon release are Borderlands 2, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed III, Bioshock Infinite, and many others.

Seriously, The Witcher 2 is gorgeous.

Aside from just talking about games I am or will be playing, I'd love to blog about my opinions about the video game industry and journalism. I am also planning some dissections of video games themselves, looking into the mechanics to make the industry successful and how they hit our id. (Not to be confused with id Software.) Whether they will interest this blog's likely tens of readers is yet to be seen, but I hope my rambling hits home with some of you. Back to games for the moment, you will most likely see me talking about RPGs and adventure games. I lean on those genres the most, though the original Bioshock showed me that I can attempt first-person shooters with my PC on super easy mode. My only gaming consoles are a PS3 and a PC. I have nothing against the 360; I just didn't choose one in the store. (If you'd like to buy me one, I'll play on it!) In the past, I've owned a PS2, Gamecube, Saturn, Genesis, and Gameboy.

Hopefully, they didn't just up the ante in the graphics department.

So thank you for taking the time to read this long-winded introduction. I do hope you return as I will try to post often or die trying. In the meantime, you can hit me up on the Twitter: @gilmeansjoy.

Beyond: Two Souls screenshot taken without permission from GameInformer.com.
The Witcher 2 screenshot taken myself via Steam.
Borderlands 2 screenshot taken without permission from the official website linked above.