We all have backlogs of games we keep meaning to get to, all those games we promised ourselves we would totally, for sure, for real, play eventually. Recently, I’ve started actually finishing up some games on my backlog. It feels amazing.
I love finishing a game. It’s satisfying to see the credits roll, and even more satisfying to then uninstall the game so its icon stops taunting me. So often we get caught up playing new games or playing the same multiplayer games every week that our backlogs grow and grow and grow. This job, as great as it can be some days, does mean I have to play a lot of games, which can mean not finishing everything I start. My backlog is large and scary. I try not to think about it.
But a few weeks ago I started working on a list ranking every Assassin’s Creed game. While I’ve played most of them, there were a few I never got around to finishing. So I decided to beat Rogue. Then Unity. Then I wanted to shake things up, so I beat The Last of Us Part 2. Then I beat Saints Row The Third Remastered and decided to finally play and beat Gat Outta Hell. So in the span of about three weeks, I beat five games that had been sitting on my backlog. In the cases of The Last of Us Part II and the remastered Saints Row game, they had only been on my backlog for a few weeks. But the other games, like Unity or Gat Outta Hell, were games that had been sitting on it for years.
I didn’t mean to knock five games off of mine in such a short amount of time, but with each game completed, I found myself excited to jump to another one. The current state of the world and my upcoming apartment move have turned me into a weird ball of stress and anxiety. Finishing stuff, especially stuff that I’ve been meaning to do for some time now, is a rush of endorphins and satisfaction that’s rare for me these days. I’m already wanting more: I’m planning on finishing Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Ghost of Tsushima, Shadow Warrior 2, and, if I have some time to spare, Halo Wars 2.
I have no idea how long this desire to complete old games will last, but I don’t want to let my current state of mind go to waste. While my brain and body are willing I’m just going to knock off as many games from my backlog as possible. Hopefully, odds are high we won’t suffer another global pandemic like this in my lifetime, so if I can use this terrible time to beat some video games, why not take advantage of it? It’s sort of like min/maxing a tragedy, and it makes me feel good in the process.
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