What shall we do with the Pile of Shame?

Behold! The Pile of Shame!

I've decided to do away with "Steam Games Sunday" and replace it with "Pile of Shame Sunday" instead. While Steam Games Sunday was an interesting exercise, and it gave me (and any readers out there) a general idea of what Steam games were popular among the Choicest Games contributors, ultimately it was just a bunch of numbers (namely playtime) that was then compiled into a ranked list. So I wanted to do another segment that was a bit more personal so that it would not only be of some use to me but also potentially more entertaining to the readers of the blog. I often comment about how large my backlog or "pile of shame" is in terms of games I haven't completed or even played before. So I decided to extend that list to games I actually have played or even completed before but haven't reviewed on Choicest Games (i.e. retro games played in my youth).

So how many games are on my pile of shame?

Almost 800 games on Steam, GOG, Origin and UPlay.

That's a lot of games. In fact, if I reviewed one game on that pile of shame/backlog every week, that's still over 15 years before I'll see the end of it. And that's assuming I don't buy any new games over the next 15 years...

I think it's unrealistic to expect I'll finish every game on the pile of shame at this stage but I'm hoping to at least make a dent in it (call it a misplaced sense of optimism or naivety) and as some of you who have been reading my blog already know, I do have a plan to reduce the number of games in this pile: by playing the short games first.

On the other hand, I also don't want to be spending all my time just playing games that are short; I want to play the games that matter to me, usually sequels to my favourite franchises or games that have been bought by friends and family as birthday/Christmas pressies - it's a bit rude not even getting around to playing them, right?

But it then got me thinking while I could be taking the pragmatic approach (i.e. finishing all the shortest games) or the approach where I get to play the games that matter most to me (i.e. finishing my "Want to Play" list) I still didn't know what kind of reviews the blog audience would be interested in reading. While I'm always receptive to suggestions, I thought I wouldn't jump into finding out by popular vote what I should review right away, since I don't think there's enough interest out there for such a thing; instead, I've asked the contributors at Choicest Games to give their recommendations on what I should review next. Here are their responses:

Lanna

Lanna didn't pick any game in particular but thought I should simply go to the oldest game in my Pile of Shame and start from there. Of course, this brought a whole bunch of other questions to the fore: Did she want me to play the oldest game by release date or the oldest one in terms of when I acquired it? Did she want me to play games that I've already completed before or even ones that I've played before and didn't like? Did she want me to play a game I got for free or one I actually purchased?

In the end, I reached a compromise which involves continuing to do what I'm already doing with my "Want to Play" List but ensuring I play the oldest games on the list first (in this case, by release date). So I've deviated off this track somewhat since I'm currently playing Mass Effect: Andromeda (which is a pretty recent game); not only that but the following games are in half-completed states:

Far Cry 3
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Battlefield 1
Master of Orion

However, after finishing those games I'll move on to actually playing games I want to play but that came out a while ago... The Witcher anyone?

Luke

Luke was rather straight-forward with his response and suggested I check out Company of Heroes 2 again (a game he's had quite a bit of experience with). I've actually played a few hours of this game already but it's been a long time since I've played it since (and I never got around to finishing the single player campaign). This time, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get that single player campaign out of the way and maybe play a few multiplayer games with Luke too.

Choona

Choona told me he started reading my huge list of games and then gave up when he read all games from the letters A-C. He did offer a suggestion that if I wanted a quick and easy game to review that I should try out A Virus Named Tom - by sheer coincidence, I've actually been playing this game on and off in recent months on the Steam Link so this could be a perfect one to try and complete too.

So expect a post in the near future detailing my exploits with Mass Effect: Andromeda, Company of Heroes 2 and A Virus Named Tom. Until next Sunday!

Also, for those with backlogs/piles of shame, how do you manage them?