Your Steam Backlog

[Kurt Cristal]

Steam users, you've all had this experience. They have one of their many swell little sales and you buy up hundreds worth of games at a fraction of the price. Then you end up with this huge backlog of games you've yet to play. Your time was occupied playing that one game you really wanted to play, but now you beat it, and all you have right now is your backlog. The dreaded question arises...

How do you pick what game to play next?

Lets see, I have the Blackwell Adventure series, the Still Life adventure series, the Broken Sword Adventure series, all 3 STALKERs, the last 3 Tomb Raiders before the reboot, Universe Sandbox, Red Faction 4, the complete Painkiller series, Hard Reset, Doom BFG Edition, Dead Space 1&2, Dead Island GOTY, Bastion, and Anno 2070.

Most recently I beat the Arkham Batman games. So what now? As you can see I enjoy quite a wide variety of gametypes. Althought I'm not asking for suggestions on what next, I would like to know, how do YOU pick what to play next when you have a backlog. Oh and, non-steam users and others who are not part of the most glorious PC master race can answer this too for their console backlog. I don't want to me exclusionary. I have a mild Xbox 360 backlog as well.

Also: Apologies to everyone for the double-post. Wasn't paying attention.

 

[Kurt Cristal]

I've got nothing. When I buy a game, I play it untill I'm finished. I don't care how bad the game is, I'm going to play through it and try to enjoy it. Buying games and not playing them is a waste of money.

Also, this means I only buy games one at a time.

I would, but the sales are so infectious. Sidenote, have you ever had a really bad game you recently played that you had to force yourself to finish? That sounds grueling!

 

[Bad Jim]

have you ever had a really bad game you recently played that you had to force yourself to finish? That sounds grueling!

I can think of nothing more absurd than forcing myself through a terrible game when I have an embarrassingly large backlog of good games.

As you can guess however, I've got nothing for the OP. I don't think I even could finish the games I've got anymore. And not just because I have Dark Souls.

 

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

Time is more valuable than money (once you have enough to be secure and healthy), in my delicious grilled onions.

I often feel pressure to work through my backlog. In a form that's like guilt or a feeling of obligation. I have to remind myself often that they're just videogames, feeling an obligation to finish them is silly. Just play what you want, and buy what you want (within your budget), and who cares if you finish it? They're videogames; if it makes you feel better, tell the internet you've conquered your backlog, they'll never know the difference.

I base my decision on what to play next based on how I feel. I just started playing through The Witcher again. I was thinking about The Witcher 3, and that made me want to go through the original again. It makes no sense why I like The Witcher so much. I rarely play games through more than once (or finish them at all), I don't like MMOs anymore because of the tedious quests, I don't like crafting, I find most A-RPGs to be boring (Diablo-like ARPGs), and I am often annoyed at games that are too simple, when they could've been better. Yet, I love The Witcher, with all its clunky combat, crafting and tedious fetch quests. It don't make no sense! I guess I like the game's world and its rough edges, that give it a genuine quality, enough to gloss over its many shortcomings. Anyway, I just felt it out, that's how I decided.

 

[Esotera]

Several Total Wars, Fallout 3, and Spec Ops The Line. There are a load of others that I will probably never play for longer than a couple of minutes every other month like Garry's Mod.

I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2, Dota, and Civ III a ridiculous amount recently, so all other games are out of the question until I get bored of them.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (never can get past the first level), Darksiders, Sol Survivor, Magicka, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Company of Heroes.

Most of the games I probably will never touch. I got them from different pack deals or I bought them to play later and they didn't capture my attention. My last few weeks has been all Just Cause 2, Bioshock Infinite, and Team Fortress 2.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Just in the last month I got Bioshock Infinite, X-com Enemy Unknown, Max Payne 3, and Hitman Absolution.

I'm playing through Bioshock Infinite and Max Payne 3, but I have yet to start X-com or hitman, and that's just the games I've bought in the last 30 days.

 

[shrekfan246]

They're videogames; if it makes you feel better, tell the internet you've conquered your backlog, they'll never know the difference.

But you will know... and your games will always be there, staring at you... judging you... mocking you... knowing they beat you...

I base my decision on what to play next based on how I feel.

That sounds like hippie talk to me.

[sub][sub]That was a joke, just to clarify. Since sarcasm and whatnot aren't easy to read.[/sub][/sub]

OT: I've got a backlog spanning multiple systems at this point. With the rate I tend to get bored of slowly-paced games and go back through Mass Effect or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and the rate at which new games are coming out I'll never get through all of it.

Thankfully, there isn't really anything particularly engrossing coming out in the near future, so I've plenty of time to wrangle back the various games I've started.

 

[yamy]

I pick which one to play...well based on which one I feel like to be honest. It's highly dependent on what I feel like playing. I'm not the type who tend to stick with one game and only one game till it's finished, so I often have a few uncompleted games laying around. I would advice just pick whichever one stands out to you. If it doesn't appeal switch to another one till you find one you want to continue with etc etc.

Backlog atm:

Cuthulu Saves the World/Breath of Death VII
Dead Space
Bioshock
Bioshock Infinite
Metro 2033
From Dust
Monkey Island 1+2
To The Moon
Just Cause 2 (<-but this one isn't my fault the save kept getting deleted/corrupted)
Portal 2

 

[The_Lost_King]

I have a backlog, I just don't care. They are just so cheap it doesn't matter. The only one that bothers me that I didn't like is sins of s solar empire because it was $30(It had recently come out and I wanted it and it was 25% off).

Edit: Oh and then there is Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. I really want to play those games but I have trouble with 2nd edition dnd.

 

[LetalisK]

The way I deal with a backlog is by not dealing with it. If you never acknowledge that you have a problem, everything will be okay, right?

My backlog:
Dead Rising 2
Devil May Cry 4
Dungeon Defenders
Dungeon Siege 1-3
Finish Skyrim
Finish New Vegas
Just Cause 2
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Magicka
Finish Metro 2033(at this point I'll just restart)
Finish Overlord 2
Portal 2
Red Faction Guerilla
Risen, STALKER
Sanctum
Space Pirates and Zombies
Tomb Raider Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld
Torchlight 2
Finish Total War: Shogun 2

That's not including the non-steam games I need to play.

 

[Joccaren]

No backlog. I'm just replaying old games ATM 'cause I am immune to impulse buying with the sole exception of food. I will impulse buy the shit out of food, end up with a giant thickshake with a dollop of icecream and bits of chocolate on it, a large meal with drinks and a sunday, several bottles of ramune, several bags of lollies, chips and lord only knows what else after an hour at a shopping centre 'cause it all looks tasty and even though I'm on the verge of throwing up I'll just buy more and try to eat/drink it.
Conveniently enough I'm also the skinniest person I know. There is almost nowhere you can touch me and not feel my skeleton.

I don't get into the Steam sales. The games they put on sale are the ones that either I already have, or are not at all interested in. Additionally I don't normally have money to spend online, so that would make it impossible to buy a game even if I did want it. That and I'll generally go to other sites, find they have better deals and buy them there instead.

 

[FoolKiller]

I have a spreadsheet with all my games listed and their release dates. I put in a macro to sort either alphabetically or by date and at the same time select a number within the total number of games. I click the button and it gives me a random game to play. Sometimes its the only way to do it.

 

[MissP]

I actually just completed Far Cry 3 and had to pick another game from my backlog. I feel like I'm making progress, but all it'll take is another massive Steam sale to bury me again. Let's see, I've still got:

Cave Story, Assassin's Creed 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Divinity 2, Trine 2, Dragon Age 2, and Psychonauts (dang bought that one ages ago). I picked out Saints Row the Third to work on next, with some Torchlight 2 on the side. Now I've also got my eye on Dead Island: Riptide coming out soon, and with everyone gushing over Bioshock Infinite I feel like that needs to be played sooner rather than later.

Oh and look, Dishonored is half off this weekend...

 

[mysecondlife]

Most notable steam backlog I can think of is Bastion. I decided to stop playing it after I couldn't take the M&K anymore. I'll invest in an xbox controller some time in future.

 

[mitchell271]

Serious Sam 3, Legend of Grimrock, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (mostly due to keyboard issues), Hotline Miami, Shank 1 & 2, Civilization V, KOTOR and the BIT.TRIP games. I get a lot of stuff from bundles!

 

[Snotnarok]

I'm not sure this is exactly 100% relevant but there is a site called the backloggery that you can keep track of games you've got, beat, haven't beat, mastered and even rate them by stars.
As far as games I haven't beaten/working on.

Farcry 3
Skyrim
Blade Kitten
Dragon Age Origins(GOTY) and .........a few more things blah

 

[Zeraki]

-Skyrim(over 100 hours logged between two characters... I'm never going to finish that game XD)

-Spec Ops: The Line(I played about two hours of it, but never got around to finishing it yet... I will eventually).

-Deus Ex: Human Revolution... this is yet another game I have logged quite a bit of time in and haven't finished. Something always comes up when I try and I end up abandoning my playthough for so long that I have to start over from the beginning to get accustomed to it again.

-Farcry 3... I just forgot I even had it. It was gifted to me by a friend so I haven't really done much with it.(although Blood Dragon looks absolutely awesome)

-Amnesia: The Dark Descent... I don't do suspense horror very well. I didn't even get to my first monster before I said "nope! some other time... I need to sleep tonight".

-Torchlight II... other things just got in the way and I haven't been able to finish it.

-Both Witcher games

-Both Half-Life games

And there are a few older games that I can't play because they don't like windows 8.