One Man And His Steam Backlog – Part 1

One Man And His Steam Backlog – Part 1

As I’m sure many of you will know, buying games on Steam is a very addictive experience indeed. With seasonal sales regularly knocking up to 75% off my favourite releases it’s no wonder I have accumulated over 50 unplayed games in little over a year. Now I wouldn’t really call myself a PC gamer in the sense that I play 95% of my games on console. The time I put aside to play any titles I own on Steam is fairly minimal comparatively and so I class myself as a console gamer.

All this time spent with a controller in my hand, my Steam backlog has been slowly mounting up to the stage where it’s getting ridiculous and I’ve decided to make a stand. So for the next month I will don the suit, learn the secret handshake and take my place as a PC gamer. Any time I would usually put aside for gaming will be spent tackling my Steam backlog and these articles will be documenting the highs and lows of my experience.

I decided to start things off with a classic and finally finished my first playthrough of the original Half-Life. I know, about time right? I needn’t say much about the game itself as most of you probably know more than me. It was interesting to see how big an improvement there was between Half-Life and Half-Life 2 especially in the story telling side of things. Gameplay was very familiar however and after finishing off Nihilanth I can happily say that I’m making good progress to reduce this massive backlog of mine.

The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition Steam Backlog

Next up is The Binding of Isaac, a dark and bloodthirsty dungeon crawler from the makers of Super Meat Boy. While this game was interesting at first, after a few attempts and a few deaths it soon became monotonous. The continues repetition of enemies, rooms and random collection of items was not enough to keep me interested for long and after spending about two hours with The Binding of Isaac I have consigned it to the Recycle Bin of my desktop.

Game of the Week

Game of the week goes to The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. This was recommended to me by a friend after hearing how much I enjoyed playing Deponia at the end of last year. Much like Deponia, this is an adventure game with a unique artistic style and a dash of humour in the gameplay. Although released back in 1990 with the updated special edition in 2009, it stands the test of time well and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with it so far.

As a newly self appointed PC gamer, one problem I have noticed myself having with PC’s as a platform and also with Steam is immersion in the games I’m playing. Whether it be the fact that the screen of my laptop just doesn’t match the quality of my TV screen. Or maybe that I’m not as used to keyboard and mouse controls and have to focus on that more than I usually would. Or quite often when I’m playing a game and one of my friends will message me on Steam for a chat (which I’m more than happy to do), detracting from my gaming experience. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I know only an alt+tab away are all the videos, social media pages and sporting score lines that could distract me for hours. Either way there always seems to be something to take away my attention, a problem that I rarely have when playing my console.

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