I’m not entirely sure what stone overturned in my mind, but recently, while flipping back and forth between a decision to load up either Oblivion or Blue Prince, I felt suddenly compelled to review my gaming backlog instead. The “B” word fills some with dread, others delight. For me, it’s somewhere in between. I like having pools of games to dip into when I feel like I need a change of pace. But I’ll readily admit that I also feel twinges of guilt over having several (dozen) games in the backlog that I both bought and intended to play but haven’t…yet. Let’s face it; game sales are a dime a dozen, and when a good deal comes along, it’s sometimes hard to say “no” outright. Rather, the justification for purchase is that the getting the game on sale makes it worth one’s time. Alas, if only the reality was as simple.

Another factor played into my turn to the backlog – and I’m looking at you, remastered Oblivion – and that was space. Yes, I did download of my own accord, but not before having to make space for its 120GB download first. If anything, the offloading games song-and-dance is probably what stuck in my subconscious and started this little journey in the first place. After all, the 5GB original version of Oblivion stares at me from my Xbox’s backlog! But…but, pretty game is pretty, I plead! What a dolt am I? Maybe. And maybe you can see why it was time for me to review my priorities.

Compiling my backlog is a work in progress – because I feel like if I make it official in a spreadsheet or something that I’ll actually see to clearing it! – but a few things jumped out at me even at first glance. One is that I have loads of smaller games (the likes of Braid, Transistor, and Fez, to name a few) that I know I could complete over a weekend or just a handful of days. Another is that my PS backlog is, thankfully, quite small when compared to Xbox/PC, but it contains some of the largest games I own. Horizon Forbidden West and Baldur’s Gate 3 are taking up lots of real estate, for example. The last thing I noticed was that I actively remember purchasing or adding all the games in my backlog, except one…

Lost Odyssey.

This Xbox 360 game sticks out in my backlog like a sore thumb because I have no recollection of how it ended up in my library. All I know is that it’s been there since the days when I had a working 360. Was it free? Did I buy it? Maybe digging through my Microsoft account would reveal that answer, but my curiosity in that regard isn’t getting the better of me yet. Instead, I’ve ben racking my brain as to why I have the game. I have an inkling that someone might have recommended it, or that I saw something about it out in the wild that looks interesting, but I honestly don’t know either way. I have an extremely vague memory of playing through its opening scenes and then never going back. Did I not like it? Or maybe it didn’t play well on my Xbox 360? (Boy, I miss that console, but it struggled with many a game.) This is where my real curiosity kicked in…maybe playing it would dredge up these lost memories? If not, playing it would at least eliminate something from the backlog, and that’s a win.

As of writing, I’ve just redownloaded Lost Odyssey, and provided it’s still playable, I’m hoping it’ll prove to be a good experience. This is moot if it doesn’t, but at least I’ll then be able to put all this to rest and make a little extra space on my hard drive, as well.

Lede image credit: Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.