Interesting little sandbox game. Got this as a present many years ago but only now getting round to playing it. Quite easy with the exception of a few serious difficulty wall missions. This game came out quite early in the 360's life (and also had PC and XBox ports) so the graphical quality was not great. One of the most touted features was the sheer size of the world. And it was indeed quite sizeable. But there were not a great many fast travel methods so a lot of the game was spent just getting to the next point. Got fairly repetitive around the middle, but the ending was very epic. The sequel is meant to be a big step up. I will now find out.

Another long forgotten entry from the vast backlog. This is from 2003 (10 years ago now) which was played briefly when it first came out and now finished. A charming little Mario RPG game, but I still think the Paper Mario series is more enjoyable. My main complain in this one is that the counter attacks were quite difficult to execute as well as figure out and the cost of not regularly performing them correctly would be quite high. Quite a lot of grinding was involved to get to the levels required to progress a few times. But apart from these rather unpleasent difficulty spikes, it was overall a very enjoyable trip through the bean bean kingdom. But still probably not good enough to warrant me playing more in this series sadly.

Spin off of the Guitar Hero series only using a turntable instead of a guitar. Fun enough for a while, but got old fairly quick. Quicker than the Guitar Heroes did sadly. Mixing just ain't as fun as strumming.

Very old Atari ST game that I didn't think I had finished before, but it turns out I probably had cause it was only 15 minutes long and not very hard. Just driving round town either escaping cops or busting crims. Fun enough considering the technical limits, but runs out of steam quickly. Good thing it was short, I guess.

Offered to take this game off someone who was giving it away and for the life of me, can't remember why....Never been that fond of World War 2 games. And case in point, this one was just okay. It had a few epic set-pieces that were cool but overall will be fairly forgettable and the bits in between the epic set pieces felt like they dragged a lot. Overall felt quite long too. Longer than it needed to be. Still, another tiny piece chipped off the backlog.

Side note: This was also the 100th game I have finished in 2013. Making good progress this year!

Brilliant adventure across a zombie infected America based on the classic Oregon Trail. Captures the necessity of balancing supplies and risks in the situation very well. The purposefully clunky combat controls make you think hard about what you should and should not risk. Loved the presentation and especially very fitting music. Only complaint would be the total absurdity of some of the event that happen along the way. Zombies trying to grab you and taking tyres by accident? Fine. Cans of gas falling out of the car? I guess. People breaking bones just by sitting in a car? Unlikely. I liked a lot of the references to other zombie games too particularly in the pictures of the major stops like Left 4 Dead and Zombies ate my Neighbours. Highly reccommended and at a little over 2 hours long for the main campaign you'd have to be mad not to.

Yet another ancient entry played for maybe an hour when I first got it in 2004 (9 years ago now) and finally cleared off the backlog. Initially tried to play the improved port on PC, but could not get it to run so just decided to go with XBox after that. Which was better I suppose because I still had my save a few chapter in.

Overall a very tidy little game. Have a feeling it ran on the Doom 3 engine or something very similar to it cause visually it is strikingly similar. I did have an unusual problem in that all the visuals were extremely blocky. Don't know if this was an XBox thing or if I had some other problem but it didn't hamper me too much. Lots of interesting mechanics in this game such as the shining eyes, good mix of stealth and combat and well though out paths through the escape of the prison. Overall was quite easy though but definitely more enjoyable than I was expecting. And of course, the charm and charisma of Vin Diesel was a big part of it too.

This DLC episode kind of just suddenly was launched out of nowhere. It serves as a prelude to the second season. More of the usual Walking Dead stuff with an interesting twist this time: depending on how you play the 5 different characters, they may or may not split up at the end, which I'm assuming will affect how the second season plays out. All in all a nice prologue to the new series. And exceedingly short. Which isn't always a bad thing.

Epic conclusion to the story. If a little bit of a cliffhanger. The progress of hardware again allowed the progress of the game engine and combat in this entry was much slicker and faster. Sadly, as a result, the platforming was made almost face-eatingly difficult at times due to the static camera angles. There was again, a lot of retreading of environments in this game again and at points it felt like it was being padded artificially. But I didn't mind because it was just so awesome through and through. Glad to have this series done and still don't know why I put it off for so long....might have been because I got stuck so much in the original Soul Reaver I thought it would prove tiresome. How wrong I was. Epic music, epic story and all around awesome. Hope they revive this series like some of the rumours I have been hearing.

Mad as a cat in a hat. And tough as nails. Especially towards the end where the difficulty curve hit a wall. Eagerly anticipated this ever since playing Castle Crashers but for the life of me could not figure out what the hell kind of game it was. This mystery remained right until I actually got to play it. And it did not disappoint. Behemoth put their usually zany humour into it, especially the narration between chapters which is probably some of the funniest I've heard in any game ever. All round top notch co-op action. If a little frustratingly difficult in places. But still awesome through and through. More please, Behemoth.

Another epic entry in the Legacy of Kain series. The story, while awesome and circular referencing back to itself a lot (due to much time travel and paradoxes) is also quite mind bending at times.

Thanks to the power of the Playstation 2, this entry was technically much superior to the previous one, but maintained all the good parts too. Very theatric and well voiced again. The combat did seem trickier, or maybe just more awkward, but there were only a handful of bosses this time and all right at the end rather than periodic ones like in the previous game. This entry was much more puzzle based and it seems "The Bosses" were actually just small dungeons that you had to figure out in order to get upgrades. One small complaint I have is that there was butt loads of back tracking and re-treading. There were maybe only 6 main areas or so and you visited each at least 3 times, sometimes more so by the time you were a third or so into the game, you had seem almost all the landscape there was to see and would only see it altered slightly from that point on. Hard to tell if this was due to intent, laziness, time constraints or technical constraints such as memory or storage. Never the less a truly epic title that again I'm not sure why I put it off for so long. On to the final and hopefully epic conclusion of this tale....

Wowzers. Got this when it first came out in 1999 (14 years ago now) but didn't get too far due to frustration from clunky controls and uncertainty on how to progress. Wish I had stuck at it because once getting into it proper it was amazing. Clever puzzles, fun combat, interesting mirror world dynamic and fascinating well written story full of twists and turns. Despite the hardware limitations of the time it actually was a very well put together game and just lots of fun to go through and watch events dripping in irony and poetry unravel. Can't wait to get into the other 2 games.

Decent enough shooter. If a tad generic. One of the 360's launch titles. I remember seeing it being played early after the consoles launch, and subsequently got it on PC, but never got into it myself. Until now. The most memorable thing I saw at the time was the awesome opening where the aliens rip open the bar to the background music of "Don't Fear the Reaper". One of the best game intros ever. Fairly standard FPS action. The most remarkable things about it I would say are the amazing set pieces and architecture. Just ended up taking screenshot after screenshot of them. I was kind of tempted to scratch this one from my list because I didn't think it would really be worth playing. After having played it, I could have probably lived with myself having done that. Seems they really wanted a sequel and I have heard whisperings of it from time to time. But now, 7 years on and still no sequel, it seems unlikely to happen.

Another fairly standard Game Boy racer. Top down this time. Just clearing out old entries from the backlog. Nothing too exciting. This is however, the last Game Boy game in the backlog.

Fairly standard classic Game Boy racer. Only in Jeeps. Hampered by the draw distance and hardware limitations and such. But fun enough for what it is. Known as 4 Wheel Drive in PAL territories and Jeep Jamboree in others for some reason...

Another solid Android game from Gameloft. Lots of fun being the Batman beating the snot out of goons, bataranging them and gliding around Gotham. Also very nice looking for an Android game and well voiced. Combat actually rarely got boring because it was just so much fun. This is actually my last Android game. For now. From what I hear, most of the Gameloft superhero games (like this, Spiderman and Iron Man) are all very similar and use the same game engine. So I will probably stay away from those so as not to detriment the experience.

Another chestnut from the past. On a roll here. This particular one is from 14 years ago. I remember playing it a little when I got it and it was played a lot on LAN at school by other people but not me.
Another classic shooter where your movement pace is a full on sprint all the time. Which is awesome compared to today's slow lumbering paced shooters. Still, doesn't make sense that a marine can move at the same speed as an alien. They're meant to be much faster. Even on a lower difficulty setting, this was very tough. And save use was limited to a lot of re-dos were needed because aliens can fuck you up pretty quick or you can sprint off a huge drop or set yourself on fire. All kinds of hazards. A lot of fun though. Captures the feeling of the world very well and genuinely tense when you're stalking through dark corridors with aliens chasing you. Good stuff. Only minor problem, which is common with older shooters like this, is that it's not very clear where to go a lot of the time and due to the limited graphics, a lot of places look the same. Less hand-holding as to your next objective. But that's kind of a good thing because a lot of games these days do pretty much just pull you along on a rope.

Yet another old classic finally returned to and closed. This time from 12 years ago. Started but never finished. I do remember enjoying this one when playing it, but must have just go distracted by something else. There were a lot of awesome PC games around in 2001 or, the "Golden age of PC" but I can't think exactly what it would have been. Still, there's something I find very charming from PC games of that era. It seems they all run the same clunky engine with the same blocky character models, but even having said that, it was still far better than anything console could muster at the time.

As for the game itself, it's a fairly standard WW2 shooter of this era in that you can run around at a constant more-or-less sprinting pace all the time so it does have a great feeling of energy and momentum. A lot more emphasis on the Nazi element. And occult. And un-dead. But an interesting little romp nonetheless and I'm glad I finally put it to bed.

Woahs. Roller coaster ride. Amazing story. Really grew connected to the awesome very natural and believable characters who over time and saw how their relationship kept changing and changing as the journey went on. A journey that had it all. Genuine joy, genuine sadness and loss, tension, scares, highs, lows, genuine surprise as well as lots of twists and turns that never once felt forced in. Characters are gorgeously portrayed and superbly voice acted. Stunning visuals in every single section of the game that repeatedly made me stop just to marvel at them. Fantasticly intense combat that never once got tired or boring in nearly 13 hours because of the sheer variety of weapons, tactics, enemies, enemy tactics and possible strategies of flanking, stealth, full out assault and more.

Much like all of Naught Dog's Uncharted series, it plays both brilliantly smooth with a beautifly polished almost cineamtic feeling to it. Only possible complaint is that it felt like it was building up to an ending multiple times only to discover there was more to go so there were multiple anti-climaxes. Other than that, fully deserving of all the great praise it's been getting and all came round to a bitter-sweet ending that is perfectly fitting for the world that is set in. Go Naughty Dog.

Very fun. Not very scary because of 2 people and constant shooting but still plenty of awesome shooter action. With a good twist on the co-op in that the 2 characters had very different play styles and approaches. Also freaking gorgeous for such a little known game. All round winner. Unfortunately, this is probably the end of the F.E.A.R series because the publisher isn't interested in making more. Shame. Would have liked to see more from this dysfunctional family.