You'd think that me keeping a backlog of all the games I'm currently playing, as well as a set goal for each game, would help me realize how many games I need to finish and how best to go about the task. You'd think that such a document would keep me in line -- "this is the game you are working on, this is how far in it you are, and this is your goal before you can strike it off the backlog, now GET TO IT!"

Like me, you're thinking completely incorrectly. For my backlog, this is a sad, sad thing. Sad Panda.

What I'm about to describe has happened many, many times in the past, so when I say the name of the game I was supposed to be focusing on currently, just realize that said game was once exactly what I'm about to describe.

So, I am "currently supposed to be working on" Dragon Quest IV. I'm in the fourth chapter, during which I guide Meena and Maya on a quest to avenge their father. Despite the amount of focus I've put into my GMAT studies (test is on Monday! watch me SCREW UP), I've managed to play it for just over ten hours thus far, thanks to idle time I have on the subway going place to place. I had a good rhythm going with it. Battles were brisk, so grinding wasn't a huge hassle.

Cut to the day after Christmas, when I went to spend some free money, including a Gamestop gift card that a friend had given me for helping him out on a project. (And Thraxen, before you yell at him, this was just an additional token of his appreciation; his real Christmas gift had nothing to do with gift cards. So calm down.) Aiming to reserve my self-chosen any-store Gift Card from my job's rewards program for other stuff, I decided to limit my videogame purchases to whatever was on the Gamestop card and whatever was left on my EB Edge card, so I kept my shopping to DS games ($30-and-under). One of the things I picked up was Age of Empires: Mythologies (as mentioned in my previous bwog). It was something I had looked forward to when it was announced, and I highly enjoyed Age of Empires: Age of Kings on the DS. I decided to pop it in for a few seconds on the ride home to see if it lived up to its predecessor.

That single ride home has become every subway ride I've taken since. The time count is only a little over an hour, but I'm hopelessly sucked into it. When I go update my backlog sometime later tonight, I'm going to tack this game on it and start charting its progress... which is exactly what I did with Dragon Quest IV when I was in the middle of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin... which is exactly what I had done with that game when I was in the middle of Half-Life 2 (yes, that game has been a years-long saga for me -- but I did finally finish it!).

Let me not forget to mention that I started a little bit of Call of Duty 4 to see how it'd run on my PC (flawlessly, by the way, with everything at max and 8X AA), which means that once my GMATs are over I will probably supplant World of Goo with CoD4 just because it's "the new thing on my PC".

Or maybe not -- maybe I'll look at my shelf one day and realize, "Hey, I never opened this game," open it up, install it / pop it in my DS slot / PSP slot / load it into my console of choice, and supplant both Age of Empires: Mythologies and Call of Duty 4.

This backlog will. Never. End.