Here's Tycho from Penny Arcade, talking about the backlash to Ubisoft's DRM scheme:

"Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won't be three posts until someone raises the *bleeping* Jolly Roger and says they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it. It's entirely possible that you don't like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it."

It's an old(ish) post, but it resonates with memore than newer ideas on the subject. The lack of rational dialog from both sides of the fence has created an environment of incredible hostility; anger that seems almost farcical given that the topic is the selling and purchasing of toys. But here we are: video game publishers are The Man, and gamers are rebels of various creeds, seeking to get the goods on whatever terms they've deemed to be acceptable. Should a publisher stray from what they feel is the moral and proper way to vend electronic entertainment, everything from secondhand purchases to outright theft is not only reasonable, but warranted. Publisher X broke the nebulous, unspoken code, and they MUST be brought to heel.

This movement, however, will never gain the power to shake up publishers - at least, not in its current form. While not every protestor supports piracy as a form of restitution and/or vengeance, enough of them do to color the crowd as a whole and erode bystander sympathy. To anyone who has ever worked for an honest check, the idea that theft (an act of personal gain) is some sort of political statement is nonsense. It's the eely rationalization of the opportunist.

The proper response, as usual, is the honest boycott. This was incredibly effective for the American Civil Rights movement because it illustrated to racist and/or dishonest companies that the disrespect or alienation of a large number of consumers had dire financial consequences. When you can show a corporation that you can live without them, you'll start to see change. A boycott is a position of strength - it shows that the protestors are willing to sacrifice their own pleasure and enjoyment to illustrate their point. It makes an impact.

Gamers, on the other hand, don't have the same stomach. Other than a few holdouts, gamer rebels still acquire the software they want and play it religiously. At best, it looks petty...a thumb to the eye of those evil fat cats at Ubisoft. At worst, it borders on the depraved; the scavenger behavior of the addict, travelling through dark channels to get their fix while cursing the very dealers that bring it to them. There's no narrative power here to draw on.

From here on out, games will be shipping with DRM, first-day DLC, later DLC, and any number of gimmicks designed to encourage new purchases and expansions. This is the publisher response to the burgeoning secondhand market and rampant software theft. Now, gamers need to respond. And the response needs to be rational, thoughtful, and based in Earthly reality.

Understand this: video game companies want your money. And that is not evil. YOU want money, don't you? Did you turn down your last raise? Your grocery store wants money; that's why they put the impulse buys next to the register and have three aisles of high-margin items like boxed cereals. Aren't THEY fat-cats too, then? Are you gonna buy second-hand olive oil to spite them, or steal celery? New cars have resale value factored into the price tag, thus sticking you for the second-hand market before the thing is even off the lot. DOWN WITH HONDA!!!

Game developers and publishers are not your enemy. They may not have the same goals as you - they'd love it if you paid $1,000 for a 20-minute demo, and you want the entire PS3 library for .47 cents - but you can pull a Benjamin Button and meet in the middle. Keep fighting and misbehaving, though, and they'll just use spikier bats. There are already talks of having the next X-Box be designedt o reject used games. And really, what does buying used games do for you as a statement, anyhow? GameStop ain't some Momand Pop corner store - you've simply given your dough to one group of suits rather the ones that actually MAKE stuff.

Hell, I'm tired of having to deal with the fallout of this silly slugfest. I'm sick of having to input 7 download codes to get all the pieces of a new game I bought because the publisher has to stash them in a Cloud to keep the vandals from enjoying them. So if you don't play nice for yourselves, do it for me. Either way, do it with a message more compelling than "you guys are greedy pigs!" 'Cause that's getting you nowhere at all.

I love me some Assassin's Creed, but the franchise has finally pressed its luck.

Revelations (at least 60% of the way in) isn't so much a conclusion as a regurgitation. Once again, Ezio is leaping around, killing Templar agents who are stupid enough to walk around a town with Assassins falling out of the sky. Once again, there are eight trillion silly little trinkets and doo-dads to collect, all put in the most absurd places. And oh yes, you get to retrain another pack of assassins, using the game's ingenious method:

"We need more brave men and women to join our prestigious, secretive order that involves the most extreme and demanding of skills."

"Let's walk up to random people on the street and ask them to be Assassins."

"Nice."

Hope you enjoyed clicking on a bunch of random jobs on a map of Europe and having your minions do them in text format, 'cause that's back too. And yes, you can see the exact percentage chance of them completing it, ensuring none of your goons ever once fail. EXCITEMENT! Within weeks, you can pull a pickpocket off the street and have them conquering entire cities. The Mediterranean Defense mode reminds me a lot of Carmen SanDiego, minus most of the fun.

One of the hooks of the game is Ezio's old age, but his abilities are entirely the same and he's still wooing twenty -somethings, so the game doesn't feel any different. (There's at least one mission with a geriatric Altair that explores this more thoroughly, but it's all too brief.) I was hoping to play as a fading old man who replaced his athletic ability with guile and dirty tricks, but I'm still chasing hoodlums on rooftops.

Revelations DOES add three new features. Sadly, two of them suck. Bombcrafting is indeed fun and I love playing with the explosives. Tossing a Lamb's Blood bomb and freaking everyone out while I loot the goodies? Slick.

And then... there's Den Defense mode. It's sorta like tower defense, except it sucks. The Desmond portions are equally ill-conceived, and are reminiscent of Mirror's Edge minus the solid level design. (Um, guys, nobody BOUGHT Mirror's Edge... take a hint.) I don't know who bought Assassin's Creed to play a first-person platformer where you summon Lego bricks to walk on in some digital Tron-scape, but if you're one of them, congrats!

The franchise still has some flash - the half-dozen dungeon setpieces are great fun - but it all feels as old as Ezio looks. It's almost as if making a game a year could have negative consequences on content evolution.

And I miss having Veronica Mars as my sidekick. Remember Veronica Mars? That show was great. Great, that stupid theme song is in my head now.

_____________________________________________

I played through the Kingdoms of Amalur demo (mostly to get the ME3 items), and was pretty pleased with what I saw. The game is completely devoid of original thought - dark elves, gnome inventors, hacking and slashing, skill trees, conversation wheels, morality choices, etc. - but well-executed, and the combat is nice and crunchy. I'll probably get it on the cheap down the road. Kinda strange to see EA releasing a Dragon Age clone to compete with their own franchise, but after DA2's lukewarm reception, maybe they're turning the screws on their Canadian buddies. It's not like BioWare's formula is some big secret anymore.

This thing still on? *Taps microphone.*

Instead of talking about games, I was playing them - sadly, this was not always an upgrade.

Brutal Legend: a charming, unique adventure featuring a few genres too many. There are points in the game where you're leading an RTS battle as the Hero Unit,while you're hacking and slashing AND banging out rhythm-based guitar solos as special attacks. That's... a lot going on at once, to put it mildly.

The game's genesis is impossible to decipher: it was Tim Schafer's attempt at a console-friendly RTS game, then ActiBlizzard saw Jack Black and pitched it as a third-person adventure instead. So they cobbled together a surprisingly good single-player campaign - which, in the end, is just a long tutorial for the multiplayer - and then EA got the game instead, and marketed it incessantly as a wacky single-player adventure, and people wondered why there were RTS battles in a hack-and-slash, and Tim Schafer gave up and started huffing Sharpie pens.

The game is about $10 now, and the writing, art, and music are worth that alone. Still, as an RTS experiment, I dunno. The game's intended audience - RTS fans - were presumably getting the goof stuff already on PC. Tim Schafer says he hates that he always ends up making cult classics, but that's what happens when you craft good games with no clear audience other than metalheads. In the end, though, I'm glad I played it. The world the game crafts is so endearing that I just liked driving around in it. Yes, there are driving and racing portions, too. Did I mention this game has way too many genres going on?

Pilotwings Resort: a slick, nice-looking game that is unspeakably boring. I'm sure someone out there enjoys flying a rather slow biplane through little pink dots, but that person is not me. The later missions might get more edgy, but I'm not willing to find out.

Dungeon Defenders: nice little tower defense/action game for the PC. Honestly, the game is shameless, taking all the things gamers crave - towers, loot, PC/gear customization, pets, etc. - and putting them into a single nice-looking package with earnest charm. There's not a single original thought in Dungeon Defenders, but who cares? It runs flawlessly off Steam, is almost always on sale in the $5 range, and does what it does very well. Great snack-sized game for your on-line pals.

Professor Layton and The Specter Or Something: Layton games are pure formula, and here's another dose. As a puzzle fanatic (and more general fan of the quaint English charm of the series), I was quite pleased. For the unfamiliar, here's a question: how do you feel about walking around a beautiful little hamlet full of strange people who inexplicably offer up puzzles about finding the area of a guy's cabbage farm? If that's your cup of Earl Grey, then welcome aboard.

One nit to pick: other than The Curious Village, the big mysteries of each game always boil down to some absurd plot or circumstance that you couldn't possibly guess until they're revealed. I get all into the story and try to figure out the angles myself, and it turns out there are giant rare sea creatures or city-wide hallucinogenic gases involved. (Those are ACTUAL examples from the series.)

Me: "Hmmm... I think Bruce here has been pretending to be The Bandit and skimming from the town lottery."

Layton: "It is quite clear: the zoo has a time machine in the penguin area!"

Me: "WTF?"

Still unopened: Skyrim, Assassin's Creed Revelations

Hope everyone has behaved in my absence. *Looks around accusingly.*

A while back, I did a blog about once-epic franchises that have become abominations, and thus needed to be put down. To start the new year in a positive spirit, let's discuss the opposite scenario: fantastic series that disappeared before their time was up. Granted, many of these withered because of low commercial appeal, but in this age of DLC and easier distribution, one can never say never.

Jet Set Radio

Or 'Jet Grind Radio' as we called it here in the States, so nobody missed the fact that the game about skater punks with graffiti cans was about, you know, skating.

Part of the problem with JSR was that the game's magic was hard to describe. The elements of the series - skating, funky music, tagging, and personality galore - don't really translate to an easy sales pitch. It wasn't really a skate simulator, so you couldn't sell it as one, and it wasn't really a racer or platformer either. It was just... itself.

And it was awesome.

It was also very short, which didn't help at the registers either. American fans might be surprised to hear that the still-short American version actually had two levels that the Japanese original didn't, which means the first edition must've clicked in at 37 minutes. It also added a hip-hop guy and gothy girl to appeal more to American tastes. (I guess it worked, since I almost always used Cube. Cube, by the way, is the GOTHY chick, and not the hip-hopper, whose name is Combo. Wouldn't their names make more since if they switched? Oh, never mind.) Cube is the classic expert character whose tagging required five hands and had mach speed to go with her utter lack of precision.

The franchise did get a second wind on the original X-Box as part of Microsoft's Operation: Please Don't Hate Us Japan!, but it didn't really work. It turns out that a quirky Eastern widget game WASN'T a good fit for a console designed for Halo and Madden, and Jet Set Radio Future failed to meet sales expectations. (Reviews were glowing, though, and the game added to JSR's considerable cult following.) A quiet outing on the GBA followed, and that's been it.

I think Sega should take another crack at it. The series is more about art design and not polygon crunching - it'd be a fine choice for Live Arcade and the PSN. Or at least port the originals and let them live again - it worked for REZ, and REZ is even weirder than these games are.

The original JSR has a 92% MetaCritic rating - trumping Mass Effect, Gears Of War 3, and Fallout 3. And yet it sleeps!

Beyond Good & Evil

Please come back to me, Yade! I mean, Jade! No more teasers, or trailers, or cryptic messages from Ubisoft executives written on bathroom stalls at E3.

I'll take Jade however I can get her, that quasi-human little she-devil. DLC adventures in chapter format? Fine! I don't expect the Call of Duty crowd to flock to BGE - and neither should the creative team - but there's some untapped love out there for our favorite intrepid reporter and her flatulent porcine uncle.

Maximo

Ghosts And Goblins was a little TOO evil - Maximo, its descendant, was just evil enough. Both Maximo games for the PS2 were quite strong and the franchise was just finding its legs before it disappeared.

Maybe it's just me, but gaming needs at least one quasi-medieval hack-and-slash platformer game on the market to scratch that itch. Golden Axe's rebirth was an utter disaster - someone's gotta fill those shoes! And, more fittingly, Arthur's goofy heart-print boxers.

I liked DeathSpank, but it veered too heavily into fourth wall-busting and modern combat. And you could actually beat DeathSpank, which seems unfair to old-school gamers. Bring back the cruelty!

No One Lives Forever

If publishers insist on reviving old PC franchises as shooters, why not revive one that actually WAS an FPS series? And a REALLY good pair of shooters at that? Strong female protagonist, creative weaponry, great sense of humor... what's not to like?

Oh, right - the third entry, Contract J.A.C.K., was a disaster. You know, the one without Cate Archer, fun weapons, or any of the elements that made the series great to begin with. It's like declaring the Mario series was done for because Hotel Mario didn't pan out.

Come on, Warner Bros. - find Cate in the moth balls and let the girl breathe again. In this era of sterile military shooters, we need some STYLE, baby.

Which bygone series do you miss the most?

Because what I clearly need is more games.

Mass Effect 3 (360)

I know. SO SHOCKINGLY ORIGINAL.

This goes one of two ways: ME3 delivers and Mass Effect goes down as one of the greatest gaming trilogies ever. OR, it disappoints, and is used (alongside Dragon Age 2) as proof that BioWare has lost it and the developer gets demoted from AAA status, and has to cling to their Old Republic revenue. There is NO middle ground. BioWare's fan feeds have always been brimming with entitled rage - no fanbase is more spoiled or demanding - but it's at nuclear levels now. Hopefully the long delay is a sign that BioWare is righting the ship and polishing every last pixel.

As for the game itself, I can't wait. Transferring your character from episode to episode is one of those little treats that means so much - it was the heart of the old Quest For Glory adventures, for example. It's one thing to be told it's the same hero; it's another for it to be it coded truth. ME3 will take place in a universe I helped shape with my own decisions and deeds, and that's a unique asset no other game can offer. (And please spare me the 'all your decisions are artificial' retort - BioWare can only do so much with current technology and a freakin' X-Box, especially when the final game will have over 100 flags to juggle. Mind-reading sensors are at least 5 years away!)

And they redesigned my main love interest Ashley Williams to look like a brunette Samus Aran - how can I pass that up? I'm comin' for you, Reapers - no species with a name that corny deserves to live.

Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)

I've always been a sucker for Kid Icarus. It got waylaid by Metroid in its infancy (which took much of the core design, and admittedly did it much better) but I think it can go a different route and still be a solid secondary I.P. for the Big N. The trick will be avoiding becoming a retread of Nintendo's other properties: an elfin hero with a bow, for example, is already taken. An exploration-based adventure with flight, ranged combat, and angel-themed environments? That could work. And you know you love the Eggplant Wizard, so don't even try to pretend you don't.

SSX (PS3)

Whatever, I love this series. Don't judge me.

Max Payne (Various)

Ditto. And I like how they've aged Max and changed the setting; the game feels like it will be a continuation, rather than a "hey, you bought this once, now buy it again!" retread that runs on nostalgia. I'm a fan of Remedy's work and look forward to this one.

STUFF I'M DREADING:

X-Com

I won't bore you with my love for the original. Yet. (ItWILL be a Nostalgia Filter blog when the new game is closer to launch.) Suffice to say, the original X-Com: UFO Defense is SERIOUS BUSINESS to PC gaming fans. It was, however, a turn-based strategy game with RPG and simulation elements, while this will be - surprise surprise! - a shooter. Fan protests have already gone up, ensuring that the game's built-in audience is in full rebellion. Add in a crowded shooter market and none of the original design team, and this has disaster written all over it.

Syndicate

See above. Seriously, another PC strategy classic reborn as another gorramn shooter. Flooding the market with floating hand games is bad enough, but do you have to pillage my teenage memories, too?

DLC On The 3DS

Because Nintendo has to recoup those four-figure Fire Emblem budgets!

Happy New Year!

Actually, there was more buying than spending. Of course, I have more money than free time, so maybe I should've gone the other route. Regardless, I took advantage of the endless supply of holiday sales and on-line promotions to secure a ton of games for relatively little cash. It's probably not in the spirit of Christmas, but hey. (Actually, rampant consumerism is more or less Christmas in a nutshell, so yay for me!)

My tally, as best as I can recall:

PC

Master of Magic and Master of Orion 1/2 from www.gog.com, $6 total. Two of my favorites from my younger days, and worth it for the nostalgia alone. MOM is a real sleeper gem that didn't shine until months of patches, and MOO2 is the perfect 'play it in one sitting' 4X game. As always, GOG provides these games in pristine patched condition, emulated perfectly and complete with all kinds of digital bonuses. What a great company.

Alice: Madness Returns, $8 on Steam. The only game I bought on Steam during the holidays, which shocked me to no end. I just don't PC game that much anymore. It's almost embarrassing to say it, but I don't like gaming from a desk chair anymore, even a nice one like mine. I gotta put my feet up!

3DS

Pilotwings: Something Or Other from BestBuy.com, $5. I forgot the subtitle. I liked the original, needed a 3DS game, and it was $5. That sounds like a winning formula.

PS3

LittleBigPlanet 2: Super Special Ediition. Amazon, I think, for $25-ish. Broke the bank on this one!

360

L.A. Noire, Complete Director's Magical Edition. $20 from BestBuy.com. I almost got the Complete Director's Magical Edition of Red Dead, too, even though I already played the core game - the DLC sounds interesting, and I gave away my copy to my brother. But I had bought enough already and I didn't feel like getting re-immersed into RDR again.

The Orange Box, $12 from Amazon, I think. I've played 75% of the set already, but I was curious about the Half-Life 2 add-ons. And who can play enough Portal? I also have a dread-based curiousity to see TF2 on a console.

Brutal Legend, $11 or so from Amazon. I hate going cheap with a Tim Shafer game (the man wrote Day of the Tentacle and Psychonauts, for crying out loud!) but $60 seemed like a high price for hanging out with Jack Black and Motorhead. Poor Tim - as usual, someone who dabbles in the clever and strange gets relegated to banging out Sesame Street product in his golden years, while bearded thirty-something hacks sell millions of copies regurgitating action movie tropes with AAA budgets. Speaking of which...

Gears Of War Triple Pack, $19 from Amazon. Started playing the original, and I wasn't exactly blown away. Vanquish took the GOW template and did it a thousand times better in every regard. Then again, GOW2 or 3 might illuminate me further on the issue. To their credit, both series refuse to take their subject matter seriously, and deliver hilariously over-the-top space marine insanity. The GOW games seem tailor-made for rainy-day co-op sessions with a buddy, where game quality isn't as important as pal quality.

Skyrim, $40, Amazon. Fine, I caved. You win. Here's a Christmas cookie.

The original Saint's Row, $12, Amazon. Not very good when compared to the sequels, but the soundtrack is pretty righteous. The lack of mid-mission checkpoints is a dealbreaker, though. That's fine for, say, Bayonetta, where any damage you take is your bad. But in something like Saint's Row, where an errant sports car or random fire can inexplicably kill you, I need time insurance. It's fun to see how far the series has evolved in a short time, though. (Well, evolved in terms of gameplay and design... it's actually gone backwards in terms of sensibility and taste, which is not a criticism.)

12 Months Of X-Box Live, $30, Amazon. And you get the code up-front so there's no muss or fuss.

All this stuff should keep me off the streets for months. Ergo, everyone wins!

And no, it's not lingering DA2 resentment.

The MMO model just doesn't work, at least not for me. No matter how hard BioWare tries to make the game immersive and involving, it will soon be overrun by players with names like 'DarthySanchez' who grief new players and then strip to their Jedi undies to hump their corpses. This cannot be avoided, and publishers have little interest in policing this behavior. (WOW allowed you to go through a fairly time-consuming process to report a stupid name on a role-playing server, but you may as well have tried to sop up an ocean with a sponge.) EA is essentially asking me to pay a monthly fee to babysit cretins - I'll pass.

A vocal minority of gamers have suggested everything under the sun to protect an adult's right to a quality MMO experience, with little success. Ideas are either unfeasible (age verification) or inadequate, like adults-only guilds, which work fine until you try to do anything outside of guild chat. I played WOW for about a year with close friends, so dungeons and adventures were fine, but it was still a false world - the reality of Azeroth would constantly be punctured by the GIFT set. Considering all of the contrivances we had to go through to insulate ourselves from trolls, we may as well have been playing D&D at my dinner table.

In other words, unless they make a Zoloft for ODE, an MMO is a poor time and money investment by my math.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect

If anyone here plays the game and has a good experience, let me know. This is one of those times where I'd like to be wrong. It's an intriguing new template for an MMO and I love me the BioWare.

2011 was a disappointing year in general - full of goodness but not greatness - but some games managed to sail under even the lowest expectations. Here are the top duds and bad trends of 2011.

Dragon Age 2: Here lies the nightmare scenario that so many predicted - the EA-ification of BioWare. Dragon Age Origins was a sprawling affair with a lot of dry spots and annoyances, but it was still an epic adventure with a ton of great content. Alas, DA2 could not say the same, and in many ways, it serves as the poster child for the problems of modern AAA gaming: a rushed production schedule, simplified combat, and a 'try-to-please-everyone-and-thus-please-none' design mentality.

Mind you, the CORE of a great game is within, and with a proper-length development cycle, this could've been a B+/A- game. Sure, the combat would've still been too Dynasty Warriors-ish, but the characters are pretty decent and it was nice to be involved in a non-apocalyptic story for once. (The game's core story, a parable about political extremism, is both well-written and very relevant for a modern audience - pity it takes the plot 20 hours of build-up to get there.) But that's not the game we got.

The issues are legion and entire Web servers exist to catalogue them. The same six dungeon environments recycled over and over. A world where everyone is bisexual, due to BioWare's deranged obsession with romantic subplots. (I have nothing against bisexuals, but a world where everyone exists to be your potential lover is just contrived fanservice.) Hyper-fast combat that eschews the strategy of Origins. A "realistic" fantasy world where enemy reinforcements magically appear to drag the fights out. It's a mess. The fact that it's an oddly compelling mess teases as to what could have been.

Mass Effect 3 now has an even bigger burden to carry: complete an epic trilogy and provide closure to millions of obsessed fans, AND it must wipe away the sins of its sister franchise. DA2 was something of a wake-up call to BioWare and they're allegedly studying Skyrim's success for the inevitable DA3. Sounds good, except for...

Bugs: Bugs are a part of the hobby - c'est la vie. But there's a difference between surprising glitches due to outlier player behavior, and plain-old corporate indifference. Skyrim is collecting dozens of GOTY honors despite varying degrees of instability across all platforms - the PS3 edition, in particular, can be a car wreck for some users. Yes, yes, games are more complex now. But games are ALWAYS more complex now. And development teams have dozens if not hundreds of people who should be on top of these things. Hell, even when they ARE on top of these things, the publisher doesn't care and simply needs to get it out by Date X to placate the shareholders. God, even Nintendo - the Isle Of Stability in gaming's stormy sea - has shipped two flagship titles with game-busting bugs. Yes, the glitches in Other M and Skyward Sword CAN be avoided, but a player shouldn't have to read spoilers and walk on eggshells to play a $50 product.

Let me tell you kids a story about the old days. We had something called 'the PC gaming industry,' or as we now call it, 'Steam and Blizzard.' It was a giant back then. The games offered a complexity that consoles could not, thanks to stronger hardware and more robust control options. PC gamers were seen as more mature and ambitious than their console brethren, and were given software to match. It was magical.

But the PC gaming industry grew complacent. It took advantage of our love and assumed we wouldn't mind. It began shipping broken games and figured we'd buy them anyhow, using patches to repair our investment. Sadly, we complied for a while. So the publishers pushed it even further and began shipping glorified betas that bordered on unplayable. By contrast, console games were mostly pristine, since developers couldn't lean on the crutch of patching. The student became the master.

But consoles are on-line now and have hard drives. Patches are in play once more. And surprise, surprise: Santa is bringing us broken toys again. This will not end well. Don't believe me? Ask The Ghost Of Gaming Past.

Duke Nukem Forever: There was little chance of this being any good. It was hard for anyone to imagine it being THIS bad.

And I don't want any excuses. If what Gearbox was given was trash - which I have no problem believing - then it should've been thrown out. Fans had waited a dozen years; what's another few? I'd rather wait a bit longer to justify the hype than be given a turd-in-a-box for my troubles. Hobbled by dated mechanics, ancient production values, and painfully unfunny humor, DNF was a weak payoff for gaming's longest-running joke.

The PSN: Remember the sales pitch? "You get X-Box Live forever - for free!" Apparently, this package also includes incessant firmware updates, choppy service, poor download speeds, dead weekends, and the occasional enormous hacking incident where all of your personal and credit information gets stolen. But think of the savings!

Showing the kind of class and awareness that only true scumbags can manage, Sony began pitching their PSN Plus 'upgrade' service about ten minutes after coming back on-line from a poorly-handled hack attack. Now PlayStation users can pay for the kind of 'free' services they were promised out of the box. But don't you fret - Sony is constantly giving away middling Genesis games for download as compensation for their rank arrogance and slapdash security. As entire warehouses of unbought PSP Gos can attest, Sony is never too big to fail. It takes real skill to steal the Crown Of Evil from Microsoft, but by God, they were up to the task.

Hyperdimension Neptunia: NIS somehow takes an ingenious idea - an RPG with characters and a story that serve as metaphors for the infantile console wars - and makes a brutally bad game from it. It was a long winter for NIS until Disgaea 4 saved their hide.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: "You know what this franchise is missing? Jumping! Why hasn't anyone ever tried that before?"

Annual Releases: It's funny: gamers used to mock the Madden series for coming out every year with slightly tweaked mechanics, but it's okay when Call Of Duty or Assassin's Creed do it. 'Cause those are gamer's games, or something.

Look, I'm a big boy. Modern Warfare 3 made a billion dollars - money comes first. But there's something to be said for restraint. Mario and Zelda have lasted 25+ years because Nintendo knows enough to keep it to one or two games a generation. The narrative is "damn, when is a new Zelda coming out?", not "geez, another Call Of Duty already?" The old expression says that you can shear a sheep a thousand times, but only butcher it once. And too many companies are reaching for the axe. I mean, look at Assassin's Creed - you've set up a template where you can make a game in any time period but still tie it to one big story. There's no reason to keep cranking out annual Ezio adventures with the same engine except for the bottom line.

It's paying off for now, but just ask Tony Hawk or the Guitar Hero people what it's like to get squeezed over and over before fans get a chance to breathe. Even the once-respected Ratchet and Clank is devolving into a zombie franchise. Ditto for Killzone. Or any fighting game series where they make a new version every four months. Instead of making another decent game on the fly, sit down and make something special. Both sides need to exercise more patience.

Anyhow, let's hope 2012 is a great year both for games, and in general. Happy holidays.

For those games not quite good enough for the Top Ten, but still worthy of praise. As a lifelong B student, I have a special place in my heart for those whodream to be merelyabove-average.

Uncharted 3: A rare case of a game that is somehow both an Honorable Mention and a reasonable Disappointment. One of 2011's most emblematic cases of a game where creative genius rubbed hard against corporate reality.

I mean, it's a rather good game, with a handful of spectacular setpieces. Sadly, it's also rather padded, featuring a number of "let's walk around for 15 minutes!" sequences involving the desert or weird narcotic darts. Gunfights also tend to drag, with random goons falling out of the sky or spawning from doorways like you're playing some kind of funky Horde Mode. Naughty Dog also intended the multiplayer to be a big-ticket item, but it's largely unchanged from Uncharted 2 other than the new maps and a few neatwrinkles. (They DID adapt the "pay a small pile of money for old maps" model, which went over about as well as expected.) As with so many creative endeavors, Uncharted was better before it became a big deal.

And yet, it's better than 98% of the stuff on the shelf, thanks to a solid gameplay template and Hollywood-caliber production and performances. That pesky Uncharted 2 casts such a long shadow. I already did some blogs about how the franchise needs to either retire or take a long hibernation for a reboot, so I'll leave it at that.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Not as stirring as its ancestry(I told you that was the theme of 2011!) but a very good game regardless. The big selling point is the ability to play it a number of ways, and that's quite true. Okay, those ways are pretty much 'stealth' or 'kill everybody,' but the point stands. Some of the classic stealth game issues emerge - all of those skill points in remaining unseen ain't so useful when a juggernaut boss battle comes up - but let's chalk that up to a parable about moderation. (Free tip: installing the Typhoon missile thingie is a great way to get some game-breaking firepower on-hand without spending too many skill points.) Hell, I just like sneaking around in ventilation shafts.

The game's only real drawback is protagonist Adam Jensen, who is stoic to the point of boredom. I'd chalk it up to his cyborg-ification - you know, the loss of humanity and all that - except that he was the same way as a normal human. The actor's dry, Batman-esque delivery just doesn't serve the story as well as it should. Then again, this may be your only chance to have a protagonist mull ove rthe choice to obliterate himself and hundreds of others as a political gesture and sound fairly nonplussed about it. Come for the uncomfortable race elements, stay for the moral ambiguity!

Batman: Arkham City

Wife: "Why does Catwoman have her boobs hanging out of her outfit? I thought she was a burglar or something."

Me: "I'm pretty sure you know the answer to that question already."

Wife: "Wouldn't you want to be inconspicuous as a thief?"

Me: "Once you put cat ears on your sneaking suit, you've given up on remaining anonymous."

Wife: "Is Anne Hathaway gonna dress like that?"

Me: "I kinda doubt it."

Wife: "Bummer."

Xenoblade Chronicles: I haven't actually played this; the game's mere existence in 2012 is the happy event. Dedicated fan campaigns worked day and night to get this gem ported to North America, and it paid off. See, social media isn't a TOTAL waste of time. Should the game sell, American fans can look forward to other niche titles making their way across the pond. The Wii could be the definitive RPG console of 2012 - I think the Vegas odds on that were 200,000 to 1.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together: Easily the best PSP title of 2011. Actually, it might have been the only PSP title of 2011. I can't really remember. Vita pre-buyers, beware! Still a superb SRPG, even though it's saddled with the worst subtitle ever. Honestly, was "Group Hug" already taken?

Guardian Heroes/Radiant Silvergun Reborn On The 360: The Sega Saturn finally gets its due in 2011. And E-Bayers 'cross the world weep as their $120 Silvergun discs dip in value...

And we close up the year with the Disappointies later this week, 'cause I'm Scroogey like that.

If anything good comes out in the next two weeks, to hell with it.

This was not a great year for gaming. Actually, it's strange: it was a great year for GOOD games, and a terrible year for great ones. The number of games I'd recommend is bottomless; the number I'll remember in a year is microscopic. Too many rushed production schedules and predictable franchising - but I'll get to that later.

Note: I don't count remakes or ports. And I have not played Skyrim, as I won't go anywhere near a Bethesda game until the haz-mat people haveat least six months to clean it up.

1) Catherine

The year's only real 'holy crap!' game is your winner by default. Thankfully, it's a real gem, and a beautifully twisted parable about love and honesty. What makes it so striking is that the gameplay - a puzzle platformer with light RPG elements - is fused perfectly with the plot. Vincent's gory dreams serve as (admittedly unsubtle) metaphors for his rapidly imploding personal life. MegaTen's mix of demon-battling and storytelling is often welded together rather crudely, as if one was an excuse for the other. But in Catherine, every aspect of the game - even an old-timey arcade machine at the bar - ties together beautifully. (Provided you can handle the incredibly difficult content required to piece the whole puzzle together...)

Best of all, the game doesn't judge. You can follow a path of commitment, decadence, or total freedom, and see a happy ending that reflects that lifestyle. (There are even endings that fall between the 'pure' options.) Granted, one has you marrying your long-time girlfriend and another has you becoming a powerful incubus, but how you feel about those things is on you. One ending even has Vincent say "to hell with this crap!" and going full bachelor. Nice.

A fantastic gamer's game - challenging, strange, and thought-provoking - and the best 2011 had to offer. Atlus is now the East'stop RPG machine. Next stop: the world.

2) Disgaea 4

"The JRPG is a dead genre." - Me.

I so crazy!

It took NIS a long time, but they finally topped the original Disgaea. their magnum opus. Oh sure, even with the new engine, the game still looks and plays like a previous-generation strategy RPG. But who cares? The aging gameplay has been expertly goosed with a ton of fun and clever new elements, like dual magichanging and establishing your own corrupt political cabinet. I especially liked assembling the war room, where how you arranged all of your units and these weird buildings translated to special effects on the battlefield. You could even create friendships and romances this way - NIS, you old softie!

The game's other strength is a sprawling cast of legitimately endearing characters. The protagonist Valvatorez - a reformed vampire who feeds on sardines - is an absolute delight, delivering every hammy line like it's his last. What makes his deranged bravado so charming is that it WORKS, and even his doubters begin to be impressed at how much he accomplishes by the mere fact that he's too nuts to realize he's way over his head. Achievements in ignorance!

A great game for the SRPG dabbler, and by NIS law, there's a trillion hours of hardcore content underneath the surface if you so desire. Either way, a rare example of a game that surprised me in a good way this year.

3) Super Mario 3D Land

Oh look, you thought I was gonna have a Top 3 without a Mario game in it. You're too cute.

Actually, I nearly wasn't, as I was late to the 3DS party. I started playing 3D Land a short while back, under the naive assumption that I could control myself and only play a few stages a day. Yeah, that didn't happen. I mean, c'mon... the Galaxy team makinga portable Mario with restored power-ups from the legendary SMB3? I'm only human! MUST! HAVE!

It's an easy game, to be sure, but still a treasure trove of Mario. When I saw that special world unlock - 8 more realms of funky, brand-new stages - my heart swelled like it had eaten a Super Mushroom. There's a whole lot of plumbin' here, and it's so well-done. My only issue is why the game wasn't available at launch. You've got a guaranteed critical and commercial hit starring your stud mascot, and it uses just enough of the 3D for the "oooooohh!" effect without going overboard. This baby will move systems! And Nintendo still had Mario Kart 7 for the holiday blitz. Ah well, if it wasn't ready, c'est la vie.

Some series crashed against the Polygon Ceiling; Mario dances on it like Fred Astaire. 2D, 3D, new or retro... Mario can do it all in a single game. The latest bit of awesome from Nintendo's unstoppable plumber.

4) Bastion

Did I do my latest Bastion thing as a weak attempt to mimic the game's beloved narrator? I did? Oh. Well, I got nothin' now.

The funny thing about Bastion is that the gameplay isn't particularly noteworthy. I mean, it's a solid action-RPG, but you wouldn't write home about it. It's the rest of the game that gets you. It's Logan Cunningham's ultra-smooth narration. It's the way the game world unfolds at your feet as you walk along. It's the endless charm and heart that comes from a small world that feels fully imagined.

In many ways, Bastion is the perfect specimen of the DLC era - a game that would be impossible in a brick-and-mortar environment, but is utterly perfect for $12 and a small chunk of hard drive. We can get magic downloaded into our homes without having to leave the room - we take it for granted, but ain't that something?

5) Child Of Eden

"HEAVEN-LY STAAAAR, ABOOOOOVE... I DON'T KNOW THE OTHER WORDS!!!"

Fine, COE ain't no REZ. ("X ain't no Y!" is kinda the story of 2011, really.) But REZ was lightning in a jar; a singular phenomenon of awesome. Rather than focus on what it isn't, I choose to celebrate COE for what it us: a fun, stylish shooter that just makes me smile when I play it.

I'll grant you that the Genki Rockets - the band behind the game's soundtrack - are an acquired taste, but they fit the environment well. (As well as any music could fit a game where you shoot the glowy spots off of a giant space whale.) Like all good shooters, there are two levels of play: there's just clearing the level, and then there's having the crack timing and pattern recognition to rocket up a monster score. Launching your shots to the beat of the music is satisfying stuff.

This is a game I play every few weeks or so when I have 30 minutes of down time and want to feel good as I shoot down sinister plants. There's a lot to be said for that.

6) Portal 2

Wife: "Which game is this?"

Me: "Remember that really annoying 'the cake is a lie!' joke Tony and I did for months, whenever you made cake? This is where it comes from."

Wife: "Oh God, never mind."

A cheap trick, but it was easier than explaining Portal to a layman.

7) The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword

The only entry in my Top 10 featuring a game-breaking bug! Oh, how my standards have fallen. If you play the elemental temples in the wrong order, you're pooched. Come on, Nintendo! That's not a "if you throw a bomb at this particular corner of this small area with the Wooden Shield equipped during a full moon!" kind of bug; that's some blatantbuggery right there. Yes, fine, it's entirely avoidable if you know not to do the Lightning Temple first. I don't care: it's still pathetic.

That debacle aside, this game is a pearl. The Wii's dated hardware is a sticking point for many, yet it's an asset here - Zelda would just look weird in glamorous, picture-perfect HD. Link's ridin' his big bird as far away from the Uncanny Valley as possible, and bless him for that.

All the little things add up: the fun motion-controlled sword-fighting, the mythology nods to previous games, and Zelda's continued ascension from object of rescue to feisty heroine. (Hell, her name's on the box... for 10 years, that was awfully hard to explain.) The bird-flying was a little dodgy, but it was generally just a transporation thing, so I'll let it slide. I especially liked how the temples were woven into the areas they occupied, rather than feeling like "oh, here's the dungeon now." This is a world I enjoyed spending time in, and that's what Zelda is all about. That, and bottles somehow being rare treasures.

8) Rayman Origins

I'm not sure how many people were dying to know about Rayman's origins, but it DID lead to an awesome platformer. Works for me.

Sitting on a couch and playing a great co-op platformer with friends? I give that an 8.0 on reflex. But Rayman goes above and beyond. I think he's in the top tier of platform heros now - he can take Sonic's place now that the hedgehog's franchise has totally gone down the crapper. It looks something like this:

Best Mario - - - - Rayman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bubsy Worst

9) Outland

A truly righteous marriage of action/platforming and the shmup - two great tastes I had never thought to taste together. The best comparison I could make was 'Actraiser meets Ikaruga' - and let's face it, if you can identify those two games, you probably own Outland already.

The game's biggest criticism is the lack of heart - that it's a perfectly-designed game without any story or soul. I suppose that's fair, but as an old man, I grew up with games that never had any story to begin with. I can live without an endearing protagonist if the gameplay is good, and Outland's gameplay is sublime. It's old school, but once in a while, that's what I'm looking for.

10) Saints Row: The Third

*Playing co-op with my friend Shawn.*

Me: "Why do you keep using that wiggly sex toy as your melee weapon?"

Shawn: "You get an Achievement for it."

That about sums it up, for good or bad.

A soft year for the hobby, but after a monster 2010, we were probably due for a letdown. The big culprit seems to be the increasingly short development times for AAA titles. Games are either outright annual releases (Assassin's Creed, Call Of Duty, etc.) or rushed to the shelves to be ready for the holidays. Uncharted 3 felt like 75% of the game it should've been, and Arkham City recycled too many beats from Asylum to feel truly special. Ironically, the one company with the "done when it's done" policy - Nintendo - released a game with an undetected bug. Not a good sign.

At some point, the people will demand games that spend more time in the oven, and the suits will not be happy. It could get rowdy!