Game Pile: Year-End Approacheth!

There are always some gimmes in the Game Pile. I didn’t sit down and put my mind out there about Velvet Assassin because I could not get the game to run at all; while I may have judged Lara Croft and the Guardians of Light for being damn-near unplayable on a keyboard, and thrown Dead Space down the stairs because it couldn’t last ten minutes of bad mood-setting before crashing harder than a peregrine falcon diving through a plate-glass window at an exploding mouse, I figured it wasn’t ‘right’ to hit Velvet Assassin because I just plain-out couldn’t get the thing to work.

As I draw nearer to the end of the year and a round number, though, I thought I’d run through some games I did play this year – either as replays from an earlier time, or play experiences that seemed a bit redundant. I mean, I didn’t review Papers, Please because there is nothing to say about it. You either are captivated by its concept and its super-simple gameplay and incentive structure, or you’re not – and for what it’s worth, I recommend you give it a shot if you’re on the fence.

One final note: the games you see coming up on this list are games I’ve played, or replayed, just for fun, not for the review. They’ll probably be more positive, or more gushy than normal.