Next time, don't be so fucking eager.

Star stickers to anyone who can 'name that flick' in regards to my title.

It is an appropriate title, though, I assure you.

Here are all the games I've purchased in 2010.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins - Return to Ostagar, Star Trek Online, STALKER: Call of Pripyat, BioShock 2, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Aliens versus Predator, Heavy Rain, and MLB 10: the Show.

WOW.

I booted Silent Hill, only to never touch it again because of how shockingly ugly the game is. Really, though, that series has gone from the greatest interactive horror franchise ever to unintentionally funny in how fucking bad it is. I'll let you know if that changes.

I played through and enjoyed Mass Effect 2, even if it wasn't quite what I was looking for in the title.

The Dragon Age DLC was okay.

I haven't even activated Star Trek Online. I love Star Trek more than anyone I know, but the beta didn't leave me with a taste of Star Trek in my mouth. Lame.

I installed STALKER and played my usual 'make it run at all' meta-game that I play each time I install a STALKER game. I booted it, tweaked settings, looked around a little, then shut it down, since I haven't even finished Clear Sky yet.

I installed BioShock 2, and have played a fair amount of it, but it just hasn't grabbed me yet. I've played a fair amount of it, and it's...okay. The mutliplayer was a HUGE waste of money on the part of the publisher, BTW.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is awesome. I'm taking my time playing it, savoring each scene. To be required to think instead of twitch in a game is absolutely sensational. You are an idiotic jackass if you're not playing this series.

Aliens vs. Predator was a mistake purchase on my part. It is gorgeous on PC, but just not very good, and way too hard.

I think I really, really like Heavy Rain. I'll let you know in the next few days.

MLB 10 feels good so far, but I still don't understand why they make the game SO FUCKING HARD. Madden is easy to play. MLB should be, also.

Oh, and Sony, please stop shipping broken DLC as a preorder bonus, as you have now in back-to-back weeks with Heavy Rain & MLB 10. NOT COOL. Also, by refusing to fix them, you look dishonest. Please get these working.

Also, next week, I'm starting on Final Fantasy XIII, and a week later, I'll be jumping back into Dragon Age w/ the Awakening expansion while also starting to get a taste of Metro 2033, and then I'm done buying games until June, when Alpha Protocol is finally releasing (believe it when I see it). I wish that 50-75% of my game purchases for 2010 hadn't come out in the first three months, but that's the way the industry let it fall.

Going forward, I'm considering unloading my entire Call of Duty set. I think I'm just done with the series. I dunno. MW2 was a letdown on a few fronts, and I just think that maybe I've gotten everything out of the series that I care to.

Also, I'll be wrapping up Heavy Rain before the weekend, while getting warmed up with MLB 10 while playing BioShock 2 here and there while still continuing the game I have fallen madly in love with, which is The Witcher! This is one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and if things continue as they have in the game, it's easily in my top 5 RPGs of all time.

So, yeah, as usual, my life is all about excess. GAH!

What about you? Has "Christmas 2" been crazy for you, as well?

-Blaine

Second! Pffft...

Let me give you a proper introduction and spare you from Tony's slander of a fine, fine game.

This is the Untitled Gaming blog. Those of you who have been following our podcast for a while know what to expect, roughly. Imagine this as sort of a non-stop literary form of our podcast in which Tony and I will just post whatever the fuck we feel like (relating to gaming) whenever we feel like it.

We honestly have no idea what to expect from this, but it struck me as a good idea over the weekend, and I informed Tony that we were doing this last night, since it wouldn't be right to take on this venture without him.

I think that this will be a daily thing, if not multiple times a day. Some posts will be three sentences, while others will be overly bloated reviews, others will be commentaries on gaming news stories, and still others will be nearly pornographic in how extremely they satisfy your brain.

At first, this will serve as our running discussion on the top 10 games of the 00s.

Before I assert that I am above even pretending that Tony's hatred of a landmark game based on its unforgiving save system is worth validating via a response, I'm going to reveal some of the games that have been in our discussion, so that you all can make cases for and against, if you'd be so kind.

Here's the short list, in no particular order:

Bioshock
Final Fantasy XII
Grand Theft Auto III 
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect
Guild Wars
Diablo II

Fable II
Fallout 3
Orange Box (this isn't even a game, but I didn't pick it, so whatever)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
MVP Baseball 2005
Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
Final Fantasy IX
Gears of War
Gears of War 2
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Lost Odyssey
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Dragon Age: Origins
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (PC)
Indigo Prophecy
Shadow of Destiny


So, that's the short list, and that's even missing a few that both of us wanted to put on there.


Hell, I just realized that Tony didn't put any racing games in there. That's surprising. I thought for sure that we'd see a Codemasters game from him somewhere in there.

One thing that will be interesting to see is how Tony and I come to a consensus on criteria for the decade's top ten games. It's clear to me, at the moment, that we have slightly different criteria. For example, multiplayer matters little to me. I do enjoy multiplayer, but I haven't quite figured out how important to me it is. It's important enough to keep Modern Warfare 2 and Forza MotorSport 3 out of the discussion, since both have extremely severe problems with their respective multiplayer experiences (though Forza 3 has a far better single player experience than the laughable MW2 single player.) I do enjoy both games but both are cases of diminishing returns on a franchise.

So, what do you guys think? What's your criteria? What would you champion for our list, and what did we leave off? Don't forget to tune in this weekend when we post our first podcast of this series!

-Blaine