48 ain't like Youtube; Youtube caps at 30 FPS, because it's "more cinematic," the current bullshit-speak for "60 FPS is too much work." I'd put "painterly quality" in a similar jargon bucket, because what the hell does that even mean here? If you're seeing brushstrokes on your screen, something is seriously wrong.

As one of the frontrunners in the voting thread is I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, I feel compelled to point out that it's on sale for a whopping $0.59 for the next 24 hours.

I love Berserk, but fair warning: there's a looooooooot of rape.

I can't help but laugh at the incredible cross-sport trainwreck that is New York right now. When the Islanders are suddenly the king of town… yikes.

Oh man, if the art design is the game's #1 draw, Patrick Stewart is #2. Some of the stuff he has to read is dreadfully written, but his delivery is so damn good that I can't help but love it.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for me. This game sure is… a game.

Love love love Sheriff of Nottingham. The panda game is also pretty good, though it's called Takenoko if anyone's trying to find more info on it.

Youtube is blocked at work, but I have to thank Drew and the world as a whole for being able to stick a link for "the moon wizard debacle" in an article.

RPS touched on a bit of disempowerment here that I thought was interesting. To paraphrase… Through the show and books, we know what terrifying things Cersei and Ramsay are capable of. Likewise, we know that life in Westeros is nasty, brutish, and short. However, in light of the fact that these villains have major…

Always great to see someone nail the bonus question. I almost can't believe I've never heard of the hodag though.

Don't worry, we're all here to console you about your history of hot butt garbage.

My big suggestion would be branching out your styles a bit, since in my mind Puerto Rico, Agricola, and Catan (to a lesser extent) all scratch similar itches. A few suggestions across "genres" for lack of a better term:

7 Wonders is good, but I've soured on it a bit. Simultaneous turn resolution is a mechanic I'm always iffy on, and combining it with your play being so disproportionately affected by your immediate neighbors has frustrated me in the long term. I still like it for 4 players, but when you've actually got 6 or 7 players,…

They're old fantasy action JRPGs that were originally for (I think?) the TurboGrafx family of consoles, with kind of awesome prog-rock soundtracks if you're into that. Of the three games I've played so far, I'd suggest taking a look at Ys: The Oath in Felghana. It's a good game in its own right and has the most modern…

I don't know what to say except "Daaaaaaaaang." Ah well, can't win 'em all!

"Opens up" is an understatement. :P After killing the gargoyles, I was positively gleeful at having rung the first bell. Then I realized I had absolutely no idea how to get to Blight Town, and promptly spent hours putzing around the graveyard, catacombs, and the segment with the butterfly. (Darkwood Basin, is it?)…

Yeah, Propositions/Errands were a missed opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if they were a feature that got chopped off as deadlines loomed. If they had been specialized challenge maps or mini-games, I'd have appreciated them a lot more.

I play it with my fiancee on her iPad, and she never wants to actually pass the tablet so we end up seeing each others' tickets and cards the entire game. After a game of heading her off at every pass, I realized it was far easier to add in two AI-players for us to smash than to convince her that Ticket is a deadly…

For the curious (why are you curious about this), everything I played this year, sorted by release date.

I intended to save it until the Best Of posts, but sure!