Another year down, another disappearing act from the Internet, or so it seemed. I miss being a student and having a white collar job 'cause both of those meant that I would sit in front of a computer a lot more often and could dick around here a lot more. I remember the community of people that we had on here who all read each others' work and made us all better writers and gamers. As is? I'm writing this mostly so that I can share the link with my Twitter followers and on my Facebook Timeline; the old meeting the new, as it were. In fact, I can lay a lot of my non-blogging lifestyle on Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone; why sit down and write something lengthy when I can just take out my phone and leave a blurb online where people are sure to see it?

Anyway, sorry for starting so down. Happy New Year! 2012 was a weird and slow year in all aspects of my life, but I hate writing about most of those parts so let's focus on the games, shall we? I always hear about a person's "pile of shame" and what they need to do to tackle this pile of games that absolutely "needs" to be played, so that's a large part of what I did this year. Certain games that slipped by me the first time 'round got their chances, and some of them did not disappoint. In fact, in the list I still have formulating in my head, there is a very good chance that I will break my surprisingly-long-held pattern of awarding my personal GOTY to a game that was released that year.

2012 wasn't a transitional year in and of itself, but it was the beginning of the end of a long cycle and a lot of new patterns and trends came to light that I don't think will fade any time soon. (Wow, I could be talking about either my life or the video game industry with that one. But again, let's stick to games.) I've bought somewhat into the echo chamber that is the internet in believing that a lot of publishers and developers are in a holding pattern until the next cycle of home consoles come out, hence why uninteresting stuff is all we see. That last part's a matter of opinion, but the state of the matter is that the big AAA sequels and moneypots are the biggest releases, while a lot of mid-tier stuff is vanishing because there's little money left in taking risks.

That is such a major bummer for me, 'cause I've always dreamed, perhaps naively, that a console cycle would actually run for 10 years and every last single drop of power could be squeezed out of them. In my fantasy world in which money doesn't seem to matter and poeple never get bored with old stuff (because c'mon, right?), you wouldn't need to shoehorn multiplayer and co-op modes into what was already a solid horror shooter that maybe needed only a few tweaks at most (Dead Spaces 2 and 3 say hi, Dead Space 1!) because the publisher is deathly afraid of a bored gamer trading it in and someone else buying the same copy, therefore "robbing" them of "their" money.

In my gamer fantasy world, the game I buy is the game I get. I don't need to worry about patches, or whether I should buy the Season Pass, or worry about a one-time-use code that does nothing but turn the game I'm playing into the one I SHOULD have been playing all along. As is, way too much content doesn't come on the disc. I understand wanting to increase your game's sales, but treating a customer like a potential thief before he or she has even become a customer is just wrong because it's bad business. I remember EA starting this with "Project Ten Dollar" some time ago, but is didn't hit me as truly insidious until now, and I've struck back. I decided I simply won't buy a game if it has too much "neccesary" DLC.

Throughout this year, for example, I've heard numerous examples of how incomplete Mass Effect 3 feels without the add-ons. On a recent Giant Bombcast, for example (http://www.giantbomb.com/podcast/?podcast_id=360) Brad had finally fished playing it, and had done so with From Ashes and Leviathan installed from the start. Apparently, these "extra" pieces of the game make Mass Effect 3's story make a whole lot more sense, to the point that they truly felt ripped out of the main game, and his experience with ME3 was completely different than the one all of the other guys had. Now, when I hear something like that, why would I really want to play that game? Why would I ever pop in any game from that fictional universe if I know that I will be treated like a moron who can't be told something vital because I didn't ante up?

Fortunately, not all games are like that. A tiny blessing in disguise that I've fully discovered this year is the "Game of the Year Edition" that some companies put out. Somewhere out there, at certain companies, someone has realized that both DLC and new game sales have tails on them, and there comes a point when throwing it all in the same package makes a ton of sense. Another "big" concern of mine is the ability to play all of my games years and years from now. If all of the extra content that ties a game together is supposed to be on a server that won't exist five or ten years from now, then why bother with ever paying anything for anything extra? Well, aside from taking real good care of your console and its hard drive, buying a GOTY edition with the extra content on the disc (that part is vital) makes great game the greatest game. Even if that's a bit of a steep hill to climb, Borderlands, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption and Resident Evil 5 are all made so much better by the inclusion of their extra content right on the disc. A lesson that I doubt EA or Ubisoft will ever learn well enough to put into play.

However, even if they did I still have plenty of stuff to play. My pile of shame is an embarrassment of riches, one that requires a good amount of chipping away even without the upcoming gems in 2013 to add to it. If I didn't buy or rent a single game from here until next January 6th I'd be fine. I doubt I'd finish games I've yet to start like Final Fantasy XIII-2, Skyrim or Deus Ex: Human Revolution in only a week or two. There are games I started but never managed to make my way back to like Catherine, Duke Nukem Forever (I know, I know, shut up), Resident Evil 6 and Trine 2, and even way back with games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, LittleBigPlanet, Dead Nation and God of War III. The fact that Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 hit next month is closer in my mind than it should be, and makes me forget that I've yet to try Far Cry 3, The Walking Dead or Dishonored.

In short, 2012 was great for video games. All of the "the sky is falling, video games are dead" talk is just that; talk. Personal top 10 of 2012 forthcoming.