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Perhaps this should be “Tap vs. Ben,” or “Tap vs. Not-Tap,” since 47Games’ Ben Hoyt is not technically on the Tap-Repeatedly staff, but we don’t have a category for that and I wouldn’t want Ben to think we’re excluding him. He has, after all, contributed a Celebrity Guest Editorial for us, and we did recently do a fun podcast on the Mass Effect trilogy and Halo, er, quadrogy. The dude is an honorary staff member, and opened up some time to contribute slightly more than half a discussion of Microsoft’s May 21 Xbox One announcement – a lucky thing, since coverage of all the new consoles has been somewhat scarce around here. Now we have an honest to god game designer weighing in (one who’s shipped an Xbox 360 title or two). Suck it, IGN!

Point-and-click adventure games have been pronounced a “dead genre” time and time again.

And Phoenix Online Studios has a name synonymous with rebirth.

Phoenix’s first released game was The Silver Lining, the King’s Quest-inspired adventure that earned them both a loyal fanbase… and a cease and desist. In 2012, I started following their work on their first commercial episodic series: Cognition: an Erica Reed Thriller. In my review, I visited the ups and downs of the game’s first episode. The “ups” were enough to encourage me to give the second episode a try… and, at PAX this week, I got a chance to chat with Phoenix’s Katie Hallahan for some previews of the third. We also talked about some of Phoenix’s other upcoming projects in the adventure game world.

I’m going to start this feature off without any real spoilers, but if you like dark supernatural mysteries, it would be worth your time to check out the Cognition series before reading. The second episode in particular gets … amazingly gruesome, and I must say some late-game twists warmed my sociopathic heart.

With Bioshock Infinite only days away and the recent re-release of System Shock 2 on Good Old Games I figured now would be a good time to dredge up this article from the darkest depths of my drafts.

When I was writing my Games of 2011 there was one game I wanted to include but couldn’t because a) it was released in 2010 and I’d restricted myself to 2011 releases, and b) I’d already written most of this as a separate article. That game was Bioshock 2.

I picked it up on Steam for £3.49 during a summer sale and in truth I didn’t expect an awful lot from it because, while it had generally been well received, it apparently didn’t measure up to its much lauded predecessor — a game which I didn’t share such a glowing fondness for. Whatever expectations I had however, where blown out of the… uh, yeah, I’ll leave that pun in my head where it belongs.

2012 was a lot of things, as most years are. My colleagues have discussed most of these things quite entertainingly, and so I will spare you from further use of the words “Kickstarter,” “Greenlight,” “Entitlement” and so on. Except for right there, just then.

If you’re intensely plugged into the independent gaming scene then you probably consider 2012 a banner year for the continuing rise of the indie. I’m only slightly plugged into that scene, so I consider 2012 an okay year in which The Last Guardian still saw no light of day and increasingly slight hopes for a new Half-Life could be taken off life support with rumors buzzing that Valve intends to focus their energy on entering the console market.

However, those disappointments have been quelled almost wholly by my games of the year…

When I read Brandon’s post on ‘gamer’s block’ I took a step back to consider whether I’d suffered from it at any point and, truth be told, I don’t think I have. Like many others around here, I’ve got an absurd backlog of games and while the size and my distinct lack of time to make even a dent in it intimidates me, it also excites me, especially when I’ve finished off whatever it is I’m currently playing and have the time to pluck something else from my virtual shelf.

In the dawn of 2012, I tore a leaf from my Starcraft 2 Jim Raynor Wanted Poster keepsake notebook (best thing about that game, really), determined to write down great titles as I played them. I always draw a blank when people ask for stuff I should remember, and Games of the Year articles are too important to leave to memory… especially mine. For twelve months that increasingly defiled sheet survived the chaotic sluice of cords, bills, beer cans, notes to self, and discarded gaming mice that is my desk. I exhumed it the other day.

Now, I admit this hasn’t been the best year for games, but there were more titles scrawled on there than I have medals for. After all, we don’t hand out awards like candy around here. So a whole lot of thinkin’, and even a fair amount of replayin’, was to come before the tally was in. This year I humbly offer five titles worthy of Tap-Repeatedly Special Achievement Awards, plus a handful of mentions of the honorable variety.

It’s 2013, which means we all survived the end of 2012. Despite those rumors we might not! So break out the bubbly, as it’s time for some of us to discuss our games and game trends of the past year.

This year I have the honor of being the first Tap contributor to write a Games of the Year list. My list starts with five games that stuck out to me personally this year. This isn’t just games I enjoyed (though it’s all games I enjoyed). It’s also a list of games that I feel represent some important trends that happened in 2012.

After the game list, I’m going to talk briefly about looking at games from the developer side in 2012 also, so you can get the full perspective of where I lived this year!

Can games mean? How? And when they do, who’s responsible? AJ and Dix take on authorship. Read on!

Year’s end: to some, respite; others, opportunity and new beginnings. To most everyone though: reflection. As many of us here look back on another year in search of inspiration or some meaning, I need to look deeper, farther back than a “year-in-review” will permit.

No, this is a life-in-review. I guess video games played a part in it.

Ben Hoyt is an old friend and longtime industry veteran – he did a Celebrity Guest Editorial for us a while back, and has appeared as a guest star in some of my posts over the years. We’ve been meaning to do a sort of sweeping discussion of the Mass Effect series for some time now, and it’s ready at last!