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I’ll always buy Naughty Dog games, they having convinced me of their undying committment to our love via the Uncharted series, but I don’t tend to slaver with excitement before they actually come out. Thus I wasn’t suffering from the can’t-waits in the days leading up the The Last of Us, their fungus-fueled post-apocalyptic proxical-parent TPD (third person depressor). I just waited until Friday and bought the game. Didn’t even unwrap it until the next afternoon.

You’ve probably seen boatloads of perfect scores from full reviews already, along with the odd 7.5 outliers that’ve caused such internet furor. Here’s what I have to say, after several hours, several more hideous deaths, and more clicking feral mushroom-zombies than you can throw a bottle to distract.

Ahh, 2011. The year in which we were supposed to have the Rapture (twice), the year of the Arab Spring, of Occupy, of the Whipping Judge and Pepper Spray Cop. The year of Steerpike’s Neglecting To Get His Carpets Shampooed, Even Though They Need It. The year of the release of Titus Awakes, which I haven’t finished but which probably doesn’t include my namesake since he died in Titus Groan. The year Brandon, Amanda, Bearwhale, and Ravious joined us as contributors. The year I gained weight, and the year I played games.

As it happens, all the games I rank below came out in 2011, though that’s not a rule. Our objective is to tell you about the games that we’ll remember most from 2011, whether they shipped that year or a decade before. And we’re each taking it in our stride – ranking, rambling, sorting. There are no rules. These are the ones that stick out in my mind. Some made me irresponsibly happy. Others made me inconceivably sad. I leave the rest to you, because I love you all, and I wish you a glorious 2012. If the world doesn’t end in December, be sure we’ll return with that year’s batch.

Happy New Year, Tappers!  (That’s what you call yourselves, right? Like, when you go to Tap-Repeatedly conventions and such?)  Needless to say, 2011 was a big year for games.  Loads of eagerly-awaited releases, some great surprises, and just general all-around awesomeness.  These days, it’s not hard to point out a really well crafted game from the last year; it’s probably a bit harder to narrow that down to five or ten. But we here at …

So Uncharted 3 releases next week.  I’ve been eagerly awaiting this game since…well, since about 18 hours after Uncharted 2 released.  And the early reviews are great.  But it seems like every time a lauded, high-profile release comes along with a linear story, we get into this crazy conversation about…well, about how inferior linear stories are. For that matter, Arkham City kind of leads into this conversation, since its story is absolutely linear in the …

Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series are some of my favorite games of this generation, or ever.  They are well-made, exciting, and have the sort of gripping storytelling and character development that so often eludes game developers entirely.  Their cinematic nature makes the series seem like a shoe-in for film adaptation, but the director attached to the film, David O. Russell, seemed dead set on not drawing from the games.  Like, at all. But with his recent …