I finish a lot of games, read a lot of books, and watch a lot of movies over the course of a year. I keep a list of them all but sometimes by the end of the year, I've forgotten what my closing thoughts on each were. With that in mind I've decided to throw down my closing thoughts on the games/books/films I finish this year via my personal blogs (including this one). The first entry belongs to the first game I finished this year, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood.

Date Finished: January 6, 2014

Hours Played: 5 1/2

Max: The Curse of Brotherhood not a great game by any means, and suffers from some wonky controls that are a major downer when you need to be quick and precise, but I mostly enjoyed my time with the game and felt that it was ultimately $15 well spent. The story is light fun, featuring Max setting out on an adventure to rescue his brother from the evil wizard, Mustachio. The gameplay is smart puzzle platforming that only falls apart when it wants you to do things under pressure (because of the wonky controls). The puzzles are well thought out and might leave you stumped for a few minutes as you attempt to work out how to progress but when you do figure them out there is this greatly rewarding sense of satisfaction that many games lack. Each level features a set of collectibles and I ended up getting about two thirds of them, meaning that completionists might be able to push the playtime upwards even more but I doubt I'll be heading back in any time soon.

Recommendation: For fans of puzzle platformers and anyone looking for something new and different to play on the Xbox One.

Full review to appear on Critically Sane later this week.

This week the Critically Sane crew examine social gaming in gaming today and how we feel about it one way or the other.

Check out our thoughts, and let me know your thoughts on the subject.

It is the end of the year, which means that it is time to look back and reflect on the best games of the past 365 days. We checked our weapons at the door, got Jeff and Fozzy all liquored up, and came up with the 10 games we, as a collective whole, felt were the best of the year. Enjoy.

10. Saints Row IV

Saints Row the Third took genre expectations and flipped them on their head. By the end of that game, the Saints Row franchise had lost any sense of seriousness and it proved a better game than its predecessors because of it. But how does one follow up ridiculousness turned up to 11 already? Why, by turning it up to 12 of course. Saints Row IV takes everything from its predecessor and ups the crazy quotient. It is a game that starts out with you literally riding an Armageddon bomb while Aerosmith’s “Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” plays and then you become the President, get super powers and smoke dope out of a light bulb. In short, the game is fun, in the most crassly absurd way possible. ~Chris Scott

9. Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock is one of the most beloved games of this fading generation, placing at number 2 on our list. So it was no surprise when the follow-up project by its creator Irrational Games quickly became one of the most anticipated games of 2013. But so much anticipation often leads to let-down. Thankfully, Bioshock Infinite mostly avoided that, delivering another uniquely weird Bioshock adventure. Like Rapture before it, entering Columbia is a magical moment and like Rapture, the floating city is as much a character in the story as anyone else. It is a place with wonder, both joyous and deadly, around every corner, making Columbia a place one wants to explore fully even if the mechanics still leave a bit to be desired. ~Chris Scott

8. Rogue Legacy

Rogue Legacy is one of the most ingenious games I have ever played. It harkens back to an era where games determined your skills at the controller. Platforming and 2D combat with weapons and skills take some finesse, all of which made me feel like I was in the 90s again. But what Rogue Legacy does masterfully is blend that nostalgic gameplay with whimsical visuals, and most importantly, a character development system. Oh, you die each time you head into the castle. When you come out, however, you spend that hard earned money on upgrades before treking back in for more. I simply couldn’t put the controller down when I played Rogue Legacy, it was always “just one more haul.” ~ Don Parsons

Read the rest over at Critically Sane.

Growing up beating a game was a big deal. Completing Super Mario Bros., Castlevania or Metal Gear was like a badge of honor and you wanted everyone to know. Games have changed since then but somewhere in the back of my head I still keep a small running tally of what is going on. Halo, Gears, Call of Duty, Killzone 2, Resistance, etc... all have something in common, they are great multiplayer shooters that have a single player component. You can easily say I beat (or finished) Halo 3 because there is a campaign that you can play through but what about games like Shadowrun, Team Fortress 2 or the recently released Battlefield 1943?

I am currently having a blast traversing the Pacific theater, taking over strategic points, killing people with my trusty SMG and crashing into trees whenever I try to fly a plane but the game got me thinking, how does one beat a game like Battlefield 1943? Can you claim superiority over the title once you max out your rank, reach prestige, achieve some other arbitrary factor or is it something else entirely? For that matter is it even possible to claim you've beaten a multiplayer game?

With no endgame the lines of understanding are not only blurred but completely invisible. Where and when can one actually claim they beat a multiplayer game or has gaming moved past such tangible badges of honor?

And can you ever really beat WoW? (outside of quitting the addiction that is)

In this episode we talk about what we've been up to gaming, movie and music wise as well as touch on J.J. Abrams involvement in a live action production of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and realism in sports gaming before cutting it short rather abruptly. Listen to it at Vagary TV along with other great podcasts like Game Seers and The Game Over Podcast, or download it directly from iTunes (rate us).

Oh and we also try to give away a crappy game that may (or may not) have been responsible for my 360 breaking.

Music in this episode:

Alive and Kicking - Mr. Big
You've Got Another Thing Coming - Judas Priest
Fire Woman - The Cult

E-mail comments (or questions) to pefectlysaneshow@gmail.com or friend us on the IGN Blogs.

Back in the early days of the Playstation 2 I jumped on the extreme sports bandwagon for a short bit, I had Tony Hawk 3 (and 4), SSX, some BMX game that promised me boobs but was really just lame instead. My fascination with extreme sports was short lived though and I haven't much paid attention to the genre in recent years. Then along came Tony Hawk: Ride and suddenly my interested was piqued, not exactly to the point where I was going to jump without a parachute back into the world of extreme sports video games but enough that I was keeping it on my radar. I mean at the very least the concept sounded cool and that was something to keep an eye on.

As I said in a recent blog post by JustSomeDude, entitled Tony Hawk goes casual to stay relevant, I said that if the game actually turned out to be fun I would possibly give it a shot. Of course all this relied completely on if Activision priced it in a price range I was willing to go to. Today 1UP is reporting that GameStop has priced Tony Hawk Ride at a staggering $120. Suddenly Tony Hawk: Ride, which was a small blip to begin with, is completely off my radar.

I don't know about you but for me that is about $40 too much. Some of you are probably scratching your heads right now going, "But Chris, didn't you spend $170 on Rock Band and $180 on Guitar Hero: World Tour?" I did but at that point I knew what I was getting out of the package. I knew I liked the basic, underlying gameplay of both Rock Band and Guitar Hero and come this fall, I won't be buying the bundles for their associated expansions. What I don't know about Tony Hawk: Ride is if it is any fun and at $120 I am much less inclined to try it out, especially with the influx of other games coming out this fall.

Am I going to forgo a pair of potentially better games in favor of one game with a ridiculously overpriced skateboard peripheral? I don't think so, and while I can't say for certain that it will stay this way, as of right now Tony Hawk: Ride won't be getting any more attention from me.

I am a pretty big NHL fan, and as good as I am at playing hockey in real life I am never going to play through the Stanley Cup playoffs and hoist that Cup above my head. So in turn I play NHL because a) I love hockey and b) it lets me live out my fantasy. I would garner a guess that people that enjoy Tiger Woods because a) they love the sport and b) it enables them to live out their fantasy of winning The Masters or some other major tournament that they are never going to do. Now what makes the second part doable? Well it is a variety of things but it generally boils down to a handful of talking points.

1)Realistic representation of the game on your screen - In a game like NHL, Madden, Tiger, or a number of other sports games we want to see the most realistic representation that the technology available can provide. Personally I remember playing Soccer on my Atari 2600, looking back the game is about as close to real soccer as Pluto is to the Sun but at the time it was a high point. We have progressed far beyond the simple graphical representation of Soccer though. I remember the first time my Dad watched me and my brother play NHL 2K on the Dreamcast, he thought we were watching a real game. In the nine years since that game came out the representation of sports on our screens has approached near broadcast like quality. This realism helps to immerse us in the game but doesn't detract from our enjoyment of it.

2)Challenging yet fun presentation of the actual gameplay - Everyone likes to win. Some people (like me) more than others (like my wife) but I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who prefers to lose. The reason for this is because it is fun. Having fun makes people happy and happiness is one of the secrets to a long life (honestly I didn't just make that up...). In regards to sports titles people want to win but most people don't want to feel like the game just let the win, they want a challenge so that they feel like they have accomplished something, even if it just as simple as beating the computer in an imaginary basketball game.

3)Allow for an escape from reality to live out our dreams - This is probably the reason most people play games, at least in one part or the other, but its still a very valid point. How many people are going to get a chance to pitch in Game 7 of the World Series, play in the NBA All-Star game or start their engines on race day on Daytona International Speedway? Not many, even those that are professionals in those sports may never get to do those things. These games are an escape from reality and the opportunity to do something that they would probably never get to do otherwise and it is all done with a few simple (relatively speaking) button presses.

And this is where my argument against realism comes in. Recently a lot of hoopla has been made about Tiger Woods 10 on the Wii taking advantage of Wii Motion Plus and how it will make Tiger Woods the most realistic golf game yet. I for one can't speak on how well it does this because I have yet, like most people due to the fact that it doesn't release for nearly a month, to get my hands on either Tiger or Wii Motion Plus but I can say that I don't see how a realistic golf game (or any game) is going to appeal to a mass audience.

To me the closer you get to realism the closer you come to losing your audience for two reasons. The first is that if I can beat Tiger Woods in a realistic sim of golf, I should probably just hit the real greens because there is money out there to be made. The second is that if I can't beat Tiger in the realistic sim because realistically I suck at golf, I am going to look for a game where I can win at, so that I can once again have fun playing my game.

There is a really fine line when it comes to realism in sports games and I hope EA knows what they are doing with the Wii Motion Plus because I see huge potential for it to backfire. After all don't we play games for fun? Sometimes when us gamers keep begging for more realism the developer has to come in like the parent and tell us that we don't need more realism because in the end it may just hurt our overall experience. More real doesn't always equal more fun, hopefully EA has found a way to strafe the fine line between real and fun. But until then its always fun to debate.

Episode 3 of the Perfectly Sane Show is live and you can listen to it over at Vagary TV (which also hosts Game Seers and Game Over), or download it directly from iTunes (rate us).

In this episode we talk about my (Chris's) XBOX Repair experience, the new Star Trek movie, the worshiping of Wookies, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Mr. T shooting Tupac, licensed games, Jon and voyeurism, all while disparaging old people, all of Asia*, American Indians, Germans, rappers and Andrew's family.

Music in this episode:

You Brought A Knife to a Gunfight - Stone Gods
Mr. T - Logan Whitehurst & The Junior Science Club
I Get Off - Halestorm

*OK so Japan, China and maybe Korea but based on landmass that is a large portion of Asia.

E-mail comments (or questions) to n pefectlysaneshow@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or friend us on the IGN Blogs.

The second episode of The Perfectly Sane Show is live at mypodcast.com and on iTunes.

In this episode we babble incoherently about what we've been playing, DLC, Assassin's Creed 2, summer movies all while ingesting vodka infused water ice on Jon's deck and avoiding a mooing German sheep named Claus.

E-mail comments (or questions) to pefectlysaneshow@gmail.com or friend us on the IGN Blogs.

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The first episode of my new podcast is live.

In this inaugural episode the crew sits down to discuss the games we've been playing, including Peggle, Gears 2, Resident Evil 5, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Legends of Wrestlemania. We also discuss the the music / rhythm genre and if we are tired of them, OnLive and if we think it is a good idea or not, mature games on the Wii (where we maybe alienate the entire Nintendo crowd by mocking the system somewhat uncontrollably), how long before a remake is viable, Vin Diesel (where I make incorrect comments about his training) and the 25 Worst Sports Movies as named by Moviefone. Interspersed between all that we possibly disparage the African American and Asian communities and most certainly disparage the gay community, a certain IGN reader (sorry beezball), and Nintendo fans, although we don't mean anything by it (except for the Nintendo comments*) and apologize to African American zombies on behalf of white male 30 somethings.

Give it a listen and let us know what you think by dropping a comment here or sending us an email at perfectlysaneshow@gmail.com, we'll read them on the next show which we are recording on Friday.

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*just joking