Pile of Shame

As far as I know, the term “Pile of Shame” originated on an old 1UP Yours episode, spawning a brilliant, albeit short-lived, experiment. The concept was that the Yours crew would revisit an underrated title as the community played along and participated in the discussion via the message boards.

While 1UP Yours’ brief endeavor flared out before it even got started, the Squadron of Shame took up the torch (then, just a small group of like-minded gamers in one corner of 1UP’s forums), and they still carry it proudly today.

This spark of an idea stuck with the Squad, and was eventually revived by 1UP FM, because it fills a need. Not only do we find joy in digging up the gems that slipped through the cracks, but we all have games that we never played but meant to, games we bought but left in plastic, games we put aside for one reason or another, to which we always meant to return but never did. We’ve all got a Pile of Shame.

Here’s mine.

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PlayStation 2

• Odin Sphere — Found cheap at an FYE that was going out of business. Haven’t started it.
• Okami — Never had time when it came out. Played about 5 hours.
• Shadow of the Colossus — I’m on the very last colossus. Haven’t played in months.

Xbox

• Ninja Gaiden — Started it at least five times. Never played past the Bone Dragon boss.
• Silent Hill 2 — Covered by a Squad mission. Haven’t started it yet.-

GameCube

• Eternal Darkness — It’s been so long, but I always meant to go back to this.
• Resident Evil 4 — I was really dedicated to the game one Christmas break, but fell short of finishing.

Xbox 360

• Hitman: Blood Money — Playing through this right now—very slowly.
• BioShock — I’m at the part right after the big reveal.-

PC

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. — Not very far into it.
• SWAT 4 — See above.

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Next time: Why we don’t finish games.

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I chose to make this my first real post partly because I appreciate the irony of launching a blog about games with a list of all the games I haven’t played, and partly because it’ll be relevant for my next post.

Note: The list doesn’t include games like Fallout 3 and Fable 2 that I’m technically in the middle of playing through right now. It also doesn’t include games like MGS3 or Mercenaries, which I have no interest in finishing.