The Pile of Shame name sounds awfully familiar from gamerswithjobs.com...

Anyway, my Pile is big. Like, too big to count because it would scare me. GOG has done a nice job of making it bigger, too :(

I try to keep with one game at a time, beat that, then move on to the next. It rarely works since I hear the siren call of another title about 10 hours in.

Me too. I probably collect games as much as I play them. I've got somewhere in the range of 100 games, and have finished less than 10 of them. There's a couple I haven't even started. (Ninja Gaiden is the obvious one right now. Bought it because I saw it cheap and was afraid it will end up as "expensive classic". But I haven't even put it in the drive to see if it works.)

Half-Life 2. I'm still going to finish it some day, though. Maybe I have the time to play games when my kids grow up? Or when I'm on retirement? I'm sure gog will be around still after 40 years or so...

All the Resident Evil Games.

But this is mainly due to not having enough ammo later in the game, so I always get this wonderful idea about starting again and being more prudent with the resources..... sadly I never ever finished one of them.

In my case it's most of the games I bought for the past two or so years. Just didn't have time to play them at all, now I'm slowly getting there, about 100 games to get through...

To be specific: Canis Canem Edit - good game but just couldn't find any time to finish it. Same with Final Fantasy IX...

Final Fantasy VI, which was the last entry in the series that I really enjoyed. I got to the World of Ruin and never managed to finish it.

What's with all the crazy bumps these days?

Well, this may be an old topic, but it's an interesting one and I like it, so I'm going to toss my two cents in. :)

So... yeah... my list:

1. Half-Life 2. I know, I know, I never finished it. And it's not like I didn't want to, it's just... Ravenholme scares the bejesus out of me, and I'm a goddamn wuss, ok? You may commence laughing.

No, seriously. I mean, I'm ok with most of the critters and baddies in it... being able to fire huge buzzsaw blades into enemies and chop them in half with a single shot does a lot to make things less scary. But the howling and the leaping zombos, and the... whole 1 hit knocks your health down to practically nothing so you're frantically scrambling to kill the bloody thing before it can land just one more tiny little flick that'll kill you, and it's jumping all over the place, and you're all "OH MY GOD, WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS IT?!" No thank you, I've gone through my entire drawer of clean underwear in one day, that'll be enough.

2. Oblivion: Yet another game that I wanted to finish, but I suppose this is my own fault for actually buying the stupid strategy guide and reading the story spoilers. (Headdesk)

Once my character hit the level cap (Because I was having way too much fun doing oodles of side quests and just free-form exploring,) and I knew what the end of the story was going to be, I just... kinda lost all motivation to complete the game.

3. Splinter Cell: Double Agent: Yet another game I wanted to finish, but there was this one really annoying bug in the PC version that kept me from completing some secondary objective at some point in the game. Being as nitpicky and completionist (read "anal retentive") as I am, I didn't really want to progress unless I could complete that objective. I figured at some point they'd release a patch fixing the bug. They kinda never did, as far as I know. So I never got around to finishing the game. I doubt I'll ever go back.

4. Far Cry 2: I got most of the way through it, but then I started having some crazy vid card issues. At first I thought my card was just flat out dying on me, so I stopped playing it and went to less graphical intensive games. I haven't been back to it. Probably should.

5. Heroes of Might and Magic 5: I think I got like five out of the six campaigns done, but then I think they released a patch which basically invalidated the saved games from any previous version of the game. ARGH.

6. Various Tomb Raider games: I love the franchise, but yeah, I think the third was the last one I actually finished before the release of Legend. So I've finished the first, the second, the third, Last Revelation I made it part way through, Angel of Darkness I skipped entirely, Chronicles I only dabbled in, Legend I adored, so that one got a 100% completion, and Underworld I picked up off Steam, but my graphics card don't like it so much, so I can run it, but the frame rate is a bit shifty, so I haven't really played it as much as I'd have liked.

7. Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: I beat the original game, and I heard such wonderful things about the expansion. What drew me was that folks said the support cast was great, and one thing I've always loved about the BioWare RPGs was the NPCs you could have in your party. The base Neverwinter Nights 2 had decent party NPCs. Khelgar, Neeshka, Elanee, Sand and the rest were ok, but they weren't great. Didn't appeal as much as the Baldur's Gate cast or the Planescape: Torment cast. They were ok. But the Mask of the Betrayer squad seemed pretty cool. I liked them. But I stopped playing because the game was just so DAMNED HARD. I'm an experienced D&Der, and no slouch when it comes to D&D on the PC, but man, MoB was kicking my ass eight ways from Sunday. I just... kinda got frustrated and eventually stopped coming back for more. I still hope to finish it someday, but I think I'll have to find a character concept that appeals to me, and part of the problem was I couldn't. My Neverwinter Nights 2 PC was a bard, and while she worked great in the base game, she was absolutely horrible for the expansion, which pretty much required you to munchkin out, and munchkin hard. That, and from a roleplaying perspective, she just didn't fit the story much. So I ended up creating a monk character, but I could never really get into his head. He just wasn't all that fun to play.

Anyway, I buy a lot fewer console games than I do PC games, though, so the only console game I've ever left unfinished that I can think of is Motorsport, and that's only because I didn't want it to begin with. It came as part of the bundle when I bought my PS3. Every other console game I've ever bought has been finished. Maybe not to "100% completion" but at least the story/campaign/whatever mode.

Apologies for rezzing this thread, however it's one of my favorites and is a good source for discussion...

Lately no matter what I can't seem to bring myself to finish Dragon Age: Awakenings.

I remember a friend lending me a game based on the skittles candies(?)...can't say I really enjoyed it and was returned like a day later

I have a vague recollection of a game like that... but it must have been so bad I pushed it out of my memory ;)

To add to my list, Silent Hill 4. I can't seem to adapt to the control scheme to really get into it.

Man, make sure you'll never try the Marine campaign in the first AVP. Personally I find that the most horrifying experience I've yet come across in videogames, although it might just be me. But seriously, talk about running out of clean underwear...

A little OT here, maybe I'll come back to this thread when I'm ready to make my confession. For now, let's just say that I've played the beginnings of many games.

That must have been Darkened Skye. I tried to play that as well, but it was rather boring.

Super Mario 64. I've had this damn game for 14 years, and I've never taken the time to beat it.

I see your AVP and raise you one "Realms of the Haunting" a whole game where freaky katana wielding demons, james bond look alikes that can survive hits from the strongest weapon in the game and many more can appear anywhere out of the ground including behind you with no warning apart from a weird screech...

First PC game I ever finished mind you the story is a good one and the puzzles aren't too bad either but yeah playing that game in the dark when young probably destroyed AVP and other games for me