I have issues with several games on my Galaxy Nexus, as well, but it's not like what you guys describe. Rather, the games I'm talking about just repeatedly restart without letting me actually play. The games include Blood & Glory, Tiny Farm, and Elemental Knights Online. This also frequently happens when I try to play Muffin Knight, but it occasionally works without restarting.
What I don't understand, though, is that I've looked up reviews in the Play Store for these games, narrowed it down to those with the Galaxy Nexus, and few (if any) have reported having looped restarts for these games, like I have. I don't get why my Nexus seemingly can't play these games (even though it plays plenty of other games just fine, with no looped restarts), yet other people with the same kind of phone as me don't have the issues...
Also, I, too, don't have "Force GPU rendering" enabled, so that's definitely not the cause. I don't get it. It's pretty frustrating...