I played far enough into Dragon Age until Morrigan joins my party. That's about 3-4 hours in? I think I'm going to give up. The story is compelling enough, but I can't stand the combat. Everything feels so floaty, and none of my party is doing what I'm telling them to do. The tactics system bills itself as easy to use, but I fiddled around with it for quite awhile before I just gave up. Here's what would normally happen in combat, maybe someone can help me out.

1.) I tell all my party to attack one target.

2.) I tell one of my party to use a special attack.

3.) I may queue up other special attacks from other party members during paused time.

4.) After someone performs the special attack, they just sit there and don't move, leaving me to tell them to resume attacking the target they were just attacking.

This was especially frustrating during the first boss fight. No matter how hard I tried to get my party members to keep attacking the boss, they would just stand their twiddling their thumbs after Shield Bashing or Growling. I really hoped that the tactics page would fix this, but I can't for the life of me find any command that says "Don't stop attacking something until I tell you to stop."

Oh well.

After the funny and interesting PS3 commercials, Sony has to take another step backwards with their new PSP Go. Do they really think this is the target audience/image for their handheld?

1.) poolside party hipsters
2.) backseat out-on-the-towners
3.) in-between-shoots fashion models
4.) morning-after hangover movie viewers (overlooking the sunrise no less)

I know, it's a bit late, but I couldn't resist.

Sony's PlayStation marketing team has finally come back to making relevant, entertaining, and straightforward advertisments! No more crying baby dolls, floating PS3s, racially charged billboards, out-of-touch "hip" viral campaigns, or the convoluted "this is living" ads. I hope that's the last we see of the "our console is so awesome our ads don't need to make sense" vibe.

"You don't cry during video games."

Film director James Cameron made that comment during a Comic-Con panel, mentioned here. I think he does have a point. While I can't recall a time I cried during a video game, there have been plenty of tear-jerking films out there. However, I'm certainly aware that gamers have been known to shed a few tears for some video games, so I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen.

But this brings me to a specific question, when have you ever cried during video games, specifically, when NOT watching a cut-scene?

The cut-scene is just a cousin of modern film, inserted into a video game experience to help move the narrative along. There are certainly very moving, emotionally, and sob-worthy video games, but it's my feeling a gamer's top ten list of emotional games would be heavily cut-scene reliant. Have you ever cried from the actual stomping of a goomba, drop of a tetris block, or headshot with a sniper rifle? Or do we revert to needing what is essentially a short film to convey emotions in between the sessions of gameplay?

Listening to music, reading a book, watching a film, and even just looking at a painting can move a person to tears. Can we say that of actual gameplay as well? I'd love to hear some examples of this.

As a Christian, I'm not offended by the fake EA protests from E3, and it certainly warrants a chuckle. But I can't help but facepalm when anyone cares to give it more attention than it deserves, whether it's mainstream media for thinking it's real, Christian bloggers riled by the stereotyping, or gamers who think they're sticking it to the "opiated masses".

I admit though, it's a step up from a goat carcass and a fake PSP blog.

For ensuring that even while I didn't watch the first 30 minutes of your press conference, I didn't actually miss anything.

You're the only console that is capable of taking advantage of a 40'x80' screen? Good thing I have one of those in my living room.

But then the problem of a 40'x80' screen is when you show your PSP games, you make people squint at the 20% of the screen being used for actually showing the trailer.

Wait...actually, it looks like they do that when they show PS3 trailers too...

OK, I'm gonna keep milking this. For the AC2 demo, if you look quickly at the live cameras you'll see a new smaller screen get lowered in front of the giant screen.

"and PlayStation 3 is the only console on which you'll be able to play Final Fantasy 14, when it launches in 2010." - Translation: Final Fantasy 14, coming to Xbox 360 in 2011.

Now I know what dress to wear to that party. What would I do without you.

Also, the first Clyon has been identified. His name is Milo.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Uncaged Edition, featuring real-time regeneration, because health packs and turn-based regeneration are so last year.

Argent Tournament, Dual Specs, Ulduar, Typhoon with 3-sec daze...

Gonna remain strong and stay away. Begone!

I think the gameplay footage was unncessary. Just have dancing next time. Read more here.

Coraline is an amazing film and a eye-popping visual spectacle. But it was not these aspects that held me rapt in the theater when I watched it. The same emotions the film evoked in me were the same as those I had not felt in over a decade. Fans of LucasFilm Games will resonate with this thought, that experiencing (not just watching) Coraline was akin to my first foray into classic adventure games.

Games like Loom, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Zak McKracken, just to name a select few, cultivated my imagination and my senses as a young gamer. And while one could argue that point-and-click adventure games may be the most passive of all gaming genres, this allowed room for the game developers to prioritize specific game elements, most notably storytelling and art design. As gaming worlds began to expand into three dimensions, with that came the ability to get a close-up look at ugly textures and odd model clipping. But the graphic adventure games came to life atop painstakingly detailed environments, and the characters, while powered only by a finite set of emotive sprites, had a wider range of emotion than many of today's gaming greats.

Maybe Dom (right) just has more trouble expressing his feelings as well as Bernard (middle) and Other Father (left).

Being at the pinnacle of decades of stop-motion film making, Coraline still "suffered" from the typical artifacts of the medium. The frame-rate was just smooth enough that you wouldn't notice the hand-posed key frames the unless you trained your eye to notice it, but it was most assuredly there. It was most evident during the spectacular mouse circus scene, but the director himself said he chose not use CGI for the scene preserve that feel of stop-motion, a choice that made watching the film that much more memorable. And with adventure games, the method of animation was essentially the same. Capture the character in a few select poses, and squeeze as much emotion possible out of each and every frame. And rather than teeter on the edge of the uncanny valley, graphic adventures ran with the idea that we as an audience would be able to better identify with the heroes if they looked nothing like we did.

But even more breathtaking than the animation itself were the environments. It was difficult to fathom that everything was hand-crafted when scenes like the garden tour and the climactic "boss battle" pushed the envelope into dream-like territory. And while it the artistic investment into the environments of Coraline reminded me of such locales as Melee Island, Rubacava, or the sunken city of Atlantis (Indiana Jones verison), it wasn't necessarily the sweeping nature of the settings that really hit me. While the narrative meandered along, we kept revisiting the same places over and over again. But given the parallel-world nature of the story, each place had different versions of itself, be it the drab and dusty real world versions, or their colorful and spatial-logic-defying fantasy counterparts. While this might immediately remind you of the common light-dark theme we've seen in a number of non-adventure games (i.e. Link to the Past), it instead reminded me of Dr. Fred Edison's Mansion from Day of the Tentacle, and how while we never left the mansion itself, Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne explored a world within a world with pockets of its own alternate dimensions. Likewise, in the film everything revolved around the Pink Palace. Not only did Coraline explore every nook and cranny in and around the house, but she returned to the same locations again and again, fantasy world and not, when she had new insights or questions regarding her current situation. Being that the story rarely left the house in the film, there was definitely a slight sense of "being on a budget" when it came to locations, but you wouldn't know it from seeing how far they stretched the sequences in the garden, circus, or theater.

Coraline, SCUMM-style.

(minor spoilers ahead) But with as much as there is to say about story and art design, a game isn't a game without gameplay, in the case of the film, the clincher was in Coraline's very own adventure. Glimpses of inventory management and puzzle solving hearkened back to that frame of mind I adopted when playing the classics. Elements like laying out the cheese for the button-mice, stacking the books to retrieve the key, the flashlight and the dog-bats, packing the garden shears for a purpose only to be realized later, and ultimately the final-level-like quality of the quest for the three hidden eyes, to be discovered with only the help of that trinket you received from your sagely allies, all added to the warm fuzzy feeling of being back in front of my old 386 with floppies in hand. And the quick thinking and resourcefulness Coraline demonstrated during the aforementioned "boss battle" was definitely more reminiscent of an ending sequence in an adventure game, light years more so than the typical boss fight that would be dependent on remembering a jumping pattern or shaving pixels off an elongated health bar.

To my disappointment, I found out that Coraline got the typical kids movie video game treatment, as a minigame-platformer for the Wii/PS2/DS. I would like to think that had adventure games continued to develop to the present day beyond their premature demise in the late 90's, they might have looked something like Coraline.

I enjoyed The Next Generation. I was enthralled by Deep Space Nine. I admired The Original Series. I was proud of The Undiscovered Country and First Contact.

But I winced at Generations. I was embarrassed by Insurrection. I endured Voyager. I was disappointed by Nemesis. I cringed through (most of) Enterprise.

Since the late 80's, I've been following Star Trek every step of the way. I watched both out of enjoyment and loyalty. I kept watching when other friends gave up. I bought all seven seasons of DS9 on DVD. I played Birth of the Federation (awesome), The Fallen (not bad), Elite Force 1 & 2 (super cool), Armada (so-so), and even a bit of Legacy (ugh). I even started reading novels to fill in the backstory for characters like Khan and Garak.

And since the cancellation of Enterprise (the final season of which was on the verge of being great, but not nearly great enough to make up for three horrid earlier seasons), I've been on a hiatus. Firefly, Futurama, and Battlestar Galactica filled in that sci-fi void for a while, all of which are highly recommendable.

But oh man, I've never been more excited for Star Trek than I have now! Go check out the new trailer!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

I can feel it coming over me, I feel it all around me.
I've been waiting for this moment all my life, it's my destinyyyyy!
Cuz the fight inside of me, it's waiting to come up now.
No matter what, no matter how,
I know I'll make it through somehooow!

Cuz when the road feels too long
I'll still be holding on,
I'm gonna keep on going,
I know I'll be strong, yeah!

Innn-desss-tructable!

I won't let nobody break me down! (take me down!)

Innn-deesss-tructable!

Nothing's gonna stop me now!

Innn-deesss-tructable!

Gonna, gonna make it gonna keep on coming!

Innn-deesss-tructable!

The last man staaandiiing!

I'm waiting for whatever (whatever!),
I'm never giving up!
Nothing can break my spirit,
Got to save my strength to fight!

Yeah!

There has been alot of heated "feedback" given to our recent video feature on Killzone 2. But there is a clear point that nearly everyone is missing.

Check out that kick-ass virtual background set!

There's a reason why I don't officially write for GameSpot, I just don't play enough games. But of the games I did play this past year, here are my favorite:

8. Gears of War 2: I loved the first one, and I love the second one, for all the same reasons. I'm also playing through the second one entirely on co-op, which is really how I prefer to play any shooters now. Of note, I played through alot of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on co-op and enjoyed it, and I probably wouldn't have touched the game just for singleplayer.

7. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: While the third game is still my favorite in the series, this is probably my second favorite. But I mention it becuase it managed to successfully pass a solid franchise from one leading character to another, enough so that I'm ready to jump in to whatever hijinks Apollo has next.

6. Defense of the Ancients: While it is a WC3 mod, Icefrog keeps this updated just enough to keep me hooked. I've played this game far more than I'd like to admit, and were it not for the terribad community (bnet kiddies) that thrives on this game, I'd probably be playing it alot more.

5. Street Fighter II Championship Edition (Arcade): Old old old game, but given it just sits in our office all day and everyone around me gets the itch to beat up on each other now and then, I've logged alot of time on the machine.

4. Burnout Paradise: I couldn't really get into the earlier Burnout games, but I really enjoyed this one. Eight-player challenges and ludicrous crashes made playing on a 10-ft wide projection screen a cherished memory. I would've played it alot more had my Xbox not red-ringed at the time.

3. Mario Kart DS: Another non-2008 game, but I've played this too much to ignore putting it here. After moving on from snaking, I've become one with the Bowser + Rhino combination to put the hurt on anyone who tries to cross me. The only problem is it handles as if Bowser were trying to ride a rhino. But the best part is being able to play with the same people regularly and weekly, and I don't have any intention of stopping (unlike some other people!)

2. Wrath of the Lich King: This game has made WoW everything I wanted it to be. While I enjoyed the Burning Crusade, it really didn't strike me how lacking it was until WotLK arrived. Phased content, vehicle combat, rejuvenated story, achivements, and a functioning moonkin talent tree has pulled me back in.

1. Braid: This is my favorite game of the year. Bioshock and Portal both stood out as great single-player experiences that really pushed the envelope in using gameplay to tell a story, but I think Braid topped them both in that regard. The problem with "art" games is while they look pretty, they can be pretty shallow when it comes to being just a game. Braid is one of the few that excels in both areas, and amazingly does so by just going back to the platforming basics.

Games I was going to play but ended up not playing (but I'm sure are great):

Grand Theft Auto IV: I watched a bunch of it from my roommate and around the office. I just don't feel any desire to pick it up.

Fallout 3: I loved Oblivion, but I got tired of Oblivion pretty fast. I may try Fallout sometime, but I just don't have it in me.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Ok, maybe I'll play this. Maybe.

Games I still plan on playing:

The World Ends With You: I've needed a new DS game for a while, and this is definitely going to get some attention.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm: The only thing stopping me from playing this is the tedious story-mode you need to go through to unlock the amazing battle mode. I loved the demo, and it may just be a matter of convincing someone else to play the story mode for me.

Left 4 Dead: I missed the boat on this one, and it's still in my GameFly Q.

Games I did play but don't care much for:

The Burning Crusade: For as much time as I spent on this, alot of it just feels wasted after seeing the improvements made in Lich King.

LittleBigPlanet: I enjoyed this quite a bit for when I can play it with friends, but it didn't end up being the killer game I though it would be.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village: The achievement hunter in me made me want to complete all the puzzles. The rest of me wanted to kill that part of me.

What I saw after I visited Kim's office this morning.

I love you guys.

We held our Ultimate Street Fighter Showdown tonight, click through for some pictures. Video coming in the following weeks!