"The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that android hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance."

–GLaDOS

Meet Alyx Vance. She's one of the main characters in Valve Studios' Half-Life series. She's also something of a rarity in videogames in that she's an actual character, as opposed to the 2-dimensional caricatures of women that dominate the genre.

Of course, I'm playing Halo 3. The single-player campaign, while entertaining, really isn't anything more than a training ground for the real meat of the game, which is the multiplayer.

There's a mishmash of a story involving the Covenant's invasion of Earth to retrieve the Ark, Cortana's imprisonment with the Gravemind and of course, the great question: how is it Master Chief can fall from space at escape velocity and survive, but he dies if he slips off a 30-foot embankment?

Well, that last one is never answered, but the rest wraps up nicely. Stick around after the credits for a nice little bit of closure.

Tonight marks the release of Halo 3. I'll risk the possible lynching by a crowd of angry, pitchfork-toting fanboys and say it: I never really got what the hype was about.

Sure, it's a competent first-person shooter, and the online capabilities are excellent, but c'mon, it's pulpy space opera with guns. It's good, but it's not exactly the reinvention of the wheel or anything.

Anyhow, Master Chief's back, riding a wave of advertising hype and testosterone into the videogame equivalent of Return of the Jedi. And, of course, Jack Thompson's back as well.

Well, I've got the 360 back. It took Microsoft a bit longer than expected, but three weeks isn't bad. Of course, I had the misfortune of having it malfunction just before they acknowledged the prevalence of the problem and extended the warranty to three years. As a result, mine was only one unit being returned in a deluge of others, so this was to be expected.

Still, three weeks or so isn't too bad of a wait considering I was dealing with what amounts to a massive corporate recall.

…and they said it couldn't happen here.

Crackdown has gone through an odd life-cycle. It didn't get much of a promotional push, and first impressions didn't help it, either. On the surface, it appears to be a Grand Theft Auto clone with slightly better graphics (of which there are only 46,178 titles available). What's more, Microsoft chose to bundle the Halo 3 beta key with it. That kind of move usually smells of desperation, and it's usually reserved for titles that just can't hack it on their own merits.

Despite all these things, it's turned out to be one of the most enjoyable titles on the 360 at the moment, and it's garnered itself a certain amount of worthy dark-horse status.

Ah. Killer 7. In gaming circles, this title is highly controversial. It embodies the "game-as-art vs. game-as-entertainment" debate more than any other. Sure, games like the worthy Okami and Ico both qualify as "artistic," while also being engaging, but no other game I can think of wears the look-at-me-I'm-art-with-a-capital-A badge with such brazen pride as Killer 7. You either love it for its loopy, entrancing story and its quirky graphics, or you hate it for its weird control mechanics and obtuse nature.

Of course, it didn't sell very well. You can still find it in the used bins, and I highly recommend at least trying it for the sake of experiencing something unique. That's probably where it would have ended for Killer 7, as a weird cult title with major stylistic ambitions.

That is, until Jack Thompson got ahold of it.

Over the last couple of decades, there's been a discernable cycle of creativity (or lack thereof) in Hollywood. It goes like this:

Find a director or a screenplay with some degree of originality
Throw some money at the project and hope it pays off
If a=yes, make as many clones of said project as the public can stomach

When GOTO 1 is no longer an option, the Hollywood establishment falls back on the tired practice of "remaking" old movies and television shows, often with no respect for the original property. We're then treated to a few summers of half-baked retreads until something new and bankable comes along.

In some respects, the videogame industry is quite similar. Sequels are easier to make than new concepts, and it's far safer to fall back on proven formulas than risk it on new ideas. If you've got a movie license, then it's even easier: just smack some tired old game mechanics together and string along the story.

I originally panned Lost Planet based on a rather underwhelming demo, but I kept hearing great things about the final version from other gamers, so I broke down and bought it.

Turns out the demo really didn't do the game justice. I've really been enjoying it, and the multiplayer is an absolute blast, easily matching the frenetic rush of Battlefront. Thing is, this is still online gaming, which means I sometimes find myself dealing with the lowest-common-denominator sorts.

I've made no secret of my fondness for this game. The hype (and delays) for this game reached something of a fever-pitch over the last year, and usually, the end product can't hope to live up to the anticipation.

But Gears of War does just that, and then some. I'll spare the lenghty review, as there are plenty elsewhere. I'd like to focus on what this game does to audience expectations for the future. (In some circles, it's called "raising the bar." Meh.)

First off, if you haven't read the Gamer's Manifesto, go ahead and do so. I'll wait.

I'd really planned to sit out the whole 7th generation rush for at least a year. The PS3 doesn't offer anything that I need, and the Wii…well, let's see how developers adapt to the new hardware scheme. I wasn't ruling out either, but I wasn't in a rush to blow a few hundred bucks anytime soon.

Then fate intervened, and I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. This was a huge surprise, as these things aren't cheap, and it certainly wasn't something I had planned on buying. Still, there are a number of games (Dead Rising, Gears of War, Halo) that are only available for the unit, so I was pretty enthusiastic about it.