I'm looking forward to the holidays, not so much for the family, food and festivities, but for the gaming.

Here's my holiday gaming to-do list:

• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
• Mass Effect
• MX vs. ATV Untamed (due out in a couple weeks)
• Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
• Contra 4 (I will beat this game!)
• Half-Life: Episodes

...

Compelling.

I've been seeing this word used more and more in the context of video game journalism, and my thoughts were highlighted by the 1up.com guys on their weekly podcast: It's being used as a synonym for 'good'. In a casual reading of the latest GameInformer, I picked up the term 6 times, and that's just tallying the one-third of the magazine I did read.

I like the...

After reading a couple of interviews with Todd Hollenshead about id software's upcoming game Rage, I have to ask: are they even interested in the games any more? The concept sounds ridiculously sparse and devoid of any gaming value.

It's been said before, but I'll put my stamp of approval on it: id software has been primarily an engine company since the days of Quake II. They make decent...

There seems to be an inverse relationship between age and attention span - as I get older, I find that a few hours with a game is all I can handle. Gone are the weekend-long gaming marathons with friends. Apparently, all these little annoyances like kids and careers really eat away at the available video gaming time.

So, I have a pile of shame here that I'm getting cracking on this...

(Blogs aren’t really my thing (you know what they say about opinions), but I figured it’s time to scribble some game-related thoughts now that YouGamers has blogging functionality. Even if no one reads these posts, it’s a nice place to collect the gaming-related thoughts that bounce around my brain from time to time.)

Video games are big business these days. This is nothing new; in...