Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole game through with my four-year-old daughter. She controls the player 2 star, and she’s actually a huge help. She can hold monsters still to let me past certain places, shoot star bits out at enemies, and collect 1-Ups and coins that I can’t reach. Having that extra heart during a boss battle makes a big difference. And the bonding is great. Every time we hear the music that goes along with “You got a star!”, we hug or high five. Mario Galaxy 2 is great. A-.

Before I started my father-daughter replay of Twilight Princess, I used the Wii to play through Wind Waker for the first time. Despite the fact that it’s an older game, I really enjoyed it. And while I found the wide-open ocean somewhat monotonous, the stealth bits and context-sensitive combat music were very well done. All-in-all, I may prefer Twilight Princess, but Wind Waker was a stellar game, and it gets an A-.

I really enjoyed the original Zuma. I played a ton of the free online version before buying the Playstation 3 version. When I heard of Zuma’s Revenge, I jumped all over it. I’ve played it a ton, as has my wife. And while she’s much better at the game than am I, we both finished and enjoyed the game. They added a number of really fun mechanics. There are levels in which you slide rather than spin, and levels in which you have the ability to switch between two locations. There are also bosses every ten levels or so. It’s one of my favorite casual titles, and as such gets the same A- that Mario Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker got.

This year, it’s not necessarily the sheer number of games that’s got me pinned down, it’s the fact that there are three big ones, and they’re all huge. I’m already 10% of the way into Batman: Arkham City, and I’m really enjoying it. They’ve integrated some of the fighting moves so well that I find myself stunned when Batman smashes guys’ heads together mid-fight, or slams somebody into a wall, or ends the fight by dangling a guy over the edge of a building and interrogating him. The game is definately a game-of-the-year contender, and may prove to be better than Portal 2, which is saying a lot.

In about two weeks, Skyrim comes out. I’ve got to play it on PC for the mods, which means that I’ll likely be buying a new graphics card for my 4-year-old PC. As huge as Arkham City is looking to be, Skyrim is likely to dwarf it in scale. The only game I’ve ever spent more time on than Oblivion was Ultima V on my Commodore 64.

Lastly, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The bonus here for me is that unlike the other two games, I’ll let my four-year-old daughter watch me play Zelda, which means there’ll be more hours in which to play, because if Twilight Princess is any measure, Skyward Sword is gonna be another long-ass game.

It’ll probably be nearing the end of 2012 by the time I’m done with all three of these.

Until the current console generation, I’d not gotten into the Zelda games. But when I tried out Twilight Princess, I fell in love. You’ll notice that when I listed my top five favorite games, Twilight Princess was number five. “So!”, I said, “This is what all the fuss is about. Zelda games are awesome! I needs to try me some more! That Ocarina game seems to be one that everybody loves; I’ll try that.” I downloaded Ocarina of Time on the Wii Virtual Console, played for about an hour, and got bored. Or maybe I got distracted. What else was I playing back then? No More Heroes? Oblivion? Elite Beat Agents? Not sure. But just recently, I started playing Wind Waker based on a friend’s recommendation. He said that Wind Waker was his favorite Zelda game. I finished the game yesterday and I really did enjoy it. But did I enjoy Wind Waker more than Twilight Princess?

Wind Waker had a number of things going for it. The cel-shaded art style was a big one, although I felt that the cel-shaded graphics in Okami were way better. Wind Waker’s music was also stellar. The music in Wind Waker was even integrated into the combat, with musical hits coinciding with Link’s sword strikes. The “Mini Boss” battle music is fun, “Graaandma” is a very simple piece with a lot of heart, and I particularly enjoyed the music for the battle against Gohdan. The various themes for the island towns are all good. The sole advantage that Twilight Princess had in its music was the fact that it was performed by an actual orchestra, whereas Wind Waker’s music was synthesized. Nonetheless, I preferred the songs in Wind Waker. The ocean travel music was amongst the best bits of the Wind Waker soundtrack, which was good given that you do so damn much travelling in the game.

And that was one of my main complaints about Wind Waker – the monotonous ocean travel. Whereas Twilight Princess had scenic views, forests, and fields with landmarks, Wind Waker had just… water. I suppose it was a cheap way to make the game world big, but I much prefer Twilight Princess’s Hyrule over the vast “fishless oceans” in Wind Waker. And on that note, I really hated the sea battles. Whenever possible, I avoided them. Fleeing was so much easier than spending five minutes trying to hit some swimming enemy with a cannonball, getting knocked off of my boat four times, and ending up at half health all for no reward at the end. Those Gyorg were the worst. They’d pursue me for fifteen minutes straight while I sailed from one corner of the world to another. Often I’d set down the controller for five minutes and surf the web while travelling from place to place since it was so boring, but those damn Gyorg would force me to spend the time dodging instead. Once I got the Song of Winds this was less of an issue, but still a pain.

Looking back now on my original review of Twilight Princess, I remember many of the things I’d forgotten about Twilight Princess. It did so many different things, and it did them all so well. I’ve discussed gameplay variety a number of times before, and Twilight Princess accomplished that variety better than any other game I can think of. In Twilight Princess you snowboard, herd goats, go fishing, hang-glide from a chicken, sumo wrestle, and a number of other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. And Twilight Princess’s dungeons were the most creative I’ve ever seen. The water temple with its waterway-related puzzles was a standout, but Twilight Princess’s other dungeons had you swinging from ropes, swimming underwater, walking on walls, and hook-shotting on a floating island. I’ve heard people speak of the game’s muted colors, and I guess that I can see them if I really look, but to me the pros far outweigh the cons. Wind Waker had a bit of stealth gameplay at the very beginning which I really liked, but not nearly the variety of Twilight Princess.

All this talk really makes me want to replay Twilight Princess, but it was such a long game, and I’m wary of Zelda burnout given the upcoming Skyward Sword game, to which I’m very much looking forward.

So many Android games just don’t work. Graphics-intensive games like Dungeon Defenders chug on a Droid X’s 1gHz processor. But there’s a huge wealth of games from older systems that would run beautifully on an Android phone. Here’s my wishlist for Android game ports from other systems.

Dungeon Keeper
I’ve replayed Dungeon Keeper a number of times, and despite the antiquated graphics, the game is still a lot of fun. Given the low-res graphics, I’m sure that it would translate wonderfully to a mobile platform. Selecting squares for imps to dig would be easy, as would picking up monsters. And zooming in and out could be accomplished via multi-touch gestures. Although it might be best to do away with the bottom menu for more screen space, the side menus could remain, with the option of collapsing them. Dungeon Keeper would be a kick-ass phone game.

Starcraft
I recently heard that Blizzard released iPhone and Android versions of World of Warcraft. If they can do that, why not the original Starcraft? The immediate reason that comes to mind is that they couldn’t charge for mobile Starcraft on a monthly basis like they do with WoW. Still, I think Starcraft portable would be fantastic, especially in Korea.

7th Guest
The 7th Guest was one of my favorite PC games back in the days when CD-ROM was new and cutting edge. A point-and-click adventure game with many puzzles that were loosely tied to the story, lots and lots of poorly-acted FMV, and horribly annoying voice-overs that would repeat ad nauseum as you worked on the puzzles. There’s already an iOS version of the game. Why not an Android version too?

Wasteland
You may have never heard of Fallout’s progenitor. Back in the days of the Commodore 64, Wasteland took the top-down gameplay of the Ultima series and the enemy portraits and scrolling text battles of the Bards Tale series and combined them into a gameplay experience that managed to perfectly blend the two, resulting in a gameplay experience better than either. And on top of that, it allowed you to split your party so that the melee characters could rush forward while your machine gunners could stay in place and spray lead into the enemies. If Android had a native version of Wasteland, or at least a DOS emulator, I’d definitely give the game another playthrough.

2D Zelda Titles
Ocarina of Time is on my list of shame. People talk about how it was the bestest game evar, but I’ve never played. And I started playing Link to the Past once as well, but never got far. I actually own Ocarina of Time on the Wii Virtual Console. I think I’d be much more likely to play these games if I had them with me at all times on my phone. Nintendo isn’t very likely to release their first-party franchises on a non-Nintendo handheld, but I can always dream.

Popcap Games
Popcap just released Chuzzle for the Android platform, and Plants versus Zombies is due out in a matter of days. When will we see Peggle? Why not Word Worm? And a Zuma release would kill the second-rate clones out there on the Android marketplace.

Elite Beat Agents
And here’s my number one pick. It’s likely to never happen, but Elite Beat Agents could be absolutely huge on a mobile platform if the right people got ahold of the license. It could be the Rock Band of phones. The Nintendo DS original title was one of my favorite DS games. The licensed music was great and very catchy, and the little stories that accompanied each were a lot of fun. You’d tap small circles and draw along lines in time with musical cues from the song. At each stage – usually one per verse – you’d see the story’s character succeed or fail at a sub-task along the way depending on how well you’d done. Fail too many and you fail the song. The DS game had Canned Heat, Sk8er Boi, Y.M.C.A., and Let’s Dance. An Android Elite Beat Agents game could sell individual songs like Rock Band does, and I’d eat them up.

I recently found myself with an entire weekend to myself. No spouse, no children, no chores. It’s a rarity. So what immediately sprang to mind? Video games. And as I reviewed the titles I might pick up, I realized that what I really wanted was a Zelda game. In the end, I bypassed Dead Space 2 and Assassins Creed 2 and ended up picking up copies of Metal Gear Solid 4, Metroid Prime for GameCube, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and Clive Barker’s Jericho. I never ended up starting MGS4 or Metroid Prime; they’re still on my shelf at home. I played a bunch of Jericho and decided that I don’t love it. But I spent a good amount of time with 3D Dot Game Heroes.

3D Dot Game Heroes is an unabashed clone of the original NES Legend of Zelda. It knows what it is and revels in it. It’s got a boomerang, bow and arrow, bombs, and clones of many of Zelda’s monsters. It uses apples instead of hearts and orbs instead of triforce fragments. It also includes overt references to other old school games. I even met Princess Alena, Brey, and Kiryl from Dragon Warrior 4.

The basic game is good fun, and layered on top of it are a number of new elements. Your first sword is ridiculously huge when you’re at full hearts, and can be upgraded at a smithy to be longer, wider, and pierce through obstacles. Amazingly, this doesn’t make the game too easy. There’s also a way to “book” monsters, listing them in a manual for reference. Hilariously, this is done by physically smacking the monster with your copy of the book until its listing shows up in the book. Yeah – the game has some good humor. There are also a number of other minigames, including arkanoid and tower defense clones. I haven’t found all the minigames yet.

I played a bunch of 3D Dot Game Heroes over the weekend, and got midway through the third temple. But the game wasn’t scratching the Zelda itch, so I restarted a new game of Twilight Princess, and finished the Forest Temple before the weekend was over.

I’d been chatting with a friend at a bar just before the weekend and he’d mentioned Wind Waker, which I’d never played. He’s a huge fan of Zelda to the point where he has a Triforce tattoo, and he says that Wind Waker is his most favoritest Zelda game evar. So I ordered the game online. For the past few days, I’ve been spending all my video game time on my Wii with Wind Waker. Finally, a game that’s scratching the Zelda itch.

Aside from the original NES Zelda and the side-scrolling NES sequel, Twilight Princess was my first Zelda game. I loved it. After that, I played Phantom Hourglass on the DS and enjoyed that a lot too. And while Wind Waker is seeming much more akin to Phantom Hourglass than to Twilight Princess, I’m enjoying it. I prefer Twilight Princess’s open fields to the open seas of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, but I’m only just approaching the second temple in Wind Waker, so I’m likely too early in the game to judge its merits. I’m sure that I’ll end up taking a sizable Portal 2 break before I even get to that temple, but I’ll report back at some point with my take on Wind Waker.

Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection

This spring, Playstation is going to be re-releasing a high-definition version of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as a packed-together collection. I’m not too interested in the fact that it’s going to be 3D-enabled, but I’ll buy it just to replay Shadow of the Colossus in HD, and to try out Ico, which I’ve never had the pleasure of playing.

Dead Space 2

January 25th is only about a month away, and knowing me I won’t buy Dead Space 2 on release day. But I’m definitely going to play. I loved the first game.

Batman: Arkham City

I was late to the party on Arkham Asylum, but I played the game in 2010 and loved it. Sequel? Yes, please. Maybe I’ll get a copy of Arkham City before it’s a year old.

Dragon Age 2

For me, 2009 and 2010 were largely about Dragon Age. I absolutely love the setting and the strategic combat, but I’ve been seriously overexposed. And while Dragon Age was fantastic, I did not love Awakening. As a result, I may not pick up Dragon Age 2 on March 8th with everyone else.

Beyond Good and Evil HD

The thought of playing my favorite game of all time in HD with remastered character models and getting trophies gives me great joy. I’m gonna photograph every animal, win every race, and collect every pearl. Again. It’s coming out sometime in 2011, although nobody seems to know when.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

I’ve been looking for a good co-op RPG to play with my wife ever since we finished Trine and discovered that Sacred 2 is kind of lame. There is very little information out there about the game, and I may wait to see some reviews before dropping the money for two copies. What I do know is that you play as a male warrior who uses two-handed melee weapons and a female archer. Co-op is the main focus of the game, and the gameplay videos look very good. Time will tell. May 10th.

Portal 2

There’s been a lot of hype and a lot of excitement around the impending release of Portal 2. Now scheduled for April 20, 2011, this sequel sees the addition of elements from one of Lungfishopolis’s Free Game Friday titles: TAG: The Power of Paint. Turns out that Valve bought out the TAG crew in the same way that they bought the Narbacular Drop crew for the first Portal game. Portal 2 looks amazing, and I’ll likely download it from Steam on April 20th.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I don’t yet have a motionPlus controller, and this game may force me to buy one. I missed the boat on A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I’d played since borrowing a friend’s NES back in the day. And I love Twilight Princess. I’ve got very high hopes for Skyward Sword, and I likely will be buying this one on release day. That’s supposed to be sometime in early 2011, but there’s been no announcement.

The Last Guardian

I’ve been looking forward to The Last Guardian for a long time. You play a defenseless boy, and must of the gameplay appears to be stealth-based. Your only means of attack is via your huge flying puppy dog companion Trico: the titular last guardian. Given team Ico’s track record, this one should be good.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Before Skyrim was announced recently, I would quickly have answered that The Last Guardian was my most-looked-forward-to game. I loved Oblivion. I really really loved Oblivion. A sequel? Yes, please. And I’ll just say goodbye to another 200 hours of my life.

Despite the fact that it was originally designed as a Gamecube game, I loved Twilight Princess. The beautifully-crafted themed dungeons, the frequent story moment cutscenes, the varied gameplay, the mini-games, the music, I loved it all. And yet I never played Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker. Call me a late-to-the party Zelda fanboy.

I kept my copy of Twilight Princess. Maybe I’m hoping to get my wife to play it. Maybe I’d consider replaying it myself at some point if I ever got a huge amount of free time. It’s a long game.

4- Dragon Age: Origins (Bioware, PC, 2009)

Although I’ve never played the console version of this game, I heard that it was far inferior to the version I played on the PC. Maybe that’s why the game didn’t make a bigger splash: it was essentially a PC experience, and when ported to the console it lacked something. But there was so much that I loved about Dragon Age. First and foremost, it’s the closest thing to Baldur’s Gate that I’ve seen since… well, since 1998 when the last Baldur’s Gate game was released. Secondly, Bioware’s move away from a linear good/evil scale. Rather than your character’s alignment being affected by decisions that you make throughout the adventure, your companions’ opinions are affected. The same action can please two of your companions and piss off a third companion. I think it’s brilliant, as it steps away from the black-and-white systems of the past and simultaneously builds NPC character depth. Third, the game’s setting is the best fantasy world I’ve seen since Brittania, back in the days of Ultima V in the eighties. I love the fact that dwarves are unable to use magic and therefore are unable to dream. I love the Grey Wardens and the dark drama of The Joining. I love the story behind the creation of the darkspawn: The Fade and The Black City. And I love the background of the dragons, how archdemons come to be, and how they can be defeated. It’s a pity that I haven’t yet had time to finish DAO: Awakening.

3- Baldur’s Gate (Bioware, PC, 1998)

I’m grouping both games here. After all this time, Baldur’s Gate may still be my favorite computer role-playing game. There’s something about the old Infinity Engine and about the makeup of these old games that no other CRPG since has been able to capture. Baldur’s Gate had more character customization options, more spells and magic items, more obscure side-quests, and more areas to explore than any other game since. It’s amazing that twelve years later, Baldur’s Gate is still setting the bar for computer role playing games.

2- Half-Life 2 (Valve Software, PC, 2004)

Valve’s development of the Source engine was an amazing achievement. But aside from that, the story and gameplay in Half-Life 2 were breakthrough accomplishments on a number of levels. Innovative enemies, physics-based puzzles, and the best facial animation ever included in a video game. All of this, and a excellently-written science fiction story about an alien occupation of planet Earth and the unlikely underground rebellion led by a voiceless protagonist who may be backed by a mysterious otherworldly businessman. I’m currently replaying Half-life 2 for the fourth time.

1- Beyond Good and Evil (Ubisoft, PC, 2003)

You knew this was coming. Beyond Good and Evil remains my favorite game of all time. I’ve ranted about it so often and for so long that I won’t repeat myself here – you can go read any of a number of other rants I’ve written about how good the game is. I’ve replayed it five times now, from start to finish, and unlocked every hidden item in the game. I’m ready now for Beyond Good and Evil 2. Bring it on.

35- Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (Silicon Knights, Nintendo Gamecube, 2002)

The Nintendo Wii plays GameCube games. When I got my Wii, the only GameCube game that I eagerly hunted down was this one, because I’d heard so much about it. It did not disappoint. The base game was an above average survival horror story. But the system of insanity effects that the game puts into place were downright amazing. The game is eight years old, so I won’t concern myself too much with spoiling it at this point. At first, when my character’s sanity started failing, I’d see a volume meter across the bottom of the screen turn down, and I’d think that maybe I was sitting on the TV remote. Later, I’d click rapidly through a series of prompts to save a game, and the game told me that it was deleting all my saved games. Aargh! Noo! It’s not the type of horror you usually see in a video game, but it was certainly horror. Brilliantly innovative. I’d love to see a sequel.

34- Desktop Tower Defense (Paul Preece, Flash (Browser), 2007)
Desktop Tower Defense is one of the few games that has improved its position on my list since I last listed my 50 favorite games – it’s moved from position 48 to position 34. Why is that? Probably because other than perhaps Starcraft, Desktop Tower Defense is potentially the best real-time strategy game I’ve played. I love the fact that you use cheap towers to construct your own maze. I love the fact that the game is updated so frequently. And I love that it’s a free game. I bought the Nintendo DS version, and while the smaller screen size and lack of mouse control makes it much more difficult to play, I still play it a lot simply because it’s portable.

33- Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (From Software, Sony Playstation, 1998)
Although I would later grow to love the stealth action in Thief: Deadly Shadows and Beyond Good and Evil, neither allowed you to sneak up on a foe and disembowel them. Before the era of achievements, Stealth Assassins awarded you for getting through an entire level without being seen once. And it was hard. But it was so rewarding to come up behind that guard who could kick your ass face-to-face and putting your sword through his side before he ever knew you were there. Stealth games are a favorite of mine, and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins was my first love.

32- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo DS, 2007)
I haven’t played a lot of Zelda games, but more and more, I’m learning to love them. Phantom Hourglass went up a slot since my 2007 top fifty list. It was in 33rd place, and now it’s in 32nd. It’s very likely the best Nintendo DS game I’ve ever played, which I suppose doesn’t say a lot for the platform since we’re not even close to the top twenty. But there are many other DS games that I’d like to rave about (The World Ends with You, Elite Beat Agents) which honestly aren’t as good as Phantom Hourglass. There’s something about the Zelda formula and the way Nintendo is able to continually innovate that makes the games a joy to play. In Phantom Hourglass, I got to enjoy open world exploration with optional sidequests, level-less character upgrades, unexpected uses of the DS console’s lesser-utilized features, and very creative boss battles. I loved it.

31- The Temple of Elemental Evil (Troika Games, Windows, 2003)
Another game that moved upwards on my list (eleven slots!) despite its horrible bugginess, Temple of Elemental Evil is the second of Troika’s three games. I loved Troika’s games, but was never able to finish any of them. I was prevented from seeing the conclusion of Temple of Elemental Evil firstly because of the game’s bugginess, and secondly because of an insanely difficult final boss. (It was, after all, a god)

The game was fantastic, and would have been better if not for its insane bugginess, about which I’ve previously written. Its implementation of the D&D 3.5 ruleset was perfect, the graphics were impressive, and aside from the buggy slowness, the engine was fabulous. If the game were bug-free and had a bit of a better story, it could easily be in my top ten.

There are also a number of games out there that I’m just dying to play. Chief amongst them is Heavy Rain, a game that I’ve been looking forward to from the day it was released. I loved Indigo Prophecy despite the plot derailment in the later portions of the game, and with all the thought I’ve put into the fact that Dragon Age was the first game in a long time to make me feel anything, I’m hopeful that Heavy Rain will achieve something similar.

Uncharted 2 is coming down in price – I can get a used copy for around $35 now, and it’s at the top of my EBay shopping list. Also high on that list is Retro Game Challenge, a DS game that I’ve heard a lot of good things about. It contains a number of different games made in a retro style. Old skool racers, RPGs, shooters and platformers which ostensibly maintain the old style of gameplay while removing the most annoying things about those games. All this is wrapped with the storyline of a 12-year-old sitting in front of a TV with his friend in the NES era, entering cheat codes and achieving high scores.

Another game I can’t wait to get my hands on is No More Heroes 2. I may wait for the price to come down a bit before I get a copy, but I was a big fan of the first one, and I’ve heard that the sequel removes all the flaws of the original and makes the gameplay a bit easier. Maybe I’ll be able to finish this one.

I’ve decided that the PC is the platform on which I want to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s a GFW Live game, and while that interface annoys the crap out of me, its one benefit is that I can get XBox achievements. And since GFW/360 achievements, PSN Trophies, and Steam achievements are the only achievements that mean much of anything to me, I’ll be happy to add to my collection.

From early on, I’d decided that I did not want to play Demon’s Souls. A game that everyone lauds as the most difficult and frustrating game they’ve played since Ninja Gaiden doesn’t sound appealing to me. But when I heard the Brainy Gamer gamers’ confab folks discussing the game on Michael Abbott’s four part best of 2009 podcast series, I grew intrigued. Many of them cited Demon’s Souls as their favorite game of 2009, despite the game’s oppressive difficulty. I pondered this as I played through Trine’s Tower of Sarek level twenty or thirty times, trying to pass the level without dying once. Maybe I am up for it after all. In the end, I determined that if I do try the game, I’d be best off renting it rather than buying. Less commitment that way.

But I don’t generally rent games. Gamefly’s monthly plan runs $16 or $23 depending on whether you want one or two games. That’s a bit more than I’m willing to pay given that I don’t always want to have a game rented at any given time. I may be better off trying to get a copy from a Blockbuster for a weekend. I haven’t rented anything from Blockbuster in over fifteen years, so that should be interesting.

Other games I might consider renting include the new Wii Punch-Out!, which seems like a quick playthrough, the newest Prince of Persia, which I’m very hesitant to play given how much I hated Sands of Time and The Two Thrones, House of the Dead: Overkill, Dead Space: Extraction, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. I’m excited to play Darkside Chronicles, but I’m not convinced that it’s going to be a keeper.

So far, this is a long list. But while I’ve listed all the games about which I’m most excited to play, there are plenty more on my radar.

A Boy and his Blob is a game that looks like a lot of fun. And while it’s not top on my list, I’d really like to try it for some point, and it’s likely more than a rental. Maybe I’ll get to it before next Christmas. Ditto InFamous. Looks good, but not high priority.

Cold Fear is a game I’ll likely download from a service like Direct2Drive or Steam, depending on where I can get it cheapest. It’s not a triple-A title, but it looks interesting, and I don’t expect it to cost much. In the end, if it disappoints, I can stop playing and I won’t feel as though I’ve lost much.

I’ll probably end up getting Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and Henry Hatsworth in another year or so once they’re bargain basement titles on EBay. I expect to enjoy them, but I’ve got DS games coming out my ears right now, so I’m in no rush.

There are also a metric butt-ton of sequels about which I’m less than excited. Bioshock 2? Meh. Mass Effect 2? Sure, I’ll try it eventually. Assassins Creed 2? Yeah – I’ll get to it. My feelings about Killzone 2 and Wolfenstein are similar. All games I’d like to try at some point. We’ll see if I ever get around to them.

Lastly, there are a few games I expect to be released later this year. I’ll definitely be picking up Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening when it’s out. Ditto Super Mario Galaxy 2. I loved the first one. Starcraft 2 is a game I’ll try to buy on day one if I can. If The Last Guardian comes out this year, I’ll be as excited about it as I am about Heavy Rain, and I’ll get that one ASAP. God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 look potentially good, but I’ll likely wait until 2011 to pick them up.

The two examples I like to look at for gameplay variety are The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Beyond Good and Evil. Twilight Princess has swordfighting, goat-herding, fishing, chicken gliding, sumo wrestling and wolf-howling. Beyond Good and Evil has fighting, vehicle driving, platforming, first-person shooting, puzzle solving, item collecting, air hockey, and my favorite: stealth. All are drastically different types of gameplay, and serve to keep the game fresh as you play.

Variety like this in what I can only term an “action-adventure” game is rare, but it’s hard not to love a well-made game with gameplay diversity as deep as that in the above two titles.

Indigo Prophecy had a good deal of gameplay variety, which is a large part of the reason I liked it, and games like Super Mario Galaxy and Space Rangers 2 certainly try hard. But I can’t think of any games that have come out in the past 2-3 years with gameplay variety close to that of Twilight Princess and Beyond Good and Evil. Can you?