Aaaaand, we're back!

It's been a while since I could go into this weekly update without wondering how I was going to manage to fill three to four paragraphs with words. And, let me tell you, if you've ever got me wondering how to BS through 300 words of content, then you have found an especially dark void of activity. You're usually lucky if I don't drop 300 words in the description field of a personal check.

For my money, this week, I'm going with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, because when it comes to creating epic role playing action, I think of Hall of Fame MLB pitchers. All kidding aside, I've been intrigued with this game for a while, and not just because of the Day 1 DLC flap, but really from the moment someone said it was going to be like God of War meets Oblivion. As far as strong pitches for my interest go, that's pretty much the skyrocketing over my bar for success.

I also really want to be interested in Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, but so far I'm just not confident in what I've seen. I love games like X-Com, Fallout Tactics and Silent Storm when done really well, and I'm hopeful that my gut feeling on Jagged Alliance is off base.

As if that weren't enough, The Darkness II comes out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this week alongside Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS and Gotham City Imposters on XBLA, PSN and PC. So, welcome back video game industry from your too long slumber. Never leave me again!

I tried to play Final Fantasy XIII when it released last year, and I made it a good 15 hours into the game, which is to say I made it about halfway through the tutorial section. After that nearly 2 full work days of effort here is what I can say for certain, Final Fantasy XIII is a game on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. That's about it.

I can't say it was terrible, but I can't say I enjoyed my time either. I can't really say anything about the story, because as far as I understand it, I had read basically the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, though I again can't say I really cared for what I'd seen up to that point. I suppose I could say that I didn't care for the characters, but honestly I don't remember any of them, except for the vague, nagging sense that there was one character who was basically a young, annoying girl stereotype.

And, now Square-Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XIII-2, which I really don't know whether it is a sequel or an expansion or what. Again, what I can say with relative certainty is that it is a game on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and beyond that not much, except that the likelihood that I will ever play it is extraordinarily low.

Which is all to say that I'm giving game of the week to Soul Calibur V.

Ok. I'm ready for some big game releases again.

The break from the busy holiday season was nice and all, and I happily feel like I've cleansed my palate, but I'd be fine with some massive game to get really excited about again. I know a lot of people don't leap to thoughts of over-hyped, mass produced, focus group marketed AAA titles when they think of video gaming worth giving a damn about, but as many of you already well know I do. There's something I really enjoy about the pomp and bombast of a game like Battlefied 3, Skyrim or The Old Republic releasing, and I am anxiously looking forward to that kind of noise again for games like Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3 or Max Payne 3. On a side note, is basically every current game franchise sitting at the number 3 right now?

That said, I've been enjoying my time in some less highly visible games lately. I've been working on improving my scores in Orcs Must Die!, a game I can come back to over and over again and have exactly the same amount of fun. I also went back to Defense Grid to play out some of the levels I'd missed. And, I've been cautiously pleased with the beta for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, something I think I've already put more time into than the original. There's a long way to go there, but it's much more promising than I expected it to be.

As for this week, King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame looks like the best option if you need something new to play, unless you're a glutton for punishment in which case Victoria II: A House Divided may be your cup of tea.

This week is more disappointing than the Green Bay Packers' wide receivers in yesterday's Divisional Playoff game, and more barren than my partly mechanical heart in the wake of that loss yesterday. I had held out some early hope that Amy, which launches this week on the PSN, might be an interesting spin through the survival horror genre, but early reviews suggest it as incoherent, bumbling and ineffective as the Packers' 3rd down play calling. So, with not much on the weekly frontier, I guess we'll all just have to grab some bench and look on impotently like the Packers will be during this year's Super Bowl.

Ok, that's out of my system.

Another January week means another week of getting back to those games you missed or needed to revisit. I, for one, just fired up Mass Effect 2 to get caught back up in advance of the rapidly approaching Mass Effect 3. I've also really got to actually go play Uncharted 3 more than the few hours I've got in the game so far at some point as well. Soon enough we'll all be absorbed by shiny new games again, and wonder where the time has gone.

Also worth some attention this week, ICO HD and Shadow of the Colossus HD hit PSN. I'm not sure who's left at this point that hasn't played these games, but if it's you, then go fix that!

Things are quiet, but they won't necessarily stay that way for long. Ignoring the dubious rumor of Diablo 3's impending February 1 release, there are still games like Mass Effect 3, Soulcalibur 5, Syndicate and SSX already creeping up on the horizon along with the PSVita.

For now, though, the big game releases of this week are more humble offerings like King Arthur II: The Role Playing Wargame and Choplifter HD. Like most of the rest of you, though, I am still plowing through the backlog left from the end of 2011. I still feel fairly satisfied just playing what I've got right now, which is an unusual feeling for me. I feel a bit like Mr. Creosote from near the end of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, sitting in my restaurant of video gaming, stuffed to near bursting and pushing away the waiter's insistence that I can stomach just a bit more. At this point, I fear that if I get one more new game, whether freshly released or through some overly tempting sale, then I will endure a similarly explosive fate as poor, corpulent Mr. Creosote.

As for this week, I'm going to embrace the idea that there's nothing pressing that demands my attention. I know Certis has been playing some King Arthur II, but his description hasn't exactly piqued my interest. I say keep working on that big dinner still piled high in front of you before you get another helping.

During this season when everyone will be or has been announcing their games of the year for 2011, I like to stop and get ahead of the curve to announce game of the year for the coming year. And, if I may be so bold, on the years when I actually remember to do this I have a pretty decent track record. At this time last year I called it and announced Skyrim as 2011's game of the year, and damned if I wasn't basically right.

In 2008 I called Dragon Age: Origins for 2009's GotY, which I think is pretty dead on, as was calling Fallout 3 in 2007. As for the other years, I either forgot to go ahead and make the prediction or I made one and it was so bad that I surreptitiously deleted the post mid-year when no one was looking. I honestly can't recall.

2011 was a stellar year for video games, and frankly 2012 looks set to pick up right where '11 left off. As for game of the coming year, I admit I'm torn between three choices. First on that list is Mass Effect 3. BioWare has been on a roll with me of late, and ME2 is one of my favorite games of the past few years. Next up is Diablo 3, which just looks to be shaping up better and better every time I see it. And, let's not even talk about how many hours I put into D2 over the years. But, neither of those is my game of 2012.

No, the "honor" goes to Bioshock Infinite as my choice for Game of the Coming Year. Everything about this title excites me. The setting looks as unique and inventive as Rapture ever dreamt of being, and when it comes to making a game I'm going to give a damn about, I'm not sure there's a company in the business right now I trust more than Irrational Games. If I could pick only one new game I get to play this year, it's Infinite.

But, I don't have to pick just one game, which is why there is also room in my heart for Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm, The Last Guardian, Guild Wars 2, Torchlight 2, WoW Mists of Pandaria, Max Payne 3, The Last of Us, Borderlands 2, Syndicate and probably a half dozen other games I don't even know that I should be excited about yet.

What's your pick for Game of the Year: 2012?

What a year it's been for video gamers, and not just unimaginative, mainstream, AAA game-buyers like myself, but for fans of portable gaming, indie gaming, casual gaming and the rest of you who reject these artificial labels created by the industry to segment and marginalize us. When I finally sat down and thought about all the games I played this year, both those that sit perched atop my favorites list and those I just enjoyed for a few days or weeks, I came up with a ridiculously long list. Honestly, it's been going nearly non-stop this year since January.

For whatever else can be said about 2011, from my chair it is one of the strongest for gaming in a decade.

This week, though, it's probably all about Star Wars: The Old Republic for me and about 2 million of my closest personal friends. Though the early access began early last week, the official launch isn't actually until Tuesday. While it's exciting to see a very successful large scale launch of a new MMO -- been a while since we've seen one of those -- the answer to how successful TOR is in the long run is really defined by how long it keeps getting new players and whether there is the same enthusiasm in March, June or October of 2012.

But, since The Old Republic was my game of the week last week, I'm going to go ahead and give this week's nod to Trine 2, which hits XBLA and PSN this week. An absolutely gorgeous game, I honestly hadn't had any idea that a follow up to Trine was so close, but early indications have been positive. And, aside from TOR and Trine 2, there's almost nothing else. Get ready for a few quiet weeks.

If you look at the seven actual games scheduled to be released this week, it's easy to conclude that there's nothing worth getting worked up about again, but actually the reality is more complicated than the release list says it is. There are actually two big game centerpieces this week.

The first is the Back to Karkand DLC that launches for Battlefield 3 this week. For about 10 days there I was playing Battlefield 3 every single night on the GWJ server, an experience that I wholly endorse. Unfortunately Skyrim released shortly after and after 2 full work week's worth of time lost in Tamriel, BF3 quickly became a bloody memory. This DLC might have been just the thing to get me back in to EA's phenomenal shooter, except ...

Star Wars: The Old Republic begins to open its doors this week to preorders beginning on Tuesday. Though the official release is still a week away, the number of people who will be granted access into this game will be measured certainly in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly even the millions. And, yes, I admit it. I will be watching my e-mail very carefully for that precious, precious correspondence saying that I have access to immediately get in an hour long server queue to kill Sith Space Rats.

As promised, Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS is this week's game of the week.

I saw a report last month saying the 3DS is on track to clear the original DS first year numbers, and though this is good news for a system that seemed to be flagging, I can't help but feel like the news might not be as good as it seems. For one thing I recall clearly when the DS launched. I was in the retail biz at the time, so I remember it the way you remember that one nightmare you kept having when you were a 10-year-old and which still secretly eats at the edges of your soul and sanity. I recall Nintendo being highly cautious about releasing DS systems out into the wild, so that for the better part of a year that was already sort of up and down from a sales perspective, even when people did want to buy a system they were hard to come by. The long and short is that I think there were very different reasons for the DS system's relatively slow ramp up. And, a desperate price drop to drum up interest was definitely not part of that mix.

The other thing I remember is the buzz. People were talking about the DS in a way they just don't talk about the 3DS. I could go for the low hanging mobile market argument, but I don't feel like that completely describes the struggles of this latest Big N handheld system. There's just a general malaise, a casual disinterest. If you can't even get my eight year old or his class interested in this system, then your problem is much bigger than anything Apple can throw at you.

As for the rest of this week, not much else to talk about.

I suppose it's time to let the Game of the Year debates begin. I know a lot of people don't normally go in for that sort of thing, and normally I'm not big on such an arbitrary accolade, but there have been so many outstanding games this year that I am happy to begin celebrating the year even as it still winds down through December. If I could hand out three of four game of the years then I would and still have a game or two that I feel got left out.

That said, none of them are going to come from this week. Now that the Blacks Monday and Thursday have come and gone, the days of heady release lists and triumphant fanfare are even now echoing off mostly into the distance. This week's releases are so uninspiring that I'm not even going to list them out below. There are only about four of them anyway, and the best among them may be Jaws: Ultimate Predator. Interesting call back to paragraph one, I'm willing to bet that's the only time Jaws: Ultimate Predator gets called the best of anything.

While Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS does come out next Sunday, I'll save that for next week to discuss. For now, Skyrim is still probably my Game of the Week. I'm now some 60+ hours in and I could easily rattle off a half dozen things I still can't wait to do. I know at some point I'll flame out. By comparison, I only put about 45 hours total into Fallout 3, and at the end felt completely sated. But, even as I sit here talking about it, I'm deeply anticipating the next opportunity I have to reenter the world of Tamriel.

Let the age of clearing out the pile begin.