Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. I started with the much reviled second entry inot Bioware’s sword and sorcery franchise. When it first came out, I had made a good faith attempt to play the original, but I failed to get into the game and decided to cut bait after about three hours of my first playthrough. Something about the mechanics of the game just didn’t click with me and I had trouble effectively controlling my party. But after playing my way through the sequel, I decided to give Origins another go-round and this time it all made sense. I purchased the Ultimate Edition with all the DLC included so I went dead to the world for a significant portion of the summer while I quested my Grey Warden from one end of Thedas to the other. That was after I lead my dapper rogue through a tumultuous decade of running around Kirkwall and bedding pirate queens in part 2. Although the recycled level in part two did get old, I loved the setting and characters. This whole series has restarted my long dormant love of the fantasy genre. Thanks so much Dragon Age. I thought I was done with barbarians wielding swords…

Batman: Arkham City. The purest Batman experience is sadly the closest I will ever come to swinging down from a gargoyle and straight up punching a criminal in the face. The open world mechanic worked like a charm and the voice acting was top-notch. The plot was convoluted and some of the action setpieces didn’t quite work out as well as they were intended to, but overall Rocksteady knocked it out of the park with this one.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Not much to add beyond what I’ve already said, but this game was not without it’s charms and suffered from the inevitable comparisons to

Gear of War 3. So the saga of Marcus Fenix and his human meat tank bros finally came to an end this year. I have only played the campaigns for the three games in the Gears of War series, and I found the story of an earth-like world rocking from cataclysm after cataclysm strangely compelling. The background story plays out like the hopelessness of early Battlestar Galactica crossed with the macho posturing and general brotasticity of Predator. The gameplay was hectic and the fine folks at Epic Games know how to put together excellent firefights on a massive scale. The third installment tied up most of the loose ends and while the game failed to achieve anything approaching real pathos, the narrative never shied away from taking risks.

Call of Duty: BlackOps. Another game which I have already spoken about at length.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This was easily my most anticipated game of 2011. I absolutely adored the original and its sequel, and I was totally looking forward to immersing myself in the cyberpunk noir future where human augmentation had run amok and tranhumanist philosophy had created a race of nano-enhanced supermen. Human Revolution delivered the goods. The game wasn’t perfect. The boss fights felt tacked on and went against the grain of everything the game’s structure had been pushing toward and the ending(s) left a great deal to be desired but this game had texture, man. There was a grit and a lived-in feeling that permeated every aspect of the game’s world of 2027, from Jensen’s apartment to the neon fever dream that was Hengsha. This game was awesome.

Crysis 2. I did not play the first Crysis, so I am unable to assess its merits in contrast to the first version of the game. I can tell you that this version was a better than average shooter whose sci-fi aliens invading New York city narrative was almost done in by some shoddy A.I. and less than thrilling enemy design. I liked the convoluted plot and the gameplay variations that you get from your nanomachine super-suit, like invisibility, invincibility, and speed but the experience never really gelled for me.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Another sequel that I dove into the deep end without starting at the dawn of the franchise. This version was the first Assassin’s Creed game I ever played, and I enjoyed the crap out of it. The narrative was gibberish, but the stealth and planning elements to each hit were fun. My main criticism came when I realized that it was nearly impossible to actually die. Ezio’s health regenerates just a little that makes it difficult for even a swarm of Borgia goons to actually kill the player character. The challenge, then, comes from the mission parameters and whether you are able to sneak and stealth your way through your objectives without being seen.

Fallout: New Vegas. This one almost didn’t make the list because I couldn’t make it to completion. After around thirty hours of roaming the wastes with my trusty supermutant companion helping out survivors of the last great war and personally assassinating Caesar this broken, buggy, unfinished game went crashed on me and I was unable to load any of my save games. I enjoyed the experience before it came to a crashing halt, but I didn’t have the patience at the time to retrace my steps in the game so I stopped playing. I plan on buying the ultimate edition later this year, which will include all the downloadable content and hopefully a stable version of the game itself. I will give that version another try, but I am worried because war never changes.

Portal 2. Easily the funniest and most well-c0nstructed game of last year, Portal 2 was short, sweet, and to the point. It was funny and I don;t have a single bad thing to say about it.

The Semantic Drift Game of the Year: I played some excellent games this past year. Skyrim kicks so much ass, but I am still neck deep in the Stormcloak rebellion and I don’t want it to end ever. Since I haven’t completed the game and will be slaying dragons for at least the first few months of 2012, the game is exempt. That leaves Batman: Arkham City as the greatest game of 2011.

Another factor has been the birthday present perfect for the man with more leisure time than he knows what to do with:  Fallout 3.

I tend to straddle a strange line between casual and hardcore gaming. Months will pass where I don’t so much as touch a controller, and my console acts as a very expensive dust collector or piece of modern art. But every once in a while a game comes out that totally grabs my attention and I become a prisoner, shackled to my Playstation 3 or X Box 360 for hours at a time pressing buttons in the flickering dark. I am a binge gamer.

It doesn’t happen much. Frequently, the games that grab me are the latest entries in series that I’ve been playing for quite some time. Earlier this year Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots sucked up all my time. Less often, I will fixate on a new game that demands my attention and I usually play with the full knowledge that I am signing myself up for further obsessions down the line. Bioshock was enough to get me onboard for any future installments.

And so was Fallout 3.

While the numerical qualifier obviously means that Fallout 3 is not a brand new game, it is new to me and that is all that counts. I’m sure there were a few jokes and references I missed that tickled devotees of the series, but if so they were integrated into a package that was friendly to newcomers. I never played Fallout 1 or 2, but the story and game world felt accessible and nothing seemed to fly over my head. And what a bleak world it is. The game takes place in the year 2277, over a hundred years after nuclear war has turned the world to hardscrabble desert.

You play as a denizen of Vault 101, an underground shelter where pockets of humanity have survived the devastation. When your scientist father flees the Vault under mysterious circumstances, you follow in his footsteps. Or not. The game world is invitingly open. Your quest to find your father makes up the central narrative of Fallout 3, but the game lets you pursue it at a leisurely pace with as many side quests and digressions as you feel like. If you want to eschew the central narrative altogether and concentrate on other matters, Fallout 3 has something for you. You can be a freelance assassin or spend your time patching up the leaky pipes in a large settlement. You can become a scourge of humanity and put whole towns to the gun, or an avenging angel of righteousness who travels the land righting wrongs.

Aside from the way certain non-player characters react to you, the game does not seem to care what sort of person you decide to be.

It is an open world in the same way that Grand Theft Auto is. Fallout 3 provides a sandbox and you decide how to play with it. But this proves to be something of an illusory freedom. There are in truth a limited variety of different tasks to perform. Like any good role playing game, every new location is stocked with characters eager for you to perform actions for them, whether it is recovering a lost violin from a hive of Feral Ghouls or clearing a train station of mutated fire ants for an overeager scientist

After a while they all seem to blur together and I found myself driven back to the central arc of the main quest which is probably just what Bethesda Softworks had in mind when they designed Fallout 3.

The most obvious antecedent for Fallout 3 is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which was designed by the same company. The engine that runs the game and the basic structure of the game echo the previous effort. Dialogue options and navigation operate basically the same way, but I enjoyed Fallout 3 because of two key differences that propel it to far greater heights than Oblivion:

1. The Setting. This might be a personal thing, but I have never been member of the Tolkien set. Oblivion was a sword-and-sorcery romp, with elves and other fantastical frippery. Fallout 3 is leaner and meaner, a tale of brutal loners struggling for survival in a future post-apocalyptic wasteland full of monsters and the worst humanity has to offer. The austere Mad Max-ian landscape is full of small settlements and pockets of survivors making the most of the remnants of Washington D.C. The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3 is full of intangible but persistent signs of its sensibility.You can see it in the little things, like the design of your in game P.D.A, the the Pip Boy 3000:

In the game’s history the Cold War never ended and neither did the 1950s Leave it to Beaver style of culture. There are wandering malfunctioning robots, but they all look like rejects from Lost in Space, with tentacled pincers and cylindrical torsos. The streets are clogged with the bombed out remains of high-finned Cadillacs and old-timey vending machines dispense soda pop. This Gee-Whiz retrofuture clashes nicely with the utter desolation and crumbling remnants of D.C. landmarks.

2. The Controls. On the surface, Fallout 3 plays just like Oblivion. At least until your first fight. Fallout 3 is a hybrid of first person shooter and turn-based strategy. Its up to you whether you want to proceed in real time or use V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) to pause the action and tactically target your oppent’s critical areas. While it can break up the frenetic action of a heavy firefight, V.A.T.S. provides a more strategic dimension to combat.

Also time slows down into a gloriously gory slo-mo explosion of a bloody pink mist that makes the act of unloading a shotgun into the face of an attacking Supermutant infinitely more satisfying than launching a Wand of Wattoomb at a goblin. I literally never got tired of that. Your mileage may vary.

But after your character reaches level 20, you stop advancing. You no longer earn experience points for slaughtering your enemies and completing quests. You can still earn good karma and material rewards, but you lose the tell-tale ka-ching! noise that accompanied each fallen foe for most of the game. I found it hard to care about completing the side quests after I had maxed out. Level 20 seems an arbitrary cut-off point, and this is basically the only real criticism I have with the game. I had managed to max out my skills fairly well, but if I knew ahead of time that I could advance no further, I would have allocated my XP differently. Perhaps I would not have allowed my lockpicking skills to moulder and played the game differently.

On a related note, more enemies would be nice. Your opponents fall into three or four basically similar categories, and after a day or two or playing you will probably have traded bullets with the entire bestiary.

Despite that, the sheer depth of the Fallout 3 environment provided with me hours and hours of entertainment and I really loved it. Any game that can make me wear new butt-grooves into the sofa and go days without showering and barely eating is worthy of attention. Fallout 3 is the game I would like to have with me in my fallout shelter as the air raid sirens blared and the bombs started to fall. A game this immersive deserves serious attention. On my newly created rating system, Fallout 3 earns Five Bored Girlfriends (Out of Five):

• We would have gotten a free book, but UPS has proven unreliable. It is possible that a certain British Boy Wizard has gummed up the shipping works.
• Problem with Blogs (according to her Israeli pal): Too many posts look like they were written in 10 minutes by bad spellers and deficient typists.
• Secret to good blogs: “Show something new.” Failing that, “Show them something old in a new way.”
• Search before you write. Try to ignore the ubiquitous and focus on the fresh. Look for what is missing on any given topic. (I like the way she speaks. She is animated without being annoying about it.)
• You are the editor and publisher. Inspect your content, and thereby find the holes.
• Lay off the feeds first thing in the morning. Look at them at night, and sleep on it. Think about before writing (unless you blog the news) because you cannot be the first out of the gate so don’t bother trying.
• Blogging in the moment causes haste, you process without thinking and your readers will do the same as they read. Calm posts lead to calm readers, and calm readers will perceive you as wise.
• “Relationship Blogging” is the new black. Comments create conversation.
• Check out Liz Strauss. She says that you blog for yourself. What are you saying? Blog for yourself and to yourself. You create a sense of home and a place unique to you that will create the same sense in the reader.
• When a blogger is faking it –
  • Inaccurate Information
  • Too many ads
  • Linkdumping/blockquoting without your own words
  • Reposted Twitter feeds (Someone in audience has been accused of having intercourse with her computer. She doesn’t deny it).
  • “Dear Diary” events from boring people’s boring lives without engaging the audience. No one cares what you had for breakfast. Unless you were ancient and blogged about it on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then, it’s gold.
• Blog for the future. Blog well. Blog for the children. (She’s reaching a bit here.) In Israel, there is a saying about “fucking the land” inserting yourself, penetrating it so that you build something for future generations.
• Stop whining about not having any commenters. Improve the conversation:
  • Stop writing for your 8^th grade teacher because she was probably a bitch.
  • Purposely leave things unfinished to encourage readers to fill in the blanks. Incomplete thoughts allow readers to complete them. Lists of 6 or 7 encourage readers.
  • Responding to every comment is crap. Trick your readers into thinking that you respond to every comment. (They are a cowardly and superstitious lot.)
  • Don’t ask “What do you think?” It doesn’t work. Pretend that your reader is like an old friend or your partner in an old married couple. Make readers finish your sentences.
  • Blog about what other bloggers are writing about. Link to meaningful conversations. Memes are stupid.
  • circularcommunications.com a guy made an interview by blockquoting her old posts. (She finds her own ideas brilliant. Who’s to say she is wrong?)
  • Comment on other blogs, preferably in an intelligent manner. This will encourage others to click back and find out just how clever you are. Comment incompletely. Help each other carry on the conversation.
  •  (She is now giving shout-outs to members of the audience, including a guy who gave her a ride on a motorcycle. She also talks about Israel a great deal in the manner that people who have lived in foreign countries are wont to do.)
  • Be generous in your backlinking.
• Return to the spirit of the pioneer.
• Entertainment Blogs:
  • “Blogotainment” (A ridiculous word that the speaker did not come up with.) Disclosure of intentions is important.
• Stick to your themes. Stay within the scope of your blog.  
• Use triumvirate of spam controls:
  • Akismet, spamKarma, Bad Behavior
  • Join the fight against comment spam! (She’s giving a call to arms.) Kill it dead.

Regarding the Blogs vs. Journalism Panel:

• On Blogs and the Mainsteam Media
  • Dvorak: Blogs being coopted by mainstream media
  • Malik: Blogs see stories as ongoing processes, not finished events. Covers evolution.
  • Dvorak: Digg got biggest upsurge from Paris’ Hilton’s PDA- Bloggers fall for non-news celebrity tripe as much as mainstream media
  • Dvorak: Blogging = “Institutionalized Ankle-biting” -scrutinizing mainstream media, which the big dogs find annoying
  • Dvorak: New York Times is designed after the Onion. Bloggers suffer from being typecast as “only a blog,” partially because of simplicity of template. If they had slicker design, people would have more faith
  • Dvorak: All Bloggers are citizen journalists, even if they report on nothing but whether or not their cats can have cheezburgers.
  • Malik: Bloggers should make attempts to call the subjects of stories, this
    covers their ass legally
  • Dvorak: Bloggers should maybe take one journalism class, look into libel law. You
    can’t legally call someone a crook, but you can call them a douchebag. Is
    calling someone “shady” libelous?
  • Malik: Big media sites should engage smaller bloggers and engender a sense of trust with readers. NYT does a poor job of this. NYT does not use audience effectively.
• On Comments:
  • Malik: Comments good, bad, and ugly show a level of engagement and involvement
  • Dvorak: If your filters are worth a shit, they will do most of the moderating for you
  • Malik: Like a bar, you decide what kind of bartender you want to be and what kind of joint you want to run
  • Dvorak: leave some of the “You suck!” comments in, if they offer evidence for why you suck
  •  Dvorak: rated comments are bull (except for reviews) because they are prone to partisan smack-talking
• On Mistakes- Permanence of Articles v. Changing Copy
  • Dvorak: changing the text after mistake is noticed is fun because it can make commenters look like dopes
  • Malik: write the post, step away for 15 minutes then check again before posting
• On Blogging Internationally:
  • Malik: mostly via mobile phone, especially in India
  • Malik: Australia not good at cricket, may or may not be good at blogging. Blogging is directly correlated to availability of broadband
• There is a NYT Blog worker here and we are experiencing our own little Crossfire. The last word? Dvorak says the NYT are clueless. (Possibly douchebags, although this goes unsaid).