Most Surprising: I’ve been wondering for a while now what exactly Blizzard was doing with the 10 million times 15 dollars they’ve been hauling in every month. Building giant money forts maybe? Buying lots of coke (-a-cola) and strippers perhaps? While it’s no surprise that this cash surplus has gone to the development of other games, I am surprised that they are simultaneously developing and promoting both “Starcraft II” and “Diablo III.” If you look at the record, Blizzard has traditionally released one game at a time in a pretty linear fashion. Game, then expansion, then a different game, then expansion, etc. Either of these games is a big enough announcement in and of itself to occupy most gamers’ minds, two just speaks of raw ambition.

So, I have a theory. Over the past couple of years, Blizzard has developed a habit that I think they went to keep. For the last two, they’ve had produce a duo of major events each fall; Blizzcon and then an expansion release for “World of Warcraft.” Blizzcon allows them to heavily push and promote the product they plan to release while also setting the stage for their future developments. Good PR. With “Starcraft II” being broken into three parts and “Diablo III” doubtlessly getting an expansion, I think it’s a good chance that Blizzard will continue to release one game every fall for the next five or six years, alternating between “Starcraft” and “Diablo.”

Most Depressing: Let’s be honest, and as a PS3 owner it hurts me to say, Sony has not had a good year. They got beat on basically every good idea that’s come to the next-gen console market. From motion-sensing to online play, their competitors have already done it and (mostly) perfected it. As 2008 began, there was still good reason to believe that Sony could come roaring back. Home would be unveiled and demolish Xbox Live, someone would finally make a good SIX-AXIS game, “Metal Gear Solid 4″ would be so awesome Jesus Christ himself would descend from on high to play it. Sadly for Playstation fanboys, nothing Sony did, said, made or sold changed the facts on the ground. The trend line from 2007 maintained itself in 2008, with the Wii clearly dominating, the Xbox 360 posting a respectable second and the Playstation 3 coming in a distant third.

And, just in case I didn’t already feel “babo” (Korean for stupid) for buying a PS3, Square announced that “Final Fantasy XIII” would have a multi-platform release. For me, this essentially destroys Sony’s next-gen hopes as FFXIII was the last trick in their bag. With Home revealing itself as a silly diversion to actually playing games and SIX-AXIS effectively abandoned by developers, there’s nothing left for them to promise. Even Blu-Ray’s victory in the format war did little to shift consumers. There’s nothing left but price cuts.

Most Enjoyable: Some of the most fun I’ve had gaming this year doesn’t come from a video game per say, although there is an excellent java version and a release an Xbox Arcade. Instead, I left the electronics behind and discovered the venerable board game classic, Settlers of Catan. A couple of Brits introduced me to it here in Korea and I haven’t been able to get enough of it since. I’ve recommended it to friend after friend and asked for the complete set for Christmas. While I won’t get into the mechanics in detail, it’s a game best played around a big table with good friends and a few beers. Even better, it combines familiar strategy game elements like resource gathering and spending with the casual appeal of dice rolling and “Sorry!”-style revenge to become a game the whole family can enjoy. Seriously, I’ve played it with my mother and she’s actually quite good.

Most Looking Forward to Their Eventual Demise: Stop it with “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” already. I’ll admit it, I was like everyone else when “Guitar Hero II” came out, seduced by the bright, flashing colors and tiny plastic equipment. But that was almost two years ago and the well has gone dry. The whole appeal of the idea was to play fun, popular songs, kind of like karoake with music instead of words. But, just like karoke, the amount of fun you have depends on the selection of tunes available. With each downloadable pack that appears, it just seems there’s less and less good stuff to be had.

Maybe I’m just too jaded of a gamer, but after wailing away on enough songs, they all just started to feel the same and my enthusiasm died. Activision and Harmonix keep releasing new tracks, but none of it is new content, just another pattern of colored dots to memorize and master. Perhaps a music metaphor is best here. It’s like a band you really like keeps rehashing the same material record after record. It’s not like you don’t enjoy listening to the music, but it’s hard to get excited about another album when you know it’s just going to be the same as the last.

Most Humbling: I recently acquired a multitude of emulators on my laptop that allow me to immerse myself in old-school gaming enjoyment at any moment. The veneer of nostalgia I felt concerning most Nintendo games, however, completely glossed over the sheer difficulty some of those games had. I mean, Christ, did I always suck at “Megan Man” this bad? It’s quite a shock to the system when one is use to checkpoints and regenerating health to face the excruciating frustration of a mis-judged jump or the underwhelming power of the Blue Bomber’s peashooter. Rather than own up to my lack of skill, I just say it’s a hold-over from the arcade era when developers didn’t want you to actually beat the game. Oh, that conniving Dr. Wily….

First, the game is revolutionary. More of a quietly significant innovation like the microwave than a bloody upheaval like the French Revolution, but a step forward none the less. The chief source is the way it mixes gameplay and presentation to create an experience that contrasts with its contemporary brethren. Most of today’s blockbuster titles are a succession of violence, gore and over-the-top machismo draped in drab shades of brown, black and gray. Examples include “Gears of War,” “Killzone,” “Call of Duty,” “Resistance,” “Left 4 Dead,” “Fallout 3,” “Grand Theft Auto IV,” etc. Most of these are also shooters, a type of game that has achieved de facto status as the genre du jour. Other hallmarks include hardcore difficulty levels, co-op modes and online play.

The new “Prince” has none of these things. The boldness involved when a large company like Ubisoft steer away from formulaic profit territory to drive into new terrain is what, for me, qualifies it as revolutionary. In an era of grim, online shoot-em ‘ups, the game instead presents beautiful and breathtaking landscapes that emphasize exploration over headshots. I simply can’t say enough about the art style; it’s just stunning. The game seeks to be rewarding, not demanding, with combat that encourages creativity in lieu of frantic button-mashing and hair-trigger reflexes a la “Devil May Cry 4.”

Second, it executes some classic gaming conventions, platforming and adventure, with renewed vigor. As I mentioned before, the FPS and RTS and other acronyms constitute the majority of games produced today; the idea of a platformer or adventure game seems downright antiquated. Even “Uncharted,” poster boy of next-gen adventure games, threw in a “Gears”-style cover mechanic. But, just like in music, movies and art, there’s something to be said for going back to the roots. The thrill of old school games like “Super Mario World” and “Pitfall” came when your plucky avatar finally navigated that tricky succession of traps and baddies to reach the level’s end. “Prince of Persia” proves that this exhilaration is timeless as the Prince slides, leaps, climbs and (with Erika’s help) flies across the world.

Third, it creates a deep immersion that almost all “big” games strive for but often fail to reach. Some games achieve it with atmosphere (”Bioshock”) and some with setting (”Grand Theft Auto IV”), but “Prince of Persia” uses connectivity. With little prologue, you are immediately thrust into the action with no clumsy interface to get in your way. There are no levels and no linearity, it’s you and this chick and an unstoppable evil to defeat. The game takes place in a sprawling city that you save piece-by-piece and can travel across back-and-forth without the aid of loading screens. I think this simple decision, to connect every area of the city so seamless, really helps lift the game from great to unforgettable. It gives the experience that larger-than-life feeling, similar to the way MMOs use vast distances to create an epic scale.

Of course, the game’s not perfect. The combat, as fun as it is to string together cinematic combos, could use a little more variety and mobility. The fairly shallow difficulty helps enhance the cinematic and immersive flow, but it would be nice to have some more challenging options. Yet, I’ll conclude by saying that these flaws are the best part as they prove that as great as this game is, it can be even better. Ubisoft has staked out some new territory, let’s hope they keep pushing the boundary forward.

Jim would be happy to know that “Prince of Persia” employs heavy use of one of his all-time favorite video game moves, the venerable Double Jump. Jim Gibbons, Online News Editor here at WizardUniverse.com, and I both have long admired the fun and utility that having an additional burst of height provides. Sometimes, one jump just isn’t enough.

Just as I feared some real economist had to come along and use fancy things likes “facts” and “mathematical data” to debunk my recent comments on the financial health of the video game industry. Such a public calling out I cannot sustain in good conscience. You have thwarted me for the last time “The Economist” and I will marshal all the power available to me towards your destruction.

I was a bit skeptical when I found out that the damn good “Call of Duty 4″ would be getting a quickly produced sequel, “Call of Duty 5: World at War,” made by the less-than-stellar Treyarch. The fact that they decided to return to a World War II setting only reinforced this notion, despite the clever manipulated titled. Seriously, why not just call it “Call of Duty 5: Nazis, Just One More Time and Then We Are Done, Promise.” But lo and behold, this article appears, bestowing upon CoD5 a perfect score. My issue is not that Treyarch has managed to produce a superior game (though I remain skeptical until further evidence presents itself). Rather the problem and contradictions implied by the “perfect” 10/10 score, something pointed out by a brave soul in the torrent of comments.

The central fallacy of a flawless score is that it suggests there is no way the product can be improved upon. Most, I think, would agree that “Call of Duty 4″ had everything you could ask for in a shooter. Ah, but was it perfect? Where there not occasionally things that irked, annoyed or frustrated you? That didn’t stop it from being highly enjoyable and an accomplishment in it’s on right. Giving a game a near-perfect 9/10 seems to be saying that if maybe there was just one more gun or one more level or one more gimmick then it would be vaulted to that most coveted of levels. People wonder why games aren’t taken more seriously and I think the anachronistic review system employed by most publications shares some of the blame.

There are some parts of the gaming community who would like to see the industry move past pure entertainment and into art, similar to the way movies and music have one foot in each door. By using such a reductive formula for criticism, the room for growth and expression is inherently stymied. While movie critics may employ a numerical scale, you would be hard-pressed to find a movie critic who would tell you that directors should stop making movies because the perfect one has been made already.

The scale is even furthered narrowed by the fact that since a 10/10 represents such a high threshold of excellence, most publication shun it entirely in order to show their “independence.” So, in the end, you’ve got an 8, which represents “pretty good,” and a 9, which signifies “pretty awesome.” Thus, a full 20 percent is in common use throughout much of the games industry. This practice hurts developers, journalists and consumers alike by sustaining a system riddled with hypocrisy.

This is just a small bit of what can be a much larger argument. The scale also threatens journalistic integrity by creating a glut of games that fall in the 8-10 because a 7 is feared to be a mark of total shit. That’s what a zero is for. Theoretically, a 7 is still above average, and there is nothing wrong with an average game if it’s something dig. If a game has a couple of things you enjoy in its mix, say turn-based strategy, zombies and medieval settings, but only garners mediocre reviews, it’s actually entirely possible that you still might like it.

I believe that a grading system (a la 1up.com) is a better way to rate games. By using pluses and minuses, it offers broader range of opinion while still saving room at either end of the spectrum. If it’s a damn good game that is completely fun and enjoyable slap an A on that sucker and that is simply all you are saying. Barring that, the only recourse I can see is Metacritic. where at least you can get a compilation of reviews instead of being subject to those wild editorial swings between 8 and 9.

In the end, no rating system can be perfect (just ask the ESRB, har har). It’s up to the consumers to take the time to actually read reviews and form opinions for themselves, rather than relying on numerical snap judgments. This also means the professionals on the other side should focus on writing copy that’s compelling enough to merit deeper reading and advance the gaming industry forward.

The game in question is the new “Prince of Persia.” A venerable franchise if there ever was one, it’s got roots sunk deep in the ancient era of the late 1980s. Back then, the game was renowned for its remarkable fluidity and imagination, contributed in part by the developer’s passion to get the Prince’s movements just right. This next-gen incarnation doesn’t look like it’s gunning to beat “God of War 2″ or “Grand Theft Auto IV” in the pixels department and that’s not such a bad thing. There’s already enough pretenders to that particular throne and those who choose graphics as a shortcut to gameplay usually fail at both. What the new Prince seems to lack in raw power he makes up in grace and style. The drawn-and-painted feel of the art direction lends the game something that all the normal-mapping and HDR Lighting of “Crysis” can’t: individualism.

The video game market is big and serious enough now that it has entered the same push-and-pull that it’s respective comrades in the music and move industries feel. The tension between creating a product that sells and furthering the form sometimes intersect and sometimes seem so remote as to make one cynical. Is the new “Prince of Persia” garb just a flashy distraction or will it add feeling and spirit to the experience? As I brought up earlier, the gameplay must come first and, for my part, I’m hoping the Persian royal’s new duds are a product of an overall design philosophy.

In the end, I must admit, I’m a sucker for cell-shaded, painstakingly animated 2D graphics (see “Odin Sphere” if you think 2D is outmoded), or anything else with a drawn or artsy feel. This brings me to exciting thing #2, the JPRG soon to reach American shores “Valkyrie Chronicle.” In addition to its animated nature, it also falls into the strategy genre, another of my favorite things. Some games you know you will enjoy despite their quality because they just have too many things you like for it to be possible to wholly disown them. “Valkyrie” seems such a game and leaves me with a tranquil, patient anxiety in juxtaposition to the my nervous fretting about whether or not Ubisoft will spoil a promising premise.

Some may known the term (all too well, in fact) to which this blog title refers to. For those who haven’t joined the World of Warcraft phenomenon, the term “/played” (or Slash Played, as the case may be) stands for the total amount of time spent in Blizzard’s virtual world. As such, this blog will cover any and all things in the video game kingdom. Expect to find the latest news and updates, including all the needed info on your most expected games.

I’ll also throw my own opinions your way, with a column that adds my own dash of insight into the all the latest trends throughout the industry, as well as a few non-sequiturs about my experience as a life-long video game aficionado. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even do a B, BD, D, DF, F, P+K.

My current spot on the globe is home of the heart of gaming fandom – South Korea, nestled snugly among some of the world’s most avid joystick fans. In between my full-time gig as an English teacher for Korean youngsters, I’ll make sure to grab delectable morsels of all things video games for you hungry readers.