The internet has been salivating over the new Halo Reach Multiplayer video for over a full day now, and although I'm sure there are plenty of in-depth examinations out there, I wanted to give it a rundown myself - pointing out things I found interesting and/or exciting.  Pictures with observations are in the full article below.

(There are 20-some-odd pictures, so beware ye of slow bandwidth.)

In full disclosure, this link has my associate code embedded. So, it would be cool if you clicked it to pre-order your copy of Final Fantasy XIII because it would help me make some money for maintenance costs. Also, I just wanted to give people this notice (because I just took advantage of the deal too), because it's pretty sweet. So if you hate me, just go to Amazon and order it there. But if you do it the former way, you have my thanks!

After watching that a few (hundred) times, check out this sweet new Reach artwork posted on Bungie.net along with the new trailer.  It's pretty sweet too.

Halo Spartan Master Chief goes on a Date with Stormtrooper from Adam Grumbo on Vimeo.

There are several culprits, some more worth the gaming drought than others, including marriage (definitely worth it), my graphic design job (not so much), our new puppy Zom (also well worth taking up some of my gaming time - I did play Nintendogs after all), and a myriad of other distractions that have arisen in my full transition to adult life.  Then of course, there is the third 'Red Ring of Death' that I've had to deal with. Although these things have hampered the majority of my "hardcore" console and PC gaming, one area of my favorite habit has thrived - the casual side.  Every spare moment I can find (be it riding in the car, waiting in a line or using the room of 'resting'), the iPhone will be out, filling those otherwise unentertaining minutes.  In an attempt to add some sense of accomplishment to my non-gaming time I've even toyed with some of the apps that ascribe 'achievements' to your everyday travails. 

But it has been said, "Man cannot live by casual gaming alone," and thus my other handhelds have been forced to pick up the slack. I spent a good week during my short holiday break playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on my DS and during the Thanksgiving break before that I wiped the dust off my PSP to play some Crisis Core, Megaman Powered Up and Monster Hunter.  Despite these frequent but brief respites, I haven't felt like I had very much to blog about - another regret I'm having as of late.

I am planning to change this though.  These past few months of minimal gaming have really put a damper on my normally cheerful disposition.  It's taken this drought to make me realize what an integral part of my life games are - to the point where I am bound and determined to make them, one way or another, my job. As far as my hobby of this enthusiast blog goes, I still have big plans.  I was a major slacker at last year's E3 - possibly because I just got caught up in the spectacle of it all (and I still have videos and pictures to upload), but I'm already making plans for E3 2010, and I promise to do better (both for myself and whatever readers I might still have). Twang should be making a comeback soon, especially since iTunes officially de-listed me. *Sigh.*

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please leave them below, or email me.

See y'all on the other side of awesome.

5) Dead Space

Dead Space combines two of my greatest loves - dead things (i.e. zombies/monsters) and space - I mean, how can you go wrong with that combination?  Before I'd even seen a single screenshot, I knew that Dead Space and I were going to have a major love-fest, and boy, was I right.  The darkened corridors harken back to the equally chilling vistas in Doom 3, but Dark Space edges it out ever so slightly in this list by combining a new and innovative U.I., inventive combat system, and creepy psychological scares.  The new Dead Space : Extraction is equally chilling and should definitely be picked up if you are a fan of the first one (and have a Wii, or course).

4) Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead can be utterly horrifying - especially when playing alone and with the lights off as hordes of zombies assail you relentlessly from all sides.  Then there is the side of Left 4 Dead when you are playing with friends, screaming with delight as your group tears through waves of infected.  Therefore, it is now paramount in my real-life zombie preparedness plan to keep a group of people with me when at all possible.  It's also why Left 4 Dead isn't closer to number one on this list.

3) Condemned : Criminal Origins

Talk about atmosphere - this game has it in spades, or aces... or whatever card/suit you want.  Condemned is one of the most nerve-grinding experiences to ever grace the interactive digital entertainment medium, chiefly due to a combination of its first-person perspective and the general feeling of helplessness as you frantically search for a new weapon after your previous one breaks or runs out of ammunition.  Some previous survival-horror games had claimed ammo scarcity as a point of player dread, but none truly delivered on it like Condemned.

2) Resident Evil (series)

Were I being a little more subjective with this list (even though any list one makes is subjective) I would probably put Resident Evil in the number one spot, simply for the nostalgia factor.  My first encounter with Resident Evil was in my local rental store.  My friend and I were looking for something to play over the weekend, slowly perusing the backs of many PS1 boxes.  Eventually we found this game with a dude toting a huge gun and making an extreme face on the cover with dual giant tarantulas flanking him.  I'm not even sure we read the description on the back before renting it.  Upon loading it up and going through the initial full-motion cutscene, we began exploring the mansion.  Minutes later, we turned a corner to reveal a pale form hunched over a prone human body, and with a sickeningly wet crunch and slow head-turn, I was officially both terrified and infatuated with zombies.  Not long after, I bought the director's cut of Resident Evil and then every subsequent one Capcom released, not to mention watching every zombie movie I could get my hands on.  But it's not just the zombies of Resident Evil that make it scary - it's the spine-jarring thrills (dogs jumping through the windows anyone?), myriad of mutated monsters, and gruesomely bad voice-acting.  If I had to suggest one game to play though, it would have to be the Gamecube remake (which is now subsequently a Wiimake).  The game's pre-rendered backgrounds mixed with its higher polygonal models and dynamic lighting create a beautiful, and often eerie, ambience.  (Not to take anything away from Resident Evil 4 and 5, which are both very good, but come on - no zombies!)

1) Silent Hill 2

The aforementioned games all have one or two predominately chill-worthy elements that they make great use of to create their fright, but none of them so seamlessly combine a truly horrifying atmosphere, head-snappingly twist-filled narrative, and legitimately jump-inducing thrills like Silent Hill 2.  The first Silent Hill was definitely scary for it's time, and the following sequels in the series were all good in their own right, but none of them, or any other horror game, can top the complete terror of Silent Hill 2.  If you somehow missed this gem, I more than whole-heartedly suggest you go pick up a used copy - especially if you're looking for that one especially ghastly game to play this Halloween weekend.

Honorable Mentions

Eternal Darkness, like Doom 3, almost made my list, but there was something about this Gamecube great that edged it just out of horrifying and into sort-of creepy.  Eternal Darkness was really more innovative than anything, with its game-altering sanity meter which would make your character's head fall off, the environments bleed, or even the channel of your television to seemingly change to another input (fourth wall be damned!).

Also among my 'almosts,' was Nightmare Creatures for the PS1.  From around the same time as the original Resident Evil, Nightmare Creatures was an overlooked and not very long-remembered game in which you were tasked with dispatching various occult-created Nightmare Creatures (see what I did there?) in 19th century London.  It featured an adrenaline meter that required you to seek out combat - a fairly innovative and tense way to move players through the narrative.  Despite its crude graphics (comparable to the original Clock Tower or Parasite Eve), Nightmare Creatures holds up (at least in my memory).

Dishonorable Mentions

Night Trap was definitely a trap (like many of its Sega CD brethren).  Spoiler Alert! - the family members are vampires!  I discovered this after becoming frustrated with not being able to properly trap all of the night ninja guys, and just began swapping the two discs into and out of the drive at random points in the game, causing some of the FMV sequences to play sporadically. 

Honestly, not much was scary about this game (hence it being in the 'dishonorable' section), but in the pre-ESRB days, my local video store saw fit to put it on a high shelf with a sticker that said something to the effect of "Not for children."  Not surprisingly, this meant the young me had to play it.  I mean, come on - there are shadowy ninja guys with sharp metal belt thingies, some tough dudes, and a girl in a night gown on the cover - SOLD.

So, how did I do?  Leave your comments, suggestions, additions, subtractions, complaints, etc. below, or send us a tweet @SouthernGamer with a #5scariestgames hashtag.

Dragon Age Journeys is a 2D browser based game coded in flash. The game takes place in the land of the Dwarves, or the darkspawn, depending on which century you look at it. You're in the Deep roads fighting a mysterious Emissary with blue flames coming out of his head. 

So how does it compare? If you've downloaded the creature creator (for free) you'll notice the setup is remarkably similar. You choose between human, elf and dwarf. Then, warrior, rogue, or mage. Game play reminds me a lot of games like Runescape, while combat reminds me of a game I played a long, long time ago– Heroes of Might and Magic, where you have a honeycomb grid to navigate to reach your opponent. Combat is also turn based.

Currently there's only one chapter of game play available, with two more to come shortly. If you don't think the game itself is exciting, and I think you will, you may be tempted to play DAJ for the Dragon Age Origins gear you can unlock through the game. 

Dragon Age Journeys is a fun, easy going web browser based game that currently will pacify your desire to slay ogres, genlocks, and hurlocks until November 3. 

Bioware really outdid themselves with this promo teaser video, enjoy.

1) There are shining moments of excellent story-telling (of which I'll comment on later), but sadly, there are just as many head-scratchingly bad ones.  Chief among these is the mute Rookie - the character through whom you experience the majority of the game.  I understand the concept of a 'blank-canvas' character, intended to allow the player to project him/herself into the main character's role (although, the Rookie is clearly male, so... good luck projecting too much ladies.)  The problem with this is that the rest of the cast is so expressive and unique that the Rookie seems like the dead shell of a zombie puppet (if I can even use enough negative adjectives to describe him) being pulled limply along to experience the others' stories.

2) The Halo 3 engine is in its terrible-twos - and it shows, most specifically in the monstrously morbid faces of the ODSTs (so thank God the Rookie leaves his helmet on at least.  I'd hate to see what that doofus looks like.)  The worst offenders are Buck (Nathan Fillion) and Captain Dare (Tricia Helfer), probably because they are actually modeled after their respective voice-actors, allowing that uncanny-valley to rear its ugly head (literally.)  Even the level terrain itself is beginning to look dated, although this is partially mitigated by virtue of over half of the game taking place at night.  Here's to hoping that Halo : Reach is built from the ground up.  Perhaps Bungie can take a cue from Naughty Dog, who thanked them in the credits for Uncharted 2, and borrow some of their awesome modeling and animation technologies.

3) Can I trash the Rookie a little bit more and still hold your attention?  Okay, good - because how frakin' stupid is it that the game supports four-player co-op, but each person has to take the role of the flacid Rookie?  Even Halo 3 used the Arbiter and two other Elites in order to make co-op more canonically plausible (and with Bungie's obsession with its canon, I can't believe they didn't at least contrive some other 'lost' ODSTs or something.)  To me, it just seems lazy - especially since the game was complete back in May!

4) Firefight.  I love Firefight.  So, why is it in the 'scorn' section you ask?  Well, I hate the inescapable lag I seem to always experience - something that Bungie acknowledges but can't fix.  Maybe it's my Brighthouse connection, or my friends' small-town Scottsboro Cable.  Either way, it often makes this otherwise brilliant mode all but unplayable.

5) Another aspect of the game that I was going to put in my 'love' section, but thought better of after a little contemplation, is the 'Visor' - a light and terrain-enhancing mode activated by pressing the 'X' button.  I have to commend Bungie on the aesthetic value of it, but that's about it.  The fanboy in me immediately cries, "Why on (or off) Earth would the ODSTs, but not the Spartans, have this visor!?"  I'll lay down a bet now that when we inevitably see the return of Master Chief, he'll somehow have Mark VII Mjolnir armor with a new enhanced visor (maybe including a new thermal and/or x-ray mode ala Metroid Prime - which is a good game to copy considering it is the Citizen Kane of games and all.  The visor has utility while playing as the Rookie at night, but you'll never turn it on during the day-time segments.  In this same vein, I hate how the ODSTs have recharging shields adrenaline, not to mention (although, I'm going to) taking a step backward in game design with health packs.  I mean, New Mombasa must have had some sort of health-care crisis to install so many magical cure-all aid stations.  Maybe Obama should look into some of those.

6) Finally, with its many, if niggling, flaws and relatively short play-time (even on the Legendary difficulty, which was a bit easier than past Halo games), I just can't justify the sixty-dollar price tag for this expansion-turned-full-game.  Thirty dollars would be the sweet spot in a price-value evaluation, but I understand that Bungie is in the business of making money, and they knew that we fanboy nimrods would fork out the full sixty.

Oh, DST, how I love thee.  Let me count the ways.

1) Anything that advances the story of the Halo universe, even just a smidgen (as is the case with ODST) has my vote of confidence.  Aside from the Rookie, ODST has some very strong characters that inspire real empathy from the player - especially the side-story of Sadie, told in the collectable audio-logs strewn about the game's hub world.  Honestly, I have to think playing as a civilian fighting to survive the Covenant invasion would have been more interesting than being an ODST wandering the almost barren streets after the fighting is already over - but that's a venue I'm sure Bungie? Microsoft will explore in the future.  Overall, the complete story arc of ODST, once assembled together through the flashbacky-thingamajigs, audio-logs and the very Halo ending, is immensely satisfying.  I'm particularly happy to finally see the Engineers - an alien race previously only detailed in the novel, Halo : The Fall of Reach.

2) I know that I sort of trashed the graphics in the last section, but I have to admit that the night-time bits of ODST have a particularly beautiful and sometimes ethereal ambience.  And though I have canonical qualms with the visor, I love the way the lines crawl out and over the terrain, highlighting the edges of all objects as they go.  One could conceivably be caught up switching the visor on and off again just to watch it spread throughout the level.

3)  Though the pacing is pretty different from past Halo games, mostly due to the vaguely open-world semi-linearity, it most assuredly feels like Halo - a point of much importance to fanboys like myself.  Every jump, grenade throw, and trigger squeeze instantly reminds you of the past three titles, even if you aren't clad in the green giant's armor.  Speaking of which, Bungie did an admirable job of simultaneously reminding you that you are not Master Chief while giving you reasons to not really care.  You may not be a Spartan, but you can still send Grunts and Jackals running in terror - a feat that is still supremely satisfying, especially since you can now legitimately use stealth to ambush groups of enemies instead of simply storming into the center of them, bullets spraying and plasma.  It is exhilarating to inch your way closer to a group of enemies bit by bit, darting from shadow to shadow, picking off Grunts or sticking their commanding Brutes before they've ever laid an eye on you.  Master Chief never really had that luxury (except when it came to killing those poor defenseless sleeping Grunts) since levels were mainly corridors filled with aliens purposely awaiting your arrival.

4) As I mentioned earlier, I love the Firefight mode.  I still don't really think it's anything more than a Halo-themed Horde mode, but that doesn't make it any less satisfying.  I can't even recall the amount of times I've found myself edged to the end of my chair, leaning forward, furiously tapping buttons while uttering into my headset some incoherent amalgamation of a scream and laugh.  Again, I don't believe ODST should have been a sixty-dollar game, but Firefight is easily the most compelling reason to shell out the dough.

5) Nathan Fillion is my hero.  I fall in love with pretty much every project to which he is attached (although, I haven't seen any episodes of Castle yet, so I can't quite make that a blanket statement.) I agree with some of my fellow online pundits in that I don't exactly believe him in the role of a commanding officer in the UNSC, or any other militant organization for that matter, but as always, his deadpan, sarcastic delivery is spot-on and often very funny (maybe not Captain Hammer funny, but chuckle-worthy nonetheless.)  Oh yeah, Tricia Helfer and those other dudes weren't bad either.

6) I hate to do this, but I can't really think of another aspect of the game that I loved enough to warrant its own section - I just needed another paragraph here for overall symmetry. (That's me - breaking the fourth wall of amateur online game blogging/journalism since 2008!)

In summation, ODST is a bit over-priced, but despite this, I really believe that the sum of its parts are greater than the whole.  However, while writing this review, I was surprised to find that I had more bad to say than good.  So, that leaves me with a bit of a quandary - do I ultimately recommend ODST or not?

My answer:  Yes!  It's Halo; I mean, come on! (Seriously though, it's pretty good.  If you like Halo, it's a foregone conclusion.  If you think you'd like a slightly different type of shooter, give it a weekend rental at least.)

Release date: January 26, 2010, mark your calendar!

Gamestop shoppers can get this DLC for pre-ordering:

• The Terminus Armor is designed for use in extreme planetary conditions, increasing run speed and personal shields, and augmenting weapons with an additional magazine of reserve ammo.

• The M-90 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon generates a high-powered localized gravity well, accelerating particles to near-infinite mass, and ultimately expanding the selection of heavy weapons available to players when they gear up for combat missions in Mass Effect 2.

Other EA outlets pre-orders will get this tasty armor:

Inferno Armor, which is used by officers to monitor battlefield conditions by recognizing elevated heart rates, and regulates sub-systems with extreme efficiency to allow for greater response times – together these abilities translate in-game into a negotiation bonus for Commander Shepard and an increase in run speed and augmented damage from combat powers.

For more info, check out the official Bioware blog http://blog.bioware.com 

Why can't I have both?