I am currently listening to my buddy Stuart Bannerman on his podcast: FromPage2Screen Movie podcast. 

Harold Leavitt and Stuart Bannerman chat about movies, new ones, a couple of old ones oh yes and we have a chat about Charity Parkerson and Melissa Craig's writing as well as the new found friends we have found on Twitter.

So, having completed my posting of my top five games of 2011 and thinking about all the talk about next generation consoles, I started thinking about the impact of the games, specifically the new IP's, of this generation. When I first started thinking about them, I didn't realize how many there have been. But the more that I thought about it, the more I realized there were, and I'm sure a few are still missing. But consider the following list:

• Portal
• Left 4 Dead
• Bioshock
• Gears of War
• Mass Effect
• Uncharted
• Assassin's Creed
• Resistance
• Alan Wake 
• Heavy Rain
• inFamous
• Prototype
• Little Big Planet
• Dead Space
• The Darkness
• Metro (2033 and this year First Light)
• The Witcher
• Crysis
• Batman: Arkham series
• Borderlands
• Dead Rising
• Crackdown
• Dragon Age

Some, like Heavy Rain, and a host of others many of which I didn't include, appear at this point to be dead, with no future games planned in the series. Some had big entrances but the follow ups were not as well received. Some have sequels coming that could determine the fate of the franchise. A few have been spectacular successes and are landmark titles for gaming, at least in the minds of many gamers. (Be sure to engage maximum strength before jumping)

Hey, I'm not one for jumping on bandwagons. Boycotts and other such things seldom (not never) work. But what if we could politely tell Valve we'd like some news, any news about the next Half-Life game? Do you remember the last one, Half-Life 2 Episode 2? Do you remember how it ended? Maybe the trailer for the game will help.

Okay, so here's the deal. A group of Half-Life fans have started up a Steam group - A Call to Communication (Half-Life). Simply being a member of the group could help, but more importantly this Saturday, February 4th, the group is planning to hold an event. Not a sit in, nor a march but a time (2:00 PM EST) to all play Half-Life 2. A Red Letter Day.

Why? Because if we do, we can put Half-Life 2 into the top 10 of the Steam Stats. I think the goal is to put it in the top 10, but I hope we can at least get it into the top 5. The time is now for us to get some new from Valve on the continuation of the series. I, nor do I believe the group, is asking for the game to be released before Valve thinks it's ready. We just want to hear something from them. Putting Half-Life 2 near the top of the play list on Steam seems as nice a way to ask as any.

HT: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The character models look bland, but Mortal Kombat for the Vita will not launch until the Spring of 2012. So I have hope that improves -- which I feel it will. I am really impressed with the amount of features they are packing into this portable version. Even the DLC characters are going to be included. What do you guys think?

Deus Ex is a special game. It remains my favorite game of all time and holds the same spot for PC Gamer. Ion Storm, the same team that did the original, released a sequel a couple of years later. Deus Ex: Invisible War really isn't a bad game, it just doesn't capture whatever it was that made Deus Ex so special. Everyone has at least one change they point out as the problem, from universal ammo to a simplified inventory. Whatever it was, Invisible War was not the successor anyone wanted it to be and so for years it seemed as if the franchise was dead.

So when it was announced that the new Eidos Montreal studio would be doing Deus Ex 3, I was both excited and concerned. If Ion Storm couldn't recapture the Deus Ex magic, what hope did Eidos Montreal have. But still, it was a glimmer of hope. Bioshock wasn't System Shock 3 but as a spiritual successor it recalled much of what made System Shock 2 a great game. Maybe Eidos Montreal could do the same for Deus Ex?

Could Adam Jensen fill JC Denton's trenchcoat?

Bioshock had Ken Levine though. Eidos did not have Warren Spector. However, as news came from the studio about the game they affirmed a love for Deus Ex and a desire to create a game that recaptured that games feel. The main glimmer of hope I had was when it was announced the game would be a prequel, not a sequel. They wouldn't try to make sense of the multiple endings of Deus Ex, which was one of the things that hindered Invisible War. Instead they would go back to the time of mechanical augmentations.  Clearly they were thinking about how to do this right. (Missteps and giant leaps follow the jump)

The poster is available from Valve here.

What can I say about Portal 2 that hasn't been said already. It was on almost every Games of the Year list and was even the top game on some of the lists. In almost any other year it would have been at the top of my list as well, but this year for me it sits at number two. 

It sits at number two not because it is flawed. In nearly every measure Portal 2 is a great game and as I thought about all the elements of the game that are great I wanted to fire it up and play it again. (Let me count the ways - after the jump; bring your long fall boots just in case)

This past weekend I had a conversation (as much as you can over twitter) with Holy Headshot from Everyday Gamers. His opinion of F.E.A.R. 3 is negative, in large part because of the story. He was a big fan of F.E.A.R. 2 and felt the story was lacking in the latest game.

Alma clearly isn't having a good day in F.E.A.R. 3

For me, the story in F.E.A.R. 3 was as good as the story in the other games and did a decent job of tying the two different story lines together. In the first F.E.A.R. you played as Point Man, a new member of a First Encounter Assult Recon team sent in to subdue Paxton Fettel, a psychic with a clone army (Replicas) that he controls. In that game you come to learn that Point Man and Fettel are brothers, sons of Alma, a powerful psychic that has been locked away by Armacham Industries, the same company that cloned the soldiers that Fettel now controls. In the course of that game Point Man kills Fettel.

F.E.A.R. 2 picks up the story with another solder, Michael Becket, who is sent into the same general area as Point Man with the goal of retrieving Genevieve Aristide, a leader of Armacham Industries. Becket learns that he, similar to Point Man and Fettel, is touched with Alma's power and she wants him for some reason. At the end of the game Aristide is able to lock Becket into a chamber with Alma. While Becket is engaged in a psychic battle Alma uses his physical body to try to become pregnant. F.E.A.R. 2 ends with Becket finding out she was successful. (Don't fear, I'll get to the point after the jump).

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Merchant deserves all the praise he has received for playing Wheatley in Portal 2. But just imagine a different, familiar yet new voice, for the role. Another beloved character from the Valve stable. (PS: rated L for language)

So per yesterday's post, #5 on my Top Five Games of 2011 is Serious Sam 3. I should probably note that I had hoped to have played Batman: Arkham City but have not; it is the one game left from 2011 that had a high probability of making my top five. The game that lands in my #4 spot is no stranger to the people around Talking about Games being #2 in the community voting for Game of the Year: Gears of War 3.

Special prize if you can tell me where (Game, Act, Chapter) this screenshot was taken.

Gears 3 was originally slated to be released early in 2011 but got pushed back to late in the year. The game undoubtedly benefited from this move. Gears 3 is the most polished game of the series and this polish is seen in all modes of it's gameplay. The game sports a great campaign, that can also be played in an arcade style mode where players are scored for each chapter. A huge plus to the game is that both of these modes can be played in cooperative mode with up to four players. 

The other multiplayer modes from Gears 2 return, including the TaG favorite Horde mode. Horde mode has been refined in Gears 3, most notably with the ability to build fortifications between waves and huge boss fights at each decade level. I'm not a huge competitive multiplayer gamer but from my limited experience the competitive multiplayer for Gears 3 appears to be more balanced than it was in Gears 2. Having time for a beta of the multiplayer was valuable to achieving this balance. (The new mode and why it's my #4 after the jump)