The game is free… kinda. It’s free in that you don’t cough up a Morgan silver dollar at the checkout of the Android market to acquire it.

However, one could be tempted to purchase an awful lot in the game. Certain plays remain locked until you win enough “game gold,” which you acquire by beating your opponents. And it takes a lot of winning to open up some plays.

I suppose they have to make their money somewhere; you can purchase game gold to unlock these items more quickly, or earn ‘em out the old fashioned way.

Beyond the costs of the game, such as they are, the controls feel natural for the touchscreen. The graphics are close to PlayStation2-era Madden games, and that’s pretty good considering that before this game appeared on the scene, some Android football games were little more than Mattel electronic handhelds of the 1970s.

And best of all, the game remains challenging and can beat you, even after a lot of games logged on the system. That, in some ways, makes it a step above Madden.

Complaints? Sure. I’m playing the game on a T-Mobile G2 with Google. And on my phone, if you play more than one game in a row, the screen starts to lose touch-sensitivity during the passing game. It’s not fun to get sacked because the screen wouldn’t read your touches of Receiver 4, or miss a field goal due to the play clock expiring because the screen couldn’t read your kick-stroke. Usually it goes away if you put the phone to sleep and then come back to it right away.

Other than that, there are the usual minor complaints such as questionable foot placement on certain catches called good or as touchdowns. And the play clock stops at a certain point on every play; meaning in the middle or out of bounds, it doesn’t matter which way the play ends, there’s no running out the clock, at least not the Madden way where you drain game clock by waiting for the play clock to almost expire.

But as much as I love my T-Mobile G2 with Google by HTC, and the current version of the Android OS running on it, which happens to be Gingerbread 2.3, I will be massively disappointed if Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) never makes it to my phone.

First of all, Ice Cream Sandwich sounds fantastic. And cozy. Like a brand new Rheem heat pump or something. And HTC has included it on their “probably” list for OTA upgrades in early 2012.

But here’s why I’m worried.

Shortly after I bought my G2, HTC promised Gingerbread in “early 2012.” It didn’t get an OTA update until late summer. And by then, the G2, originally released in Fall 2010, will be older than 18 months since initial release, which would give HTC the perfect excuse not to upgrade the G2.

Considering how much they dragged their feet on the original upgrade from Froyo to Gingerbread, one would hope they’d be a bit more prompt on Ice Cream Sandwich.

But I’ll believe it when the OTA appears.

And while I didn’t buy many new videogames for the PS3 this year, it’s pretty easy, actually, for me to select a favorite: Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is the easy choice.

Sure, there were plenty of decent games out there this year on PS3. But none really grabbed my attention and made me say, “I gotta have it,” like Skyrim did.

Oh, sure, I enjoyed Dragon Age II. And I even appreciated the new White Knight Chronicles. But Skyrim set the bar for RPG experiences on a game console. Again. It’s that simple.

This time around, the Razr is nowhere near as impressive. Although thinner and lighter than other smartphones boasting a 4.3-inch screen, it’s features are familiar to anyone who uses an Android Gingerbread smartphone, and its battery life is horrid.

So, my perspective is this: stick with something more solid, made by HTC.

Some of them are even quite specialized; you don’t get just generic guitar controllers, but can — for a princely sum — get something name-brand and fancy like a Gibson SG. The trouble is, eventually, all these music games are pretty much alike, so the choice comes down to the game’s selection of songs.

That’s why I like the Music Wars series, currently from Wolverine Studios. The developer, Antuan Johnson, got his start with a feature-slim freeware version and took it commercial a couple years ago with Music Wars: Rebirth.

That’s why I’m excited to hear he’s in the open beta stage of his next massive update of this game. By focusing on simulating the music industry itself, the focus is less on whether a person can hit all the notes in order, and more on one’s evaluation of talent and such.

The updated game is said to have a ton of feature improvements to make it a deeper game experience than ever.

I, for one, can’t wait.

Well, let’s take a look:

First, I’d choose Disgaea 4, simply because I’ve loved the whole series and still do.

I’d then boot my other two choices into the first quarter of 2012, where the next really must-have games are waiting for me. One of them, of course, is Mass Effect 3. I want to complete that trilogy.

Then I’d probably insist on my next choice being Silent Hill: Downpour, even though Final Fantasy Vs. XIII would indeed be tempting.

Despite the science fiction dystopia represented by Fallout, The Elder Scrolls is clearly the franchise where Bethesda is clearly most at-home. The game screams developer affection for the product being presented.

When my wife and I first encountered Oblivion around the time we first got married, we ended up playing two copies of the game to death before we grew tired of it, and just my first couple hours with Skyrim tell me that my PS3 controllers are going to need some fresh duracell procell replacements by the time we grow weary of this latest installment.

Unfortunately, this entertainment software doesn’t even try hard to be convincing; it shows activity everywhere and spits out computer-generated-voice words every few seconds.

Rather predictable and disappointing, don’t celebrate Halloween with this stinker of a game. An Arizona pool fence is far more interesting and convincing as a ghost detector.

Even at the price of free, Ghost Radar Classic is too expensive for what it’s worth… which is nothing.

The look of the game will call to mind the PSone and PS2 classic series, Gallop Racer, and the racing is roughly on par with that series. However, whereas Gallop Racer was interactive for the gamer, in this game all you can do is bet on outcomes and watch.

It’s actually not too hard to keep from losing your shirt on this game, because it enforces a strict limit on betting of $10 per horse, per line. So at most, you lose $30 per race.

The racing is fun, but with such a shocking lack of interactivity, gets told fast and doesn’t age well. Too bad.

Many times, as we’ve been learning the area, Google Navigation has been the key to us arriving on-time, in the right place, without getting lost among a load of rabbit trails. Back when I briefly worked for a Spring reseller a few years ago, TeleNav was a spendy little app. It added something like a $10/month charge to your bill, in addition to requiring that you had a data plan as well.

Now it’s on most Android phones and all you pay for is the data plan.

Guess which one I like better?

I suppose someone would bet their equestrian helmets collection that if I’d waited a few more days, I’d have received the OTA update. And maybe they’re right. But once I was on Gingerbread, I was happy, so how I got there didn’t matter as much.

Well, just as I sat down to write this entry, my phone buzzed to tell me a bug-fix update had been released and asking if I wanted to install it. Sure thing! So I did.

And now I have my first OTA from T-Mobile. Which is great.

Sure, it’s not Ice Cream Sandwich, but that probably won’t be sent to my phone anyway, much as I wish it would. But at least it shows there’s an effort made on T-Mobile’s part.

I understand that even the latest eInk color screens might not be up to Jeff Bezos’ standards, but I can wait until they do and start appearing on the second generation of Kindle Fire devices.

That being said, if I wanted a backlit tablet, the Kindle Fire is pretty sweet. It can perform full Web browsing and even stream video in addition to reading books. (Not sure if it utilizes a YouTube video downloader, but its speeds are primarily determined by your WiFi network, so it’s probably pretty good.)

And with 8 GB of memory, it’s the beefiest Kindle device yet. And all for a price of $199? That’s an impressive debut, considering Barnes and Noble dropped the Nook Color to $229 the day before the announcement, hoping to undercut the widely-anticipated price-matching price of $250 that was expected out of Amazon.

The world is hurting right now from the loss of Steve Jobs. But with the innovation he’s displaying, I’d argue Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is a candidate to eventually become the next great tech innovator.