Now, most of the game is a wonder to play. Graphically, it’s beautiful on the PS3 and the tone and theme of the game make for some of the most compelling gameplay I’ve encountered in quite a while. But do we really need to hear background characters invoking divinity and damnation in the same breath?

Personally, I think the same emotion is communicated with a robust “Damn it!” without bringing the Almighty into the picture. Now, BioShock isn’t the only game to do this by any means; sadly, it is the game I’m most disappointed in for doing so. Yet I’d rather spend three hours searching for the best diet pills than playing a game with this particular kind of potty-mouth.

From a gameplay standpoint, I really wanted to keep the game. Due to the coarse language factor, though, it’s trade-in-bound. Too bad.

Maybe it’s the cool creature designs, maybe its the solid action, maybe its the intriguing storyline and maybe it’s just that I played the game on the easiest section where I wouldn’t end up dying constantly (since I’m not a big shooter fan, remember?) or what, but I have ended up really enjoying my time with the game so far.

Searching out aliens to blast is less healthy, but more fun, than searching out the best diet pill. I can’t imagine anyone who loves shooters not loving this game.

Only an hour very quickly turned into, like, four hours. That’s how addictive the game plays. The pacing is much improved this time out and, with plenty to do both in-town and out, the game is much better than the first Fable, which was a classic but not exactly as polished as this game is.

You can do just about anything in the game, from having sex to performing at a real work-a-day job, to getting married and whatnot. And the graphics, this time, are on par with the best Xbox 360 titles on the market. About the only thing you don’t get to do in the game is sell car insurance: mainly because there are no cars in the game.

Otherwise, I’m sure they would have thought of it.

There were really just two main contenders this time out: Fable II and Fallout 3.

Fable II is addictive and deep; I loved the first game and my wife and I have been looking forward to the new one ever since we got our 360.

Trouble is, Fallout 3 is also mighty attractive. From the same folks who stole literally hundreds of hours from both my wife and me with Oblivion, as much as we both want to play Fable II, there’s simply no contest, in this case.

Fallout 3 is our must-own title of the 2008 holiday season. No question about it. And I think this is a choice that’ll be as widely popular as Outer Banks rentals.

Sometimes there’s just nothing worth getting. This is one of those months for PSP Slim. Save your money for other games on other platforms.

Eternal Poison

I like Atlus’ role-playing titles more often than I dislike them. This one’s worth having; it’s the best-looking PS2 tactics-style RPG that Atlus has released to date! Could have used it on the PS3, but at least it’s cheaper on PS2. And it’ll play on PS3 unless yours is a recent one that lacks backward compatibility. Cheapskate.

Resistance 2

The follow up by Insomniac Games’ debut PS3 title has been long in appearing, but it’s finally here. I tend to prefer the Resistance series to Gears of War, even though I expected that to go the other way, the first time I tried both. Go figure!

Valkyria Chronicles

My hopes are set high on this one, not so much because it’s a PS3 RPG (which is much-needed) but because it looks like Sega’s finally going to make a great RPG for the first time in too long. Just hoping the game lives up to the hype for a change.

Alone In the Dark: Inferno

A great survival horror franchise returns from the (un)dead to set up all-new chills and wet-your-bed moments. The tight episodic structure encourages frequent gameplay sessions because you know what kind of time commitment you’re making each time you pick it up, and it’s not overly-demanding.

Tomb Raider Underworld

Lara Croft hasn’t disappointed yet in this generation of hardware. This title is also available on Xbox 360, but I discovered the series on the original PlayStation, so I prefer to pick the PS3 version and have a DualShock 3 in my hand.

These are four great titles, but with God of War III, Killzone II, Resident Evil 5, inFamous and Final Fantasy XIII all missing this holiday season, Sony’s left with another holiday season in which they don’t have as many killer apps overall as does the Xbox 360.

This is a nice November crop, but not enough for PS3 to overtake the 360.

Left 4 Dead

Once EA gets into a new game genre, they really get into it. More survival horror from the company that did so well with their survival horror debut, Dead Space.

The Last Remnant

Another SquareEnix RPG on 360 instead of PS3? Believe it. This one’s typical epic stuff on the new next-gen RPG champion, Xbox 360. Not much has been leaked about this one, but it’s supposed to be the latest RPG goodness from the company that recently gave us Infinite Undiscovery. ‘Nuff said.

Where’s Gears of War II on our list? Sorry… didn’t care for the first one, so no go on the second. We’re that ultra-picky. Ignore us at your own expense.

TecmoBowl: Kickoff

It’s been over 15 years, but Tecmo Bowl non-licensed football has returned, this time on Nintendo DS. Worth owning for nostalgia alone.

Chrono Trigger

The classic SquareEnix game that started a worldwide obsession that’s outlasted two successive hardware generations and counting is back, this time on the DS. A must-have for SquareEnix fans.

That’s it! But what fun you’ll have.

Tales of Vesperia is the tenth main title in the Tales series, and is, to date, the most appealing of the series. The anime-style graphics have the right look and feel, and are relatively consistent throughout the title. The combat is smoother than usual and, like its predecessors, is an action-based RPG that keeps all the action on the main screen, rather than switching to a special “encounter” screen.

The story revolves around Yuri, a former member of the Imperial Knights who quit when he became unhappy with how the Empire treated its subjects. Accompanying him is his intelligent dog, Repede, and Estelle (Estellise, to be more formal), a successor to the royal throne who has never been outside of her castle walls and never known anything less comfortable than a modern sofa.

Their society revolves around an ancient technology called “blastia,” which has properties that can be used in a wide variety of ways, including enhancing battle skills, but also mundane tasks such as maintaining the water supply of a city. Blastia to the world of this game is pretty much what petroleum oil is to our real-world society: a lifeblood element. And viewed as a parable of our society’s dependence on oil, Tales of Vesperia takes on an extra level of unexpected depth.

As the story gets underway, a thief steals the aqua blastia responsible for the lower city’s water supply, and Yuri pursues the thief to the castle of the royal family. He is unable to capture the thief, but there runs into Estelle, who accompanies him, eventually joining his party.

The action-based battle system remains challenging throughout; it is one of those rare games that is balanced well enough that you actually have to use the defensive moves to limit your opponent’s damage on you, while still allowing you to get in some offensive maneuvers at the same time. Estelle’s entrance into the game as an ally is a particularly well-designed element early in the game; in a battle with your first boss-level character, you have to survive your encounter with him long enough to cut him down to about half of his unrevealed hit point total.

Once you get to that point, Estelle enters and provides some much-needed healing spells so you can attack your opponent a bit more freely. You’ll still need some defensive moves, but you can attack with less hesitancy and take your opponent down much more quickly than in the first half of the fight.

Using this as an example without revealing more spoilers, let’s just say that further boss-level encounters are similarly well-designed, making the experience all the more satisfying when you come out the victor.

In the end, Tales of Vesperia is much improved from previous series installments, but still has a way to go before it can be considered on-par with the top RPG offerings available today. As a second-tier RPG series, however, it delivers a satisfying experience that offers plenty to appreciate in between the bigger RPG releases.

The hockey game, developed by Visual Concepts, does play host to some changes, however. Most notable is the new commentary team, made up of Randy Hahn, Drew Remenda, and John Shrader of the San Jose Sharks broadcast team. While this freshens up the commentary with new voices, they are too often stuck with the same too-brief script of tired clichés that the last commentary team used, limiting the appeal of the new voices behind the lines.

There are also some notable upgrades, including new stick handling moves, more superstar moves added to the list from 2K8, enhanced skating engine, enhanced checking, brand new fighting engine, hit by puck collisions, blocked shots, user-controlled Stanley Cup celebrations, playoff beards and more than 1,400 new gameplay animations. But it’s all just window dressing on a package that, in the end, is still more vanilla than it is rocky road.

The heartbeat of any pro hockey game is its franchise mode, and unfortunately, there have been some troubles with NHL 2K9 in that regard; it seems that some users have discovered that if they play through more than a couple months of the franchise mode in one sitting, the game has a tendency to freeze up and result in lost data.

Also, if one manually saves their franchise immediately after a game-controlled auto-save, some users have reported that their save file gets self-deleted by the game. Although these problems are said to be limited and rare in scope by 2K Sports, they can occur and certainly become a problem for those who experience them. So far, in my testing, I have not been able to duplicate these errors.

The skating physics are improved from last year’s model, and the feel of the game is solid. Once you learn the controls, it is possible to be competitive in most of the games you play, though the AI is smart enough to win some from you even if you’re a series veteran, especially on the higher difficulty settings where the game physics and AI amp up and start playing as smart as you, and allowing fewer flukey goals.

Still, there’s really not much new in the way of expanding the appeal and features found in franchise mode, and the online play options are pretty much the same as before. When you combine this relative lack of real change or improvement to the series, along with the annoying lack of the cinematic presentation flair on display in 2K7 but since abandoned, there’s not much to really recommend this year’s model. If you desire up-to-date rosters, this is a serviceable entry in the series, but those who loved the 2K7 version won’t find a suitable replacement in this year’s model.

I do that on occasion; in fact, I’m doing it currently. But I can’t really discuss it because of NDAs and the like. Why is it so hard to keep one’s mouth shut at times like this?

Easy: you’re getting to see something before anyone else, and if it excites you… you can’t share your excitement with anyone. That’s kind of what bloggers do, right? We share what fires us up.

Still, it’s not that frustrating; one pay-off is that once the game does hit the streets and the NDA expires, I’ll be more ready than most reviewers to offer up a solid opinion on the final product.