Even if I don’t really play video games anymore. Even if the last (and only) MMORPG that I played was Star Wars: Galaxies – and I’m talking buying that puppy the day that it came out. I bought it with such eagerness, back in the summer of 2003, I was salivating the entire ride home. I was so, so, so very excited… and never have I been so let down by a video game. What a piece of shit that game was. Still, it is tough not to feel a tinge of excitement here, although I would much rather have a Knights of the Old Republic III (the first two are such phenomenal games, two of the very few games where I felt extremely emotionally involved while playing).

Look out, post-apocalyptic RPG fans, a barren New Vegas is set to join D.C. in the world of Fallout with a full game release for Xbox360, PC and PS3 next year. (Pittsburgh, or “The Pitt,” was added to Fallout 3 via downloadable expansion pack a few weeks ago.)

The new game is to be a joint venture from Bethesda Softworks (who developed and published Fallout 3 and developed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) as publisher and Obsidian Entertainment as developer. Not quite sure what it’ll mean in terms of the game’s quality for Bethesda to act only as publisher and not as developer in this case. However, Obsidian did develop the highly competent Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, picking up the reins nearly seamlessly from BioWare, so I’m pretty confident.

Now, if I could just find the time to actually finish Fallout 3. I’m way back in, like, chapter three. Per Bethesda’s Peter Hines, who broke the news at a Bethesda press conference this morning, Fallout: New Vegas won’t be a sequel to Fallout 3, but rather will be another story set in the same world. So if I’m still playing Fallout 3 a year from now (which is not really that unlikely), presumably I could play both concurrently? Anyone else still exploring fallout D.C., but excited about the prospect of getting to explore post-nuclear-holocaust Vegas?

There’s no shortage of WWII video games, between the Call of Duty series and the Brothers in Arms series and the Medal of Honor series and the Wolfenstein series and…you get the idea. But Velvet Assassin looks to bring a little something new to the time period by having a female protagonist (based on real-life WWII spy Violette Summer) and focusing on stealth rather than either shooting skills or squad-based strategy.

Violette tells the story of her time during the war from a military hospital, so all the gameplay is a flashback – I imagine that means they’ll have to do something creative for when you, like, die. I’m more into RPGs lately than FPSes, but everything I’ve heard about Velvet Assassin sounds like a cross between standard WWII games (which remain my favorite FPSes) and Splinter Cell, which was an awesome game as long as I remembered not to go all Navy Seals and run into places with guns blazing.

Anyway, publisher Gamecock and developer Replay Studios have released a new trailer today, with Violette cribbing Winston Churchill’s speech (and for some reason running around in what appears to be a negligee of some sort for a good bit of the time). I hope the voice acting ends up a bit better than this, but I’m not optimistic. If they can get the gameplay right, I’ll be happy enough. Also, it’s called VELVET ASSASSIN, which is perhaps the best title of anything ever. The game will be released for Xbox360 and PC on April 16th.

New Year’s Day is a quiet one in our household. A family day if you will. And with the boy, we decided to grab a cheap puzzle game for the Wii gaming system via their online “WiiWare” client. The bright bubbly graphic and fun problem-solving nature of World Of Goo was apparent from the quick blurb there, so it was a snap judgment, but quite a lucky one too. Now really, this is a video game, so what is it doing on Row Three?

Well, besides a potential no-brainer film adaptation (which could make it one of the first truly good video game adaptations, another discussion which does not interest me so much), the raw cinematic nature of this video game is often breathtaking. This is in no small part due to a rich soundtrack (best video game soundtrack ever?) and visuals are clean and simple yet also silly and epic. Showing clear influences from Tim Burton and Dr. Seuss (and perhaps a bit of Neil Gaimen and Dave McKean) there is a narrative here that goes beyond puzzle solving and great game play. Taking more-than-just-potshots at consumer culture and the recycling of ourselves into ourselves (reminiscent of the designer soap in Fight Club) malaise of youth and beauty obsession, World of Goo takes a big page out of The Lorax with its anti-corporate, growth-for-growth sake message. It also reminds of the gooier Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

The game has a story (of sorts) that follows the downfall of civilization via consumer products in four chapters (Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring) and an epilogue. There are similarities to Pixar’s Wall-E in that a man-made thing evolves out of consumer waste to a point to both collect and replace human endeavors. This makes for the third post-apocalyptic narrative aimed at the younger set (although City of Ember didn’t really light any fires in the pop culture) with enough wit to attract adults as well. A chapter where the ‘goo’ go through the evolution of computers from NASA gravity simulations to social networking is particularly inspired both in terms of what can be done with puzzle game-play but also how diverse science and capitalism and human endeavor can play off one another in exciting ways. Kind of like the game itself. In terms of video game culture, I am no expert, but I know art when I see it. It is curious that this is a full ‘independent’ video game, rather than one of the monster video game studios (Electronic Arts, Blizzard, etc.). I find it most exciting that a game can be fun, deep, subtle, breezy full of sly wit all at the same time.