Dear Bioware,

Back in 1998, I rushed out on Christmas Eve to pick up Baldur’s Gate at FedEx so that I could play it over the holiday. Looking back, it is still one of the best, most exciting RPG experiences I’ve ever had, and it was eventually overshadowed by its siblings, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. But ever since you abandoned the 2-D Infinity Engine, your games have been declining in quality.

Yes, I know Neverwinter Nights was designed to be a toolset, and the campaign that came with it was meant to show would-be game developers what they could make, but the fundamental play mechanics were flawed. It was like you forgot the strategy and party-management elements of Baldur’s Gate and churned out a 3-D Diablo clone.

And then there’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so beloved because it was a Star Wars licensed game that didn’t suck. But overall, it was a shallow, dumbed down version of Baldur’s Gate in 3-D — those of us who spent hundreds of hours of your old games couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the lack of depth. Jade Empire was a total misstep, but then you promised us Mass Effect — a scifi RPG to rival Baldur’s Gate, a monstrous XBOX 360 exclusive that would make us all believe in you again.

Despite all the hype and good press, I have to say that Mass Effect was a dumbed down and simplified version of Knights of the Old Republic — not exactly strong praise. The party system is even more bare bones than KOTOR — making me wonder why it was even included. Why have party members you can’t micromanage? Yeah, you can tell them who to shoot, but it’s so cumbersome and so weak, that you might as well just let them run into to walls on their own without giving them orders only to see them do the same.

Sure, you’ve got some pretty nifty dialogue trees, but without the gameplay to back it up, it’s just a choose your own adventure story. Every second I play this game, I think back to how Baldur’s Gate made me believe that the world was real — and made me care about each and every one of its characters. BG’s Minsc is still the finest NPC ever made in an American RPG, only to be rivaled by the evil droid in KOTOR. There’s no one here like that. I haven’t played BG in about five years, but I still remember Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, and Aerie — I can’t say the same for ME, a game I played a few weeks ago.

I haven’t even gotten into the broken game engine with its frame rate problems. Any first person shooter as many hiccups as ME would be taken out and shot by the fanbase, yet the players all praise the genius of ME despite the fact that it runs like a dog.

I wanted to like the game — I really did. But at the end of the day, it’s just not very good. Oblivion, which came out shortly after launch, is still the superior RPG. I could play that game for the next ten years and still find new things to do and enjoy. Mass Effect, not so much.

Ah, the DS. It’s the best selling game console in the world, yet rarely gets the respect its rich library, innovative gameplay and pleasing industrial design deserve. I picked up a DS Lite in 2007, and have had many enjoyable hours of gameplay on the handheld system, including experiences that surpass the biggest games on more “hardcore” systems.

As always, my best of the year list is generated from games I first played in 2007, not necessarily games released in 2007.

5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat

The stylus seems a natural mouse substitute for first person shooters, and although the control scheme can be a little uncomfortable until you get the hang of it, COD4 on the DS manages to be a surprisingly good translation of the excellent console/PC game of the same name. Featuring a side story to the main COD 4, the DS version offers many of the COD signature elements on a handheld — buddy AI, scripted events, rail-gun shooter levels and even a one-on-one battle with an attack helicopter.

The graphics are comparable to N64 shooters, and the gameplay surpasses even that of N64 classics like Turok and Goldeneye. In fact, had this come out on the N64, it would been thought of as revolutionary. It may not be as good as modern shooters on the “next gen” systems, but it’s a damn fine portable version. Definitely worth picking up for shooter fans.

4. New York Times Crossword Puzzles

It may not sound exciting, but having 1,000 New York Times crossword puzzles available on your DS is certain to help pass the time in a doctor’s waiting room, on the subway, or on a flight to Hawaii and other annexes to Hell on Earth. Featuring a slick presentation, mostly excellent handwriting recognition (the game doesn’t recognize my “L’s” very well), and an awesome “Monday - Friday” mode, this game is great for crossword puzzle enthusiasts and novices alike.

New York Times Crossword Puzzles is not be the sexiest title on the DS, but it’s one of the most indespensible.

3. New Super Mario Brothers (2006)

What took Nintendo so long? New Super Mario Brothers is an update of the classic 2-D sidescrolling Mario Brothers games using 3D graphics — and the result is nothing short of amazing. Featuring great music, challenging levels inspired by classic Super Mario Brothers, as well as new powerups that turn Mario into a gigantic Godzilla-like plumber capabale of destroying everything in his path, as well as into a tiny tiny Mario who can get places the bigger versions can’t.

Easily the best Mario game since Super Mario World. Highly recommended.

2. Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass

The direct sequel to Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, Phantom Hourglass features the cell shaded graphics and south Pacific universe of its Gamecube sibling. In terms of gameplay, it is definitely a cross between the Windwaker and A Link to the Past, combining the best of the 3D Zeldas with the best of the 2D.

The innovative part of the game is that it is completely controlled with the stylus. Link is moved by moving the stylus across the touch screen, and foes are hit by swiping the stylus at them. It’s simple and elegant, and makes for a fun game. Notes can be made on your map, to help you solve many of the games puzzles.

The dungeons and puzzles are pretty similar to other Zelda games of the past, and there is not much new ground covered. However, it you’re looking for a Zelda handheld experience that rivals that of the main Nintendo consoles, then look no further than the Phantom Hourglass.

1. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I was frequently harassed by my online friends for the many hours I spent playing Bejeweled on XBOX Live during the first year of the system’s life. Because of that, I was not surprised by how thoroughly Puzzle Quest pulled me in with its mix of classic Bejeweled gameplay and deep RPG elements and strategy. Puzzle Quest is a gem matching game, where matching gems boost different types of mana. Once you have enough mana in the right colors, you can unleash attacks on AI opponents, who are competing with you on the same puzzles.

It’s hard to describe, but once you get past the learning curve, it becomes clear just how brilliant Puzzle Quest is. Weapons, armor, magical items, companions and character attributes all help you to succeed on the game’s puzzle boards, particularly against higher level companions who can be quite challenging to defeat.

The single player game is so good that I largely ignored the rest of my DS and XBOX 360 collection once I got it. The only downside, is it just supports Multicard Multiplayer — single card and online play are not included, which is a big drag. It would be great to compete with other players online for items and experience. Hopefully they will include this feature with the inevitable sequel.

If you own an platform that supports it — DS, PSP, XBOX 360 or PC — then you have to get Puzzle Quest. It’s easiest one of the best games of 2007, and certainly my favorite on DS.

When did Merge become the greatest record label in America? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a video on Subteranean that made me buy a record, but here’s the first since at least 2006: “Impossible” from The Shout Out Louds. It’s like the Cure rose from their schlocky grave as a pack of pretty Swedes.

And in the “old favorites from 2006″ department, here’s the Thermals with “Pillar of Salt.” Their LP, the Body, the Blood, the Machine is still in heavy rotation on my iPod.

It’s funny how disinterested I am in this election. Part of it is the deep disappointment I felt about Howard Dean’s Iowa flameout in 2004. I was tremendously excited about Dean, and it was a huge blow to see him knocked out of the race by the skittish party establishment who would rather lose the election than run a candidate who wasn’t part of the team.

Now it’s 2007, and we’re faced with a gallery of establishment candidates — Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden and Dodd. Kuccinich and Gravel are both outsiders, but who in their right mind would support them? I have long been wobbly in my support of Clinton. Her early debate performances convinced me that she was the right candidate, but her increasingly shrill attacks on Obama have lead me to support him, largely due to sympathy.

In many ways, the Republican race is more interesting than the Democratic one. It seems the frontrunner changes daily, and Mike Huckabee, who impressed me as a contender due to his funny and disarming appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher over the years has emerged surprisingly as the current front runner. Huckabee in many ways is the Republican Howard Dean — he represents an appealing alternative to the establishment picks, particularly to young evangelicals skeptical of Romney’s Mormanism, and distrustful of pragmatists like Giuliani, McCain and Thompson. But the corporate-types in the Republican party hate him and loathe the large evangelical base they’ve used to get their candidates elected. It wouldn’t surprise me if Huckabee gets knocked out by McCain or Thompson thanks to party elites reluctant to let fundamentalists take over the party in more than name.

Granted, I’m not exactly a fan — the guy is a theocrat, and he’s in bed with the kind of people who want to make people like me go away. But it is interesting to watch a guy with very little money beat up puffed up heavy weights like Romney and Giuliani.

Don’t get me wrong — I’d sooner write in my dog’s name than vote for a Republican — but at least the Republican slag-fest is entertaining. The Democratic race on the other hand, is at worst cringeworthy, and at best dull. Clinton’s attacks on Obama — particularly the use of surrogates to question everything from his experience to his religious credentials to his past drug use — are sickening. It’s like watching George W. Bush kick the shit out of poor John Kerry, except this time it’s a Democrat doing it. She seems mean and abrasive, and I never hated Bill Clinton more than when he was on Charlie Rose bashing Obama on his wife’s behalf. This coming from a stalwart defender of the Big Dog during his battles with the Republicans in the 1990’s. Any goodwill Hillary earned from me during the early part of the campaign has largely been lost. I’ve been tuning her out for at least a month. If she wins the primary, it’ll be another unenthusiastic and largely symbolic trip to the polls in November for me. I don’t even know why I bother to vote.

But that’s politics — just disappointment after disappointment. I feel bad to have never experienced FDR or JFK — the two heavy weight Democratic presidents of the 20th Century. One only has to look at all the presidents of my lifetime — from Gerald Ford through Bush II — to see why we’re a nation in decline. And the field on both sides is incredibly uninsipiring (again).

But hey, I’m supporting Obama, anyway. At least he’ll make us look good to the world. There’s something to be said for good PR.

So, the girls both had bouts of asthma last night that kept us up all night. You enter this strange state when you’re up every two hours administering breathing treatments — the night stretches on into infinity and you are neither awake or asleep, but somewhere in between.

Now, the girls are so doped up on Albuterol Sulphate, that they can’t sleep. They just talk and talk and talk, while my body cries out for rest. Is it any wonder they didn’t sleep when they were getting breathing treatments every four hours around the clock as infants? There’s got to be a better way to control breathing disorders that doesn’t require a stimulant like Albuterol, or steroids.

If there’ s a hell on earth, its two toddlers who can’t sleep, but need to, and two adults that can’t stay awake. And I’m expected to go to work in the morning?

Salon posted an interview today with Georgetown theologian John Haught about his response to the New Atheism as embodied by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. It’s worth reading insofar as it reveals that those on the “spiritual” side of things really don’t understand atheism in a very fundamental way, just as atheists don’t really understand religion and the need for god. And I should know — I’m an atheist. The need for faith is something I can understand on an intellectual level, but not on an emotional one.

Here’s a quote:

But why can’t you have hope if you don’t believe in God?

You can have hope. But the question is, can you justify the hope? I don’t have any objection to the idea that atheists can be good and morally upright people. But we need a worldview that is capable of justifying the confidence that we place in our minds, in truth, in goodness, in beauty. I argue that an atheistic worldview is not capable of justifying that confidence. Some sort of theological framework can justify our trust in meaning, in goodness, in reason.

By referring to hope, what Haught really means is hope for life after death, hope that there’s something more than the natural world. He believes that atheism is a state of nihilism and negativity, that without hope for a future after death, life itself is without meaning.

But for me, it’s the finite span of life — the blink of an eye and you’re gone reality we all face — that gives me hope. It’s the great fortune to have experienced all this, to have fathered two daughters, enjoyed art and music, that gives me hope and meaning. The luck of it all! If the wrong sperm fertilized the wrong egg at the wrong moment, none of us would be here. To have come as far as we all have is truly remarkable.

Everything around us is dependent on a chain of stunning coincidences going all the way back to the Big Bang. Is that so terrible? The awesomeness of an infinite Universe, propelled along by accidents is far more humbling to me than the idea of a vengeful creator who forced his only son to suffer so that the rest of us could absolve ourselves of our mistakes. I don’t begrudge other people their need to believe in the myth, that it’s the only thing that keeps them going, but why does it trouble them so much that there are people who cannot bring themselves to pretend to be religious? And why do they have to project despair on us, as if our lives are meaningless without what George Carlin referred to as a “Magic Man in the Sky” to guide our way from birth to death?

As a boy, I never really believed in God, despite going to church, or the magnetic evangelical influence of certain friends and family. When I looked into my dying father’s eyes and saw a man broken by sickness and filled with fear of death, I didn’t glimpse God so much as the inevitable end we all someday face alone. The realization that there’s nothing more than life brought me a peace I’d never been able to have with religion — an acceptance that someday I will die. And it’s not all bad — it’s just the way things are.

When my aunt visited me last year and was startled by how much I reminded her of my father, it was clear to me that some part of my father was in me. That he continued after death, and when I look at my daugthers and see so much of myself in them, and so much of my mother and my wife, and the grandfather they will never meet, I know that this is how we reach everlasting life. By passing our traits down through our children — through genes and nurturing love.

And so I don’t fear death. Because although my own consciousness will end, never again to return, there will be bits of me alive in my children. And that is what gives me hope. That they will live long lives and live to see themselves and the people they love in their own children and carry on the wonderous chain of life.

This made my day:

And if this tool becomes president, I’m moving to Canada:

I picked up a Nintendo DS a few days ago, and I have to say, I’m hooked! I’ve spent the past five years or so playing games on XBOX and XBOX 360. Having spent much of my time playing first person shooters and other action games, it’s something of a novelty to be playing games designed for all-ages. Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, while not being the deepest Zelda game, is a great portable spin-off for the classic series, and it has a really great art style and slick presentation. Likewise, Mario 64 is astonishing close to the Nintendo 64 original, and I’m also having a great time cracking out some of my old Gameboy Advance games.

Although the DS is mostly known for Hannah Montana games and the like, there are a surprising number of titles aimed at hardcore gamers. I’d put the system somewhere between the Nintendo 64 and the original Playstation in terms of the depth of available content, and I’m looking forward to such games as the new Advance Wars, Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village and the DS version of Myst.

Well, it’s nice to know those of us who don’t subscribe to Christianity are welcome in America. Here’s Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President, on freedom:

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

The pundits have spent the morning praising Romney’s speech on faith, comparing him to Kennedy’s famous “you can trust me, even though I’m Catholic” speech that made him the country’s first and only Catholic president.

It’s already clear that those who don’t subscribe to religious beliefs can’t run for high office. Now it appears that there’s no place for us in the American system at all. And with Hillary and Obama embracing a more religious tone in the campaign, one wonders if even the Democrats would publically include us.

Just one of many reasons why I’m finding it hard to feel engaged by the Presidential contest.

I was in our bedroom this morning, digging around for some clothes, when I happened to glance over at my old CD shelf. I haven’t bought a new CD in about three years, and it’s been even longer since I’ve bought a vinyl record. I’ve gone completely digital.

Now, when I hear about a band (usually from a Pitchfork review), I immediately check eMusic for them. If they’re not there, I make a mental note to check iTunes, and if they are there I add them to my “Save for Later” list, to be downloaded once my eMusic subscription refreshes.

There was a time only a few years ago when a new release meant a desperate jaunt over to a brick and morter indie record store to hunt for that elusive record, only to find out that they just sold their last copy five minutes ago. And god help you when that indie record store inevitably went out of business — your access to music was seriously diminished. Now music is accessible beyond measure, and with eMusic, it’s pratically free, though perfectly legal.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t miss records at all. At the dawn of the MP3 era, with the advent of Napster, I was depressed by the loss of physical media. Now I wish it would all go away. Movies and games are next, thank god.