Let me qualify the following statements by saying that there are things I really liked about Inception, and if it had been made by virtually any other person, I would be more forgiving.

But this is something written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and therefore its flaws are all the more glaring. As a story, Inception is all setup and no payoff, all concept and no heart – all science, no humanity.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard all you need to about the film. Inception is about entering dreams in order to steal information from a person’s subconscious. Leonardo DiCaprio and his squad of dream-raiders do this for a living. They’re very good, but it’s highly illegal.

The dreams have a ton of rules (much more than the similar but comparably less complicated[!] world of The Matrix). Get killed in a dream and you wake up. Dream time is faster than real time. You’ll never remember the beginning of a dream, and you need an object to carry around with you so that you can hold it and feel if it is different than the object is in reality, and thusly know if you’re in the dream world or the real world. You can’t change too much in a dream or the dreamer’s subconscious will rise up and attack you. Pain in a dream is as real as anywhere else.

Imagine all this mess as the first half an hour of a film.

Okay, now that we have most(!) of the rules in-hand, we can begin the actual going into dreams thing. DiCaprio’s team, which eventually consists of a hilarious Tom Hardy, the extremely stalwart Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the somewhat-naggy Ellen Page (with others who are similarly boring), wants to invade a guy’s dream, go into a dream within a dream within a dream to confuse his mind, and plant an idea so the guy thinks it’s his idea.

This has only ever been done once, supposedly, and it’s so difficult that puts everyone in danger of dying in the dream and being sent to “limbo,” a dream state so deep that it will feel like an entire lifetime passes before the people trapped there eventually wake up.

But for all that, we’re not even to the story yet, which is the major, fatal flaw of Inception. For all that time wasted establishing the rules of dreamland (which, I must protest, seems counterintuitive to the whole nature of dreaming – how can there be so many rules? I have dreams in which I alternately perform in stage plays, run from zombies and battle aliens.), the actual characters are sorely shallow.

It might be that there’s not very much to work with, but the performances turned in by the various players (all of whom have proven to be extremely talented throughout their youngish careers) are similarly puddle-sized. DiCaprio’s character Cobb is tortured by his wife’s death and a subconscious echo of her that harasses him and others in the shared dreams. DiCaprio interprets this as having a single, hard-set furrowed brow pretty much at all times. He spends the entire movie insisting on the reality he sees, shirking Echo-Wife’s pleading that he stay with her in dreamland, and rarely expands beyond this one emotional state. His motivation (“I just want my kids back!”) is what pushes him to do “this one last job.” It would help if “this one last job” was more dangerous and therefore difficult or trying, or Cobb’s pain at missing his kids anywhere near palpable.

For someone so supposedly desperate to return to his home and family, in fact, Cobb seems to have made exactly zero progress to that end up to the start of the movie. Then, suddenly, it is all-consuming. Sorry, but that doesn’t play.

Gordon-Levitt has almost nothing to do. One wonders at points why he’s even in the movie (until the fight sequence in the hotel – and the other fight sequence in the hotel – which are absolutely phenomenal), as his character is so one-beat and straight-laced that he never even raises his voice during the span of the film. I’ve seen Al Gore show more emotion.

But that’s just it – there’s nothing to get emotional about. It’s a job; they’re doing it, it needs to be done, no one needs to be all that invested in it. Cobb is supposed to be upset, but stoic – but with very little up and down, the whole thing grows tiresome. In too many ways, Inception becomes a much smarter and cooler Ocean’s 11. But even George Clooney’s Danny Ocean had a more believable and characteristic drive than Cobb ever achieves (and meanwhile, Gordon-Levitt has no motivation as a character whatsoever).

Then there’s Ellen Page. Her character fills the role of “dream maze constructor” on the team, but really, she’s DiCaprio’s conscience and guide in the labyrinth of the dreams (her name’s Ariadne – also the woman of Greek myth who helps Theseus get out of King Minos’ labyrinth, for anyone who hasn’t already been informed of that little tidbit by every other writer in the universe). Really, there’s little if any reason for her to be in the film other than this one glaring plot device: she needs to pull DiCaprio back from the brink later in the film.

As such, Ariadne never becomes more than a nagging almost-extortionist for Cobb. She “discovers his (not very well-kept) secret” about his evil Echo-Wife, and she insists on being in the dream world because supposedly evil Echo-Wife could threaten all the other dream-raiders, and so of everyone available, Ellen Page is best suited to help out. The whole Echo-Wife threat never materializes, Ariadne never really does anything in the whole “dream-heist” plot line, and her character never evolves into anything even resembling a rounded person.

All these complaints are a result of story sacrificed on the altar of special effect. Inception does some dynamite things with dream-sets: blowing them apart, flooding them, spinning them around, collapsing them and folding them in on themselves. There are a few really great moments because of this.

But it’s much more like watching a tech demo at times, or visiting a theme park attraction, than a real true-to-itself story. For all that dream-building, the movie never feels like a dream. For all the people who populate it (and really are very ho-hum about the entire concept), they never feel like living, breathing people doing something extraordinary and making it through by the skin of their teeth. At no point is there ever that deep breath of almost-failure or character-in-peril, and Inception is all the worse for losing the subsequent sigh of relief following success.

Christopher Nolan is the kind of storyteller who can infuse a complex and twisting story with a real and deep emotional draw – the kind of guy who can take the concept of Batman and create The Dark Knight, easily the most engaging and human conception of any superhero ever on film.

Many of Nolan’s works rank among my favorites similar reasons. The Prestige, for example, is a story about magic and science and tricks, but really it is about two men obsessively trying to destroy each other and in the process define themselves. Memento explores a man’s means of creating his identity through his actions when he can’t remember them, and the lies he (and we) tell in order to maintain that self-image – especially to himself (ourselves).

What’s Inception’s theme? What’s its message? What does it accomplish for being made, and what do we take away from it?

The answer is nothing, unfortunately. Which is the lament of Inception – because relatively, it is so bad and it could have been so good. It should have been on par with Nolan’s other works, and could easily have gone from blockbuster to transcendent.

Inception is more on par with the works of Michael Bay or M. Night Shyamalan than the rest of the Nolan cannon (though it definitely rises above those ranks rather than fall amid them). It is often stunning and an envelope-pusher in terms of special effects – and in that respect, in terms of spectacle and advancements in filmmaking, worth seeing. But this isn’t good storytelling, because it isn’t good story. The “telling” part may be sprinting ahead, but the rest is scrambling – and failing – to catch up.

I don’t even know how to start this.

It’s rare that some major aspect of a film doesn’t leap out as I go to compose a review, begging to be dismantled or jeered or championed. I had no such luck here. Two days have gone by while I sat here, trying to come up with an introduction that does this film justice. I never did find one, so I’ll be as simple as possible.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is spectacular.

“Spectacular” in every sense of the word. Spectacular in that it is a loud, explosive, awe-inspiring epic (of epic epicness; not to sell out or anything, but it’s so totally true) that clips along beautifully, taking just enough time between each hilarious moment and developing characters so that we literally can’t wait for the next massive, graphic set piece. Spectacular in that it is one of the best movie-going experiences I’ve ever had, bar none. I mean that in the sense of best of all time. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie. It has been years.

And not to say that Scott Pilgrim is the best film ever made; that’s a little crazy and not my point. The film has its flaws: for one, while the story is funny, reverential to its subject matter, referential and, above all, extremely upbeat, it does lack real motivation. You never feel like in the battle of Scott Pilgrim v. World, et. al., that Scott Pilgrim might be the loser – or for that matter, that there’s anything that demands he participate in said struggle.

But in a tribute to its source material and the video gaming culture from which Scott Pilgrim draws life, that’s not really the point. What heart-wrenching reason does Mario have for kicking turtle ass on his trek from castle to castle, searching for some (pixilated and) faceless princess? None other than that we would really enjoy it if he did, thank you very much.

Scott Pilgrim takes on the world, in the form of Seven Evil Exes that he must battle in order to win the right to date his dream girl, too-cool-for-school hipster-with-colored-hair Ramona Flowers. For no other reason, perhaps, than that we will enjoy it.

And enjoy it we do. Thank you very much.

I was skeptical about Michael Cera in the titular role (no, he doesn’t play The World), seeing as he’s become a ludicrously skinny, mop-headed hipster archetype with a really airy, highish voice. I’ve been known to be one Cera’s biggest advocates (his work on “Arrested Development” proves he could be destined to be a great one), but he’s ludicrously soft-spoken, and especially in Scott Pilgrim. It’s like the rest of the cast dared him to try to be inaudible whenever possible during this movie.

And yet it plays. In fact, it works almost like an in-gag; on the one hand is the quiet, somewhat-bumbling Scott, working through life as if it could knock him flat any moment. Juxtapose that with the actual villains who catapult Scott into high-flying wire fist-fights, sword duels, and multi-opponent kung-fu extravaganzas, where he routinely knocks them flat. Cera absolutely nails all of these moments. It’s remarkable. And it’s awesome.

The rest of the cast, too, is spot on, driving the “everything other than the fighting” direction of the movie. Most everyone else steers clear of any fighting – in fact, reactions from the other characters range from amazed to blasé, another joke in itself. And while I won’t discuss them all here, they all carry a comedic weight and timing that drives the movie extremely well. We’re not just watching crazy video game-inspired Matrix-esque comic battles, because these guys all really live in this crazy world too, and they have funny things to say about it as they try to deal with or accept the insanity (or ignore it, as the case may be).

And while the source material of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the multi-part graphic novel of various similar titles by Bryan Lee O’Malley is certainly deep and brilliant in its conception, give a round of applause for director Edgar Wright. Every single shot in this movie is stylish; every sound effect exactly what’s needed. This is Wright at his most perfect: it’s like sitting inside his head, watching his exact conception of the Scott Pilgrim story. Shawn of the Dead, Hott Fuzz, Spaced – all of them have been practice for this project, where Wright just gets so many elements exactly right.

His high-energy visuals couple with a camera style that routinely downplays the crazy CGI gags going on in the background (such as a point total drifting into the air from the final resting place of a defeated enemy or a giant “Ka-POW” ringing from a character’s jaw as it meets fist), keeping these many sight-gags and references only half in the frame. Big comic-book letters and video game cliches are just what happens in the Scott Pilgrim world, the camera style says. The characters and even the film crew being “over it” makes us laugh even harder.

In fact, all of Scott Pilgrim is both sight gag and joyous display; both a gentle jest on our 8-bit childhoods and a love letter to those many two-dimensional sprites of pop culture that influenced us all, one way or another. It is, at every single point, a great experience.

Nick Hurwitch, who sat next to me during the screening we caught at the San Diego International Comic Con 2010, referred to Scott Pilgrim as “generation-defining.” I wholeheartedly agree. Scott Pilgrim could (should) easily become to 2010 what Star Wars was to 1977. See this movie, and see it in a theater.

What’s more, my freelancery at FileFront means I’ll be doing some news coverage from the event when I hop up there Saturday with hetero life mate Nick Hurwitch. Not only will I be enjoying it, I’ll be getting paid to enjoy it.

It is now all the more enjoyable.

So here’s a quick post about where you can see all kinds of Hornshaw-related Comic Con stuff tomorrow. Here, obviously, will be a few of the more thinkpiece/analysis write-ups I occasionally do about things, so anything that strikes me as interesting enough will probably appear on hornshaw.com on Sunday.

Meantime, news posts with my byline will pop up on FileFront. I’ll be covering video games for the site, so those posts will mostly concern hands-on time with upcoming game titles. I’m still in the process of hopefully nailing down what I’ll be able to actually play, but I should get some face-time with a ton of games and franchises, including:

• Dead Space 2
• Red Faction
• Mega Man Universe
• Dead Rising 2
• Gears of War 3
• Halo: Reach
• Whatever the hell Kinect-related stuff is going on at the Xbox booth
• Call of Duty: Black Ops

That’s just what I can think of off the top here. I’m sure there will be reps from every corner of the gaming universe, so I’m hoping to get lots posted.

Beyond that, I’ll be Twittering and Facebooking up a storm under the #sdcc hashtag. You can follow my FileFront-related Tweets at twitter.com/filefront, which will be anonymous except for the #sdcc tag (I’m pretty sure my boots are the only ones on the ground in San Diego this weekend [all hail the supernerd]).

Everything that comes from me that hits the FileFront twitter account will be doubled on my Twitter account, twitter.com/philhornshaw, plus a whole lot more. FileFront tweets will be limited to video games and related stuff, and they’ll be kept somewhat minimal (around once an hour). The full-on disgusting sweaty torrent of everything that strikes me as interesting will be managed on @philhornshaw, so unfollow if you’re not interested.

Finally, game-related stuff beyond the FileFront feed will also find a home on my video game-related twitter account, twitter.com/hornshawguides. And more stuff will pop up on my facebook feed (find me – Phil Hornshaw. If I don’t know you, we can be friends if you send me a message so I’m not all “who’re you now, crazy stalker?”).

All told, there will be a lot of doubling-up on the feeds, so I apologize about that. I’ll try to limit them to where they belong as much as possible.

Here’s a preliminary itinerary of what I’m hoping to do tomorrow:

• 10:00-11:00 Panel of the Living Dead: Surviving the Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Onslaught on Xbox 360— Xbox 360 has become the exclusive epicenter for zombies. The team behind Capcom’s Dead Rising 2 joins the industry’s top zombie creative minds and a special guest zombie authority for a behind-the-braaaiiinnss look at the popular zombie titles on Xbox 360. Chomp on insights into how they’ve developed their unique lexicon on undead lore and storytelling approaches, and get survival tips for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Join the flesh-hungry undead for a special Dead Rising 2surprise from Capcom and be one of the first 25 zombies attending the panel to receive a special token for Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. Room 25ABC
• Backup: Twilight Fan Fiction meetup
• 11:00-12:00 Reading with Brains: The Rise and Unrelenting Stamina of Zombie Fiction— Authors and survivors include Amelia Beamer (The Loving Dead), Max Brooks(The Zombie Survival Guide), Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer), Mira Grant (The Newsflesh trilogy). Walter Greatshell (Xombies: Apocalypticon), Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin), Ryan Mecum (Zombie Haiku), John Skipp (Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead), and Joan Frances Turner (Dust). Moderated by Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy. Room 7AB
• Or: 11:00-12:00 Hollywood and Ghost Recon Join Forces— Little Minx, a company of Ridley Scott and Associates (RSA), presents Oscar-winning director François Alaux(Logorama), associate producer and technical advisor to all RSA films Harry Humphries, and a feature actor from the short film, who will be joined by Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Solider video game studio associate producer Adrian Lacey in a panel discussing the upcoming short film, as well as connections between the film and the game. Attendees will be treated to the world premiere debut of the film trailer, as well as a live demo of the upcoming video game. Room 25ABC
• 12:00-1:00 The Venture Bros.— Creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer host a laissez-faire chat about — what else? — The Venture Bros. They’ll be joined by Patrick Warburton (voice of Brock Samson) and James Urbaniak (voice of Dr. Venture) as they screen sneak preview clips from the upcoming season, shamelessly plug their new DVD and line of action figures, and take questions from the audience.Indigo Ballroom, San Diego Hilton Bayfront
• And possibly some: 12:00-1:00 Street Fighter Mania!: SSFIV and Beyond!— Producer Super Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono shares his thoughts on SSFIV and presents his exciting vision for the future of the franchise. Experience why everyone can’t get enough of Street Fighter! Featuring Seth Killian, Street Fighter special advisor. Followed by a Q&A session. Room 25ABC
• 12:30-1:30 MTV Games— Harmonix have revolutionized the world of music video games with groundbreaking titles such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, bringing virtual rock to your living room. This year, the world’s premier music video game company is set to rock the world again with Rock Band 3 and Dance Central, bringing gamers ever closer to the real thing. Join the Harmonix team for a fast-paced panel discussion, insane performances, and some fun surprises! Room 4
• Except I’d hate to miss: 12:45-1:30 Futurama— Celebrate Futurama’s triumphant re-return to the airwaves! World-premiere footage will offer an exciting and informative glimpse of Comic-Con in the year 3010. Panelists include executive producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, cast members Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katey Sagal, and Maurice LaMarche, director Crystal Chesney-Thompson, writers Ken Keeler and Patric M. Verrone, and animation producer Claudia Katz. Ballroom 20
• Then probably: 1:00-2:00 The Write Stuff: Creating Genre Television— An incredible insider look at the making of genre television from the scribes behind some of today’s hottest shows who share their candid thoughts on how to make the series we love (and sometimes loathe)…and beyond. Featuring Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, Lost), Gabrielle Stanton (The Vampire Diaries, Moonlight), Jesse Alexander (Heroes, Lost, Alias), Jose Molina (Castle, Firefly), Robert Hewitt Wolfe (The Gates, Deep Space Nine), Charles Murray (V, Criminal Minds), Sarah Watson (Middleman, Parenthood), Ashley E. Miller(Fringe, Terminator), Steve Kriozere (NCIS, V.I.P.), Steve Melching (Clone Wars, Transformers, The Batman), and Mark A. Altman (Castle, Elvis Van Helsing). Moderated by Creative Screenwriting’s Jeff Goldsmith. Room 8
• Later, some more toss-ups: 3:30-4:30 Red Faction Armageddon: How to Build a Transmedia Universe— The biggest event in the mythology of one of the world’s most popular video games is also a flashpoint in the launch of the Red Faction multiplatform universe. Get exclusive information about it and pick up tips on world-building and game concept development, along with info about the partnership with Syfy in this in-depth Q&A with creator Danny Bilson (EVP Core Games, THQ), Lenny Brown (director IP development, THQ), Hollywood’s leading Transmedia producer Jeff Gomez (Avatar, Transformers, Tron Legacy, Men In Black 3D), Alan Seiffert (SVP, Syfy Ventures), and Erika Kennair(director, development, Syfy). Room 9
• 3:00-4:00 NBC’s Community Cast and Creative Team— The cast and producers –Joel McHale (The Soup), Chevy Chase (Hot Tub Time Machine), Donald Glover (30 Rock),Yvette Nicole Brown (Rules of Engagement), Danny Pudi (Greek), Gillian Jacobs (Choke),Alison Brie (Mad Men) and executive producers Dan Harmon (The Sarah Silverman Program), Joe Russo (Arrested Development), Anthony Russo (Arrested Development), Neil Goldman (Scrubs), Garrett Donovan (Scrubs) and Russ Krasnoff (The Soloist) — are on hand for an animated discussion and Q&A session about what’s in store for viewers this fall. Indigo Ballroom, San Diego Hilton Bayfront
• 4:00-5:00 Writing for Comics— Top comics writers Brian Michael Bendis (New Avengers, Powers, Secret Invasion), Marc Guggenheim (Wolverine, Resurrection), andPeter David (Incredible Hulk, X-Factor) offer a discussion and instructive tips on the art of writing for comics. Writers and editors speak about the process of writing and how the game is played. Want to know how stories come about and learn how to do it yourself. This is the place to start! Moderated by Comics Experience’s Andy Schmidt(X-Men, Annihilation). Room 30CDE
• But only to openly boo Paul W.S. Anderson: 4:00-4:45 Screen Gems: Resident Evil: Afterlife— In a world ravaged by a virus infection that turns its victims into the Undead, Alice (Milla Jovovich) continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety. Her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new heights, but Alice gets some unexpected help from an old friend. A new lead that promises a safe haven from the Undead takes them to Los Angeles, but when they arrive the city is overrun by thousands of Undead and Alice and her comrades are about to step into a deadly trap. The fourth installment of the hugely successful Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: Afterlife is again based on the wildly popular video game series and this time will be shot in 3D using the same state-of-the-art cameras created for Avatar. Writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson, along with the film’s stars Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, and Wentworth Miller, will be on hand to show you some stunning 3D sequences and answer your questions. Hall H

Yikes. I’ll try to keep it entertaining for those of you at home.

The article basically sells a rumor that Sega, the creator of the Dreamcast, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Sonic the Hedgehog and numerous arcade games, is thinking about throwing its hat back in to build home consoles in the next hardware generation.

Which is, of course, a terrible idea. Because Sega is terrible with consoles. In fact, it’s so bad an idea that Sega should be physically restrained from doing so. No one will suffer but you, me, and video gaming at large.

Observe the following history:

Sega made home game machines for about two decades – the last one being the Dreamcast, which it released in 1999. The Sega Genesis, the 16-bit cartridge-based machine that competed with the Super Nintendo, by far was its most successful. It had a lot of the same games as the SNES, a few of its own, but one resounding success – there were games. Lots of games.

Under the Genesis flag, being waved madly by Sonic, Sega at one point snagged 65 percent of the console market. In the 1980s, Sega was developing innovative games and hacking away in Japan. Sega was winning the console fight before 1994.

But that’s also when the horrific crash-and-burn downfall began.

Sega was losing money and market share by 1994, just after it rolled out Sega CD in 1993. A precursor to all future video gaming, Sega CD was an add-on attachment for the Genesis that played CD-based software, and had all the cool accoutrements to go with it – like full-motion video and voice acting. For the first time, these elements could be incorporated into games, taking them to a new, beyond-cartoon-style level. It was Sega’s first attempt of many to out-technology the SNES, which was garnering more and bigger exclusive games, while Genesis lagged behind with sequels to Sonic that weren’t enough to prop up the whole system.

Despite being, in many ways, a revolution, the Sega CD didn’t take off. It did sell 6 million units here and abroad, which is sort of insane given the size of the gaming industry in 1993, but it was overpriced and had weak support from gaming companies. Which makes sense, given the machine ran a medium that no one was really producing – we’re talking about a time when PC games barely ran on CD. What gaming company was equipped to make CD games in 1993 for one console add-on that no one owned?

Really, Sega should have kicked out a bunch of great games themselves. But they failed to do that. So the Sega CD failed miserably, costing the company a bunch of money.

Despite aggressive, often successful advertising, the Genesis was getting its ass kicked by 1994. Sega’s share of the market had diminished to 34 percent. Profits were on the decline. Sega decided more and more hardware was the answer, and started shoveling boatloads of money into developing new machines.

Sega started shipping other stuff. The 32X was a cartridge add-on that played 32-bit games using the Genesis hardware – basically, the next system generation (the Sony Playstation plays 32-bit games) without the next system. It was released in late 1994.

A stunning failure, I remember 32X having maybe five games, all awful. The real total is upwards of 25 or 30, although I can’t pin down a hard number. The machine was overpriced, retailing at about $160, its games were universally crap, no one was equipped to develop for it, and Sega failed to develop for it itself at launch. Plus, in a brilliant move, Sega was already developing its next software platform, the Sega Saturn – and the potential of that system overshadowed the 32X. Undercutting a current-gen piece of hardware with its next-gen piece of hardware, also known as the shoot-own-foot maneuver, is a mainstay in the Sega repertoire of idiot moves.

The 32X was pretty much a Genesis-killer. Sega had dropped a bunch of money into the 32X and Sega CD without developing decent games for them. The add-ons cost a bunch of money and sold like polished turds. So Sega dropped support for both of them and refocused its attention. It’s this continual refocus that characterizes Sega’s story of failure.

Sony was rolling out the Playstation, a 32-bit CD-based system, right around the same time the Saturn was getting ready to launch. Meantime, Nintendo was developing the N64 way on the outside – it was skipping the entire 32-bit console generation and maintaining development of games for SNES. Sony was an unknown quantity that hadn’t developed hardware (or even really video games) before, and Nintendo wasn’t rolling out new hardware. Sega should have pummeled in 1995.

(As an aside, Nintendo released graphically stunning games like Donkey Kong Country in the face of 32-bit machines, and they sold stunningly well. The SNES was redesigned and re-released in 1997, when Nintendo made its last game for the system – and Nintendo was still shipping SNES consoles in 1999[!]. That’s an eight-year lifespan for a video game console. Because those guys know how to make a decent machine.)

Sega, instead, suffered defeat at the hands of the Playstation, even though the Saturn dropped before Playstation in May 1995. And Sega rolled out some premiere titles, running graphics and speeds previously unseen in a major console, like Virtua Fighter and NiGHTS. But it made mistakes. One of them was the huge price – $399 – and another a stunt born of intense idiocy.

Up until the big yearly E3 gaming conference in May 1995, Sega had been touting a September release date. Then, at its E3 show, Sega yanked the tablecloth out from under the fine china: the September release was a ruse. It was shipping consoles immediately.

It seemed like a great idea at the time, but not even the flowers were still standing after Sega’s announcement.

People don’t like things surprising them when it comes to video game hardware releases. This is especially true for people who own stores and are suddenly expected to carry said hardware. Imagine gamers, suddenly learning about the four-month jump on a 32-bit console, rushing out to Target, Best Buy, Funco Land and Walmart and finding – nothing. Those consoles hadn’t shipped yet, or they hadn’t arrived yet; worse, Walmart had no idea they were coming for another four months. Stores weren’t ready – they didn’t even have clear shelves to put Saturns on. Consumers were pissed, store owners were pissed, developers were pissed. The gimmick failed miserably.

And just like with the Genesis and its add-ons, Sega failed to procure the third-party support it needed for the Saturn to thrive. Sony was pumping games out of its own studio, 989 – Crash Bandicoot, notably, and Syphon Filter – and working hard to develop third-party support – like in the case of Squaresoft, which developed Final Fantasy VII for Playstation in 1997 and broke all kinds of sales records. Sega, on the other hand, sat on its hands, failed to roll out a new Sonic, and eventually abandoned the Saturn.

Here’s how it happened. Sony was blasting away with an overall better software network. Nintendo threw down with the N64 in 1996 (a year late!), jumping 32-bit and moving on to the more-powerful 64-bit processor (even though it was still publishing on cartridge, which overall held less information and cost more for game companies to develop). Both Sony and Nintendo, to stay competitive, were releasing lower-priced systems and dropping their prices when necessary. The Playstation launched at $299 and N64 at $199, and prices got slashed over the next few years.

Meanwhile, Sega…did nothing.

Through yet more incredibly poor planning, Sega had made the Saturn a big, bulky, irritating machine. Sure, it ran well and was fast – but it was hard to scale down or scale back. Sega was incapable of creating a cheaper Saturn under the laws of physics. They lagged on price cuts and started to lag on sales. Remember, the thing was still a minimum of $100 more than its competitors.

After a while, Sega got around to fixing this – by packaging its three best-selling games, Virtua Cop, Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2, with the console. But as with everything in the Sega story, the damage was already done. Saturn sales sucked so hard that by 1997, two years after its launch, Sega was talking about a new system, the 128-bit Katana, at E3. It would later be renamed the Dreamcast.

Of course, given its history – two failed add-on systems that preceded the launch of a new console, which preceded the launch of a new console – Sega pissed off a lot of gamers and developers. It kept releasing hardware and expecting people to buy it or produce for it. Then, when those people started to do so, Sega stopped supporting the machine. Most of its hardware from 1994 to 1999 seemed like it was just a placeholder for this Katana/Dreamcast thing. People stopped buying Saturn, because why buy this machine when a better machine’s already on the horizon? Same with developing games for Saturn. Not to mention that when hardware companies announce new systems, the days of the old system are immediately numbered. It makes no fiscal sense to develop games on a doomed, under-established console.

Saturn production ceased in 1998 just about everywhere, although it lasted to 2000 in Japan.

To much fanfare and in what would become the greatest console launch up to that point, Sega squeezed out Dreamcast in North America on Nov. 9, 1999 (9/9/99, if you remember the very cool advertising campaigns).

Dreamcast is definitely one of the best consoles ever. It dropped the world’s first console massively multiplayer online RPG (a game in the vein of World of Warcraft and EverQuest) with Phantasy Star Online. It was the first console with Internet support (using a 56K modem, but hey). It had a sweet controller and a controller-based memory unit with its own screen – which you could take away and play little Tamagotchi-type games on, or use to call football plays during games so no one else could see them. Dreamcast produced several benchmark games that would come to define the future of the industry and change how it was received. It had a new, very cool Sonic game.

In essence, Dreamcast was the console Sega had always been trying to make. It sold 500,000 units in the first week, which was unprecedented up to that time.

Online support meant Sega was doing something no one was doing – even the venerated Playstation 2, which eventually would have a network adapter, but not at its 2000 launch. Seeing as Internet multiplayer has become The Standard of console (and computer) gaming, Dreamcast was years ahead of the curve. Internet multiplayer wouldn’t really ramp up until Microsoft got into console gaming with the Xbox in 2001 and its Xbox Live service in 2002. It wouldn’t happen until we were in a whole new millennium.

But Dreamcast didn’t sell, despite a 15-month jump on the Playstation 2 and Internet connectivity. It had a tiny library of games because Sega had a terrible relationship with developers, having bent them over and screwed them so many times during the past six years.

And gamers, too, were jaded. Think of it – you’d been a Sega supporter since the Genesis in 1991. And every time you handed Sega your money, they snagged it and bit your hand before you could withdraw. Every piece of hardware bought between 1993 and 1998 had been discontinued with barely any games (and even fewer good games), effectively swindling you out of your cash. Meanwhile you could have bought one Super Nintendo and played it for the entire decade. Every other major console on the market enjoyed an average lifespan of about five years – maybe more. Sega’s machines: two years.

Sega had sucked too hard for too long and, facing horrific losses, dropped out of consoles altogether in 2001. They didn’t just stop making Dreamcast – they surrendered the console war. Broken and bloody, Sega nearly put itself out of business with some of the worst business practices ever. Today, Sega is a third-party software producer, making games for their competitors, much in the way the conquered armies would be made slaves by the Romans. Okay, not really, but they have been brutally humiliated.

This is the cautionary tale from hell for the gaming industry. Sega should not be allowed to produce a new console. Once Sega went into straight software development, they started profiting again – how could they not, really, having massively reduced their operating costs by hacking off the rotting limb that was their console department.

But now the company has its confidence back, and that’s bad. After being demolished for a decade, another decade has passed with relative Sega success – and rumor has it, Sega thinks it’s back in the game, so to speak. The company doesn’t remember what a dismal failure it is.

But I remember.

The rumored Sega console will be made more cheaply, with cheaper components, then the other next-gen consoles, so it can have a smaller price tag. Already a bad sign. Having been out of console development for better than 10 years, it’s going to take a Herculean effort for Sega to develop the third-party support any console is going to need to thrive. Also bad. And while Sega is doing okay as a software producer, we’re not seeing any giant-killing going on here – Sega is a moderately successful game developer. Are they going to bring “moderately successful” to bear in creating a strong lineup to push the sales of a console? Because they haven’t yet – ever.

But worst of all, if Sega makes a console, people will buy it. Probably not many people, but enough. People who remember the golden days of the Genesis from their childhoods. People who have some kind of awful nostalgia for Sega and what it could have – should have – been. People who want to be optimistic about a company they always kinda liked (even if Sega didn’t even bother to lube it up before they stuck it in) and think, “I’ll give it a chance – maybe it’ll be great.”

“Maybe” my ass. Sega is still Sega. A new console will fail because Sega doesn’t know what it’s doing when it comes to hardware, and gamers as a community will bear the brunt of that fallout. They’ll shell out money to buy this console and money to buy the games, lose out terribly, and be stuck holding the bag. Again.

I see a new Sega console as being bad for video games as a culture. I’m hoping I won’t have a chance to proclaim, “told you so,” in the near future.

It’s a writing fellowship program in television from ABC. Like all things requiring application, I had to punch out a few essays about me, and what I’m like, and why I’d like to write for TV, and what I bring to writing TV that’s special that no one else can.

I also had to crank out a script – an episode of a TV show that was in production in 2009. It’s an exercise in proving you can operate as a writer on a TV show, matching tone and characters in a world of someone else’s devising. The end result was quite an interesting exercise.

Of course, I knew something about what writing for TV is like, which is why I want to do it. But this is the first time anything I’ve written hasn’t been strictly original, outside of some Final Fantasy VII fan fiction I wrote when I was 12. It’s probably still out there in Internetland someplace.

Anyway, having been kind of out of TV for a few months because of my cross-country moving excursion, I went with “The Office,” seeing as I know it more or less like I invented it.

To make sure I went full nerd, I made the episode about “Battlestar Galactica” in some way as well.

“The Enemy of My Enemy,” my first-ever TV spec, can be read here. If you’re so inclined, feel free to leave comments. Don’t steal it, though – I already I have proof that I’m the author of it. Also, that’s not very nice.

Writing it was definitely an interesting experience. Working with a lot of confines makes things easier in a lot of ways: you don’t have to invent the characters, you just have to try to work with them; you already know what the structure has to be like; and so on. But it can be tough to find your own voice while speaking with someone else’s.

Using “Galactica” was the first idea I had for this script, and it was what allowed me to go off in the direction I did. It also was the first and best way to write “The Office” like me – nerd it up. Even more than usual.

After that, it became easy. Characters start plotting against one another; alliances form; craziness ensues. A lot of that craziness is bubbling viscously under the surface of “The Office” at any given time, which certainly is nice. At the same time, I think I tapped the reservoir pretty effectively.

Overall, I’m very happy with the whole thing. I put together a pretty strong application, I thought, and the script’s not bad, if the author’s opinion counts for anything.

Anyway, it made my girlfriend laugh. That’s always a win.

Yes – I am once again professionally playing video games.

The job actually entails an awkward amount of grunt work, and if ever there was a way to turn video gaming not fun, walkthrough writing would be it.

The specifics are thus: play video game extensively; write down a step-by-step guide to finding, doing, and beating everything in said game.

But it’s been fun, specifically because, this time around, I’m figuring I should make it fun. With such a goal in mind, I’ve started a new Twitter account for live-tweeting game walkthroughs: @hornshawguides. Actually, it’s more like live-playing video games and trying to be funny at the same time. Find it and follow it at http://twitter.com/hornshawguides.

[The title of this blog refers to one such @hornshawguides tweet, which stemmed from “Transformers: War for Cybertron.”]

This new gig is actually something of an offshoot from a previous walkthrough job I picked up last year while living in Chicago. I previously wrote a bunch of walkthroughs for mahalo.com (I prefer not to grace the site with a link and extra traffic), of which this is one, for “Killzone 2” for PS3. I wrote quite a few others, but I’m having trouble tracking them down by searching my own name. Even Googling myself doesn’t come up most of my walkthroughs even 10 pages in.

Anyway, I did a bunch of them. And I’ve gotten pretty decent with it. However, after awhile, I started to feel like mahalo had no problem exploiting its already underpaid freelance gaming staff – especially when they started paying us in mahalo dollars, which are slightly less valuable than Monopoly money.

So I bailed on that gig. I didn’t really need the money. Plus, I’d ended up working a few massive walkthroughs that were not worth the amount of money I got paid to do them. Anyone of the opinion that this sort of thing is not work needs to play to completion a little horror called “Tales of Vesperia.” Then explain how to do everything to someone else, in writing. Hate-hate-hated that game.

A few months later, I was contacted by my former editor at mahalo, Mark, who’d since moved on to another job, and who was looking for writers for a video game site the company he worked for had recently acquired. Already the job was better than the one I’d previously done – they reimburse for the games you have to buy! That was nice. It also made me realize how bad the old system sucked.

In the last month, I’ve blasted through four walkthroughs and I’m starting on my fifth. “Red Dead Redemption” should be on that list but isn’t, for some reason. “Transfomers: War for Cybertron” hasn’t been edited yet, but it’ll be soon.

The return to gaming for pay has me remembering what I liked about gaming for fun. It also has me thinking about the medium a lot more than I have in the last year.

Video games made a huge impact on me when I was young. Adding to the slurry that was my media exposure, they presented another mode through which I was exposed to deep, engaging storylines. My appreciation for video games reaches well beyond the very minimalist, superficial thrill of blasting away at virtual bad guys or opponents from foreign lands – though to say that isn’t satisfying would be a dark and horrible lie.

I’ve always been captivated by games that present moving, involved stories. Really, when I buy a game, so long as it’s competent, I could really care less about the game aspect of it. The game is a method of delivering an engaging narrative: that’s what I’m shopping for.

And so when I recently read the Roger Ebert column with the bold and sweeping claim that “Video games can never be art,” I took issue with it, just as many nerds all over the Internet (and even in print) have.

But still, this needs addressing.

First off, Ebert loves this stance. His claim: that he’s never seen a game that interested him enough to make him play one. That’s right – he’s never played one. He’s only watched others.

I recently heard that described as “the equivalent of watching a movie without the picture.”

And that’s exactly right. Ebert’s claim that a game can never be art relies on his extremely dated conception of the word “game.” He asks in the article, can you win it? Are you scored? He likens the idea of video games being art to a single game of chess, a chess match, being art. It isn’t. A player’s choices can be elegant, his method of play beautiful, but it isn’t art.

Okay, granted. However, a video game is more than just the conception of points and winning and achieving goals.

Instead, the medium is something much more akin to an interactive film experience, but it’s even much more than that. Because where film and literature are passive, video gaming is becoming much more conversational. The art is emerging as the people making games realize that their medium is not about dictating what happens in the story, but by allowing the player to interact with the vision of the creators to produce something new.

I recently read an interesting blog about the game “Alan Wake,” which is a narrative horror adventure-type vehicle. The article discusses how we’re on the cusp of the video game medium really becoming art because the creators of games are discovering what the language of games is. “Wake” puts you into the role of the protagonist, but is created in such a way that you are not him. You animate him, but you are also separate people – a narrative convention that games struggle with. Up to now, games have been weak in the sense that they invite you to place yourself into the role of protagonist, but then fashion stories about characters that you’re supposed to be, independent of your input. You act out the story in the game, but that’s about it.

“Wake” creates a relationship with the narrative, the game and the player that’s such that you’re driving the story, but you’re also interacting with it. It’s set and yet it is fluid. This is one of the few games that has created a situation in which playing the game creates an experience within the narrative. You couldn’t get the story experience of “Wake” by watching it or reading it only. Interaction within the game’s construct is key to understanding what it means to convey.

The point is, there are games out there that are more than what Ebert claims they are. I hate to play this card, but I whole-heartedly believe – he’s too old to get it. His closed-mindedness defeats the medium before he can experience it, and that bias means he would never get the real experience anyway.

Yes, not all games are great. That’s clearly true. It’s also true of everything. And gaming is a child-aged medium, struggling with its own growing pains and sense of identity.

But it’s getting there. The next decade will be a very exciting time to own an Xbox or a Playstation or a Nintendo. Just as television has really amped up in the last fifteen years, video games will be pushing the envelope in a real, impossible to ignore sense.

/end rant

Anyway. I missed the culture and I’m glad to be back. So no disparaging an entire mode of expression, Pulitzer Prize Winner Roger Ebert.

I know I owe a real post, but in the meantime, I need to make this available to everyone immediately. It’s a set of videos good buddy Jason Wong just made available on his YouTube channel.

All three videos were content created by my high school friends (read: my oldest and most hilarious friends) and me sometime in 2006. We posted them on the humor website I ran with their amazing help, shadypenguin.com. The site is now defunct, but the videos survive.

When Clinton Wong instant messaged me with the link to the videos, it was like being belted in the head with the wooden samurai sword of nostalgia. The weirdo crap we used to get up to, man.

Two of the videos were trailers we made for “Worms,” a parody horror movie the concept for which we invented in high school, sitting around in art club, trying to stave off going home as well as entertain ourselves. Nick Hurwitch, who more than anyone else is integral to these three films (his dad provided the camera, which he’s behind for the two trailers), would eventually go on to write the script for a film class. Eventually we’ll shoot it in a back yard, or better yet, that little Novi park where you can see the playground through the trees.

The third video is a mock-commercial we created for a section of shadypengiun.com that served as the fake website for the fake special interest group, the National Whiners and Complainers Association of America. The NWCAA later would back its own candidate for the 2006 presidential election – Trained Chimp, a chimpanzee in a suit whose campaign platform outshone both parties’, and who would have been a serious write-in contender if Nader hadn’t siphoned off all his votes.

I’m pretty excited about re-discovering these. Shadypenguin was an awesome time in my life and it’s nice to remember when we used to have summers to screw around and throw worms at each other.

Watch the last video here.

The sequel to last year’s arthritis-inducing “Assassin’s Creed” carries many of the same flaws as its predecessor. It contains good voice acting but a needlessly dense and insane story, more repetitive gameplay that lacks creativity, and a control scheme that feels like it belongs back in the late 1990s alongside such nearly unplayable horrors as “Resident Evil.” For all that was improved between the first and second games, so much is left to irritate a player that the fact this game isn’t universally panned is astounding.

In fact, “Assassin’s Creed 2” is a critical darling – despite being really, really boring. The premise and master idea is that the “Assassin’s Creed” franchise would be a darker “Prince of Persia” – rather than climbing through ancient ruins gathering treasure, players would take part in an assassin’s quest to remove evil leaders from cities during the Crusades (in the first game) and the Italian Renaissance (in the second). As the assassin, one could scale buildings, sneak through crowds, get in close and take out enemies with a mixture of stealth, acrobatics, weapons and planning.

The execution is far from being as elegant as the description.

First, the actual assassinations never, ever, go well, because “Assassin’s Creed 2” is littered with minor irritations that amount to blown cover. Walk just a little too fast, stray just a little too far, press the control stick just a little off to one side, and not only is the moment lost, but often the result is a start-over situation, or worse, a tedious battle with a handful of armored guards. And those guards have some ridiculous eagle eyes when it comes down to the actual assassinations – so rather than feel like a sneaky badass, able to attack a situation by studying the best way to approach and eventually murder your target, much more often the player finds herself tearing through the streets after an escaping enemy, eventually chasing him down, pouncing, and then turning to deal with the fallout.

This is the exact opposite experience the game should be giving you. Rather than everything going south at the critical moment because of something dumb like bumping into a random person in a crowd, “Assassin’s Creed 2” should be striving to put you in a position to hone your skills and then use them to accomplish a goal. Learning to play the game well, and then applying that knowledge and skill, is what makes a game fun.

But at no time does “AC2” ever employ skill of any kind.

The problem comes down to a ludicrously poor conception of how to control your character. Walk with the control stick; run by holding down the right trigger and using the control stick; sprint by holding down the A button, the right trigger and the control stick. I’ve heard this configuration referred to as the “Run Claw,” and that’s a perfect description: You spend virtually the entire game in a sprint, squeezing the controller tightly, making your hand sore just to get around. And the game’s sprawling Renaissance cities are just huge, which means just running from place to place is what takes up the bulk of your time and really crafts this whole experience.

And getting around is just not that much fun.

Climbing buildings should be the “Assassin Creed’s 2” bread and butter. Getting up the buildings should be fun, traversing the city from the rooftops and descending on enemies should be fun, and doing so should be challenging but rewarding.

Skip all that in “AC2” because the Run Claw could also be called the Climb Claw – the control is the same to scale buildings. But you don’t actually do anything other than hold the buttons down, occasionally guiding your assassin to a certain hand or foothold so he can get to the top.

Once atop a structure, you can run around it and jump to other structures – by using the same controls. Not by pressing buttons, but by continuing to hold the run buttons down and steering. The character makes the jump you intend automatically, most of the time, requiring absolutely no actual “play” from the person behind the controller.

This is also a major source of frustration, because fairly often, you’ll miss what you’re steering at slightly, or you’ll misjudge the configuration of a building, and the assassin will just hurl himself off a rooftop to fall to his death or massive injury. This happens 900-times as often when “AC2” decides to “help” with the player-controlled camera during certain climbing puzzles in order to show you the path – but without locking the camera in place, and usually moving it while the player is in the middle of a motion, which results in failure after failure after failure.

“AC2” loves to emphasize quickly getting in and getting out of an assassination, and often leaves the player in a “quick, escape!” situation. It loves to require speed and precision in leaping and running, without providing the controls to accomplish either. Whenever the player needs to abscond in a hurry, he inevitably ends up falling, off-course, or being killed and forced to repeat the instance. Or, of course, fighting his way out of the situation.

Combat is just as unsatisfying as climbing and jumping. Swordplay, the form fighting usually takes, is accomplished chiefly by jamming on the X button over and over again. The enemy will sometimes swing in return, causing the player to need to hold down the right trigger to block. The player can then time a press of the X or B buttons while holding the trigger to either make a counter attack or disarm the enemy.

Against lesser enemies, a counter attack will get a kill. Against tougher ones, a disarm will almost always work. Even in battles with a large group of enemies, the combat is never tense or difficult – only frustrating. There’s rarely a moment where you’ll actually lose a fight, even if you get pummeled. Eventually you’ll clear out the enemies simply by smashing the X button or using the appropriate counter.

“AC2” includes some decent innovations to its predecessor. There are more weapons available, an entire economy system that allows the purchase of clothing, accessories and armor, and collectables that offer interesting story elements. The assassin’s base of operations can be upgraded, which itself provides income for the player to use to get more weapons, which is also a nice touch.

Despite this, the economy portion of the game has little discernable impact on the actual game. Weapons are supposedly stronger, armor supposedly heartier, but the only real impact of buying new things are that additional armor gives you more health and additional accessories allow you to carry more expendable items. Even these money centric portions of the game, while adding an additional layer to an otherwise-repetitive experience, aren’t really necessary. Invest your money in the right places, and it quickly becomes so abundant as to be a moot point. You’ll rarely need to complete side missions to raise capital, and really, you can blow right past the racing, fighting and assassination side missions for most of the game without any repercussions whatsoever – and they add nothing to the experience except to break up the repetition.

And then there’s the story. A game can be pretty bad if the story is compelling, because despite that playing it feels like running a cheese grater over your arm, you are rewarded for your toils with something interesting and you feel like you earned a reward. Unfortunately, like “Assassin’s Creed” before it, “AC2” makes sure not only to give almost no useful information to advance its overall good-versus-evil everything-you-know-is-a-lie story, but it grows its psychotically huge evil conspiracy to the point of being idiotic, implying that just about every single historical figure ever was influenced by the game’s special artifacts, or was a member of the evil faction or the good faction. Marco Polo and Dante Alighieri were assassins, and Robert Oppenheimer and Adolph Hitler were Knights Templar. Right.

I can’t fathom why so many people give this game such a positive reception, when it really fails to do what has been established as fully possible by something like 10 or 15 previous adventure games, not the least of which are every single title of the “Prince of Persia” series. And those are made by the same company as  this – so how is it that “PoP” can be exciting and challenging, even at its worst, and yet “AC2” is often more mundane, frustrating and painful than filling out a tax return while being stabbed in the tongue?

The first “Assassin’s Creed,” while awful in almost all the same ways, was at least an unknown quantity and therefore kept the player interested, and the assassination gameplay was a little bit innovative and interesting at first. “AC2” brings nothing at all to the table, so much so that it feels like a punishment – being forced to play the same bad game twice.

A 100-page script isn’t really that bad, at least when you’re writing a screen play, like I did. Formatting helps a lot – there’s a ton of white space, character dialogue eats up pages and pages, and you get to make line breaks for different actions and things all the time. All in all, it could be worse (see Game on, novel writing, an entry about Script Frenzy’s sister event, National Novel Writing Month [which I subsequently failed]).

My 100 pages is finished. The untitled script is about Marney Friday, an intrepid high school journalist, who sets about chronicling the last days of her father’s life after he suffers a heart attack. Marney travels around her town, interviewing the people who interacted with Hal Friday before his death, and learns things about the man – and herself – she didn’t expect.

Problem is, 100 pages puts my script right around the end of the second act. In a three-act structure, this is, as we writers say, bad.

There are probably an additional 30 or 40 pages I need to write before I can set about revising this first horrible draft. I say “horrible” because, as far as my writing goes, this is one of the worse things I’ve ever put down. It’s not exactly a bad idea, and the writing’s not god-awful. But a good way to describe the project in general is, perhaps, “malformed.” Undercooked. Still incubating.

Ms. Friday needs some more time in the test tube before I unleash her upon the world. As such, I’ve given almost no part of the script to almost anyone, when usually I’m sending at least bits and pieces off to several of my writer friends for feedback. (However, you can read the unedited first 10 pages here.)

I don’t want feedback this time, because I know what it’ll be.

Meantime, one of the larger effects of Script Frenzy seems to have been that focusing for that long on one thing has got my brain swimming around in ideas for other things. I’ve hopefully got more than one zombie story for Wrath of the Damned forthcoming, as well as some other scripts I want to work on.

The only problem with that is firing up the old hyperdrive motivator in my head to get me working on some of them.

Or finishing that script.

Or revising it.

At least I’m not writing this in front of the TV. That’s one step in the direction of creativity.

Standing in the living room of a suspect’s apartment, you hear a key rattle in the lock. Your partner, a local PD detective named Blake, doesn’t catch the sound – until the man is in the room with you both.

Your search of the home, strewn with about 2,000 crucifixes among lit candles and pictures from Catholic scripture, is an illegal one. You know you shouldn’t be here, but the suspect is clearly disturbed and, after all, a child’s life hangs in the balance. You have only a few more days to find that child alive. So you and Blake question the suspect.

As you’re speaking to him, you back into a table, knocking over a candle. You turn, picking it up and replacing it, and spin back around – to find Blake standing at the wrong end of a gun the suspect had been hiding. FBI training kicks in and you pull your own weapon, training it on the suspect.

“He is the Antichrist,” the suspect drones as he gestures with the gun at Blake, his voice full of fear, full of despair. Through your head buzz a thousand things you could say and do – and as Blake keeps shouting, you could shoot the man.

The suspect makes a move and you twitch. You fire. He falls.

You know you could have talked him down, but it’s too late. The suspect is dead – if he was the killer you’re after, what knowledge he had just died with him. And your decision, your action, you have to live with.

It’s a nearly unprecedented position for a video game to take: there are no game-over screens, no failing and reloading to try again, no second chances. In Heavy Rain, as in no other game I’ve ever played, you live with the consequences of your actions.

Even the main characters – there are four of them, whose stories in their search for a serial child murdered known as the Origami Killer are told in alternating chapters – are susceptible to dying and staying dead in Heavy Rain. You can play the game one week with one outcome, another week with very different one, depending on your choices, your successes, and your failures.

The failures are the especially intriguing parts. The game doesn’t have many dedicated buttons – you walk using R2 on the Playstation 3 controller, steer with the left analog stick, but that’s about it. Everything that happens, instead, is context-sensitive. Sometimes the game will prompt you with instructions about how to open a cabinet or look out a window; other times it will tell you which buttons to press in sequence to deflect a punch or climb a hill.

Heavy Rain is all story, so instead of guiding your character through level after level, pressing buttons to instruct the character, the game instead is guiding you through its story. You get to guide your character in walking around, but more often, your controls are meant to simulate the action you initiated your character into taking. For example, when playing a chapter in which you’re driving a car, the story dictates where the car goes. You hit the buttons it tells you, simulating concentration, precise motions, and the intensity of the situation.

Fail during one of these sequences – they are many – and the story proceeds differently than if you had succeeded. In the car-driving scenario, for example, missing too many button combinations ends with a flaming wreck. At another point, during a shootout, screwing up too often gets your character injured and forces him to kick down a door and escape into the night, rather than take the rampage to its bloody conclusion.

Playing Heavy Rain is much more like watching a movie, in which your decisions, unlike almost any game I’ve heretofore encountered, impact the way the story plays out. But what the game really excels at delivering is a level of intensity that’s even more exciting than the choice aspects of a game. Fail any of the difficult, concentration-heavy and awesome-to-watch deadly action sequences and your character could be killed, and stay killed, for the rest of the story. Nothing builds tension like consequences that can’t be taken back.

And because the emphasis is so heavily on story, the one here is pretty great. Unlike Indigo Prophecy, developer Quantic Dream’s Xbox title from a few years ago that’s in the same vein and with a similar delivery to Rain, this game never takes too many twists into crazyville. The story makes sense, the twists make sense, and it’s down-to-earth enough to engage you fully from front to back. As some reviews I’ve read have pointed out, Rain is written to the caliber of many Hollywood movies – and it would do pretty well as one, more than likely.

There are a few issues with the writing. Quantic Dream is a French company. The voice actors are mostly European. As an American gamer, you’ll feel it immediately in the dialogue and delivery. When one character pats herself on the back by uttering the phrase, “You go girl,” it’s not because the game is 10 years old – it’s because French culture isn’t quite in sync with American culture.

Even then, these are extremely minor squabbles in the face of what is among my top five gaming experiences of the last 20 years. Rain is so engaging, so intense, so entertaining and so well-made that even goofy lost-in-translation moments or a Resident Evil 2-esque crappy movement control system detract only in the smallest possible way. The fact that the game is a little short – I finished it pretty much in a pair of marathon sessions because I couldn’t put it down, so maybe around eight or 10 hours – also is easy to overlook, partially because Quantic Dream promises downloadable content (one new chapter’s already available), and partially because it’s clear that replaying the game will be very satisfying.

I loved this game. This is the first title I’ve picked up that truly made me happy to own a PS3, and one of a very small number of games that I started playing again almost as soon as I’d finished.