I’ve been playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I wrote a story about the multiplayer. I keep forgetting single player’s even there. I default to the Engineer kit because I like the M2 Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. I can’t hit helicopters with it yet, but it has a larger blast radius and less regard for gravity than other launchers. This makes it good against infantry and lightly armored vehicles. Players say Carl is overpowered. I think they’re forgetting the 40mm grenade launcher, the M60 light machine gun, and the mortar strike. Rock, paper, shrapnel — every kit has its gimmick.

I only wish DICE would fix auto-team balance. Many games are ruined when a team loses and half its players quit, leaving the remainder overwhelmed. And then the server’s dead. It happens every day and it’s terrible. But I love this game.

I played Final Fantasy 13 much more in March’s first half than I did in its second. My schedule has been disrupted both by Flipsy and my growing love of Bad Company 2, and I prefer to only play RPGs when I know I have at least two hours before I plan to do something else. I plan things that way.

But I like this game. I like Sazh and the baby chocobo he keeps in his ‘fro. I like that new mechanics were introduced across multiple sub-plots until 25 hours into the game. I’m 32 hours in now, on Chapter 11, and I still don’t feel I’ve mastered the combat system. I haven’t read any reviews yet; do other people like it too? I think Final Fantasy 13′s design was a bold thing. I only wish either that preemptive strikes were easier to achieve, or that they felt less essential.

I’ve been playing King’s Bounty: Armored Princess as well. It’s a more convenient game than its predecessor now that it has fast travel and few quests require turn-ins to complete. It’s also a more balanced game now that Rage is useful from the start and it’s harder to specialize in multiple skill trees. Class choice has come to matter. I may replay it if a third game isn’t out by the time I finish a first time.

I’m not as scatterbrained as I was in February. Three games has been enough. A Dragon Age expansion came out and I barely noticed. I’ve heard it’s good; I’m waiting for it to go on sale. Sam & Max Season 3 (I’m calling it that even though TellTale isn’t) and the Skate 3 demo release on April 15. I’ll probably work on finishing Final Fantasy 13 by then.

And then Kozlov slipped.

The snow hadn’t settled around our sniper before he had seized the enemy’s attention. He hastened to find cover, but found only bushes and the trees that, when on the ridge, gave him adequate protection from enemy eyes, but offered none from enemy fire. The three of us still on the ridge watched in still silence as gunfire caused the trees, and Kozlov along with them, to fall. We were exposed.

The explosives came next, flung, propelled, and dropped from the sky. Popov, our medic, jumped right into the shit, hurrying to resuscitate the unsure-footed Kozolv. But he didn’t see the grenade in his way — the shit overcame him.

Sokolov and I were left on the ridge. I struggled with my fight or flight instinct as he mastered his, and flew. Torn, but thinking it the nobler thing to do, I dove into the white hell below. My AUG made two short bursts and let go of six rounds which made their new home in an enemy sniper. I searched our departed medic’s gear and scrambled to ready the defibrillator as I, like Kozlov, Popov, and so many trees before me, fell.

But death did not take me. Instead I lay in the war-stained powder contemplating our missteps. We had all made some. And then my vision went white; when it cleared I saw Sokolov, who held two whining paddles, moving for cover behind a rock. I joined him there and dropped a box of ammo at our feet. Moments later, the instigative Kozlov and Popov redeployed next to us, and we partook of medical supplies. All without a word, we prepared to have another go.

December is a month of uncertainty; it’s where publishers tend to bury games in which they have little confidence. But it’s also a month of potential, as last year it gave us Persona 4. Moreover, it’s the month of digital distribution sales; Steam’s annual store-wide sale always does well to pad my backlog, and this year I’m hoping Impulse and GamersGate will give them some competition.

Although the main quest was a load of fun, the most fun I had was with the optional content. Messing up raider camps, spelunking in irradiated animal dens, and meeting wasteland eccentrics are great pastimes. Moira’s Wasteland Survival Guide quest alone took me a few days to complete because I kept getting sidetracked. My favorite bit of side content, though, is Dogmeat. If you follow me on Twitter, you may be aware that my dog of six years, Saya, died over the summer. This happened not long after I started playing Fallout 3, and just a few days before I found Dogmeat; I’d completely forgotten he was hiding somewhere in the game. Entering a random junkyard and seeing him run up to me so suddenly was, to say the least, difficult to deal with. Matters were made worse when I realized that Dogmeat can die. This was unacceptable. I turned to the mod community to see if there was anything I could get to protect my dog, and what I found at Planet Fallout was a mod called Dogmeat Leather Armor. Besides giving him a custom leather armor graphic, this mod flags Dogmeat as an essential NPC so that if he runs out of health in combat, he doesn’t die, he merely falls unconscious until the danger is gone. It’s technically a cheat mod, but not much of one. I feel no shame about it either way; it’s better than sending him back to Vault 101.

As I said, I haven’t touched any of the five add-ons, so I may not be out of things to say about Fallout 3 just yet, but there you have it. I’ll leave you with a video of The Nuka-Cola Tour that I recorded a few weeks ago in Girdershade.

Buzz Out Loud is a daily technology news podcast from CNet.com. Each episode is thirty to forty minutes long and is hosted by Tom Merritt with two or more others from a rotating group of regular guests. BOL has become a part of my routine; I listen to or watch the show with my morning coffee while I scroll through my RSS reader. As such, it’s my first stop for tech news and opinion. I still subscribe to the news feeds of sites like Engadget and Arstechnica, but much of what’s discussed on BOL every day is picked from their headlines anyway; it’s like a tech news “best of.”

Out of The Game is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by any combination of the gaming media lumaries Jeff Green, Shawn Elliott, Robert Ashley, N’Gai Croal, and Luke Smith. I enjoy the perspective that each of these individuals bring to their discussions, as they’re all former games writers. Shawn works at 2K Boston, Jeff at EA LA, and Luke at Bungie. Robert pursued a music career and N’Gai is a creative consultant to game developers. The crew’s discussions are born from the simple prompt, “what have you been consuming?” This can be the consumption of any form of media: books, film, television, music, comics, and of course video games.

The Bombcast is the official podcast of GiantBomb.com, a source of video game news and reviews and home to a massive user-created database. Episodes are hosted by Ryan Davis and he is joined by Jeff Gerstmann, Brad Shoemaker and Vinny Caravella. The Bombcast follows a fairly standard video game podcast format beginning with a “what are you playing?” segment, followed by news, and ending with listener e-mail. What makes this show remarkable and my favorite video games podcast are its personalities. Ryan, Jeff, Brad and Vinny worked together at GameSpot for several years before starting their own website in 2008. As such, they play off of each other well in conversation which provides for a very entertaining two hours every Tuesday.

Keith and The Girl is a free, daily, unscripted comedy podcast that has been in production since March of 2005. Comedian Keith Malley and his girlfriend, singer Chemda Khalili, host the show from their home in Queens, New York, where they and their guests begin every show with a prayer and discuss current events, comedy, relationships, the KaTG community, and the inevitable robot uprising; gossip is every Thursday with regular guest Patrice. The show’s guest-list includes such comedians as Jesse Joyce, Greg Giraldo, Christian Finnegan, Joe DeRosa, Marc Maron, and Doug Stanhope. Keith and The Girl has affected my life in a way no other single brand of media ever has. Besides making me laugh daily, once in a while, shit gets real. For example, when Chemda confronts Keith about his alcoholism (#39, #992), or the time Chemda’s brother was on the show talking about his suicide attempt (#649). Much like Buzz Out Loud, it is a part of my daily routine. I listen every night just before going to bed; it’s like a punctuation mark for my day.