Black Ops 2, Yer Out.  Dishonored, Yer In! Far Cry 3, Yer On Deck – I’m starting the new year off right, by walking off of the field of combat (populated mostly by petulant children & quasi-adults with some serious anger issues) to pursue a solo mission of revenge in the city of Dunwall. Still, I spent a solid 96.5 hours in BLOPS multiplayer, killing my way through 8,289 of you while mastering both the Skorpion EVO submachine gun, the FAL OSW assault rifle & getting pretty damn good with throwing cooked grenades at wads of defenders in Headquarters.  See you punks next November for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 4: Future Warfare 1: Past Tense.

Telltale Game’s The Walking Dead is a masterpiece – I know that Cloud & Aeris are the gold standard for heartbreaking video game character interaction, but I now submit that you substitute Lee & Clementine in their place. This game is the reason to get an iOS device (if you don’t have a 360 or PS3 to play it on). Wonderful voice acting, top notch animation, extraordinarily compelling gameplay. A must play (props to both viciouspjurahead & The Pwn Ranger for insisting I pick this up.)

 Homeland, Season 2 – Binge watched the entire season over the New Year’s break. Three key take aways: 1) Mandy Patinkin’s beard should get the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor. 2) Damian Lewis’ mouth is too small for his face/head & it freaks me out. 3) Morgan Saylor is most likely a lovely human being but her Dana Brody is one of the worst characters on television. Let’s all pray for some kind of inter-show/inter-network wormhole wherein Dana meets The Walking Dead’s Carl, they date and one night they are exploded via a carbomb full of zombies.

Champion! Magazine – Woe is me & woe is you; what looked like the successful heir to Wizard is no more. I thought it was really going to make it to; bunch of ex-Wizard staffers, backed financially by billionaire Sam Simon (most likely procured via Ralph Cirella), gorgeous tablet based interface, affordable, plus funny & charming in the way that old schoool Wizard was. But after almost six months with no new issues, I took to Twitter to get an answer from @TheChampionFeed, who then directed me to customer service who let me in on the bad news.  They say “hiatus”, I say “What startup ever comes back from hiatus”? Up side: refund. Down side: I’d rather have a fun, clever magazine about comics.