What a weekend! This was really the kick start of the holidays for me. Vancouver was blanketed by snow--I know, BIG DEAL(!!) if you're from anywhere else in Canada or big chunks of the US, but for us folks in the warmest and wettest urban center in the country, getting several inches of snowfall this close to Christmas IS a big deal, trust me! My wife and I also attended our first Christmas get together with friends and that was a great party with a collection of people ranging in ages from 8 months to parents in their 70's. (The Chief and Athena were at the party too, so that was pretty sweet for this BSG fanboy!) And then last night, after a solid snowed-in day of gaming...I've gone back to the final stages of God of War II to finally complete the game--don't ask! I get busy with new stuff to review every week and it's taken me forever but man, I love God of War!!! Anyone that is fully enamored with the new Prince of Persia and its simplified design, should really take another look...

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E3 2008 was without a doubt the most boring expo the industry had ever seen, and was so bad it even cast doubt on the future of the conference. Gone were the days of booth babes and excitement, traded for boring hallways and lackluster announcements. Honorable mention goes to Nintendo for what could easily be the most ridiculous press conference in the history of press conferences, overly-ecstatic air-drumming included. The ESA promises E3 2009 to be a return to the glitz and glamour of years past.

The popularity of downloadable content and digital delivery skyrocketed in 2008, seeing more and more people make the move away from hard copies of their games, music, and movies. User-generated content also grew in popularity, games like LittleBigPlanet are only the beginning, folks.

Unfortunately, economic conditions in 2008 saw the closure and decline of many great game studios. Flagship Studios was the first on the chopping block, closing their doors after the abysmal failure of Hellgate: London. Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down Ensemble Studios after the completion of their latest project, Halo Wars for the 360. And what about Midway? The Mortal Kombat publisher couldn’t catch a break in 2008, with dropping stock prices and lay-offs, the future of Midway doesn’t look good. Time Splitters developer Free Radical even saw employees showing up to work with locks on the doors. The biggest of all though, EA has started laying off more than a thousand people in 2008, and closed the doors of several studios, including EA Chicago and the Vancouver-based Black Box Games. Another Vancouver-based developer, Radical Entertainment, also saw massive lay-offs. Let’s hope they have a better year in 2009.

In more exciting hand-held news, Apple released the iPhone 3G, marking the computer giant’s entry into the gaming market. The sale of iPhone games has been a tremendous success, but it wasn’t all roses for the iPhone when Google released the new T-Mobile G1. Running on the new Android mobile operating system, the device has managed to take some of the steam away from Apple’s iPhone juggernaut, but we’re still looking forward to some of titles the iPhone has coming this year, including Metal Gear Solid Touch.

We all knew the sequel to Batman Begins was going to be good, but no one thought it would be that good. The Dark Knight was released to rave reviews and killed the competition at the box office, quickly becoming the second highest grossing film of all time. No one, least of all those involved in the making of the film, could have predicted the mad success. As it stands, director Christopher Nolan is exploring the possibility of making a follow up, but nothing has been decided yet.