Once Sega left the console market, it’s like they forgot how to make Sonic the Hedgehog games. The once-mighty Mario rival and system seller became a joke, with each subsequent game further sullying your childhood. Fans repeatedly begged Sega for one thing: a hedgehog with guns! No? Maybe hoverboard racing? Wait, I know, a werewolf!

So imagine my shock when Sega announced that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 will be a 2D sidescroller that picks up after Sonic & Knuckles with only Sonic as a playable character. Sorry all you Cream the Rabbit fans. Interestingly, it will be episodic and available for download this summer on PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.

Considering the only decent Sonic games to emerge in a decade were the 2D sidescrolling ones on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, this seems like a very promising first step for the ailing mascot’s big comeback.

“It was a bigger iPod Touch,” unimpressed Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said of the iPad that Apple unveiled on Wednesday.

Yeah, cause the DSi XL isn’t just a bigger DSi. Which isn’t just a DS Lite with a camera. Which isn’t just a DS that’s not hideous. And the Wii certainly isn’t a Gamecube with a motion controller. And let’s not even get started on Gameboy ….

… Well, I guess we know what movie is following in the footsteps of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li as top contender for this year’s Moldy Award.

Paranormal Activity, the allegedly pee-your-pants-scary horror movie that had audiences across America allegedly screaming, could use a little more para: Most of the movie is utterly normal activity. A large portion of it is a static shot of couple Katie and Micah’s bed as they sleep, and absolutely nothing happens for like 70 minutes.

Sure, I get that you have to build suspense, but seriously, a five-minute sequence that results in some super spooky noises? That’s not scary, it’s boring. The whole cinema scarité was done before to better effect a decade ago in The Blair Witch Project, which at least had novelty on its side. But Paranormal Activity is such a blatant rip-off, they might as well have called it Blair Witch 2. But I guess that title was already taken.

For a movie built entirely on suspense, the payoff has to be pretty spectacular to be rewarding, and Paranormal Activity simply can’t deliver. We get no answers, no resolution and no scares. Sounds pretty normal to me.

Microsoft announced at CES last week that it’s bringing old school back. Game Room will launch in the spring with 30 arcade and classic games such as Centipede, Asteroids and Tempest, and hundreds more to follow. It’s like a giant Xbox Live Arcade, only that name was already taken.

It seems to be a way to differentiate arcade oldies that comprised a large portion of early XBLA releases from the bigger games like Shadow Complex and Castle Crashers that have taken off since the 360’s launch. And while none of the announced games does much for me, call me when the 90s arcade classics start showing up, and I’ll happily plunk down some virtual quarters.

Dark Void has been one to watch for awhile now. An original IP from Airtight Games with strong support from Capcom, it features aerial combat and vertical cover that looked fresh and engaging. Too bad the demo proves otherwise.

My face fell as I started playing this previously anticipated title. Sure, the flying feels pretty good once you realize the right stick makes you roll and you stop trying to control it like an FPS, but the aerial combat feels a bit clunky. I was dogfighting some UFOs and found it difficult to keep track of them. And once I found them and got a button prompt to board the vehicle, all you do is avoid some shots and hammer on the B button to oust the driver. It’s like a QTE but even more boring!

The ground combat proved even more lackluster, with dumb enemy AI and imprecise shooting. Top it off with a questionable art style and noticeably low framerate (which could be just the demo), and you know what disappointment tastes like. Dark Void just became one to avoid.

So Avatar sucked, right? You knew the writing was going to be simple and blunt and derivative. You knew the message would be, like, “greed is bad” or “go outside” or “share your toys.” But the 3D and the CG were supposed to punch your brain so hard that you wouldn’t notice, that you’d be too busy trying to look around some scenery to catch a peek of Na’vi boob or something that you wouldn’t listen to the sludge coming out of the speakers.

But it didn’t look that good, did it? After I got used to the 3D and settled in to a minor, pulsing headache, it looked pretty much like any other big-budget, grand-scope flick. There were several moments where I took my glasses off, saw that telltale double image and was like, “that’s not 3D is it [glasses back on] oh I guess it is well hmm.” The first and last thing I was really impressed by was that little glob of floating stuff at the very beginning.

I do think the CG savages Na’vi did a good job of taking a spirit walk over the ancestral bridge spanning the uncanny valley, but then again they were blue and rangy and kinda cat-like. My friend Ross has almost the exact opposite opinion—about the 3D and the uncanny valley stuff—so I guess, you know, a nation divided.

What’s hilarious is that the clumsy Dances-With-Wolves-meets-Ferngully story is apparently angerfying the portion of the U.S. that thinks if you’re not actively pouring molten plastic into a bedrock aquifer you must be an anti-American hippie terror-fag. Leftist Hollywood pushing its agenda while making our kids buy its action figures! Truly the final outrage.

… and to all a Christmas Nights!

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Colorado and know that this scenario is completely impossible, but this looks chillingly horrible. Like, my face is frozen in shock at how awful it is. Its horribleness sends shivers down my spine. My brain is numb from … well, you get the point.

Amanita Design, the Czech collective behind biomechanical point-and-clicks such as Samorost and Machinarium, are offering a bundle of their stuff at a steep discount, just in time for me to buy it and give it to … me.

For $10, you get downloads of Samorost 2, Machinarium and the soundtracks from both. The games will run on whatever OS you have on your computron, thanks to that otherwise vile runtime known as Flash.

There are other things you could spend $10 on, of course. Like PSP Mini Tetris. That’s totally worth the money.