Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. I’m sure there’s no real conspiracy here, but I’d just like to point out that Robo’s theme and Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” sure seem to be very musically similar. The composer, Yasunori Mitsuda, had never even heard of Rick Astley before asked about it and I’m inclined to believe him. Anyway, unfortunately embedding was disabled on this video (and all variants I found) so you’ll have to click the link to get there. ...

There was a day, back in my youth, when I abhorred first-person shooters. Sure, I played some Goldeneye here and there with my friends, but I was never a Doom, Unreal, or Halo fan. Then something spectacular happened: a company that I’d heard of, but avoided their games because of my fps ambivalence released one of the greatest games I’d ever played: Half-Life 2. It revolutionized my understanding of FPS games and instilled in me blind trust in Valve. I loved Counterstrike: Source, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it, but I’m still very excited for Valkyria Chronicles. I promised my family that I wouldn’t make any purchases until after Christmas (not that I should be making any at this point), so I have to wait until at least then to hope that I get what promises to be a sweet looking video game. Enjoy the video review. We shall see if it’s as good as it’s claimed to be by people like Shane Betenhousen and the PA guys. ...

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Whoa! Another WMQ! With a sound defeat of FSU, Florida has solidified its ability to compete for the BCS championship game, so long as they defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide this Saturday, that is. ...

So I’m a little obsessed with the Zombpocalypse at this point in time. Between my recent obsession with the amazingly good Left 4 Dead and my strong desires to read books like World War Z, I found myself purchasing a comic book that I heard recommended by Shawn Elliot on the now defunct GFW Radio (now known as LAN Party). The Walking Dead was mentioned by the podcast members to be a mature and complex view of the end of the world following the Zombie Apocalypse. It’s not your typical short, two-hour movie that ends, it is, as Robert Kirkman likes to make a point of stating (it appears on the back of each book), a continuing story of survival horror. His afterward on the first volume speaks about his dissatisfaction with the ending of all those movies. About his disappointment with the lack of a critical look at how society would proceed following the end of the world. ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. Saw this on Kotaku, thought it was kind of funny. Enjoy:

The game they were mentioning in the podcast was Gears of War 2. I agree with that being kind of cool, but at the same time, we were all trying to really push ourselves and play the most challenging version of the game. Even if Simon had more experience, I still don’t think we would have been able to make it through the whole campaign on expert, it’s just too hard. ...

It’s the second day of the zombie apocalypse. No zombie can stand against Chicago Ted. How long does it take to turn after infection? Two weeks? Two days? 2.5 hours!? That’s some of the flavor text littered around the safe rooms in L4D to add to the atmosphere and, despite never seeing another human being in the game, they effectively make us all feel like the world is actually lived in. Like there just might be other immune survivors roaming around, seeking help too. ...

Hey Dan, did you stay up until around 0300 today playing Left 4 Dead after it went live last night? Uh…yeah… But oh man, where to begin? Valve does not rush a product. They don’t ever release a game that hasn’t been thoroughly playtested and optimized for consumption. It’s why the L4D demo is so brilliant, it allowed them to take a look at the last few things that needed to be tweaked and then release accordingly. Take the difficulty level. There was quite a bit of outcry about the difficulty of the computer version being far too easy compared to the console version. In fact, I’d been refusing to play any levels that were lower than the highest difficulty, Expert. Let’s just say that last night we were stuck on the second level for somewhere around two hours, endlessly being mauled by the zombie hordes. ...