My goodness. I just finished watching some gameplay footage of Fallout 3 over at Kotaku and it blew my mind. I can tell that it will be pure fallout and it molds beautifully with Oblivion's obvious influence on it (even kept one of the same voice actors, I'm sure more have carried over though). This game should live up to your expectations as the gameplay videos that I saw just surpassed all of mine. Okay so there is this one town called megaton which is built around a bomb that never went off. When you hear this you think "hmm... It would be neat to see that go off" and that is exactly the quest that they showcased in this 5 part demo. At the end, needless to say, the explosion was quite expansive. No more Megaton, 'nuff said. What the heck! You can completely obliterate a small town if you choose in this game? All those people, and their families, just gone. I thought it was neat how the quest-givers voice was the same as that guy from the black hand. Both peoples are harbringers of death. Awesome.

And this is just one game. I couldn't even begin to start about the rest. Spore = Enormous Scale. Left 4 Dead = Killer Multiplayer (ba-dum-tish). Mirror's Edge = Hardcore Parcor. Banjo-Kazzoie N+B = Finally a good new platformer. Res 5 = Zombies, 'nuff said. LBP = Make-your-own-platformer-n-stuff.

I'm in tears only because I must wait. At least Spore is out soon.

Resident Evil 5 is actually next year but yeah, this holiday season looks alright. Dead Space and Saint's Row 2 are on my list as well as the ones you mentioned. Oh, and its the Dark Brotherhood, not the black hand, but we talked about that.

Just thought of something, now that you are basically unemployed you have tons of times to play games!! Nothing but time in fact! So get to "work".