Gripes and Groans

Usually, I round up the worst video games of the year. But why should I bash "Transformers" and other lackluster titles at this point? Most bad games don't sell well and are already forgotten.

What is more important now -- the slowest period of the year for new releases -- is to look ahead to 2008, and to chronicle the disappointing moments of 2007, in hopes that game makers will stop doing stupid stuff now and then.

Maddening fumbles: "Madden NFL '08" looks beautiful. It plays sweet, mostly. But "'08" came with more fumbles and interceptions than ever. Defenses are beefed up. Offenses have buttery fingers.

This makes things more realistically challenging, because you can't toss ill-advised passes without repercussions. Fine. Sure. Whatever. I haven't played this "Madden" much. Don't plan to.

Game testing fell short: Before a game is released, testers play through them. But not only did testers drop the ball on "Madden's" fumbling, they didn't find troubles with a few other big titles. (Or, possibly, game designers didn't listen enough to testers' complaints.)

The most disappointing experience of 2007 came in "Spider-Man 3," a downfall that should have been caught during the testing process.

It's great fun until halfway through, when it becomes unfathomably difficult. I'm a moderately hard-core gamer, and I failed for hours to beat some big bosses. I threw the game on the ground, angry as a shaken hornet.

People in charge: A hard level is fun; an impossible one in a mainstream game kills sales.

Microsoft Xbox 360's "red ring of death": As some Xbox 360 owners can testify, their machines died inexplicably, and the 360's green power button turned red.

Microsoft extended warranties, repaired busted systems and seems to have fixed problems for newer systems. Still, quite a few gamers waited forever for Microsoft to ship 360s back to them. And I'm still a little guarded with my first-generation 360, waiting to see if it's going to implode.

Meager marketing for 2008: The Wii, Xbox 360 and PS 3 are relatively young and still establishing themselves. Thus, there is no big, newer game system on the horizon.

Also, other than a rumored April or May release date for "Grand Theft Auto IV," there's little buzz on pending games. So while I can't believe I'm suggesting the industry needs more marketing hype, it does, or else video gaming will look stagnant when it's not.

Rechargeable batteries stink: Both hand-held systems, Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP, constantly run out of juice merely by sitting still, turned off.

Meanwhile, the PS 3 controller doesn't turn itself off automatically after sitting idle for a few minutes, and its charge dies. (The 360's controller does turn itself off.) These are the dumbest things ever and must be fixed in the future.

Poor Web surfing: The powerful PC inside the PS 3 can surf the Web nicely. But it won't truly play much streaming video. That's dumb. The Wii and PSP browsers also suffer from limited streaming video. And the Xbox 360 has no surfing at all.

The game industry says it wants to give us a complete computing experience, but there's always some idiotic hitch like this that keeps machines from becoming all-in-one systems. Companies: Get your act together, and you'll rule the world.