In which N'Gai and Stephen continue their Very Special face-to-face edition of Vs. Mode: N'Gai with his restrained praise of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and Stephen with his crisis of faith over the series' failure to regain its innovative heights.

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer), we offered up a theory--Linear Gamers Vs. Circular Gamers--to explain why even brilliantly-controlling games like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass don't float our boat. Totilo, meanwhile, said that he was being to feel a bit run down by Zelda Fatigue, 12 games into the series. In Round 2, we collectively did what Totilo wished Nintendo would do and switched up our own formula. We met face-to-face in order to a) correct Level Up's own ignorance of the Zelda series with a crash course on Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; and b) talk about how much the series has progressed, if at all, since those twin high water marks. In today's Round 3, we serve up a wide-ranging discussion about the pros and cons of long-running franchises--for both developers and gamers. An excerpt:

Stephen Totilo: What would you like to see Aonuma and his team do next? Take the controls that they were able to sort of build atop the Zelda foundation and then to go and make a better Zelda? Or would you like them to take the controls that they built atop the Zelda foundation and now move those controls into some brand new game experiences?

N'Gai Croal: Well, again resisting the fiction as I do, selfishly I'd say, "Try your hand at another fiction." But I think the question you're asking is a bit deeper than that, which is what should incredibly talented artists and teams, you know, what does it mean when they either are forced to--we don't know that for a fact--or by choice restrict themselves to working on a single series.

I mean it's interesting to contrast that to the team that did Ico and Shadow of the Colossus because Shadow of the Colossus didn't turn into the game that people thought it was. People loved it anyway, but people thought, when they first saw it--with the horse and the bow and arrow--they thought that this was going to be Zelda for the PS2, And it turned out not to be that. It was a very sort of pure, stripped down ,focused game design, but coming off of Ico--for the, say, 500,000 people worldwide who bought that game and loved it--a lot of us would've been happy with Ico 2, but that team, Ueda-san and his team, they didn't make that game.

Totilo: Right, Nico as it was rumored for a while--

Croal: Exactly. He didn't play that game and so what I'm hearing from you is a desire for Nintendo to rethink how they're doing, dealing with the Zelda franchise and maybe walk away from it for a while, let us miss it, maybe remake some of the other ones, which have exemplary game design and spif it up for a new generation. And then have Eiji Aonuma's team to do something different.

Totilo: Yeah, and I guess to wrap this up I just need to go and ask you one more time to help me figure this out: to what extent do you think that the feeling that I'm having is the byproduct of having played so many more, so many of these games already? And is my fatigue of Zelda and my disappointment with the new ones something that people are going to have when Gran Turismo hits its 15th iteration? Is it a feeling that you suspect Final Fantasy fans might be having at some point soon? Or is this something that you think is unique to Zelda?

To read Round 3 of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

Skateboarder Tony Hawk and graphic designer David Carson

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here back in September about getting a new post-Red Ring of Death Xbox 360 just in time for the Halo 3 launch, followed by a postcard showing off his very first kill in Halo 3 multiplayer. In today's entry, Electronic Arts' Skate serves as a jumping off point for his boyhood memories of the birthplace of modern American skateboarding.

I have some news. You might want to sit down--I've been playing a game that isn't Halo 3.

Given my almost exclusive interest in multiplayer FPS chaos, you would have thought I'd barely be able to dress myself and hold down a job after midnight on September 25th (for non-believers, that was the release day for the Master Chief's final chapter). Yes, I have been spending nearly all of the Xbox Live time I can scrape together sticking people with spiked grenades, but EA has managed to divert my attention for an hour or two with a game about plywood, polyurethane and the police: Skate.

Knowing that I grew up north of San Diego in the 70s and 80s--and if you could hear me speak, you'd detect the slight So Cal accent in my voice--you might assume I spent a fair amount of my youth loitering in front of the local 7-Eleven on a skateboard. Truth is, I could barely go twenty feet on the street without wobbling off the board and watching it sail out into the intersection. Yet, however painfully unskilled I was in the actual act, I've never lost an interest in culture and aesthetics of skateboarding; it was part of the air I breathed. Shamelessly, I've even stood in line on opening day for both "Jackass" movies.

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