This coming Friday heralds the official start of the holiday buying season and the biggest shopping day of the year. You can bet that there will be a handful of great deals, but we wanted to make sure you had a little direction going in to the holidays, so we're giving you this handy guide. Today we'll be taking on the Wii, but keep checking back, as we'll be covering all the major consoles throughout the week.

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Anyone having trouble deciding on a holiday greeting card to send out to their Xbox Live friend list this season should an easier search thanks to Valve expansion into the stationary market. "Left 4 Dead," "Left 4 Dead 2" and "Team Fortress 2" each have their own set available, featuring artwork by Alexandria Neonakis.

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One of mobile gaming's heavy hitters unequivocally expressed its preference for the iPhone over Android phones last week and believes that other developers will come to similar conclusions. Gameloft, whose library of releases includes "Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles," "Uno" and "Guitar Rock Tour," said that it has already begun cutting back on Android titles and expects to see such decisions trend throughout the industry.

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Sony and Microsoft entered the current generation of consoles with far greater immediate ambitions for non-game content. Nintendo appears to be warming up to the idea of its Wii becoming a place to watch movies and TV episodes, however. Though the company has denied plans for an HD hardware upgrade, their "Wii no ma" service in Japan has now expanded beyond ad-only content to include paid viewing options as well.

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Despite requiring a nuclear submarine to run, "Crysis" has been very popular in the mod scene since its launch. The latest mod to impress adds the infamous "Back To the Future" DeLorean to the game, allowing you to crank it up to 88 miles per hour before blasting off into the past (or future).

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"Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles" was a little too ambitious...and not very good. For a glorified light gun game it had overly complex controls and wasn't, well, very much fun. But Capcom has returned to give it another game with "Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles." Does it remedy mistakes of the past or are we left with another so-so title to fill in the time between true sequels?

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If Capcom's "Dark Void" becomes a hit when it comes out in 2010, Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment will already be ahead of the game, as they've announced they now have the rights to make a film based on the unreleased title.

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I have to admit that back in 2005, I laughed at the idea of "Lego Star Wars." The whole concept seemed too kid-friendly and too corporate at the same time. But I was quickly swept up in the game's quirky sense of humor, refreshingly tight game play and surprising depth. I enthusiastically embraced all the "Lego" games that followed ("Lego Batman" still gets plenty of mileage, and the new "Lego Rock Band" is amazing if only for the presence of Lego David Bowie). But I was disappointed with "Lego Indiana Jones," which felt too loose and not as sharply whimsical as the other games in the series.

Now comes "Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues," which incorporates elements from the first three "Indiana Jones" movies and augments it with a healthy dose of 2008's middling "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

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About the time Trekkies are starting to exhaust the special features on their new "Star Trek" DVD's and Blu-ray discs, they can expect to see the franchise's long-awaited MMO ready to go live. Though it's been in development for about half a decade, it looks like all systems are go for 2010, and the first class of cadets for "Star Trek Online" will see the game's open beta test start up on January 12th in preparation for its February 2nd launch.

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If "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" hackers really have unlocked a hidden game mode called "Global Thermonuclear War," it would be a fitting tribute Matthew Broderick's character in the 1983 movie "WarGames" who famously did the same thing on a government computer. "GTW" is one of three multiplayer modes that some players claim to have found locked within "MW2," possibly as content planned for a later release as DLC.

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