This is the final round. The week-long short-session Vs. Mode between me and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal draws to a conclusion in rather segue-ready fashion.

In this last round, N'Gai and I dissect "Nucleus," "Pac-Man Championship Edition" and "Diner Dash," among others.

And then your favorite Multiplayer blogger brings it home with the discovery of a short-session, itty-bitty game that might be better than "BioShock" at the very aspect of gameplay that "BioShock" is best at.

Say it ain't so! Or say it is so! Or... say what? The surprise game is revealed in the last letter of this exchange, after the jump.

And guess what game we'll be tackling in our next Vs. Mode? Get ready, Ken Levine.

(As always, Vs Mode is co-published on N'Gai's "Level Up" blog.)

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Today's third round of Vs. Mode picks up in mid-stream. I had just asked Newsweek's N'Gai Croal if he agreed that "Super Stardust HD" is the first of a new wave of high-end small games. His reply kicks off today's round. Dust off round two if you need a refresher.

In today's exchange we finally get past our impasse (sorry folks, N'Gai just isn't interested in a "Space Invaders" with really advanced artificial intelligence). Instead he has ideas for a sequel to "Everyday Shooter." Me? I suggest that a rush of small games may change the way we all relate to games.

An excerpt from me that might remind my fellow bloggers who attended a Game Developer's Conference Sony event as the thing I kept asking Phil Harrison about:

I’ve argued that the cost and length of new retail games narrows most gamers's experience. Rentals and demos aside, gamers wind up playing just a few new titles a year and/or are unlikely to try many games outside of whatever genres they’re comfortable with. The widespread availability of small games to console gamers can change that. I feel like we’ve all been given a new (or newly refined) mechanism to experiment with and enjoy a broader array of games. It’s like we all just went from having broadcast TV to 500-channel cable.

This feels healthy to me, as it seems like it will speed the feedback loop of creativity and consumer reaction. And it’s all hinging on getting new thing after new thing.

Read the rest of the exchange after the jump. And in the next round, we'll start breaking down some specific games. Enjoy!

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Welcome to another Vs. Mode confrontation. In previous installments, Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and I have debated "God of War II," the "Halo 3" beta and the adults-only "Manhunt 2."

Yes, yes, that last exchange was a bit lengthy.

So N'Gai and I thought we'd do something that's really hard for us this time: be succinct.

Our topic, fittingly, is short-session gaming. Sound nebulous? We're talking about all those downloadable games and quick handheld games that are occupying more and more of both of our gameplay time. We like the short stuff. He and I have battled it out on the "Super Stardust HD" leaderboards. (My top score dwarfs his, naturally). And we've both been hooked on short handheld games: he on the PSP version of "Gunpey," me on the DS version of nirvana (AKA "Picross").

So we decided to do a Vs. Mode on this stuff, as an attempt to figure out what's great about the short games and what big games could learn from them. This one started tame -- a little too tame for my taste. But before I could get too upset about that, I had N'Gai trashing my so-called Grand Unified Theory of Best-Selling Games and I accused him of using the old-man defense one time too many.

Where else will you read a verbal brawl of this intensity? Nowhere else.

(Unless you count N'Gai's blog Level Up, where he co-publishes these exchanges, and the court filings of the Epic v Silicon Knights lawsuits)

Read on at the jump for Round 1, consisting of our first four 500-words-max e-mails. Round 2, in which I just about lose my patience with this guy, arrives Tuesday.

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