Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Fallout: New Vegas and Singularity (pictured) headline the six nominees for the Writer's Guild's Video Game Writing Award this year.

God of War III, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II round out the field of nominees. The winner will be named Feb. 5 at the annual Writers Guild Awards, which will take place simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York.

Writers who are Guild members or who have applied for membership are eligible, and they must have worked on a game that released between Dec. 1, 2009 and Nov, 30, 2010.

Last year's winner in this category was Amy Hennig for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The full citations for each nominee are:

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Story by Patrice Desilets, Jeffrey Yohalem, Corey May; Lead Script Writer: Jeffrey Yohalem; Script Writers: Ethan Petty, Nicholas Grimwood, Matt Turner. Publisher: Ubisoft

Fallout: New Vegas, Creative Design Lead/Lead Writer: John Gonzalez; Writers: Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Travis Stout; Additional Writing: Tess Treadwell, George Ziets, Jason Bergman, Nick Breckon, Matt Grandstaff, Will Noble, Andrew Scharf. Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

God of War III, Written by Marianne Krawcyzk; Additional Writing by Stig Asmussen, Ariel Lawrence, William Weissbaum. Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Wii), Writer: Benjamin McCaw; Story Dialogue Editor: Marianne Krawczyk. Publisher: Ubisoft

Singularity, Written by Marc Guggenheim, Lindsey Allen, Emily Silver; Additional Story and Writing: Jason Henderson, Adam Foshko, Michael Cassutt; Story and Script Consultant: Adam Foshko. Publisher: Activision

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Executive Producer-Writer: Haden Blackman; In-Game Script: David Collins, John Stafford, Cameron Suey; Additional Writing: Tid Cooney, Ian Dominguez, Tony Rowe. Publisher: LucasArts

2011 WGA Awards Video Game Writing Nominees Announced [News Release]

Want to put the fear of a fancy and fashionable assassination into your foes in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands? Then get thee to the nearest Ubisoft game and sign up for their Uplay scheme.

To make the Prince of Persia look a lot more like Ezio from Assassin's Creed II, you'll need to acquire Uplay Win "units," based on your accomplishments in various Uplay-enabled Ubisoft games. It's free, you'll just need to meet the Uplay requirements to do so.

If you'd prefer to look like the Prince's brother, Malik, you can apparently text message the word PRINCE to 44144, if that makes sense.

I was enjoying playing Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands as I played it this weekend for review. That doesn't mean I wanted it to glitch near the end and force me to start over. Too bad for me.

This post contains videos of the inescapable room I found myself in while playing a finished Xbox 360 copy of The Forgotten Sands.

These videos are, I guess, SPOILERS, since they show things that occur in the final hour of the game. They are light on narrative spoiler, but hey... just know this: By watching these clips you may also discover how I got trapped in an inescapable room. And, until Ubisoft patches the game (let's hope they do), it's best to be forewarned.

Please note that I seem to have been caught in this glitched room because I let the Prince fall and die, and because the game was autosaving, for some reason, while I did that. A reporter friend of mine who was also playing the game for review did not encounter the same glitch — another says he heard of one who did. My friend probably avoided it because he didn't die at the spot I highlight in the second video of this post. So my advice to you is this: Don't die there!

The first video, posted up top, shows the glitched, inescapable room.

The second video is a surprise. What you see in this clip is part of my second play-through of The Forgotten Sands. Because I had been caught in the glitched room during my first play-through — and because the game only allows one save file and no chance to restart from any other file — I had to start The Forgotten Sands over from the beginning. Several hours later, and about 20 minutes before I encountered the area where I died and was deposited into the glitched room I reached the room you see in this clip. Note that this is, in fact, the glitched room — except that it isn't glitched here. It works fine and is, thankfully, escapable. This is how the room is supposed to work. After you get through it, you reach a climbing section that leads to the place where my glitching problems began.

The third video shows the late-game sequence where I died during my first play-through. I call out the specific jump that did me in, the jump that respawned me not at the base of this climbing sequence but in the glitched room. This video shows you where not to die, so that you can avoid the glitched room.

Now that we can all see my follies, let's hope Ubisoft spots the bug responsible at squashes it. Players beware; it'd be a pity if this ruined your experience of an enjoyable game.

If this opening cinematic for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands doesn't get you excited about the game's May 18 release, nothing will.

Now this is how an epic action-adventure game should start. Mysterious beauties in pools of water, large-scale battles filled with warriors in exotic garb, flying balls of flame, buildings toppling, and lots and lots of jumping; this trailer has it all. The Prince might be looking less Persian and more like a refugee from a Conan novel, but when has the Prince ever really been Persian? In the original game he was a tan blond man. I'm not saying there aren't tan, blond Persian men running around, but they aren't exactly common either.