Ahh, Christmas time. In two weeks, hordes of people will descend upon the poor individuals forced to work retail to make ends meet, and those poor souls’ lives will be transfigured into a pure living hell. Did you know that some insane number (like, fifty-seventy percent, I am so not making that up) of retail revenue for the entire year is earned during the months of November and December? With such a shopping frenzy going down, its little wonder that publishers decide to release their best games during this period. Which really sucks for those of us playing rather than earning. I know it’s good business to release your title when people are buying, but why not wait until, say, the summer for some of those? Not a year goes by without a huge chunk of empty release schedules between the months of April and June.
It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. I’m just pissed that all these good games are coming out and I don’t have the time to play them right now. Here’s what’s coming out this week, that I won’t be playing until next year.
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Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts: I really liked the original Banjo game, the one for N64. Yeah, I know it was just a retarded collect-a-thon in the shadow of Mario 64, but I beat it with 100% when it first came out. I haven’t played the second one, and I hear that this one’s got that collect-a-thon feel to it except that you’re making vehicles.
Call of Duty: World at War: It’s Call of Duty 4, but set in dubya dubya two rather than in the near future. Seriously, it plays exactly the same. I guess Ron Perlman was right!
Mirror’s Edge: Easily the most innovative game to see release this week, Mirror’s Edge is a first-person parkour game set in the future. If it doesn’t make you sick, you’ll probably like it. If it does make you sick, you’re probably going to keep playing it anyway, because it’s just that cool.
Eternal Poison: Ever want to play a Strategy RPG with five intertwining stories? Now you can! It’s like SaGa Frontier with tactics, except probably less obtuse. I really wish I had the time to get into this game, because it looks like it could be fairly interesting.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels: George Lucas fails again at an easy, obvious victory. When everybody said they wanted a lightsaber fighting game for the Wii, this is not what we wanted. This game doesn’t use 1:1 motion, just the same mindless flailing around that every other Wii fighting game includes. Sigh.
WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2009: Ohh you didn’t know? Your ass better caaaaaaaalllll somebody! [This author has been sacked; GameSpite now hiring for a weekly columnist position — ed.] If this game doesn’t feature the New Age Outlaws, I don’t want anything to do with it. But I’m going to take an educated guess and say that they haven’t switched up too much in the last year for this title. This reminds me, anybody know what happened to that rumor that WcW vs NWO Revenge, or one of the N64 WWF games was being remade for WiiWare? Because that would be boss.
eternal poison is boring as hell. avoid it.
Yeah, but you say the same thing about FFV. So….
“Not a year goes by without a huge chunk of empty release schedules between the months of April and June.”
I’m not sure this is true anymore, what with the delays of games like GTAIV and MGS4 from the holiday season to the traditional dead zone. To some extent, publishers are learning that their games may get lost in the late year crush.
Better get some Neosporin for that burn, Shivam.
Also, no mention of Lich King, which while just an expansion, will likely sell more than all of the above mentioned games combined?
Computer games are beneath reibeatall’s notice! Come to think of it, WotLK can be downloaded as well as store-bought. Maybe I should add it to the DLC segment?
Rei never mentions PC games, no matter how significant — and its target audience doesn’t need a reminder it is being released anyway.
I saw the artbook for Eternal Poison and it has some decent, if generic, art.
Mirror’s Edge is the brightest star this week imo. I’ll play COD eventually, but I wonder how many people are going to skip COD because they’re still playing the online modes of Gears of War 2 or Resistance 2? I know I am.
i went into eternal poison with my hopes way up–it was a strategy game with really cool looking art, and it seemed to be right up my alley. That said, mechanically the game makes a bunch of questionable calls, and the damn thing is SUPER SLOW– you’re forced to watch the same canned animations over and over and over again.
the color palette is aggressively grey, and the characters have really nothing going for them. It’s a missed opportunity on a number of levels =(
Not every SRPG has the Final Fantasy license going for it.
Also, you can disable the animations.
Why do people lay the fault for crappy Starwars games at the feet of George Lucas, other than just an irrational hatred of the man? Does anyone blame crappy Star Trek product on Gene Roddenberry?
I know Lucas didn’t live up to your impossibly high expectations for the prequals, but give it a rest people. :p
Because he’s simultaneously a hack and a control freak.
Does anyone blame crappy Star Trek product on Gene Roddenberry?
Well, a lot of stuff early in TNG’s run that kinda sucked was his fault via executive meddling, soooo…
I’m not sure innovative is the word I’d use to describe Mirror’s Edge. What with how you can describe it as “First Person Prince of Persia” but most appealing game in this batch, sure.
You can describe everything in terms of something else if you want, but no amount of reductivism makes Mirror’s Edge any less creative.
“Does anyone blame crappy Star Trek product on Gene Roddenberry”
The difference between Lucas and Gene Roddenberry is that Roddenberry has an excuse: he’s dead.
Christmas is going to be bad this year. My boss’ mom, a former regional VP at J.C. Penney’s, told me that they can calculate, within the standard +/-3%, what the total sales for Christmas are going to be just from the hourly data from Black Friday. If they don’t meet expectations, the market is going to tank.
“Well, a lot of stuff early in TNG’s run that kinda sucked was his fault via executive meddling, soooo…”
Yeah, but no one’s continually going out of their way saying that he ‘ruined’ Star Trek after several decades of waiting with crappy books. ‘Sides Lucas was always a hack, he never claimed to be anything else. :)
Oh my God, the New Age Outlaws? Crap, when was the last time they were around… 2001?
Haven’t heard that other rumor, but it would certainly be interesting to see how they do it.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
You forgot Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World for the Wii. I doubt it matters to everyone, but it is exciting to some of us.
Not that I’ve played a WWE game in a number of years, but the one new feature this year is co-op (tag team) story mode, which is something these games have been sorely missing. Granted, it’s probably poorly executed or far too short, but I probably know someone who will buy it, so I’ll let anyone who cares know. Yes, I still watch wrestling. No, I don’t know why.
I gotta stand up for Eternal Poison here — I enjoyed it enough that I reviewed it AND bought it when it came out yesterday (of course, some of that was for the awesome art and music, which everyone should be able to appreciate). It’s not for everyone, sure, but I definitely don’t think it’s the type of game that you should dismiss just because someone tells you to. Give it a rental shot and see if it does anything for you.