If you ever wanted proof that publishers hold back their releases until the magical holiday season, take a look at this week’s releases. Now compare it with about three weeks ago. Or the week before that. Or the week before that. Get my drift? Despite the HD consoles’ resurgence in releases, the Wii looks to be skipping out on this week waiting for God knows what. The 360 and PS3, however, are seeing some fairly big name releases this week betraying their impatience in waiting for November to roll around.

Remember. Release dates are quite literally made at the whims of the publisher.  The following are subject to change without any warning.

 

Releases To Watch For This Week

I’m gonna need a bigger stick

Dead Island (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday September 6, 2011
If one were to trace the beginnings of a game’s popularity with gamers in general, it almost always starts with an E3 showing or some reveal by a major gaming website or magazine. How about one that can be directly traced to a singular, smaller point like a trailer? Enter Dead Island.

Dead Island turns out to be almost nothing like the trailer-that-shall-not-be-named. It did get the setting right though. Set on a resort island with a sudden zombie (or infected for the zombie purist out there) problem, four people find themselves immune to zombification and now must discover the source of the outbreak and escape if they can. Dead Island promises to be an open world take on the zombie decapitating formula. You have access to every part of the island at any time in the game. Unlike Left 4 Dead though, the weapons at hand tends to be of the melee type, and just like a certain other zombie game with emphasis on melee weapons, these weapons can be combined together to make new kinds of weapons.

As you kill zombies, your character gains experience points to level up, which in turn gives you new skills. These skills vary from making you a better fighter or a hardier character. Each of the four playable characters specializes in different aspects of the game. For example, the hotel receptionist has a certain affinity towards sharp weaponry while the washed out rap star does better with blunt weaponry. Who knew? Moreover, Dead Island supports drop in and out Co-op making an almost MMO style experience where one player specializes in something will the partner compensates for whatever weaknesses the other might have. Continuing the RPG trend, you’ll also receive various side quests from other survivors that you meet that ranges in difficulty and rewards.

That could be the real surprise behind Dead Island. For all the Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising comparisons made, Dead Island looks to be more similar to Fallout 3. The trailer-that-shall-not-be-named may not have been very representative of the final product, but from the sound of the previews, Dead Island still deserves the hype surrounding it, however misplaced they may be.

 

Resistance 3 (PS3)

Tuesday September 6, 2011
Aren’t shooters supposed to be about you winning and not constantly losing over and over again? Apparently, somebody forgot to tell the guys over at Insomniac that.

Both Resistance 1 and 2 tell the story of the armed forces putting up a fight against the Chimeran invasion. Resistance 3 has none of that. Instead, humanity has been utterly defeated by the Chimeran forces and has gone into hiding. What little fighting that occurs now happens between the scattered human stragglers and the relentless armies of the Chimeran. Ain’t that cheerful.

On a more joyful note, Insomniac brought back the weapons wheel of Resistance 1. Resistance 2 dropped the weapons wheel and adopted the prevalent two-weapons system forgetting the fact that part of Resistance 1’s charm was its eclectic set of weaponry borne out of Insomniac’s experience with their other series, Ratchet and Clank. You can also look forward to new weapons to fill up that weapons wheel such as a sniper rifle that can blow people up and a new Marksman rifle.

On the multiplayer front, Resistance comes the closest to copying the experience of a PC First Person Shooter multiplayer mode. Meaning, everyone moves really fast and requires near surgeon like precision just to get a bead on them. Following the industry standard of FPS multiplayer mode, Resistance 3 has a leveling system built into the multiplayer as well. Play enough times, and you get to unlock more weapons and abilities like the Doppelganger ability, which creates and illusion of yourself to confuse enemies. Resistance 3 will also reduce the size of the multiplayer maps from Resistance 2, which boasted a maximum of 32 player matches played on large, sprawling maps. Resistance 3 cuts that number back down to 16 and aims to make the map a little bit snugger in comparison.

Unfortunately for Resistance 3, it won’t have the special co-op mode that Resistance 2 had, which was a kind of a cross between your standard Horde mode, Class based, objective driven mode. Instead, co-op entails you and a friend, either online or local, playing through the campaign mode.

First person shooters have never been the PS3’s strong suit, but that certainly isn’t stopping them from trying. After the disappointing Resistance 2, Resistance 3 does have the unenviable job of reminding people that the series hasn’t quietly shuffled off into oblivion.

 

Honorable Mention

Driver: San Francisco (Xbox 360, Wii)

Tuesday September 6, 2011
If you need to add a fresh new mechanic to a game, what do you turn to for inspiration? I can picture the guys over at Ubisoft being asked this question for Driver: San Francisco and answering, “The early 90’s TV show Quantum Leap.”

The story of Driver: San Francisco revolves around series regular protagonist, John Tanner on his quest to stop bad guy, Jericho. Trouble is, Tanner got into a coma. Instead of the game taking place after Tanner wakes up, the game takes you into Tanners head where we see Tanner alive and well with his partner as they try to take down Jericho. Yes, the entire game takes place inside a guy’s head.

Being in a coma does have its advantages though. Tanner can “shift” to any other driver in San Francisco. When he does, he might find himself into a middle of a sidequest. Shifting into an ambulance starts a mini-mission involving driving a patient to the hospital. Shifting into a police car might start a pursuit mission. Even shifting into a normal car might start up some other little mission like one where you have to drive recklessly to scare the car salesman sitting in the passenger seat. In essence, Tanner becomes the ultimate voyeur.

Shifting has other uses besides starting up missions. In the middle of a race, you could shift into a car ahead of you to run interference on your opponents before jumping back to the racecar. It can also slow down any cops that are pursuing you as well.

Even the multiplayer modes will have shifting as well. Driver: SF comes with 10 multiplayer modes, some of which sounds more like a mode you’d find out of an FPS like Capture the Flag and Base Defense. One of these modes, Tag plays a little bit like the actual game of Tag except only the drive who is “it” can score points. The person who can reach the score limit first wins. The other drivers will all try to crash into the it driver to gain the status of it and thereby gain points. The twist here comes from the shifting. The it driver will be constantly bombarded by other cars because other players can shift into any cars around the it driver, but he or she can’t shift out as long as they remain it.

Let me get this straight. Even if Tanner does manage to catch Jericho in this little dream of his, isn’t Jericho still on the loose, or does Tanner just wake up in the hospital bed where his partner tells him that Jericho was caught and will be going away for a long time? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mainstream game that takes place inside a dream, Inception style, but this whole shifting mechanic does sound really interesting though.

 

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten (PS3)

Tuesday September 6, 2011
This, along with Star Fox 64 3D, is making this week an unofficial “revive an old genre” week or something. The Disgaea series has become pretty well known for two things: The adorable, yet evil (but not really), Prinnies. And being an incredibly hardcore Strategy Role Playing Game.

Set once again in the bowels of hell, or at least a very anime take on one, a vampiric prison warden discovered that the government in hell is really, really corrupted. Why this is a surprise is beyond me. Like any good hell denizen with a werewolf for a friend, he decides to change the world.

In addition to having an insanely deep combat system, Disgaea 4 hasn’t forgotten its roots in absolute silliness and included a throwing mechanic. Basically, you can have one character throw another character all around the map, hopefully onto higher ground or something. Better yet, you could just pick up multiple characters creating a giant totem pole of all your characters and move around the map like a Slinky made up of people. Best yet, have the bottom character pop an enemy up so that the character on top of him could pop the enemy up even more. Don’t worry about running out of characters though. Somehow, the bottom most character jumps up to the top of the stack to keep juggling the enemy up higher and higher all the way to the moon! And that’s just the throw mechanic.

You can fuse Demons together to create bigger demons, which can then transform into giant weapons for your characters to use. You can enter into any item in the game like they’re mini-dungeons. You can create your own expandable nation complete with all the bureaucracy. You can create your own map, which can be shared with everybody online. You can invade other gamer’s maps and kidnap their character to discipline them. Basically, Disgaea 4 wants to eat your life.

The SRPG genre doesn’t exactly have the popularity required for a more frequent release (We’ve only had like 3 SRPG games so far), and given how very Japanese-y SRPGs tend to be, they’re not likely to get on anybody’s radar these days. That hasn’t stopped this incredibly deep and hardcore genre from coming out with new titles here from time to time though. The audience may be very niche, but that doesn’t make the game bad. If you just happen to have about a billion hours that you just can’t figure out what to do with, don’t use it on something productive like self-improvement. Try a hardcore SRPG like Disgaea 4 instead.

 

Star Fox 64 3D (3DS)

Friday September 9, 2011
Let me guess. You’ve never heard of Star Fox haven’t you? And you’re wondering what the hell a fox is doing flying spaceships. I’m a little confused on the second part myself, but here’s something to help you out with the first part.

Originally released on the N64 over 14 years ago, Star Fox puts you in the cockpit of the Arwing, an advanced starfighter, as Fox McCloud. He along with his squad of anthropomorphic mercenary buddies must stop the mad scientist Andross and his army from taking over the galaxy.

Games like these don’t exactly exist anymore, so a somewhat more detailed description might be necessary here. Think of it as an on-rails shooter except you have control over the Arwing’s positioning on the screen. The original Super Nintendo Star Fox consist of nothing but this, but Star Fox 64 added in missions where you play as a tank instead of a spaceship and, more importantly, sections where you’re no longer on rails.

This marks the last port that we know of for the 3DS. From my playtime at PAX, this looks like a solid port of the decade old game, and the gameplay itself holds up pretty well. It’s even a little bit refreshing given how this genre is basically extinct. If this game somehow revives the space combat genre, I would be one very happy man.

Coming This Week

Tuesday August 30, 2011

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Xbox 360, PS3)

The world of Warhammer 40,000 could be one of the geekiest and nerdiest world in the pantheon of nerdom. Thankfuly, the video game version looks to be a Gears of War game with more emphasis on melee combat instead of the cover based shooting action. It does have a multiplayer mode as well with a heavily customizable avatar for any Warhammer geek to fulfill their lifelong dream to play as a space marine. No painting necessary.

Rise of Nightmares (Xbox 360 Kinect)

Everyone wondered how the Kinect would work for a more traditional game. Sega will be taking a stab at that with their extremely campy take on a horror game Rise of Nightmares. This first person slashing game has you using your body to not only control what sort of attacks you make but the movement of your character as well. By taking a step forward or back, your character moves forward or back respectively, and turning your shoulders controls where they turn. Slashing your hands in front of you makes your character attack with the weapon he has at hand. Once your weapon breaks, and they always do, you’ll have to punch your way through the zombie hordes. Whether this ends up panning out the way they hope remains to be seen, but at least Microsoft can now say that the Kinect ISN’T all Kinectimals and Fruit Ninja.

Rugby World Cup 2011 (Xbox 360)

What’s with the scrum you may ask? Well it’s Rugby time! Play for country and pride in tournament, international test and online against fellow rugby fans with up to 4 players simultaneous and 20 player tournaments. Can you lead your country to glory and win the Rugby World Cup? Well if you’re actually reading this enthusiastically then why the hell not! This is your chance, use it or lose it.
-Wolf96

Driver: Renegade (DS)

John Tanner’s been a busy boy this week. Not wanting to be left behind, even the 3DS gets in on the driving action this week. No coma powered, Shifting action in this one though. This one has Tanner driving around New York City taking down 5 crime lords with nothing but a car and a full tank of gas. If only that works in real life…

 

Late to the Party

• Pinball Hall of Fame: Williams Collection (3DS) 9/6/2011

 

Wow! It’s a pretty good week. You’ve got your shooter, your old school port, your wacky Japanese game, your wacky, coma induced game, and even a foreign sport. Trully there’s something for everybody this week.

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