Where the hell did this come from?  After a good couple of weeks with less than a handful of notable releases, we’ve suddenly got a week jam packed with games worthy of anyone’s attention.  It’s like… like… a third Christmas or something.  Isn’t this supposed to be the summer months?  Isn’t this when we’re supposed to be so bored out of our minds that we… we… go out?  And play or something?  Whatever’s the reason, we’re in no shortage of anything to do this week.  Hell, with this week alone, we may have something to play for all summer!

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

Alan Wake (Xbox 360)

Tuesday May 18, 2010

The crapping-your-pants-off genre just got a new contender this week.  Meet Alan Wake.  This suspense horror writer has just taken a vacation at a sleepy town of Bright Falls to loosen his writer’s block.  Unfortunately, he got his wish.  He suddenly finds himself trapped in a supernatural nightmare.  He must fight not what hides in the darkness but the darkness itself.  This darkness has the propensity to take over people and have them attack anything that moves.  Alan Wake may wield a gun, but his real weapon is his flashlight.  Shining his flashlight on possessed victims weakens the darkness enough for him to finish them off with his gun.  Thankfully if you need a more powerful source of light, flares, the headlights of a car, street lamps, and just about anything that emits light will do the trick as well.

Alan Wake seems to be following the episodic trend that other survival horrors of recent times have adopted.  The game is separated into episodes like a TV show.  I’m guessing this is meant to keep you coming back given the cliffhanger-y nature of most serial dramas.  From the looks of the videos, Alan Wake seems to lean on the action side of the survival horror genre, but the enemies and the general feel of the environment definitely makes the experience spookier than Resident Evil 5.  On a strange side note, here’s what I learned from the survival horror genre.  Never go to a sleepy little town where the name of the town is an adjective followed by a noun. 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (ECKM*)

Tuesday May 18, 2010

Thank the video gaming gods that this Prince of Persia game is not, I repeat NOT, the video gamization of the movie.  At least I hope not anyways.  It tells the story of the prince we know from the Sands of Time trilogy.  The timeline of the game is after Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, but before Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.  That means we’ll be playing as the prince before he went all emo and metal in Warrior Within.  Despite the name, The Forgotten Sands is actually 4 different games depending on which platform you get it for.

Xbox 360 and PS3

In this version, the prince visits his brother, Malik, whose city seems to be having a little invasion problem.  When things become desperate, Malik, unleashed some Sand magic which turned the tides of battle... in the Sand’s favor anyways.  Everyone’s turned into Sand monsters save the two brothers, and the city have just turned into everyone’s favorite obstacle course.  Having some experience with this kind of stuff, it’s up to the prince to fix everything.  All of your favorite acrobatics returns here along with some refinements like being able to jump from pole to pole quicker.  Also, alongside being able to rewind time, the prince has the ability to manipulate the elements.  The one that’s shown off the most is his ability to stop water.  I didn’t say freeze because that’s really not what he’s doing.  He stops water in midair turning them into platforms, poles, or walls to help the prince navigate the environment.  Making its triumphant comeback is the rewind mechanic, which makes those tough areas a little easier to deal with.

Wii

The plot for this one has been kept under wraps for reasons that escape me.  One thing I am sure of is that it’s definitely different from the 360/PS3 version.  Even his sand powers are completely different.  Instead of controlling the 4 elements, he can make a sand pillar to help reach higher areas, a sand ring on walls as a handhold for the prince, and a bubble that encases the prince keeping him afloat in midair.  Basically, they’re all powers that either help him reach his destination or potentially save him from badly made jump.  That last fact is important because, odd as it may sound, the prince doesn’t have the rewind ability.  When he screws up, the game takes him to a safe location close to where he died, but the game will only let you do that so many times before the prince have to respawn at a checkpoint.  The number of chances you have does regenerate so it’s not like you only have like 3 chances throughout the entire game or anything.  Despite being on the Wii, the visuals seem to be pretty impressive with the frame rate usually hanging around 60 frames per second.

PSP

This version follows the Malik storyline and is basically a 2.5D platformer.  Meaning, everything is rendered in 3D, but the game plays on a 2 dimensional plane.  If the Ipad version of Mirror’s Edge is anything to go by, I’ve no doubt that the loss of the 3rd dimension won’t make the prince’s many acrobatic moments any less exhilarating.  As for what kind of powers he’ll be wielding, that info is also a bit lacking.  I do know that he’ll be able to slow or speed up objects in the environment.  Not en masse mind you.  He’ll only be able to do it one object at a time.  Also, it can be used on enemies.  I can see the benefits of slowing them down, but why you’d want to speed them up is beyond me though.  Again, the prince will not have the Rewind ability, and this version seems to follow the Wii version in terms of handling your failures.

DS

This version has the least amount of info available.  What I do know is that it follows the Malik storyline, and the visuals are much more cartoony compared to the others.  There will be some touchscreen puzzles alongside the usual acrobatics.  The strangest departure is the shop where you can buy upgrades for your weapons and, oddly enough, your sand powers.  It’s a little bit like Superman stopping by the nearest Superhero shop to upgrade his flight speed.  Also, now he’s more powerful than 2 speeding locomotives!

Ubisoft is definitely doing the right thing for this iteration by giving each console its own version of the Forgotten Sands.  The real question now is which version will end up being the definitive version.  That’s me signaling you guys with deep pockets to play the 4 different versions and give me an answer.

Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday May 18, 2010

I’ll never fully understand why shooters rarely touch the Wild West motif.  It’s full of guns, scoundrels, and whatnot to make a great shooter.  Meet one of the few franchises that’s actually set in the Wild West.  This third person shooter has you playing as John Marston, returning from his stint in Red Dead Revolver and trying to go straight.  He has the Dead Eye ability, which allows him to mark where on the enemy’s body he’ll shoot them.  He also has a lasso, which can be used to catch wild horses or catch people with bounty on their capture.  You get to explore a giant chunk of the Wild West.  Up North is a modern (at least for its time), bustling city.  To the West is one of last frontier towns.  To the South is Mexico in a midst of revolution.  And everything in between is the Wild, Wild West complete with game that you can hunt for money, bandits waiting behind rocks to ambush anyone passing by, stranded travelers, and whatever else the wild has in wait. On top of this massive world full of little side quest and other things to do that isn’t even a formal quest is the multiplayer mode.

Probably the biggest mode of the multiplayer modes is the Free Roam mode.  This mode could’ve easily been renamed the MMO mode.  You along with everyone else gets to play around in the single player game world.  In it, you can start various group activities or just jump into an ongoing activity that someone else has started.  Or you can just screw around with the wildlife or probably other people.  And this is on top of the usual multiplayer modes like deathmatches and CTFs.  This game looks to be the definitive Wild West simulator made by the guys who made the definitive car stealing simulator.  So if stealing cars just isn’t, I don’t know, retro enough for you, perhaps stealing horses in Red Dead Redemption is the game for you.

Split/Second (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday May 18, 2010

Throwing turtle shells is so passé.  Rubble and debris is the new spiked turtle shell, baby!  Meet Split/Second, the racing game that turns demolishing a building into more than just eye candy.  In this game, it’s less about how good you are at following that invisible line that gives you the shortest route to the finish line and more about how good you are at avoiding debris raining down from above or restabilizing your car after it’s been rocked by a nearby explosion.  That seems to be the heart of this very pretty game.  As you race through the course, you come across things on the side of the track that’s rigged with explosives like a gas tanker or a bus.  If you do some cool driving things like drifting, jumping, or overtaking opponents, you build up a meter that’s divided into 3 sections.  Filling up anyone of those sections allow you to activate said explosives.

The destruction isn’t just for taking out cars in front of you.  Fill up all 3 sections of that meter, and you get to pull off Power Plays which are massive explosions so devastating that it alters the tracks.  Basically, it closes one way but opens up another.  Anyone caught in that giant explosion is just screwed.  This game is so focused on this aspect that it barely has any kind of car customization.  You get one of 3 classes of cars each differentiated by how much punishment they can take and how fast they can go, but that’s it.  This game seems to be made for the destruction junky that seems to be in all of us.  So have at it!

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

Sunday May 23, 2010

After more than 2 decades, this is arguably Mario’s first ever real sequel.  Think about it.  This is the first time they basically took the exact same concept from a previous Mario game and created new content for it along with new additions and features.  If the name and the number at the end wasn’t enough of giveaway for you, this is basically Super Mario Galaxy with new worlds, a new story, new costumes, and Yoshi. So, what’s new?

One of the weaker aspect of the first one was the weak collection of power ups available like the bee costume or the Fire Flower.  They’ve decided to rectify this mistake by making more costumes, and some of them sound pretty cool.  The rock costume lets Mario turn into a boulder where he can then roll around and probably crush enemies and obstacles.  The Boo Costume lets him become a Boo Buddy allowing him to pass through certain walls and be carried by drafts.  The Cloud Costume lets Mario create up to 3 platforms right below his feet.

Yoshi makes a comeback in this one and, in a sense, gets his own collection of costumes as well.  One such “costume” fills him up with air, which slowly leaks out of his mouth propelling him upwards.  Another one is the Fiery Yoshi, which makes him run super fast.  Yoshi’s real asset though is his ever useful tounge.  It can stun enemies, act like a grappling hook on certain parts of the game, and swallow objects which he can spit out at enemies.  Most of the time, when all a sequel does is add more and more on top of its predecessor, It’s usually a recipe for mediocrity, but given Super Mario Galaxy’s play on gravity and just the amount of imagination and ingenuity poured into this concept of spherical worlds, we’d be stupid to not want to see Nintendo do even more with the concept.  And that appears to be exactly what they’re doing here.