November in Gaming

You know how, before a massive Tsunami, the sea retreats from the shore? That's what the games market feels like in the run up to November.

I do understand why big games companies choose to release games only in March and November and pretend the rest of the year doesn't exist - it's because statistically, these are the most popular months. Like most things in life, this makes sense as long as you don't have two brain cells to rub together creating the tiny static discharge of thought. For the purpose of this analogy, the execs who make these decisions don't have two brian cells to rub together.

But whatever, November is almost upon us. For me, this is kind of a relief. Apart from Batman, I have to go back to Febuary to find the last big budget game I was interested in which followed through on all it's promises and that was Dawn of War 2. This means I've been filling my time with crap like Section 8 and indie games.

Admittedly, I do love indie games - I've been getting really into them this year - but there are itches that indie games just can't scratch. So what do we have coming up in November?

Well, not Alpha Protocol. That was supposed to be coming out this month but Sega were dicks and didn't arrange the testing in time. When it got delayed, they looked at what else was coming in November and delayed it till the next financial year. How do I know this? I don't, but I know someone who works for Sega and he says this sort of thing is pretty much par for the course, they're dicks. I'm paraphrasing slightly.

We don't get Mass Effect 2, either. I'm not so worried by that one as, since being thoroughly disillusioned by ME 1 a few months ago, I've mentally written off ME 2 until further evidence presents itself. Like a combat model that isn't totally balls.

Not Splinter Cell Conviction, either. Although, thanks to a complete rebuild, we might at least see that game this century, even if we won't technically see it this decade.

But fuck all that, enough moaning about what we're not getting, what ARE we getting?


October 30th: Borderlands

For the longest time, I haven't known what to think about Borderlands. If it had come out a few months ago whilst I was still heavily into The Witcher, TF 2 and Left 4 Dead, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. From that point of view, the marketing scumbags have been quite clever in releasing it just ahead of the rest of the November A-Listers. It gets attention.

I'm cautiously hopeful for Borderlands. We haven't had a decent non-source engine shooter for a while and there are certain aspects of it that definitely do appeal to me. Whether it'll be any good or not is in the hands of the gods, though. The reviews are positive but that never really means anything.



November 6th: Dragon Age: Origins

After finding that I suddenly don't like Jade Empire, KOTOR and Mass Effect, you can imagine I'm extremely skeptical about Dragon Age. Particularly as I think fantasy settings are reserved (with certain exceptions) for developers with no imagination. Sadly, Dragon Age looks like it has the unexciting combat of Jade Empire and the plot of a bad Narnia book. I'm prepared to be proved totally wrong but seeing as this game is by Bioware, who are one of the golden boys of gaming, it'll take more than the inevitable glowing reviews to convince me.


November 10th: Modern Warfare 2

I've been trying not to think about this one as the original was one of my favourite games evarrr and sequals to my favourite games evarrr seem to always turn out shit. With this one, I'm just kind of hoping I'll wake up one day with it ready installed ony my compuer and I can just casually wander over and see if it's any good without building it up too much in my brains.

My main concern is that they'll spend too much time creating massive set pieces and getting you to do things like ride snow mobiles over ice floes rather than have you do what the original did so well - shoot lots and lots of people.


November 18th: Left 4 Dead 2

This one I'm happy to get worked up about as it's Valve, who rarely disappoint. We know exactly what Left 4 Dead 2 will be, so we can all get up an appropriate level of excitement. I'm expecting to get a reasonable amount of milage out of it as I've got 80 hours out of the original (and counting) and the sequel has more content :D

Although Valve seriously need to dump the source engine after this. Seriously. I know they've been updating it but it's five years old. Mind you, so's World of Warcraft and people are still playing that.


November 20th: Assassins Creed 2

Now, this one is good/bad. On the one hand, it looks like the first one but tweaked to remove the annoyances. This is a good thing. Maybe it'll have an actual ending this time.

But there are also things Ubisoft have been proudly showing off like Leonado Da Vinci's flying machine which just look a bit shite... I'm just hoping those things take a back seat to the Parkor and awesome freeflow combat. And that it has an ending. Seriously, Ubisoft.