Just looking at this picture will make about 200 people reinstall Oblivion.
It is that time of year again! You’ve just collected your last star in Super Mario Galaxy 2. You’ve accidentally shot your last horse in Red Dead Redemption. And you did the right thing by avoiding Alpha Protocol. Kudos!
... or maybe you've accidentally shot your last Yoshi...
Looking at the upcoming release schedule for the next few months, I only notice a very few titles that pique my interest. I’m sure most of you do too. Allow me to be the first to officially welcome you to the summer gaming lull.
Singularity will keep me occupied for a bit, though something about it reminds me of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Legendary, and Fracture. Raven is developing it (the people who made Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), so I might be delightfully mistaken.
Believe it or not, I’m looking forward to Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4. Lego Batman and Lego Star Wars were both fantastic family games. My wife is a pretty big Harry Potter fan, so I’m sure she’ll be happy to pick up the controllers again with me.
Say goodbye to your friends and family!
StarCraft II, of course, will dominate a ton of people’s time this summer. Not mine, sadly. There isn’t a low enough difficultly setting in real-time strategy games for me to be able to compete. If there was an “enemy unarmed” level of difficulty I might be able to compete…. maybe. I’m certain Cheyenne will whip up a review as fast as his fingers can click.
But other than that, we gamers are looking at a pretty open release schedule for a while. So, my question to you is, what are you going to do with your gaming time?
Personally, I’m going to probably go back and play some old favorites. Right now I’m playing through Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the 100,000th time. I still consider it one of my favorite games of all time, but it’s starting to show its age a little. Afterwards, I may go back to Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
To scratch my action itch and to prepare for their upcoming sequels, I’m switching back and forth between two of last year’s best action titles, inFamous and Batman: Arkham Asylum. inFamous is harder than I remember and Batman is easier than I remember. Both are still awesome and totally worth their sticker price.
Oh Pripyat! You're so fantastically creepy!
I’ve also been meaning to reinstall S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and mod it with the Complete mod. That game, like no other before, truly nailed the environment and feeling of isolation. I’ve never tried the Complete mod, but I’ve never heard a bad word said about it. Hopefully I’ll unearth my copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. from one of my gaming boxes and try it out. That reminds me… I also need to play Metro 2033. (Is Russia becoming the new “World War II” of video games?)
And finally, I need to play Mass Effect 2! I’m a huge BioWare fan and I absolutely adored the first title. The only reason I never played ME2 when it released was because of time. Since I didn’t avoid Alpha Protocol, I need some good western RPGs to wash the taste out of my mouth. Thankfully, I think I now have the time to play Mass Effect 2.
So, what will you be playing this summer? Will you be digging up some recent hits or will you be going further back in time in your collection? Or are there some other titles you’re looking forward to?
I’mma jump back to ME2 on hardcore difficulty
How could you forget about Sin And Punishment: Star Successor, and Metroid Other M? There is also BlazBlue Continuum Shift coming out in late July.
True it isn’t like last October/November, and this January/May time, but there are still good games coming out. But hey it will give us time to catch up on all the games that came out over the last six months (man time flies when you are in college).
Continuum Shift? I guess the name is a little bit better than Calamity Trigger… but come on. At least they are fun games.
Yes and the story is well done too. Having the option for both English and Japanese is good, since I prefer the Japanese voices. I really wish it wasn’t like a yearly release but a two year release, just cause of the small cast and the fact that you can get a lot of time in on just one fighting game in two years. Also, I hope the community improves (not saying they are bad players with no skill), cause I hate all those people who are not open to newcomers and people of their region (this is aimed to the Japanese players who think all other countries suck in fighting games).
Actually, I think I’m going to ride the ‘free game’ wave. Currently having quite some fun playing League of Legends (even though my laptop can BARELY run the game, there is no slowdown after the maps FINALLY finish loading) and if Lord of the Rings Online goes free to play any time soon, I might just venture into that world to see what it’s all about.
Plan on buying a decent PC after graduating in September, so I’ll probably start buying games again around that time. Also… Halo: Reach is only 98 days away now ^.^
I have been splitting my time between 3 games… Persona 4(again (again)), Persona 3 FES, and the Pheonix Wright games.
There have been a few other titles here and there (SMG2, Dawn of War 2, Red Steel 2
I have still yet to play Dragon Age: Origins. It’s been sitting on my desk since November of last year. I did the origin story as mage and another as a warrior a few months back, but that was about it. Mass Effect 2 came out so DA:O took the backseat… and I play through BioWare games the first time in a single sitting (counting food/sleep, etc) so it’s been hard to free up 40 hours.
StarCraft 2 will definitely suck some of my free time when it comes out. They’re adding a ton of RPG elements to it, so it’s going to be pretty revolutionary as far as the single player campaign goes for an RTS… an RTS/RPG.
I need to do my yearly play-through of Knights of the Old Republic (already one year late on that). Have to play through Mass Effect 2 as a evil female adept (opposite of my good male soldier). I also want to play through Secret of Mana, Earthbound, and Super Mario RPG (SNES) again. It’s been around a decade for Earthbound and Super Mario RPG and nearly five years for Secret of Mana.
Lastly, I may attempt to get into Oblivion and beat it. I finished the intro and did a few things but could never get into the game. I enjoyed/beat Fallout 3 too, so who knows.
… now if only all of these games didn’t take tens of hours to beat.
SCII for me will eat up the summer, especially since the editor is so robust. The editor will allow you to have any type of genre in it. I too bought DA:O, but I did in December, and when I finally get around to fixing my PC issue later this week (probably won’t get the Mobo back for a week or two) then I can sit down and play the game, in the mean time I have about 10 RPGs that I bought for my PS2 last year that I have yet to play.
I have some games I bought for dirt cheap a while back that I haven’t even touched. After I finish FFXIII and Red Dead I’m going to go back and play though Borderlands, Bionic Commando, Dragon Age Origins Awakening, Saints Row 2 and Samurai Warriors 2 Empires. That should keep me busy until Birth by Sleep.