People All Over the World, Join Hands, Form a Hype Train, Hype Train

Hey Fyre,

So Autumn is here, and with it the awful hate parade that is the Video Game Holiday Season, now literally longer than an actual season.

Most other towering horrors are best tackled with some sort of gameplan, so I’m going to throw down a rough outline of the upcoming media torrent’s few offerings that I hope might be filled with creamy dulce de gioco rather than the grainy nougat of mediocrity:


October 6 – Resident Evil 6
I have RE5 still sitting unopened on the game shelf, so this isn’t any sort of early purchase, but RE4 was so, so, so very good that I still have tons of leftover good will for the action-horror era the franchise has moved into. Once I’m done with 5 – someday, shortly after I learn Esperanto and lose 20 pounds – 6 will pop up onto my “buy this game if it’s under $20” radar. Assuming it doesn’t just turn out to be shit.

Hey, is it me, or does Leon get to wear the best jackets in these games?



October 9 – XCOM: Enemy Unknown
The original X-COM has a place of honor in every beardy old gamer’s heart, occupying as it does the swirling nebulous Venn diagram of Civilization, Fallout, the X-Files, and Aliens. The new game gets extra kudos before even going on sale by providing a turn-based refuge for clumsy old farts like me who were ecstatic about the announcement of the other XCOM game and then horrified to learn it would be a first-person shooter. I’m a bit bummed that the game requires Windows 7, which means I’ll be playing on console, but the idea of playing X-COM with nicer graphics and a slightly less brutal difficulty is still appealing.



October 9 – Dishonored
I’m on the fence with this one. I don’t care for Bioshock, and I don’t really enjoy Bethesda’s other first-person adventure offerings (your Fallouts, your Elder Scrollsses), so on paper this shouldn’t be on my radar. Thing is, I do enjoy fucking with enemy AI routines in games, and as near as I can tell from the previews that’s all Dishonored is about: our game is full of bugs, please use the bugs to win the game.

Also, you get to control swarms of rats and sic them on enemies. You can’t be less than intrigued by that.



October 30 – Assassin’s Creed III
Let the unEzioing begin. We’re both long-time AC faithful, so even if this installment is merely “as good as” the last few I’m sure we’ll be along for it. I mentioned in discussing Revelations that I was ready for Assassin’s Creed to mix it up a bit more, and as of yet it’s hard to say if Ubisoft have hit the oh-so-tricky balance between freshening things up and maintaining the feel of the series.



December 4 – Far Cry 3
I played an hour of Far Cry 2 every day for over a month, and it sort of seeped into my skin and hair in a weird way. I’m curious to see if the new game in the series picks up the same baton of morally ambiguous open world shooting that the last one had, or if Crytek roll things back to the “superhero with an M-16” vibe of Far Cry Instincts and the Crysis series.



December 12 – Hawken
Multiplayer BattleMech shooter, yo.


You can’t really talk about buying games in Fall without mentioning Black Friday. Last year I did the “line up at midnight outside the Best Buy” thing and while it had a certain Woodstockish appeal, I think I’ll try and keep any post-turkey shopping to mail order this year.

I know that you prefer to celebrate Buy Nothing Day, and good on you for it, but some of us need to hunt for bargains in our game shopping. Like need, pathologically. I have a problem, help me. I’ll be hoping for at least some of these games to go on hefty discounts this year:

  • Sleeping Dogs
  • Madden 13
  • FIFA 12
  • Amalur
  • SSX
  • Diablo III
  • Lollipop Chainsaw
  • Darksiders II
  • Skyrim
  • Max Payne 3
  • Resident Evil 6
  • AC III
  • Saint’s Row III
  • The Witcher 2
  • And if I’m really good, a bundle of a PS3 and some console exclusives

How about you? I know your gamer time is now being eaten into by an autonomous bodily fluids factory, but are there any games on the way that catch in your mind’s eye’s twitchy hands?

– ssr

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