This Week in Games: Feb. 15 – 21

This week has something to offer just about everyone! The PS3 / XBOX360 release of the fighting-game classic franchise Street Fighter IV will try to hack & slash its’ way to success!  The XBOX360 actually gets Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned that was initially supposed to be out last week, the PC grognards will be thrilled at the release of Warhammer Dawn of War II. PSP owners get a quirky offshoot of the Disgaea franchise with Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?. The DS gets two hotly anticipated titles – we get the follow-up to last year’s excellent classic jRPG port with Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and also finally see the arrival of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the first time for the classic handheld strategy-RPG to make it to the DS. Check out the list!

  • Street Fighter IV
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned
  • Race Pro

  • Street Fighter IV
  • Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year

  • Cradle of Rome
  • Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year
  • Battle Rage

  • Disney Sing It: High School Musical 3 Senior Year

  • Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?

  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
  • Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride
  • Moomin: The Mysterious Howling

  • Warhammer Dawn of War II
  • Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst
  • Penumbra Collection

As for last week … the promising set of releases proved to be another mixed bag, with the multiplatform release of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin being widely reviewed as a solid but very generic and average shooter that adds nothing to the franchise and is below what we would expect from Monolith, and the PSP sequel LocoRoco 2 delivering solid heaps of fun! Finally the multi-platform Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection has proven to actually be a very good collection that folks are really enjoying. I am now charging up my DS for a busy week after very little use so far this year.

What I’m Currently Playing:

  • PC: Gothic 2 Gold – this one tests the capabilities of current netbooks, especially when I turn everything up full! Definitely one of my favorite games of all time and really consuming most of my gaming … yet again!
  • PC: Arcanum– still making good progress here, though I’m getting to the point where the end is in sight, even if it is still many hours away!
  • PC: Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box– I am just starting tis … my first PC racing game since Test Drive Unlimited a few years ago!
  • PSP: LocoRoco 2 – the original was flawed but loads of fun, and so is this one … even more fun than before!
  • PSP: Monster Hunter Freedom 2 – still looking for why this game sells millions in Japan … haven’t found it yet.

Enjoy gaming!

No Responses to “This Week in Games: Feb. 15 – 21”

  1. I’m thoroughly confused by “Street Fighter IV will try to find success in spite of a demo widely regarded as falling somewhere between mediocre and average.”

    What demo? And early reviews have been raving. I haven’t been this excited for a game in years.

  2. LOL, nevermind, I see you copied and pasted from last week. I’ll leave you to edit it with correct information about the awesomeness of SFIV.

  3. Hehe … yeah, fixed it up. Hoping the game matches up with the early reviews as opposed to the many over-rated games of 2008 (Fallout3, GTA4, Fable 2, etc)

  4. “Hack and slash”? You’re killing me here 🙁

    SHORYUKEN!

  5. As to what I’ve been playing, I’ve been grinding a bit further through Gears of War on the 360, and getting frustrated when the checkpoints don’t apparently work. I’ve paused Fallout 3 (also 360) because I’m in the middle of a Raider camp and keep getting killed whether I try and creep forwards or get back out of there.

    I’ve also been loving the fact that I can check out Wii, PS3, and 360 games for free from the Iowa City Public Library. So I’ve put a bit of time into Little Big Planet, Burnout Paradise, Prince of Persia, Crash Mind Over Mutant, Metroid Prime 3 (I still can’t get into any of the Metroid Prime games), Spider-Man Web of Shadows, Soul Calibur IV, and Ace Combat 6.

  6. I’ve been mostly playing Loco Roco 2, Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, and…

    RETRO GAME CHALLENGE!
    http://www.gamesanityblog.com/2009-02-14/my-trials-in-retro-game-challenge/

    I preordered SF4 on the 360 for Jeff and his friends to play on MY big screen TV when they come over.

    I’d like to try that Prinny PSP game someday, but I’m not sure how good it’ll be. –Cary

  7. If you need help on gears, simon, i’d be glad to help out in co-op. I was able to beat it on hardcore without too much of a problem. my gamertag is umm179.

  8. I’m not sure if we’ll ever sync up time-wise considering I was playing at 3am last night, but I’ll be glad to add you to my friends list 🙂

    My Gamertag is SiW73 btw.

  9. Lol, my dad has a cow if i go to bed a minute past 11:30. But, it might work if you live like in california or something. (I’m EST).

  10. Finally picked up a Wii Fit yesterday (Saturday). Played it a bit last night and enjoyed it. Skiing is a bit harder than one might think – especially if you have a 2-year old sitting on your shoulders at the time!!!

    As for other playing, I’ve gone back to working on Civilization Revolution on my DS to play a few games… fun, although I’m not easily beating even the highest level of difficulty at the moment….

  11. Well this past week the boot drive in my gaming rig died, so I didn’t get much gaming done. I did pick up Left 4 Dead on Steam though since it is 50% off until midnight today. So I have been installing water cooling, swapping drives around, and re-installing Vista (64bit this time) and my games. Though I think I will just install Sacred 2, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, and Fallout 3, since I’m not playing any of the others I have. And since the first 2 are Steam games they are easy to install. 🙂

    Oh, and my Wii died. My 2yr old has this habit of turning the Wii on when nobody is looking, so over the past few months since she was able to reach it, it has been on almost constantly until the other night when I heard this rattle come from it. Yeah, not good. It won’t recognize a disc now. So I gotta send it back to Nintendo and for $75 they will fix it and give me another 12 months on warranty (it is out of warranty now). So needless to say *I* didn’t play any games. My son Dylan has been absorbed in Pokemon Pearl for the DS which I recently picked up via Goozex.

  12. @ Simon “You’re killing me here”

    I guess my appreciation of the fight game genre is showing 😉

  13. Been playing Wii Fit almost every day and doing pretty well at it. My daughter got Animal Crossing: City Folk for her birthday this past week and we’re bummed that we can only have one town with four people in it (there are five of us in the family). What a stupid, stupid limitation. On the GCN version we could at least have multiple towns (using multiple memory cards). Oh well, I volunteered to be the odd person out as I have enough on my gaming plate with LEGO Batman and Burnout Paradise (both on PS3) with the BP Legendary Cars slated to release this Thursday! (Yippee! BttF Delorean, K.I.T.T., the General Lee and ECTO-1! I can’t wait…) I still intend to finish Fallout 3 and write a guide; but, the game is too much like work and not enough like fun.

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