Harmonix

Rock Band Lego (Nov 3) – If you already own Rock Band… why?

The Beatles Rock Band (Sept 9) – I like RockBand because it's the only game my wife will play with me. So I'll pick this up around Christmas. The three singers thing is actually pretty cool, not just a gimmick. One of my problems with Rockband is when they make really simple songs super hard to play. Like Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet. That song is like a douchebag fratboy gently strumming his guitar but instead of one button notes they made it 3 button notes constantly changing. It's insanely tough. If a song is easy, make it easy in the game! I have no problem struggling through a crazy Who guitar solo and barely making it to the end because I feel like a rockstar but failing out on sleepy basic songs sucks. Now people will disagree with me but the Beatles (as awesome as there were) weren't very musically complex for the most part. The songs shouldn't be difficult in Rockband and I was concerned there were going to artificially jack up the difficulty so you'd be failing out like Hey Jude. After watching people play several songs on expert, it's a bit of a concern but I'm satisfied enough to buy it.

Namco Bandai

Tekken 6 (Oct 27) – I think anyone that's spent five minutes around me know I hate fighting games. So this comment might offend people but it felt like Soul Calibur but a big easier. Again I'm not a big fan so I don't really know what else to say.

Bethesda

Wet (Sept 15) – It comes out in a couple days and I see there is a demo up on PSN so you can play it yourself. Me. I hated it. The whole premise is so stupid. You go into a room with like ten enemies and they all just stand there shooting aimlessly at you while you run around like an idiot jumping and sliding to try and trigger the slow motion stuff. Even the car ridding parts don't impress me. Terrible AI. The developers were nice guys but this game was weak. The few moments of slow mo blowing peoples heads off looks okay but the thrill dies minutes later.

Rogue Warrior (Oct 27) – Really generic, low quality FPS. Why do companies even make games like this?

Brink (Q3 2010) – I had no idea this game existed before PAX. I'm definitely interested. It was just a live demo and it's being made by Splash Damage. It has like Mirror's Edge running and jumping mechanics so you can move very quickly from a FPS perspective. Fully customizable characters. Two factions on the "Brink" of civil war. It was like a Utopian city that lost contact with the rest of the world. So you're either the security force or the rebel immigrants that have come to the city. Kind of cartoonish characters. Feels a lot like Killzone, In fact the basic gun is perfectly identical (I mean even the zoom in is identical) to the ISA rifle. There is a class system and you can change your class at captured beacons. It will be 8 player co-op or 8v8 multiplayer with tons of objectives. So like you bring up a wheel and it gives you I think like 10 potential objectives with associated XP. So like switch to engineer (100xp), then you get some new ones like create a short cut (150xp) or fix that crane (300xp). Etc. it's kind of tough to explain. In live demo he had to guide a robot to a bomb and so everything you did helped speed up the process. Or you could just escort the vehicle which was an objective (10xp per second). Does that make any sense? It looks like it's trying to do a lot of things at once. Like a complex MAG objective system mixed with Killzone, mixed with Mirror's Edge. Again, definitely interested.

Ubisoft

Assassin's Creed 2 (Nov 17) – This was just a huge stage demo in the biggest theatre at the show. Assassin's Creed was for me, like most people, a game that was both excellent and terrible. The graphics, the go anywhere gameplay and story were great but the repetition was ridiculous. So after watching a 40 minute presentation I can't comment on the repetition (the guy assured us it was gone) but it looked like the same great elements of assassin's creed 1. There is a huge portion that takes place underground. Lots of hidden treasure to find (too much). You can pick up enemy weapons. The gun is pretty cool because it gets increasingly accurate when you hold down the button but it reveals you so you can't use it in combat. A lot more platforming which looks identical to PoP. Double knives. The biggest change is that there is now a money system. So you get money for killing guys and you can pickpocket people in the street. You use the money to buy potions. The one he showed us was a potion that made this lord's guard start hallucinating and going crazy. Then he threw money on the ground and people are tried to pick it up while the guard was swinging his axe around all crazy like. Again it feels like I'm forgetting some stuff.

Splinter Cell (Q1 2010) – I've never played any of these games before but it was the first part of the AC 2 presentation. Umm this game looks really silly. During the question period all the fanboys were furious about the game because it looked really easy and entirely lost it's stealth element. The presenter kept saying the main character was a panther, he was a predator, a puma. It was actually really funny in his Quebecois accent (but he didn't mean it to be, I'm sure). Basically imagine a fast paced Uncharted with **** graphics and this stupid new aiming system. This aiming system involves tagging enemies while hiding behind a corner. Then you jump out and quickly/automatically shoot all the tagged enemies. It looks so easy. Another feature is the last known position. So as soon as you break the line of sight a ghost of you shows up and the enemies head towards that spot. So as long as you are out of sight you can then sneak around them as they head towards that one location. WTF! Does that make sense at all? They could call it the Ubisoft easy button. During the demo he just hung off ledges and enemies walked right up to him so he could grab them. I can see why fans of the game would be angry. Otherwise the game looked pretty rough. Expect a delay for sure.

Avatar (Nov 24) – Got to watch this in a 3D theatre. Silly. But the game looked decent. It's a third person action game. Really cool night to day environments. Interesting customizable special abilities. You can play as humans or avatars. I guess James Cameron is trying to build like a Star Wars universe and he's had this idea for like 12 years. So this game isn't a movie tie in. It's like a completely separate game set in the movie universe. Some interesting vehicles and big creatures to fight. It looked well polished and unique enough to be given a chance. Personally I kind of like Lost Planet 2 better because the weapons are more interesting and the bosses are bigger, also co-op.

EA

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Q1 2010) – You got to go into 4 squads of 4 and play in a special room. It was pretty neat. Good game. I'm really at a loss of what to say. It felt like a good first person military shooter. Got to ride an ATV and a tank. The destructible environments was pretty cool but didn't make sense sometimes (clearly they're going to work on it). If you're a big fan of the series you can ask me specifics I guess,

Brutal Legend (Oct 13) – I waited so long and did not get to play this game. Some demos had like organized lines and time limits while others were just clustereffs like Brutal Legend. It was super busy all the time. So I got to watch people play it a lot. Looks pretty basic, attack with the axe, lighting attack called down by the guitar. Driving sequences look fun. The best part was the dialogue. It's genuinely funny and Jack Black does a great job. People were laughing out loud in groups watching this game being played.

Dead Space Extraction (Sept 29) – Urghh horrible. If you're a fan of light gun shooters on the Wii then you'll probably like this game. But I was a big fan of Deadspace. I think it was really underappreciated. It scared the crap out of me and I still have to go back on Impossible to get my Platinum. It was a thrilling game and to see it dumbed down on the Wii breaks my heart. It's not so much the graphics but like the game wasn't mean to be a light shooter. Creeping around in the dark, moving from shadow to light, with all the strange noises, crazy aliens sneaking up behind you, crawling out of vents, running for your life, getting cornered, zero gravity, aliens coming from all directions. All that reduced to a locked screen and three monsters taking turns running at you. It's dumb.

Saboteur (Dec 8) – I was interested in this game but it really looks like the **** I talked to Tom French (the lead designer) for a while as I was playing (he was super nice). The game looks really rough. Like dead enemies floating into the sky, the camera moving into objects so you can't see anything, enemies randomly falling into walls. Graphics are not great. Shooting effects are terrible. AI and enemy detection is laughable. I guess ideally it's supposed to be like a sandbox, third person, WW2, stealth game with a lot of driving portions because the main character is a race car driver. You can steal soldier's clothes and walk around but you have a detection meter. Like there's some good ideas here and I was excited about it but the game wasn't very good. Also the fact that the Nazis look like Space Marines and they're apparently marching in groups of 8 around every corner of occupied France in the middle of the night while you're driving through.

Dante's Inferno (Feb 9) – Another surprise, this game was pretty damn cool. It played exactly like God of War but a lot tougher. Most people couldn't get through the demo on easy (I did of course :D) Static camera, same buttons roughly. Same level of graphics although I might give the edge to GoW3, same gory gameplay. Damage bosses until a button press sequence. Epic huge and creative bad guys you're fighting. There is this demon riding a Minotaur (but like a pretty crazy looking Minotaur). You have to rip the demon out of the seat and then take control of the Minotaur to pound and tear apart guys. Meanwhile you're riding on the back of some grotesque human boat. So your Minotaur (which is like five times your size) rips out the eye ball of the giant human boat and the eye ball is like the size of the Minotaur's chest. Then he sticks his hands into the eye socket and tears the head off and throws it away. Crazy stuff like that. There was another fight against a giant Octopus man. A lot of times when you fight giant bosses, they kind of sway back and forth stupidly then every ten second smash a fist down at you. This Octopus man was out to get you! He was pounding fists and dragging his arm across the cage you were in. It didn't feel like it was canned. You end up killing him by dragging his face onto a big wheel and tearing it in half. I'm not a big fan of gore but this game will be the king, and I can appreciate that. They also gave us a comic of the story and it sounds decent. It's a toss up between this and GoW for me. If you're a fan of the genre get both for sure.

Darksiders (Jan) – As good as Dante's Inferno and GoW3 were, this game was bad. Such a plain, ugly, boring game. The enemies, the environments, your weapon, your special attacks, the platforming parts, all bland and terrible. This is something you'd play on PS2 in the middle of it's cycle. Enemies just slowly hobble towards you and the weapon collision is off entirely. They had a big decorated horse/mechanical bull that you could ride. Easily that will be the high point of Darksiders.