Despite some great weather I’ve been seeing in my neck of the woods, this may feels much like a September in the context of video games… Theres a lot of games coming out that I’d consider highly anticipated, it’s kinda crazy that they’re all coming out at once. Lets get started then…

Skate 3

I’ve talked enough about this… I don’t think I need to go into detail…

Lost Planet 2

I liked the first Lost Planet quite a bit, if the timing was better on this release I probably would have been all over it, my complaint about the last Lost Planet was that it didn’t flow very well to me, and it was pretty much a deal breaker.

3D Dot Game Heroes

I was so excited for this game… but I think the marketing has fatigued me completely on the idea. There are a million reasons for me to love everything about this game, but I’m just not feeling it at the moment, I’ll probably hold off on picking this up for now… I don’t think it will have the charm required to get me off skate 3 this week at least, and I’ll be travelling quite a bit over the next few weeks so maybe I’ll look into grabbing it in the next release lull, but I really blame the marketing on this… it was just too much too early and I’m not nearly as excited for it as I was a month ago when the first set of reviews started coming out.

And all that is just this week… The following week is a big one as well…

Red Dead Demption

I wasn’t interested in this at all, I’ve had my fill of open world for while I think, but the western theme is always interesting to me because its seldom explored. I liked the previous Red Dead game, but quit when I had to play the indian… not because I’m anti-indian, I just got tired of the bow and arrow pretty quickly. In any case, this will also be on my list of rainy day hopefuls.

Alan Wake

This title screams interesting… I watched the quick look on giant bomb, and it seems pretty great based on that.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

’nuff said right? I loved the first game, this seems like the sequel that brings in some of the features that didn’t quite make it into the previous version. Even if it was just more of the same I’d be all over it. Besides, there is no way this game doesn’t make it into my house… I’m sure the girl friend went ahead and pre-ordered it weeks ago…

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

This game looks really good, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more hype around it. The last Prince of Persia game was disappointing to me, the no fail mentality sort of made the game feel like it might as well have been on rails. This one appears to be getting back to the platforming puzzles that I loved about the original, that sadly and slowly left the series, this has the potential to be a great great game.

Split/Second

Arcade racers clearly have a place in my life, I love the pick up and play aspect of them, you don’t have to be great at racing to be successful so you can jump in after months away from the title and still compete, that doesn’t happen in your Gran Turismos or your Forzas. I doubt I’ll be buying both this and Blur (more on that later) though, so I’m probably going to wait for the reviews and see if they mention the deal breakers for me. My problem with this one before I get all the details is that once you learn all the track variations it would remove a lot of the challenge/excitement I think.

Trauma Team

ok ok, I know what you’re thinking, but whatever. I haven’t played a Trauma game at all to this point, and to me they look fun in general, I’d considered picking one up on a couple different occasions so there is no better time than now with a new release. I think the multiplayer will be a hit with the girlfriend, and any time I can put video games and quality time with her together its a win situation for me. I’m really looking forward to this one.

There you have it… 6 releases in 1 week that I’d consider very buy-able, 9 in total… but wait… theres another week…

ModNation Racers

The next game really selling the play, create, share mentality, I think this really lends well to a kart racer, if the power ups are awesome this game will be awesome… all that customization, and infinite number of tracks to play, this game will never get old as long as the power ups are great. I’d like a demo first I think…

Blur

Hard not to look forward to this one, Project Gotham by the guys who made Project Gotham, with kart racer-esque power ups… I liked the PGR series a lot, they always felt somewhere between arcade and sim to me, and I appreciated that about it. It’s going to be really interesting to check this one out.

11 games in one month? This is a heavy heavy release cycle leading into summer with some really compelling titles, and a good mix of sequels and new IPs. It’s going to be really interested to see what the numbers for these games look like without the spending power Christmas provides. If you wanted to get creative, you could include the last week of april and get Splinter Cell: Conviction and Super Street Fighter IV