Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Genre: Action/RPG
Release Date: Available now

There’s a certain rinse and repeat sensation that every Diablo-clone inspires. When you strip away their trappings, be it an orc-strewn fantasy land or superhero-laden stronghold, these action RPGs amount to little more than bashing the hell out of everything not bolted down, scoring mad piles of loot and moving on to the next trigger point to engage a new stream of foes. While this game play can be addictive and certainly scratches that innate itch to cause untold amounts of mayhem, modern dungeon crawlers need to apply their own secret identity to make it all worth a gamer’s while. A few years back, Vicarious Visions updated the template they crafted with last generation’s X-Men Legends titles and drafted the entire Marvel roster with Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The ability to join forces with all of the great heroes that have inhabited that potent universe was a big draw and the game was a genuine success. Three years later, Vicarious Visions is back with the sequel, aptly titled Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.

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Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Artificial Mind & Movement
Genre: Action
Release date: Available now

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Nowhere is this cliché more evident than in the video-game domain, where each year new action games build upon the foundations laid previously by other developers. Think of Bullet Time. First “The Matrix” film series did it. Then Max Payne copped to it. And suddenly, everyone from the Prince of Persia to Blinx the Time Cat was slowing time to get out of a jam. Of course, the movies are no different. You only need look in Quentin Tarentino’s direction. Every film that cool cat has ever seen has stewed in his brain pan and been churned out into the pop-culture fever dreams that he’s concocted; their obscure grindhouse origins are ripe for the enterprising cineaste looking to connect each dot. It’s fitting, then, that Artificial Mind & Movement’s new third-person action game, Wet, should emerge as the love child of QT and the action game genre.

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Publisher: 2K Sports
Developer: Visual Concepts
Genre: Sports
Release Date: Available now

Would you pay to play a demo? That’s a question that has been lobbed by marketing forces ever since digital distribution really began to take root and thrive in the video game console space. While most consumers eagerly chomp at the bit to take the latest demo for a whirl, the moment a price gets slapped on the content, the voices often sing loud and clear in opposition. That hasn’t stopped publishers from attempting to make a little bit of scratch off those itching for their next eagerly awaited release, which was evident last summer when Microsoft and Lionhead Studios offered up Fable II Pub Games to whet fans’ appetites before Fable II dropped in October. This summer, 2K Sports has released their own premium pre-release content with the unveiling of NBA 2K10: Draft Combine on the XBLA and PSN networks.

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Publisher: Disney Interactive
Developer: Genki
Genre: Action/RPG
Release date: Available now

Video-game consoles inspire a great deal of loyalty from fanboys ready to ignite flame wars at the mere sight of a message-board troll. Then there are the players who enlist alongside Master Chief or get to work freeing Warcraft from the Horde and settle down for a multiyear engagement with their game of choice, ignoring the lion’s share of competing releases. This loyalty seems to be an innate trait of the more mature gamer, though, and while the prime demographics have certainly skewed older in the last decade, there is still plenty of cash to be mined from the pre-tween set, who are less finicky about their game choices than they are about their veggies. Kids think nothing of pinballing from Pokemon to Bakugan and back again, allowing properties like Disney’s Spectrobes: Origins to make a serious run for the throne.

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Publisher: Oxygen Games
Developer: Twelve SRL
Genre: Platformer
Release date: Available now

The current generation of consoles has given developers the ability to latch onto archetypes from gaming’s past and pull them into the light for new generations to enjoy. We’ve already seen digital distribution channels such as Xbox Live and WiiWare reanimate the adventure genre through games such as the recently released Tales of Monkey Island. Side-scrollers have also benefited from the nostalgia, with Bionic Commando Rearmed and its ilk receiving wide acclaim. In an age when former gaming poster child Sonic hustles from gimmick to gimmick looking to reclaim a hint of his past glory, does CID the Dummy stand a chance to become America’s Next Hot Mascot?

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Publisher: EA
Developer: EA
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now

Earlier this year, veteran broadcaster and former NFL coach John Madden announced that he was stepping aside from his color commentary duties to get busy enjoying the remainder of his days. Love him or leave him, Madden was an iconic presence on Monday Night Football and his absence will surely be noticed. While the Big Guy jumps aboard that famed Horse Trailer for one last ride into the sunset, there’s no doubt that his legacy lives on in the digital age, as the Madden brand has become synonymous with videogame football. With the annual release of his smash mouth simulator treated as a national holiday of sorts, it will be a long time before we divorce the man from the game. As the first title released following Madden’s exit, Madden NFL 10 bears the weight of living up to the man’s legacy.

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A few years back, I received an urgent call from my wife. She had been in the midst of a feverish shopping excursion when she rounded a corner of the local mall and walked smack into a mammoth line, easily 100 people deep, winding its way from the entrance of the GameStop halfway towards the food court. She wanted to know what new console had been released that day and (bless her heart) should she get in line as my proxy. My brain went into overdrive. The 360 had already been released and we were still a few months shy of the Wii and PS3 debuts. What game could kick-start such a frenzy? Then it hit me. Exhibition football was back on the tube and the retail stores were stocked with back-to-school items. There’s only one game that manages to stir the masses year-after-year with each subsequent installment.

“It’s Madden, baby!!!”

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Tiburon
Genre: Sports
Release date: Available now

At this year’s E3 conference, Microsoft garnered lots of press with the unveiling of Project Natal, a motion-sensing device seemingly ripped from the film “Minority Report” but owing just as much inspiration to the Nintendo Wii. At the same conference, Sony displayed its own unnamed version of the Wiimote and its waggling wizardry. The message was clear: while Microsoft and Sony offer powerhouse, pixel-bursting consoles, they clearly lag behind Nintendo’s lower-powered Wii, which thus far outsold the competition on the strength of its innovative control scheme. Despite that success, core Wii owners would counter that the Wii has yet to fully reach the potential promised when the system first debuted in 2006, a fact that Nintendo has sought to remedy through the introduction of Wii Motion Plus, an enhancement designed to produce true one-to-one motion control. While we won’t know how well Nintendo has implemented the device until Wii Sports Resort reviews start appearing, Electronic Arts has jumped to the forefront, embedding the technology into this year’s installment of its venerable Tiger Woods golf franchise, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Electronic Arts
Genre: Puzzle
Release Date: Available now

The Nintendo Wii has defied all expectations and has emerged as this current console generation’s clear winner in pure sales. While Nintendo might not have pushed the envelope in terms of graphics quality or phenomenal processing power, they did accomplish their mission of pulling more gamers into the fold, some would argue to the detriment of their loyal, hardcore fan base. And while Nintendo has offered some compelling first-party content geared towards satisfying both camps, they’ve received much-deserved criticism concerning their tendency to grant the coveted Nintendo Seal of Approval to any developer looking to make a mint off of a poorly conceived and executed collection of minigames. It helps that the legion of new players is seemingly less likely to hit up sites such as Avault for a recommendation, and is more likely to make a purchase based solely upon the pretty pictures adorning the box. Fortunately, there are some developers who, despite their intense commercial interests, have assigned generous resources to their casual divisions to create compelling entertainment geared for everyone. EA, in partnership with Steven Spielberg, first hit paydirt last year with the ingeniously clever puzzle game Boom Blox, and they’ve returned with a more robust follow-up in this year’s Boom Blox Bash Party.

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Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Techland
Genre: First Person Shooter
Release date: Available now

Westerns–those tall tales of the Wild West–are an American invention, yet some of the best myth building has come from outside sources. It was Italian director Sergio Leone who placed Clint Eastwood on the map as The Stranger With No Name in his series of blood-drenched Spaghetti Westerns from the 1960s. While Americans took these oaters for granted and rolled their eyes at the creaky conventions that defined the form, it took an outsider to see the core attraction in these tales of the good, the bad and the ugly things men do and pump them up to operatic majesty. And while the world of cinema has long ushered its heroes towards that triumphant ride into the sunset, the video-game world has merely dabbled in the genre from time to time, most notably in the old Konami arcade side-scroller Sunset Riders and Gun, the Neversoft epic that ushered in this current generation of Western-themed games. Taking a page from Leone’s playbook, Polish developer Techland exploited this niche a couple of years back with their original release, Call of Juarez. This FPS benefited immensely from the developer’s decision to build a strong narrative around an aging archetype, following Leone’s lead in crafting a hero shaded in gray: the memorable Reverand Ray. Well, Ray is back, and he’s brought his brother along for the ride in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

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Publisher: Sega
Developer: High Voltage Software
Genre: First Person Shooter
Release date: Available now

When Nintendo first unveiled the Wii, fanboys paged through their wish lists of new iterations in the Mario, Zelda and Metroid series and began to dream up new and exciting applications for their favorite genres. The so-called hardcore crowd immediately conjured up lightsaber battles as a no-brainer use for the Wiimote, while others saw the ability to closely replicate the pixel-perfect mouse-driven controls that PC first-person shooter afficionados have enjoyed for years. And while a handful of FPS games have trickled through the deluge of shovelware ports, none have lived up to that initial fanboy fantasy. Enter developer High Voltage and the much-anticipated The Conduit, a Wii exclusive that endeavors to deliver hardcore action thrills while rewriting the book on how a console FPS should be controlled.

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In case you missed Part 1.

3. Tales of Monkey Island (Wii – Summer) The Secret of Monkey Island remake (Xbox 360 – July)

While these two titles are completely independent, they were announced within a day of each other and are both primed to hit this summer. My cousin Jason said it best. “We’ve had a decade plus of nothing Monkey Island and then suddenly Guybrush Threepwood is back with a vengeance“. Like him, I think my brain is going to explode.

The Monkey Island games hold a spot on that lofty perch that I reserve for my most beloved game play experiences. Mario, Zelda and Metroid sit up there too, but not many more. This is elite company for sure and it’s a testament to the talent employed by LucasArts in the early-to-mid 90s that these titles linger long in memory. I understand why the art form died, (once 3D gaming came along, there wasn’t much call for 2D point-and-click adventures) but it’s a shame that the caliber of storytelling and puzzle construction also seemed to go softly into the night.

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A few weeks back, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) showered gamers with a deluge of news and announcements highlighting the newest games in store for us this season and beyond. In addition, we saw a potential game-changing move with Microsoft’s unveiling of their self-aware Project Natal. We’re one step closer to Judgment Day with that one.

Anyway, I covered the Microsoft and Nintendo conferences in three separate Blog posts, which is becoming an annual tradition now that I’ve done two of them. Those pieces were focused on my reactions to the news coming from the console manufacturers, not necessarily about the games themselves (although it would be impossible to overlook that piece). This week, I intend to give you my Top 5 most anticipated games of 2009.

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Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available Now

Earlier this month at E3, developer Telltale Games announced that Guybrush Threepwood and the denizens of Monkey Island have joined the developer’s growing stable of character-driven episodic adventure games. Fans of the old LucasArts adventures can now check another buried treasure off their wish lists and set their hopes high for a potential Full Throttle or Grim Fandango reunion. Of course, it was Telltale’s expert handling of the beloved Sam & Max series (originally released on the PC two years ago) that paved the way for the return trip to Monkey Island. PC gamers and Wii wagglers have had their chance to reacquaint themselves with the canine gumshoe Sam and his psychotic little buddy Max, and now Xbox players finally get to enjoy their hijinks in the recent release of Season 1 of Sam & Max Save the World.

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(In case you missed part 1)

4. Every Move You Make

This has nothing to do with Sam Fisher but everything to do with spying.

Now that Microsoft has made cyber stalking from the comfort of your couch as simple as can be, it’s high time that they start working on making Internet piracy completely undetectable. Where’s the love for those deviants?

Last year, Microsoft furthered their goal of turning the Xbox 360 into the center of your home entertainment by adding Netflix streaming into the stable of options available through the system. This year, they’ve gone and added more features with a defined focus on blowing out the social networking aspect of the system.

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