Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Remedy
Genre: Action/Survival Horror
Release date: Available now

“Wake me when Alan Wake is released.” That used to be my running joke when my most anticipated game announced in 2006 failed to materialize year after year. In fact, for a spell of time between late 2007 and early ‘09, the game completely vanished from Microsoft’s radar, leading many to believe that it had been unceremoniously cancelled. Then, at last year’s E3 conference, Remedy finally exposed their labor of love to the light and allowed the gaming press to fawn all over it. Previews raved about the game’s taut mix of action gameplay and a driving narrative ripped from the pages of contemporary pulp fiction.

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Publisher: Kalypso Media
Developer: Haemimont Games
Genre: Strategy
Release date: Available now

City-building strategy games are a dime a dozen in the PC realm, but on the consoles they still represent a minor niche at best. Part of this is the control scheme. A mouse and keyboard becomes an extension of the strategic-minded player’s mindset, while controllers lack the sheer number of inputs needed to tend to every angle of a growing empire at a moment’s notice. Then there’s the target demographic, with the top-tier consoles such as the 360 and the PS3 catering to the fratcore demographic that aims to get their gun on. Running an island nation, a conceit that the recently released Tropico 3 offers, can prove to be a bit too cerebral for the console crowd.

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Publisher: Atlus
Developer: ACE Team
Genre: First Person Brawler
Release date: Available now

I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on a first-person shooter. It was in the early 1990s at University of Massachusetts/Amherst when a departing senior tossed me a diskette containing the shareware code for Doom. Somehow Wolfenstein 3D had escaped my gaze, so it was Doom that showed me the brave new world of future gameplay. And while I reveled in toting a boomstick and busting out a chainsaw in all its over-pixelated glory, my mind raced to other applications. Busting caps made for a fine diversion, but this seemed like the first step in realizing the dream of virtual reality. And yet, here we are, almost two decades later, and the first-person viewpoint, with few exceptions, seems rooted in the realm of shooters.

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Publisher: Hudson Soft
Developer: Hudson Soft
Genre: Turn-based Strategy
Release date: Available now

I don’t really remember it, but others might recall that the Nectaris series actually debuted way back on PCs and the TurboGrafx-16 (one of its eight games, I believe) in the late 1980s. They are turn-based, hexagonal-mapped strategy games in which one player tries to overtake another by moving their units around the board. Military Madness: Nectaris, recently released on Xbox Live Arcade, is an updated throwback to the original.

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Publisher: 2K Sports
Developer: 2K Sports
Genre: Sports Sim
Release date: Available now

With the start of a new baseball season comes a lot of great things. High hopes for your favorite team to do well, or sometimes friendly trash talking between you and others whose favorite team is a rival of yours. It also brings us a new sports game for the season. First I want you to sit back and recall your best video-game memories. Somewhere near the top of the list is likely a moment featuring a friend and a sports game. The reason: sports games offer the opportunity to face off with friends in a one-on-one battle; it’s like a fist fight without throwing fists. Let us take a look 2K Sports’ Major League Baseball 2K10 to see if it can make the final out to get the win.

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Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Signal Studios
Genre: Tower defence
Release date: Available now

Just as the grainy sound of gramophone music lulls you into a gentle reminiscence of the old days, you find yourself in a quaintly arranged toy diorama. Toy soldiers representing troops who fought in the Great War (1914-18) mill about in neatly dug trenches. Model trees decorate the surrounding countryside. A blue sky dotted with white clouds adorns the walls that mark the edge of the toy battlefield. All is tranquil and calm. Memories of childhood hours spent re-creating battles with plastic soldiers gives you a warm, nostalgic feeling. Then, quite suddenly, the peace is shattered. Sirens wail, there’s a wave of movement from your soldiers as they scale the trenches and launch themselves towards the enemy lines. In the distance, tiny dots come ever closer, revealing themselves to be a mass of enemy troops. Time to act – wire needs to be laid, machine gun positions set, artillery deployed and gas teams unleashed. The struggle for Toy Soldiers has commenced.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare
Genre: RPG
Release date: Available now

It’s been a little while since we defeated the Archdemon (the corrupted old god in the shape of a giant high dragon), about six months to a year by my watch, but the Darkspawn did not disband and retreat to the Deep Roads. They’re organizing and ransacking the north country, and rumors abound of some that speak. As not only Ferelden’s Queen, but also its Grey Warden commander, I find myself on the road to Vigil’s Keep to rebuild the Wardens and scoop up those pesky post-blight stragglers. Of course, the new recruits and I are attacked along the way, so the ritual dismemberments resume in Dragon Age: Origins—Awakening.

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Publisher: 2K Play
Developer: The Odd Gentlemen
Genre: Puzzle
Release date: Available now

Who ate all the pies? Not me. I was too busy playing 2K Play and developer The Odd Gentlemen’s puzzle game The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom to take snack breaks. In this case, the culprit is the titular lead character of the game, a villain sporting a fabulously fiendish waxed moustache who harkens back to the silent-film era. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Digital Illusions
Genre: First-person shooter
Release date: Available now

Yes, you read that name above in red correctly. Through what at first had seemed a series of unfortunate events, RPG-girl (yours truly) has ended up reviewing the latest FPS to hit the Avault streets. While you might be inwardly groaning as much as I did when it first happened, you’ll be happy to hear that I was pleasantly surprised. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the latest offering from DICE and EA, not only maintained my interest for the duration of my time with it, but it also continued to keep me coming back for more multiplayer punishment. I won’t say that the game converted me, but my visit to its world of blood, guts and guns was truly an exciting one.

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Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Genre: Action Adventure
Release date: Available now

Imagine that you are attending a public event during the Renaissance where a city official is speaking. The crowd listens to him ramble on about the future of the city and the great things he is planning. In mid sentence, an assassin jumps down from the rooftops and slips a blade right into the official’s heart. The crowd panics and guards scramble. Your heart drops as the assassin scales a building out of sight in a matter of seconds. Assassin’s Creed II puts you in the shoes of that very assassin in an innovative and interesting way.

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Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
System: Xbox 360
Genre: RPS
Release date: Available now

We’re always going to want more when it comes to downloadable content. Depending on the platform, publisher and game itself, situations can get pretty ugly, too. Anybody who remembers the horse armor debacle in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion knows what I mean. But that was probably the saving grace of DLC, because if gamers hadn’t voiced their price-for-content grievances, where would we be now? Would we be shelling out our MS Points for single items? Would the greedy hands that be see Borderlands as a DLC cash cow because of the limitless amount of weaponry they could sell? And would we still have seen an expansion as meaty as the Secret Armory of General Knoxx? Thank God I’m speaking hypothetically here.

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Publisher: W!Games
Developer: W!Games
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
Release Date: Available now

One of the retro perks of our newfangled Wi-Fi enabled world is the resurrection of the proverbial “family game night”. Once upon a time, we whiled away our evenings chasing down loot and struggling to build a Monopoly to the detriment of our beloved family members. And then, when TV and console games beckoned, it looked as if the traditional board game was destined to a purgatory of moth-balled closets and dirt mall swap meets. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same – and as services such as the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN began to flourish, smaller developers realized that they could utilize the instant connectivity afforded by the Internet to breathe new life into faded board game archetypes. The question is, does Greed Corp. have what it takes to take its place on the crowding shelf of new online classics such as Catan and Carcassonne?

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Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Petroglyph Games
Genre: Strategy
Release date: Available now

Like tanks? Big explosions? Strafing aircraft? Unpredictability? Then you might do well to invest some time into Panzer General: Allied Assault. It wouldn’t surprise me if you haven’t heard of it. This turn-based wargame has sneaked under the marketing radar. This is rather a shame, as it offers more value and entertainment than some of the bigger hitters. There have been a plethora of World War II games (most have been first-person shooters), so it’s refreshing to see a different type of wargame. Don’t get me wrong, I love bumping up other players’ kill ratios in Call of Duty, but it tests my reflexes without giving me much of a neuron workout. So it’s nice to find a game like Panzer General that keeps the cobwebs at bay.

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Publisher: D3Publisher
Developer: Vicious Cycle
Genre: Shooter/Side-Scroller
Release date: Available now

Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond marks the second appearance of extreme action hero parody Hazard in an all-new Xbox Live Arcade downloadable game. A direct sequel to Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, Blood Bath decides to go retro, placing Hazard into a throwback of 8-bit side-scrolling action. Unlike the first Hazard, which was completely 3D, Blood Bath is completely 2D, linear and platform-based, very much akin to old classics such as Contra and Metal Slug.

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Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Gearbox Software
Genre: RPS
Release date: Available Now

Mad Madame Moxxi is like a praying mantis. The oddly sexy ringmaster of the Underdome loves nothing more than to watch potential suitors get devoured in her brutal arena spectacles. It’s an idea similar to that of Auntie Entity, the principal antagonist in the film “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” only instead of the phrase “Two men enter, one man leaves,” it’s a little more like “Bring friends, you’ll need ‘em!” Read on to see if Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot is worth a spin of the wheel.

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