Upcoming 7-10-07

All of the following are scheduled to ship 7/10/07. As before, game ship dates stolen from Gamestop, reviews (when possible) provided by Gamerankings. Before we go on,, a simple logic puzzle, for the publishing company CEOs out there. So you're in the business of publishing videogames, and as such you know that a good percentage of your customers are in high school or college and during Summer usually have nothing better to do than work at McDonald's or hang out at comic shops. Being the president of a videogame company and thus obviously an incredibly smart person, worth many millions of dollars and owner of at least one diamond-encrusted Lamborghini for each day of the week, you also know that the games industry has a tradition of blindly throwing top titles out during the Christmas rush, when these same people are 1: Gearing up for tests and 2: Flat broke. Why is it, Mister Smarty Pants Videogame Man, that you know these things and yet, year after year, decide to release jack all during the Summer months when your customers are both flush with cash and bored? This the same logic that killed Beyond Good and Evil, the same logic that forced people to chose between Metal Gear Solid 3 and Halo 2, and will be the same logic that's going to lead to development team behind Kane & Lynch: Dead Men being dragged from their homes at three in the morning one night in January and never heard from again. But hey, I'm just one of a thousand hacks with a Blogger account. Although if I were a PS3 owner, I'd like to have something to justify my fandom between here and November besides Lair. PS2: Zilch. But not to worry, you 90 some million or so who've yet to move to next-gen: In two weeks you'll be able to once again justify putting off your upgrade thanks to Guitar Hero's 80's Edition and Persona 3. Wii: Nothing this week, and nothing again next week. Although two weeks from now Wii owners will be able to slake their totally-not-a-drought with Alien Syndrome and... Escape From Bug Island. XB360: Project Sylpheed (67%) Ouch. Iwanted this to turn out at least decent. It's a 360 remake of a Sega CD shump, a title that could not be more relevant to my interests had the game come with a goth librarian girlfriend simulator minigame. As we've explored earlier though, anything scoring below a 75% is a pretty sure sign that you're dealing with certified crap printed on disc. I mean, I'll still wind up buying the stupid thing, I just won't admit it. PS3: So you're Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America. It's the week of E3, you're about to announce a hundred dollar price drop on the PS3, and it looks like you may be gaining the nearest thing resembling momentum since last year's E3 disaster (an E3 that went so badly for you that you took E3 in a flaming wreck, Balrog vs Gandalf-like along with what remained of your communal goodwill). So you'd think that maybe you'd have a big title coming out this week to try and take advantage of this, right? Right? Not only is the PS3 not seeing anything released this week, it won't be seeing anything at all in the way of exclusive games until Lair, in the middle of August. Okay, ignoring the whole lack of worthwhile 3rd party exclusives-- was this abysmal dearth of 1st party titles in the first year really what Sony was planning for last year when the system was first announced? What was the plan here, to survive for an entire year based on the promise of Motorstorm? DS: Apparently Vegas: High Stakes was delayed a week and will instead come out this Tuesday. Those of you who were actually worried about this, please, go spend your $20 on video poker and stop ruining my hobby. PSP: Rivera: The Promised Land (N/A). You have to like what Atlus has going, what with their ability to treat the niche subject of hardcore traditional Japanese RPGs and bring them to North America, treating them with the reverence their okatu-driven customers demand, something Vic Ireland and his Working Designs crew were never able to accomplish. As for this game in particular, I'm not the one to be passing judgment upon it, as I haven't been able to enjoy a JRPG since Final Fantasy VII ten years ago. However, this looks competent enough, what with it's goth lolita girls in comically oversized hats and heroes wielding swords that look like everything swords just should not be. Atlus' target audience will no doubt be pleased, those of us just at the periphery of this audience will instead sit and watch Odin Sphere's animations.