And thank God we’re through. Yesterday was pretty much the end of the annual video game holiday season logjam. Sure, a few titles will trickle out between now and Christmas, but few of them are all that noteworthy. Unlike this week, which sees the release of Left 4 Dead 2 (which is partially set in Savannah), Assassin’s Creed II, LittleBigPlanet’s handheld debut, the second LEGO Indiana Jones, and the Wii-exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. There’s also the latest in the never-ending series of Tony Hawk games. Instead of working out your fingers, though, Tony Hawk: Ride comes with a skateboard peripheral; because the best way to reverse the rapid deterioration of a long-running franchise’s fanbase is to make the latest iteration cost twice as much as usual.
I mean no disrespect to Buck Fever or the inimitable Style Lab series, but two games stand astride this week’s list of releases like the bronze colossus Helios overlooking the mouth of Rhodes. If you believe the internet (and Lord knows you should) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the greatest and best selling game of all time. It will also teach you Spanish, give you a makeover, and help you realize you’ve always been a strong, beautiful, confident person deep down inside. It’ll also probably lap the field in Fox News opprobrium. Many are wondering if the GTA “hot coffee” controversy of 2005 was just foreplay for the likely eruption of media outrage over Modern Warfare 2 and its cavalier attitude towards civilians. Either way it’s guaranteed to be the most popular game among “hardcore” gamers, both the poorly parented 12-year-old racist homophobes who self-identify as such, and everybody else who likes video games but find the “hardcore” tag as appetizing as a Monster Thickburger after reading Fast Food Nation.
If you don’t feel like slaughtering innocents in an airport, then maybe you should pick up New Super Mario Brothers Wii. This sequel to the 2006 DS game New Super Mario Brothers adds four-player simultaneous co-op to the classic side-scrolling gameplay of the original Super Mario Brothers. You can help your friends out or pick them up by their heads and throw them into a bottomless pit. And if the game gets too hard, you can let it play itself; NSMBWii is the first title to ship with Nintendo’s new “Super Guide” feature, where novice gamers can send the game into auto-pilot during especially difficult moments.
This week’s new video games are a good mix of the old and new. Oh, wait, no they’re not. It’s another round of sequels and licensed games. Not that game sequels are inherently problematic (technology tends to keep getting better, y’see), but it’s hard to get excited over the sixth Tekken if you’re not a huge fan of fighting games. Even if you like racing games, Forza Motorsports 3 will only be interesting if you really liked the first two.
There is one new and original title launching this week, and that’s DJ Hero. Activision might deck it out in Guitar Hero dress, but DJ Hero’s gameplay bears little resemblance to its big cousin or Rock Band. Sure, you still hit colored buttons at the right time, but scratching, crossfading, and rewinding have no analogue in either of the two big music games. DJ Hero isn’t just fresh and exciting, though; it’s also shockingly fun.
Find the full list of new releases after the jump.
I was talking to some people about this band Cold Cave. They make lo-fi electro-pop that sounds like old New Order four-track demos, but without almost any of New Order’s songwriting skills. It’s pretty dreadful stuff. One guy said he liked Cold Cave because it reminded him of old OMD records. Another guy asked why he didn’t just listen to old OMD records, if that’s what he wanted to hear. That’s not a great argument, normally, but in this case I kind of agreed with it. Why waste time on a vastly inferior rip-off when you have access to the original?
I thought of this conversation about Cold Cave a lot while playing Shadow Complex, a new Xbox Live Arcade exclusive that comes out this Wednesday. Both blatantly pay tribute to ’80s classics. Shadow Complex is basically just Metroid, straight-up, or more specifically the ’94 Super Nintendo sequel, Super Metroid. The game’s makers aren’t ashamed to admit it. That means it’s a 2-D side-scrolling action game that prioritizes exploration over blowing stuff up. Things do explode, and man does kill man (hundreds of men, actually), but the crux of the gameplay is unlocking all the game’s secret passages and power-ups.
Prototype
Rated M for Mature
Released June 9
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Published by Activision
What It Is: Like Sony’s Infamous, Prototype is an open-world superhero action game that doesn’t force you to be a good guy. Unlike Infamous, Prototype doesn’t give you the option to be a good guy. It’s impossible not to kill innocent civilians in Prototype; you’ll unwittingly decapitate a half-dozen just crossing the street. It’s not the point of the game’s story, but Prototype is basically about being a crazy genocidal dickhead in a realistically rendered New York City. Your enjoyment will hinge on how you feel about massacring some fools.
Prototype’s superfun when: you pick up a car, ram it into soldiers and pedestrians while running five Manhattan blocks, scurry up the side of the Empire State building, toss the car at one helicopter, dropkick another until it explodes, and then blow up a tank on the way down with an elbow-drop. Prototype’s utterly ludicrous action offers up some of the purest fun of any game yet this year. Oh yeah, you also eat people to regain health and learn how to drive a tank. It’s so dumb it’s god-damn genius.
Prototype’s puny alter ego is exposed when: you stop fooling around and pay attention to the story. As fun as the gameplay can be, Prototype’s story and cut scenes are among the worst in recent memory. The lead character is angstier than grunge Hamlet; he’s a wholly unlikable whiner who wouldn’t think twice about killing every single person on Manhattan in some vague quest for revenge against the people who gave him completely awesome and amazing superpowers. It’s like if Superman got pissed over being able to do absolutely anything and vented his anger by Stone Cold Stunnering the Sun until it died. Combine the miserable story with repetitive missions, a needlessly complicated skill tree, and, oh yeah, the gleeful endorsement of genocide, and you’ve got a game that tries valiantly to undercut whatever fun it might possess.
What you should do: borrow a copy from a friend, play the first few missions to unlock some powers, and then completely ignore the rest of the story as you wreak havoc throughout the city.
GammaTesting.com’s fourth episode is a classic romance: boy loses donkey, meets girl, fights demons, releases evil god. All for love. We also love — mostly — Prince of Persia’s seamless gameplay, capable writing and gorgeous Disney atmosphere. Almost enough to marry it. But is there enough going on to resurrect the game after the first play through? Hmmm.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Rated M for Mature
Released April 7
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Published by Atari
What It Is: Remember the Vin Diesel movieChronicles of Riddick? You were probably too busy convincing yourself John Kerry wasn’t a horrible candidate to notice this giant bomb. Games based on movies are traditionally awful, but somehow the video game tie-in, Escape from Butcher Bay, easily outperformed its nominal source material both critically and commercially. The unique stealth-focused first-person shooter boasted excellent production values and a tight narrative focus, exactly unlike the movie’s sprawling sci-fi nonsense. Five years is a long wait for a sequel, but for those who’ve forgotten or never played the original, Dark Athena comes with a spruced-up current-generation remake of Butcher Bay. So that’s two complete games on one disc, both overflowing with Diesel’s comical cheerlessness.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Rated M for Mature
Released Feb. 10
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Published by Warner Brothers Interactive
Killzone 2
Rated M for Mature
Released Feb. 27
PlayStation 3
Published by Sony
What’s more respectable, a game that’s technically excellent, but lacking in ambition, or one that’s less well-designed, but tells a more interesting story? That’s the quick and easy breakdown of Killzone 2 and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. The former nails the first-person shooter formula as thoroughly as possible, but without an iota of originality, whereas the latter tries something different by muddling together familiar ideas from various genres and media forms. One’s more fun to play, but the other tickles the ol’ gray matter a bit more.
I was talking to some people about this band 
Prototype
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
