Do This Week’s Releases Signal Better Summers Ahead for Gamers?

A lot of interesting and big games came out this week (the two shouldn’t always be confused) and a few are coming out next week as well. And in the next couple weeks after that. In fact, so far this season it’s felt like the trend of leaving most of the summer devoid of noteworthy releases has been abandoned. I wrote about it a few years ago in an article called, “The Holiday Crush” which was part of a series bearing the alarmist’ title “Gaming in Crisis.” It discussed the industry’s propensity to load the majority of its AAA titles into the three month window of October, November, and December in a go-for-broke tactic that hoped to take advantage of holiday-related spikes in credit card spending. It was (and is) my opinion that this was an ill-advised practice rooted in an old model that assumed most game purchases are made by someone for someone else. As in a Mother buying Super Mario Bros for their child at Christmas because it was on his list, instead of the more contemporary and accurate example of a 35-year-old kid buying Super Mario Bros Wii for himself now because today was its release date and rationalizing it all to his wife by saying it is for their children “because they have been good.”

It was a tactic practiced by publishers of all sizes which artificially created situations where Dreamcatcher Interactive’s biggest game of the year, a point-and-click style adventure was competing for market share against Electronic Arts’ latest multi-million dollar sequel in its best-selling (X) franchise. Perhaps it is the frightening volume of the excitement already building around the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, still over 6 months away, that has scared some publishers into seeing the logic  that dictates that you’ll have better sales when your consumer has fewer competing distractions.  

That should lead to more evenly balanced release calendars and summers filled with weeks like this one.

But decisions will still have to be made and so here are our initial impressions of this week’s games:

(We want to stress again that unless stated otherwise, these are just initial impressions of these games based off of limited play time of titles from recent industry events, official previews, or full titles in our possession and are not our final, officially scored reviews!)

The Conduit (Wii)

Sega, High Voltage Software

We’ve seen a lot of this one even before we officially started in on the review so it’s a pretty easy one to call. Compared to any other First Person Shooter available on the Wii, it’s awesome, but we should have a full review of it up by the time you read this. But here is the Reader’s Digest version – if you own a Wii you need to go pick this one up now.

Dawn of Discovery (Wii)

Ubisoft, Sunflowers Interactive

We’re only a few hours into this one, but it feels promising. It is a strategy game that feels a little like the original Age of Empires – a lot of focus on resource management and the tech tree, but made accessible for the wider audience of the Wii. Still, so far, it seems to have a scalable level of depth that more serious gamers will be able to appreciate if they can get around the kiddie-graphics. Other production values like the quantity and quality of the voice-acting have us even more surprised that we haven’t heard much about this title before. We’re holding off on giving any final judgments till we play more of it, but so far we are both surprised and encouraged to see a title like this on the Wii.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS)

Atlus

The Shin Megami Tensei games are definitely an acquired taste, but for those of you who do like them, this portable title seems to have captured all of the flavor of its larger cousins, but in size that fits in your new DSi. Yes, it’s a new storyline that seems to have all the hours of deep, distinctive, and disturbing content you typically find in the series but now you can easily smuggle it into class.

And if you don’t have a DS but your still looking to take some suicidal students around with you, Atlus has a PSP solution you’ll recognize called Shin Megami Tensei: Persona coming out this September.