Short post this week, as there’s very little coming out at all. Something worth noting is that the ‘Walking Dead Guessing Game’ I’ve been playing for a few weeks is going to be absent for a while because…well, the game came out. Expect a review in the coming days. Heads up: It’s pretty good so if you’re invested after the first few episodes of Telltale’s game, you’d be crazy to miss it.

Coming out this week:

Shad’O – September 4th for PC
The Inception-geek in me is sold on the idea of following the story of a 9 -year-old  boy being lost in his own mind and fighting to save his memory. At the same time, I cannot use words to explain how little I care for the tower-defense genre. It’s just one of those types of games that I’ve never found myself caring for. Still, if that’s your thing, perhaps Shad’O‘s distinctive art style will find you willing to search up Steam for a copy.

The Sims 3: Supernatural Limited Edition – September 4th for Mac & PC
Christ, do any serious gamers still play The Sims? I’ve never dabbled much more than the occasional 5-10 minutes at a time. I have a similar problem with Minecraft, that there’s a lack of incentive or objective…I need a game in my games, so these ‘extreme-sandbox’ titles really leave me spinning my wheels. For those that still enjoy clicking two avatars and watching them have very PG-sex, though, the Supernatural Edition adds…’werewolves, fairies, witches and more’. So I’m far from sold.

Zen Pinball 2 – September 4th for PS3 & PSVita
Alright, let’s get this out in the open, so that for all future pinball releases, I can just link straight back here: I don’t understand the notion of playing pinball video-games. I mean, yeah, not everybody has a pinball machine at home (or at least I sure as hell don’t) but there’s something about the physics of the game ‘pinball’ that make a vitualized counterpart seem inherently wrong to me. Maybe it’s just me.
The coolest thing about this title from the PopCap behemoth of casual games is that if you already own Zen Pinball or Marvel Pinball, you’ll receive an update to ZP2 for free. So, there’s that.

Dogfight 1942 – September 5th for XBLA
What is the deal with all these WWII flight sims? Is there some totally loyal audience that goes out of there way to keep this mini-industry unto itself afloat? Either somebody’s doing something right or these developers are losing a whole mess of cash. Dogfight‘s selling point seems to be that you can play on both sides of the aerial conflict, whether your preference play out as the Axis, Allied or both. I don’t think I could take these sorts of games seriously, having found myself pretty far removed from WWII games in the past five years or so but even I can admit ‘Dogfight‘ is a pretty damn cool title.

Kung Fu Strike: The Warrior’s Rise – September 5th for XBLA
I feel like I should give Kung Fu Strike a chance. After my not so glorious turn with Sleeping Dogs (thanks again for all the hate mail, guys!) I found myself in a real heavy martial arts place, re-watching some of my favorite Chinese kung-fu flicks. That said, knowing that KFS was released two months ago on PC has me inclined to check out that release instead and also…there’s very little about KFS that looks particularly worthwhile. If I bother, I’ll let you guys know.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Riders of Rohan – September 5th for PC
If there is a single MMO I will check out when I finish building my PC later this week…it won’t be LotR: Online. It’ll probably be Guild Wars 2. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I’ll probably not be playing any MMO’s anytime soon, but a Riders of Rohan expansion is probably the worst way to sell me on an LotR MMMO. How offensively boring are the Riders of Rohan? Give me a Tom Bombadil themed expansion and maybe I’ll reconsider…
No. I won’t.

Trine 2: Goblin Menace – September 6th for Mac & PC
Trine is, to this day, still one of those downloadable games I have every intent on playing, but the more I hear about Trine 2, the more I find myself put off. Wasn’t this game supposed to come out over a year ago? Is it ever coming to consoles? Not to mention that every time I hear the word goblin,  I immediately think of David Bowie in the 80′s flick Labyrinth. If I’m thinking about Labyrinth, things have probably gone wrong somewhere.

Closure - September 7th for Mac & PC
Alright, I like to do enough research on every game featured here to be able to say something, anything. It doesn’t matter whether I’m fooling around or if I genuinely have something to say about the game itself. With that in mind, the following is literally all I could find out about Closure:

Closure is a unique and stylistic puzzle platformer that takes the concept of light and shadow and twists it up into something never before seen.

Uh, good. I think?

Like I said, relatively small week right now. There are a few larger titles next week but by and large, nothing to look forward to quite yet. Catch you guys later, and stay tuned to OWNT for, you know, stuff.

Woah, more games are coming out this week?! I still need to finish and review Sleeping Dogs before I start worrying about anything else. Speaking of reviews, we should be getting Darksiders II and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron reviews up in the coming days. Games, man. They’re like the future!

What isn’t like the future, however, is half of the games coming out this week. If you happen to be brand new to the Playstation scene, fear not! Sony have four compilations of previous series’ available for you this week. For everybody else there’s the obligatory niche PC game, the behemoth MMORPG and, of course, Madden. If you aren’t playing something current this week, you’re living in the past!
Unless you’re buying one of those compilations, in which case you’re still living in the past. Or something. I don’t even know anymore…

Coming out this week:

Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII – August 28th for PC, PS3, X360
All I had to learn about Pacific Squadron was that it begins with the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor and suddenly, I found I don’t care anymore. World War II was an absolute beast of a war, lasting six years, and all that developers can think to do is rehash old ideas? Forgive me if my memory’s hazy but didn’t I play this game nine years ago when it was called Medal of Honor: Rising Sun?
Oh, sorry, what? It’s a flight sim? Hell, now I definitely don’t want to play it.

It’s not often that something appears less interesting than its Michael Bay counterpart.

God of War Saga – August 28th for PS3
All that Sony have done here is prove how much of an utter fool I am for buying the original God of War Collection last year. Whilst that game simply included Kratos’ first two PS2 outings, God of War Saga includes his two PS2 adventures, both PSP titles and PS3′s God of War III. In hindsight it just makes me wonder how much free space was on that original Collection Blu-ray, if they managed to fit an additional three games on it?!

Guild Wars 2 - August 28th for PC
It seems that every news source I can find cite’s Guild Wars 2‘s release date as being the 28th, but everybody I know who plans to play the highly anticipated MMORPG seems to be on the servers already. I don’t know if they pushed the release forward or if it’s some sort of perk, but hey, if you’re super stoked about Guild Wars 2 go forth and…do whatever people do in MMO’s…?

Even I’ll admit, there’s nothing about this picture that isn’t badass.

Infamous Collection — August 28th for PS3
See?! They’re doing it all over again! C’mon, Sony, we know that two games cannot fill a Blu-Ray! How did you ever get away with selling each of these separately?
If you haven’t played the Infamous games, here’s your chance and it’s totally worth it. Infamous 2‘s story is nowhere near on par with the original and sometimes the sequel seems to be relying on reused assets or bland design (you made a supervillain called The Beast a giant magma-man? That’s it?!) but the gameplay is super engaging and tight enough to make these games more than commendable.

Journey Collector’s Edition – August 28th for PS3
For everybody out there who lacks an internet connection to their PS3, here are the two best games available on PSN, with a third outing by the same company that made the former two, but this time on a disc! I’ll admit, I never thought I’d ever see Flower on a disc.
Comprising of the thatgamecompany PSN-trilogy of Flow, Flower and Journey, this package is worth picking up for the latter two alone. They are both truly excellent artistic examples of minimalist game design and have been known to cause religious experiences for large gatherings in Cathedrals. That was not a joke, weirdly enough.

This is just a glimpse of how pretty Journey can be.

Knight Age – August 28th for PC
The guys over at Joymax are either ballsy, ignorant or outright stupid to allow an MMO to go into open beta on the same day that Guild Wars 2 is released. They’re taking on what has frequently been cited and voted as the years most anticipated game. In fact, if I don’t seem to be saying much about Knight Age, it’s because I’ve never heard of it, but I’ve heard of GW2 for a good few years now. Non-stop.

Lights, Camera, Party! – August 28th for PSN
Apparently this Playstation Move title is a fast paced and hilarious party game that involves a satellite crashing into the house of the Funzini family and the owner of the satellite…you guys don’t really care about this, do you? It’s probably not worth your time, but if you’re really desperate for a Move game then here, I guess.

Madden NFL 13 – August 28th for PS3, PSVita, Wii, X360
Last years Madden returns, but this time with more stuff! Or something! I don’t know anything about football!
Look, I’m British, okay guys? All I know about football is that the teams have a certain amount of time to take 100 yards of ground or something like that. And don’t give me any shit about not researching your favorite sport, I don’t even know how soccer works (although I still feel dirty whenever I type that word, urgh.)
I’d totally play NFL Crunchtime, though:

Mass Effect 3 DLC: Leviathan – August 28th for PC, X360
Jesus, does everything come out on this one day?  I still have like another three titles before we get away from the 28th!
Am I the only one who thinks Leviathan seems a little…sketchy? I mean, for those who have seen Leviathan‘s trailer and know the outcome of ME3, doesn’t this seem like it should have been in the main game? I find myself ever so slightly disconcerted by the fact that this DLC seems to take place before the end of the game, but we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe Bioware knows what it’s doing! I mean, I doubt it, but maybe!

Psychonauts – August 28th for PSN
Holy crap, I just realized that I never played Psychonauts.In fact, come to think of it, it’s entirely possible that I’ve never played a Double Fine game. I feel genuinely kind of dirty now.  But I guess now I have no excuse for not playing this psychic epic as of this week. I’ll let you guys know what I think whenever I get around to it.

Cool car, homes!

Ratchet & Clank Collection – August 28th for PS3
It’s a matter of public record that Metal Gear Solid 2 was the first game that I ever really played seriously but the original Ratchet & Clank is the game that showed me that games could still just be a whole lotta fun. I’m not especially crazy about the next two sequels (and Sony seemed disinclined to include the utterly ‘meh’ Ratchet: Deadlocked) but for anyone looking for a slice of classic action-platforming, this should more than satisfy their needs.

Rock Band Blitz – August 28th for PSN, August 29th for XBLA
Ahhh, Rock Band. Every time I think I miss you, I remember that there’s a reason I hung up the insanely expensive money-sink that was plastic instruments. After the relatively underwhelming set-list of Rock Band 3, it makes sense that the emphasis of this downloadable title would be making use of the catalog of songs available on Rock Band Network to build your own playlists.
One thing I will say about Rock Band 3, though, is that it taught me that Elton John is secretly an utter badass:

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD – August 28th for PSN
I can’t pretend to remember much of the time I spent playing Tony Hawk’s in days of old. All I can say for sure is that without the original soundtrack this re-release holds no interest for me. Not one bit.

 Joe Danger: The Movie – August 29th for XBLA
Creating your own action movie, scene by stunterific scene?! Eh, why not. Sounds like dumb fun. Oh, it’s a sequel? Pass. I’m not up to date with the story.

Secret Files 3 – August 31st for PC
Apparently these Secret Files games are fairly popular. I have never heard of them. Not a once. But, hey, if somebody out there wants to continue making point and click adventure games well into the 21st century, they can be my guest. Maybe a series worth looking up on Steam sometime for experimentation and what not.

Wow. That was longer than I ever anticipated. That means there’s a potentially busy week ahead. Obligatory prediction for The Walking Dead: Episode 3 is that we’ll not get it this week. I’m thinking first week of September right now, but be sure to check back at OWNT for any updates.

Are you planning on checking any of these out? Drop the word in the comments, and remember to check back for your next week in games!

The Wii is many things: it’s a family friendly console designed to get men and women, young or old, playing together; it set the standard for motion control in video games; it was Nintendo’s first platform to utilize a full-sized optical disc; but most of all, it was fun. It was not without its faults, nor was it ever free of criticism. As a piece of technical hardware, the Wii was inferior to its contemporaries, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, in physical storage space, in processing power and in multimedia functions. Even before the console hit the market, there was a vocal backlash directed at its name – the ‘Wii’.

Up until April 27, 2006 just seven months before its North American launch date, Nintendo’s then next generation console was unofficially known as the ‘Revolution’. Following its name change at that year’s E3, Nintendo was met with a barrage of jokes based on the new name. Justification came shortly thereafter as crass jokes spread across the internet. The console’s pronunciation as “we” represented the company’s intent to blur the line between gamers of different ages. Nintendo was creating a new market of consumers, one that had yet to be introduced to the world of video games. Furthermore, the two i’s were said to imitate two people standing side-by-side, playing together, again an initiative of Nintendo’s that would get people up and off the couch.

Despite Nintendo’s best efforts to quell the storm of negativity, the gaming press wasn’t going to have it. The irony is that no matter who you were, when the Wii finally launched on November 19 or in the aftermath of it’s sales blitz, you wanted one.

But it was still easy to hate. It wasn’t as powerful as its competitors, its online functionality was hindered, and its launch line-up was less than impressive: its only games of notoriety being The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a mirrored-port of a GameCube game; Red Steel, an urban hack-and-slash whose promise of fluid motion controls was unmet; and Call of Duty 3, the forgotten soldier of the franchise before the storm that was Modern Warfare. Two highly anticipated titles, the conclusion to Retro Studio’s Metroid Prime series, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and the long-awaited Super Smash Bros. Brawl, were pushed back to later dates, leaving the Wii’s holiday window looking rather barren.

The biggest launch title for the Wii was a GameCube port.

For most of the first year it stayed like this. Gamers could only play so much of Wii Sports and the lack of third-party support, a common problem with Nintendo consoles since the GameCube, discouraged all those waiting for AAA titles. It wasn’t until the Holiday of 2008 that the next installment of the Mario franchise hit store shelves.

For the first time since its launch, people were excited again. To this day Super Mario Galaxy remains the third highest rated game on Metacritic of all time, and is considered by many to be on par, if not better, than Mario’s previous masterpiece Super Mario 64. Finally, the Wii had arrived.

But alas, the Wii could not shake its reputation. It had endured a year’s worth of insults and severe lack of content. It seemed that in the public eye, not even Mario could save it. For all the anticipation and all of the promises, Nintendo had once again found themselves in a hole. The console continued to sell and exceed expectations for the company but in the mind of the hardcore gamer, Nintendo had sold out.

Of all those I’ve spoken to who have expressed either frustration or anger towards Nintendo, the Wii is the singular point of discussion. The motion controls, the graphical limitations and the online components are the most common complaints as far as the hardware goes but the number one complaint that I have heard in the six years that the Wii has been out is simply, “Where are the games?”

In the first year, I might’ve sipped a bit of the haterade and joined in on some of the anti-Nintendo uproar. But then I discovered something wonderful, a brilliant tool that could help me overcome my gamer angst: the internet. Where were the games, they asked? Right at the tips of my fingers on Amazon, on retail websites and all across the digital catalog. Therein lied the root of Nintendo’s problem – marketing.

Mario will always sell. Nintendo needs to focus on pushing the lesser known games.

You see, all those concerns about a lack of games or support from third-party companies seemed completely valid when you walked into your local GameStop or Best Buy and saw a row or two of Wii games and then five walls across of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles. To the ordinary consumer, it’d be easy to jump to the conclusion that the Wii had no games. What you see is what you get, after all. Then I learned a thing or two about marketing, about distribution and about localization.

I learned that not everything that is made can be marketed. The money that would be spent on commercials or store signage would be wasted if the sales expectations were not met. So the big games, the Marios, the Zeldas, those would get all the publicity because everyone knows about them and everyone will buy them. That’s just the way business works – you market what sells.

The problem with this is that in a generation when you have three corporate entities in the gaming industry who do you make the games for? Obviously first-party companies and subsidiaries would remain exclusive to their parents so you’d get Halo and Gears of War for Xbox, Infamous and Uncharted for Sony and Metroid and Kirby for the Wii. These are big name games coming from big name companies. But what about Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Rockstar? The answer was simple: multiplatform. Make the game available for all platforms and reap greater rewards. The issue with that: Nintendo’s console could not handle the games that were being developed on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, for the ‘core’ audience. Because of this, most developers tended to shy away from a market that had already been saturated by family games and, as gamers lovingly referred to them, “shovelware.” Why would these big companies waste time on a console that they couldn’t even take as much advantage of as they wanted to?

The games that the Wii did eventually get came from the smaller, less financially-capable companies barely made a splash in the market: Tri-Crescendo (Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon), Grasshopper Manufacture (No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle), Vanillaware (Muramasa: The Demon Blade), Platinum Games (MadWorld), Cing (Little King’s Story), Treasure (Sin and Punishment: Star Successor) and so on.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. One of the best games for the Wii. Sadly, no one played it.

Not a one of these games was multiplatform (although No More Heroes received an HD port in 2011 for the PS3 and Xbox 360), and yet if you were to look at the sales records for them, you’d be less than impressed. Not because they were bad games, far from it, but with few exceptions there was little to no marketing done on their behalf. As a result, stores either never carried them to begin with, or never restocked the shelves after their one or two initial copies sold out. And the tragedy is that most average consumers have likely still never heard of them.

I can understand the frustration with many of Nintendo’s business practices: the negligent online support shows how out of touch Nintendo is with the current generation of core gamers and the hardware deficiencies certainly hold back the console in the eyes of a worldwide market. I was told once by a colleague that the Wii is not a current generation console simply because there is nothing on it that couldn’t be on another platform. To an extent, he’s right. The hardware determines the generational gaps. When the technology improves, then the need to create a new product is there. The current iteration of consoles is the longest there has ever been.

But I’ve noticed a trend in the market lately. For as powerful as these current systems are, this year’s E3 made one point very clear: they are no longer purely gaming consoles. They are entertainment centers. They are computers. They will continue to evolve and become even more. The benefit is there and in the eyes of a consumer, having a single unit that can serve all of your necessary functions is ideal. But what happens when Microsoft buys the rights to use Blu-ray, and Sony starts charging a monthly cost for their online service to better support and maintain the network? Then what will distinguish one from the other?

Recently, members of a fan-driven community known as Operation Rainfall have taken it upon themselves to get several games localized in America that Nintendo had refused to support: Xenoblade Chronicles earlier this year and most recently The Last Story. The third and final game in their quest is Pandora’s Tower, which is currently scheduled for a European release in April of 2012. If the fans can be so passionate about the games, why can’t the developers and publishers?

With the Wii U set to launch in a few months, there’s one question on everyone’s mind (besides cost): what can I play? Nintendo needs to hit the ground running with AAA titles and this time they need to be supporting even the smaller companies as fully as it can. Having had a chance to get my hands on the system at a recent private demonstration, the potential is there. It’s a nice gesture to offer games like Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3 but you don’t want to set another trend of simply picking up the scraps of the other consoles. Where Nintendo needs to shine is in its exclusivity and its first and its third party support for new, marketable games.

When the Wii launched six years ago, I went from an excited prospect to a discouraged fan quickly. I thought Nintendo had betrayed me – me, Mike, their loyal fan! How could they?! But then I discovered that there were games that existed beyond the veil. Nintendo didn’t abandon me, they simply prioritized differently. The hardcore market still existed on the Wii, I just hadn’t realized it at the time. Here I am, six years later, and I can proudly say I regret nothing. Some of the most fun I’ve had this generation has come specifically from Wii games (Monster Hunter Tri and Xenoblade Chronicles). Would I have enjoyed either game better in high definition? I can’t lie – of course I would have. But who wouldn’t?

In an interview recently, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime stated that gamers will never be satisfied. We always want bigger and better. We could get a game that is, for hypothetical purposes, the greatest looking game of all time, and someone would say “Well I wish they would have done xyz better.” No one is an exception. To demand more from the industry is how it can grow and evolve. To be content results in stagnation and nobody wants that. But I come from an age when games were judged by one thing only: how fun it was. If it isn’t fun, why bother playing it?

And you know what? I’ve had a ton of fun with the Wii.