The Fall of Gaming

Now before you get all bunched up and upset, this isn't about the decline of the gaming industry.  Well, not entirely.  As a matter of fact, the industry is doing quite well with the Supreme Court case this morning and the slew of AAA titles coming out in the past month or so.  But besides the point, I'm talking about the "Fall" season of gaming.  It was a time for many things, including new beginnings, final endings, and some questionable things on the side.  So let's see what's been going on this Fall, and why it was so important.

First off, as I'm sure many of you were aware, Halo: Reach launched in October as Bungie's final Halo title.  As a prequel to the first game, Reach brought about a very in-depth and story driven single player, while keeping the same old Shoot-Melee-Grenade formula that the franchise is famous for.  With the multiplayer, they added on matchmaking to the Firefight mode introduced in Halo: ODST, as well as releasing a slew of different maps and gametypes, such as Headhunter and so forth.  Personally, I think Bungie did a fantastic job giving the fans what they deserved, and I'm excited for whatever new IP they come out with in the future.  Also, a good luck to 343 Industries, who will be picking up the franchise in the near future.

Next, we had a variety of new releases hit the shelves for all types of gamers to get their hands on.  For FPS fans, Medal of Honor was released mid-October and, while it flew under the radar, got some decent reviews.  Many people gave it a chance while waiting for Call of Duty: Black Ops, which will hit shelves next Tuesday, but I have a feeling those who did purchase the game will put it down and hop on the CoD train.

RPG fans saw the release of Fallout: New Vegas, which took the formula of Fallout 3 and gave it a fresh coat of paint.  While there is quite a bit of content in New Vegas, there are also multitudes of bugs and glitches that appeared in Fallout 3 as well.  I cannot forgive Bethesda for not fixing these errors, so I will definitely not pick that one up.  Perhaps a rental in the future, but for now, I'm still happy playing my copy of Fallout 3.

For music gamers, there was Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Rock Band 3, and DJ Hero 2.  After trying the demo for GH, I have declared the franchise dead, and were the cost of Rock Band 3 a little (or a lot) lower, I would purchase it for sure.  GH just tries too hard to compete with other music games, and ends up coming off stale and unwanted.  Retro gamers had some fun with Sonic 4, and that game received very good reviews as it returned mostly to it's roots and gave Sega fans what they've been wanting for ages.

So as you can see, there have been several top-notch games released recently, and I haven't even mentioned them all (Fable 3, Castelvania, etc).  So, as it happens, I find myself not having the money nor the time to devote to so many games at one time.  Hence the other side of the "Fall" of gaming.  I can blame this on many things (Lack of a job, Classes, Life in general) but I haven't really ever felt this overwhelmed by the releasing of so many games.

Hell, I still need to play through Mass Effect 2 and FFXIII, something I've been wanting to do since the summer!  At times, I wish that the industry would slow it down a notch.  However, that would be a horrendous move, as profits would plummet and the industry would pretty much keel over and die.  But still, it's difficult to really sit down and enjoy a game for what it's worth when a new major title comes around the next week that I'm excited for.