After a few months where I felt like I had to look hard for games I wanted to play, I suddenly find myself knee-deep in a vertiable corncucopia of games I’m excited about. Too many, in fact, as there’s no way I have time to play them as much as I’d like. Right now I’ve got:

  • Splinter Cell: Double Agent (360) - Fantastic stealth game with a story I’m actually interested in. I’m playing on the default difficulty setting and it’s still hard. Cornucopia of Games!I also end up getting obsessed with getting high stealth ratings, so I end up repeating parts of some levels many, many times to find a way to do what I have to do without getting caught. The AI is reasonably intelligent too, which means that there are some slightly emergent elements to the tactics you have to use, at times. (At other times, it’s quite linear, but presented so well I don’t mind.)
  • Guitar Hero II (PS2)- I think I’ve said enough about this.
  • Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (360) - This baby’s a rental as I doubt I’ll feel compelled to play it more than 6-8 hours, but I have a soft spot for the Marvel universe and this has gotten pretty good reviews considering the fairly mindless beat-em-up nature of the game.
  • Gears of War (360) - I picked this up today after seeing that it’s gotten nearly universally excellent reviews. I haven’t played it as of writing this post, but I’ve got an appointment with a friend to start playing the co-operative game on Xbox Live together. I am very happy to see that it included online co-op. I almost always prefer to play co-operatively vs. NPCs rather than PvP these days (except in MUDs, where I prefer PvP), so this is exciting.

And then, coming up later this month, I’m going to be playing:

  • Rainbow Six: Las Vegas (360). I loved Rainbow Six 3 and played it a ton co-op vs. NPCs with various friends via XBL. Really looking forward to a similar experience here, since Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was a real disappointment for us co-op (only like 4 missions available).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (360). Pure nostalgia play here, but my nostalgia for it was never as strong as Mario, for obvious reasons. Probably a renter.
  • Zelda: The Twilight Princess (Wii). Aw yeah. I was among the people disappointed with Wind Waker, and I am dying to see if Nintendo pulls this one off. Go Miyamoto.

That’s seven games in a month. That’s the kind of trouble I want to have! I’ll be playing these games for months, nevermind whatever games come out pre-Xmas in December.