Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

For me Summer has frankly been one huge disappointment so far. Months of cold wet weather followed by a respite that had me hoping…a week of thirty degree heat, I was all set for some fun.

Then the rain came back and I realised it’s almost August, so instead of remaining disappointed at the total lack of summer I’ve chosen to check out the inevitable stream of games coming this Autumn and Winter to cheer me up. It’s quite a long list this year which is excellent, so here’s my real favourites.

Hellboy: The Science of Evil - August.
While I’ve not seen a whole lot on this one, I’m simply interested in it as a Hellboy tie-in, though I hear it isn’t related to either film.

Lego Batman: The Videogame - September.
While not the Dark Knight game that’s apparently in development (and could have done with being developed in time for the movie, however never mind) this one will be joining my collection of lego videogames (Star Wars and Indiana Jones so far…)

Silent Hill: Homecoming - September.
Just what my Halloween will be needing, along with another good bout with BioShock. The Silent Hill series never fails to leave me with the shakes.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - September.
We’ve been eagerly awaiting this one for a long time, finally a Star Wars game done well (That is, since Knights of the Old Republic) which will actually make the Force almost as important as the lightsaber wielding.

Dead Space - October.
Joining BioShock and Silent Hill we have a non-franchised game apparently inspired by a cross between Doom and Event Horizon as you play a nameless, faceless survivor who wakes aboard a seemingly abandoned ship in the depths of space.

Ghostbusters - Autumn.
Originally intended as the official second sequal to the popular nineties franchise, I’ve heard rumours now that we may actually be getting a Ghostbusters 3 movie. Until that materialises though we finally get to don proton packs of our own in a game written by and starring Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, along with Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe - Autumn.
The chance to play as Batman taking on Sub Zero? Who could pass it up?

Prince of Persia - Autumn.
My favourite series of games finally makes a long overdue appearance on the next generation consoles. I’ve played Persia since the days of my Pentium 286 and always been a fan of the revolutionary control systems.

Call of Duty 5: World at War - November.
Call of Duty 4 got me through the poorly timed two week Christmas recovery from an operation last year and Call of Duty 5 will see a return to the World War 2 battlefield that I so loved from the first two in the series. This one as pretty much a given.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Not soon enough.
Needless to say, my most anticipated game of the year. I truly cannot wait to dig into my new Deathknight character as he cuts a swathe through Northrend. The beta information that’s been flooding out has been mouthwatering.

Ever since I finally chose to defect from my Ranger ways to a more hard hitting holy warrior, I’ve had the aim of being a tank. I even had visions of one day becoming the Main Tank though with my slow reflexes and awful coordination, I did wonder just how likely this was.

What’s a tank? I was anticipating this answer, not many of the readers I know of are actually MMO enthusiasts so will likely be confused, however in MMOs no matter what the classes are actually called, they fall under a number of types which are always called the same thing. In a group you ideally want the enemy to be paying attention to someone other than the weaker members of the party, like the cloth wearing healers as well as to keep the attention away from the people who need to concentrate on getting distance to use bows and spells. This is where the tank comes in, mobs love to focus their anger on the guy that won’t stop hitting them, won’t stop hurting them and they get royally annoyed by the guy who takes a beating without flinching. This is the role of a tank, to hammer the target with a lot of damage and to take a beating without falling. You don’t even want to concentrate on killing targets, that’s the job of the people who aren’t being directly attacked (or more importantly, defended against,) you just want to lay down the hurt.
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