Greetings humans, Monki here yet again with Dan's Games of the Week. How did you spend your labor day? I spent most of mine catching up on Dead Rising, playing some Texas Hold 'em on XBLA and going back to Star Wars KoTOR 2 to prep myself for next week's Star Wars Lego release. I'm very anxious.

Word also comes this week that the $600 PLAYSTATION 3 will NOT come with an HDMI cable to unleash the true potential of that system. Awesome. I mean, really, who needs to throw in a $30 cable into a $600 package, right? Sony continues to impress the hell out of me as they dive headlong into their next console release. Who else thinks Sony is REALLY going to hit that November 17th release date? Ah well, I'll keep my ear to the tree, you guys enjoy this weeks new releases!

Game Releases for the Week of 9/3-9/10

Games games everywhere! But I can't play em since I'm going out of town for the weekend. See you jerks next week, when we'll have LEGO's, Hockey, and Mario playing Basketball. Happy long weekend!

Xbox 360

9/5 Test Drive Unlimited -- It's hard to believe I've been playing Test Drive games since I was 8. I specifically remember the CGA graphics and the dangerous mountain passes, and the overwhelming sensation of joy when you reached that final gas station and were handed the keys to the car (and then of course dumped to the DOS prompt). Twenty years later, Test Drive is still, well, going: with a series of recent missteps, it's not necessarily going strong. But developer Eden Studios is attempting to fix that with the first next-gen incarnation on the 360. The rub here is the game has a Massively Multiplayer Online aspect to it.. an impressive 1,600 miles of road have been modeled on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and when you're driving around you'll see other players on the road, the idea being, of course, to challenge them to a race. With other features like a custom course designer, motorcycles, car customization, house customization, and all that jazz, the game certainly comes packed with value-added features. The only real question is whether the driving engine (not to mention the graphics engine, which judging by the downloadable E3 demo, could use substantial work), is as tuned and playable, as, say, the excellent NFS: Most Wanted.

9/5 Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged - Hmm, let's do the math here. This collection of XBL Arcade games contains Geometry Wars ($5), Bejeweled 2 Deluxe ($10), Wik - Fable of Souls ($10), Hardwood Backgammon ($5), and Outpost Kaloki X ($10), making your savings.. uh.. nothing. It's a good collection of games, but if you have an internet connection this is essentially pointless.

9/6 Scramble - Another left-over from last month's Xbox Live Arcade releases shows up this week (I neglected to mention "Time Pilot", released last week: very fun if you haven't checked it out yet). "Scramble" was one of Konami's popular arcade titles, released in 1981. It's your basic side-scrolling shooter in the Defender vein, and would eventually go on to spawn Konami's popular (and better) Gradius series.

PSP

9/6 Loco Roco - See the game of the week, below.

9/6 Guilty Gear: Judgement - The Guilty Gear franchise continues to beat itself (no pun intended) to death, branching out into every system conceivable genre and unwisely expanding on its tried-and-true brawler origins. This incarnation is an action brawler in the classic Double Dragon style, though the developers have promised to spice things up with a intricate combo system.

9/6 NASCAR 2007 - Oval driving action comes to the PSP to the first time this year with EA's NASCAR 2007. EA promises the handheld version will be comparable to the console versions, with a steady framerate and added ad-hoc wireless play. See the console description for more info.

Xbox

9/6 Spy Hunter: Nowhere To Run - Start whistling the Peter Gunn theme because Spy Hunter is back! And this time, he's a wrestler! The tie-in to the upcoming Spy Hunter movie continues the modern reworking of the classic arcade game, this time with an added emphasis on 3rd person fighting (that must be in The Rock's contract) in addition to the racing/shooting. Fans of the series will be pleased to learn there's a bunch of bonus features, including a top-down mini-game that plays like the original.

9/6 NASCAR 2007 - EA rolls out another version in their yearly racing series this week, with a few new features and some others that have been tweaked based on a desire to bring the game back to its basics. Taking a hint from the popularity of EA's Burnout series, the sense of speed has been significantly enhanced. Gameplay-wise, the career mode has been tinkered with, adding racer attributes that not only signify your rivals strengths and weaknesses, but driver-specific-ratings that can be honed based on driving prowess. Overall, hours upon hours of fun for rednecks everywhere.

PS2

9/6 Yakuza - Released in Japan to much acclaim earlier this year, Yakuza is essentially a brawler with a strong story that follows the player into the seedy depths of the Japanese underground. With 300 items to use for hittin', a story by a popular Japanese novelist, and a voice cast that includes Mark Hammil, Yakuza looks to be some button mashing fun.

9/6 Spyhunter: Nowhere To Run - See the Xbox description.

9/6 NASCAR 2007 - See the Xbox description.

PC

9/4 The Secret Files: Tunguska - Wikipedia says the "Tunguska event" occurred in 1908 when a suspected meteorite created a 10-15 megaton explosion when it landed in Siberia. This game takes that true-life premise and runs with it, delivering a classic point-and-click mystery adventure game. Developed by Germany-based Fusionsphere Systems.

9/5 Perimeter: Emperor's Testament - This is a stand-alone expansion pack for the Russian-developed "Perimeter", which gained its fair share of followers among PC real time strategy fans when released last year. Besides the traditional resource gathering and unit building, Perimeter puts emphasis on puzzle solving, allowing you to create new areas of the game map through terraforming.

9/6 D.I.R.T.: Origin Of The Species - I'm really not sure what's going on with this game. Referred to in places as simply "Origin of the Species", other places the odd acronym "D.1.r.T.", this is a so-called "lite RPG" from a first time UK developer.

GBA, GC, DS

None

Game of the Week:

Loco Roco, PSP, 9/5

How to describe this game? Like Katamari Damacy, Loco Roco is the newest in the "Bizarro-Japanese" game genre that consists of weird cartoony characters and odd gameplay mechanics. In Loco Roco you're a blob-type-thing, and using the PSP's controls, you tilt the world to move Loco around, gather up other blob-like-things, and grow larger in the process. Once you're big enough, you can split your Loco Roco into little Loco Rocos to get through tight spots. It boils down to your basic hunt-and-gather gameplay, in this case looking for Roco pieces as well as items scattered throughout the levels. Graphics tend towards the aforementioned bright, colorful, and weird variety, but are smooth as silk (the music/sound effects are weirder). Overall, even PSP owners will tell you the system is hurting for new, innovative games, and Loco Roco certainly delivers.

Game I'm Playing:

99 Nights, Xbox 360, 8/15

Still hacking away at this goddamned game. With it's save system that can only be described as evil, it takes a longg time, complete with many, many stage restarts to get anywhere, as I have been painfully discovering. But one really can't argue about the feeling of accomplishment when you power through a teeming mass of enemies with only a tiny slice of health left to complete a level. Skill-wise, it has that tiny hint of Ninja Gaiden.. it forces you to get better, not fuck up, and hit that B button as fast as humanly possible. If you enjoy getting good at games, 99 Nights awards perseverance.