Greetings again folks, Monki here with Dan's Game of the Week column.

I'm pretty excited to see some true Next-Gen football titles in the upcoming weeks and we'll get our first taste this Tuesday with NCAA '07. Personally I would have rather seen Vince Young on the cover, but what can ya do?

I also picked up Frogger on XBLA and am extremely disapointed by it. The online play is actually CHOPPY. Simple flat graphics and choppy Live play, very weak. Hopefully Street Fighter 2 (available on August 2nd) and Contra (available in the Fall) won't have that problem. Alright, enough whining, let's move on to Dan's Games of the Week.

Game Releases for the Week of 7/16

US game sales up 25% in June. Could it be this column is making a difference? Game companies: you're very welcome. Now where's my cut?! Anyway, Dan here with this week's releases. It's the biggest list we've seen in awhile, so get your credit cards ready. We've got football on tap this time, with cross-platform NCAA Football 07 and another movie tie-in on multiple platforms, Monster House.

This Week's Releases:

DS

7/18 Monster House - You just know a movie called "Monster House" is made for video games, and THQ is delivering this week, bringing the title to multiple platforms. Unfortunately there's very little out there that suggests what makes each version different. The NDS version, at least, seems to be a top-down shooter with the bottom screen used as a radar.

GC

7/18 Monster House - Even the ol' GC gets some lovin this week with THQ's Monster House. This version looks to be a more traditional 3D character-based platformer, allowing the player to "explore a living, breathing house full of traps and mystery".

PSP

7/18 NCAA Football 07 - The hand-held version of Tiburon's football game promises a few exclusives for fans of Sony's PSP. Besides the online WiFi matches (which features updates on real-life games courtesy of a scrolling ticker), the PSP version has achievements which unlock ESPN football highlight clips.

7/18 Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth - Six years after the PS1 version was released, Square Enyx has hired the team who worked on the original title to port the first in the popular (at least in Japan) RPG series to Sony's hand-held. If you like HP and MP, selecting options in menus, and reading text boxes, you'll be picking this one up this wek.

7/18 Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light - More RPG goodness for the PSP this week, this one a collaboration between Sony Japan and Hit Maker. This one follows a group of adventurers attempting to end the rise of a demon empire or something.

7/18 Miami Vice - The movie doesn't come out until later this month, but oddly enough the PSP gets the game now, and even more oddly, it's only on the PSP (maybe they figured the Xbox and PS2 got their own horrible Miami Vice game, based on the TV show, back in 2002). This one looks to be your basic run-and-gun title with lots o' explosions.

Xbox

7/18 NCAA Football 07 - The console versions of the popular NCAA Football franchise has a few new gameplay tweaks and features this time around, including the new "Momentum system", and (I love this one) -- "improve your players by having them excel in the classroom". See the 360 description for how the graphics have changed.

7/18 Warpath - You gotta feel for developers who decided to plow ahead with their Xbox games despite the onslaught of the 360. What's left are games like Warpath, a FPS by the developers of last year's Pariah. It features online XBL modes and lots of Halo rip-offs, like a "Vibro Blade".

7/16 WWII Combat: Iwo Jima - Follow up to last years WWII Combat: Road to Berlin, this is a budget title with an emphasis on online play -- that is, if you can find anyone playing it.

Xbox 360

7/20 NCAA Football 07 - 360 owners get the first football game since the somewhat disappointing Madden 06 with NCAA Football 07. What do you get for the extra $10 over the last-gen consoles? Gameplay wise, not much. But on the graphics front, EA has done tons of research to give the 360 a workout and fill every edge of your HD screen, including calculating the light levels and temperature at each college stadium throughout the season.

There's also the little touches that should put alumni into a tizzy: accurate seating sections in the stands and amazing stadium recreations (125,000 polygons each, compared to 2,500 in the current-gen versions). Being a football game fan will certainly help your enjoyment of this game, but even if you're not it might be worth picking up just to check out how damn pretty everything looks.

PC

7/20 Atlantis Quest - Puzzle game with an Atlantis theme and matching storyline.

7/20 Flight Deck 4 - For fans of Flight Deck 3, Flight Deck 4 is 1 better!

PS2

7/20 Monster House - See GC version description.

7/20 NCAA Football 07 - See Xbox version description.

7/22 Super Dragon Ball Z - See game of the week, below.

GBA

7/18 Monster House - Even the ol' GBA gets some love this week, with this title from THQ. Looks like a simplified (one screen, obvs) version of the DS version.

Game of the Week:

Super Dragon Ball Z, PS2, 7/22

Ok, I can't believe I'm naming a DBZ game the game of the week. I mean, why?! It's Dragon Ball Z. It's a fighter, just like the last hojillion BDZ games. Anything left to say? Actually, yes there is: Unlike the previous Budokai games in the DBZ series, this title has an unique and impressive pedigree: it was developed by Noritaka Funamizu’s new studio Crafts & Meister.

If you haven't heard the name, just know this: Funamizu is best known for a little arcade fighter called Street Fighter II that sucked down more than a few tokens from yours truly back in the day (and will soon, incidentally, be the biggest new thing on the Xbox 360's XBL). With colorful 3D graphics and an intricate combo system, DBZ and fighter fans alike will certainly be watching how this one does.

Game I'm Playing:

Tomb Raider Legend, Xbox 360,

This was supposed to be a week full of Prey for me, but unfortunately due to some mis-management of my Gamefly Queue, I was sent this one instead. So I sort of disappointedly began working my way through Lara Croft's latest adventure. Eidos' new platformer soon won me over however, with familiar, fun gameplay and beautiful (if somewhat uneven) graphics. It's been awhile since I've played a Tomb Raider game, having stopped after, oh, the second one when it became obvious the series was going downhill.

But it's even more obvious that the team behind this game has been strongly influenced by the platformers of late -- this Tomb Raider feels far more like Prince of Persia than Prince of Persia felt like Tomb Raider, which is a good thing. Lara's movements rivals the fluidity of the Prince, and you'll quickly find yourself performing acrobatics and swan dives into pools of water. Lara can't run on walls or play with time, but to make up for it she has an impressive, albeit limited arsenal of guns to choose from. And while gunplay is certainly fun, the puzzles are what you'll spend the most time on. It's a short game (I'm at 75% or so after 4 hours), but so far, short and sweet.