Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to intro Monki's newest weekly wrap-up column. I was indeed at X06, with my 2nd article hitting tonight. Read my first article here. They also sat me down with Peter Jackson to talk about the big Wingnut Interactive announcement, so I'll have that for you soon as well. I will say that the badass looking HALO WARS trailer Monki has for you below has nothing whatsoever to do with Jackson or Bungie, but Jackson told me that the trailer for that game will give you guys a good idea what the movie will look like. Enjoy the wrap-up!

Greetings humans, Monki here with a fresh new weekly wrap-up of all that is video games.

As most of you have probably read, Quint, that salty bastard, was off in Barcelona being treated like royalty while I was chained to Harry's chair during Fantastic Fest. You don't want to know what the Red One can do with a banana and a little bit of patience. Anyway, on to the wrap-up.

First some Wii news. It seems that EA is going to be releasing their everlasting gobstopper of a franchise, the Madden series, onto the fancy new system. At least due to the radical controls of the Wii we can all expect something a bit different out of the series. Also mentioned is one of the first driving games for the Wii that looks to take advantage of the Wiimote as a steering wheel.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - September 28, 2006 - Electronic Arts today announced that Madden NFL 07, the EA SPORTS best-selling football franchise with the exclusive videogame license of the NFL and PLAYERS INC, and Need for Speed Carbon, the latest iteration in the world's most popular street racing franchise will be available with the Wii launch on November 19, 2006.

"Both Madden NFL 07 and Need For Speed Carbon were able to really bring out the innovation in the new FreeMotion Controller on the Wii and will attract a whole new sector of gamers," said John Schappert, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EA Canada. "We are honored to be a part of the launch of this new exciting platform and are inspired by the new creative ideas it will let us explore."

With the launch on the Wii, Madden NFL 07 takes advantage of the revolutionary controller design and all-new Madden FreeMotion controls to create a new controller-focused experience, bringing Madden's gameplay depth alive in a whole new and immersive way. Key Wii-only features for Madden NFL 07 include exclusive multiplayer mini games designed to support four player gameplay, new multiplayer enhancements including a multiplayer sprint, new play calling system designed for basic football fan knowledge, and Madden in-game tutorials that teach the users how to use new FreeMotion controls and allow users to practice within the game. Madden NFL 07 on Wii will also include the popular key features lead blocking control, NFL Superstar: Hall of Fame mode as well as all-new Highlight moves that allows you to run like the NFL players run.

Makes you wonder if they'll switch out the cover boy (Shaun Alexander) since he broke his foot this past weekend. Any athletes out there willing to go up against the Madden curse?

This next bit is from Rockstar Games' press release regarding their brand new game coming out next year some time. It has got me interested.

New York, NY - September 25, 2006 - Rockstar Games, the
world-renowned publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.,
is pleased to announce a partnership with Team Bondi
Pty Ltd to publish the ground-breaking next generation crime thriller
L.A. Noire. Developed by Team Bondi, a new Australian based studio
founded by Brendan McNamara, of The Getaway, L.A Noire is an
interactive detective story set in the classic noir period of the late
1940's. L.A. Noire blends action, detection and complex storytelling
and draws players into an open-ended challenge to solve a series of
gruesome murders. Set in a perfectly recreated Los Angeles before
freeways, with a post-war backdrop of corruption, drugs and jazz, L.A.
Noire will truly blend cinema and gaming.

Sam Houser of Rockstar Games serves as Executive Producer and Brendan
McNamara as Director of Development for L.A. Noire.

"Brendan and I have known each other for a long time, and to finally
have the opportunity to work together on a game is exciting," said Sam
Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "The longstanding mutual respect
and the combined experience between the two of us make this a great
partnership," added Brendan McNamara, CEO of Team Bondi.

L.A. Noire is a next-generation title and will be published by
Rockstar Games. The official trailer will be released October 5th at
www.rockstargames.com/lanoire.

The teaser out for this game is black and white. You think they will have the cajones to release a full game in b/w? I guess we'll have to see how Sadness does on the Wii. You know, it's great to see developers treating video games more like art instead of mindless entertainment. With Rockstar and Bungie now leading the way with storytelling, us gamers have a lot to look forward to over the next few years.

Holy crap. Have you guys seen the trailer for Halo Wars? At X06 Bungie announced that they were creating an RTS (Real-Time Strategy) based on the Halo universe, very cool indeed. It is being developed by Ensemble Studios, the guys who did Age of Empires. The trailer is totally amazing, check it out:

Multiple Spartans! So, I think Quint is working on some information on that one, I'll definitely be annoying him for more details when he gets them.

This next one was sent in by the Kampbell-Kid who is turning out to be my go-to guy when it comes to cool game videos. This is the trailer for The Wheelman. The cool part is, the wheelman is played by Vin Diesel and his voice and likeness will be used in the game. Check it out:

Do you guys like the "star-driven" video game idea? John Woo is working on Stranglehold right now with Chow Yun-Fat, another one of these types of games. Personally I've never been the type of guy who will purchase based on star-power alone. A game should focus on the most important aspect, the amount of fun it is to play. A lot of developers are getting bogged down trying to promote the next big hot-shit thing instead of just making fun games. Time to shut up and start making me enjoy my time in front of my console.

One of the very first announcements out of X06 came to be my absolute favorite. Before Peter Jackson walked out and talked about how he is going to change the future of the world via my 360, before CliffyB made all the girls swoon and talked Gears of War, before all that was the announcement of the XBox Live Arcade release of DOOM.

I think the amount of time I burnt playing DOOM in my childhood would probably equal a few years. I remember designing and playing our multiplayer deathmatch levels until our eyes bled. (Here's a fun fact, Deathmatch was a phrase coined by John Romero when Carmack showed off his new multiplayer abilities on DOOM.)

I'm currently setting up a 10 hour marathon co-op game for this weekend with some buddies over XBox Live (which DOOM full supports up to 4 players). Speaking of which, the coolest part of this announcement is the fact that you can play 4 player couch co-op. (4 people on one monitor on one XBox 360) I can't wait to get some insane deathmatch and co-op rocking on my buddies projector. The co-op games have been lacking over the last few years. Really only Halo has had split screen totally co-op built into the game in the last few years. That sucks because one of my favorite things to do was blast away at common enemies with friends via the internet or whatever else. CliffyB did mention that Gears of War will have a full co-op mode though, so hopefully the tides are changing.

So, Microsoft has really done everything they can to establish themselves as THE next-gen system to have come this Christmas. With former exclusive titles now falling to Microsoft and insanely cool looking new titles being shown off, it seems that Microsoft can do little wrong right now.

I, for one, am excited that the 360 will be getting Guitar Hero 2 sometime next year. I only played the first occasionally at friends houses, but I had a blast. Assassin's Creed was also shown off at X06, footage of that one looks great. DOOM hitting XBLA. Awesome.

The PLAYSTATION 3 remains stagnant. Nothing is really driving me to purchase that system at this moment, which is a shame. I'm not a huge Final Fantasy fan and Metal Gear isn't enough for me to drop the amount of money for a plussed blu-ray player. I guess the only good news PLAYSTATION fans can be happy about is the lower-end SKU will now have HDMI availability. So, there is some good news.

So that just about does it. I'm off to go play some DOOM now. Who would have thought that I could have bought a 360 and spent only $20 on my favorite games to play for it. What a world.

I just saw The Fountain tonight before I started writing this column up, so I leave you all with a sweet parody video that I didn't have the balls to ask Darren Aronofsky if he liked.

Until next week, up the tree I go! Drop me a line if you have any cool game news!