With the holiday and all, we’re a little late in getting this one up. Also be sure to look for our in-depth look at Team Fortress 2 coming up midweek. Without further ado, and as always look both ways before connecting to the server, this week’s new gaming releases.

Two of the biggest games of the year are out this week! I hope your wallet is still holding up after this record season for amazing games…

Rock Band (PS3, Xbox 360) – Live out your rock and roll fantasies with this beast of a package. Rock Band has more than 50 rock songs from the 70s onward, including such greats as Metallica, Iron Maiden, Nirvana, Radiohead, Weezer, Soundgarden, Black Sabbath, and more. This package includes the Fender Stratocaster guitar controller, an awesome drum kit (4 pads and a pedal, with real wooden sticks), and a mic for your faux band’s vocalist. Developer Harmonix is also promising weekly updates to the game in the form of downloadable songs, several of which are already live, and full albums in the future! The first of these planned is supposed to be The Who’s Next.

Mass Effect (Xbox 360) – A long time ago, on a PC or Xbox far away, there was a little game dubbed “KOTOR” because of it’s insanely unwieldy title. That game went down in history as one of the greatest RPGs ever, and now it creators, BioWare, are back in the RPG arena with Mass Effect, the first of a planned space opera trilogy (no relation to Star Wars this time). Many fans have been waiting with baited breath over the past two years for this game to finally come out and take them away to another world, one of branching dialog trees and morally ambiguous lead characters who get to make decisions about what planets to defend from annihilation, and which to leave to their fate.

Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddes (PS2, Xbox 360) – the long-running MMORPG from the company most famous for it’s non-MMO RPGs gets it’s fourth expansion this week. Two new character classes are introduced, along with bunch of new zones and a host of new mobs to xp on. Better gear than the Tu’lia Shijin drop? Ha ha, fat chance.

Geometry Wars Galaxies (Wii, DS) – The Xbox Live Arcade classic-from-two-years-ago has gone full-blown, and gotten released on a couple of Nintendo systems this week. If the original is any indication, these will be action-packed, and addictive as can be.

Trauma Center: New Blood (Wii) - Wannabe rockers got theirs this week, and now so do wannabe doctors. This is a follow up to the popular Trauma Center titles already available for the Wii and DS. The word on the street is that this one is quite a bit more challenging.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (DS) – A sequel to Final Fantasy XII, not called Final Fantasy XIII? What, you say? These things are quite run-of-the-mill in the bizarro plane from which Squre Enix makes their game naming decisions, I can quite assure you. In addition to the zany title, this game got transmogrified from a full-on Japanese style console RPG, into a miniature real-time strategy game for the DS. It even features a pretty good 3D graphics engine. Worth a look.

Wii Zapper with Link’s Crossbow Training (Wii) – The Wii gets a wiimote-into-lightgun-plastic-mold peripheral this week, to go along with the rash of Wii lightgun games coming out lately. The real draw here, though, is the game that comes with it. Link, from Legend of Zelda fame, stars in this modern-day parallel of the ancient Duck Hunt. The whole package will run $20, which is not too bad for something of this nature.

A few years ago I hopped into a beat up old Jeep with Scotty Dunlop, who you may remember from such illustrious exploits as “I was the lucky shit who got into the Playboy Mansion,” and we drove out to Denver and then to San Fran. It was a trip for the ages, of the deets I won’t go into hear, but one of the highlights was the Dr. Mario throwdown Scotty had with my buddy Jay Mallo’s fiance.

Scotty claimed he was an amazing player and Carolyn threw down the gauntlet and they battled for what seemed like three straight days. This was huge, epic playing. Both competitors were each other’s equal, playing better, not worried about the lack of food or sweat poring from their brow. Anyway, I was thinking about this moment for a few reasons.

The first, is that while Tetris may get all the recognition in the genre of matching tile games, Dr. Mario is the standard bearer.

The second reason is that I came across this cool anthopological study on the history of the matching tile game. (via: Kottke.org) If you’re a fan of Tetris, Dr. Mario, or Bejeweled you should check out this truly great study.

Can we write the history of a game genre? Some anthropological work has been done on game history: Stewart Culin’s 1894 article on Mancala, the National Game of Africa (Culin 1894) discusses the spread of Mancala games geographically and historically, noting differences in rules and materials used to play. Writing the history of matching tiles games is slightly different in that the time span is much shorter (20 years rather than thousands of years), developed mostly commercially and generally attributable to individuals (as opposed to the folk game of Mancala). Matching tile games are arguably a less clearly delimited field than Mancala games, and where the development of Mancala is an integral part of the way the game is distributed, by passing on between people who innovate or misremember the rules of the game, video games are software products that can be distributed globally without being changed, but only used differently.

Keep an eye out for the family tree. Just knowing that Dr. Mario gave birth to a game called Lumines means I’ll want to check that out.

The Fall release bonanza continues on strong this week, with several big games coming out.

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) Mario needs no introduction. This is his first big outing on the Wii, and it is most assuredly a paragon of gaming excellence. No Wii owner should be without it.

Assassin’s Creed (PS3, 360) Ubisoft’s next big franchise? The game throws you into the middle of the third crusade, at the end of the 12^th century, as an Assassin who likes to get his parkour on while investigating and finally putting the hit on his targets. Reviews have been remarkably split on this one, ranging from 10/10 to 6/10. At least it looks cool.

Contra 4 (DS) Yes, you read that right. Contra. 15 years or so later, the Super Nintendo’s Contra III: The Alien War finally gets a real sequel. Forget all the failed 3D nonsense with the Contra name slapped onto it that has come out over the years since, this is the real deal. Developer Wayforward Studios are reverent scholars of the series, and have come up with a DS game that, not only lives up to its name, but also comes up with a sensible solution to the classic DS problem of how to use the second screen. They just make the levels twice as tall, and give you a grappling hook to quickly get to the top screen! That’s awesome, and now I’m ready to kick some alien ass.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (PS3, 360) IO Interactive are the guys behind the extremely well done Hitman series, and this is their latest offering. The titular Kane and Lynch are a couple of ex-con, straight-out-of-a-Tarantino-film types, no doubt out for revenge and/or a briefcase full of cash. If this sounds like a bad action movie to you, then you’re probably not far off judging from the reception the game has gotten so far. Still, there is something to be said for bad action movies, and by extension, bad action movie games. Rent it first, though.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus (PSP) Plus is not a sequel to, but rather an expansion of last year’s Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. It adds a mission generator that randomly assembles mission stages from a pool of resources, and an online play mode. Fans of the original game might be interested. Not a bad deal, at $20.

Need For Speed: ProStreet (PS3, 360, Wii, PS2) This year’s Need For Speed curiously eschews illegal street racing for the noticeably lamer legal alternative. The series has historically been shallow racing fun, in contrast to the incredible depth of something like Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport.

Orcs & Elves (DS) This first-person RPG originally appeared on cell phones. It was coded by Doom’s John Carmack himself, over 4 days. If you’re looking for something simplistic and a little retro, perhaps, you might want to give it a look.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) Take the entire Resident Evil series’ narrative over its first three entries, and spin it into a lightgun game, and you get Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii. If you liked House of the Dead, you’ll love this.

So apparantly this is an IQ puzzle some Japanese employers give during job interviews. Pretty sadistic if you ask me. You’re brain is gonna sweat trying to do this, but it’s a good challenge. It took me about 15 minutes to get and then in my own hubris I tried to see if I could replicate it, but unfortunately, it took me another few minutes to do it again. Once you get the pattern for how this works, you’ll wonder what the big deal is, but trust me this thing is like the thighmaster for your brain.

Crossing the River

The following rules apply:

• Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
• The father can not stay with any of the daughters, without their mother’s presence.
• The mother can not stay with any of the sons, withouttheir father’s presence.
• The thief (striped shirt) cannot stay with any family member, if The Policeman is not there.
• Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft.
• To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
• To move the people click on them.
• To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.

You do this right - you can land a job in Japan!  I posted the instructions b/c the game’s in Japanese and I don’t understand their funny letters.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THIS GAME 

There is a certain stratum of the populace whom, when posed the question, “What weapon is best-suited to vampire slaying?,” would give the singular answer: “The whip.” This is a group, who, for the most part was coming of age in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the mighty and ubiquitous Nintendo Entertainment System (aka old Nintendo, regular Nintendo, etc.) dominated the video game landscape, and would be familiar with the Castlevania series and its unique conventions regarding vampire lore. Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles is a title crafted specifically for this age of gamer, now displaced by the first-person shooter generation and almost altogether bereft of the 2D action/platformer.

Castle Dracula appears out of the mists every 100 years, and it is up to the members of the ancient and venerable Belmont clan of vampire hunters, wielders of the legendary whip “The Vampire Killer,” to venture therein and vanquish its evil and cunning master.

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles takes the two games widely considered to be the greatest entries in this long-standing series’ illustrious catalog, Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, and bundles both onto one PSP disc at a ten dollar discount compared to most PSP games.

Rondo and Symphony came back-to-back in the series canon; they take place only 4 years apart in the series chronology, feature the same set of characters, and finally, mark the transition of the Castlevania series from the hardcore linear action of the Nintendo days to the Super Metroid-influenced, more free-form action game. This centers on castle exploration and item-gathering for progress, similar to modern titles in the series like Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin. One might say that these are the seminal games of the entire series. Rondo is much more like the classic formula, and Symphony much more like a Metroid game, so much so that successive entries in the Castlevania series have been termed “Metroidvanias”.

Oh, but that’s not all, oh no, developer Konami has also given Rondo of Blood, never before released outside of Japan (though widely imported and much-ballyhooed over the Internet) a modern-day graphics face lift. This newly-remade Rondo sports polygonal “2.5D” gameplay, in which all the classic side-scrolling action of the original title is preserved, but now displayed in a 3D space. The end result is a game that plays like a classic but looks more contemporary. MORE »

This is a big time of year for game releases, and I am here to point out some of the more deserving titles.  I’m sure there will be more of note than I see, so feel free to make your own additions to my list in the comments section.

Guitar Hero III (360, PS3, Wii, PS2) - Bringing the noise this week is Activision’s 3rd installment in the popular Guitar Hero franchise.  New to this edition is the Les Paul styled guitar controller with improved fret buttons, bundled with the game disc, and wireless on all versions except the Xbox 360, which inexplicably comes with a wired guitar controller. The set list this go-around includes both Guns ‘n’ Roses and Metallica, so I think that covers just about everyone.

John Woo’s Stranglehold (PS3) - The martial-arts and gunplay action fest finally makes its way around to Sony’s machine.  Pick up the collector’s edition and get the HD version of Hard Boiled on the same Blu-Ray disc.

The Simpsons Game (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, DS) - Normally games based on licensed properties are not worth anyone’s time, but I have heard surprisingly good things about this one.  If you are a big fan of the show and know enough about gaming cliches (in order to get a lot of the game’s humor), you might want to check this out.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360, PS3, DS) - In a year without BioShock, Halo 3, or The Orange Box, this would be without a doubt the FPS to get.  Which is not to say the game lacks luster.  Not at all.  COD4 has some of the best visuals around, and the multiplayer experience promises to give even the Master Chief a run for his money.  I have it on good authority that this game is “freakin’ sweet.”  Note that this only applies to the game as runs on the 360 and PS3.

Virtua Fighter 5 Online (360) - Fighting game franchises don’t get more hardcore than Virtua Fighter.  If you are a serious study, willing to put in hours and hours and hours (and hours) to learn the hundereds of moves and combos available to each character, then you might be competent enough to venture online for the first time in the series’s history and not be owned relentlessly.

Manhunt 2 (Wii, PS2, PSP) - The game finally sees release this month, after being slapped with an “Adults Only” rating by the ESRB back in June, and subsequently being denied license to publish the game on any major platform.  Developer Rockstar (of Grand Theft Auto fame) has reworked the gore and violence present herein to be granted a “Mature” rating instead.  Notable more for pushing the envelope in terms of controversy than decent game play, this is as serviceable a stealth action game as it may be.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (DS) - JRPG fans take note.  Spin-offs of the much-loved-in-Japan Dragon Quest series have a very good track record, and this game in particular has made a very good name for itself since being released in Japan.  Only for the DS gamer with lots of time to lose.

Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP) - The strategy-rpg series gets another quality entry.  The genre is really taking off on Sony’s portable, with Jeanne d’Arc and Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions also recently having come out.

Silent Hill Origins (PSP) - A prequel to the first Silent Hill game, and just as chilling.  Horror fans will have a good excuse to put on the headphones, close the curtains, and curl up on the couch with their PSPs.

Hello ya’ll. Just wanted to let people know we have a cool contest in light of the upcoming Beowulf animated mo-cap moving coming out on Nov. 16. We’re pretty excited for the flick and advanced word has been decent enough to get us feeling okay. So with that in mind we have a snazzy giveaway.

We’ve got to find a nice home for the new Beowulf videogame from Ubisoft. It’s got some sweet graphics and it’s a brawler, actioner type of game. You are Beowulf, the warrior with the strength of 30 men and once you ascend to the throne you have to manage your kingdom, etc. Looks like good fun for those involved. Game will be released on Nov. 13.

Take a look at the game over at IGN.

And also, as a throw in, we’ll include a copy of the Beowulf movie picture book tie-in. So if you or you know someone who is a fan of videogames all we’re asking is to leave a comment with why you or your loved one deserves a copy of the videogame (don’t worry about the particular gaming system we’ll handle that) and an email addy for us to contact you. Contest is open to anyone and we’ll select one random winner with the best answer.

Beowulf the movie comes to theaters and IMAX 3D on Nov. 16, but the deadline for this contest is 12 p.m. (Pacific time) on Wednesday.

Check out the trailer after the jump. MORE »

Ever have one of those days where you wake up in a brightly lit, starkly furnished scientific facility, and are put through a rigorous battery of experiments using physics-defying wormholes to navigate chambers filled with lethal obstacles before breakfast? Do you want to?

If you answered yes, then Portal is just the experience for you. Aperture Science has created a nifty little thing called the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or portal gun, for short. Test users are required. There will be cake at the end of the testing. You might even make a friend. And then possibly kill them.

The conceit of Portal is in the portal gun. Use it on flat surfaces to create two ends of a wormhole. What goes in one hole comes out the other, and momentum is preserved. The portal gun is your only hope to make it through the 19 test chambers of the Aperture Science Laboratory, and to finally get that elusive piece of cake.

Portal is essentially a puzzle game played in the first-person perspective. One would be forgiven for mistaking it for just another first-person shooter, as it does feature a gun of sorts, and comes as it does from Valve Software, developers of the well-known Half-Life series. Portal is even a part of The Orange Box, Valve’s value-tastic collection of 5 games for the price of one available on PC, Xbox 360, and soon on the PS3. For those with a PC, Portal is available as a stand-alone product over at Valve’s own digital distribution network, Steam.

However, Portal is definitely not an FPS. There is almost no combat element to the game; what little combat there is focuses upon knocking over and deactivating gun turrets that would otherwise kill you. No, the only gun you get in this game shoots nothing but reality-bending elliptical wormhole entrances and exits. The portal gun can be used in a myriad of ways, from taking a shortcut across a long room to redirecting projectiles of various types to new targets, to dropping a nice big Weighted Storage Cube on a cute & cuddly voiced, deadly machine gun turret.

The game is rather short, as a first-time run through the 19 test chambers will likely not take more than 3 to 5 hours (mine was right at two and a half), but the length is supplemented by 6 additional reworked-for-advanced-difficulty chambers available to those who have completed the game once, per-level challenges based on time, portals used, and steps taken, and an awesome Developer Commentary mode, in which each level of the game features commentary nodes you can activate to hear a bit about the design philosophy of the area of the game you are currently in.

The game also has a wicked sense of humor, which I won’t spoil here but I will say that the only speaking role in the game belongs to GLaDOS, a computer AI, who prods you through the tests with colorful commentary on your progress. Portal is something hard to capture in words, so I urge you check out the game for yourself. Trust me it’s nothing but cake for those that do.

Rather than fill a list with each and every game slated to be released each week, I’d like to shine a more finely tuned spotlight on a few more notable titles. Without further ado:

–> Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is being released for PC this week. See my post earlier in this blog for more info on this crazy fun game.

–> Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation releases this week on the Xbox 360. This series has always been about arcade-y fighter jet dog-fighting mixed with nice visuals and a nonsensical narrative, and has always been quite fun.

–> Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles takes the two most highly regarded entries in the long-running whip-wielding/vampire slaying action series, Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, and bundles them together in this PSP release. Rondo of Blood never saw a western release in its true form, and this package not only includes the classic 16-bit version, but a fully remade version featuring fully polygonal “2.5D” graphics. This is where it’s at for console old-schoolers this week.

–> Clive Barker’s Jericho is out this week, but by all accounts it’s a stinker, so caveat emptor. Those into the survival-horror genre might get the most out of it. It’s on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

–> Conan, of barbarian fame, gets an action game on the PS3 and Xbox 360 this week, but it is not to be confused with the promising-looking upcoming MMO title.

–> Eye of Judgment is an interesting game, being a PS3-based collectible card game, played either wholly on the console, or using actual cards on an actual game map, via the PS3’s camera accessory. The game is reputedly very good and preventing cheating, as players scan their physical cards using the camera before playing.

–> Front Mission comes out for the DS this week. If you are a fan of strategy-RPGs, check this out. It is a re-release of the first entry in a great SRPG series, and one of the few to make it out of Japan.

–> Mega Man ZX Advent is out on the DS this week, and takes the old blue bomber to some new places, introducing Metroid-like exploration to the action series for the first time.

–> Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations also sees release on the DS this week. This is the third entry in the popular Ace Attorney series, featuring cartoony trials and investigations. The series is known for it’s comedic writing and inventive gameplay, which is more about thoroughness than twitch action.

–> Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction comes out for the PS3 this week, after having it’s release date shifted around a few times. Fans of 3D action-platformers should celebrate, as this is the newest, and first of the new console generation, in this well-liked series.

–> Tomb Raider Anniversary is slated to hit the Xbox 360 this week, and for those who don’t know, the game is a remake of the very first Tomb Raider, which was an amazing and awesome game in its day. All reports say that Anniversary does a good job of upholding it’s good name, and the PS2 version which saw release earlier this year was certainly very good.

–> Zack and Wiki comes to the Wii this week, which should be good news for Wii owners looking for a 3D adventure game. I hear good things.

I’ve never been a huge fan of puzzle games. Looking back over the years, there have only been a handful I liked well enough to want to own, games like Tetris (which was a Game Boy pack-in anyway), Dr. Mario, and Mr. Driller. Aside from these few, puzzle games have just never had anything to grab my attention and keep it for longer than a few minutes of gameplay. And now here is Puzzle Quest.

A multiplatform game, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is available on PC, PSP, Nintendo DS, and Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Arcade. The core of the game is a colored gem matching game, similar to Dr. Mario, Bejeweled, and scores of other games in the genre. The playing field is full of gems of four different colors, colored stars, gold coins, and skulls. Swap two things around, and if you manage to get three or more in a line to match, they disappear, creating various effects, and all the pieces above them fall down to fill in the empty spots, with new pieces coming into play from the top of the field. This is all fairly standard for a puzzle game. Where Puzzle Quest differentiates itself is in its quest mode.

As the title implies, Puzzle Quest features a narrative. At the outset of the game, you choose your character from one of four fantasy archetype classes