First things first, it has been a long time since this weekly article has been published. I apologize 1,000 times over, as an untimely firewall at work and life in general has intruded in. Well, enough of the pandering apologies and on to the show.

Do to being offline with this for so long, I’m only going to take the last 49 games that were rated and take a peak at them. Looking over the list, there appears to be a lot of familiar faces and trends, a definite diverse undertow and a lack of true-next gen titles making their way through the process.

The first thing that jumped out was the volume of previously released games going through the ringer once again. With new version of Feeding Frenzy, AstroPop, Tiger Woods and a host of sequels, it’s a wonder people keep buying the same recycled crap across every single platform. Speaking of, how about a “Holy Spellforce Batman!”, as there were no less than five titles rated by the ESRB for the Windows PC series. It probably was for the Spellforce Universe set that went on sale recently, but still….

I think we all know that diversity in the workplace is not only encouraged, but in some cases required. However, can you see the ESRB raters’ face that had an inbox of Hannah Montana, Big Mutha Trucker 2 and Baby Luv waiting to be played? Once those were finished up, Cake Mania 2, My French Coach: Intermediate and Army of Two were begging for attention. Honestly, I am getting this vision of Forrest Gump talking about a big box of chocolates and never knowing what you will get.

Now we get to take our weekly (or is that monthly?) poke at the true next-gen systems Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Again, there is so little to get excited about, as only two titles were rated that span both systems: The Club and Army of Two. That was it for the PS3, and the Xbox 360 fared not much better with a couple of XBLA retreads (Feeding Frenzy and AstroPop) and the new Omega Five XBLA and Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess, shared with PS2 and PC.

<shakes head>

Based on my look through, I didn’t really notice any game getting outed by the ESRB. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss one.





AstroPop
PopCap Games, Inc.
E
PC, PS2, Cell, Web, Xbox 360


Cake Mania 2