This week there were just a handful of games to look at, as the ESRB only turned around and published 33 games that were rated. I guess some ESRB staffers are starting to burn off those vacation days. Use it or lose it always starts to become a pain in the butt in early November.

There wasn’t a ton of interesting things in this week’s batch, but I still managed to finagle out a couple of nuggets of data. What I saw was that the Nintendo juggernaut (Is it?) keeps on rolling, we had a brand-new playa not seen in almost four years show up and the true-next gen releases look to be slowing down. On to the show:

Nintendo just keeps having titles churned out for its platforms left and right. For this week, there were 13 of the 33 “games” on the DS and Wii. I can understand the Japanese style anime games, kid’s games and downloadable content for the Wii Shopping channel. What I do not get are all the self-help and teaching guides that come across this article each week. Ubisoft will be giving DS owners the option to buy a couple of titles called Mon Coach personnel j`ameliore mon Anglais and Mon Coach Personnel J`ameliore Mon Espagnol. Is that French? Anyway, why in the world do people pay $30 a pop for this stuff? I may need to write an Editorial on this…

There is normally one or two of the odd-ball platforms that see a rated game each week when I review the titles. Usually, I see the occasional web browser, plug-and-play or Mobile game. This week I had a pleasant surprise as a game for Linux (EVE Online) was actually rated. In fact, after checking the ESRB’s database, they have only rated Eight Linux games ever, with the last being 2003’s Puzzle Pirates. Yeah for Linux!

I hope everyone will be enjoying Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Assassin’s Creed, because there were only two next-gen titles that were rated this week. Burnout Paradise looks like it may be just another retread from that series, but Codemasters’ Turning Point: Fall of Liberty seems to have some solid buzz and unique storylines that could make it a sleeper hit. Other than those, there weren’t even any Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network games that were rated. This is the last big week for release in the retail world, so we may have seen the majority of the rated titles for next-gen dry up until after the holidays.

I didn’t see any an unannounced titles jump out, but it appears that the PC platform is regurgitating some older games including Luxor 3 and Lumines. No word on if these are flash based, or part of Windows Live. This was also the second time in the last several weeks that DreamCatcher Interactive has had a large collection of PC titles rated from the same series. Previously it was SpellForce, and this week it was Gothic. Sounds like another box set may be in the works.





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Publisher
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Blue`s Journey
SNK Playmore USA