It’s November again, and you gamers know what that means. Christmas releases are coming, and the hype is already here.

I don’t like being disappointed by Christmas releases, so I learned long ago to be a pessimist about such things. As I got better at it, I started saving money by not buying the terrible games with a lot of Christmas advertising. And now I’m going to pass the holiday savings on to you!

Most other months of the year you decide your purchases by reading reviews. But at Christmas the advertising shoots for preorders and gets you all hyped up before the review is even out. So the only way to combat this and help you truly decide what you should buy this Christmas is with preemptive reviews for games that aren’t out yet. Of course, I don’t have any real information on these games, so I’m going to achieve this by making things up as I go along. But bear with me here; I’m doing this for you.

[Review] Assassin’s Creed 2

Desmond Miles is back again to relive the memories of his ancestors from the renaissance. And this time the towers are twice as high, the side quests are twice as repetitive, and the dying monologues are longer, subtitled in French, and unskippable!

I guess it’s true what they say; ‘it takes two asses to make an assassin.’

Assassin’s Creed 2 now stars Giovanni Auditore, Altair’s clone recently thawed from cryogenic freezing (in keeping with the loose sci-fi theme) sometime in the late 14^th century. Assassin’s creed was beloved for the times when it derailed its own plot to make you do the same three or four side quests in every city while jumping off extremely high towers. Its sequel has taken this to heart, making less variety of side quests but compensating by doubling the number of cities you have to do them in.

In addition to the vistas that expand your map, you can now fly around in DeVinci’s Ornithopter. Playtesters realized quickly that, on its own, this was a bad idea since the first game taught the player to jump from high places. So you can pay merchants in cities to follow around underneath you with hay carts for you to land in should you fall. This mechanic is especially useful when you get to the assassination mission that requires you to fly by your targets palace window with a blow gun.

The control scheme has been expanded to allow more choice when evading detection. Before there were high and low profile toggles to indicate how suspicious your actions would be to guards. Now the profile levels are separated into the following convenient breakdown: low, inconspicuous, narcoleptic, stalker, legerdemain, high and racial minority. While this may seem unnecessarily complex, the ability to portray a narcoleptic kleptomaniac has many uses when the guards are searching for a cutpurse and run right past your “unconscious” body.

But ultimately the controls are too complex and the gameplay too repetitive to make this worth getting… just like the last one. And while the story is good, the twenty minute cut scenes following every assassination tend to drag on.

Wounded 2/5

[Review] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty Games have been getting shorter and shorter. Early on they took about twelve hours to beat, while the last one could be completed in a particularly good five hour sitting. Modern Warfare 2 and it’s two hours of single player content proves that it’s not about the length… it’s what you do with it.

Modern Warfare 2 does for the modern FPS what Haze did for the PS3; advertise.

Modern Warfare 1 was deemed the most photorealistic war game of its time. After a few years we expect graphics to get even better, but, due to Treyarch’s sudden decision to raise the PC price to $90 just two days before release, I sadly had to play this on the Xbox with the graphics of yester-year.

Of course Modern Warfare 2 has received a lot of criticism for their new “realism engine.” When the player is shot he reacts realistically, often unable to use his gun or walk properly until bandaged. Once, I took a shot to the inner thigh after all my squad mates were killed and was impressed that the game actually made me sit through ten minutes of earsplitting screams before finally bleeding out and letting me reload from the last checkpoint. Also, for those of you who remember the scene in Call of Duty 4 where the player’s helicopter is downed by the shockwave of a nuclear explosion and the character slowly dies of radiation poisoning and blood loss? Well scenes like that are repeated at the end of virtually every level so that the player understands the importance of the whole military, rather than one super hero soldier. For those of you confused by this, I should clarify that I’m making all this up. After all, would it really be a Call of Duty game if it ever did anything different? (zing!)

Wounded 2/5

[Review] Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Origins was so long you won’t have time to play any other games this November. Good thing I stole that hourglass from Prince of Persia!

Dragon Age Origins made me laugh, scream and cry and then five minutes later the first cut scene ended.

Baldur’s Gate was one of my favorite games of all time. So Dragon Age calling itself the “spiritual successor” made for some pretty big shoes to fill. The controls took the best elements of Baldur’s Gate’s pause-and-play tactical party combat and combined them with the most action driven elements of MMOs to make a truly intuitive and unique experience. I would have expected the combat animations to get old after a while, what with 120 hours of unique story mode to play through, but the leveling scheme keeps you at no end of new maneuvers to learn, all with their own unique and truly useful applications.

While I’d normally complain that it would be hard to take the voice acting seriously with such well known figures as Kate Mulgrew (AKA Captain Katharine Janeway) and Tim Currey (see for yourself) the characters and story are so supremely well written that I didn’t even notice when Kate Mulgrew’s character started ordering around a tattooed elf named Chakotay (the lead designers swear this is total coincidence).

Definitely the best game of the season, though I’ll have to admit that pause-and-play may not be for everyone.

Survivor 4/5

[Review] Left 4 Dead 2

This package involves more maps than the original Left 4 Dead and three new special infected. I and many others got far more than $50 worth of enjoyment out of Left 4 Dead, so I was more than happy to pay again for this sequel, despite the boycott controversy. Then Valve said ‘oops, you don’t have to pay that whole $50 because it’s 10% off preorders on Steam.’ So I was ready to pay my $45 when Valve was like ‘oh I forgot to mention that stacks with the buy 3 get one free deal.’ So I chipped in with my friends and paid Valve $33.75. For you Xbox gamers, that’s about half the price you’ll be paying for the game. For you PC gamers out there, that’s about half the price you’ll be paying for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (yeah I went there).

If that’s “just a reskin of the first game” I’ll eat my own brain.

I’m starting to feel bad here, like I’ve taken advantage of Valve. This just reinforces my belief that Gabe Newell really just wanted to run a candy store but couldn’t make it profitable because he always felt like a bad person when he’d have to charge little kids for putting smiles on their faces.

The most significant change in flow this time around is the uncommon infected, which are zombies that are harder to kill because of things they were wearing when they became infected. Riot gear zombies are bullet proof in the front. Haz-mat zombies are flame retardant. And “white sheet,” or KKK, zombies relentlessly attack, and do more damage to, the two black survivors (in keeping with the southern theme). These force the player to think while mowing down hordes of undead rather than leaving it fully up to reflex.

The game’s sound track has been changed to reflect the daytime and southern setting changes. This means fewer high pitched string and Theremin noises and more rock themed music. Some of the panic events are even set to RE: Your Brains by Jonathan Colton and Thriller by Michael Jackson. In tribute to the dead rock star, Valve has even included three of his previous faces in uncommon infected models. (My editor is telling me it’s too soon to make zombie Michael Jackson jokes.)

While the game is certainly a sequel, many gamers, including myself, are skeptical of its value before the release of its free DLC which Valve has promised. Valve has optimistically said it plans to release its first downloadable map within the next six years, a lofty goal for the makers of Half-life 2. But we’ll wait and see if they can meet the strenuous timescale they’ve set for themselves and recommend that you pick the game up once it’s been supported well after the holiday rush 2015.

Lucky 3/5