Summer Game Drought & Other Thoughts
Summer has never really been a good time for gaming - especially during a console's launch. With kids out of school and one of the biggest (formerly), videogame trade shows in effect you'd think that developers would be launching new games left and right, but that's not the case. Instead it's the Fall and Winter months that brings the biggest games, and with those being the biggest shopping seasons I don't blame them.
I say all that to express my relief that August is just around the corner and with it Metroid Prime 3. I'm not even a fan of the prime series, but this severe drought of Wii games has been killing me. I put my preorder in at the beginning of this month when I found a deal on the game and couldn't take the mind-dumbingly dry release calendar. I haven't played a Metroid game since Metroid Fusion on the GBA so this will be my first 3D Metroid game, and frankly I couldn't have picked a better time to jump in since this game is sporting the definitive controls scheme.
Adding to the harshness of the Wii drought is the fact that game companies keep announcing how they were caught flat footed with the Wii and now have to play catch-up. So instead of having games soon to be released they have announcements of how we can expect awesome games in the far future. Wonderful. Making things worse is the absolute crap-fest that Nintendo is allowing now with incredibly horrible games. It's disturbing when a toy company in Whamo announces how they are going to make videogames so you can play with their toys. I guess kids can't be bothered to go outside anymore and throw a frisbee.
Still there is no crisis, and the sky is not falling in spite of what offended "hardcore" gamers say. Yes, I said offended. It's hilarious and sad at the same time to see people express how Nintendo hurt their feelings because their desires weren't catered too explicitly. The fact is that starting next month Nintendo will be releasing three of their biggest games in a five month span - something that is practically unheard of - so I wouldn't be too worried. This is not counting the handful of quality 3rd party games also being released in that span. No, the time to worry is next July during the next E3 or whatever they have. If a slew of incredible games aren't announced by then I will totally jump on the meltdown bandwagon.
