Let the games begin!

I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are already getting stoked about this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing. Although some folks, like me for example, are much more concerned about the upcoming games rush, a time when publishers overstock game store shelves with their hyped products during the holiday season. The games rush usually starts around mid-August and reaches full momentum by late-November. But since I always need to budget my expenses early on, I've already finished picking a PC game for each month.

August

Space Siege
Space Siege is an action-RPG from Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege). I find the game to be similar with System Shock than Dungeon Siege. The setting will be on a ship infiltrated by aliens, and the story will be told via PDA logs located throughout the ship. You'll also be able to upgrade your body with implants to improve your combat abilities. But unlike in System Shock, there's a moral conflict in the game. The more you have upgrades, the less human you become.

September

Spore
After 4 years[?] in development, Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims) will finally unleash Spore to the world. Spore showcases a mix of features from various genre like god games, strategy and life simulation. The game allows you to play the different phases in the evolution. You start out with a single microbe from the tide pool phase, then evolving it to a land creature in the creature phase, and finally advancing them into interplanetary conquerors during the space phase.

October

Fallout 3
I started to loath Bethesda after Morrowind. Even more so when they butchered the design of Fallout 3, eschewing the much loved turn-based combat, by turning it into a graphic-fest shooter game. Nonetheless, I'm still picking up Fallout 3 because of my love for all things post-apocalyptic, and I'm still hopeful that this game will deliver an irradiated RPG experience, much like its predecessors did, even though it has undergone extreme mutation under Bethsoft's hands.

November

Empire: Total War
The Total War series of strategy games has already taken us into different historical eras. We've fought battles in Feudal Japan, in the Roman Republic, and in Medieval Europe. The new series, Empire, will take us back to 17th - 19th centuries and give us the chance to fight pirates in the Caribbean or participate in the American Rebellion. There are great changes and additions in this series (can you say naval battles?), and it's just too many to mention them all.

Now, there you have it. All my picks for the PC each month are done. All I need to do is get a better system to handle these games. Cause, quite frankly, I don't think I'd be able to run them (especially Fallout 3).