In game making land, the summer never really brings many high profile console game releases. Although we were lucky enough to have GTA IV and a few other minor titles, this autumn/winter is shaping up to leave Xbox 360 drooling in front of their wide-screen LCD TV’s.

I’m going to push the originality angle here and post yet-another-list of games that any self respecting Xbox 360 owner should take heed of when deciding what games to buy in the next few months.

1. Gears of War 2

Excuse the pun but Gears of War 2 looks to be a lot more EPIC. Different weapons, bigger bad guys and improved gameplay will contribute to an all out gore fest of immense proportions. Early indications are that it will be a 4 player co-op allowing some fantastic campaign missions but also the matchmaking system will be modified so teams can play maps together similar to Halo 3.

This game will set all the little kiddies scampering back onto their Xbox Live mic’s, I don’t care, I was pretty good at annihilating them the first time, I expect it will be the same on November 7th.

Release Date:
Worldwide: 7th November

2. Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is the latest outing from the creators of Oblivion; Bethesda Game Studios. Set in 2277, two hundred years after the nuclear war that destroyed the world, this game focuses on a man who survived the war in a bunker known as Vault 101. He lives with his father and wakes up one day to find that he has left the safety of the shelter and ventured out into the wastelands. As any would-be hero does, he ventures out after him and that is where the real heart of the game begins.

Fallout 3 features breathtaking visuals, an improved targeting and attacking system and fantastic character interaction. It’s less than a week until it’s release, I suggest you take the plunge and get this game, it’s gonna be a good one.

Release Dates:
US: October 28, 2008
UK: October 30, 2008

3. Dead Space

For our US readers, Dead Space may already be on your shelves and our UK readers may be interested to know that this game is released tomorrow.

Dead Space is a third person shooter which is set in (yep, you guessed it!) deep space. The player takes control of Isaac Clarke, an engineer tasked with getting a stricken mining ship back online that also (rather surprisingly) has his ex-girlfriend onboard. The player takes charge just as his crew are savagely killed and mutated into evil beasts.

Dead Space not only boasts stunning visuals, it features an over the shoulder camera view (a la Gears of War) and without a HUD, shows life meters on the space suit of the games main protagonist and visualises ammo levels on holographic displays.

Depending on it’s popularity, you could see this game dropping in price after it’s release but I would recommend getting it as soon as possible.

Release Dates:
US: October 14, 2008
UK: October 24, 2008

4. Fable 2

A massive hit on the first generation Xbox, this game looks to have taken all the good points from it’s prequel and extrapolated them a hundred fold. With huge dynamic level designs and an improved weapon base, it’s truly upto the player to decide how his/her character will materialise. You can be the hero of Albion but also a legend for being an evil villain, it’s all dependant on how you deal with your quests.

Release Dates:
US: October 21, 2008
UK: October 24, 2008

5. Mirror’s Edge

Mirror’s Edge looks to be truly unique in it’s gameplay. You play a character named Faith who is a renegade against an oppressive government that controls her people. Faith, a free runner, attempts to rescue her sister while running messages for the criminal underworld, she gets caught up in a series of events which lead to her being pursued by the totalitarian government.

Mirror’s Edge employs a first person view with no HUD, only showing the flailing arms and legs of the character you control. This helps the player keep a sense of momentum as they guide Faith over rooftops and down buildings, as is shown in the video above.

It’s certainly a different concept but one that looks to be a sure winner.

Release Dates:
US: November 11
UK: November 14

Conclusion

So there you have it, a little rundown of the best looking games coming to us in the next month. Agree or disagree, why not leave a message in the comments?

Katie received a call on Thursday of last week asking her if she was free to be admitted to hospital for surgery on a recurrent back problem. Knowing it would mean a greater chance of not getting any complications in future, she took it.

Yesterday she was admitted, straightforward exploratory surgery on an existing scar area on her back, a small operation. The operation lasted just over an hour and she sailed through it, so much so she was asking for a big dinner when she was wheeled back into the ward, having been Nil By Mouth for nearly 27 hours.

The only problem yesterday was the waiting. Having booked into the ward at 10am, we were seen by consultants and told that her operation was the last on the list for that particular ward. This meant we ended up waiting seven hours in the ward just sitting there counting down the minutes until she was prepared for surgery.

I have had to go into work this morning but I will be leaving early to go and see her, she’s been a brave one and I can’t wait to see her cute little smile later today.

Imagine if in all your favourite movies, the characters used a mobile phone. Found courtesy of Slashfilm:

This week saw my father in law go into hospital for surgery on a recurrent hip problem. He (like me) played a hell of a lot of sport in his younger years and his body until today had made him pay for that. This leads to me hoping that I don’t start to fall apart in my later years, due to the amount of football I have played.

Early this morning the landlord came and introduced herself properly, giving us an explanation of things that were never indicated to us by the letting agents. It was the usual “Call us if anything should go wrong”. We mentioned that our neighbours had been making loud sounds, something that seemed to be reinforced by the family the other side of the couple in question. We put in a request to get the oven sorted, because at the moment it takes a hour to cook something even when it’s at 250 degrees.

The kittens have acclimatized to their new home, they love coming up into the bedroom in the evenings and sleeping on the bed, which at first we were happy to let them do until they started fighting at 2am in the morning. They have subsequently been banned from the bedroom, and don’t we know it, they have mewing and clawing at the door every evening since!

My Xbox has been repaired, just in time for my pre-orders, it also means we can watch all of our movie downloads on the big screen, saves wasting money heading to the cinema that’s for sure (but don’t tell anyone, right?!).

I have been on and on about Quidco in the past, loving the fact you can get cashback from the purchases you usually make online.

Picture this, I’m at work and my boss comes up to me and asks me to find a new Macbook Pro for the graphic designer and a Windows laptop for her. I immediately hit the internet, looking at where would be the most beneficial place to get a cheap laptop that can also work as my boss would like.

Logging onto Quidco, I see that Apple have upped their cashback rate to 6% on purchases, meaning I can get quite a sum back if I get a new Mac from them. Getting the okay, I simply track the business purchase through Quidco, an order totalling £1200. I return to check the status of the cashback in my Quidco account about an hour later, what do you know? £61 tracked and validated there and then!

My employer is none the worse for me doing this, the price they pay is the same. It just means that with a little bit of ingenuity I can profit (albeit small amounts at a time) from being the person consulted to make the necessary arrangements for the rest of the team!

Bonus.

You can’t go anywhere lately without anyone mentioning the Credit Crunch, it’s got to a point now where it’s being blamed for everything and I think it’s nothing more than just a convenient excuse.

Have you been affected by the credit crunch? I haven’t, yet. My place of employment still managed to get the same number of bookings for our courses as last year and with that it wasn’t the hardest we had ever worked. My company deals in the professional training arena and what would you expect the first thing HR departments would cut back on in a credit crunch?………training their staff.

On a personal level, I am still able to move my small-ish sized credit card debt between various 0% interest offers, my bank overdraft hasn’t been touched and I found out the other day I am eligible for sizeable loans (then again who isn’t?). Readers may cry “What about mortgages?!”, at the end of the day, when you borrow and there is a crisis with your bank, there is nothing you can do, it’s the same as a pension, you’re taking a massive gamble. People who borrowed efficiently and kept within their means aren’t really worried about the credit crunch, from the outcries I have witnessed it was the people who borrowed above their means and bought houses that stretched their budgets to above a tangible limit, so as soon as the interest rates on their repayments rose, they couldn’t afford the repayments on their house (look at America’s Sub-Prime mortgage crisis, it’s the same here).

I have noticed changes but these changes I don’t think are dependant on the Credit Crunch. The price of oil was sky-rocketing way before the US collapse and with agriculture being hit hard, the food bills have steadily increased. I have been lucky in the respect that I can now walk to work and don’t have to fuel a vehicle nearly as much.

What grinds my gears is the way the media report this “crisis”. Every single morning, headlines are dominated by our economy and rightly so. But what we don’t need are the Fiona Phillips of this world patronising me with how I am going to live when fuel bills rise again and the food bills mean I live on cat food. She earns £500,000+ a year and I really don’t need her fake sincerity.

Life is good and I will continue to ignore this pap they are propogating, I am starting new businesses and buying more than ever before, why should I be worried about some Icelandic bank being bought out by it’s government? The reason is I bank with companies who can afford to buy their smaller counterparts so I will never have to worry.

Bankers, the lot of them.