hexogen

Because the basic gameplay is still fun year after year, at least in multiplayer. It has arguably the best shooter controls on consoles, all the weapons are satisfying to use, and the progression system is and has always been addictive. More importantly, I have good friends who find the game fun to play, so I often have someone to play with and talk to. The single player has definitely lost its allure, though. I play it, but it's not a reason to buy the game anymore.

P.S. I'm actually going to get Halo 4 at launch and pick up Black Ops 2 a month or two later, and I've been getting CoD on day one since 4. Both of my usual CoD squad are getting a little bored of the series (they play it considerably more than I do), and even I want to play something "fresh". So I'm going with Halo 4. My point being that even for my two friends and I, the signs of series fatigue may finally be starting to show.

Biggest by far: Modern Warfare 2 - Particularly the multiplayer. I loved Call of Duty 4, so naturally my expectations were high for MW2. It seemed to expand on CoD4's multiplayer systems in all the right ways and I was so excited for it. And then I played it and found it was a game with plenty of good ideas, totally ruined by imbalance and baffling design decisions. Like having super powerful killstreaks that counted towards even more powerful killstreaks (e.g. harrier leading to chopper gunner leading to nuke) or the one man army/danger close/grenade launcher combo, or the tac insert boosting in free-for-all. Among plenty of other things. Just, ugh.

Fable III - I remember feeling this was a step back from Fable II in a bunch of ways. The Sanctuary interface was terrible and I remember hating everything after you become king/queen. Plenty of other things, but I honestly don't remember what they were, so I guess they weren't that bad. But I enjoyed Fable II a lot more than III.

I like it so far. The guns feel good and the game runs silky smooth. The campaign, which I'm about 2/3 done if I had to guess, is a fun thrill ride as CoD campaigns always are. It doesn't blow me away or anything, but it's good. The multiplayer is simultaneously fun and frustrating. I like the return to just leveling up instead of leveling up and having to purchase everything with in-game currency. The support package is a great addition since most of my go-to killstreaks are fairly passive, and I like to help my team win instead of worrying about my kill/death ratio.

As for the frustrating parts, the lag compensation in this game is ridiculous. My game seems to be a half second or more behind everyone else's quite often. On my screen I'll dump four or five bullets into a guy before they shoot at me and then I get killed by what seems like one bullet from them. I look at the killcam and from their perspective it looks like I'm oblivious to their presence. And yet the game lists everyone in the lobby, including myself, as having a four-bar connection. It can be maddening sometimes. I know there's always going to be moments like that due to latency, but I've never experienced it to this degree, and so often, in a Call of Duty game.

The spawns are terrible sometimes, but IIRC Black Ops was the same way at launch and it got a lot better with some tweaking. And the maps overall seem really small and labyrinthine, which I'm not ecstatic about. But, believe it or not, I do like the multiplayer. I just find it a lot easier to go into detail about what I don't like rather than what I do.

Mass Effect X: Combat Racing?

If this patch only exists to update the version to 1.1 and fixes absolutely nothing, that would be awesome.

So far, probably Pokemon Black/White. But considering how much I love all the Assassin's Creed music, I'm fully expecting Revelations to be my favorite when the year is done.

Well I liked it. I rest my case.

I saw this earlier today. Assuming it's not fake, it looks like it's just a temporary ban from playing MW3 online until the game is officially released.

No, it still only has one A in the title.

Well at least they all include the game disc.