Every year I eagerly await September through about late November.  Since I'm somewhat of a video game junkie, during this period of the year I find a little bit of a hole in my pocket.  I go on preordering sprees, which wind-up good (Last year's Borderlands and Assassin's Creed 2) or relatively bad (Brutal Legend), and end up spending a couple hundred dollars on games.
 
This year's spree of irresponsible spending started with Halo: Reach.  A lot has already been said about Reach and likely in better words, so I will be brief.  It's a Halo game.  Bungie slowed the pace down a little bit, making it more of a deliberately-paced type of experience (though, I will say that Bungie sucks at scripting events).  Legendary Solo is more manageable than it has been in the past (at least to me), but the game is still a little bit of a challenge.  The game does have a great ending, it gave me goosebumps.  But, for the love of God, why is Noble Six Noble Team's bitch?  Stop fucking yelling at me, I've killed more Covenant than you can even dream of.  Sorry...  Seriously, though, you are constantly being berated by NPCs in the game who, more often than not, end up staring at a rock face doing nothing while you eradicate the Covenant scum.  But that's all I'll say about Reach.  Oh, and the multiplayer is pretty good.  Okay.  Done.
 
Next up is Dead Rising 2, a little bit of an oddity for me.  You see, I purchased Dead Rising some months ago, but didn't enjoy the style of it to finish the actual game.  I didn't even bother to try out Case Zero when it was first released because of a particular comment I think Brad made during the Quick Look ("It's definitely Dead Rising...").  However, as I grew bored with Reach, I decided to give Case Zero a try.  And I liked it.  A lot.  There's something about chainsaws strapped to a canoe paddle that is appealing.  Not to mention broadswords being at the ready.  So I was sold.  I preordered DR2.
 
When I first received the game, I was kind of disappointed in it.  Even with the whooping level 5 Chuck Greene I had imported, the game was ridiculously hard and oppressive.  I felt that Dead Rising 2 was everything good about Case Zero diluted down to an outlandish extent.  That is, until I leveled up my Chuck more, and learned where all the cool stuff in the mall is.  The difficulty at the beginning of the game is by design, you're supposed to do the Dead Rising thing, where you die, then start over with your money and character stats from your previous game.  The system works better now than it did in the first game, allowing you to skip the more exposition-y parts of the intro so you can get right back in to the zombie killing.
 
Make no mistake, Dead Rising 2 is way better than Dead Rising.  The combo weapons are ridiculously awesome most of the time, and there is plenty of stuff to do and see in the mall.  If you disregard the story missions, you can spend three days (probably around 7 or 8 hours of realtime) killing zombies or doing whatever you see.  And that's where the game really shines, when you break away from the tightly restricted time-based gameplay and just go play.  Controls are still a little bit unresponsive, there are a few bugs, and the framerate can drop, but this game can really draw you in.  The story is "meh", and the voice-acting is a little bit hokey, but you're not playing a Dead Rising game for story.  You're playing to kill zombies.
 
Last week, I got bored with Dead Rising 2, so I bought Comic Jumper.  I thought Comic Jumper looked cool when I first saw it some months ago.  I saw the quick look and was kind of turned off to the gameplay.  But, whatever.  Yeah, the gameplay is bad.  It's not good.  It's not fun to play.  But holy shit, that game is funny.  I haven't finished it yet, as it really is kind of a chore to play, but I really do look forward to the next round of dialogue after a level in that game.  Good stuff.
 
Finally, I picked up Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions on Monday, as I need something to occupy my time until later this month.  So...  It's okay, not great.  There's a good sense of humor to it, there is a moderately well thought out upgrade and challenge system, but damn, the controls and targeting are not good.  At al.  The game isn't open worldy anymore; Activision went back to a level-based gameplay.  That would be fine to me if it didn't feel like they did it because they couldn't really get Spider-Man's traversal skills to work smoothly.  Web-slinging is okay, but ziplining is finicky AND wall-crawling is often awful, as the camera usually bugs out.  Web of Shadows had better controls than this.  I do like the different dimensions, but the only one that's really different than the others is Noir.  Noir has a uniquely dark atmosphere, and a truly different style of play (It is focused much more on stealth).  The stealth mechanics don't work without hitches, but I find the stealth sections to be more enjoyable than the others.  I haven't finished the game yet, but am about 60% through.  It'll be done by Friday.
 
That's all for now, but I'm really looking forward to Fable III, Costume Quest, Assassin's Creed, and maybe The Force Unleashed 2, New Vegas, and Black Ops...