Well, for all you folks who can’t wait for Madden, it may be a good week. Madden surrogate NCAA Football ’07 hits for the major platforms. Other than that, you may want to take a snooze.

[b]NCAA Football ’07 – Various[/b]
It’s Madden’s less popular younger brother about NFL’s less popular younger brother, the NCAA. But it can tide you over, an if you really like NCAA football, there’s nowhere else to go.

[b]Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth – PSP[/b]
This one’s a classic, but still pretty much a game most people have played. If you missed out or long to do it again and have a PSP, you might want to grab it.

[b]Super Dragon Ball Z – PS2[/b]
It’s a Dragon Ball Z game. I don’t know anything about this one, but historically that has meant mediocre fighting games with a lot of flying and huge beams.

[b]Monster House – Various[/b]
A video game about a movie that looks like a video game… I have nothing else to say on this. I predict it will be bad, because I’m psychic like that.

Yeah, slow week other than NCAA Football being iterated. Apparently Pain Killer: Hell Wars for Xbox has been pushed back from its original date I listed of this week.

GamesDaily has a nice summary of why developers hate certain game reviewers. Oddly enough, the reasons mostly mesh with why I hate most games reviewers: People shouldn’t review games they haven’t spent time with, and they shouldn’t review genres they hate. I have seen dozens reviews lambasting puzzle or retro arcade games because “I don’t like this kind of game.” Great, I don’t like most RPGs much, that’s why I don’t review them.

The big sites and magazines have had some notably terrible reviews recently. Aside from copy & paste jobs between reviews of the same game on different systems, there are reviews of games which complain about problems that could be circumvented just by reading the instructions or following a tutorial. I have taken to trusting nobody unless I know them pretty well (it helps if you know how their preferences mesh with your own). It also helps if they are Cone, because Cone hooked me on Ratchet and Clank and for that he is a god.

[url=http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/media/?id=13224]What Game Developers Hate About Videogame Reviewers[/url] (GameDaily)

All you have to do is hold a party. This was too good to keep to myself.

[quote]Want to get in on the action? Throw your own Wednesday Night Arcade party! We’ll even help get you started with a Party in a Box. Okay, there’s not really a box, but here’s what we’ll send you:
A free pizza from Papa John’s.
1000 Microsoft points. Use ’em to download Xbox Live Arcade titles!
Free digital music download to get your favorite eighties tunes.

All we ask in return? Take some pictures of your party and tell us who was there and what happened. What did you play? What did you listen to? Did you get pepperoni or sausage on your Papa John’s pizza?[/quote]

[url=http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2006/0712-partyinabox.htm]Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday Party-In-A-Box[/url] (Xbox.com)

So apparently after years of fanboy waiting, Team Fortress 2 leaves the land of vaporware and becomes real. While I was never a big TF guy, I know people who would damn near kill for this game. It was really the great-grand-daddy of class-based FPS games.

Half-Life 2 Episode 2 should be coming to the PC, 360, and PS3, and will include TF2 and a “puzzle game” called Portals. The latter involves, well, portals and using them to move yourself and other things around.

Valve will also be bringing HL2 and HL2 Episode 1 to both the 360 and the PS3 as part of the package.

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/halflife2episode2/news.html?sid=6154006]Half-Life 2: Episode Two – The Return of Team Fortress 2 and Other Surprises[/url] (Gamespot)