This week I decided that I would take a look at some of the new games that will be released within the next few months. Some of these upcoming games look very promising but others look plain weird. These days though, weird is more popular than it ever has been. Honestly, games like Amplitude and Backyard Wrestling seem to make absolutely no sense and that is what in turn will make them sell a million copies. People who thought that Pikmin would be the last weird game that was actually good to come out will be shocked to find that the market is being dominated by these games at this very moment. Amplitude for example is the sequel to Frequency which gained critical praise for its innovative take on music mixing, but no one could deny that the game looked sane. Yet, Frequency sold very well in stores and that is how Amplitude was conceived. Games that are set around unusual circumstances seem to be doing much better than games that take a more believable route. Is this what the future holds? Well I’m not sure but I think it’s great. I believe that people play games to get away from the real world. Why would people prefer games that take a realistic approach on a serious situation over games that have fifteen legged creatures that sing? I feel that weird is the future and there is no stopping its wrath. That is unless the new Pokemon games sell poorly and that would be a bad sign. What kind of world would we come to if that ever happened?

    A game I personally look forward to is Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness for the Playstation 2. For many months Eidos has promised that this will be the best Tomb Raider ever. Well to be honest, they said that for every single Tomb Raider sequel. The Tomb Raider series hit a fall with its last installment that simply had little to no connection with Lara Croft’s tomb raiding roots. Why would a raider of tombs be infiltrating a military base? It made no sense and it surely didn’t answer the cliffhanger that had been left with the equally lackluster Last Revelation. Tomb Raider 2 was the series peak and since then it has taken a serious fall. It is purely in the fact that every sequel has taken Lara farther away from the ancient tombs that made the first two games so intriguing. While the future looks bright for the Tomb Raider series because of its new Playstation 2 installment, one can only look at the footage of the new game and ask if it does the series justice. The demos and footage that have been examined still show Lara very far away from the tombs that made her popular, but the game seems to be fixing every other problem that the series has been known for. The clunky camera has been reworked and the controls are supposedly tighter and less tedious to work with. There even seems to be a deep story hidden in there somewhere. If there is enough praise for these fixes, then the Tomb Raider series will be back on track. With a new game and a movie slated for a late July release, Eidos looks like it will have a hit on their hands once again. Let’s hope they don’t break what isn’t broken.

    The final topic of the week is LucasArts and their new selection of games. Surprisingly none of the LucasArts games coming out in the next few months have anything to do with a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. I would be defying my science fiction religion by saying this but I am actually glad they haven’t been pumping out a ton of Star Wars games lately because you can only have so much of one thing before it becomes tired. Indiana Jones And The Emperor’s Tomb looks to be a big hit when it is released on the Playstation 2 this May. Its X-Box version has already garnered a slew of excellent reviews for its great combat engine and strong emphasis on exploration. While the Playstation 2 port will lose some of the lush details associated with some of the more powerful versions, it will not lose the sense of adventure that has many times been lost in this genre. The Collective’s superb fighting engine was praised in the hit game Buffy The Vampire Slayer and now returns to help out Indy. The fluid fights make even the Matrix look amateurish. Indy can use his whip to grab on to things and swing and also use a machete to clear our brush. The many different gameplay elements will help separate it from the currently washed up Tomb Raider saga. Indy fans will go crazy and it is the only true filler until Senior Harrison Ford and Senior Senior Sean Connery take to the jungles once again in a currently untitled sequel due out in 2005. The first original LucasArts game in awhile comes in the form of RTX: Red Rock. It is a science fiction adventure that mixes exploration with deep action elements. The main character named E.Z. Wheeler has a mechanical arm that can be customized to hold a plethora of different weapons. The game will feature many puzzles and intense action scenes using weapons ranging from machine guns to laser cannons. While not much is being revealed about the story, we can expect nothing less than genius from the creators of many great Star Wars games. This will hopefully be enough to separate them from simply being called “the Star Wars dudes”. I know that LucasArts has the will and power to make them more popular than ever and if they use that power, then other developers better look out because the science fiction gurus will be back in top form.

    Well I hope you all enjoyed this issue of The Weekly Banter and it looks like I will be back next week because the feedback from my first two issues has been great. Tune in next week for another dosage of my oddly satisfying opinions. If you have any topics that you think deserved to be covered then e-mail me at lifeforce@vgcity.com and I will take a look.