Among the many great games that have come out in the past few weeks, I've been playing Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves with my 3 yr old son.  It doesn't always hold his attention (he constantly wants me to play "Murray" or "Turtle" and then wanders off when I don't have any missions for them), but it has mine absolutely captured.

Rarely do I play a game and say "wow, that's just a better way to do things".  Sly Cooper 2 is one of those games.  The game is broken down into a series of "heists" (episodes).  All your missions for each episode are laying all the groundwork for the big heist at the end -- disabling defenses, gathering information, creating a cover or a distraction.  Then when you finally pull off the heist at the end of a mission all those individual threads are pulled together into a triumphant payoff.  You really get the sense that you have a master plan that you are executing due to careful preparation. 

In other words, it captures the "heist" vibe perfectly.  There are a million other things to like about the game of course -- like the original Sly it has sharp, polished minute to minute gameplay, a great variety of mechanics, and a wonderful sense of humor.  But the heist structure of Sly 2 just blows me away.  It gives the whole game an intensity and cohesiveness that is downright impressive. 

Sucker Punch remains one of the best under-publicized developers in the industry, IMO.  Both Sly games and Rocket: Robot on Wheels were all top-notch games filled with humor, variety, and warmth.  I really hope Sly 2 does well for them, though I fear the "cartoon animals" setting will instantly turn off a lot of people who would otherwise love it.

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I have to say the new HDTV really brings some games to the next level.  Playing Burnout 3 in widescreen is pretty awe-inspiring (even if the gameplay is becoming a bit repetitive a few hours in).  Unfortunately I ran into some problems with Fable on it, but nothing a little research on the internet couldn't give me a workaround for.

It's going to take me months to dig out from the avalanche of high quality games this year.  Dawn of War & Battlefront are sitting on my desk waiting to be played, freshly purchased from the local EB.  Tomorrow is Kohan 2 and X-Men Legends.  Meanwhile I've barely scratched the surface of Sims 2, Fable, and Call of Duty: United Offensive!  At least it's a pretty good problem to have... 

Last week I was looking forward to a few new PC releases -- Locomotion, World At War, and Kohan 2.  EBWorld showed them all arriving!  Alas, World At War and Kohan 2 are actually not until later in the month or even into next month, and I haven't been able to track down a copy of Locomotion.

On the upside, wandering through Fry's today I discovered copies of Chicago 1930!  This is the latest from Spellbound (the folks who did the under-rated Desperados and the somewhat justifiably under-rated Robin Hood).  Not that you'd even know it was them from looking at the box -- no logo.  How bad does your standing as a developer have to be when you can't get your logo on a Microids published box?  Anyways, I'm hopeful it will be as fun as their previous games... I can't believe I missed it's release altogether.

This week is just insane, game release wise.  Sims 2, Sly Cooper: Band of Thieves, Fable, and Call of Duty: United Offensive.  Wow.  Also Demon Stone and Port Royale 2, though I imagine I won't pick those up right away just due to sheer overload.

As if that weren't enough, I've finally broken down and gotten an HDTV.  I'd put it off for quite a while but now the time has finally come -- and just in time for all the console releases of the holiday!   There is a bewildering array of choices when buying an HDTV, and honestly I'm not sure how anyone who isn't a videophile, engineer, or both makes sense of it all.  I ultimately settled on the Samsung HL-P6163W.  I'm a little concerned about video sync issues folks on AVSForum have been complaining about -- lag introduced when converting from some formats, specifically composite video input.  I'm most concerned about it being a problem for playing video games, though at least I can use proper component video on the Xbox & PS2 once I acquire all the needed cables.

If anyone is still reading after slogging through all the gory details of game releases and other material acquisitions, I also survived the Austin GDC last week.  Some good talks (and some great jawboning about random design philosophy with smart folks) -- I'll try and write up some more detailed thoughts later this week in all the copious spare time I'm sure to have.

I've gotten hooked on BOTH Phantom Brave and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time this week.  That's not a typo on Star Ocean by the way... presumably one becomes an intergalactic farmer using a Trans-Temporal Space Plow to properly till your property at the End of Time.

My grammar-fascist tendencies aside, both are great games.  Between those two and Front Mission 4 I'm in RPG overload -- and I know the holiday season is far from done serving up RPG goodness.  Fortunately Xavier likes watching me play Front Mission (or "robot game"), and all three games are quite different, at least as far as RPGs go.

I have to admit Front Mission is probably the weakest of the three.  It's certainly the slowest paced.  Phantom Brave is a little too much on the goofy side for my tastes, but it is without a doubt the ultimate stat-building leveling up game -- if you like that sort of game (such as Nippon Ichi's Disgaea or La Pucelle) you definitely should check out Phantom Brave.

Star Ocean is the most "classical" RPG of the set.  While it does have a more reflex-based combat system (like Star Ocean 2, or the Tales series) it has a big epic story, lots of angsty dialogue, etc.  I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.  So far it feels a lot like a more polished and slightly less wordy (but only slightly) Xenosaga.

Modern console RPGs really are the digital equivalent of novels.  Just like I have a hard time reading multiple novels at the same time, I'm not quite sure I'll be able to keep all the plot threads of the three games in my head at one time.  We'll see, but I can't quite bring myself to stop playing any of them...

The next few weeks are all ridiculous for good new releases too.  Next week is World at War and Kohan II, two of my top picks for strategy games this holiday (though by no means the last).  It's a good time to be a gamer.