Autumn Game Lineup Reviewed

Autumn marks the beginning of open season on the plains of game. The dash is on to release all those titles developers introduced at E3 in May during the run up to the holiday season, where marketing people have arbitrary dates marked out as milestones for release and instant success.

September is traditionally the quietest of the Autumn/Winter rush, and to put that into perspective we saw about 40 games released for the PC alone. FPS kiddies will be more than happy with Day of Defeat Source and Bet on Soldier, whilst Fable: The Lost Chapters and Dungeon Siege 2 will fulfil the desires of those of you with role-playing aspirations. Funnily enough Madden NFL '06 will interest RPGers as well as sports fans, but we'll let you skip on ahead to read why.

For strategy gamers there are two expansion packs to the year's two biggest RTS offerings, Rome: Total War: Barbarian Invasion and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Winter Assault. Both offer RTS action as well as triple-layered titles.

The Sims 2: Nightlife fulfils the requisite cash cow expansion position, while Falcon 4.0 Allied Force marks its sixth year with a fresh release to bring stupendously realistic modern flight simulation to the desktop.

Unfortunately there is nothing slated for turn-based strategy fans until November when Civilization IV will make all work impossible and all competition meaningless - that is, if all goes to plan.