The Video Game Onslaught Begins

The fall tidal wave of video games has begun, with the flood starting with two releases in the past two weeks: Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Madden NFL 12.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution has had overwhelmingly good reviews and looks to be the first big game of the season and Madden needs no introduction, as NFL football gamers have no other option than Madden.

This week, four possibly significant games debut - Driver: San Francisco, Dead Island, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and Resistance 3.

Driver: San Francisco (Sept. 6) is a car game with a twist – you play as an undercover cop who, through a near-death experience, is able to “leap” into the bodies of other drivers. This lets you affect car chases and infiltrate gangs.

Dead Island (Sept. 6) is a zombies-in-paradise games, with a group of people on an idyllic Caribbean island vacation trapped with the undead.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Sept. 6) takes a series which is normally played in a massively multiplayer online role-playing way and turns it into a third-person shooter. You play as a futuristic Romanesque warrior battling huge armies of Orks.

Resistance 3 (Sept. 6) is the latest installment of the PlayStation3-only saga of the epic battle against alien invaders – the Chimera – in the US in the 1950s.

Next week, the pickins get kinda slim, with NHL 12  and maybe The Gunstringer - an XBox 360 Kinect title – garnering some attention.

The rest of September will see Gears of War 3 and The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection as possible winners.

Gears of War 3 (Sept. 20) is an XBox 360-only shooter from the  series that made sprinting and finding cover important features in a game.

The ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection (Sept. 27) contains high-definition, 3D versions of two PlayStation2 games that should be in any gamer’s collection.

ICO was a simple “rescue the girl” game that made minimalism in video games an art form.

Shadow of the Colossus expanded the quest, both horizontally and vertically, featuring huge beasts and grim determination.

NEXT: October – raging souls, bats, robots and battlefields.