Fall preview

My list of 10 games to watch for this fall is up now at thephoenix.com. It seems like a good crop this year. Not only are there are a lot of games that look interesting, there are a lot of games that look different. I mean, really, who doesn't want to play that Sesame Street game?

That said, there's no question that the game I'm anticipating the most this year is Battlefield 3. I can't even really explain why. I haven't been into a military-themed FPS since Call of Duty 4, and even then it was all about the campaign for me. But I bought my new computer in large part so that I could play Battlefield 3 as it's meant to be played, and I've watched that Caspian Border trailer about a hundred times. It's going to be sad when I load the game, am not immediately good at it after 30 minutes of play, and break my keyboard over my leg.

Anyway, I had fun writing this year's preview, and I hope you have fun reading it.

Also, last weekend at Joystick Division I published a column about how Gears of War is the quintessential 9/11 game. As I say in the piece, I've always had that impression. It wasn't something I cooked up in a cheap ploy for pageviews. You may or may not agree with the article, but I hope you at least agree that it's the kind of discussion about video games that's worth having.