7 Games You Might Miss This Fall

Games Radar has up a piece trying to point out the top seven games you're likely to miss thanks to the many high-profile launches coming this fall. How can a quirky title like Eternal Sonata hope to survive opposite Mass Effect and Blue Dragon? Likewise, will cult status be enough to save NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams when it goes up against the likes of Mario Galaxy on the Wii platform? A list of titles to come back to early next year, or something to help if none of the big names are turning your head.

Comments

Eternal Sonata

[atomicstrawberry]

Hopefully Eternal Sonata will survive against Blue Dragon by the simple fact that it appears to be a better game. At least, that was my judgement based off the two demos.

Re:Eternal Sonata

[Wiseman1024]

Quirky? Eternal Sonata is awesome. Awesome music, awesome visuals, awesome setting, and for what I could see, awesome gameplay. On the other hand, the Blue Dragon demo confirmed why I'm not so interested in the game: nothing's really bad about it, but it doesn't fascinate me like Eternal Sonata does. The later looks and feels like a mix between a fairy tale and a Thomas Kinkade painting, and few settings can be more interesting than the dreams of a genius. The Chopin theme works wonderfully, and the 4 CD soundtrack is one of the best I've ever seen or heard. The visuals are beyond comparison, at least if you like this style, and the gameplay is simple, fast and addictive, so how could this game be considered "quirky"? It's a damn blessing they even decided to release it in Europe; games this good tend to be Japan-exclusive, who knows or dares to guess why.

Re:Eternal Sonata

[atomicstrawberry]

RPGs never used to turn up in Europe because companies like Sony had a rule that the game had to be localised into French and German at least, and often Italian and Spanish as well. For your bog-standard shooter or similar that is not a major hurdle, but for a text-heavy RPG that's a huge (and expensive) undertaking. Additionally RPGs have traditionally not done as well here (though I think this is a bit of a catch-22).

NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[Psykechan]

NiGHTS Journey of Dreams is on the list.

I love the original NiGHTS game and its spin-off Christmas NiGHTS. I will regularly hook up the Saturn and give it a good play through because it is that good of a game. Years ago I would've loved to have a sequel/remake on a newer system.

However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game. I would love it if I'm wrong but I'm going to be reading many reviews before I even attampt to play this game let alone buy it. Sega has broken my heart too many times recently.

Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[G Fab]

Don't get too down, pal.

The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes. Sega has fallen painfully, but that's what it takes sometimes to get some kid in there with some good ideas and a soul to make some new content. They have the brands, all they need are the ideas.

Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii. You take risks when you have nothing to lose. EA will never release that awesome ground breaking game - the most they can hope for is frames per second on the 2 point conversion. Is EA going to take manpower off of Nascar 2009 to make the next Katamari? It's profits per quarter might suffer!

    But Sega... Sega has nothing to lose and might just take a low budget risk that adds something to the industry. It's only a matter of time.

I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry.

It's like Olivia. She had no body, but she gave me all she had. What she was, actually. And if you ask Seth Able to sing, your bank account might double. Those with less produce more. The zen is the dao is the buddha buddie (holy shit, I'm drunk).

Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[Khuffie]

Two points to note: - EA is working on Spore, and while I can't pass judgement on that, you can't say they are not taking a risk - Nintendo was far from 'barely holding on'. They've made healthy profits in the N64 and GameCube days.

Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago.

Nintendo as of August 2002 was kicking just a little more ass than you might be capable of remembring in your current intoxicated state. GBA was going like a freight train and GameCube was closer to head-to-head with Xbox than it ended up being when Xbox production stopped completely. Not to mention that their first unprofitable ever was yet to occur. High times, actually.

Nintendo's "comeback story" with the Wii is nice. They zigged when the rest of the industry was reading the final chapters of The Zag Handbook Volume IV, copyright 2001 Nintendo Corporation Limited. But it actually represents a return to the undisputed top of the industry, not a revival from the ashes.

Sega has been in steady decline since the end of the Dreamcast era, which is really just a continuation of past errors that extend back to the Mega CD and Super 32X time period. Nintendo has never been in their situation, and Sega can't look to them for an example of how to cheat death. Too few of the old Sega fans can look at any of their offerings and honestly feel like the Sega of today is capable of much any more. That's the perception that Sega has to combat if they don't want to be considered in the same light as other companies like Namco. (They're fine and all, but something beautiful and nostalgic is lost when you speak of Sega in the same way one might speak of Namco, as opposed to the same way people speak of Nintendo.)

Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[Intellectual Elitist]

> However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game.

Virtua Fighter and Virtua Tennis seem to be chugging along just fine, and Shinobi & Nightshade on the PS2 have a strong cult following. True, Sega screwed the pooch with the Sonic franchise a long time ago, but I can't think of any other botched franchises off the top of my head...

Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams

[G Fab]

oh yeah, the gameboy.

good point, good point.

Nintendo was doing a lot better than "barely holding on". That was lame hyperbole on my part.

Not to rain on Nintendo at all, I love Nintendo, but your comment that they have returned to the top is simply wrong, I'm afraid. Nintendo is a game maker, ans Sony is just an electronics company, so it's easy to have nostalgia and think Nintendo is the true leader over the course of consoles. But Sony is (which makes their current console a shocking failure). The wii is supposed to sell to people who don't play video games, but that's what the playstations actually did.

You can't understate what the Playstation 1 and 2 did in the industry. You can add all the SNES and NES systems sold together and come millions short of the Playstation, and tens of millions short of the Playstation 2. Sony has obvious dropped the ball with the PS3, but they are still the king as long as the Playstation 2 dominates. Part of Sony's problem is that, for most people, there is no reason to replace a PS2. No Gameboy brand has approached 100 million either. The game industry that we have today exists on the back of the playstation, even many of the wii third party games are PS2 ports. That's not to diminish the wii as the dominating winner of the new three, but Sony is still selling more consoles than Nintendo.

    And think about this, all those Playstations could have been Nintendos. Nintendo rejected the playstation idea, and left Sony and NEC with investment spending they had to try to recover.

  Nintendo was dominating with NES, didn't innovate much with SNES and barely held the lead (even lost it for a while), and completely failed with their next two consoles, only to finally have no reason at all to make another standard console and then found some success. You can say that Nintendo made money anyway, but as am atter of potential, Nintendo truly has risen from the ashes. The wii could eclipse the Playstation 2, and certainly proves that Nintendo was far below its potential for the past ten years.

My overall point was that Sega could easily think their way to better games. Look at the string of great Mario games. They are usually very interesting, and that takes creativity more than technology. Sega has intangible assets in copyrights and it's only a matter of time before they get desperate enough to invest one of them in a truly innovative designer.

So yeah, the gameboy proves that Nintendo wasn't dead. But Nintendo had to get its ass kicked before it got into gear. I think it's much easier to come back in this industry than in others. I think it's only a matter of time before Sega figures out how to do that.

Re:wtf are they thinking?

[G Fab]

This actually is News for Nerds, unfortunately.

Stuff that matters.

(cue that "The more you know" jungle)

Finally the Holiday season is here

[Tol Dantom]

The truth is most of the games on this list would never get notice, and frankly the Wii and DS selections were a little weak. Come on guys, tell me how you managed to guess Radar Readers wouldn't be buying kiddie and tweener rhythm games.
Nights and Fred are pretty obviously going to get trampled.

They actually have interesting points about the shooters though. 51 looks like the next FEAR, which did great, and there's no reason it couldn't kill if released in Jan-June. More than any other game 51 is caught in the undertow. The biggest hype of this season is feeding into shooters with Halo 3 ready to split open the earth to make way for end times-like gushers of money in Redmond and 51 wants to get right in the goddamn way. Same with Army of Two and Kane and Lynch. These games sound really interesting but not only are they throwing their hats into the November mudslide, they're also climbing over each other and releasing on the same day in what may be the stupidest release timing I've ever heard of. I understand they're trying to cut each other off but it just seems so stupid to slit each other's throats for some of that holiday cash. If the developers would just wise up they could own a month from the second quarter. A triple-A game released in March is the only thing for the obsessive compulsive gamer media to talk about during that time.

Great times

[p4rri11iz3r]

Right now is indeed a great time to be a gamer. The only problem is, come December, I'm going to be so broke it'll be sad. Heck, even the most spoiled, rich kids are going to have a tough time. Right now I have plans to buy the "big 3" for the Wii and maybe a few others. I really wish I could afford a 360 so I could pick up many of the games for it as well.

Naturally, the fanboys will argue which console has better games, but my question is: does that even matter? Just enjoy the plethora of good games available for your console(s) and let the others be. We need to unite as gamers to encourage this kind of greatness in our games.

I do feel sorry for some of these "lesser knowns." To be honest, they probably would have been better off waiting for Q1 or Q2 to release when gamers have finished their holiday games and are looking for something new. I'm hoping that we'll have another dry, boring Spring (which is sad, really) so that I can catch up on all the games I missed.

Re:Great times

[BarneyL]

No rush, it's cheaper if you take your time rather than buy more than you can play. I'm just playing through a cheap copy of Prey right now, and have FEAR plus the last two Broken Sword adventures on the the shelf after that.
All good games and cost me less than one new one would.
Staying a year out of date save a fortune on hardware upgrades too...

Eternal Sonata will do fine...

[7Prime]

We're talking about ALL huge titles by large game developers, here. The buzz behind Eternal Sonata (Trusty Bell) has been huge, possibly almost as much as Blue Dragon. In fact, it's Blue Dragon that's by a fairly small, indy company: Mistwalker (and no, Mistwalker is not owned by Microsoft). Eternal Sonata is made by Tri-Crescendo, a branch of Tri-Ace, which is a huge company, comparitively. In the RPG community, you don't hear much about Blue Dragon these days, but ES is getting more hype than anything else. It'll do fine. I, for one, am buying an XBox360 the day ES comes out.

And NiGHTS? That's being produced by Sega's Sonic Team, one of the most (in)famous console development teams in the history of gaming. Yes, it won't outsell Myamodo's franchises... and really, can you really justify that happening?