It’s shaping up to be an expensive month for gaming, with the next few months looking to be not much better.

Firstly, just around the corner we have Shadowrun -  a First Person Shooter based on the old p+p RPG that is seeing simultaneous release on PC and xb360, and cross-platform online play. Criticisms I’ve seen so far range from “no depth” through “no single player campaign” to “this is nothing like the old RPG” and similar sentiments.

The latter seems a bit dumb, since it’s not an RPG. If you don’t like shooters, you’re not going to like a shooter based on an old RPG any more than one based on anything else.

The lack of single player campaign would be a bit of an issue if the game was being released at full price, which it seems *is* the case in the USA. However, here in Australia [and I believe the situation in the UK and Europe is similar] it is being released at $65 - a smidge over half the price of many regular XBox360 releases. And besides, there is an offline single-player mode - it’s just bot-based matches, much like Unreal Tournament had.

I played the demo for a little while before work this morning, and I have to say it plays beautifully.  The graphics aren’t amazing, but they’re good enough - what makes it for me is the gameplay. I think this is a must-buy for me.

A little further ahead this month we have Overlord - somewhere between Dungeon Keeper and Black & White,  this looks like a real fun time. The demo is downloading while I work, so I should get a look at it tonight, but the screens and videos I’ve seen so far look great. Another probable must-buy.

Tenchu Z,  The Darkness, and Armored Core 4 are all also coming out this month, and look interesting enough to at least have a closer look at.

In the following months, GTA4, Mass Effect, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, Halo 3, and many others will be vying for my attention and dollars - I think I’m going to need a second, and possibly third job.