Welcome to the Loadout. Our philosophy is that the working week is a recurring boss battle that you’ll need the proper weapons to take down. The supplies at hand won’t always be pretty but you might just be able to hold out until the weekend. Green means add it to your arsenal, yellow leaves it up to your discretion and red means back away slowly. With that, let’s see what we’ve got this week:
The Game: Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes of the Ring
Specifications: The newest contender in the wrasslin’-game genre takes fighters from a long-running Mexican wrestling promotion and embeds them in crazy matches.
Ideal Usage Scenario: If you’re itching for some top-rope action before the annual Smackdown vs. Raw title comes out,Lucha Libre‘s well-worth your time. The action’s more high-flying and a bit faster than SvR and all of it–especially the impressive character creator–looks nice and sharp.
The Game: Medal of Honor
Specifications: EA’s FPS series returns, set this time in the modern-day military conflict happening in Afghanistan. Players will control soldiers from different branches of the Armed Forces engaged in battle there, with a special focus being paid to the Tier 1 operatives.
Ideal Usage Scenario: The Taliban multiplayer controversy seems to have subsided and honestly, if you’re a FPS junkie, you’ve pre-ordered this already. Everything I’ve sen so far indicates that MOH is a soundly-built and good-looking FPS but one that’s unadventurous and blandly conservative in execution.
The Game: Borderlands Game of the Year Edition
Specifications: Last year’s hyper-addictive “role-playing shooter” gets a beefed-up edition to celebrate its success. The game thrust players onto a faraway planet where a squad of warriors battled enemies in search of a mythical technological treasure and kept folks glued to the screen thanks to randomized procedurally generated enemies and loot.
Ideal Usage Scenario: If you never bought the initial release, you’ll come up sitting pretty. Borderlands GOTY costs the same as the original but includes all four DLC packs–The Zombie Island or Dr. Ned, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, and Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution–on the disc for the same price. If that’s not enough over-the-top shooting action, the disc also includes a first look at vaporware-no-more title Duke Nuke ‘Em Forever. What a deal, eh?