How does one compete with the ultimate superhero video game ever? Well, the general consensus looks to be to drown the damn thing with so many titles coming from almost every genre under the sun, it’ll make your head spin. Thankfully, I have a neck brace handy.

Remember. Release dates are quite literally made at the whims of the publisher.  The following are subject to change without any warning.

Releases To Watch For This Week

Where’s a good taco stand when you need one?

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday October 18, 2011
Spider-man may have made some inroads in proving that comic book superheroes can indeed make good video games, but Batman: Arkham Asylum takes it all the way home. Who can blame them? Arkham Asylum’s take on the Metroid formula along with intense brawls against a room full of thugs, a deeply satisfying stealth mechanic, and some of the best voice acting done by the right voice actors equals a serious Game of the Year contender for 2009. Now let’s take all of that and stuff it into everyone’s favorite structure, the open world structure.

As big as Arkham Asylum was, it might as well be a studio apartment compared to the massive Arkham City, a portion of Gotham City cordoned off to be the new Arkham Asylum. All of Arkham City will be open to Batman. As such, he has the ability to glide, Super Mario World style, everywhere. Although there are buildings everywhere, only some will have interiors. Batman will also come across various side quests in the city like rescuing some hapless civilians who somehow got stuck inside the city or interrogating thugs for more info about the city.

Of course, you can’t call a sequel a sequel unless it’s can fulfill the “bigger, better” quota. Obviously the locale has become bigger in every way possible, but Batman’s combat has also received the bigger treatment as well. Now thugs come in even larger numbers for Batman to beat the living daylights out of, and many of Batman’s repertoire has been enhanced to deal with larger quantities of foes such as the ability to counter multiple enemy attacks at the same time.

By the sound of all the positive previews being thrown about, Batman seem poised to take the gaming world by storm once again, and unless you have some deep-seated distaste against people dressed up as animals, you might like Arkham City as well.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS)

Monday October 17, 2011
Very interesting counter-programming move there, Nintendo. The HD systems get the “World’s Greatest Detective,” and Nintendo counters with their own iconic detective with headgear that is just as silly.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter actually takes place before the last three Professor Layton titles. In fact, Last Specter starts off without Luke, Layton’s perennial apprentice in the last three games, at Layton’s side. That changes fairly quickly as Layton is summoned by an old colleague, whose son just happens to be Luke, to investigate a local mystery.

By all accounts, Last Specter won’t be changing the Layton formula of walking about the environment one screen at a time and solving random puzzles, but Last Specter comes with a new side mode called London Life. In this mode, you create an avatar to explore Little London where you get to interact with various characters from the Layton Series of the past. You can expect to do a variety of side quest and missions for the denizens of Little London. Whether or not Little London has a goblin problem that needs solving remains unknown.

Funny. This marks the fourth game in the series, and from the looks of it, little has changed since its last iteration. Yet, I’m okay with that. The Layton series’ inherent charm may very well be a bottomless well that Layton games can draw from to keep people hooked.

Honorable Mention

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One (PS3)

Tuesday October 18, 2011
Sometimes long running franchises need to take a break from the usual and take small side trips like Mario did in all of his spin offs. Looks like Ratchet and Clank felt the same way.

Instead of a third person action platformer that we’ve come to love and expect out of Ratchet and Clank, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One plays more like the 2D brawler of the olden days with guns. All 4 One supports up to 4 players either locally or online with each player playing as either Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and Dr. Nefarious. The Camera stays fixed above the characters while players run around shooting enemies and generally working together to overcome obstacles. Normally, Dr. Nefarious plays the villain in the Ratchet and Clank series, but given how he’s caught in his own scheme and has to rely on the other three to stay alive, Nefarious really doesn’t have much of a choice.

Changing up the format for a long running series carries some risk of losing the interest of the fans of said series, and given gamers general distaste for games going “casual,” All 4 One could be Ratchet and Clank’s riskiest move since... ever. At the same time, this could bring in new fans who were wary of the Ratchet and Clank series. How anyone could be turned off by the series escapes me, but you never know really.

Rocksmith (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday October 11, 2011
I can’t figure out how I feel about Ubisoft making a guitar game within spitting distance of the rhythm genre’s crash. On the one hand, I can’t see players from seeing past the genre’s recent crash and giving a shot, but on the other hand, Rocksmith looks to be far more than any guitar game that came before it.

First up, the game absolutely requires you to have a real electric guitar, which some bundles do come with. All copies of the game come with a special quarter inch jack to USB cable to connect your electric guitar to the console. Second, You’re not triggering sound samples like every music game before it. Every guitar sound coming out of the TV directly corresponds to your plucking of the strings on your guitar. Basically, Rocksmith turns your TV into a fancy amp. Finally, mastery of any one of the 50 songs does actually mean you can take that electric guitar, plug it into a real amp, and play the guitar part of the mastered song for real.

In addition to playing the included 50 songs, Rocksmith also has a variety of mini-games. These will train you in a specific guitar technique like scales, shifting, and sliding. Also, maybe a couple of years from now of Rocksmith playing and mastery, you should then check out the Amp Mode and Tone Designer. Did you know that the sound of an electric guitar is based on your amp’s setup? In Amp Mode, Rocksmith gives you almost dizzying amounts of control to a virtual amp including pedals and cabinets allowing you to make your own unique sound to your electric guitar. Tone Designer gives you control over the controls on the amp, which cabinets your amp is in, what pedals are placed and where. Just for fun, you can unlock specific setups from any of the songs allowing you to just goof around with a sound used by actual guitarists.

Guitar Hero and its ilk basically took the concept of air guitar and gave it form. In essence, those games set out to become a shortcut for rock star wannabes. Rocksmith goes in the other direction entirely by grounding the entire thing in reality. Your fingers will bleed, and your guitar will sound like a tortured cat for the first god knows how many hours. But maybe, just maybe, Rocksmith could be your ticket to actual rock stardom, or at least admiration by your friends and potential mate.