Labor Day has always had more significance to me than New Year’s Day since my life has been dictated by the rhythm of the schools for so long. So Happy New Year.
We begin to see the number of strategy titles grow, too, as we march towards the holiday season.
September 3 – Seven Kingdoms: Conquest (Enlight)
September 4 – Sims 2: Bon Voyage (Maxis/EA)
September 10 – Galactic Assault: Prisoner of Power (Paradox/Wargaming.net)
September 17 – The History Channel: Great Battles of Rome (CDV/Slitherine)
September 18 – World in Conflict (Sierra/Massive), Fantasy Wars (Atari/1C), XIII Century: Death or Glory (Atari/1C)
September 24 – Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (THQ/Relic), Escape from Paradise City (Focus Home/Sirius)
September 25 – The Settlers: Rise of an Empire (Ubisoft/Blue Byte), Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East (Ubisoft/Nival), Crusader Kings: Deus Vult (Paradox), Strategic Command 2: Weapons and Warfare (Battlefront/Fury)
September 30 – Jazz: Hired Guns (GFI Russia)
Mostly expansion packs, but there’s a lot of them. Company of Heroes, the best game of 2006, will offer new campaigns and British Allies. Sims 2 gets its vacation pack (Is it just me, or are the Sims 2 expansions the same as the Sims 1 expansions, but with new names?)
Ubisoft continues to beat on the long dead Settlers franchise, even after last year’s Heritage of Kings RTS misfire. Will XIII Century be this year’s Imperial Glory – a Total War-ish game that somehow misses the point?
The big title of September is World in Conflict, a late Cold War RTS that opens with the Red Army emerging from container ships in the Pacific Northwest. Sierra/Massive has a tough balancing act. They need to make a good single player RTS, since most people still play games on their own. But they also have an innovative multiplayer option that allows teams to control different aspects of the battle.
And is there a worse name for a game than Jazz: Hired Guns? It’s about mercenaries in Africa, but all I can think about is Satchmo pulling a tommy gun out of his trumpet case and shooting up the joint.
I have to admit I don’t think I’ve seen The Sims series labeled as a strategy title before. :)
Yeah, Jazz is a truly awful name. One thing that strikes me about the list is how generic all these titles are in name, especially when you’re looking at them all at once.
Of the list personally I’m looking forward to the SC2 expansion the most, followed by potentially World in Conflict. I like the cheesy theme, loved the Ground Control series, but at the moment I’m not sure if it will amount to anything but mediocre. I gave up a long time ago on purchasing anything that would be played a few hours and forgotten about. You’d be amazed at how much money you can save that way considering the number of “eh” titles that are released each year…
The Sims is absolutely a strategy game, IMO. It’s probably the game that most strongly emphasizes time and resource management.
I don’t think Opposing Forces will arrive until early November.
Could be you’re right, Luke. There has been no gold announcement as far as I know.
I’m just going by publicly posted release dates from Gamespot, IGN, Gamespy, etc.
And I think this is the third time I’ve posted Seven Kingdoms.
JAZZ has been renamed (again) to “Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge”. I would’ve preferred “JAZZ: Bad Dudes on The Edge”, but they didn’t ask me.