Wow, when I went and listed the games coming in July, I didn’t think only 8 kinda interesting games would come out. But not to worry, there’s at least some really badass long-awaited releases in the month.

This month there are only: 3 multiplatform release, 1 PC release, 1 Nintendo DS release, 1 Nintendo Wii release, 1 Xbox 360 release and 1 PSP release. Yeah, no good PS3 exclusive releases in July. That’s it, everything else that comes out is either shovelware, or not worth mentionning.

Read on and see what interests you in July!

**EDITED: Monster Rancher DS should release by August 4th, according to the email I received by the company, so I’m removing it from this list**
**ANOTHER EDIT: Monkey Island 2 added to Multiplatform Releases list**
**YET ANOTHER EDIT: Hydro Thunder Hurricane added to Xbox 360 Release list**

MULTIPLATFORM RELEASES

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge 07/07 (PC, PS3, 360)

Monkey Island 2! Should be good since the first Monkey Island Special Edition was fairly good.

DeathSpank 07/13 on PS3 (PSN) and 07/14 on Xbox 360 (XBLA)

Deathspank, seems to be a Diablo-like game, but a bit parody-ish and colorful. Definitely looks interesting.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 07/27 (PS3, 360)
sorry, could only find the japanese boxart
BlazBlue is finally going the road of Guilty Gear, spawning its first “not exactly a sequel but not really a new game”… thing. This game brings in a few new characters, some character balancing and a few random features. It’s definitely going to be badass, since the first release was badass. But will it really be worth buying if you already have the first one? We’ll see…

PC RELEASES

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 07/27

Well it’s finally coming. Millions of people are waiting for this, and it’s surely going to be awesome. The wait for this was almost as unbearable for the wait for Diablo 3 (seriously, what are you doing Blizzard? You better not make Diablo 3 the next Duke Nukem Forever), but it’s finally coming, and it’s going to be great… according to a ton of people who played the various betas. While I’m not too fond of the idea of having the 3 campaigns released separately through multiple years, I’m still pretty hyped to play this, as I really loved the original (though I mostly played UMS maps).

NINTENDO DS RELEASES

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies 07/11

Gotta love the Dragon Quest franchise. One of the top jRPG series, and for good reasons. This is the first “main series” game in the franchise to be released exclusively on a handheld console. And, from the very little I’ve played on the japanese version, it actually looks really fun. We are promised hundreds of hours of gameplay and, frankly, I wouldn’t doubt it. I can’t wait to finally play this.

NINTENDO WII RELEASES

Arc Rise Fantasia 07/20

This might not be the final boxart…
It’s an RPG. It’s turn-based… And frankly that’s all I know about it. It might be good, from some screenshots I’ve seen it looks like it could be interesting… but RPGs are hard to gauge if they’ll be any good without playing them, so I guess we’ll see when it comes out.

Xbox 360 RELEASES

Crackdown 2 07/06

First note: The box art is really cool. Finally a modern shooter game gets a badass hand-drawn cover art rather than a generic “in-game model of the main character standing in front of an explosion” cover. Very oldschool, very fun to look at. Thumbs up on that one! (check out this bigger image of the boxart)
As for the game… well I really didn’t like the first one. The gamepaly felt rather cheap and it wasn’t entirely clear what you had to do most of the time (I just ended up jumping from building to building shooting anything that got in my way, but that got old fast), so my expectations for the sequel are honestly not very high. I might still give it a try though, if the site I rent games from get an available copy someday.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane 07/28

Hydro Thunder is a badass arcade classic racing game. This new version seems to be just as good as its predecessors. This really should be worth checking out.

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE RELEASES

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable 07/06

Strangely enough, I’ve had this game on the PS2 for almost 2 years (the FES version) and I still didn’t even put it in my PS2 yet… I have no idea why. So I have no idea what to expect from this one, but I did see lots of positive reviews for the PS2 versions. Should be good.

jobocan Console, ds, Games, games of the month, Handheld, PC, ps3, psp, wii, xbox 360