I thought Jeremy Parish's review of Halo3 : ODST was very good and surprising. I went from definitely not interested to somewhat curious.

Thanks for the link, Panda. I heard Parish talk about the noir-ness of ODST on Listen Up, for instance the Marty O'Donnell-described "smokey sax" (!) music. I tried the first two Halos but neither of them grabbed me at all, and gave 3 a pass. But like you ODST is on my radar now, going to be one to look for at the rental store. If at least for the music.

Edit: And from Tom "Tom Bramwell" Bramwell's review:

I haven't been following ODST at all, so this probably isn't news to a lot of others—but if you didn't know, there you go. I guess Tricia Helfer is in there too if that's your sort of thing.

Zombie Apocalypse is slated to appear this week on XBLA and PSN and will cost $9.99.

The first DLC pack on the PS3 for Fallout 3, Broken Steel will be released this Thursday on PSN. The other two DLC packs, Operation Anchorage and The Pitt will appear on PSN on October 1st, and then Point Lookout on October 8th. The DLC pack Operation Zeta has not been dated yet. NOTE: For PS3 owners contemplating purchasing these DLC packs, the Fallout 3 GOTY edition which includes the original game and all five DLC packs will be in stores on October 13th @ $59.99.

And I'm crossing my fingers hoping Trine is finally released on PSN this week.

There is a demo on PSN for this Katamari game. Playing the demo made me so sad. I imagine telling myself years ago after buying the first Katamari Damacy game for $20 new a week or so after release that this game won't be any fun in a few years. Each successive game has been worse and worse if the demos are any indication. The second game had some interesting twists, but I can't understand how this game still sells. Are there any people who haven't played one? I imagine anyone who has is sick of them by now.

Yeah, I had mixed feelings coming out of the Katamari Forever PSN demo. They finally figured out how to aesthetically draw players into a next-gen Katamari through the different graphical filters, but they're still stuck in the same design rut that has plagued all of the post-Takahashi games (and, arguably, parts of We Love Katamari too).

The demo pretty much nails the two major areas where I feel like the series has gone astray:

- I Hate Bogus Alternative Objective Levels. The series has done this right exactly once - the sumo level from We Love Katamari - and has never recaptured the magic since, spending the rest of their time loading up with tedium (go back and get more water!), punitive mechanics (don't run over cold stuff!), and/or outright guesswork from the player (how big is my snowball again?).

- Who Exactly Is the King Of Cosmos Again? This was called out in the Forever PSN demo thread - they have had no clue whatsoever about how to characterize the King after Takahashi left and the entire playful tone of the series has been stifled ever since. Call me crazy, but I don't see Forever's sulking robo-king fixing that anytime soon.

Having the fresh coat of paint on the classic levels definitely makes me mildly curious, but not enough to spring $40/50 dollars for what essentially amounts to a half-hearted reunion tour DVD. For this week, I'd rather turn my attention to ODST or the PSP re-release of Persona.

There are 2 games coming to the Wii that both had some chance at greatness this week but missed the mark. The first, Spyborgs was given a full face lift after it's initial announcement, but from what I've seen doesn't carry the depth to really get a lot of support. Secondly, TMNT: Smash Up by all accounts has a great pedigree on the development team with a combination of people from Team Ninja and the Smash Bros. series games. This game looks like it suffers from an identity crisis and is repeating history. Like the TMNT fighting game on the SNES, it does nothing to really make itself different from another fighter other than it's skin and a couple small things.

That said, I heard one thing about ODST that makes it sound good - they brought back the original Halo pistol.

Isn't Certis hot to trot on Aion? Would Master Chief be more awesome if he could fly? These are the burning questions in my mind.

Yeah there's nothing "Firefly the FPS" about it, and it is pandering, but at least Adam Baldwin and Fillion should be good listens. And it will work: I've a friend who watches Castle and even saw Waitress. Tragic man-crush.

I don't mean to imply they're not worth watching in and of themselves, I haven't seen Waitress but I've caught Castle before, I just mean he'll see anything that has Nathan Fillion's name on it. That's the tragic man-crush part, of course it's working out for him so far (well I guess there was Jade Empire). It's in the same way that I might even watch Canadian drama just to see Grace Park. And you suggest I have bad taste! For shame sir.