Steven DeVito

So far in the Invisible Pigeon-holing Council, we’ve considered genres from the very general MMO to the totally niche Bullet Hell as well as addressing one of the oldest genres in video games, the Beat ‘Em Up. This week, we take a turn from the classics and consider a genre so new it has only seen commercial releases in the last year. Well-known among gamers yet rarely recognized as its own genre, today we reflect on the breakthrough genre known as the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

Welcome to "Worth It - Games Worth Playing this Week," a new weekly column you'll find here every Monday. In Worth It, I'll sift through the games being released this week to let you know what you can look forward to and, sometimes, what is just too bad to ignore.

This week, obsessive fans of all sorts rejoice, from the increasingly rare tabletop strategy gamer to the Sephiroth fanboy. Hit the jump to find out more.

The Mega Man franchise is one of the most recognized names in gaming. Since the character’s creation in 1987, there have been over fifty titles bearing the Mega Man name with sales exceeding the population of Malaysia. It is also one of my personal favorite series. I celebrated when Capcom released Mega Man 9, but I remained skeptical of their ability to bottle lightning a second time. Did the latest entry live up to its lineage? Find out after the jump.

Welcome to "Worth It - Games Worth Playing this Week," a new weekly column you'll find here every Monday. In Worth It, I'll sift through the games being released this week to let you know what you can look forward to and, sometimes, what is just too bad to ignore.

This week, we have an important release for the PC gaming community, a sequel to a successful RTS franchise, and the latest entry from a living legend of video games. Find out more after the jump.

The internet is abuzz with news that PS3s across the globe, including developer builds, have been encountering an unusual show-stopping error when attempting to play certain games. At first it seemed the problem was isolated to the Playstation Network, but reports soon came in that all manner of PlayStation 3 consoles, primarily the earlier releases of the hardware, have been getting stuck in a loop when attempting to access the Playstation Network, PSN games, and, strangely, even some games played offline.

Team17, creator of the classic Worms series, followed up on their promise of more news regarding the newest iteration of their hallmark franchise. Worms Reloaded, the first 2d worms game to be released for the PC in almost a decade, now has a very tentative release date of "late spring or early summer."

Worms Reloaded is set to be an "enhanced" version of the XBLA and PSN versions released last year. Worms 2 on Live Arcade was one of the top 10 XBLA downloads in 2009, with almost 2 million downloads. Even better news is that we can anticipate a very reasonable price for Worms Reloaded - don't expect Team17 to go the way of Braid and jack up the price of their Steam release without at least adding a good number of features.

For the past few days, Nintendo has been in full media blitz mode, churning out release dates and previews of some of their most anticipated titles of the year. At Nintendo Media Summit 2010, the newest versions of the beloved Metroid and Super Mario series, along with new DS XL hardware, were given official US release dates. The months of May and June are going to be an exciting time. Check out the release dates and more after the jump.

So far in the invisible pigeon-holing council, we've looked at some very general genres from the overly general MMO to the unexpected Beat 'em Up. Today, however, we look at something completely different. We're going to be taking a look at the extremely tight niche genre not terribly well known in the United States, referred to as “bullet hell.” Known as 弾幕 or "danmaku" games in Japan (where the genre is substantially more common than it is elsewhere) and alternatively referred to as manic shooters, bullet hell games are an ultimate extension of the shoot 'em up genre. Unlike MMO or Beat 'em Up, one might call bullet hell an "end-point genre" - you learn most everything you need to know about a game simply by hearing that it is a bullet hell game. So what does this mean to us as gamers? Find out after the jump.

Team17, creators of LAN party classic Worms: Armageddon, announced via Twitter that they will soon be releasing a new edition of Worms for the PC. Details at this point are essentially non-existent, but what we know so far is that the game is titled Worms Reloaded, it will be distributed via Steam, and it will be a return to classic 2d game play.

Team17 has seen some success in recently with Worms titles on Xbox Live Arcade and assorted handheld platforms, but it has been almost a decade since the PC has seen a 2d Worms game. 

Could Worms Reloaded mean the return of one of the most amusing PC games of all time? We can only hope.

A couple times this week, when a friend would ask me what I was planning to do this weekend, I would reply, "The usual; laundry and writing my review of God of... Dante's Inferno" I simply could not help myself. To say that Dante's Inferno is similar to the God of War series is a ludicrous understatement; it's like saying a Clementine is similar to a Tangerine. While that raises some troublesome philosophical arguments - chiefly, 'how different must two games be' - the only real question that needs answering today is 'Will Dante's Inferno be worth my money?' Find out after the jump.