When the summer drought of 2007 ended, the first big name title was Bioshock.  This was followed by Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect.  Of course two of those games were as dull as pisswater but they were all big names.

This week sees us crawling out of the desert and welcomed by the following heavyweight releases. Hellboy, Madden and Summer Athletics.

Hellboy: Science of Evil is based loosely on the recent sequel to the excellent Hellboy movie starring Ron Perlman.  Typically this means a roaming beat ‘em up with platformy bits.  Metacritic’s 50% average indicates that this will be as dull and generic as expected and, frankly, my expectations are that it’ll be as dull as a single by the band Travis.

Madden ’09 is going to be Madden ’08 + 1 but, to be fair, EA have been rather decent recently.  For example, two of my favourite games of the last twelve months have been Skate and Euro 2008 which both progressed their respective genres forward a fair bit whilst adding uploadable replays and customization.  Listen, I don’t know anything about American Football but I wouldn’t bet against this being quite good if you like that sort of thing.