Looking Ahead: Will November 2009 Be Another Great Month of Gaming?

2009 has been quite a year for gaming. September gave MMO gamers plenty to digest as quite a few noteworthy titles launched. Many players were getting their hero on in Champions Online, dealing with the apocalypse in Fallen Earth, and sprouting their wings in Aion. All of this activity has been keeping gamers occupied well past the free month of game play that most of these games offer.

Normally, this would mean a full gaming plate for the community.  However, November promises to be a month with some solid titles coming out as well, arguably with a better line up than September brought us.  Not only will FE, CO and Aion be getting patched or expanded, but several other established games like WoW, WAR, DDO, etc are seeing plenty of activity. November still promises to bring some new games to the forefront that could make the end of the year very enjoyable.

Consider me booked for the rest of the year:

Borderlands
One type of game play I’m growing very fond of lately is coop team play. 4 team coop games like Left 4 Dead have consumed me. I’ve been playing the Crash Cource DLC for Left 4 Dead alot recently, so I began to pay closer attention to Borderlands. Its an RPGish shooter with 4 person coop team play. This formula has worked well for Valve, and I am interersted in seeing how Borderlands executes this style of game as well. I probably won’t purchase it right away, (damn this budget to hell!) but will definitely be keeping a close eye on the title.

Left 4 Dead 2
Speaking of Left 4 Dead, L4D2 is launching in November. Holy crapola I’m gonna be all over this one! I’ve never had a more fun – yet intense – experience as Valve delivered to me in Left 4 Dead. If they improve on the first game even a little, this is a sure fire bet for game of the year and likely to be a big reason that I won’t see too much of the aforementioned Borderlands. Chainsaw melee weapons to fight a horde of zombies? Hell yeah.

Dragon Age Origins
I’m on the fence with this one. On one hand, I’m desperate to play a BioWare game as a precursor to SWTOR so that I can get a first hand experience of how BioWare will deliver good story and experience. On the other hand, it has some RTS-like game play in regard to micromanaging npc group mates and I’m not sure how much I will like that. It will likely be worth the 50ish bucks to find out, because the video I’ve seen on it has been very interesting and the character creator was fun to play with.

Additionally, I discovered that I was able to save my created characters via BioWare’s new social network.  Great, yet another social network to deal with.  I think that my thoughts on this inundation of social networking has been well stated by others, so just know that I agree with them. To make the point further, look at all the networks ITG is in on the contact page for an example of social network overload.

Ok enough grumbling about social networks…for now. Back to the games. Even if I “only” play 1 or 2 of these games, I’ll have my grubby little paws so full of gaming goodness that I’ll be as happy as a kid in a candy store. Its likely that WoW will release the Icecrown expansion then too, and between these games and woW/CO/DDO I just won’t have enough time in the day to play them all as much as I’d want.

So whaddya’ think, November games > September games for this year?