THQ Announces Fiscal ’09 Games

Darksider screen
What to make of the mysterious Darksiders?

THQ has officially released their lineup of game releases for the 2009 fiscal calendar, featuring both original titles and sequels to existing IPs.

Let’s get the predictable regulars out of the way:

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. Yep, it’s another annual wrestling game. I want to bitch about how they should take a break for at least a year and have something substantially new to release with every iteration, but why would they do that? That’s just throwing away perfectly good money.

Red Faction: Guerilla. Those who played through or even saw the original on PS2 know this game is all about physics-based environmental destruction, and lots of it. You can expect to see the same from this one, just taken further with next-gen capabilities.

Saint’s Row 2. With the release of GTA4 creeping its way closer and closer, it’s a little hard to take Saints Row 2 seriously. When the first one came out, it was a way above-average GTA clone at a time when a lot of us were jonesing for a next-gen GTA fix. Back then, San Andreas was more or less old news and the next GTA-proper was quite a ways away.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. The heavily hinted heavyweight Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II is indeed, officially, on its way in. Not too many details out there, but it’s expected that it will take what Company of Heroes did for firefights and do that for melee combat in an RTS, along with the ability to garrison buildings. Although this isn’t confirmed, it’s presumably using a tweaked (to what extent is unknown) version of the Essence Engine developed for Company of Heroes.

And now on to the original IPs:

Darksiders: Wrath of War. This is a game, until just now, that was completely unknown to me. Without much information at my disposal, I had to go to one of the bigger guys, more specifically IGN, and according to them Darksiders “features open-world exploration, a deep combat system and a huge arsenal of modern and mythical weapons.” If executed properly, it could be interesting.

Deadly Creatures. Described as “action-thriller”, I’d probably classify it as a bug-based action-fighter. No, I’m not trying to be funny – after watching a trailer of some gameplay I was thoroughly disturbed and bothered by the bug-on-bug crime. Arachnophobes stay away!

De Blob. From seeing a few gameplay videos the best way I can describe it on its most very basic level is it being a slimy, blob-like take on Katamari.

Battle of the Bands / Big Beach Sports. And finally there are two new titles for the Wii. They are “new social and party games for the expanding base of consumers playing the Nintendo Wii”, so that means that if you’re reading this, you probably don’t care.

Source: THQ

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  • Cenobia

    I have high hopes for Red Faction. Hopefully they make it more like the original and scrap the 2nd’s storyline. The first was so much better in my opinion.
    Everything else looks meh. Especially Saints Row. Who’s gonna buy that after GTA comes out?

  • shajir

    Hope they will make individual game versions for each console rather than follow the policy of – “Make it on one and port it to the others”… With the volume of quality games increasing this year, I wish THQ all the best to join the league with their list of games…

  • Wade Larson

    I saw a big article on Darksiders in Gameinformer a couple months back, and it looks promising. Then again, I’m a sucker for sadistic games (i.e. God of War) and this looks like pretty much a God of War impersonator, but instead of playing a Greek god of War, you play as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse – War (dur). I really hope it can take the good parts of GoW but make the game stand on its own legs. Please, no GoW clone. Elevate the genre, don’t imitate it.

  • Jonathan Zungre

    Where’s the UFC game that THQ is putting out! not in 2009?!

    Cenobia, i think saints row 2 will sell for the same reasons that the first one did. People who say, “man gta was so good, i wish i could play something new that’s like it right now.” its not “either or.” its “Both”.