Like a kid in the worlds most expensive sweet shop

All summer long there was barely a single game release that made me feel like I had to have it. Now, it feels like the pre-Christmas floodgates have been flung open and all the goodies that should have been gently trickling into my shopping basket throughout the year are pouring out in a tumultuous cascade. I'm swamped in triple-A releases that I have no way of keeping up with.

I've plucked a few choice items from the swirling torrent over the past few weeks, mainly 'Halo: Reach', 'Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock' and 'Castlevania', but so much else has gone sailing by! Games like 'Enslaved: Odyssey to the West' and 'Vanquish' have really piqued my interest, and if they'd been released back in the great game drought of the summer I'd have snapped them both up on release day. But when I'm having to leave games like 'Medal of Honour' and 'Fallout-New Vegas' on the shelf because I simply can't afford to buy any more games this month, what chance do the smaller, less well known releases have?

Yesterday was a prime example of launch scheduling gone mad. Three of the most anticipated games of the year (for me at least) were released on the same day. 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II', Fable 3 and of course, the one I've been waiting for with bated-breath, Rock Band 3. Just the games alone would set me back somewhere in the region of a hundred and twenty quid, but when you consider the fact that the big selling point of RB3 is of course the instruments then things just start getting silly! Amazon is selling the Keyboard peripheral bundled with the game for £99.99, the new multi-buttoned guitar controller is going for £109.99 and the new souped-up cymbal-bedecked drumkit goes for another £99.99. So just for Rock Band I'm looking at £309.97, add to that another eighty quid for the other two games and I'm looking at a layout of almost FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS! For COMPUTER GAMES! IN ONE DAY!!!

Thank you games industry, your infinite wisdom has decreed that no-one is going to buy games in the summer, but everyone is willing to shell out hundreds of pounds every week in the run-up to Christmas; and as a result, many of the games I've been waiting months to play will now have to wait many more months. Hell, I may even be tempted to start shopping second-hand.

What a bunch of jerks.