I hope you've been saving up, because your wallet is going to take some serious damage this week. This is probably the worst/best week of the year in terms of game releases, not just because a bunch of high-profile games are coming out, but because so many of them are good.

At the top of the heal is Far Cry 2, which is a must-have. It is -- mark my words! -- the next Half-Life for how much it advances single-player shooters (and the multiplayer is nothing to sneeze at). Fable 2 is Fable, but better, smoother, more charming, and more flexible. And the co-op gameplay is already available via patch. Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the paragon of city racing games, gorgeous and graced with great physics. I'm sorry to inform you that you cannot write off Guitar Hero: World Tour as a Rock Band wannabe, which I was guilty of myself until I actually played it. And if you have a Playstation 3, this is the week you finally get BioShock and Rock Band 2. As if that wasn't enough, there are seven Nirvana songs available for download for Rock Band. I lost count of the cost of all this somewhere around the $300 mark.

Also out this week is the middling Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, a.k.a. Spider-Man '08. And Wii Music. Some people might dig having this rhythm sandbox, but my idea of hell would be getting stranded on a desert island with nothing but Wii Music. At least it supports that terrible balance board from Wii Fitness. It's used for -- no joke -- a foot tapping function for drummers.

There's even a cool little Nintendo DS game called Master Monster Lair, which is a sort of dungeon crawler RPG where you actually make the dungeon that you're crawling in. It's pretty slow, but it's different enough to grab my attention. Too bad it's coming out this week. It would have been a perfect release for a slow February Tuesday.