This week is a head-to-head battle between two platform-exclusive shooter sequels: Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360 and Resistance 2 for the Playstation 3. Both games have promising multiplayer support, so we'll see how that shakes out once they've gone live. As for their single-player games, I haven't played Gears 2 yet, but its going to have to try pretty hard to be more mediocre than Resistance 2.

Speaking of mediocre, the Quantum of Solace James Bond shooter is Activision's attempt get Bond making the same sort of videogame dollars as Spider-Man. However, I've heard nothing favorable from the two people I know who've been playing it.

But this week's most interesting new release is EndWar (pictured), the console-based real time strategy game from Ubisoft's Shanghai studio. Ubisoft deserves enormous credit for risky ventures like Far Cry 2 and now EndWar, both of which make brave design choices when they could have instead opted for a "safer" route. I've only spent a little time with EndWar, but so far, it looks really good. The control system, which is based on giving verbal commands through a mic, works wonderfully. And although it appears simple at first, I have yet to wrap my head around the gameplay. I keep losing matches to the AI, even though it feels like it's fighting fair. EndWar uses a tricky system where the guy loses gets the most powerful toys, which means maybe the guy losing isn't actually the guy losing...?