There's a little someone to threaten everyone's wallet this week. Particularly dire is Assassin's Creed II, which is every bit as good as the first game, but with a much heartier actual game built around it. But it's also got a lot of great incidentals. I've happily whittled away several hours on the collectibles system, which shows that Ubisoft was listening when we complained about the stupid Templar flags in the first game. In fact, sometimes in Assassin's Creed II, I feel less like an assassin and more like a tourist collecting Renaissance art and admiring the Italian architecture. I'm talking gameplay, mind you. Crackdown and Saints Row style gameplay. Because Renaissance art and architecture aren't the sorts of things I'm normally into. You'll see what I mean when you start playing. Which you should. This is one of the year's best games.

If you've played the demo and followed the previews, you have a pretty good sense for how much of a wallet threat Left 4 Dead 2 poses. Did you like the first Left 4 Dead? Do you want new creatures attacking new characters in new places and being splattered with new weapons during new game modes? Well, then consider yourself fifty bucks poorer this week.

If you want something with less blood, there's Super Mario Bros. Wii with its fancy new multiplayer and co-op modes and the PSP version of Little Big Planet. Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues is supposedly all new Indiana Jones sequences set to Legos, even though the previous game covered the first three movies. But now you can play your favorite scenes from the Crystal Skull movie. Such as Shia LaBoeuf swinging with the monkeys. I hope those adorable gophers will make an appearance.

If you've got $120 burning a hole in your pocket and room in your living room for another Activision peripheral, you might consider Tony Hawk: Ride, abbreviated as THRIDE, which makes me think of someone with a speech impediment at best and babies with birth defects at worst. That's a pretty terrible thing to say, I know. I'm sure Tony Hawk: Ride won't be that bad.

On the downloadable front this week, your wallet should be wary of another insidious match-3 RPG called Gyromancer from Popcap and Square-Enix, two companies who know RPGs and match-3's, respectively.