This must be what it's like if you stick around at the finish line of a marathon after everyone else goes home. A few stragglers, huffing and puffing and maybe a little pathetic and desperate to see if anyone has waited up for them, plod across the finish line. So it is with this week's new releases. Like the game based on Avatar, which I'm pretty sure opened last month, played for about a week, and was then cycled out of theaters. I had half a mind to get around to seeing that. I'm sorry I missed it.

Also out his week is Rogue Warrior, a shooter based on Richard Marcinko's books about what a bad-ass Navy SEAL he was. The game has made it's way to retail shelves with all the fanfare and anticipation of an actual Navy SEAL infiltrating a terrorist base. Very sneaky, Bethesda.

But really, you know it's a safe week for your wallet when the most exciting releases are a new MX vs. ATV game from THQ (MX vs. ATV Reflex) and some indie thing from Poland about driving around killing zombies (Zombie Driver). Pictured, in case you thought that screenshot was maybe from Avatar.

However, some of us are in dire peril of losing twenty bucks from our wallets. That's what it's going to cost Lord of the Rings Online players who want to avail themselves of the new content in the "Siege of Mirkwood" expansion, which goes live today. The expansion adds new stuff like dynamic replayable battles, revised mounts, overhauled combat, a Lone Lands make-over, and a whole mess of revised systems. It even adds Dol Goldur for folks who have made their way through Moria. For those of you who don't know what Dol Goldur is, it's a freakin' Nazgul fortress just across the way from Lothlorien.

I'll have more to say on this in a series of game diary entries that will start later this month. If you haven't heard from me in a week or so, send someone into Dol Goldur to get me out. Preferably a bunch of folks at the level cap.