September's a good month. I suppose if you have to go back to school, you might argue that, and you'd have a strong case. But allow me to present my case.

If you watch the television in some capacity, there are a number of fantastic shows returning this month. Dexter, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Stargate Universe and Sons of Anarchy are a few of many that spring to mind. And of course new shows like Boardwalk Empire promise to reach incredible amounts of awesome.

And of course, September marks the annual kickoff of the video game industry's "Hey we're going to release so many amazing games that you won't have time to play them all and you'll want to scream" extravaganza. Halo: Reach, Dead Rising 2, Spider-man, FFXIV, Civ V, and a few more this month alone. I hope you all have your controller batteries charged.

Speaking of upcoming games, the folks at Bethesda asked me to remind you that pre-orders are open for their upcoming co-op dungeon hack n' slash Hunted, and there are a bunch of exclusive game items depending on where you preorder it from. It's mostly exclusive armor and weapons, and even bonus levels and character skins. Pretty cool stuff.

The Demon Pack, from Amazon.com

The Assassin Pack, from Steam

The Darkset Pack, from Gamestop

The Griffin Pack, from Best Buy

I'm torn between the Darkset pack and the Assassin pack, personally.

The FFXIV beta has (supposedly) started. If you've tried to get a key, or gotten a key and been unable to download the client, or gotten a key and downloaded the client and can't create a character, you know why the "supposedly" is there. It's definitely a rough start for the game in an MMO market where nowadays if you don't launch super smooth and polished, gamers start calling you dead in the water.

I had a conversation about this the other day, and I seriously believe that if WoW had to launch against itself today, it would sink. Or at least seriously suffer. World of Warcraft at launch was not only plagued by server downtime issues, but didn't have nearly the number of features and content that it does today. Features that many people now expect as auto-include on new MMOs.

I give MMOs a six month grace period. I'll try them at launch, if I don't like them I stop. But I don't write them off completely until I've tried them six-months post launch. Six months is a fair amount of time for the game to settle into it's niche, and begin receiving patches that fix or add things that may have been broken or missing at launch.

I will still give FFXIV it's fair shot, despite the issues it's currently having. And FFXIV isn't even a game I'm super incredibly excited about. But with no Cataclysm release date, and The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, and 40K: Dark Millenium still a year (or more) away, I'm open to all sorts of flirting with other MMOs in the meantime.

The Final Fantasy XIV open beta is supposed to launch tomorrow. I haven't found anywhere to pre-load the client, but I have the game pre-ordered so I'll definitely be checking it out this week (in case I want to cancel my preorder!)

I played Final Fantasy 11 for a few weeks, but it wasn't my cup of tea. The frustrating combat system/menus and struggle to find groups turned me off. Still, I make it a point to try almost any MMO at least once, and at the very least FF14 is looking very attractive from a visual standpoint.

There was a recent uproar concerning the Fatigue system that the game has in place, but only really started to get noticed in Beta Phase 3 after some fixes were made. The initial nerdrage was, ultimately, due to a poorly translated Japanese post. An official, clearer translation was released by Square-Enix, and while the Fatigue system is not quite as harsh as initially assumed (from the poor translation) it's still got some people in a sour mood.

Before I try to sum up the system (as I understand it), it's important to remember that Final Fantasy 14 will be sporting a class system similar to the job system in FFXI. Basically any character can have more than one class, and can switch between the classes at will depending (apparently) on the weapons they equip.

Square-Enix has then calculated an average amount of skill/experience points that a person could obtain in an hour if they were solely grinding out experience and doing nothing else. They're calling this number a "threshold value". I'm just going to call it a block.

Now, in a given week (think of the week-long raid lockouts in WoW) for the first eight blocks of leveling, you're earning the maximum amount of experience possible. So this could be eight hours, if you were to spend eight hours just earning experience. For a normal player, it's probably going to take much longer to reach eight blocks of experience.

Once you've passed the eight blocks, the next seven blocks will see your experience/skill gain gradually decrease (per block) until it reaches zero. Once a week everyone's blocks reset at zero.

Now, if this were the system alone, I'd say players are justified in being angry. However there are a couple additional points to consider. First of all, as soon as you stop engaging in experience-gaining activities, your blocks begin to recover. We don't have confirmation yet, but I'm going to assume this counts when you're logged off as well. So basically, while you're hanging out in town, or offline altogether, your blocks are resetting, even before the weekly hard reset.

So I think maybe this system only realisticly effects the hardcorest of the hardcore grinders. Those without jobs or families who desire to play their MMOs for 12-16 hours a day. I don't think the average player is really going to be hitting this threshold as often as they think they are.

And even if they do, the next thing to remember is the the skill block countdown applies per class. So if you churn out eight blocks as a Gladiator, and you're still chomping at the bit for another eight hours of playtime, you can swap to your Thaumaturge class, or your Fisherman class and churn out some skill points on those classes, with a fresh timer on your skill blocks.

I may be missing some crucial pieces of information here, but who even plays that much in a day? Are people legitimately angry because after (roughly) fifteen hours of straight grinding they'll be prevented from earning experience for a little while? Or ar they just angry because the option to grind 24 hours a day is being removed, even though they'd never even come close to doing that?

I've been playing a healthy bit of Mafia 2 over the last couple of days. I'm a little more than halfway through the game, and I'm loving it. I've read some other reviews that are calling it an "empty sandbox" but I disagree with that assessment.

A "sandbox" game, like GTA or Red Dead Redemption is a game whose intention is to give you a whole world to play in. You are, in a way, the god of this fictional city/country. You can wreak havoc on its environments and citizens at will, spend hours and hours off the beaten trail doing side missions or just goofing off.

I don't really get the impression that that was the developers intention with Mafia 2. Yes, the game takes place in an open world, but it seems meant to play the part of another character in the story rather than a free-for-all playground. Mafia 2 is an excellent third person mobster story that is set in a living, breathing city. The purpose is to make you feel like your actions and your story are taking place in a real world, not necessarily to let you go crazy in said world.

The main problem I feel is that Empire Bay is so well crafted, so gorgeous to behold and drive around in, that you can't help but wish that it was just chock full of side quests and mini games and menial tasks just so that you had an excuse to spend more time in and explore more of the city. However, that's not Mafia 2's goal. And it's a shorter experience as a result, but it's no less enjoyable.

Mafia 2 brings a sense of realism in as many ways as possible. From the graphics, which are stunning, to the characters, nearly all of which are well-acted and animated. Driving too fast or running stop signs or mowing down pedestrians will get the attention of the police. Sometimes you want to drive fast anyway, but sometimes it's best to stay under the radar. You're not invincible in Mafia 2, and a frenzied police chase can easily mean death. Not just from the police, either. It is very easy to die a horrible death in a car crash if you're going too fast. Remember, airbags didn't exist yet and seatbelts were only starting to show up in cars. They were death traps on wheels.

The grab at realism and immersion is deep rooted in the story as well. You start each day, generally with a phone call, and you end each day by heading back to your home and going to bed. You'll do menial tasks here and there while on missions. At one point very early on in the game, Vitto attempts to get an honest job, as a dock worker. You spend a few minutes moving crates from point A to point B, all while Listening to Vitto bitch about it. Finally you get fed up and walk off the job site.

Moving boxes isn't exciting gameplay, but the experience really drives home the point that this guy doesn't want to be just another working shmuck like his father. He wants riches and he wants them fast. He wants to be somebody. You want him to be somebody too, so it plants the seeds of reasoning for pursuing a life of crime. The story has a number of moments like this, and while on paper these menial or insiginificant tasks sound dull, very much like Heavy Rain's minor moments, it helps pull you into the story.

The story isn't exactly a mindblowing and revolutionary new take on mobsters... if you've seen The Godfather, Goodfellas etc you'll be familiar with most of the plot devices the game seems to use. But they are all executed so well as to be enjoyable regardless.

With no multiplayer, and a lack of tons of mini-games and sidequests, Mafia 2 is no doubt a short game. There are some collectables (Playboy Centerfolds) which will add more play time if you want to hunt them all down, but realize that this is a tight, well-formed story wrapped up in a solid third-person shooter. It's a great experience, but it's not an incredibly long experience.

I'm playing on hard for as much of a challenge as possible, as is my credo since Demon's Souls, and it's extending the play time a bit, mostly because Vitto dies far more easily, so you have to really make use of cover. I'd recommend it if you want as much out of the game as possible.