Summer, particularly post E3, is generally a dead period for the games industry. Web sites continue to pump out articles, but with many companies preparing for the crowded, yet lucrative holiday season, notable new releases are few and far between. It’s certainly not an ideal situation for a core gamer, but at least it does provide some relief for one’s bank account. Plus, given that more games seem to get released each year, it’s not like gamers don’t have options. In fact, many probably need look no farther than their own entertainment centers.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone comment that there are simply too many games to play, and not enough time or money to do so.

June, for instance, was a surprisingly solid month, thanks to the releases of Red Faction: Guerrilla, Prototype, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, The Sims 3, The Conduit and Fight Night Round 4.

If you have exhausted the current crop of titles, then perhaps now is the time to sit down with some old friends. By friends I of course mean games. Everyone knows that gamers don’t have real friends, but merely Internet contacts who have cool names like SniperXtreme4Life, King Clenched Buttocks and TerribleUseOfPwn.

I, for instance, recently re-introduced myself to Warhawk, Incognito Entertainment’s third-person combat game from 2007. Resistance: Fall of Man was the game that busted my online cherry, but Warhawk stole my heart. Warhawk, in essence, opened me up to a whole new world. Granted, it’s a space populated by strangers who call you nasty names, but the online realm is still a pretty awesome gaming arena. The game consumed all of my free time. I certainly didn’t ignore Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Assassin’s Creed or Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, but when I was done with those adventures, I jumped back into Warhawk. It quickly became my go-to game.

Despite its age, Warhawk still has an avid community. This sustained enthusiasm can, at least partially, be attributed to Incognito’s excellent post-release support, which included three booster packs: Omega Dawn, Broken Mirror and Fallen Star. It seems that gamers have pretty much abandoned Collection mode, but you can find a good round of Hero or Zones without much difficulty. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag remain the heavy favorites though. Some people bemoaned the absence of a single-player campaign, but the developers stuck to their guns and focused on creating a tremendous multiplayer experience. Far too many studios try to cram unnecessary modes into games, attempting to appease those gamers who believe that every title has to have multiplayer and solo offerings. Personally, I would rather have an excellent multiplayer game than a good multiplayer game saddled with a lackluster story.

Warhawk doesn’t need a story. In fact, the game is better off without one. I don’t even want to think about pre-round text walls, or inane, testosterone-fueled cutscenes. I would rather punch a great white shark in the teeth with my penis. When I play Warhawk, I want to get into a frantic battle as soon as possible. I do not care if the Eucadian general called the Chernovan general’s mother a whore, or if the latter put dog poop in the former’s coffee. I play Warhawk to have fun, not to escape to a mystical, magical world inside my television.

To this day, I still consider Warhawk to be my best PS3-related purchase. It is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated games of this generation. As of this writing, I have poured approximately 275 hours of my life into the multiplayer-only game — nearly triple the amount of time that I invested in Nintendo’s sophomore mascot mashup, Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Based on upcoming releases, that total is about to increase significantly.

Wii Sports Resort is the only notable release for July, and I probably won’t purchase another game until Batman: Arkham Asylum launches in late August. Titan Studios’ Fat Princess is also supposed to drop this summer, but Sony has yet to announce a specific date. Hopefully we get the downloadable darling sooner rather than later, but until then, I have Warhawk.

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