A Gamer's Week: November 28

This week we have three significant reviews: one for the shooter Vanquish, from developers Platinum Games and publisher SEGA, another for the engrossing Football Manager 2011, the well known management simulation series from Sports Interactive, and one for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the new game in the third person series from Ubisoft.

All are significant in their own way, with FM 2011 offering more depth and interaction than previous versions, Vanquish delivering a speed based shooting sequence which breaks out of the Gears of War mold while Brotherhood creates the most streamlined experience in the series yet while also delivering multiplayer.

And we can offer a Weekend Reading feature about The Witcher 2 and the problem of piracy and an EndWeekGame piece dominated by Gran Turismo 5.

And if that is not enough we have a Gamer Diary linked to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

We also have a selection of the most important news of the week that was.

Monday was all about hybrid role playing games as the Dead Money downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas, which will initially be exclusive to the Xbox 360, was revealed to raise the level cap while more details about how augmentations will work in Deus Ex: Human Revolution were offered by the developers.

Tuesday we found out that Bungie, which is now working with Activision Blizzard on a new intellectual property, is working for both alpha and beta testers even though they have not announced their next game while the recently launched Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit got its first two DLC packs, basically a paid way to unlock all the cars.

On Wednesday I spent one full speed filled hour with the racing simulator Gran Turismo 5, experiencing first hand the install times, and we also wrote about the first patch for the game, which allowed early on launch day.

On Thursday an analyst predicted that a new Grand Theft Auto will be delivered by Rockstar during 2012, with next year dominated by Max Payne and L.A. Noire, while Mark Wahlberg was revealed as the actor to play Nathan Drake in an Uncharted movie.

Friday we found that Crytek is set to launch a new online shooter called Warface under a free to play model with GT5 getting a new update over the weekend.