Shippin' Out May 1-5: GRAW PC, Spellforce 2, Seed

Officially, the Electronic Entertainment Expo's opening bell is just over a week away. However, final preparations for the event are already well under way, with a flurry of last-minute changes and new game announcements eating up the majority of publishers' and developers' time.

The rush to get set for E3 and the ever-increasing amount of media attention on the event are two major factors behind the dearth of new releases this week. Without question, the highest-profile new release to hit stores isn't technically a new game. It's the PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, which has drawn high praise on the Xbox 360 and scathing criticism on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Check back later in the week to see how the PC version fares with GameSpot's own Bob Colayco.

Besides GRAW, the PC got several other releases of note, including Runestone Games' massively multiplayer online role-playing game Seed and Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars, the sequel to Phenomic's 2004 hybrid role-playing and real-time strategy game. Another offbeat RTS, Atari's Western-themed Desperados, also got a sequel this week--Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge. Finally, Ubisoft shipped Paradise, an adventure game set in Africa from the creators of the Syberia series.

The week was extraordinarily light on console releases with just one game--Tecmo's horse-racing title Gallop Racer 2006--trotting onto PSs. The rest of the release slate was almost entirely portable titles, including Top Gun for the DS and Dr. Sudoku for the Game Boy Advance.

MAY 2, 2006
Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge (PC)
Great Journey--Mr. Penguin's Letter (PC)
Gallop Racer 2006 (PS2)
Seed (PC)
SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars (PC)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PC)

MAY 3, 2006
Dr. Sudoku (GBA)
Paradise (PC)
Pet Soccer (PC)
Top Gun (DS)
Ultra Sudoku & Ultra Kakuro (PC)