There were three playable characters in the first game, plus a whole lot of unlockable skins, and I think all three are available in the second game too.
At the moment I’m just playing Team Fortress 2 and a few browser games. If Mercenaries 2 turns out to be good I’ll probably get it at some stage.
I’m playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3, + **Civilization IV: Warlords **(and teaching them at my school 
).
Like Sitnam, I have **Civilization IV: Colonization **on order!
Halo 3.
If you don’t already have it Beyond the Sword is well worth the cash, if only for the scenario Rhye’s and Fall of Civilization.
Board:
Agricola- I have been playing mostly two player with my fiance. The special pre-order only Z deck stinks, and I am going to have to physically restrain himself from ordering animeeples on the net.
Dominion- Want! I have played the prototype plenty, but I want my own! We seriously considered making a set out of index cards yesterday. Only another month or so hopefully.
Video:
Seriously, I have been playing my old copy of SSX Tricky. I assume I will play Spore soon.
Stone Age has been pretty much the board game of the summer for me. Having recently acquired Race for the Galaxy, I think it will become the game of the fall.
I also expect to be playing Spore when my pre-order arrives from Amazon.
I somehow missed this on my first read through or I would have commented on it when I noted that P3 was one of the games I was working through right now.
To provide a little background, I don’t really like anime. I love animated stuff in general, and I love fantasy stories, and I really SHOULD love anime, but I find that the typical Japanese anime art style really grinds on me a lot of the time, and that most anime stories go way past fantasy and into stupid for me. When I first heard about Persona, I did the “oh, another super-Japanese weird anime RPG, when’s the next Final Fantasy coming out again?” (which has a certain irony to it… but I digress).
Some of the people that I hang out with on the 'net, though, and who are very familiar with my taste in games, kept swearing to me that I’d like it. When the FES edition came out, and for only thirty bucks, I did the “hey, what the hell?” and bought it. Even then, I didn’t really play it for a couple of months. That said, now that I have started it, this is a very very fun game. It’s pretty off the wall in a lot of ways, but everything just rings true. It’s especially well written for what it is, to boot. There’s a ton of stuff to do, there’s a lot of very interesting characters, the fighting is pretty good, the social and persona systems are even better. It’s just the sum of a bunch of really fun little parts, and I definitely recommend it for anyone with even a passing interest in RPGs.
I haven’t seen any reviews for the PC Version, but almost all the Xbox 360 reviews are negative, saying the Mercenaries 2 is repetitive, buggy, and basically not very good. Ah well, that’s $100 bucks I’ve got to spend on something else, then…
Well, this last weekend was Spore weekend, of course, so I THOUGHT I’d end up wrapped up in it. Haven’t even picked it up yet, though.
Got a beta invite for WoW:WotLK and have played it a little tiny bit. Even with brand-new content, though, I’m just burned out on WoW.
While out shopping last week, I happened to be looking through the PC games section of my local megaretailer and picked up Sins of a Solar Empire. I didn’t know a great deal about it, but I’d read some reviews that were near-uniformly good–and it’s my type of game. I haven’t gotten that deep into it yet, but it’s pretty much consumed all of my (limited) gaming time.
Not necessarily a game for “limited” gaming time, as I’m sure you’ve found out. 
I’m actually not as high on it as some people, but it’s a pretty good game for sure, and I am all for supporting Stardock/Ironclad/etc, given their well publicized stances on a number of gaming issues (DRM, support, other stuff).
I’ve mostly been playing Europa Universalis 3 + the addons lately. I’m currently trying to recreate the Roman Empire as Italy (formed with Milan). Superpowers like Austria, the Ottoman Empire, Spain, France and Poland have all either fallen before me or been left in complete disarray. The only enemy left that could really hurt me is Russia, and they have just inherited a rather large Burgundy…
I’ve started playing Transport Tycoon Deluxe again (well, actually, an open source version, OpenTTD, which uses the same artwork and sounds as the original, but adds more airports and other features).
I’ve been playing the crap out of Madden 09. I’ll occasionally play a little Civilization IV, or go to a friends house for a quick Rock Band fix. I keep telling myself I can wait until Rock Band 2 comes out, but it is so hard. I haven’t played any COD 4 since Madden came out, and I’m kinda worried about the aforementioned degradation of skills.
I am playing Fire Emblem:Path of Radiance (the Gamecube game) on the Wii. I will probably also spend some time playing Paper Mario:The Thousand Year Door, Lego Star Wars, Boom Blox, and Zack and Wiki. I am playing Rondo of Swords on the DS, but if I don’t get better at it, I may switch back to Picross. My next purchase will probably be Warioland: Shake It! or De Blob.
Well, I got my copy in the mail and have played for a few hours and I’m impressed so far and it takes a hell of a lot to impress me. The story might fall a little bit too far on the “Throw crazy crap against the wall and see what sticks and then we’ll call it ‘deep’” school of thought, but there’s so many options for the player it’s overwhelming. I’ve never seen this level of… well… role-playing in any “RPG” to come out of Japan.
The fact that it has a very smooth combat system is icing on the cake. I’ve played too many console RPG’s that try for gimmicky combat systems and just wind up with broken ones.
We’ll see how I feel at the end of it but Persona 3 made one hell of a first impression.
EU3 for me as well. It’s not nearly as bad as some made it out to be. Currently I’m trying to make Oman a regional power.
The Ace Attorney series has swallowed my soul. I’m on the last case of Justice For All right now, and can’t get the Steel Samurai theme song out of my head. It’s catchy as hell.
Ace Attorney is still eating my soul, but it has the slightly annoying trait of the last cases in each game outstaying their welcome by at least one stage. I’ve been on the same case for 3 days! It was interesting when I was trying to piece it together, but now that everything that’s happened is out in the open, the whole ‘The Bad Guy Has Maya’ plot is just annoying. ‘We have her! … No, we don’t!’ Argh. >_< Just let it end, for god’s sake!