I covered the broad strokes of September yesterday, but the full list over at MSN is worth a closer look, because this month runs deeper than the headline games suggest. Wolverine grabs the spotlight, and fair enough. It's the exclusive everyone's talking about and the one most of us have circled. What caught my eye is the cushion underneath the big names, which is unusually thick this month.

I didn't expect to see cozy games named in the highlights at all, let alone alongside the blockbusters. A crowded September that makes room for smaller, slower games is rarer than it should be, at least in my reading of it. Most months, anything without a nine-figure marketing budget gets shoved to the margins or quietly delayed into next year, and everyone involved knows it.

Strange to say about a month with Wolverine in it, but the cozy and mid-budget stuff might be the real story. One big exclusive, a stack of smaller games that would otherwise get buried, and a release list that somehow came out balanced instead of a single-game victory lap.

Reminds me, at least the way I remember it, of release windows back on the SNES, where you'd get a big RPG, an action game and some weird curiosity all landing close together, and all three somehow found an audience. Maybe my memory is glossing over the casualties. Crowded calendars used to feel normal to me. They only turned fatal when marketing budgets decided every game needed a clear runway.

My picks if you're budgeting for one or two: Wolverine if you want the event, and something from the cozy pile if you want a game nobody else in your group will be playing. The source list has the full rundown, and it's worth scanning past the top few entries.

As always: have you played any of the smaller stuff on this list already, in early access or demos? I'm curious whether the Wolverine hype holds up past the first ten hours. I still have a soft spot for the character's PS2-era outing, which makes me a tough crowd.