You can bet your last dose of Zombrex (it exists, right?) that this year will see the release of many collections, trilogies and such for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They offer publishers the chance to squeeze a little bit of extra money out of their back catalogue, and as long as they arrive at a bargain price we aren’t going to complain.

We’ve already seen the four-strong Far Cry: The Wild Expedition, released last month for around £25. Next up? Capcom’s Dead Rising Collection.

Even though Xbox 360 owners were given the chance to download Dead Rising 2 and its prologue for free last year – as part of the ‘Games for Gold’ promotion – the £20 (or thereabouts) price-tag for Dead Rising Collection is justifiable by the inclusion of ‘Off the Record’. This standalone spin-off still sells for £10+ on the likes of Amazon, and chances also stacked high that most people overlooked it when it was first released.

It’s easy to see why. There was a good year between Dead Rising 2 and ‘Off the Record’ yet some critics still found it hard to recommend revisiting Dead Rising 2 so soon. Fans likewise called it a “cynical cash-in” because there was little reason why it couldn’t have been released as a piece of inexpensive DLC. The setting, boss battles and a lot of the cut-scenes are the same but the plot has been re-jigged to an alternate “What if?” scenario. To be more exact: “What if renowned photographer Frank West encountered the zombie outbreak instead of Chuck Greene?”

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Where was Sir Clive Sinclair last weekend?

He was at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, making an impromptu visit to their Sinclair Celebration Weekend Event. Albeit an impromptu visit with a few days notice.

He was there with his brother Ian.

More Sir Clive Sinclair Watch next week. Unless he’s not photographed somewhere notable and someone doesn’t send out a press release.

Further afield in Guam, Call of Duty: Black Ops II voice actors James Burns and Kamar de los Reyes toured the USS Frank Cable, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet kindly documented it on Flickr.

Here they’re being shown the ship’s machine shop. They were also evidently shown the carpentry shop and bridge, where they learned about navigation.

No clever comments. I’m not messing with the US Armed Forces.

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EA’s plan to take Plants vs Zombies – PopCap’s much loved 2D timewaster – and turn it into a third-person class-based shooter did initially sound disastrous. Yet with some attentive nurturing on behalf of the newly formed PopCap HD studio, we’re reminded of that not particularly well-known phrase: “From tiny acorns mighty online shooters grow.”

Gears of War provides the bulk of inspiration, rather than EA’s own Battlefield series. Some may even be surprised to learn of this. The four-player co-op ‘Garden Ops’ mode bares a startling resemblance to Gears of War’s Horde mode in particular, only with a far brighter colour palate. Maps may be few in number but they’re surprisingly large and varied, offering three different locations per map to place a garden homestead. AI-controlled zombies then appear in waves of increasing strength and number.

After the tenth final wave has been defeated a mad dash back to Crazy Dave’s campervan ensues. Staying alive until Dave arrives can be a tricky task, no thanks to the sheer amount of zombies that quickly swarm towards the pick-up point.

As well as random ‘special waves’ against certain enemy types, both waves 5 and 10 feature super-sized bosses that are randomly selected via a slot machine. Every now and then the slot machine will cough up some bonus cash too, which is used to purchase packs of stickers.

Stickers not only boost your arsenal of plants and zombies, which can be strategically placed at pre-determined places to protect your turf, but can also provide the chance to respawn instantly and give the whole team an instant retry when playing ‘Garden Ops’.

The inclusion of these consumable, single use, items did briefly give cause for concern – we were worried that unlocks would be scarce, prompting dreaded micro-transactions. Thankfully that’s not the case. Even matches that end unsuccessfully reward enough cash to buy one or two packs of stickers. Spend your time playing a variety of modes and you’ll find yourself amassing a sizeable assortment.

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With the Year of Luigi coming to an end, a range of Luigi-themed discounts are underway on the Nintendo eShop.

The best of these is New Super Luigi U for £13.49. Less good, at least in terms of discount, is Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros. on 3DS for £27.99. NES classic Super Mario Bros. is also being cut to £1.74 on both Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console.

As for new stuff launching this week, there’s puzzler Tappingo – best described as a mixture of Sudoku and Picross – on 3DS for £2.49, fellow puzzler Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (£7.99), hidden object thing Vacation Adventures: Park Ranger (£4.49) and Life with Horses 3D for an eyebrow raising £24.99.

They’re being joined on the eShop by reasonably entertaining platformer Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, which is set to cost £36.99 on Wii U and £29.49 on 3DS.

This leaves us with scrolling brawler Renegade, which after arriving on 3DS VC last month, is now available on Wii U VC. £3.49 seems a fair price to knock seven bells out of some 8-bit bad guys.

A week which sees the release of three cartoon tie-ins and little else sounds like a total write off. When South Park and Pac-Man are involved though, you know you’re in good company.

The often delayed South Park: The Stick of Truth is the runaway headliner, and word has it that the extra development time has allowed Obsidian to fully fulfil Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s vision of an authentic South Park RPG.

And it certainly is authentic – for most part it looks indistinguishable from the notoriously crude cartoon. Reviewers have revelled in its abundance of morally dubious jokes – “in gameplay terms it may be soon forgotten, but there’s unlikely to be a funnier – or filthier – game any time soon” said Eurogamer in their 8/10 review. EDGE too gave it an 8/10, reporting that it “sees the duo attempting to push the boundaries even further than usual”.

Worry not for there is a decent RPG under the crudeness, albeit one that’s easier than most RPG fans will be used to. GameSpot was one of the few sites to suggest that the lack of challenge is a problem. They gave it 7/10.

Based on the Disney XD CGI cartoon series, Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures is also worth considering. We reviewed the region-free US Xbox 360 version back in January and found it to be a mildly entertaining adventure that’s a cut above most cartoon tie-ins. Indeed, there’s a pleasing air of confidence about it. It’s not like we see many platformers released these days either.

It’s out on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii U and 3DS for around the £25 mark. It’s worth noting the fact that there isn’t a single review of the 3DS version on Metacritic, even some four months since its US release. You know what that means, right?

Then there’s Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff from 505 Games, out on Wii U, Wii, 3DS and DS. A 5/10 from both Nintendo Life and The Official Xbox Magazine indicates that’s…ok. Again, expect to find it for around £25. Incidentally, the Xbox 360 version seems to have been lost en route from the US. No easy achievements for us.

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Now here’s a feature that has spent some time on the back burner. Once scheduled to coincide with The Stick of Truth’s original release date – back when THQ was still breathing – we’ve held it off time and time again following the numerous delays.

With Obsidian’s RPG finally out this week, we’re mildly pleased to present this slightly uneventful history of South Park games. Yes, there have been more bad ones than good, but you can’t blame us for that.

You can, however, blame Acclaim – their disrespect for licensed games is what ultimately lead to both themselves and fellow publisher THQ going bust. Well, that and THQ manufacturing approximately 20 billion uDraw tablets.

South Park – N64, PSone, PC

If memory serves, there was a bit of a buzz surrounding the first South Park game. South Park fever was in full swing – you even couldn’t step into Clinton’s Cards, of all places, without tripping over merchandise – and so the videogame press of the era were keen to give it plenty of exposure. It even took the cover of Future’s respected Arcade magazine – a move they later apologised for.

Although Acclaim had a reputation for churning out bad games during their 16-bit days, they managed to turn their repute around by becoming one of the N64’s most prolific publishers. They understood that although the risks for developing for the N64 were high – mostly due to pricey cart costs – if the product was good enough, it would sell incredibly well. The original Turok reportedly managed to turn a huge profit, selling over 1.5 million copies.

South Park however saw Acclaim fall back onto the license for sales. Seemingly rushed out to cash-in on the show’s success, it was ostensibly a re-skin of Turok 2. Snowballs replaced arrows; the mini-gun became a rapid fire foam dart launcher. And the much celebrated cerebral bore? That was changed into a weapon that made characters unwillingly sing and dance, rather than drilling their brains out. Visually crude, with the notorious ‘N64 fog’ in full effect, it simply saw the South Park gang fighting off swarms of mutant turkeys, robots and other enemies while trying to save their home turf. Most reviewers found that it was beyond repetitive, in respect of both enemy attack patterns and use of speech samples.

The PSone version didn’t arrive until almost a year later, featuring notably poorer visuals. A Game Boy Color South Park game was also in development, but eventually canned due to Trey Parker and Matt Stone reportedly believing it wasn’t a good fit for a system with such a young demographic. Acclaim later re-used the engine and some of the art-work for cartoon tie-in Maya the Bee, which incidentally, was re-skinned once again to become the New Adventures of Mary Kate & Ashley in the US. A quick glance on Google suggests that it actually wasn’t a bad little game, should you ever want to discover what could have been.

South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack – N64, PSone, Dreamcast, PC

Whereas the first South Park game received a staggered launch, mini-game collection Chef’s Luv Shack was released simultaneously across four different formats. Just in time for Christmas, funnily enough.

The Dreamcast had only been available in the US for a month prior to Chef’s Luv Shack’s release, and following poor reviews it was wildly regarded as one of the DC’s worst games, joining the likes of Acclaim’s own WWF Attitude. The whiff of ‘rush job’ was undeniable – it was, for most part, a dull quiz game. The mini-games meanwhile were heavily influenced by the arcade classic of yore – ‘Asses in Space’ was a clone of Asteroids, while ‘Bad Kitty’ was based on Donkey Kong. There was also a ‘Whack-A-Mole’ game, presumably because it’s written in stone somewhere that every mini-game collection must include one of these.

Oddly, the PC version removed all multi-player support – the game’s only positive feature – leaving the player to compete against CPU opponents only. We should also spare a thought for those who shelled out for the N64 version. With the majority of N64 games retailing for £49.99 at the time, that must have been heavy blow to the wallet.

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Three big name new releases were competing for people’s payday money last week, and even with some mediocre reviews behind it Square-Enix’s Thief has managed to steal the top spot, pushing LEGO The Movie Videogame down to #2.

FIFA 14 is at #3 while the better than expected Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare cuts in at #4.

Konami’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 enters at #10.

Two other new entries also lie within the top 40 – Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles makes its mark at a surprisingly high #13. That’s not bad going at all.

Fellow RPG Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, incidentally, now sits at #23 – down 12 places.

That other new arrival? That’s the 3DS’s Senran Kagura Burst at #38. PQube’s titles rarely enter the top 40 at all, so we’d imagine that they may actually be pretty pleased with that. It’s also #4 in the 3DS chart, clocking in above the likes of Mario Party: Island Tour and Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Sandlot’s budget-priced shooter series has been called ‘the videogame equivalent of a B-movie’ so many times that it’s dangerously close to becoming a cliché. When the first EDF was released on PlayStation 2 – under the guise of Monster Attack in the west – it’s true that the comparison was more than fitting. The assortment of super-sized enemies is mostly formed of ’60’s horror film-style giant insects, while dialogue is beyond the realms of cheesy.

Over time though the EDF games have evolved, right up to the point where it’s clear that great amounts of both time and money are being spent on development.

This is easily the most impressive looking instalment yet. The fully destructible environments are surprisingly detailed while the vastly overpowered weaponry results in the screen being frequently filled with pretty explosions. Perhaps calling it the videogame equivalent of a Michael Bay film would now be fairer?

For the record, we failed to bond with 2011’s Insect Armageddon. It saw US studio Vicious Cycle take the reins, and despite encouraging previews, the series was ultimately steered off track. Thankfully EDF 2025 sees the series back in the hands of its Japanese creators, who have built on the foundations of fan favourite EDF 2017 to create something to suit newcomers and battle hardened fans alike.

The differences between character classes are remarkably defined, with each class having their own pros and cons. Whereas any character could use vehicles before, now only two classes have the ability to summon and use them.

There’s also a new jet-pack equipped Wing Diver class which requires a degree of skill to get to grips with. Their weapons are either plasma or laser based and linked to the jet-pack’s energy supply. Spend too long in the air and you’ll find you’ll have no resources left to gun down enemies once you finally land back on the ground. Fencers can carry four weapons at once to provide heavy fire-power but are crippled by a slow pace, while Rangers remain the good all-rounder. Unsurprisingly, they’re recommended for newcomers.

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