The storylines for RPGs usually fall into one of three categories: saving a sacred realm, rescuing royalty, or going on a treasure hunt to find a holy weapon of sorts. Contact breaks out of these traditional shackles by involving you personally as a character.

Let’s try to explain. A Professor crashes on a strange planet and uses your DS to make contact with you. But rather than play as yourself, you control teenager Terry, while the Professor talks to you on the top screen to give hints and suggestions of what to make Terry do next. Your goal? To find and reclaim the power cells for the Professor’s craft so that he and Mochi – a strange lamb/cat hybrid – can go back to the place they call home.

The two screens display distinct visual styles: the Professor’s isometric world is low-res and minimalist, while Terry’s is softly shaded. There’s plenty of charm and some nice ideas – like stickers that can be pealed off magic cards and stuck onto objects via the stylus. You can also go fishing, cook, and dress Terry up like a doll.

The problem is that, deep down, it’s nothing more than a tedious dungeon crawler with a battle system that’s neither functionally interesting nor flashy. You just have to tap on an enemy, select attack and sit back and watch Terry do his best. This is even the case for boss battles, which if you’ve rushed to get to you won’t have enough experience to triumph in first time. So you’re pretty much forced to go out looking for smaller enemies anyway. Which is dull.

Although Terry’s thirty – thirty! – stats are constantly increased, you never feel compelled to spend time ‘levelling up’ like you would in a Final Fantasy game. There are some puzzles – plus the odd mini-game to serve as a distraction – but none are as clever as Zelda’s. And it simply isn’t as addictive as Pokemon; there’s nothing to keep you playing, apart from the sight of the super-cute Mochi licking his tummy on the top-screen.

Yer actual Ubisoft have signed up as European publishers of the Top Trumps games previously announced by Ironstone Partners. This remains essentially good news, especially as PlayStation 2, PC and – most importantly – Nintendo DS versions have been mentioned for release in the next couple of months. Top Trumps over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection – which I should point out hasn’t been mentioned – would be very, very fine.

But it’s not uniformly good news. You see, I’d not thought it through. Top Trumps is great because of all the licenses – Marvel, The Simpsons, Harry Potter etc – attached to the various editions. But in this case Top Trumps is the license, and the video game rights to the aforementioned properties are with other publishers.

So – “initially,” says the press release – the games will feature proprietary Top Trumps characters. Which brings with it the distinct risk of rendering the games utterly disinteresting. But if they come to some sort of arrangement with Marvel, then you’ll find me frothing at the mouth once more.

Among the next batch of titles to grace Xbox Live Arcade, revealed by Microsoft today, is Worms. This is a good idea.

Look at it. It looks like Worms. There are no forts, no bubbles at the top of the screen to burst, and it’s 2D. Admittedly, I’d have quite liked a straight conversion of the original, with rubbish pixellated graphics, but I’m just a nostalgic idiot. This version is even being handled by the original developer – Team 17 – unlike so many Live Arcade conversions.

THQ Wireless, meanwhile, have announced Worms Crazy Golf. This is a bad idea, for reasons too obvious to go into. But, Team 17, that’s what you get when you give a mobile publisher the right to do what the hell they like with your property.

Not much has been heard from Midas Interactive for a while. They didn’t even have a raft of new releases for the festive period, which is odd when you consider that Christmas would be an ideal time to push out some stocking fillers.

They’ve made an announcement today though, that being that they’re branching out into PSP publishing. Their first title will be a futuristic racer known as Stateshift that looks uncannily like the underrated PSone racer Rollcage. Developers Engine Software are at the helm, who are also working on the Marvel Trading Card Game for the DS, and have worked on some licensed GBA games in the past.

Being from Midas and all, you can probably expect it to retail for a bargain price from the outset. £9.99 might be a bit of a hopeful figure though.

Capcom’s Lost Planet has found – ho ho – its way back to the top of the chart, pushing last week’s comfortable #1, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, down to #5. That leaves room for the the pair of big football games to fill the rest of the top three, with Wii Play up seven places to #4. More stock, you see.

Wario Ware is only just behind, down three at #6, but Zelda’s down another seven at #21. It’s a resolutely good week for Nintendo though, as they’ve got more games in the top 40 than any other publisher – even EA. So well done them.

Last week’s couple of moderate handheld releases fail to chart in the grown up chart, but Rocky Balboa takes #3 in the PSP chart, and Star Fox Command #8 in the DS chart. Look, there’s just not another word for ‘chart’, alright?

To all intents and purposes, zombies are the ultimate video game adversaries. This is one of the reasons why Game 505’s Zombie Zone went into my shopping basket whilst at Sainsbury’s today, the other reason being that you have to pay for parking unless you spend over a fiver in store. The nerve of it!

Although I was initially quite looking forward to some mindless zombie-harming violence, an inspection of the reverse of the case reveals exactly what to expect:

If only more publishers were this honest in their blurbs.

It’s not just the futuristic setting that sets Crackdown apart from the gun-ho urban gangsta GTA clones; it’s the fact that it’s not quite so po-faced. This is arguably down to the augmented ability system. At the start you can only lift small objects, jump small distances and throw small grenades. By the end of the demo – which has increased ability speed, incidentally – you can jump around the roof tops like Spider-Man, lob explosives that cause screen-filling carnage and throw lamp posts around as if you’re the Incredible Hulk. Rah!

The commentary is another highlight – we’re sure it’s somebody famous supplying the voice work – giving insights to your next mission, firing off sarcastic quips when you fall to your death or blow yourself up, and advising what your partner is up to if you’re playing co-op online. When hosting a game you can scout for players with certain attributes and also choose if you want quiet or talkative team-mates. It’s quite easy to lose your partner when playing, although any enemy supply depos that you take over will become handy restart points.

What impresses the most is that it’s very user friendly. The controls should feel very natural to those that weaned on GTA, while the on-foot controls – especially the targeting – work almost perfectly. The vehicles also handle excellently, and although there aren’t any motorbikes or boats – at least in the demo – there are buses, trucks and special agent police cars and such. The graphics aren’t amazing but there’s a nice solid feel and the cars and characters have thick black outlines giving an almost cel-shaded look.

The demo is available now on the Xbox Live Marketplace and gives around an hour of play, both online and off. Be warned though – at the time of writing the download speed is very slow due to the number of people wanting to get their hands on it. The full game is out on 23rd February and comes with a sought after Halo 3 beta invite.

The Magic Box has new shots of Turok for the Xbox 360 and PS3. It’s looking very good, albeit in that typical ‘must every 360 game be an FPS?’ fashion.

Nostalgia dictates that Turok really should be played on a Nintendo console however. Being an early N64 game, remarkable for its lovely dinosaurs (as well as thick fog and stupidly expensive cartridge price), the thought of playing a new Turok first on the Xbox 360 is a bit like watching mummy get drunk and flirty with another man who clearly isn’t your father. Purely by association with Microsoft, its absorbed tones of Far Cry, Gears of War and Crysis. Which is to say, technically very good, but a bit soul destroying. Of course, the game isn’t out till the autumn, so ignore any of my preformed prejudiced opinions.

Last month N Gamer magazine promised to spill the beans on a wealth of top secret Wii games; this month they’ve put the previously unannounced Scarface: The World is Yours on the front cover. That’s about it as far as the secrets go, disappointingly.

So yes – it’s another conversion. Developers Radical are putting a bit of effort into it though, promising enhanced visuals such as better water effects and more detailed character and vehicle models. N Gamer also reports that the controls work brilliantly – the nunchuk is used to move and the Wii-remote to point and shoot.

This’ll be Vivendi’s second game for the Wii, with the first being the better than expected Ice Age 2. We should be thankful, really – they could have given us a conversion of Spyro: A New Beginning instead of this more mature offering.

It’s a toy license. It’s a budget game. It’s from DSI, who don’t have the best reputation around. Or any reputation at all. In this case, though, conclusions shouldn’t be jumped to – the developers have managed to use the license to good effect, creating a neat little homage to the classic Transport Tycoon.

It’s fairly straightforward: you’re presented with an overhead map on which there are a number of towns and cities, and it’s your job to connect them with rail links as you see fit, purchasing trains and attaching various cargo containers. The trick is to keep an eye on supply and demand to get some nice little earners going – one town might have bountiful wood, the next town access to a sawmill, and a third town a demand for furniture. There’s probably a sale on at DFS or something.

As Richard Branson knows all too well, running a successful transport company requires good business sense and a fair bit of money. Trains run at a cost, and if the overheads aren’t covered then you’ll be in the red in no time. Small trains are fine for just carrying a couple of passenger carriages, but for heavy duty work it’s best to opt for a more expensive train despite the extra costs.

The campaign mode is ideal to start with, as it acts as a glorified tutorial, with the first set of challenges being to join up a couple of towns and get passengers going back and forth. This mode isn’t the best ambassador for the rest of the game though, as options and space are limited. Once the basics have been mastered – which for us took longer than we imagined due to unhelpful menus – the Sandbox and Freeplay modes should be your next destinations.

Here there are choices of expansive maps – including the whole of Europe – plus you can research new trains, purchase new buildings, and more besides. Placing a post office in a town will increase the amount of mail, whereas a theme park will attract more tourists. Although you can still buy things when in debt, being in the red isn’t much fun, but it can be challenging to get back in the bank manager’s good books.

The biggest problem is the presentation. The charts used to display supply and demand could have been made easier to read, and some of the button placement is bizarre – having to hold down the left shoulder button to move around the map, for instance. We can’t be very positive about the music either, and the graphics are functional at best. Still, they get the job done and that’s all that’s needed.

More than five months on from being released in the rest of the world, Nintendo have finally had the decency to release Star Fox Command in Europe. When I originally reviewed it back in September, I came to the conclusion that it’s good but not great. I’d rather have a conversion of the sublime Star Fox 64 – nee Lylat Wars – with touch screen controls, truth told.

Actionloop is another delayed DS game making a belated appearance this week. If you fancy some Zuma-style ball popping, you can get it for £16.99 on Play.

The only other game out today is Rocky Balboa – a PSP-exclusive from Ubisoft. The lack of reviews is a bit worrying. And why no PlayStation 2 version? It wouldn’t have taken much effort, surely.

Sony confirmed the European PlayStation 3 launch details last night. I almost completely forgot until I saw some other websites rubbishing the stupidly inflated British price.

So it’s official, the PlayStation 3 will launch in the UK and across civilised Europe on 23rd March with a price tag of £425 (or €599 for Euro using people).

That takes the piss a bit, surely? As UKR have mentioned, the $599 US price translates to just over £300, while the Japanese ¥60,000 price converts to £250… so why do Sony expect us to pay £425 in Britain? That’s 70% more than the original Japanese price.

Apparently 300,000 units will be available in the UK for launch. That’s awfully ambitious of Sony.

As well as all that, around 30 titles will be available for launch, Resistence: Fall of Man (generic FPS!), Ridge Racer 7 (Riiddddddddge Raaaaaacer!!) and MotorStorm (must be shit, made in Britain) being the reported highlights.

We’ll get our own localised PlayStation Network online thing too, which is actually not as dull as it sounds, because you could buy an arcade port of the rather good Tekken: Dark Resurrection in Japan for just £9. Expect to pay double that for the download to get shipped over here though.

Possibly the most intesting thing to come from this news, is the announcement that only the ‘premium’ 60GB PlayStation 3 model (which also sports WiFi and HDMI) will be available in Europe. That’s not actually that interesting, but at least it shows some recognition from Sony that selling stupidly crippled ‘cheaper’ versions of a product which lack half the features you wanted, isn’t such a great plan.

If you want, there’s still time to pre-order from Play.com for a mere £549.99. Or just pick one up on eBay for less than the original price a few weeks after launch. I’ll be waiting to get one from Hong Kong (yes, Hong Kong & Taiwan got their own PlayStation 3’s launched months before us) where they currently cost just £240.