Disregarding the fact that Halo 3 was released on Wednesday - netting Microsoft a cool $170 million in the US alone in just one day - this week’s line up of new releases “belongs” to THQ, with no less than five games out across different formats. Juiced: Hot Import Nights, Conan, Moto GP 07, Bratz The Movie and Ratatouille to be specific. We can’t vouch for their quality, but it’s not often that a publisher pushes out so many titles all in one go. Unless it’s a budget publisher, but they only do that to save on distribution costs. The skanks.
This week’s biggie though, again ignoring Halo 3, is FIFA 08. Don’t actually ignore Halo 3 though - it’s ruddy good! The Wii version of FIFA 08 would appear to be the one to go for - EA has added loads of extras, including a Footii Party mode presented by a Mii take on Ronaldinho.
Sega are releasing Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars on PSP at a budget price - it’s only £16.99 on Play - but reviews suggest that it hasn’t aged too well. Another racer from Sega out this week is Sega Rally on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Edge gave it a solid 7, but said it’s about six months too late with Colin McRae Dirt being better in some respects. On the flipside, EA’s Skate has been getting glowing reviews with many saying that it’s better than any of the previous Tony Hawks. The Xbox 360 version of Skate is out this week, but PlayStation 3 owners will have to wait a fortnight. Stuntman: Ignition makes its belated appearance on Sony’s black slab this week though. We bet PlayStation 3 owners are getting really pissed off with having to play catch up again and again.
Curio of the week - an award that we just invented there and then - goes to Grim Grimoire on PlayStation 2. It’s a beautiful looking 2D RTS from Disgaea developers Nippon Ichi and is apparently very good. DS owners though might want to get some Jam Sessions in before Guitar Hero DS arrives. Also on DS: Codemaster’s Race Driver Create & Race, which looks it could be the best serious racer for the handheld. Not that there’s much competition, mind.
Doesn’t look like there’s much out next week, although something called ‘Hard Knock High’ on PlayStation 2 piques our interest…
Dreamcast maraca shaker Samba de Amigo is coming to Wii. The original used two plastic motion-sensing maracas, so it’s something of a match made in heaven.
The real surprise though is who Sega have asked to develop it - GearBox software, of Brothers in Arms fame. After years of rendering muddy fields and soldier’s helmets they probably fancied a bit of a change. Bring on the colour!
It’s all change in the top 10 - Medal of Honour: Airbourne has dropped from top ‘o the pile to #6 allowing Tiger Woods 08 to go on top. MySims enters at #2, Super Paper Mario rises up one place to #3, while Colin McRae: Dirt has gone from #11 to #7 and Heavenly Sword has fallen five places to #12. Transformers: The Game is back in at #10, presumably as the PlayStation 2 version is only £15 in HMV’s sale.
Sonic Rush Adventure has done better in its second week of release going in at #26, with Singstar Rock Ballads one place higher. The apparently very good Warhawk only manages a lowly #38 placing, which might be because most PlayStation 3 owners have downloaded it instead. One advantage of buying the boxed version is that you get a free headset to shout abuse at other gamers, although you have to pay double the price for the pleasure.
It’s quite surprising to find Pokemon Diamond and Pearl leaving the chart so soon, currently at #34 and #39 respectively. They could even be out the top 40 entirely next week. We shall see.
After the showings of Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii and the Wii Zapper at E3, you’d think that Nintendo would be all out of surprises for this year. And you’d be right; it was third-party developers that shook up the Tokyo Game Show.
Blue Dragon DS is now official, a 3D Kingdom Hearts is also on its way to DS featuring multiplayer modes, and Sega hope to sell 4 million copies of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Last week Nintendo also announced that the $19.99 Wii Zapper will comes with Link’s Crossbow Training as a freebie.
One Wii game at the show worthy of its own paragraph is Ousama Monogatari - which translates to ‘Kings Story’. Although most websites are referring to it as O Project, which appears to be what Marvelous Entertainment (of Harvest Moon fame) will be calling it in the west. The graphics look a cut above most Wii games, or at least most western efforts, and it has more than a pinch of Pikmin about it. The star is a young boy who has a crown thrust upon his head and must order around the townsfolk to improve and defend the land. Check out the video on IGN.
Hudson, Namco and Konami are all banking on the success of Wii Sports and potential success of Wii Fit, with similar games in development. Active Life: Athletic World - which will come with a mat - is Namco’s effort, and includes snowboarding, kayaking, rollerblading, mole whacking and a Temple of Doom style mine-kart ride. Pilates, Yoga and Skin Basic are Konami’s doing, and we’re confident that Skin Basic doesn’t show you how to skin dead meat. They also showed off Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party, Big Head Baseball and Big Head MLB.
New International Track & Field is their sporty DS offering, and has a character roster that includes Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill. It’s like Konami Krazy Racing all over again. Hudson showed Deca Sports on Wii - the ten games set to feature are badminton, archery, snowboard racing, curling, beach volleyball, soccer, supercross, figure skating, basketball, and kart racing. GameStop commented that as per Wii Sports you can’t control the characters in badminton, and it’s not possible to perform stunts while snowboarding. Tsk!
Two DS games also receiving mild responses were Metal Slug 7 - which displayed slowdown and had no touch screen controls - and Exit DS. IGN reports that Exit DS has dire controls, with Mr ESC getting stuck in walls several times. Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword looks awesome though, and Konami are having a crack at a text-based adventure with Time Hollow.
Quick Wii round up: Capcom are down to publish Camelot’s We Love Golf! They did Mario Golf, so it should be good. Ubisoft are publishing No More Heroes in the US and presumably Europe. There’s still no word on whether Rygar: The Battle of Argus is a new game or a remake of the PlayStation 2 Rygar, but it’s looking good with a stylish new lead. It could suffer from competition from SoulCalibur Legends though, which appears to be an unnerving mixture of 3D adventure game and traditional dungeon crawler. No random dungeons, please!
Success for both the Wii and DS seems set to continue in 2008 - Wii Fit could potentially be bigger than Brain Training - but parents have already been angered over the Wii Zapper, claming that they don’t want to see kids waving plastic guns around. As for sales of over four million copies of Mario & Sonic, both Sega and Nintendo better hope that they don’t have another ET on their hands.
It’s known that Sony left out the rumble from the PlayStation 3’s controller due to Immersion’s lawsuit over use of their patented rumble technology. Sony’s official line, however, was that the rumble feature affected the motion sensor SIXAXIS technology, and that it’s a last generation feature anyway. Which was obviously rubbish as a new rumbling pad - the DualShock 3 - was confirmed at the Tokyo Game Show this week. It’s due out in Japan in November, but the US and Europe will have to wait until next spring. There’s a list of games that’ll use it on Eurogamer, some of which will require a patch downloading before they start a-shaking.
They also confirmed a few other bits at the show: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue will be available both as a download and on Blu-Ray this December in Japan, online socialising software Home won’t make it out this year, a TV tuner is in development for PSP, and SCEI have purchased Evolution Studios (Motorstorm, WRC) and its subsidiary Bigbig (Pursuit Force).
They aren’t going to be phasing the PlayStation 2 out any time soon either, although there wasn’t much on show apart from some SNK 2D brawlers, Seaman 2, Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus and Fire Pro Returns. Yakuza 2 is heading to the US though, which gives hope for a Euro release.
Over on PlayStation 3, the usual big hitters were doing the rounds: Metal Gear Solid 4, Devil May Cry 4, Little Big Planet and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The first official trailer for Metal Gear Solid Online was released, along with a new one for Afrika. We’re still none the wiser what it’s actually about - the video shows no actual hunting. It does point out though that Afrika is only a working title. Hmm. Also be sure to take a look at the Echochrome trailer if you missed it at E3.
On PSP the biggest surprise had to be Secret Agent Clank, starring him out of the Ratchet & Clank games. It’s by the same developer as R&C: Size Matters and also uses the same engine. After donning a tux and learning ‘Clank Fu’, the little robot must save his furry friend. Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops + was another surprise - read the amusing playtest at IGN - but Silent Hill Origins was absent. There was also a new Star Ocean, in addition to Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, which is set before the previous games and features three new heroes.
It’s slightly worrying that the most interesting PlayStation 3 titles are those that will be available via the PlayStation Store, but with dozens of PSP RPGs and the success of Core Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, 2008 could be the year that the PSP finally catches up with the DS.
It’s not unusual for retailers to start selling hyped-beyond-belief games a couple of days before their actual release. Rainforest-destroying* Argos, though, have set a new record by selling Halo 3 a whole week early. It’s all to do with their ‘check and reserve’ system - eager fans have spotted that their website has copies in stock, and they’re then popping down to their local store to collect them.
Argos have since noticed their mistake, and have temporarily removed the game from their site entirely. The current search results for Halo 3 on eBay make amusing reading though, with ‘buy it now’ prices ranging from £50 to over £100.
Be patient and wait - Tesco or somewhere is bound to do it for £35 on release.
*May not be true
You might not have heard of the GP2X before - Gamepark’s marketing budget doesn’t extend to much beyond a full page advert in Retro Gamer. The fact that you can’t simply pop down to Gamestation and buy one doesn’t help the publicity side of things either.
For those not in the know it’s a neat little handheld that has gone down a storm with homebrew coders. Indeed many - if not all - of its best games have been knocked together by small bedroom-based teams. Perhaps the main selling point, though, is the number of emulators available. That, and the fact that it can be hooked up to a TV - an idea that Sony recently borrowed for the new PSP Slim & Lite.
After selling 30,000 of the open-source consoles since 2007, a new model has been announced - the GP2X-F200. Mmm, Catchy. It’s due out in mid-October for £119.99, and includes an improved D-pad and a touch screen. It’s backwards compatible with software for the previous models, and comes with five bundled games. There’s no word on which ones, but we reckon the port of the Game Boy Advance GTA-alike Payback is one of them. But who knows - it could end up being five different variants of Pong.
GP2x.co.uk is the site to visit for more info on the new system, or to see what games are available then head over here.
Don’t you think?
There are two reasons I’m interested in the game: Wipeout was the first game I had for the PlayStation, so I have an unreasonable amount of affection for the series; and I like the way the HUD bends inwards.
Neither’s a particularly good reason, so hopefully it’ll actually be good as well. It’s sort of based on the new PSP instalment, Wipeout Pulse - but with a selection of tracks etc from all the previous games - and of course the first PSP Wipeout title was pretty ace. SIXAXIS control could work well, and it’s a PlayStation Store download, so shouldn’t cost the earth.
The official Smash Bros. blog has released new details on the Wi-Fi options for Smash Bros. Dojo.
The first thing to take in is the sweet apologetic note from Masahiro Sakurai about how playing someone in a different country may result in a lot of lag. Something which we’d have hoped they could have sorted out. Some games of Mario Kart DS are unplayable, which is a problem when the only people that seem to be on the server are Japanese.
There are two ways to play - with friends or with anyone. With your friends, you can send little messages to each other, although considering how hectic Smash Bros. is, no doubt that’d be suicide. Voice communication please, Nintendo. Apparently there’ll also be a number of types of game to play, although no specifics where revealed.
When you play with anyone, not only will you not be able to send messages, you won’t know anyone’s name. Which is presumably to protect innocent minds. More annoyingly, no record will be kept of the game at all, so it won’t count towards the games you’ve won or lost. It’s hardly Xbox Live, but that may not be a bad thing.
At least you get to punch a sandbag while you’re waiting for it to load. Brilliant.
Midway’s heavy promotion for Stranglehold - sorry, John Woo Presents Stranglehold - has paid off: it’s #2 in the chart, beating off Super Paper Mario which goes in at #4. Medal of Honor Airbourne is still on top. Heavenly Sword enters at #7, Wii Play is back in at #5 rising from #14, but the lovely Bioshock has fallen from #3 to #10. Interestingly, seven of the games in the top ten are single console exclusives.
Two Worlds - which charted at a surprisingly high #4 last week - has also fallen, dropping to #15. If the reviews are anything to go by, then it doesn’t deserve to be in the chart at all. Boogie is also on a slippery slope, sliding six places but spare a thought for Sonic: Sonic Rush Adventure hasn’t made it into the top 40, despite good reviews.
The release of the PSP Slim and Lite has shaken up both the PSP full price and budget charts, with games such as Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Sonic Rivals, Virtua Tennis 3 and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters rising up the ranks. But no Lumines? Shame on you!
An e-mail has popped into the inbox of subscribers to Nintendo of Europe’s newsletter, announcing something called the ‘Hanabi Festival’ - a celebration of previously unreleased Japan titles arriving on European Virtual Console.
It kicks off this week with two Mario games - Mario Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (NES version) and the SNES grid-based puzzler Mario’s Super Picross. You have to hurry if you want The Lost Levels though - it’ll only be available until the end of the month. Then next week is ‘ninja week’ with the US version of Ninja Gaiden and Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (both on NES) available to download, followed by ’sci-fi week’ on 28th September, which includes legendary N64 shooter Sin and Punishment and Gradius III on SNES.
We would have rather have Super Mario RPG instead of The Lost Levels (which did eventually made it’s way outside of Japan via Super Mario Allstars anyway), but still - Sin and Punishment at last!