Read this: “our upcoming product will deliver an experience that will span the traditional boundaries of video game entertainment.” Span the boundaries? Surely that doesn’t really make sense. But hey: it sounds like it might mean something, and that’s good enough for a press release.

A press release announcing almost nothing, anyway. What almost nothing? This: Bioware and LucasArts are working together on something. As is traditional in such non-announcements – of which there are many in our little world of video games – there are no details of anything. Just hyperbole.

Here’s some more: it “will push the boundaries of the gaming market by utilizing the strengths of both companies to deliver an innovative, high-quality experience.” Which means precisely nothing.

EA have announced the full song list for ridiculous peripheral-fest Rock Band. And it’s fine – good, even. ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by The Ramones: excellent. And what’s that? A Pixies track? Sterling work, EA.

Except the line-up has been split helpfully into decades, and ‘Wave of Mutilation’ is filed under “2000s”. That’ll be a track off the 1989 Pixies album ‘Doolittle’. Just a bit off, then.

It’s clear to see where the error arose: ‘Wave of Mutilation’ is also the title of the Pixies best of album, released in 2004. Someone at EA clearly didn’t read their Google search results very closely.

Wired didn’t pick up the mistake, and they really should have. To their credit, 1UP did, and corrected it, but didn’t point out EA’s mistake.

There is nothing more important than the Pixies. These people need to be told, otherwise they’ll never learn.

I’m not sure if this has happened before, but the top three games in the chart are all football related – Pro Evolution 2008 sits right at the top, FIFA 08 at #2 and Football Manager 2008 at #3. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption enters at #7 and High School Musical: Makin’ the Cut has risen from #18 to #9. Ratatouille has scurried up too, from #7 to #5, but both Halo 3 and The Orange Box have fallen a couple of places.

Plenty of new entries elsewhere – The Sims 2: Castaway at #19, which will no doubt rise in the coming weeks, Tomb Raider Anniversary at #24, Thrillville: Off the Rails at #28 in is second week of release, Clive Barker’s Jericho at #26 and Drawn to Life at #31. Spare a thought for poor old Project Gotham Racing 4 though, which has dropped all the way from #6 to #18. THQ’s Jucied 2: Hot Import Nights on the other hand has gone from #20 to #13. It’s probably on offer somewhere.

Over in the single format charts, Virtua Fighter 5 goes in at #9 in the Xbox 360 chart, while SWAT Target Liberty enters the PSP chart at #19. Eye of Judgement on PlayStation 3 makes a surprisingly high appearance at #13. Surprising, because it’s almost £70 bloody quid.

Captain Planet would be proud. Whereas the first Chibi-Robo – one of the last truly great GameCube games – saw the mute robot reunite a broken family while tidying up their home, this sequel is set in the great outdoors and has an anti-pollution theme. Speaking of Captain Planet… isn’t it time for his revival? The Ninja Turtles, Transformers and Biker Mice from Mars have had comebacks recently so it only seems fair. The artists would have to make him look at bit less camp to blend into today’s tough teen market though – those tight red shorts really didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Chibi may only be a tiny tin man, but he has a giant task on his hands – to turn a barren wasteland into a place of paradise. Fortunately he isn’t alone in his quest – Chibi can stroll into the local town and become friends with various toys, with the first being a French puppet. They’re all eager to get their hands dirty but require a donation of watts depending on the complexity of the task – building paths, lamps and planting trees won’t cost much, but making soil fertile and building statues will costs the earth. So to speak.

The toys can only do a few deeds before running out of juice, so you’ll need to re-visit town regularly and find them again. To make Chibi’s job even harder a mysterious villain and his band of emo smogling monsters also need to be dealt with. These freaky types kill the park’s flowers, which isn’t a good thing considering new equipment is unlocked according to the amount in your park.

To accumulate watts first you need to gather happy points. The easiest way is to dance to flowers – by spinning a record with the stylus in tune to the beat – but you can also give flowers to the florist, present the toys with sugary snacks and water the new flower buds spewed from jiving. Every movement made by Chibi drains his battery slightly and at the start of the game trips back to base are frequent so that you can recharge, but once bigger batteries are unlocked things don’t feel quite as restrictive.

There’s only so much time in one day too, so it helps to plan ahead – you might want to spend one day watering flowers, another picking and selling or just walking around town looking for Famicom cartridges that let you build new structures. Whatever you do though, the Smoglins can attack at any time so you need to keep an eye on the forecast back at base. They’re easy enough to defeat – just spray them with Chibi’s water gun or run them over in the Chibster’s jeep or car. These modes of transport make it easier to navigate the park, although they also drain your battery life.

With its carefree vibe and colourful visuals it’s a game that’s been designed to tug at your heartstrings; something it succeeds at doing quite nicely. But if there’s one thing that developers Skip haven’t learnt from Chibi’s GameCube romp is that gamers don’t want to plough through (no pun intended) pages and pages of text. Every time you go back to base your minder Chet gives you a rundown of your current assets, asks if you want to save and if you want to covert happy points, suggests finding some friends and blah blah blah. Then every morning it happens all over again. If you don’t mix up the chores it can be a touch on the repetitive side too, although perhaps all the more rewarding because of it. Go fourth and spread the love, man.

Sonic needs to cut back on eating worms, dead foxes and whatever else hedgehogs eat before entering the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

And Mario should know better than to waste water by fiddling with sprinklers. He’s a ruddy plumber!

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is undoubtedly this week’s big one. Review scores haven’t been as high as the first game – released six years ago now, believe it or not – but they have been higher than the slightly lacking sequel. The controls are said to be spot on although it’s hard to say if those who haven’t played the first two will be left clueless with regards to the plot. Also on Wii this week: the utterly rubbish Escape from Bug Island (nee Nerco Nesa), baffling US baseball thing The Bigs and Monster Trux – another rubbish budget game from the guys behind Ninjabread Man and Billy the Wizard. And third party publishers wonder why their Wii games aren’t selling that well…

EA usually releases their multi-format games on every console simultaneously but The Sims 2: Castaway is only out on Wii and DS this week. Bit strange seeing that MySims was only released about a month ago. Over on PlayStation 2 Moto GP 07 seems like the one game worth bothering with – the rest of the offerings include Alan Hansen Sport Challenge, Avatar: The Burning Earth and Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots. THQ really aren’t trying with their subheading any more, are they?

Nothing on PlayStation 3 this week, although it’s the 360 that’s playing catch up with Virtua Fighter 5 and Tomb Raider Anniversary. Lara is also out on PSP as is the top-down strategic S.W.A.T Target Liberty. Probably a good move seeing the PSP’s lay out isn’t ideal for first person shooters. Speaking of Sony’s handheld, the white Slim & Lite is now available. There’s also a new Xbox 360 bundle, which comes with five Xbox Live Arcade games and a 256MB memory unit for £199. Not bad, although one of the games is the dire Feeding Frenzy.

All those who said they’d eat their hat the day a decent cartoon licensed game arrives should get ready to eat hat pie – Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck on DS has been getting some very warm reviews.

Rather than being another generic platformer, the idea is to frustrate Daffy as much as possible – the madder you make him, the nearer you are to finishing the game. Poke and prod him, snatch items away with the stylus, rub out body parts with a rubber and – ingeniously – slam the DS closed to leave him in the dark. There are mini-games to discover too, like by pealing away one of the background images. EGM claim that it’s full of genuinely humorous lines, such as Daffy mentioning that the game is full of bugs… only for Bugs Bunny to appear. Well, maybe they didn’t pick the best example…

Hopefully the developers will have a go at a decent Taz or Speedy Gonzales game next – plenty of untapped potential there, we would have thought.

Sega’s Football Manager 2008 – for PeeCees – has knocked FIFA 08 off the top spot and has become Sega’s first number one since Football Manager 2007. The Orange Box has managed to outsell Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – Valve’s collection goes in at #3, while Link’s latest enters at #4, one place above Halo 3. Project Gotham 4 slips from #2 to #6 while Crash of the Titans does the opposite and climbs from #19 to #10. Perhaps we were wrong to write off the bandicoot so soon.

Take 2’s Carnvial: Funfair Games on Wii has done surprisingly well going in at #25, and the Wii version of Rockstar Presents Table Tennis has also made the sports sim make a re-appearance at #37. High School Musical: Makin’ the Cut on DS is also doing well for itself entering at #18, although there are a fair few fallers – Juiced 2 has dropped 13 places from #7 to #20 while skate skates from #12 to #24. Buy it – it’s good!

Thrillville: Off the Rails hasn’t made it into the top 40 but has entered in the lower reaches of the various single format charts. Xbox 360 RPG Eternal Sonata makes a mark at #9 in the 360 chart while Buzz! The Hollywood Quiz goes in at #7 in the PlayStation 2 chart. Is the answer Ghostbusters II?

In a genre neatly sewn up by Activision and their annual Tony Hawks knee scraping sims, you’d be forgiven for thinking that EA’s developers would struggle to get one over on the bird man. Admittedly we did have our doubts on hearing ‘Ace of Spades’ unpredictably blaring out over the FMV intro, not to mention the fact that EA’s Black Box studio previously worked on the lamentable Marvel Nemesis. But worry not: considering it’s their first foray into skateboarding they got “it” pretty much spot on.

After a fatal accident from a botched stunt – as seen in the intro, which amusingly stars all the real-life skaters who appear in the game cast into the roles of medics, shop keepers and such – your skater finds himself desperate to restore his name. Once the tutorials are out of the way you’re free to skate around the bustling city as you please, taking part in photo shoots for magazines, trying to beat challenges set by pros, taking part in contests and recording footage for promo videos. You’ll probably spend a good while kitting your character out with various licensed baggy jeans and t-shirts as new clothes are the most common rewards.

The first thing that makes an impression, after the typically polished presentation and some blatant product placement, is that the camera is positioned at a slightly obtuse angle, almost as if it’s looking up at the skater from the ground. It has obviously been set this way for artistic purposes but there were more than a few times that we crashed into a rail or something else hidden by the skater’s up close torso. Certainly it gives skate a unique look (you can get rid of the whole HUD and have the screen cleared of clutter if you like) but it’s a little strange at first, if only because it’s unexpected.

Realism is by far skate’s forte. The graphics do a good job of reminding us that photo-realism is not too far away, the physics are almost perfect – no crazy gravity defying stunts – and the controls are spot on. Most of the tricks are mapped out onto the right analogue stick and are performed by some gentle tweaking. Pushing up or down ever so slightly pulls off manuals – and the emphasis there is on the word slightly. The triggers are used for the grabs and spins, and tapping X makes skaterboy go faster; handily only three taps are needed to get a full speed so you don’t need to jab it like a wild thing.

At times though, the realism is also skate’s biggest hindrance. A fine example is one of the early ‘sweet spots’ – a trick challenge located at the bottom of a steep hill. It’s in a busy residential area so not only do you have to focus on the criteria for the trick but pedestrians and cars have to be avoided. Now here’s the annoying bit: you have to have a good deal of speed behind you to clear the jump, so a lengthy uphill skate is required beforehand. Crash into something or mess up the trick and you’re looking at another lengthy hill climb, compared to in the Tony Hawk games where you just magically reappeared at the right place to try again.
One thing we do like about the inane realism is the taxis have even been programmed to drive more erratically than the other cars. Call us lazy though, but having to ollie up kerbs every single time you cross a road quickly gets annoying. The bail animations could have done with some tinkering also – at times it looks like a plastic store dummy flying through the air before crashing to the ground.

Still, this is slick stuff and the online aspects only polish off an already comprehensive package. Videos can be edited and then uploaded and any photos captured from your videos you can be shown off too. Not only can you partake in races and S-K-A-T-E competitions (one player does a trick, the rest have to copy it) but you can also be a spectator and spy on the highest ranked. If we were in charge of the Tony Hawk franchise we’d be pretty worried right about now. Yep.

Just as I was ready to write the PlayStation 3 off as a disaster of Dreamcast proportions, Sony release quite possibly the first game that’s ever come close to looking like a real CGI film (that doesn’t involve shooting people from a first person perspective) – and that game is Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Does this mean the horsemen are around the corner?

This is a very awkward moment. It must be what it’s like to find out your mum just came top of FHM’s 100 Sexiest Women. Since Sonic has given up the goat, and Nintendo are happy to make all of their games for 20th century hardware, I suppose it makes sense that the graphical generation leap would be made by Sony or Microsoft. But finally seeing it, and admitting that – graphically at least – this generation’s Mario 64 is a Ratchet & Clank game is a little bit… strange.

Don’t believe me? You can download the Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction demo from the PlayStation Store now (assuming you’re one of the few who bothered to buy a PS3). It snuck up on us rather quietly.

This doesn’t mean to say that Ratchet & Clank is this generation’s Mario 64 – it’s still the same old repetitive “whacking the crap out of robots” romp which is quite obviously designed by Americans (though disco dancing pirate robots does put this ahead of other generic platformers). But just looking at the game, playing it and having your jaw dropped by cinematic camera angles, utterly detailed environments and spectacular graphics… it should satisfy the graphics whore in all of us.

But at the same time as this breakthrough, the Xbox 360 and Wii are both currently outselling the PlayStation 3 by over 400% – that’s after the 178% sales increase brought on by the PS3’s price drop and ‘redesign’ in the US. Which makes it look like Sony are doing a bit of a Sega…

Will The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass be able to knock FIFA 08 from the top of the charts? We’d like to think so – it’s not as if the DS hasn’t been selling well in the UK. Nintendo would probably be just as pleased if it outsold Halo 3 – currently at #3 in the chart – though.

It’s no surprise that Half-Life 2: The Orange Box has been getting full marks considering it includes the legendary shooter, both the additional episodes, Team Fortress 2 and Portal all in one… box. According to Valve they lost count of how much money went into making the collection a long time ago. But yet again, the PlayStation 3 version won’t be arriving until after the Xbox 360 iteration. 23rd November to be precise.

There’s actually nothing out for PlayStation 3 owners this week, although PlayStation 2 owners get Buzz Hollywood, Singstar Bollywood and Thrillville: Off the Rails. Thrillville is also out on everything else this week – the demo on Xbox Live was entertaining (you can go on the rides, as well as design them) and review scores have been mostly positive. Xbox 360 RPG Eternal Sonata seems to be building up a nice little cult following, while Take 2 have slipped out Carnival Funfair Games on Wii. Hardly a decent replacement for Grand Theft Auto IV, which would be out this Friday if Take 2 had stuck to the original release date.

It’s a slow news day, not that it matters much around these parts, so we’d though we’d introduce you to High Score 100 – a Transfomer toy loosely based on a PlayStation joypad.

Sadly he’s a bit smaller than the real deal, but still very cool. Can we have a free one please, Hasbro?