September 2008 – Games Asylum

Wario fails to shake up the chart

UK Chart Now here’s a surprise – Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, Samba de Amigo and Sonic Chronicles have all failed to enter the top 40 chart. However, Pure – Disney’s ATV racer that’s had little publicity – skids in at a lofty #9. Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway goes in at #4, then lower …

The shape of things to come?

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Sony seem to be pushing the PSN a lot recently. First they had GT4 Prologue released as a download, and now two major titles have popped up in a week. Wipeout HD is in a word, superb. It looks amazing, the craft control perfectly, and there’s tons of stuff to do. They’ve even managed to …

He ain’t heavy

This Week's Games

This Week’s Games Can you stomach yet another war game? Ubisoft hopes so – Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and Brothers in Arms: Double Time for Wii are both out today. Hell’s Highway has been getting a lot of 7s and 8s in the press and is apparently a bit on the gory side. Double …

How many missing people called Maddie are there?

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As you may have read (or seen) elsewhere, Bungie aren’t ditching Halo just yet and yesterday released a teaser trailer for what looks like a new Halo 3 campaign. Around half way through the video some garbled text appears and if you watch without blinking the words â€˜MADDIE, WHERE ARE YOU?’ flash up for a …

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09

Reviews

EA’s latest version of ball-o-stick-o can be compared to the much underrated Xbox 360 shooter Shadowrun. No, Shadowrun doesn’t feature a hidden golf mini-game (although Viva PiÃ±ata: Trouble in Paradise does – try knocking sweets into holes with the spade). But like Shadowrun, if you don’t have your console connected to Xbox Live then you’re going to miss out on the best bits.

Buy Banjo-Kazooie, get Banjo-Kazooie free

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Game, Gamestation and Play are all giving away the original Nintendo 64 Banjo-Kazooie as a free Xbox Live Arcade download when you pre-order Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on Xbox 360. The two games tie into each other to make use of the abandoned swap-shop feature that Banjo-Tooie was supposed to use. So it’s a good …

Mahjong – more popular than Star Wars

UK Charts

UK Chart The headline? That’s as far as DS owners are concerned. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed only manages to get to #39 in the DS chart, whereas Mahjongg goes in at #17. Star Wars is top of the all formats chart though, and #1 in all three PlayStation charts, as well as Xbox 360. …

DELETED

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I dutifully downloaded the first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People – subtitled Homestar Runner – when it was released on WiiWare. For free, of course, using the Wii Points I’d exchanged for the Stars I’ve collected over the years. I intended to review it properly, but now that the second episode …

Viva PiÃ±ata: Trouble in Paradise

Reviews

The bad news is that Trouble in Paradise feels more like a special edition of the first Viva PiÃ±ata than a fully fledged sequel. The good news is that it’s still as addictive as ever, and the new refinements make for a better game. It’s a lot harder to unlock the achievements this time round too, but whether that’s a good thing or not is up to you. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of back breaking labour – apart from the whole back breaking thing.

Mahjong madness

This Week's Games

This Week’s Games Sega’s Yakuza 2 on PlayStation 2 could very well end up being the last decent PlayStation 2 exclusive. Sure, there are plenty of games still on the way for the aging format, but most are toned-down conversions. If you liked Shenmue then buy it – it has lots in common with Sega’s …

Pixel perfect

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Retro box art can be a great source of amusement, as proved by the artwork for the first ever Mega Man game. The wags over at The Minus World have decided to go one step further and knock up some retro-style artwork for current releases including Bioshock, No More Heroes and Portal. The result? Like …

Ecolis: Save the Forest

Reviews

Imagine if every time you wanted to boil the kettle you had to push six or seven buttons, set a timer and then choose a temperature instead of just flicking a switch to set the water boiling. That would be pretty annoying, right? This quirky Pikmin-alike RTS also suffers from being too convolved for its own good.

As the title suggests, Ecolis has an anti-pollution vibe, with idea being to save a forest from destruction by ordering around armies of squirrels and beavers. But whereas Pikmin and Command & Conquer were blessed with simple and effective control systems, Ecolis has been lumbered with a painfully cumbersome way of doing things.

More reasons to shop at Morrisons

UK Charts

UK Chart Remember when the chart was full of Â£1 PC games that Asda was flogging? Something similar has happened. See, Morrisons had quite a good deal on last week – selected new Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games were Â£25, Wii games Â£15 and DS games Â£12. This seems to have had a knock …

Rocking all the way to the bank

This Week's Games

This Week’s Games The credit crunch seems to have rubbed off on the gaming world. Supreme Commander is out on Xbox 360 this week for a hefty Â£29.99. The PC version, which came out over a year and a half ago, can easily be found for around a fiver. Then there’s a belated appearance for …

Mario’s a family guy

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Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth McFarlane is branching out into animated shorts, with the first an amusing little parody of Super Mario. Sponsored by Burger King! This about a dog on a gameshow is better still.

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