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 down Atari’s Family Trainer at #20.

So how well did Wario do? Try a poor #14 in the Wii chart. Samba de Amigo goes in at #16, with De Blob at #20. Sonic Chronicles enters the DS chart at #7 then in the Xbox 360 chart there’s Baja: Edge of Control at #20 and PDC World Champ Darts 08 at #23.

There isn’t much else going on in the top 40 apart from Halo 3 going back in at #30 and TNA Impact dropping from #9 to #23. The Simpsons Game is still selling well, currently at #26. That’s quite impressive seeing as it’s nearly a year old now.

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 provide SIXAXIS support that’s actually pretty good! The most interesting part, though, is that it’s a PSN Store exclusive. You won’t find it in the shops. This is another massive step forward for online downloads, and at £11.99, it’s a steal.

Burnout: Paradise also popped up this week. It marks the first time on any format that a full current-generation game has been made available to download. At £24.99, it’s a tad pricey, but the fact that it’s up there is promising. A lot of older games disappear from shelves, leading the industry to have a sell-quick business model, almost freezing out slow burning, idea-lead games. Hopefully we’ll see more games being put on the store, and maybe games that have great ideas but lack rich publishers will be able to compete with the souless, idea-straved blockbusters that have almost destroyed my will to play games (I’m looking at you Gears Of War). It won’t happen. But it’d be nice.

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 Time is a bit of a mystery but it looks like it contains levels from Earned in Blood and Road to Hill 30. I could be wrong though.

Wario Land: Shake Dimension is also out on Wii. The animation has been handled by a Japanese anime company, so it looks rather special, but the gameplay is said to be a bit on the shallow side. Still, it’s nice to see a new 2D platformer in 2008. De Blob looks like a better one to go for, with some incredibly positive reviews behind it. Samba De Amigo is out as well. You can even get some fake maraca bits to clip onto your Wii controller to go with it. Cha cha cha!

The PlayStation 3 is swarming with racing games, with four making it out into stores – Pure, SBK: 08, Baja Racing and G1 Jockey 4. Bioware’s RPG Sonic Chronicles has sneaked out on DS, as has Sim City Creator, while the PSP gets R-Type Tactics.

Next week: FIFA 09, Zubo, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials And Tribulations.

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 ‘MADDIE, WHERE ARE YOU?’ flash up for a second or so. As far as anyone is aware, there are no characters in the Halo universe named Maddie, which has lead many to assume that it refers to missing five year-old Madeleine McCann. Personally I see it as a joke at the missing child’s expense – as there is no other way to explain it – and thus completely in poor taste.

Bungie has responded, calling it “an unfortunate coincidence” and pointing out that: “As always, all of the characters in our games are fictional. Any similarities between real life and the characters in our games are purely coincidental.”

Yeah, bollocks.

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 Piñata: 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.

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 deal, then? Well not quite – in the US, Nuts & Bolts is set to retail for $39.99, half the price of what Microsoft are charging in the UK. We should probably be used to it by now…

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. The Wii version manages to get to #3 in the Wii chart, pipped by Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.

The top ten in the all format chart is quite different from last week’s: Mercenaries 2 has dropped from #1 to #6, Tiger Woods 09 from #2 to #5 and Spore from #3 to #10. PC thing Warhammer Online enters at #4. That’s two PC-exclusives in the top ten – something that hasn’t happened for a while. Crisis: Warhead – another PC-exclusive – is the only other new entry at #21.

Too Human was hanging in the chart by a thread last week, but has risen from #38 to #22 due to being discounted in a few high street stores. A fair few games have fallen like metal balloons though – Guitar Hero: On Tour down from #8 to #23, Spore Creatures from #14 to #28 and Smash Bros. Brawl from #13 to #35.

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 is out, it seems a bit of a stupid thing to do. So I won’t.

I’d completely avoided Game Rankings, but checking it now it’s probably what I expected: some very good reviews, and some less so. Edge in particular gave it just 4 out of 10.

My general opinion of the game is that it’s all fine and dandy, but not as cohesive or, frankly, funny as the first Sam & Max episode – also from Telltale Games, of course. Game Rankings just about agrees, as does Edge, which gave Sam & Max’s debut 6 out of 10.

Just about the only genuinely funny thing on the Internet – though inconsistently so – I am a fan of Strong Bad. Indeed, I think he is awesome. I even bought the Strong Bad Email DVD boxset for Christ’s sake – and I was tempted by a plush The Cheat. Sam & Max’s humour just works better in a game; but by the same token, Sam & Max checking their emails probably wouldn’t be as funny as Strong Bad doing so.

It’s not bad though. The puzzles are of the same collect-an-item, use-an-item variety as Sam & Max; some of them are tremendously satisfying, though none are terrifyingly taxing. There are loads of incidental bits to collect and do, all drawn from the Strong Bad universe.

It’s perhaps a bit too walky – probably due to the constraints of being set in Strong Bad’s world – though there is a lot to be said for wandering through Strongbadia (Pop: Tire). It’s certainly funny enough of the time to keep a fan interested, but if you don’t know Strong Bad, it’s probably a good idea to start by checking some emails. Or just play Sam & Max. It’s better.

The bad news is that Trouble in Paradise feels more like a special edition of the first Viva Piñata 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.

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 never-concluded trilogy.

There isn’t a great deal else out this week, apart from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on all formats – even PSP. The demo had 7 out of 10 written all over it – nice and shiny but a little tedious. Game are doing the Wii version, which has extra multiplayer arenas and stuff, for £29.99. There’s also the budget priced Warriors Orochi 2 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360, which is yet another twist on the Dynasty Warriors series.

As always there’s a load of tat out on DS, including – rather stupidly – two Mahjong games from different publishers. One is spells it Mahjong, the other Mahjongg. Hmm!

Next week: Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, DeBlob, Samba de Amigo and Sonic Chronicles.

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 driving 87mph in a DeLorean.

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.