UK Charts

Ubisoft’s gamble to publish The Wheelman has paid off – it skids into #11 in this week’s top 40 chart. It’s also a fitting game to play this time of year as Vin Diesel’s head looks just like an Easter egg. Resident Evil 5 stays put at #1, while bizarrely both Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty 5 have crept back into the top 10 at #7 and #9 respectively.

The Wii version of Pro Evolution 2009 helps it rise up to #22 while Afro Samuari makes a surprise appearance at #33. Surprising because it’s not meant to be that great and the movie hasn’t even been released over here yet. Speaking of movies, Monsters Vs Aliens fails to make it into the top 40 at all. That’ll no doubt change soon though.

In the PlayStation 2 chart Koei’s insanely titled Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis makes in entry at #11. It’s probably quite a good game to buy now and keep hold of – obscure RPGs like this are usually worth loads in the future.

This Week’s Games

Blimey, there’s quite a lot out this week. But what does any of it mean? I’ll try to work it out as I go along.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time is for Wii and Nintendo DS, and the two versions are compatible in multiplayer. Reviews: quite good.

Driving action thing Wheelman is out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. It’s got Vin Diesel in, which is surely a guarantee of quality. There’s a film on the way too, but that’s based on the game, rather than the other way around. Which is surely a guarantee of quality. Reviews: moderate.

Afro Samurai and RTS Stormrise are both out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The former is exactly what it sounds like – a game about a samurai with an afro. Fair enough.

I’ll be interested to see how Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 goes down on Wii. Reviews have been pretty darned positive – a higher average score than other formats on Game Rankings, indeed.

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is without reviews, so you know what that means. Monsters vs Aliens is your obligatory film tie-in, and with the film out this weekend should do well in the coming week or two.

There are a couple of Mushroom Men games, which I don’t quite understand. Platform games by the looks of it: 2D for DS (reviews: bad), 3D for Wii (reviews: moderate).

Don King Boxing sounds like fun, but I doubt it’s Don King doing the boxing, so it’s probably less fun in reality.

Finally, let’s dip into the file marked ‘DS games never to be mentioned’, and mention Imagine Doctor and Imagine My Restaurant. Splendid both, I’m sure.

It’s the Game Developers Conference in America’s own San Francisco at the moment, and real websites remembered that King of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, gave a keynote today.

It’s all right though, it doesn’t look like much of significance happened. Especially for game developers, who should surely have been the target audience. Never mind.

But! There’s a new Zelda game for the Nintendo DS on the way. It’s called The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and features a steam train. This is excellent news, as my rubbish screengrab shows (scroll down this page to watch the video).

From what Nintendo is saying – which isn’t much, as far as I can see – it’s going to be an awful lot like Phantom Hourglass, albeit with the aforementioned steam train. STEAM TRAIN. I’m not entirely sure why it looks so cool to my eyes, but it does.

It’s hard to imagine a more successful game, if you judge success by the extent to which the developers achieved what they set out to do. I am of course assuming that I know what the developers set out to do. But in this case I think that’s safe: make an unreasonably entertaining light gun game.

Six. That’s the number of new entries in the chart this week. WWE Legends of Wrestlemania is the highest ranking at #4, followed by GTA: Chinatown Wars at #6. Then there’s Singstar Queen at #22, Scrabble Interactive 2009 at #27, MadWorld at a not very impressive #34 and MySims Party at #35. Resident Evil 5 continues to hold #1.

Brain Training and Puzzler Collection have both flown up the chart, suggesting that some lucky mums received a DS for Mother’s Day. They’re now at #8 and #12 respectively.

Halo Wars has fallen from #9 to #19 while SOCOM: Confrontation also drops from #11 to #29. Street Fighter IV is on the rise though, from #13 to #7. I finally picked up a copy last week. It’s ace, apart from being chucked back to the character select screen after loosing a fight.

Resistance: Retribution takes #1 in the PSP chart, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templers goes in at #23 in the Wii chart while Henry Hatsworth doffs his hat at #15 in the DS chart. How very gentlemanly!

Coke have opened their wallet, pulled out £25,000, and blown it on Xbox Live points.

They’re going to be given away on Xbox Live next week, as part as a ‘Happiness Factory’ promotion on a first come, first served, basis. It does look like you’ll have to go through the Coke Zone website to claim them though.

With plenty of new games arriving on Xbox Live this month, including The Watchmen, Peggle, Outrun Online Arcade, Uno Rush and The Dishwasher: Dead Samuari the deal is a decently timed one.

If you give a man a plough and a bag of seeds instead of a loaf of bread he can feed himself for months. Give a man a fishing rod instead of a fish and he can catch his own food. Give a man a copy of Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon to review and he’ll wonder where several hours have gone. Not all of it was enjoyable, mind you.

Like the previous Harvest Moon games, tolling away on a patch of raggedy land to create a fertile farm full of fruit and fortune is rewarding. The town has plenty of shops to spend your sweat-covered cash on while the townsfolk themselves are a curious bunch, often mid-conversation as you enter their homes and happy to let you eavesdrop. If watering and sowing crops starts getting laborious then you can also pick up a rod and go fishing.

This Week’s Games

That headline is a apt one as both MadWorld on Wii and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure on DS are out this week. They’ve both been getting reviews scores of around 7 or 8, making them worth a look. Shame the same can’t be said about Castlevania: Judgment, which got very grave reviews when it was released in the US.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is arguably the biggest game out this week though – scores have been nothing short of brilliant, with a perfect 10 from Eurogamer and the Official Nintendo Magazine dishing out 94%. To counterattack on PSP there’s Resistance: Retribution, which sees the series go third-person. Game are doing a collector’s edition which comes with four postcards and a downloadable theme.

If none of that lot takes your fancy then there’s also Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Directors Cut on Wii. The developers say that if it sells well then the sequel and Beneath a Steel Sky will get the Wii make-over treatment too.

Next week: Afro Samuari, Don King Boxing, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust (only £16.99 to pre-order at Game), Monsters vs Aliens, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, The Wheelman and Stormrise.

Titmouse Games have announced their first videogame – Seven Haunted Seas. I have absolutely no idea what the game is about. I just wanted to bring the fact that there’s a studio called ‘Titmouse Games’ to the world’s attention.

UK Charts

This week’s chart finally proves that the Resident Evil franchise is no longer symbolic with PlayStation – 55% of Resident Evil 5 copies sold so far have been on Xbox 360 with the remainder on PlayStation 3. It’s #1 in the chart and has become Capcom’s biggest launch ever, outselling the rest of the top 10 titles combined. It also becomes Capcom’s second #1 of the year so far with the first being the magnificent Street Fighter IV.

The rest of the top 10 has had a shuffle – last week’s #1 Empire: Total War drops to #8, Halo Wars falls from #5 to #9 while Killzone 2 goes from #2 to #5. Street Fighter IV is out of the top #10 now, from #7 to #13, but I doubt that Capcom are too bothered.

The apparently average SOCOM: US Navy Seals Confrontation is the next highest new entry at #11, followed by Disney’s DS game Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force at #16. I had a sneaky suspicion that this would do quite well. Sonic and the Black Knight dashes in at #30. It’s not very good, so with a bit of luck it won’t go bounding high next week. This week’s biggest faller is Silent Hill: Homecoming, which goes from #13 to #39.

In the single format charts Persona 4 takes the top of the PlayStation 2 while Championship Paintball 2009 arrives at #33 in the Xbox 360 chart. Splat!

This Week’s Games

So, Resident Evil 5. It hasn’t turned out to be as good as everybody hoped, but it’s still worth a play through. It will undoubtedly be #1 next week though, regardless of the bounty of 7/10 review scores. Another game out this week that hasn’t scored as high as it might have done is Sonic and the Black Knight on Wii. Even Famitsu gave it a cussing and they’re usually pretty generous.

MySims Party also slips out on Wii and DS this week, along with a game based on the TV-series Grey’s Anatomy. The Wii version is only £16.99 at Game, which probably tells you all you need to know. If you are looking for a new game on the cheap though then take a look at the lovely Persona 4 on PlayStation 2, currently £14.96 on Amazon. It scored very highly when it was released in the US late last year. Metal Gear Solid 4 also goes cheap this week on PlayStation 3 with an early Platinum re-release.

There’s a fair bit out on DS too, although the only thing that will be of interest to anybody over the age of 12 is Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, the sequel to Puzzle Quest: Warlords.

Next week: MadWorld, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Resistance: Retribution, WWE Legends of Wrestlemania, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Directors Cut, Castlevania- Judgement, EA Sports Football Academy and the apparently quite good Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. Phew!

Already people are making a shocking realisation, that Resident Evil 5 is quite similar to Resident Evil 4. Surely they should have cottoned on by now, it’s obviously not trying to reinvent the wheel. Yes, it’s true: Resident Evil 5 still sees you shooting zombies (well, “infected”) in much the same manner as the rest of the series, however this time they’re African zombies, and you get to kill them co-operatively with a friend. I don’t know whether to be outraged or overjoyed.

A lazy person might just call this Resident Evil 4 Goes Safari. Fair enough, they wouldn’t be far wrong. Despite sticking to its roots like a grumpy old bastard – the control scheme is still shite, although you can now strafe with the analogue stick – a number of little changes have seeped into the game, making it much faster and slicker than before, yet still immediately familiar to the sorry old cunts who resist change. It’s this kind of pondering, barely noticeable change that makes Japanese game developers the makers of Japanese games.