UK Chart

With little in the way of new releases at this time of the year, it’s just a bit of a shuffle for the chart this week. Wii Fit finds itself back on top of the pile, with last week’s #1 Soulcalibur IV down to #2. Mario Kart Wii doesn’t involved in the shuffling fun, sticking boringly at #3. Big Beach Sports is up one to #4, Wii Play up two to #5.

Pretending to be a rock star is still popular, with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock up five to #6, and Guitar Hero: On Tour down one to #7. Mario & Sonic - unmoving at #8 - remains more popular than the official Beijing 2008 game - though that rises seven to #13, and may well keep moving in that direction.

Puzzler Collection for DS enters the top 40 in its second week, at #34. As for this week’s new releases: the DS version of Race Driver: GRID makes no impact on the Nintendo DS chart, and indeed the game drops four places in the all formats chart; The Mummy III takes #7 in the PlayStation 2 chart, which might not be much of an achievement these days; and there’s no placing for obscure PlayStation 2 RPG Growlanser.

We all love not news - those stories that tell us nothing at all. They’re in all areas of the specialist media, but I think games websites still do it best.

But I was disappointed to find little on American gaming sites - just IGN telling us that Left 4 Dead isn’t coming to PlayStation 3. Neither, presumably, to Commodore 64.

There’s not even that much on this side of the Atlantic. Play.tm helpfully report that there won’t be any driving section in the next Bond game.

Eurogamer pulls its weight though. We’ve got Hitler not appearing in the next Wolfenstein; This is Vegas not being released this year; and best of all, exclusive word from Sony that there isn’t yet a European release date for SOCOM: Confrontation. I don’t know how I’ll fit in not doing all these things.

There’s a Wikipedia article dedicated to Breakout clones - of which Arkanoid is the most notable. It’s hard to say what the first such game I played was. I definitely remember playing it on some sort of PC or Mac thing at a friend’s house when I was quite young, and I’ve still got Alleyway for the Game Boy somewhere. In any case, I’ve always loved it, to the point that I wanted - and probably still want, for that matter - a Quickshot Supervision, purely for Crystball. In fact, it’s the only properly ‘retro’ game I can really tolerate. But I can’t quite articulate why. Which is going to make this a super-excellent review, isn’t it?

Attempting to be remotely subjective though, Arknoid DS has at best niche appeal. If you’ve played a Breakout clone before, then effectively you’ve played this. There are some bells and whistles, but they’re not very loud. Little pixie bells and whistles, if you will.

I wanted to wait until I’d seen the film to play THQ’s WALL-E tie-in. I wasn’t so interested in the quality of the game - Matt’s covered that - but rather how it relates to the film.

The answer: tenuously.

It starts with the same opening sequence - WALL-E trundling around, compacting scrap, building structures, interacting with his cockroach friend. This nicely highlights the embarrassing inferiority of the game’s visuals compared to the film. Of course it’s not going to be as beautiful as Pixar’s original, but it really doesn’t look very nice at all. FMV doesn’t have to be your enemy, THQ.

Then it all gets terribly arbitrary. Admittedly I’ve not played it for an awfully long time, but I was quickly introduced to a variety of cubes of scrap - which WALL-E forms in his metal tummy. There are standard cubes, but also heavy ones, and cubes that carry some sort of electrical current.

This is pure artistic license on THQ’s part, though not unreasonably so - it opens up plenty of staple video game puzzles. But it starts to get ridiculous when the scrap for the ’special’ cubes comes from vending machines. And WALL-E’s solar panels are recharged at special points where the sun has been magnified. It’s not only completely made-up for the game, but - as far as I can work out - unnecessarily so, and not really in-keeping with the film.

To be fair, the early parts of the film - with WALL-E just getting about on his own - can’t have been easy to mould into a game, but it just seems like such a cursory effort, and I can’t help feeling that there are going to be a lot of vaguely confused kids.

“Nice video / Shame about the song.” That’s probably the only thing I can remember from Not the Nine O’Clock News, which isn’t bad considering it was first broadcast when I was between the ages of -2 and 0 years old. It rather sums up echochrome though, which looked simply divine when it was shown in video form last year. A black and white puzzle game where changing perspective changes reality - it looked interesting, new, mature.

But I should have seen it coming. The black and white, the all lowercase title - it’s massively poncy, and that’s not often a good sign. What should have been a minimalist, mind-bending, but perversely intuitive puzzler, is actually just a fiddly little bugger.

Nintendo are effectively upgrading the Wii Remote. This immediately sounds warning bells: anything non-standard inevitably means that not everyone has the same equipment - and that’s the essential assumption for console games.

But it’s okay, because the Wii MotionPlus - as it’s being called - will be included with Wii Sports Resort. Also included will be a Wii Remote Jacket. Bargain? Probably. Amongst the new stuff in the game will be Dog Disc, Sword Play and Power Cruising, which looks like Wave Race. Will it better the original Wii Sports? Possibly not.

Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii looks like more of the same old, but I’ve bought it twice before, and chances are I’ll buy it again. There’s an “urban city area” to visit, but you won’t be able to convene with online friends there - a shame, but very much in line with Nintendo’s policy of shielding people from each other online. You’ll again be able to visit friends’ towns though, and moreover talk to them there with the WiiiSpeak microphone. It’s not going to be a headset though; rather it will allow whole rooms to speak to each other. Hopefully it’ll be better than most conference phones I’ve used.

I like the sound of Wii Music. The Wii Remote and Nunchuck will be used to pretend you’re playing everything from guitar and violin to steel drum and cowbell. COWBELL! What sounds great to me, though, is “a pressure-free musical playground where there are no mistakes.” That’s right, it’s about fun. Can I get a hell yeah?

Not much for the DS, to be honest. There’s Japanese mad music tappy thing Rhythm Heaven, which certainly looks mental. Oh, and an exclusive Grand Theft Auto game - Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

There are videos and all sorts over on Nintendo’s E3 website.

UK Chart

Just to prove that I’m utterly rubbish, my prediction that Unreal Tournament III for Xbox 360 might do very well in the chart has not exactly come true. It is the highest new entry, but that’s only at #18.

It’s as you were at the top of the chart, with Super Smash Bros: Brawl still at #1, followed by Battlefield: Bad Company and Lego Indiana Jones. Big Beach Sports moves up one to #4, and Beijing 2008 rises from #9 to #5. The Olympic goodness extends to Mario & Sonic’s attempt, which jumps three back into the top ten at #8.

Buzz! Quiz TV for PlayStation 3 enters at #22; Pokemon Mystery Dungeon enters at #30 and #35 in its Time and Darkness incarnations respectively. echochrome doesn’t even manage to get into the PSP top 20; similarly no room for either of Square-Enix’s retro revamps in the Nintendo DS top 40.

With the film’s release, Kung Fu Panda’s second week on sale is a significant improvement, moving up from #40 to #9. Expect something similar to happen to WALL-E - new this week but not in the top 40 - when it hit cinemas in a couple of weeks.

This Week’s Games

It’s a good week for handhelds, if you’re looking through my eyes. Needless to say, I am looking through my eyes.

What’s good about it? Well, echochrome for PSP for one thing. It’s a black and white puzzler all about perspective - if two parts of the maze aren’t joined, then rotate the camera until they look like they’re joined, and they are joined. Have a look at the video we posted about a year ago and you’ll get the idea. In short, it looks ace, and indeed has gone down very well.

The other handheld highlight for me is Arkanoid DS. Arkanoid, Breakout, Gerald Ford - call it what you like, it’s my favourite ‘retro’ game by far, and thus I am quite excited by Square-Enix’s new version. It’s not gone down as well as their other retro update also out today, Space Invaders Extreme, but that’s no massive surprise.

The big multiformat release is WALL-E. The film - it’s a Pixar thing - is being given big big love; the game has been more moderately received.

Buzz! Quiz TV for PlayStation 3 has been going down very well with reviewers, as has Unreal Tournament III on Xbox 360. The combination of Xbox 360, FPS and summer may mean it does very well in the chart next week.

Well, maybe. The Hoff has been talking to BBC Radio 1, and at the end of the resulting Newsbeat story, we learn that he “remained tight-lipped about his latest project, which involves a game.”

What could it be? Probably something less interesting than I hope. Because I hope it’s a new SpongeBob SquarePants game from THQ, but based around David Hasselhoff in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Which is admittedly unlikely.

To be fair, it might not even be a video game.

So it’s another racing game. How original. Another racing game from Codemasters. How original. Another racing game from Codemasters in the Race Driver series. HOW ORIGINAL.

Ah, but Race Driver: GRID is original. Sort of. A bit. Let’s put it like this: it’s original like Halo was original. That is to say, little tweaks to a very familiar game which make things manifestly better.

Like early on, when you can choose how you are referred to by the voiceover lady. ‘Jake’ was a choice, and for that Codemasters receive bonus points. Anyway, there are loads of them, so if you can’t find one you like, then you’re an idiot.

If you’ve got Stars in your Club Nintendo account, go and log in to the Nintendo website and have a check, because any older than 24 months are going to expire today, like some sort of loyalty scheme supernova.

Your best bet is to exchange them for Wii Points, on a different Nintendo website. But a warning if, like me, you’ve not used it before: it’s a right pain in the arse.

The system is stupid: even if your Wii Shop Channel and Club Nintendo accounts are linked, you still have to type in a 16 digit code on the Wii Shop Channel after getting your points from the website. Oh, and Wii Points from that website are of limited availability.

A tip though: it looks like they’re being added today at about 21 minutes past the hour - they were earlier, anyway. Yes, I have been keeping a close eye on it. A load of Wii Points Card 100s were added at 1121, and gone by 1135. It was Wii Points Card 300s at 1221, and they went even quicker. Then it was back to the 100s for 1321.

Also, you can only get one Wii Points Card per day. I’ve grabbed a couple of 300s and a 100 since Friday, but I’m still going to have 200 Stars expire. If we use the Wii Points Card 2000 RRP of £14.99, that’s about 37p I’m down.

I could get some shitty wallpaper from the Stars Catalogue, but I think I’ll probably just not bother. After all, I got a free Boots meal deal at lunchtime, so I’m still well up on the day.

Shirley Shirley bo-birley
Banana-fana fo-firley
Fe-fi mo-mirley
Shirley!

That’s The Name Game by Shirley Ellis, and this week I have been nothing short of enraptured by the names of games in the gaming news.

There have been those that have made me want to rip my own face off. Activision’s Dancing with the Stars: Get Your Dance On! sounds like literally the worst thing ever: a celebrity dancing reality show tie-in. Jesus wept. My Dress-Up from Oxygen Games helps fuel my despair in the Nintendo DS’s line-up, and The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff is just astonishing, even for EA.

But there has been good, too. Major Minor’s Majestic March can’t be a bad thing, and when it’s from Majesco and involves “multimedia musician Masaya Matsuura” (out of PaRappa the Rapper), there’s enough alliteration to bring joy to the entire universe.

The name Guinness World Records: The Videogame confuses me more than anything. The press release backing up the title doesn’t help matters when it says that you will be able to, “grow the longest fingernails ever seen; to walk a tightrope across the Grand Canyon; or even eat a jumbo jet”. What?

And finally, surely every British person is surrounded by a warm glow when there’s news of MMORPG Asda Story. If only it was what we think it is.