Only one for Xbox 360 this week: Crash Time. It’s another one of Activision’s mysterious budget efforts… which is probably all you need to know about its quality.

Next week: Silent Hill Origins on PlayStation 2 and Dr. Who Top Trumps!

Except of course I’m lying. There are approximately as many brain training games for the DS as there are atoms in the average mug of tea. You can already train yourself in other ways too, and now you can train to be a ninja!

Well, not quite. This is, in effect, Reflex Training. But dressed as a ninja, and taking itself far too seriously.

The mini-games – including nabbing flies with chopsticks, poking fireflies, and slashing bad guys with a katana – are more tolerable than I’d imagined. They’re basic and re-used ad infinitum, but that’s to be expected from this sort of thing – and it’s not really a great problem if you do just play it for ten minutes every day. After all, they’re tests of reflexes, not in depth adventures.

The periodic belt tests throw a selection of mini-games at you without notice, which is sort of nice in a sub-Wario Ware kind of way. And these actually grade you, which is handy, as there’s not a mountain of feedback from the standard mini-games.

Though the little talks from your ninja master are moderately impressive in terms of sound clarity, he’s terribly po-faced, and that hardly encourages me to go back to the game day after day. It’s simply more fun training my brain.

The only proper new entry is Sega’s rubbish Iron Man at #11. Forza 2 and Viva Pinata are both back in the chart though, presumably as they’re bundled with the Xbox 360s people have been buying to play GTA IV on.

“She was devastated to be called fat,” a family member said over at DISBoards. “We had to work hard to convince her that she isn’t. I know it is just a game but seriously we already have to worry about young girls starving themselves to look like the magazine models and now we have a game that tells them they’re fat.”

Surely though that would just compel them to play Wii Fit a bit more? And did anybody feel insulted when Brain Training told them they had the mind of an 80 year old?

Whereas Nintendo have let their sprightly mascots settle their differences with a spot of fisticuffs in the Super Smash Bros series, Sega have instead opted for a friendly game of tennis. The term ‘superstars’ is pushing it a bit though. Sure, everybody knows who Sonic and Tails are but Gum from Jet Set Radio? Ulala from the super-obscure Space Channel 5? Heck, Alex Kidd hasn’t been seen since 1990! Then again, Sega couldn’t really have included a thug from Condemned 2, a chap from Viking: Battle of Asgard and a car from Sega Rally Revo as playable characters.

Like most Wii games developers Sumo have thought to include a number of different control systems. That number is three. You can play it the lazy way like Wii Sports Tennis with the characters automatically running around, leaving you to merely swipe the Wii remote when the ball comes in your direction. Or you can control the characters yourself with the nunchuk, or do away with the nunchuk altogether and hold the Wii remote on its side like an NES pad. Which of course means backwards digital control. The problem is that all three are sluggish - you never feel completely in control as you did in the Virtua Tennis series. You do have plenty of influence over the ball’s direction though, not just when serving but in mid-air too.

Various tournaments are available from the off, but the Planet Superstars mode takes up the bulk of it. Here you’ll find dozens of mini-games each themed around various Sega titles of yore (Chu Chu Rocket! Space Harrier! Golden Axe!) complete with soundtracks ripped from their subject matter and a range of unlockable goodies. Don’t get too excited - they’re mostly additional soundtracks. No playable retro games or such sadly.

The Super Monkey Ball section includes knocking giant spheres into holes with some well-aimed shots, while the Jet Set Radio mini-games involve collecting the different coloured spray cans to fill in tags on the other side of the court. Then there’s the jolly fun House of the Dead mode where hoards of zombies have to be knocked over within tight time limits. Thankfully there are a few power-ups on hand including rapid shots, giant balls and triple balls. Sometimes it’s worth thinking about who to pick before tackling said mini-games.

Predictably each character has their own skills - Sonic is the speedy one, NiGHTS the all-rounder while Eggman can pull off powerful shots and so fourth. Also, after a decent rally a special move can be pulled off like Monkey Ball’s AiAi lobbing some banana skins on to your turf. It certainly looks better than most multi-format Wii efforts - the NiGHTS court with its lovely water effects is particularly alluring. It’s just a shame that some of the mini-games require more luck than skill, and with iffy controls it might be an idea to go for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions instead.

Righto. I recognise that most things in the world are manufactured in China nowadays, however this doesn’t apply to food and drinks. Said products tend to be produced near the market they’re sold in, for a variety of sensible reasons, and China doesn’t have a sparkly clean reputation in regards to food production - indeed, here in Hong Kong, ‘Mainland Chinese Food Danger!’ is pretty much a weekly headline, as we’re informed of yet another suspicious artificial food substance to avoid due to high levels of MSG or lead paint.

So the point is, FpsBrain would never have been produced in China in the first place, unless its producers stupidly thought shipping cans of sugar water halfway around the world made sense. Their press release claiming to “boycott China” as an act of support for Tibet, is essentially self publicising bullshit, because it’s not a boycott at all.

On the positive side, FpsBrain will be donating €1 from every order to the Tibet Initiative Deutschland. It’s not really like Tibet’s got a lack of high profile backing though.

In other news, Games Asylum has revealed to cheering onlookers that we’re boycotting fascist regimes and using only, erm, ourselves, to write these words. Indeed. Ni hao. Ni baba, mama shenti hao ma?

Actually, it’s worse than that: it’s also like Advance Wars all over again. I have absolutely no patience for strategy games. I like to have feedback on my decisions nice and quickly, and I don’t like having too many variables; I hate it when I lose because of a decision I made before the level even started. I just don’t get on with strategy games. It’s not them, it’s me. I know that.

I’ll keep playing Patapon, because it does look lovely, and it is a quality product. But I genuinely can’t play more than one level at a time.

I have been playing Big Brain Academy again though. I gave up on it quite quickly originally, because some of the games within each category are so much easier than others. But someone was talking about how much they like the Wii version, so I dug it out. And I’m in some sort of routine of playing it regularly now, which is jolly good.

But for Patapon and Big Brain Academy, I had to turn on my PSP and Nintendo DS respectively for the first time in a long while. Does anyone know why the PSP loses its charge so badly? They’re both pretty much first generation versions, but my DS keeps its charge over long periods of inactivity, whereas my PSP always has to be recharged. Which is even more annoying when the firmware usually needs updating, and that can’t be done when the battery is low, even if it’s plugged in. Rubbish!

Did you know that if you untangled all of your veins from inside your body and straightened them out, you’d be dead?

The two in question are Sega’s rubbish looking Iron Man for all formats and the Game-exclusive Ultimate Board Games on PlayStation 2, Wii and PSP. The latter features chess, dominoes, battleships, sudoku and twenty others. But no Mouse Trap? For shame.

Next week: Boom Blox, Apollo Justice and Speed Racer.

In the UK alone, it sold 609,000 copies on launch day, making it the fastest selling game in the UK (a 20% sales increase over GTA: San Andreas). It’s expected to sell around 6 million copies worldwide in the first week, which makes for some insanely high profits.

There’s the usual controversy too of course. In Croydon, a man queueing at the midnight launch for GTA IV stabbed a man in the neck. Right…

At the same time, idiots like Jack Thompson are already proclaiming GTA IV evil, something which must be banned, before they had even played it. To quote the man himself;

“Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio.”

Rockstar must be pissing themselves whilst rolling in their piles of cash.