The press release announcing Toy Story 3 was only issued back in February, just four short months before the game itself. With such a short space of time between being announced and being released I feared that this would be a rush job. The end result though is a package that’s both fun and imaginative. See – sometimes it’s nice to be proven wrong.

A makeshift board game – designed by porcine money box Hamm, no less – provides a hub while the game is set as a retrospective after the film. The story mode takes around 3 hours to finish and covers the key-events plus a few extra levels for good measure, such as a chance to play through the Buzz Lightyear videogame seen at the start of Toy Story 2. Two other levels are set in a little girl’s imagination, including one in a bedroom that starts to flood with coffee that has to be quickly avoided. Woody, Jess and Buzz can be swapped between with a touch of button and have their own unique skill – the junkyard level is a highlight as it makes good use of skill swapping and is actually quite clever in places. Should you ever get stuck at any point in the game a hint can be given, and there are also infinite lives on hand to stop the kiddies from getting too frustrated. This doesn’t really do any favours to the difficulty level, mind.

Also available to access from the hub is the significantly longer lasting Wild West themed toy box mode. The idea here is to turn a dusty ghost town into a thriving society by completing missions, buying new buildings and purchasing playthings. There’s a relaxed pace with no pressure to do anything apart from stopping the occasional bank robbery and to defend the town from random pixie/gargoyle/robot invasions. The more buildings built, the more things there are to see and do – building the newspaper office, for instance, adds a camera to your inventory and a list of things to find and snap. A goo machine lets you change the size of objects while every building – and also the town’s inhabitants – can be customised with parts hidden around the environments.

Once a sports car has been purchased a brilliantly designed stunt park becomes available and there are countless hidden things to find, like the ability to rather sadistically drop kick the Lego-style townsfolk through the air. To see and do everything on the checklist will take an incredible amount of hours – easily the same amount that you’d have to sink into a decent RPG.

Ignoring the shortcomings of the story mode, I think this will be remembered as a genuinely decent movie tie-in for quite a long time to come.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why Mr. Potato Head isn’t featured it’s because EA currently hold the rights for their Hasbro Game Night series. It isn’t a massive blow – who wants to play as a talking vegetable anyway?

This Week’s Games

Move along PlayStation and Xbox owners – there’s nothing for you to see here. There isn’t a great deal out for owners of Nintendo’s consoles either though, so there’s no need to be jealous.

THQ’s The Last Airbender for Wii and DS is the biggest game of the week and is based on the upcoming movie that doesn’t look too bad at all. The movie itself is based on the Avatar cartoon, but I’m guessing they weren’t allowed to call the movie Avatar because of that other movie. US magazine Nintendo Power appears to be the only place to review it so far. They gave the Wii version 6/10 and the DS version 7.5/10.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice on DS is another movie tie-in, based on a Disney movie that looks like shameless clone of the Harry Potter saga. Then there’s Art Academy: Painting and Drawing, which is being published by Nintendo themselves.

Chicken Blaster on Wii rounds off this week’s releases. The publisher’s website has been showing a “coming soon” page for months, so they clearly don’t want to world to see what tat they’re planning to publish.

Next week: Madden NFL 11 on PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 and Family Gameshow on Wii.

The name Ed Fries might ring a bell with you – he was the vice president of publishing at Microsoft during much of the original Xbox’s lifecycle. He has worked at several companies since then but has recently finished his arguably greatest achievement – bringing Halo to the humble Atari 2600.

Inspired by speaking at a small video game conference and also by reading the book Racing the Beam, he set about creating the game from scratch turning for the chaps at AtariAge for help whenever he got stuck. You can read the full story of how the game come about here.

And you can also play Halo 2600 in your browser.

Hint: The gun is located on the first screen above you.

UK Charts

Activision Blizzard’s PC RTS Starcraft II has gone straight to #1, selling more copies in the UK in just one week than the original’s entire UK lifetime sales. Chart Track tells us that the original – which was released in 1998 – entered the chart at #24 and that it wasn’t even the highest selling PC game that week (Lucasarts’ Star Wars Supremacy was). So, well done to Blizzard for proving that PC gaming isn’t quite dead yet.

Toy Story 3, Red Dead Redemption, Dance on Broadway and LEGO Harry Potter round off the top 5 best selling games of last week. Dragon Quest XII has risen two places, going from #9 to #7, but Crackdown 2 has now left the top 10 dropping from #10 to #19.

It looks like the poor old PlayStation 2 is fading fast – this week Chart Track could only find seven games to compile a PlayStation 2 chart out of. There are a few releases still lined up for the system though including FIFA 11 and Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest.

A week ago videogame retailers were reportedly annoyed with the £129.99 price tag that Microsoft has whacked onto the Kinect. Many chains were expecting it to sell for less than £99.99 while a few even said that if it sells for any more than £100 it’ll flop.

Seven days later and their tune has suddenly changed. Despite a higher price than expected, retailers claim that pre-orders are flooding in with advance orders now expected to topple half a million in the UK by launch.

Grainger Games’ sales director Phil Moore had this to say: “The feedback we’ve had so far from our customers is that they feel the price is appropriate to the product. We have taken a large number of deposits for Kinect already and it is set to become our biggest pre-order to date. This tells us the device’s appeal has not been affected by the price point”

Sarah Jasper from The Hut Group agreed: “Based on our orders thus far, customers are clearly excited by this offering and price – and quite rightly so.”

In order to drum up even more pre-orders Mircosoft are taking the Kinect on tour round the UK. Dates are as follows:

Alton Towers – 31st July– 31st August
London Zoo – 7th – 22nd August
The Thames Festival in London – 11th – 12th September
Chessington World of Adventures – 21st – 31st October
Clothes Show Live in Birmingham (NEC) – 2nd – 8th December

Microsoft will also be setting up shop in Covent Garden which opens tomorrow (31st July) and will be open daily 10am-8pm. Rumours of Bill Gates making an appearance to serve cups of tea are currently unfounded.

This Week’s Games

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has been getting fans of the series all emotional – one chap in Singapore who waited in line for 24 hours allegedly burst into tears upon being handed his copy. Reviews suggest it has been worth the wait – the average review score is currently a massive 96%. A version for consoles? We can only dream of such a thing.

Alas, this week is nowhere near as eventful for console owners – the budget priced Reel Fishing: Angler’s Dream and Hidden Mysteries: Titanic are available on Wii while Midas have re-released a load of PSP games under Sony’s new PSP Essentials banner. It seems slightly pointless to me as they were all budget games to begin with anyway.

Next week: THQ’s The Last Airbender, Chicken Blaster on Wii, Disney tie-in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Art Academy: Painting and Drawing on DS.

UK Charts

There isn’t a single game in the top 10 chart this week that’s in the same place it was last week. Mostly notably, the jolly decent Toy Story 3 has risen from #5 to #1, DS-exclusive Dragon Quest IX enters at #10 while Crackdown 2 drops all the way from #1 to #10.

Despite not being very good both Naughty Bear and Sniper: Ghost Warrior have risen a few places – they were at #21 and #22 respectively but they’re now at #20 and #17. Transformers: War for Cyberton has driven up a few places too, going from #35 to #30.

There’s nothing massively major going on in the single format charts, although I am surprised to see F1 2009 at #8 in the Wii chart given that it’s almost eight months old.

The credibility of British red-top newspaper The Daily Star was knocked today after they were forced to make an apology to Rockstar for running a story claiming that Grand Theft Auto Rothbury was in development.

The unbelievable thing is that they went out and collected comments from victims of the recent atrocious crimes in Rotherbury, without checking with Rockstar to see if the game was indeed real first.

That apology in full:

On 21 July we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.

We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.

We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.

It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.

We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.

At least a charity is going to benefit from this balls-up.

This Week’s Games

If you’re lucky enough to be going away on holiday this year then Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies on DS is an essential purchase for those long waits at the airport. It’s about as good as RPGs get, with just about everybody giving it 9/10.

On Wii this week there’s Free Running, which was first released on PlayStation 2 way back in 2007. If you thought the best bits of the Prince of Persia games was the wall running bits then it might be of interest. It’s only £14.99 on Play.

North American Hunting Extravaganza is also out on Wii and is making me wonder what’s worse – hunting games or dancing games? It must be a close call. Anyway, this one looks like it should be avoided – it only has a 20% average review score. And if you play it, you’ll make baby Jesus cry.

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore on DS rounds up this week’s releases. It’s a movie tie-in, so obviously it’s going to be awful.

Next week: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Reel Fishing: Angler’s Dream, We Sing Encore and Titanic Hidden Mysteries. Huzzah!

UK Charts

Usually we grumble about movie tie-ins selling well, but word has it that Toy Story 3 is surprisingly inventive so we have no issues with it entering at #5 in the chart. But what’s this? Dance on Broadway has gone from #4 to #2, pushing LEGO Harry Potter to #3. That’s a grumble right there, that is.

Crackdown 2 holds onto the top chart position for a second week running while a surge titles have shot back up, presumably due to the release of the new Xbox 360. Alan Wake has gone from #23 to #11, Bioshock 2 from #24 to #12 and Split/Second up from #22 to #16. Forza 3 makes a re-appearance at #39 too.

Transformers: War for Cyberton is the biggest faller of the week, dropping from #19 to #35. If it doesn’t manage to outsell last year’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tie-in then there really isn’t any justice in the world.

When was Dead Rising 2 originally due to be released? I pre-ordered my copy a good six months ago and recall it knocking around on release lists months before that. It can’t be too far off from being finished now, as Capcom have revealed two different special edition packs.

The pack above is for North America only and includes a two-disc steelbook case, a Zombrex syringe pen, prescription notepad, prospectus sales brochure, safety card and a 48-page hardback Dead Rising 2 art book. The PlayStation 3 version comes with a Blu-Ray disc featuring a high definition making-of movie and with a voucher for a downloadable XMB theme. Xbox 360 owners meanwhile with get the same making-of movie on DVD, plus an 83-minute Zombrex Dead Rising Sun movie which is directed by Mega-Man creator Keiji Inafune.

$80 to you, my big American friend.

The European SE pack is slightly less exciting, containing only a zombie action figure (with two accessories – a Servbot head and a traffic cone) and a bonus disk which presumably contains the aforementioned making-of. I searched on all the big name online retailers but couldn’t find anybody offering it to pre-order yet.

If it arrives at retail for any less than £49.99 though, I’ll eat my own brain.

This Week’s Games

The new slimmer Xbox 360 is officially available from this Friday. I’ve had a quick scout of the big online UK retailers – Game, Play and GameStation are all sticking to the £199.99 RRP. ShopTo are selling it for £184.85 while Amazon has it for a fiver or so more at £189.99. Remember, if you’re “upgrading” from an existing Xbox 360 you’ll need the Hard Drive Transfer Kit to transfer all your saved games and stuff.

I can’t fathom why Microsoft didn’t push Crackdown 2 back a week to release alongside it, as the only Xbox 360 game out this week is Toy Story 3: The Videogame. I watched a video of it on Xbox Live and, amazingly, it doesn’t look too bad – as well as a story mode there’s a sandbox-style toy town with various challenges and pointless things to play around with. It’s out on PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, DS and PC too.

The PSP version is also part of a new PSP 3000 bundle, available for £129 on Play.

Puzzle Quest 2 on DS may or may not be the only other game out this week – MCV says this week, Play says 24th July while Amazon says 10th September. Gah!

Next week: Dragon Quest IX, North American Hunting Extravaganza, Free Running and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.