The release of Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have done much for PlayStation 3 console sales, but has for some reason sent the value of older Metal Gear Solids sky-rocketing.

Going by the current prices on Amazon Marketplace and eBay, the GameCube-exclusive Twin Snakes has been exchanging hands for in excess of £50, the PSone original for over £25 and the Substance version of Metal Gear Solid 2 for upwards of £45. eBay auctions for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence have also been ending for around £60, while Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel on PSP has been selling for £30. Even Metal Gear Solid 2 - which can be found for £1.99 in Gamestation - has jumped up to £8 on Amazon Marketplace.

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.

Now these are cool: officially licensed Nintendo DS Star Wars lightsaber stylus. The three pack is set to retail at $8 (about £4 in real money), whereas the two pack costs $17 (£8) and actually light up. Give one to a pal and have a mini lightsaber battle!

Wired’s Chris Kohler was given the chance to play through Too Human - a game which started out as an RPG for the PSone before moving over to GameCube then finally Xbox 360. The gaming press have recently been billing it as Diablo for the Xbox 360 generation, but it would seem that calling it an epic would be off the mark. In fact, Kohler claims that it can be finished in around 10 hours, and ends abruptly with a cliffhanger.

“It’s ironic, considering that one of my favorite “sanity effect” tricks that (ahem) Eternal Darkness pulls on you is when the game suddenly stops after a few hours and you see a message that reads something like, “Thank you for playing! Continue your adventure in Eternal Darkness 2, coming soon.” Five years later, Too Human does the same thing — except seriously.”

But don’t go jumping the gun just yet - Wired’s preview later reveals that there is a great deal of replay value.

“By the time you finish the campaign, Baldur will likely only be at level 25 of what I believe is a maximum of 50. He’ll have some decent armor and weapons, but there will be lots more out there. You can begin a new campaign with the same character you finished with, and the enemies will scale up accordingly so the challenge can continue. You can even jump into alternate versions of each level with more and different enemies and drops. You could also, of course, pick a different character class for even more replay value. And there’s the two-player online cooperative mode, which I haven’t tried because there is only one of me.”

He also praises the story telling, the notable lack of loading screens and the smooth frame-rate. Nonetheless, it looks like Too Human could be set to receive some very critical reviews when its finally released in August.

Out with the old, in with the new. That is, the four new entries into the top 10: Super Smash Bros. Brawl takes the top of the chart, Battlefield: Bad Company at #2, Big Beach Sports at an absurdly high #5, and Beijing 2008 at #9. Then at #14 there’s Guitar Hero Aerosmith and The Bourne Conspiracy at #15. What’s amuses me is that Big Beach Sports has managed to outsell even Metal Gear Solid 4, which is currently at #6.

More new entries? Oh yes: My Health Coach on DS at #27, Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath at #31, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at #36 and Kung Fu Panda at #40. The Incredible Hulk game is now completely out of the top 40. Iron Man is still around though, but probably not for much longer.

Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii are back in the top 10 at #4 and #7 respectively. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - which was at #10 last week - has fallen to #23, but that’s not as bad as Alone in the Dark which has already dropped from #3 to #17. Poor Atari!

Summer of Sonic, in the nuttiest of shells, is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan convention that’s being backed by Sega Europe. It’s being held 9th August at the Covent Garden Dragon Hall Trust in Central London and is free to attend. Blue hair dye is optional.

As well as some poor sap dressed up as Sonic, there will also be the chance to play Sonic games of yore (including a Sonic 2 contest with prizes), see some rare Sonic merchandise, read issues of various Sonic comics and play a new Sonic game - presumably Sonic Unleashed. Or maybe Bioware’s Sonic Chronicles.

The dedicated website can be found here. Maybe you could get them to run a Sonic 3 contest instead. Sonic 2’s two-player mode was a glitchy mess. Great music though.

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.

Five years after its US release, European Wii owners finally get to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. A word of warning, though - people have been experiencing the same problem that occurred with the US version. It’s all to do with fact that it’s the first game to come on a dual-layered Wii disk - if there is any dust on the laser inside the Wii then it’ll struggle to read it. The solution? Send your Wii off to Nintendo to be cleaned. Or you could try sticking a cotton bud in there I suppose. Hopefully that won’t break it.

The Guitar Hero milking continues with Guitar Hero Aerosmith on all four major formats, and it would probably be best to buy Battlefield: Bad Company now if you’re interested. Wait too long and everybody playing online will be amazing at it and make you look like a fool. I’ve found that out the hard way by recently picking up Shadowrun on Xbox 360 cheaply.

The Bourne Conspiracy has been getting some good reviews (apart from EDGE, who gave it a 4) while THQ’s Big Beach Sports on Wii can be found for ridiculously cheap on the internet (£12.99 at Play). Cricket is one of the sports included and you can connect a DS and use it to customise your characters. Reviews haven’t been too shabby.

Two of interest on DS this week - Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS - see?) and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Certain online retailers (like Play again) are offering a neat Dragon Sword stylus with Ninja Gaiden.

Activision supply this week’s movie tie-in - Kung Fu Panda. Apparently it’s not that bad. There’s also Wacky Races on both Wii and DS. Oddly, the Wii version is viewed from a side-on perspective. It’s probably a bit rubbish.

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.

Wondering why Rick Moranis won’t be supplying his high-pitched vocal talent for the upcoming Ghostbusters game? Sierra’s Ben Borth has the answer:

“He made so much money off of Honey I Shrunk The Kids that he retired. He just doesn’t want to work anymore.”

Just so you know, like.