Imagine if every time you wanted to boil the kettle you had to push six or seven buttons, set a timer and then choose a temperature instead of just flicking a switch to set the water boiling. That would be pretty annoying, right? This quirky Pikmin-alike RTS also suffers from being too convolved for its own good.

As the title suggests, Ecolis has an anti-pollution vibe, with idea being to save a forest from destruction by ordering around armies of squirrels and beavers. But whereas Pikmin and Command & Conquer were blessed with simple and effective control systems, Ecolis has been lumbered with a painfully cumbersome way of doing things.

UK Chart

Remember when the chart was full of £1 PC games that Asda was flogging? Something similar has happened. See, Morrisons had quite a good deal on last week - selected new Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games were £25, Wii games £15 and DS games £12. This seems to have had a knock on effect on the chart, with most of the games in the offer shooting up or reappearing. Most notably: Kung Fu Panda back in at #23; Smash Bros Brawl, Off Road, Cooking Guide, Guitar Hero: On Tour, Sports Party, Soul Calibur IV and GTA IV all going up a few places.

The top three has remained the same - Mercenaries 2 on top followed by Tiger Woods 09 and Spore. TNA Impact goes in at #9 despite average review scores, Spore Creatures arrives at #14 in its second week of release, while The Sims 2: Apartment Pets - which apparently sold out on release - is back at #19. Rock Band - which came out on PlayStation 2 and 3 and Wii last week - only manages a poor #30. Also feel sorry for Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, which has slipped from #23 to #40. Too Human is also on the way out dropping from #16 to #38.

There’s a little bit of action in the Xbox 360 chart - Warhammer: Battle March enters at #11, NHL 09 at #15 and Supreme Commander at #25. Ferrari Challenge screeches in at #29 in the Wii chart and something called Spellbound at a lowly #41 in the DS chart.

This Week’s Games

The credit crunch seems to have rubbed off on the gaming world. Supreme Commander is out on Xbox 360 this week for a hefty £29.99. The PC version, which came out over a year and a half ago, can easily be found for around a fiver. Then there’s a belated appearance for Rock Band on Wii, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 which will set you back £130-odd. Isn’t the sequel out soon?

Speaking of belated appearances, the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions of Ferrari Challenge are out this week, while for some reason Activision has decided to release Pimp My Ride on Wii. There are also two very similar sounding DS games out - Picto Image from Sega and Bakushow from Rising Star. They’re both quiz games designed to be played with friends, taking the idea of the built-in Pictochat to another level.

TNA Impact is the biggest release of the week though, and will probably get quite high in the chart. It can’t be any worse than any of the recent WWE Smackdown games.

Next week: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Yakuza 2, and not one but two Mah Jong games for DS.

Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth McFarlane is branching out into animated shorts, with the first an amusing little parody of Super Mario. Sponsored by Burger King!

This about a dog on a gameshow is better still.

I’ve just found out that - for some bizarre reason - EA released Madden NFL 09 on the original Xbox last month. It’s the first game to be released on the deceased system for over a year - the last game was Madden NFL 08 on precisely 14th August 2007. The last PAL release, if you’re interested, was Xiaolin Showdown on 2nd March 2007.

I’m surprised Microsoft still have the facilities to press new Xbox titles, but even more surprised that EA have been kind enough to include online play too. It all seems a bit pointless to me, but then again, even in the UK stores such as Game and Gamestation still sell pre-owned Xbox games.

UK Chart

The top three games in the chart this week are all published by EA - Mercenaries 2: World in Flames at #1, Tiger Woods 09 at #2 and Spore at #3 - but it’s not all good news for the company, with Facebreaker failing to break into the top 40 at all. It’s been universally panned, so this is probably a good thing.

Too Human is already on the slide, dropping from #8 to #16, while Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise clocks in at #23 while Infinite Undiscovery makes a surprise entry at #28.

Nice to see some new decent games make notable entries into in the DS chart - Spore Creatures enters at #12, Final Fantasy IV at #20, Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise at #22 and Civilization Revolution at #45. All of these though have been outsold by the stupidly named Imagine: Teacher, which has leaped a massive 34 places from #40 to #6. Blimey!

8 years in the making, 5 hours to play through from single celled organism to galactic empire…

Half that time was spent in the editor too. A case of a brilliant concept, with lavish development, then bugger all actual game?

It’s not that Spore’s bad (the editor and creature stage is all rather good fun), it’s just tediously simple. The tribal and civilisation stages consist of nothing more than building a few structures, then conquering rival tribes and cities by one of a few simple means (eg; a dance-off). Then repeating that exact same mechanic a few dozen times, until suddenly your species has somehow developed spaceflight. Building your galactic empire, while impressive in scale, ultimately boils down to a similar mechanic - explore solar systems, talk to aliens, ally or conquer them, in the most Fisher Price way possible.

Making a game of “life and the universe” child’s play is quite an achievement in some senses. Will Wright has boiled down life and civilisation to a series of dance-offs and shooting ‘religion beams’ at the unenlightened. Some substance would have been nice though. Oh well. At least the creature creator is quite spiffy.

This Week’s Games

I made a mistake in last week’s new game round up by claiming that Fable II is Microsoft’s next big first party Xbox 360 game. It isn’t, but don’t blame me - Viva Pinata 2: Trouble in Paradise has appeared out of almost nowhere. It’s meant to be good though, as is the DS version - Pocket Paradise - which is also out this week. And if you still can’t get enough of interacting with funny looking critters, SPORE Creatures is out too.

EA is allegedly tightening up their quality assurance, but review scores for both Facebreaker and Mercenaries 2 have been rather poor, including an average 5 from Eurogamer for the latter. IGN liked it though and gave it a score of 8.0. Just don’t go for the PlayStation 2 version, which not only plays worse than the original but somehow manages to look worse.

Not one but two RPGs from Square-Enix are also hitting shelves - Infinite Undiscovery is another welcome RPG for the Xbox 360, while Final Fantasy IV on DS should make a few people happy seeing as it’s less frustrating than the Final Fantasy III remake.

Next week: Rock Band for PlayStations 2 and 3 and Wii, Opoona, TNA Impact, Supreme Commander and more.

To promote today’s release of Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, EA attempted to recreate scenes of a fuel crisis in Venezuela, as found in the game, but in North London. Hands up who thinks that’s a good idea. The only people to put their hands up are in EA’s marketing department. And they’re all idiots. Clearly.

So what happened? Well, a few people got some free fuel. Meanwhile, queues of cars waiting to try to get some free fuel stopped local residents from being able to get out of their drives, and generally created traffic chaos. This presumably made people late for work, some of whom will have got in trouble for as much, and potentially lost out on pay.

If I’d been delayed because of this stupid marketing stunt - which to my mind only puts EA in a bad light - I’d be making my way to EA’s Guildford office right about now to park across their car park exit, to make sure none of them can get home this evening. The absolute cretins.

Apologies for the harsh language there, but you may (or may not) have noticed that Games Asylum’s YouTube page has been permanently disabled.

Occasionally we’d get the odd e-mail from EA and other publishers via YouTube claiming copyright on videos that we uploaded, but they didn’t mind us uploading them. And why would they? We’re giving their games publicity for free. Heck, the press are always sending us links to videogame trailers so that we can potentially feature them on this site.

But earlier this week a year old video of the WWE Vs Smackdown trailer was removed, because the WWE claimed full ownership and copyright violation. Today I received a message stating that the Game Asylum account has been disabled, thus losing everything that was uploaded - over 300 videos, including some personally taken in Tokyo.

Last time I checked the channel had over 3 million video views. Obviously YouTube aren’t bothered about the loss.

While the PSP is currently surviving on slim pickings, the PlayStation 2 continues to fade out gracefully with news that Rebellion are working on Call of Duty: World at War: Final Fronts for the system. It’s not a conversion of either the upcoming Wii or PlayStation 3 versions of World of War, but a new game built from scratch.

Perhaps ‘scratch’ isn’t the best word to use there. Rebellion have a reputation (a good one, in fact) for turning out games in just a matter of months by recycling textures and engines from previous works. Take a look at Alien vs Predator: Requiem and Dead to Rights on PSP for proof.

The thing that I find amusing is that Call of Duty 4 never appeared on PlayStation 2 - or Wii - but World at War is. But still - well done Activision for supporting the format.

UK Chart

Too Human manages to get to #1, but only in the Xbox 360 chart. Over in the all formats chart it makes its appearance at #8, with Tiger Woods 09 taking the top spot followed by Mario Kart Wii, Wii Fit, Carnival: Funfair Games and Wii Play. Bejing 2009 has started to fall from #3 to #9 for the obvious reason, while the DS-exclusive The Sims 2: Apartment Life arrives at #11.

Back in the single format charts, Driving Theory Training enters the DS chart at #16 and Smash Court Tennis 3 goes in at #25 in the Xbox 360 chart. Both are published by Atari, incidentally, so well done them. Perhaps Phil Harrison really can turn the company’s fortunes around.