It has been a rough week for THQ. Their orders for Homefront were slashed due to it ‘only’ having a Metacritic rating of 75%, but then they bounced back after 375k copies were sold in the US on launch day. For new IP in a crowded genre that’s not bad going. General opinion is that much like Call of Duty the multi-player is ace but the single-player mode is pretty short and a bit disappointing in places. It can’t be nowhere as short as Konami’s Battle: Los Angeles, which reportedly only takes 40 minutes to finish.
Semi-sequels Okamiden on DS and Gods Eater Burst on PSP fly the flag for those not into first person shooters. Okamiden could very well be the last decent DS title, although now that I’ve typed that I think I may end up eating those words. I’m sure the DS has a couple of years left in it yet. Gods Eater Burst meanwhile is a PSP exclusive sequel to the cult classic PlayStation 2 brawler from Capcom. Funbox Media also have been threatening to release Natsume’s RPG Adventures To Go on PSP for months now. Our release date source says it’s out this week but Amazon says next week. It looks quite interesting.
I have no idea what’s going on at Tecmo-Koei at the moment – they seem to be going through a patch of publishing really sloppy games. Warriors: Legends of Troy fails to break this trend – the average review score currently stands at 35%. Another one to avoid is movie tie-in Hop, which I can’t find hide nor hair about.
I don’t think we’ll ever see a MotoGP game as good as the original Xbox’s MotoGP games, although Capcom’s MotoGP 10/11 is apparently a step in the right direction scoring an 8 from Eurogamer and a 7 from The Official Xbox Magazine. Scoring similar scores, albeit from different publications, is Top Spin 4 which is available on all three of the major formats.
Activision’s Monster Jam games have always been mediocre and their latest – Monster Jam: Path of Destruction – appears to be just that. I wish these games were about monsters rocking out, like the title suggests, and not US-flavoured monster truck racers. It’s out on PlayStation 3, DS and Wii. Why no Xbox 360 version, Activision?
Rounding the week off is budget release Alien Breed Trilogy from Mastertronic. We reviewed the final part of the trilogy and found it to be pretty good, playing a lot like a top-down version of Dead Space.
Next week: the 3DS and the system’s launch titles, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, Crysis 2, Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive, Tomb Raider Trilogy, Deep Black, PlayStation Move Heroes, Super Karts and North American Hunting Extravaganza 2. Hot dang!