New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMBW) may look like nothing more than an expansion of the wildly popular DS title baring almost the same name, but when Nintendo’s ever-quotable Reggie Fils-Aimé predicts that the Wii game will outsell the all-conquering colossus that is Modern Warfare 2 (only on 360, mind), it’s clear Nintendo have high hopes for their ever-versatile mascot.

More…

Posted by Rupert Higham on 20/11/09 in Reviews, and tagged with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, nintendo, platformer, wii.
(1) comments

Sony Europe’s new video rental and download service is yours for the plundering on PlayStation Network this side of the Atlantic. Fancy catching up with X-men Origins: Wolverine on your PSP? Jump in. Oh wait, that’s the other one.

You’ll find the new features under “Video Store” on the PS Store. There are reportedly over 2,000 flicks on offer, with rentals priced from €1.99 (good for a fortnight, or for 48 hours after beginning playback) and full purchases from €7.99. Launch titles include Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Valkyrie, Bruno, Dead Space: Downfall and the new Star Trek film.

No complete series of Spaced = no sale, Sony.

Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 19/11/09 in News, Spotlight, and tagged with PlayStation Network, VOD.
(0) comments

There’s a tension in every open-ended game (or even every game, period), a tension between avatar and surroundings, figure and backdrop, between the simplifications which allow players to interpret and act upon the world they’re given and the fertile, vital unpredictabilities of that world – in short, between gameplay and setting. Faced with so challenging a dichotomy, many developers lean one way or another. The randomly generated ASCI landscapes of cult hit Dwarf Fortress are famously more than a match for their colonists, for instance, while Jak II’s capaciously chunky steam-punk environs are quite passive, sterile, despite their graphical liveliness.

Ubisoft Montreal’s Assassin’s Creed series tackles this tension head on, and therein perhaps lies its claim to greatness. Where other third-person sandboxers cloak the enmity between order and chaos in make-believe, Assassin’s Creed transforms it into a component of the make-believe, a premise. Your character, Desmond Miles, springs from a long line of assassins, each engaged in a shadowy war with the Illuminati-like organisation known as the Templars. To penetrate the centuries-old mysteries of Abstergo, the vast military-pharmaceutical corporation the Templars have become, Desmond must tap into the “genetic memories” of his ancestors – 12th century Arabian backstabber Altair in the first game, Renaissance nobleman Ezio in this one – reliving their thoughts and deeds with the aid of a high-tech VR machine termed the “Animus”.

More…

Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 17/11/09 in Reviews, and tagged with action-adventure, Assassin's Creed 2, PlayStation 3, PS3, third-person, Ubisoft Montreal, Xbox 360.
(4) comments

Blame the insipid Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, if you will, or Vin Diesel’s wrecked-from-birth Wheelman, or even Far Cry and Crysis, but I’m sick to the rear molars of games in which over-clocked Western secret service bruisers are slam-dunked into post-colonial scenery in order to flog their militaristic hard-ons in the name of international stability. It’s less a question of pinko liberal sympathies as familiarity-bred contempt: the old sub-equatorial geo-political sandbox is positively heaving with unshaven one-man-armies and their flaccid punchlines. Next time, developers, try rural Dorset. The weather’s not too pleasant, but they make wonderful cream teas.

Such whinging aside, there’s always room for a game that’s utterly, spectacularly, triumphantly stupid, whether it’s set in Borneo or Birmingham, and Avalanche’s third-person pacification spree Just Cause 2 is certainly that. This stupidity hinges on two elements: a parachute, and a grapple line.

More…

Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 13/11/09 in Previews, Spotlight, and tagged with Avalanche Studios, Eidos Interactive, Just Cause 2, PlayStation 3, PS3, shooter, Square Enix, third-person, Xbox 360.
(0) comments