Electronic Arts have gone and done it again. Earlier in the year Need for Speed Shift took me by surprise and did more than enough to ensure it was my favourite racing game of 2009. Shift managed to fight off some tough competition from the likes of Forza 3 and Dirt 2. I wasn’t holding out much hope for Need for Speed Nitro on the Wii. After all, the graphical capabilities of Nintendo’s console could never compete with the glossy visuals on the Xbox 360 and PS3. There is also no way the Wii can ever compete with Microsoft and Sony’s more powerful consoles when it comes to audio. Going head to head with such heavyweight competition would be madness. So, it’s a good thing they didn’t do that! Read the rest of this entry »

The crime fighting duo are back and doing what they do best. To those who are thinking “fighting crime?” nice try but I’m afraid that answer is incorrect. Sam, the 6ft laid-back Dog, and Max, his short psychopathic Rabbit companion, excel at biting sarcasm above all else. Don’t get me wrong, they do their best and ultimately solve crimes, I’m just saying they’re no threat to the Miss Marples, Poirots, or even Quincys of the world.

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“I am CL4P-TP but you may call me by my locally designated name, annoying little shit”. This line, minus the bit about him being an annoying little shit, is uttered by a small robot as the game begins. It is quite obvious that players are supposed to like this robot. I hate him with a passion. His appearance annoys me. His voice annoys me. Everything about him annoys me. I don’t think I’d be as annoyed at this pretty insignificant robot had he not been created as light-entertainment. Another character was created for this very purpose and his name was Jar Jar Binks. The major difference is that Jar Jar was created to amuse children and this robot is featured in an adult game with an 18 rating. Strange decision.

This serious/silly juxtaposition is indicative of the entire game. I can’t understand why this game deserves an 18 rating. I can only assume the creators purposely did just enough to warrant the 18 rating in order to gain a certain type of lucrative publicity. I’ll concede that there is a lot of blood. Heads explode and limbs fly off bodies but all the while it’s wrapped up in cartoon visuals.

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“Welcome to the world of fashion.” This is the message which greets you at the end of the intro. Nice visuals and upbeat music, the beginning of which is identical to a popular Football (Soccer) tune, come together to make the stylish introduction.

The game begins and you find yourself working in a fashion store named Primavera. You’re not the only shop assistant. There is a girl named Renee who seems to me to have a bit of an attitude problem. I suppose cheeky comments may be the norm in the hoity toity world of fashion but I wouldn’t be putting up with her nonsense.

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While writing my review of Hasbro Family Game Night on the DS I was certain of two things regarding this sequel on the Wii. Firstly, given the superior capabilities of the Wii the graphics would be much better. Secondly, the games would work better on the Wii and thus provide more in the way of entertainment than the version on the DS.

The first assumption was true. The graphics on the Wii are clearly going to be much better than on the DS. We’re not talking anything special here but they are solid enough and it can’t be easy to make what amounts to a few boardgames look pretty. My assumption that this shinier version on the Wii would be more entertaining proved to be a little off the mark.

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Nintendo’s Wii can be a strange beast. At times feeling like nothing more than a gimmick, a retro games player with some tacked-on motion controls, games developers struggling to make the most of the hardware in the most gratuituous ways possible to grab attention and sell more of their poorly-polished wares. Sure, the system has some outstanding titles and clever uses of its strong points, but as someone who loves his Wii dearly and thinks it deserves more, I can’t help but feel a little sad that the system’s reputation is constantly tarnished by third-rate minigame-fests, poor controls, and lazy gimmicks.

A Boy and His Blob, however, is none of these things. It’s exactly what the Wii should be known for – what the system was designed for, and hopefully a game which history will remember as one of the console’s finest.

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It’s been a month since The Beatles: Rock Band last saw any DLC loving with the Abbey Road album, but thankfully that drought is set to end this week as the remainder of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released for the game this week.  That means classics like “She’s Leaving Home”, “Within You Without You” and “When I’m Sixty-Four” will soon be playable in game, despite the lack of clarinet, violin or harmonica peripherals…  As Sgt Pepper’s came at the height of The Beatles psychedelic period expect the songs to have some excellent ‘dreamscapes’ to keep the watching hordes entertained, distract you at those critical moments and keep you placated until my personal favorite Beatles album, Rubber Soul, is released as DLC next month.

The fab four aside, we are also treated to 5 tracks from former punks and now full blown emo stars A Fire Inside (AFI for the uninitiated) for the regular Rock Band games.  The first 3 tracks are all lifted from the bands new album Crash Love alongside “Love Like Winter” from Decemberunderground and “The Leaving Song, Pt II,” from Sing the Sorrow.  These are all well an good but I have to ask, where the hell is “Days of the Phoenix”?  Easily their best song and still no RB or GH loving for it!

As if all of that wasn’t enough, joining AFI for this weeks RB DLC will be the timeless (and undeniably cheesy) 80′s classic “Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles as well as a track from from RB whore Dave Grohl’s new supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, featuring Josh Homme (of QOTSA fame) and John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame), who will be contributing “New Fang” from their self titles debut album.

The tracks are all released this Tuesday on Xbox Live Marketplace and Thursday on Playstation Network with the exception of the Them Crooked Vultures track, which won’t see the light of day on the PS3 for another 2 weeks yet.  As for pricing, Sgt. Pepper’s will set you back a hefty 1080/£7.49 for the full album and the 5 track AFI pack will cost 680/£5.25, alternatively all of this weeks tracks will be available individually for the regular price of 160/£0.99 each.

Full tracklisting with video links after the break, and I urge you all to watch the one for “Being For The Benfit of Mr. Kite!” as it’s equal parts awesome and creepy…

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The BBC have announced today that they will soon be releasing a new iPlayer channel for the Wii. The move comes in the wake of complaints about the console’s previously browser-based service, which works (most of the time), but isn’t quite up to the same level as the PS3′s dedicated iPlayer or the Xbox 360′s Sky TV support.

As with its web-based counterpart the iPlayer will also support radio, with Wii-exclusive animations and visualisations, and also adds new support for the Wii Remote’s vibration capability. The UK now has around 6 million Wii users, so giving them a streamlined way to access BBC’s wealth of content on demand can only come as good news.

The iPlayer channel will be available from the Wii Shop Channel from November 18th, and is only available to users with a UK broadband connection.

Hasbro (not to be confused with Haribo who make Starmix) are the world’s leading board-game manufacturer. The company has brought us hugely popular board-games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, and Cluedo. Family Game Night does not include any of those titles and this can either be seen as testament to Hasbro having a large volume of quality games or that this is a “best of the rest” collection. In this review I hope to arm you with enough information so that you can come to your own conclusion.

Mr. Potato Head takes on the role of host and hovers around while you decide which game to play next. There are four playable games – Connect 4, Bop It!, Battleship, and Operation. In an attempt to add some variety each game comes with a number of modes and additional options.

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I am not a huge fan of racing games but I enjoyed the previous title in this series.  The thing I remember most about Forza 2 is spending hours thinking up and creating designs, adding them to various cars, and selling them for a ridiculous profit in the auction. I didn’t spend anywhere near as much time with the paint tool on this occasion but I did notice the biggest flaw in Forza 2, having to create your initial design on an actual car, has been fixed with a nice black canvas to work on before applying the masterpiece to a vehicle. I did spend just enough time to create the Team Teabag mascot, the angry teabag man, and applied it to every vehicle in the hope it would bring me good luck.

This game looks incredible. I hesitate to use “photo-realism” when describing the graphics because for so many years the term has been quickly thrown around only for a title to come along with superior visuals and awarded the same label. Perhaps terms such as “even more realistic than photo-realism” or “photo-realism +1” should be introduced to save us from looking foolish in retrospect. I will go ahead and stick my neck out on this one. The graphics in Forza 3 look photo-realistic. I reserve the right to excuse such a bold statement in future by claiming what I actually meant is that Forza 3 looks photo-realistic after someone has downed six pints or had tear-gas sprayed in their eyes. Water, trees, and mountains simply have no right to look this good in a racing game.

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