What a great week to take vacation – how exactly am I supposed to take the kids hiking with all these great new games that came out this week? Finally, the week of waiting for Bioshock was over and while we were all enjoying that game, even more downloadable content came out! The summer used to be such a great time – I could veg out and just play catch up on all the games I missed in the prior holiday season…but no, not this year – the games are coming out fast and furious, and we haven’t even started talking about the downloads! Since this column is supposed to be about downloaded games, I suppose I’ll put down Bioshock and let you know what else was released.

First, let’s talk about Xbox Live…a mere sixteen pieces of content have been posted this week for the console, which is almost enough to fill that meager 20GB hard drive you premium owners have. Core owners, well I feel sorry for you and I’ll leave it at that. In the department of stuff you have to pay for, we have three new items to catch your interest. The best one is Space Giraffe, which is a game that’s a combination of Tempest and Bedlam. What’s that-- you’ve never heard of Bedlam? Get thee to a Vectrex pronto! Anyway, at 400 points this game is a steal, and you should pick it up immediately.

The other new game, Street Trace…well let’s just say I didn’t get it, especially for ten bucks. I’d rather be playing the demo for EA’s Skate. When I saw the demo for Skate, I was thinking, ‘oh great, another skating game..’ but I have to say In my time with the demo I was intrigued and may have to rent this one when it comes out in mid-September. The final paid content is for our favorite Solitaire game. We’ll just move right along then…

Other demos include Ratatouille, Blazing Angels 2 and Madden NFL 08. The original Blazing Angels was a game with some potential, and the new one does look better than the original. I’m going to reserve judgment until the final game comes out, but I enjoyed this demo as well. Various new trailers have also been released – make sure you check out the Sensible World Of Soccer trailer if you remember the original game and/or enjoy soccer (duh).

As I mentioned last week, Nintendo is taking the subtle approach with its Metroid marketing campaign. First I wanted to mention I neglected write about the Metroid channel on the Wii which has posted videos (i.e. trailers) of the upcoming Metroid game. The video quality – well let’s just say it’s not good – right up there with You Tube quality. Not sure what they were thinking there, I’d save the 70 or so blocks for console downloads like the SNES Super Metroid. This one is well worth your time. Two other games were released for VC this week: Shinobi 3 and Neutopia. Shinobi 3 has been on GameTap for some time and is a very good game, but I wouldn’t pay for it when I already have it. Neutopia has been receiving some positive reviews, but it’s not something I’ve been dying to play so it’ll go on my ‘get to it when I have time” list which is now tentatively scheduled for 2042.

GameTap has added six games to their library this week, although none of the games are jumping up and down saying “PLAY ME NOW,” I’m always happy to get even more value in my subscription. Enemy Engaged 2 wasn’t a bad game, but it’s not in my main genre. Mark of The Wolves and King of Fighters 2003 are NeoGeo games which are always worth trying out, even if it’s just to say “thank God I didn’t have this system all those years ago and paid $199 for one game.”