Welcome to an April Fools Free column of This Week In Downloads. Thank goodness all the fake news articles like a 360 having a Blu-Ray disc and so forth are over with! This week we have an abridged column thanks to the folks at Sony. In a word, their PlayStation Store interface, well, sucked. They are working on a whole new interface (the screenshots taken this week are not fake), and plan on having it ready to go by April 17th. The bad news is that until April 17th there will be no new content on the PlayStation store. On the bright side, that saves me from a dreaded Thursday night deadline, so thanks Sony!
Moving along to the Wii Virtual Console, we have one N64 game (Crusin USA) and the debut of a new console, the Sega Master System. Remember last week when I said that Master System games will be at 400 points…well, I’m sorry, they ‘start’ at 400 points, which means “Great Football” will be 400 points while every other game you’ll actually want off the SMS will be more. Wonder Boy is the debut game on the Virtual Console and its 500 points or $5. I should let you know that this game is available for free in your annual GameTap subscription so save yourself some money and head over there for this unmemorable game.
Crusin USA is a mixed bag. It really got ragged on during its original release for horrid graphics and gameplay, but I purchased it and I actually had fun with it if you can accept it for what it’s worth: a 15 year old arcade conversion on the N64; alas your mileage may vary on this one.
Nintendo doesn’t do much to alert you a game has been updated on the Shop, apparently instead it’s your responsibility to go through the games you purchased and look for the ‘updated’ tag. That’s what I did this week and noticed there’s an updated Kirby 64 download. It’s not a patch, so you actually have to delete the old game and re-download the update. There’s nothing like making everything difficult, Nintendo! I have no idea what the ‘update’ does either, so I guess if you’re happy with the old version, stick with it.
Moving along to GameTap, they did a cute April Fools thing (I got suckered by it last week) by adding “Captain McGrandpa” to their list of new releases. It turns out it was a text adventure game that everyone played by using the GameTap forums. It was cute, but not really a game in the traditional sense. There were three new games on the service and one game is what we’ve been waiting for!
That’s right, the console gaming classic DiRT is now on GameTap. It’s about @#$@$ing time. The game is just as a remember it on the 360, but man the graphics can a nice upgrade on my high end rig, and now I have reason to use my USB steering wheel yet again! It’s highly recommended that you pick this one up as soon as it stops downloading (it is a pretty big download).
Rounding out the service we have Warlords, which even though it’s an old strategy game, is important in the PC World because it was the precursor of the Warlords BattleCry series. It’s one of those games that are nice to have that you can appreciate, but it’s not a genre or a game of which I’m a huge fan. (This game rocks – ed)
The Xbox 360 continues to pound out the new content. First up is a demo of the EA shooting game Army Of Two. It’s a decent game and worth picking up the demo to see if it’s worth the purchase – it’s not a must buy game for everyone but the demo gives you a nice taste of what to expect. Football Manager was released for everyone not in North America, so let me know how that game is. I don’t understand the restriction here – unless it’s a licensing issue.
For those fans of American Idol Karaoke Revolution, you’re in luck as another 22 songs have been uploaded on the service, bringing the total number of songs you can download to three billion, give or take. At $1.50 a pop, I wonder who has picked up every song. If so, can you give me some money too since you obviously have it to burn? Thanks.
