This is the weekend I am dreading. Not because it’s early March, or not because there was a ton of downloads released this week – instead it’s because I lose an hour of luscious, tasty sleep. On the bright side, having more sunlight in the evening is just awesome; it just seems like such a sacrifice to get it. Oh I know, you’re saying, it’s just an hour, blah blah blah…but I work my best around 1-2 am….and by best I mean “barely breathing,” but that’s another story.
In addition to the above travesty, we have this week in downloads, which kind of resembles an HDDVD display at a local electronics store: sure it’s there – you can see shelf tags, but there’s not much product available. With that in mind, let’s ‘dig in’
First off, there’s the Wii Virtual Console which gives us a whopping one title this week. The good news is that it’s a very good one: Super Turrican for the SNES. It’ll set you back 800 points but this is a wonderful game to play with the classic controller. Colorful graphics, lots of bad guys to shoot and a unique ‘freeze beam’ make it a very enjoyable experience 15 years after the game originally came out. What’s even more interesting is that the game is made by Factor 5, who just recently designed the unenjoyable LAIR for the PS3. Let’s just say thank goodness there was no SIXAXIS in 1992.
This week the new game for the PS3 and 360 were identical: Capcom’s Rocketmen: Axis of Evil. I opted not to purchase the full game this week as the demo left me wanting. The cel shading graphics were interesting, but the game moved at the speed of a 300 baud modem. It just seemed to take forever to move from room to room; it rather reminded me of Bully on the 360. The demo didn’t have me intrigued enough to purchase the full game; however you mileage may vary depending on your enjoyment of games like Ultimate Alliance.
Those of you looking to rock out, uh, may want to skip this week unless you pass the dutchie as we have not one, not two, not three but six (!) Grateful Dead songs, but it’s your lucky day because if you buy five you get one free. I bought zero, because I’m sorry, it’s not really a band I “Rock” out to…other things, yes, but not rock.
Yet another Ace Combat 06 skin was released, but this one was free. Also in the add on department we have two new Chessmaster Live tables, which will set you back $1 for each one. A second co-op package for GRAW (Ghost Recon) 2 was released for the low, low price of $5 and a Call of Duty “Title Update” (patch) was also released. Right as we went to press 2K Sports announced that some Minor League Stadiums are available for free including the home of the Portland Sea Dogs, Hadlock Field. If I liked MLB 2K8, this would be really, really awesome.
Remember when Microsoft gave everyone Undertow free for a week to compensate for all the Live issues? Well, the reasoning for that was made clear this week when the “Path of the Elect” add on was released for the game which will cost you $5. While I love the idea of new content, the fact that this content is half the cost of the full game better mean there’s a lot of depth in this new version. Oh wait, I paid zero for the full game, so I guess it’s quite the value after all. My bad!
Rounding out the Xbox Live offerings is a demo of Major League Baseball 2K8. Personally, after spending time with the Show on PS3, I find it hard to enjoy this game at all. I did not enjoy this demo one bit. Thankfully it’s just a demo that can be cleaned with one press of the delete button.
It’s been a pretty rough couple of weeks for my GameTap subscription – I haven’t seen anything I really, really liked in a while. That changed this week with the release of Aces of the Pacific, the Sierra PC-DOS classic. Another interesting title is the strategy/economy/rpg/pirate/action game Port Royale 2. Finally the Genesis game Batman Returns rounds out the GameTap offerings. It’s great to finally see a game that I’m pumped up about seeing again.
