Well, it’s official – it’s the Ides of March! Isn’t that exciting? How can you not be excited – after all the start of baseball season is only a few weeks away! I can’t wait to see my wonderful Baltimore Orioles attempt to not have the worst record in baseball! Baseball Fever – catch it!
Most of my week has been dedicated to playing baseball games, The Show on the PS3 and PSP as well as MLB 2K8 on the Xbox 360. Never fear though as I did have a chance to play wonderful downloadable games this week just for your sake. Some really nice downloadable content was made available, so we’ll start off with the 360.
There are only a mere ten (!) add ons for games for the 360 this week but before you get too excited, three of them are for one game. The game is MLB 2K8 and the content is completely free. First there are minor league stadiums available for download, including the home of my favorite AA team, the Portland Sea Dogs. Cool Base uniforms are also available for free as well as the first trading card update package which fixes some items adjusted due to roster moves. I will say that it’s nice to see support for the game so quickly after release – and here’s hoping 2K will continue to support the game throughout the summer. (It needs it – ed)On the basketball side, 2K has released a roster update for NBA 2K8.
The next items cover RPGs: first there’s an add on for Mass Effect called Reach for The Sky which will only set you back $5. Next there’s a Dark Messiah add on which is also $5. Finally there’s downloadable content for Two Worlds which has a higher price, it’s $7.50. Perhaps this is because the game is already bargain binned? I’m not sure, as I never got into that game myself. I think of the three items, the Mass Effect content is the only one that rises to the level of ‘must download.”
Two new Live Arcade games were released but only one is worth downloading. Stay far, far away from Bliss Island as $5 is way too much money to pay for what feels like one of those Flash games you see in travel pop-up ads. Brain Challenge makes its way from a cell phone to your 360 in pretty good form, but $10 seems a little much...it’s not a bad casual game though, so I’ll give you permission to buy it. In fact, based on the price of this game, it sure does make Brain Age for the Wii look like it’s way overpriced!
A weekly roundup of the 360 content wouldn’t be complete without going over our music downloads: first there’s the inexpensive but “WTF are those songs” South by Southwest pack for Rock Band; although it’s not really a pack you have to buy each song separately but they are half-price ($1 each). I know nothing of the bands or the songs, so I’m taking a pass. The SXSW festival is one of those very cool things in Texas that is well known, however these songs aren’t. Maybe they will be but with a song title like Beethoven’s C***, I don’t think you will hear it on your local top 40 station anytime soon.
Over on Guitar Hero 3, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, they’ve released a track pack by the Dropkick Murphys….and the best part is that it’s FREE! So even if you haven’t heard of these songs, the price is right to pick them up! You can also purchase the “Modern Metal” pack.
PlayStation 3 owners will be prompted to get a firmware update on their next login which addresses online compatibility issues (as of this writing, I’m still seeing issues with MLB 08 The Show; I was hoping that may be fixed). Other updates include the aforementioned Guitar Hero and Rock Band downloadable content, as well as some new trailers for the upcoming Hot Shots Golf game.
Owners of the Toy Home game will be happy to see a title update that is a must download as the game now supports online multiplayer (Yay!). If you want to shell out another $7, you’ll get six new vehicles and two new playrooms. It’s important to note that while the PlayStation store implies that you need to buy the pack to get online multiplayer, that’s not the case.
