A surprisingly busy release week (albeit one chock full of cross-platform movie adaptations) is giving way to a couple of firsts here at TWiG.

The first, uh, first is that this marks the first time that a given franchise has managed to snag the featured spot in The Week in Games twice.  That’s right, way back in the very first edition of The Week in Games, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword looked like the game to beat; this week, it’s Ninja Gaiden II, for the Xbox 360.  Let’s face it—a lot of us grew up on Mortal Kombat, living for the fatalities and the location-specific kills that the game introduced us to, inspiring arguments regarding which, of all of the kills in the game, was the coolest (read: bloodiest).  As much as we might purport to be above such base desires now, there’s still something appealing about a game that doesn’t just include blood as some means to an end of gritty realism, but revels in it, putting gushing fountains of red liquid where mere arteries should be.  My nearest point of reference would be Kill Bill for the style of the bloodletting going on here, though I’m sure you can point me toward obscure Japanese films that would be closer to the truth of the inspiration.

If Ninja Gaiden II were only about the blood, though, it wouldn’t be worth highlighting.  No, the other thing about the reborn Ninja Gaiden series is the way it preserves an old-school level of challenge to the player.  For those who can appreciate a good challenge (that is, things that are freaking hard), it’s refreshing to see that the franchise’s transition to 3D hasn’t brought with it a softening of the controller throwing, profanity-spewing, rage-inducing difficulty that so loudly marked its NES predecessors.  I, for one, can’t wait to get my hands on the thing.

As for the other first, this is the first time that a single game has had a release that spans the entire gamut of current gaming systems.  From PS3 to the PC right down to the Nintendo DS, Lego Indiana Jones is making his debut this week.  If you aren’t looking forward to being chased by a giant Lego boulder and seeing how they handle the heart-ripping scene in Temple of Doom in a game aimed at kids, well, I don’t know you.

Otherwise, we have a whole pile of other movie-themed fodder (hello, Kung Fu Panda), GRID, which looks like a seriously fun bit of racing once you get past the drab visuals, and PC Mystery/Adventure fans who don’t mind a gothic bent in their gaming might find something to love in Dracula Origin.  For the first week of June, honestly, this is a hell of a release list.

The full list of games and a short trailer for Ninja Gaiden II is AFTER the JUMP:

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller

Ahh yes, quite a choice we have this week.

I must admit, there are a couple of releases this week that I’m tempted to highlight simply based on name value alone.  The Nintendo DS has a couple of them: LOL, perhaps not the first game to be named after instant message parlance (remember WTF for the PSP?), but it is the first to use that parlance in a way that would seem to be related to its origins; it’s an entirely social product with no one-player mode, which could be interesting at least.  Super Dodgeball Brawlers sounds like one of those things that’s pure awesome in theory, and utter bunk in practice.  Needless to say, I don’t know a damn thing about it.

There’s also something called Stronghold Crusader Extreme, which must be good of course, because it has the word Extreme in the title.  When you say it, actually, I’m sure you’re supposed to add a few exclamation points to the word Extreme.  You know, like Extreme!!!, or EXTREME!!!!!.  Yeah, that’s probably it, caps lock and five exclamation points.

Ditch the shovelware parade headed to the Wii, and what are we left with?

The sole release this week for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 is a little something called Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which is finally making its way to the console scene after having eaten PC gamers’ lives since last October.  Assuming that Activision hasn’t toned down the brutal difficulty nor the map intricacy of the PC version, console gamers are in for a treat as they embark on one of the most immersive team-based FPS experiences out there.  It’s difficult to quantify, exactly, what makes Enemy Territory: Quake Wars a fantastic game, as it’s certainly not the most imaginative team-based experience out there, and the graphics fall in that all-too-familiar mix of brown, gray, and brownish-gray, but something about it is simply addicting, and you just can’t help but keep coming back until you are the team MVP (or, in my case, anything except “least accurate").

Xbox and PS3 owners tired of Team Fortress 2 might just want to give it a look.  The full release list (and a trailer for Quake Wars) is after the jump.

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller

I never thought I’d see the day.

When is the last time this happened?

Somehow, some way, the Nintendo DS is without a single release this week.  Keep in mind, there were over 50 things released for the DS last November.  50, in a single month, and even since then, the DS has always been a reliable source of new releases; in weeks where it seems as though nothing worthwhile is coming out for the consoles, we always had the DS to look to for a new IP, or at least some imaginative use of the stylus.  As recently as last week, the DS has saved us from the banal, so to look at it, so lonely, with nothing new to offer for the week, well...it’s a little bit sad is all.  (sniff.)

(give me a moment to compose myself.)

(deep breath.) Okay.  So who’s to blame for the orphaning of the little portable that could?  Likely, none other than the parents of that portable themselves, those unfeeling, heartless vessels at Nintendo.  Why would they do such a thing to their adorable little two-screen?  Well, Wii Fit is coming this week.  Wii Fit is, of course, poised to be the biggest thing out there since, well, since GTA IV, though I imagine that for most of the people who would actually be interested in Wii Fit, it will be the biggest thing since Wii Sports.  You can’t fake-bowl forever, I suppose.

In any case, Wii Fit looks to be the piece of software (one hesitates to even call it a “game”, really) that will allow the success that the DS has had in the self-help arena (see: Brain Age, Flash Focus, Let’s Yoga!) to be transferred to the console.  Its success will hinge entirely on how willing people will be to shell out $90 for a “balance board” and the software for that balance board, but despite some of the bad press that’s been thrown its way in pre-release, early indications lean toward the Wii-buying population being very willing.

Other than Wii Fit, UEFA EURO 2008 is dominating the release list, with versions coming out for pretty much every platform that’s not the DS.  Soccer/football fans will undoubtedly be delighted.  The oft-delayed Haze, Ubisoft’s yellow-tinted shooter with the awesome website and the silly Korn tie-in, is out tomorrow as well, just in case the FPS crowd is out of things to do.  And then, on wednesday, the increasingly reliable Xbox Live Arcade will see the release of the first episode in the Penny Arcade Adventures series, with the unwieldy and vaguely hilarious subtitle of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.  Fans of Gabe and Tycho had best have their download fingers ready.

The rest of the releases (and really, there aren’t very many) and a trailer for Wii Fit are after the jump:

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller

Oh, I know, WiiWare is out this week, but I already posted about that at length.  Given the list of WiiWare releases, LostWinds certainly looks like the one to get (though Pop is a nice surprise for WiiWare release day)...I certainly know what I’m doing when I get home from the day job today.

So...is there anything that’s not WiiWare worth picking up today?  Well...you fans of Narnia-related stuff are in for a treat, as you get a game to go along with your movie this week.  Released for pretty much every major system (except the PSP, oddly), Prince Caspian looks just about the same as any other movie-related game this week.  Hudson’s releasing Deca Sports, which actually seems kind of fun, not to mention that it’s the first Wii curling experience available, which may make it a must-buy.  Come on!  Curling!  Who doesn’t like curling? 

Still, the DS looks like the software platform of choice if you’re not into downloadables this week.  For one, Myst is finally making its way off the PC.  I mean, it only took 13 years.  Still, I have to give this week’s cookie to Atlus, who is abnormally active for this time of year.  Do you like bugs?  Do you like robots?  Do you like tactical warfare?  If you answered yes to the previous three questions, there is no way that you will not like Drone Tactics.  Honestly, it looks like a can’t miss formula on paper, as you get to customize your little bug things to your hearts content and sic ‘em on (presumably) evil robot bug things.  Okay, I honestly have no idea if the thing will be any good, but Atlus + Robot Bugs + Turn-Based Strategy should = AWESOME.  I hope that equation holds.

The full list of releases and a Drone Tactics trailer are hidden after the jump.  CLICK IT:

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller

As much as we enjoy going off the beaten path here at Moving Pixels, it’s difficult to go off the beaten path when the beaten path is just about the only path available to travel.  Case in point: After a couple of weeks with surprising depth in the release list, we’re back to the vast desert wasteland of game releases.  As is the case in most vast desert wastelands, however, there are a few oases to be found.

Of note this week:  Boom Blox is upon us!  Steven Spielberg’s first foray into the gaming arena is so Spielbergian that it’s got his name splashed across the top!  Actually, the only thing identifiably Spielbergian about Boom Blox is the explosions.  There are lots of explosions, though.  I have to admit, I know very little about what this game is going to be like and how it is going to be played save the Wikipedia article on it and the various major game site previews that are out there, but I do know that you can’t really go wrong when you have lots of explosions, blocks, and rectangularly-shaped animals populating your game. 

Did anyone else know that Speed Racer was a Nintendo exclusive?  When did that happen?

Regardless, the only other game on this particular list that might have had a shot of challenging Boom Blox as the week’s most highly-anticipated game has to be R-Type Command, another North American release of a somewhat obscure Japanese game (R-Type Tactics) by the mighty and venerable Atlus.  Granted, it’s a game with long-running and storied franchise behind it, but the boost provided by history is almost entirely negated by the fact that the entire history of R-Type is as a space shooter, while R-Type Command is a turn-based strategy game.  Still, the chance to fight Giger-isms in turn-based combat is just too much win to pass up.

The rest of this week’s releases (you know, the three or four I didn’t mention) are after the break…

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller

You know, you have to give Iron Man some credit.  Not only is Sega’s adaptation of the soon-to-be blockbuster film being released on every single major console and portable system this week, but it single-handedly ensured that every single system had at least one game to show off this week (thus avoiding the fate of withstanding a surely snarky synonym for “zero” in its release column).  The demo that Sega released on Xbox Live isn’t even all that bad, even if its all-too-short play time does cut out right when it seems as though the game might just get exciting.

No matter—if you’ve been at all privy to the world of gaming journalism in the past week, you know that anything on this list that isn’t Grand Theft Auto IV is being seriously, seriously overshadowed by Grand Theft Auto IV.  You’ve seen the exclusive review (and while I won’t begrudge them for it, I hope IGN thought long and hard about dishing out that 10 when they knew they’d be under scrutiny for being the only outlet allowed to break the dated review embargo that the rest of the media has had to follow), and heck, you’ve probably seen the rest of the reviews so far as well.  That Metacritic wall o’ 100s is awfully impressive, if not altogether unexpected.

The sheer magnitude of Grand Theft Auto IV‘s release is enough to make one wonder: why in the world would Nintendo choose to release Mario Kart Wii a mere two days before perhaps the most highly-anticipated release of 2008?  One could make the argument that the audience for the two games is different, but it intersects in enough places that the buying public for Mario Kart can’t help but be affected, at least a little bit.  One could also say that Mario Kart is a strong enough franchise that it’ll get its sales over the long-term, and it will be fine.  This is probably true—and I do expect that Mario Kart will sell gobs of product and little plastic wheels regardless of what other releases happen to coincide with its own—but still.  Mario Kart Wii got one, maybe two days of serious publicity when the journalists got their copies, only to be swallowed almost immediately by the Grand Theft Auto behemoth.  Pushing off the release (or moving it up, even) by a week or two might have been able to ensure a solid stream of publicity surrounding its release.  As it is, it’s going to have to rely on an admittedly sizable established fanbase.

Of course, one could also argue that that fanbase has been what has been sustaining Nintendo all along, but it wouldn’t hurt to try like hell to expand that fanbase, especially when there is such a sizable new install base just sitting there, waiting to be taken advantage of.  Nintendo apparently sees Mario Kart as a “bridge game”—that is, a game that could help casual players transition to more involved gaming experiences—and having had a day or two to play the game, this makes sense, given that it had the four game-playing members (that is, myself, my wife, and my kids) playing a game together for the first time since Wii Sports first invaded our home and free time.  Still, it’s not going to be a bridge for anyone who doesn’t notice its release.

Other releases this week include the happily budget-priced SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 (a much cheaper way to get your Neo Geo fix than the Virtual Console, as it turns out), and Konami’s contributions to the Nintendo DS’s continued dominance as a lifestyle machine (as opposed to a simple game machine), called Let’s Yoga! and Let’s Pilates!.  I would be sarcastic about these things, but I may buy them.  Somehow, these activities seem more palatable when you plug them into a DS and pretend they’re games.

Perhaps I’ve said too much.  Go take a look at this week’s release list, after the jump…

(continue...)

—Mike Schiller