UK Charts: Crysis 2 Gets Knocked Off Top by Zumba Fitness

EA’s top dog Crysis 2 has now been knocked off top spot by Zumba Fitness. The release of the title last week for the Wii and Xbox 360 has topped the UK charts this week, due to this Crysis 2 has been pushed down to second.

Full top ten for the week ending April 9, 2011 is below.

Zumba Fitness (Pipeworks Software, Majestico Entertainment)
Crysis 2 (Crytek, EA)
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Traveller’s Tales, LucasArts)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters (EA Sports, EA)
Shift 2: Unleashed (Slightly Mad Studios, EA)
Homefront (Kaos Studios, THQ)
WWE All Stars (THQ San Diego, THQ)
Pokemon Black (Gamefreak, Nintendo)
Pokemon White (Gamefreak, Nintendo)
Dynasty Warriors 7 (Koei)

Kung Fu Panda 2 Screenshots Released

Yesterday THQ announced that the Kung Fu Panda 2 game is on the way, and today the first screenshots have arrived. The first Kung Fu Panda game was an entertaining, albeit simple, platformer/brawler, so hopefully the sequel can be as enjoyable. Check out the screens below and see if you can figure out how Kinect support will be implemented. (Click pic for full size)

Kung Fu Panda 2 the video game confirmed

THQ have confirmed that the Kung Fu panda will be chopping his way to the Xbox360, Playstation 3, Wii and DS.

Here is the press release

WOKING, UK. – Mar 30, 2011 – THQ (NASDAQ: THQI) today announced its plans to release the Kung Fu Panda 2™ video game on Kinect™ for Xbox 360®, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, uDraw GameTablet®™ for the Wii™ system and the Nintendo DS™ handheld system, in conjunction with the theatrical debut of the eagerly anticipated movie from DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (NASDAQ: DWA).

Players will find all-new ways to enter the world of Kung Fu Panda® in the video game, including the unique ability to use Kinect to “become” Po on screen, as they seek to restore the balance of power and save kung fu forever.

Kung Fu Panda 2 the video game begins where the movie leaves off, as Po and the Furious Five venture out to save kung fu from a new evil threat. Only with Kinect for Xbox 360 will Po teach players key kung fu moves and train them for impending battles against new, never-before-seen enemies, co-created by THQ and DreamWorks Animation. Utilizing Kinect, players will then seemingly transform into Po as they block, dodge, duck, punch and kick, no controller required. Onscreen, Po follows their every move as the game takes them into some new terrains and environments.

“Kung Fu Panda 2 brings enormous innovation and creativity to build on the excitement of the movie,” said Mary Beth Haggerty, THQ’s Vice President of Product Development, Kids, Family and Casual Games. “The team brought unique elements to each platform so players can have a different experience with the same great story.”

Kung fu requires strategy and acumen, so on the PlayStation®3 system, Kung Fu Panda 2 lets players battle with moves such as “acu-punches,” “thunder strikes” and “kung fu curls” that incorporate problem-solving skills to help players master their talents under Po’s tutelage.

On THQ’s uDraw GameTablet®™ for Wii, players will control Po with their stylus to fight and defend Gongmen City in story mode. The epic battles against old and new enemies will happen amidst a backdrop that players themselves will bring to life. In drawing mode, players can color various pieces of character art and objects which will in turn populate the story mode, making the game unique to the player. There are also several awesome mini-games that players can enjoy playing as the adorable baby Po.

On Nintendo DS, Kung Fu Panda 2 will allow players to command Po using the stylus and unleash awesome kung fu moves against enemies alongside his friends and fellow kung fu masters, the Furious Five: Tigress, Monkey, Crane, Viper and Mantis. In addition, the Nintendo DS version offers an addictive card game called “Five-Card Fu”, which can be played either alone or with a friend. The game is played on a 3×3 grid which contains nine squares. To get started, the player must select five cards from their in-game library and place one card in one of the nine squares. Each card will have a number ranging from one through nine on each side of the card. In order to win, the player must strategize on which square they will occupy first as well as which card to use. Once the player places a card in a square, the opponent will have to place a card on an adjacent square that beats the numerical value of the card the first player placed. The player that occupies the grid with the highest numerical value wins.

Throughout April and May, Kung Fu Panda 2 fans can find out more about the video game and sign up for “training” through online videos and training mini games by visiting www.kungfupanda2game.com. When they sign up for “training,” players will be notified by e-mail when each new video and games are available online.

Crysis 2 keeps up a good fight against 3DS competitors

This week’s new releases! March 28th – April 3rd

Looks like things have calmed down quite a bit after last week’s rather cramped schedule. Probably for the best as everyone is likely still busy either playing Crysis 2 multiplayer or lamenting the small range of decent titles on their kick-ass 3DSs (spoiler: that situation has not improved this week). However there’s still a few interesting titles to be found if you’ve already had enough of shooting dudes or pining for Mario.

Highlights

The much delayed Motorstorm Apocalypse finally hits the shelves this week after recovering from some rather serious distribution issues, namely that Sony kinda felt that selling a game about a city decimated by natural disasters would be in somewhat bad taste less than a week after an earthquake/tsunami killed thousands of people in Japan. We might actually see quite a few foreigners importing this game from Blighty (wow that makes a change) as the US release date is still TBA and I think we can rule out any Asian version for the foreseeable future.

So what about the game itself? Well it’s just more of the same Burnout style vehicular mayhem but in a post-apocalyptic setting and with ……….a story mode? Not to sure about how that’s going to work in a racing game, but at least it’s something different I guess.

What would a release schedule be without the traditional ultra niche simulation game for the PC? Boring as hell, that’s what! So I present to you Driving Simulator 2011: Vehicle Collection, a truly groundbreaking title that simulates the experience of driving a car. I can’t really think of much else to say about it other than that, and evidently the publishers couldn’t either considering the press release listed “a uniquely constructed 3D world” as a feature. I was under the impression that sort of thing was expected of all games these days.

If that still wasn’t enough to sedate your desire for digital motorcars then we’ve also got Need For Speed Shift 2: Unleashed (or simply Shift 2: Unleashed depending on where you’re from) which is supposedly going to “redefine the racing simulator genre”. So does that mean Driving Simulator 2011 is going to be obsolete on day one? Damm, better cancel my pre-order then. While Shift 2 is probably going to offer a radically different experience from the smash hit Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (the one from 2010, not 1998) EA are at least going to reuse its “Autolog” social networking system, a wise move considering Hot Pursuit just won a BAFTA for multiplayer content.

Now there’s probably a few of you wondering what the hell The 3rd Birthday is. Well basically it’s the third game in the Parasite Eve series, a much loved RPG franchise that’s been on an 11 year hiatus since the late PS1 era. I can only assume Square Enix decided not to call it Parasite Eve 3 because they evidently have some kind of policy that dictates all their portable games must have utterly ludicrous names.

As a massive fan of Parasite Eve 2 I was overjoyed when I first heard 3rd Birthday had shifted development to the PSP instead of the originally intended Japanese mobile phones. However that enthusiasm diminished somewhat when I realised Square made the rather curios decision of taking the series away from it’s Resident Evil inspired survival horror roots and instead turned it into a third-person cover based shooter with body swapping mechanics. Oh god, that exact combination of words brings back deeply unpleasant memories.

The only other thing I can see worth much of a mention in my book is the ultra perverted and ridiculously named Ar Tonelico: Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel, an RPG I incorrectly documented in last week’s list. My bad!

Full Schedule

Multi
WWE All Stars (PSP/PS3/PS2/Xbox360/wii) [Yes, it’s coming out on PS2. No, I don’t get it either.]
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters (WII)
Need For Speed Shift 2: Unleashed (PC/Xbox360/PS3)

PS3
PES 2011: Pro Evolution Soccer (Platinum re-release)
Ar Tonelico: Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel
Motorstorm: Apocalypse

PSP
The 3rd Birthday: Twisted Edition [FYI: All European versions are considered the “Twisted Edition”]

PC
Driving Simulator 2011: Vehicle Collection
Mystery Of Mortlake Mansion
ARMA II: Reinforcements

DS
Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2011 – Over the Nexus
Bejeweled Twist

3DS
Combat Of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
Rabbids Travel In Time 3D

Xbox 360
Tekken 6 (Classics re-release)

This week's new releases! March 21st – 27th

Seriously, if you can’t find a single title in this week’s bonanza of interactive entertainment that appeals to you, then I weep for your soul.

Without any doubt the headliner this week is the graphical monstrosity Crysis 2 for the PS3, PC and Xbox360. Showcasing the latest version of the ludicrously powerful CryEngine 3 it’s likely that this FPS will be significantly raising the bar on whats possible with current generation hardware. But while there’s little doubt that an adequately specced PC running Crysis 2 at full power would look utterly godlike, we still have the usual debate/flame-war on which of the console versions is “better” that needs resolving.

During the open mutiplayer testing period the general consensus was that the PS3 version just wasn’t cutting the mustard both graphically and server connection speed wise, to the point where the PS3 demo was actually pulled from the PSN last week. However Crytek claim that all the issues with the PS3 version have now been resolved, something that early reviews of the title seem to confirm. Still, if you’re in the position to be choosing a platform to play it on make sure you do a little bit of research and make up your own mind before laying down the wonga.

Hot on the heels of last week’s Warriors: Legends of Troy comes the grand daddy of hack ‘n slash: Dynasty Warriors 6 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, which will of course be released under the name Dynasty Warriors 7 (long story). Even though the Warriors games are bizarrely popular in the UK, the reception to the last major iteration in the series was rather mixed at best even from longtime fans. Perhaps fearing the further rise of Capcom’s (way more awesome!) rival franchise Sengoku Basara, it looks like Omega Force have put a little more effort into it this time around by including a host of improvements such as 13 new characters, much larger maps, real-time weapon change (surely this should be PS3 exclusive?) a new major faction and a previously unexplored time period in the Warriors mythos. Not sure that will be enough to win over new fans or even appease the current ones, but if past experience is anything to go by it will probably sell well anyway.

Dissidia [duodecim] 012 Final Fantasy and it’s PSN based prologue Prologus also hits this week, providing what will likely be one of the last major PSP titles before the NGP takes reigns this Christmas. Not really too much to say on this one, it’s the same as the last Dissidia but with more characters, a few tweaked mechanics and a new story. I guess just calling it “Super Dissidia” would violate Square Enix’s mandate to give all their portable RPGs utterly ridiculous names.

Not that they can ever hope to outdo Gust’s Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel for the PS3 in that department. This release marks the return of the popular PS2 Ar Tonelico RPG franchise that was legendary for it’s overwhelmingly frequent use of incredibly crude and hilarious double entendres. Qoga certainly upholds this tradition with such memorable lines as “I’m so exited to feel you come inside me!” (in reference to a form of mind reading) and “I see..Men are really fond of their drills” (in reference to good lord knows what). However they seem to have taken it one step further this time, with many of the female protagonists being required to shed more and more cloths in order to perform increasingly powerful magic spells, a process that the games camera is more than happy to give you an eyeful of. Unsurprisingly the game sold fairly well on it’s debut in japan, but whether this shift from clever innuendo to more blatant acts of sexualization will be as well received by the English fanbase is yet to be seen.

As we come to the end of this weeks highlights theres a chance you may be thinking “What the hell random guy who wrote this article! Why you gone into excruciating detail about some perverted JRPG but not mentioned any of 3DS launch titles!?!?!”. Well lets be honest here, while the 3DS is almost certainly going to revolutionise handheld gaming in was we never thought possible/wanted to be possible, the launch line up isn’t……stellar. Most of them are just slightly done up version of pre-existing games but with a few 3D effects shoehorned in, the worst offender being Rayman 3D which is just yet another re-release of Rayman 2: the Great Escape which came out in bloody 1999! And with the exception of a very lazy half-assed nod of acknowledgement to Super Street Fighter 4 3D, they all fall very squarely on the “Casual” side of the market market. In summary, if you’re a serious gamer it might be best to wait a while for some better titles before you pick a 3DS.

Besides who cares about 3D when you’ve got North American Hunting Extravaganza 2 for the Nintendo Wii? Sequel to last year’s seminal all-in-on hunting experience, North American Hunting Extravaganza 2 features over 20 types of big game, 10 types of waterfowl, 4 new regions, authentic real-time Labrador Retriever functionality and 4 player simultaneous multiplayer action that’s sure to BLOW YOU AWAY.

Not that that’s going to stop this great big hypocrite form buying a 3DS on day 1……… US import of couse.

Multiplatform
Crysis 2 PC/PS3/Xbox360
Dynasty Warriors 7 PS3/Xbox360
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars DS/3DS/PS3/Xbox360/PSP/Wii/PC
Battle Vs Chess Xbox 360/PS3/PC
The first Templar PC/Xbox360

DS
Jewel Quest Solitaire Trio
Phineas & Ferb Ride Again
Wizards Of Waverley Place: Spellbound

PC
The Next Big Thing
Europa Universalis III Chronicles
Lost Saga Europe
Arcania: Fall of Setarrif
Bracken Tor: The Time Of Tooth And Cla
Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder
Restaurant Empire II
eXperience 112

Wii
North American Hunting Extravaganza 2

PSP
Dissidia 012[duodecim] Final Fantasy
Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive

PS3
The Tomb Raider Trilogy (Contains Tomb Raider Anniversary, Legends and Underworld)
Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel

Xbox 360
John Daly’s ProStroke Golf

3DS
Super Monkey Ball 3D
Super Street Fighter IV 3D
Nintendogs + Cats: French Bulldog & New Friends
Nintendogs + Cats: Golden Retriever & New Friends
Nintendogs + Cats: Toy Poodle & New Friends
PES 2011 3D
PilotWings Resort
Ridge Racer 3D
Starpoint Gemin
Rayman 3D
Super Monkey Ball 3D
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3D
Samurai Warriors: Chronicle
Madden NFL Football
The Sims 3 3D
Asphalt 3D
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

XBLA/PSN/PC
Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime

This week's new releases! March 14th – 20th

Well it looks like the industry is finally back in full swing with an impressive 25 “new” retail releases on the cards! Headlining the pack this week is Kaos Studio’s FPS Homefront on the holy trinity of PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Set in the near future where a united North/South Korea has invaded the United states and blah blah blah blah blah. As nice as it is to see an FPS not set in Made-upistan, the sad truth is that very few people are going to give much of a toss about the narrative. As with most FPSs theses days its all about the COD (Call of Duty, not the tasty fish) “inspired” multiplayer mode, and in that regard Homefront doesn’t disappoint.

We had a chance to try out a near final build of it the other day and we were quite impressed with how they’d managed to cherry-pick the best mechanics of other multiplayer FPSs and combine them together into one neat package. That’s not to say you should start throwing away your copy of Black Ops or anything just yet, but at the very least Homefront should give a you a good enough reason to take it out the disk tray for a little while.

It’s also a good week for sports fans too, especially if your into TOTALLY AWESOME MONSTER TRUCKS as MONSTER JAM: PATH OF DESTRUCTION seems to be appearing on every console under the sun: DS, PS3, PSP, Wii and Xbox360. For those who care about less manly sports then there’s also MotoGP 10/11 (two games in one?) for the PS3/Xbox360 and some hot ball smashing action with Top Spin 4 for the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.

PS3’s got some good exclusives worth a look this week thanks to the latest member of the Yakuza family (which has thankfully been left mostly unedited this time around) the very ill timed Motorstorm: Apocalypse and the PlayStation Move centric platformer PlayStation Move Heroes which features characters from Ranchet & Clank, Sly Raccoon and Jack & Daxter. Not sure if the ol’ Jack & Daxter franchise has much name recognition these days considering the last iteration in that series was the massively overlooked Lost Frontier for the PSP and PS2. I can only hope that means they plan on bringing the boys back from the grave in the near future, otherwise their inclusion in Move Heroes is just a little perplexing.

But not nearly as perplexing as the mere existence of Warriors: Legends of Troy, the latest in Koei’s massively popular Dynasty Warriors franchise. Seriously what the hell, why Troy? And more importantly, why now? From what I’ve seen of the gameplay it’s like they tried to make a title that cashed in on the popularity of the movie “300” but then forgot to release it for 4 years or something. Anyway the game itself actually looks extremely crappy, so Hopefully some low sales figures will help disparage the belief that the Dynasty Warriors fan-base (a large percentage of whom are UK residence for some reason) will buy anything provide it lets them hit the attack button hundreds of times to make a KO counter go up. I mean seriously, less than 30 playable characters? Disgraceful.

Moving on from “Why now?” we arrive at “Why the hell did this take so long?!?!” with the delightful looking Okamiden for DS, a long desired sequel to the cult classic Okami. Kinda sucks it’s a portable game, but I got my  fingers crossed that it’ll sell well enough to justify a fully fledged console return for the franchise one day.

The only other portable game worth a mention is the long overdue Gods Eater Burst for the PSP, an enhanced re-release of the Japanese exclusive God Eater. Why did they add the “s” on the end of God? Hell if I know, still a pretty kick ass name. Unfortunately the game itself is just yet another dumbed down Monster Hunter clone. It might seem appealing if you prefer your art style to be more Persona and less Conan the Barbarian, but other than that I can’t think of a reason to recommend it over the genuine article.

Speaking of portables, today marks a very special occasion for this weekly feature because next Friday is March 25th, the official launch day of the Nintendo 3DS in Europe! That’s right, this is the last week where you won’t have to see a giant list of shoddy third party DS shovelware titles with the word “3D” added into their names. Truly the end of an era………

Oh! This week is also one of the rare cases where I can end the article by mentioning a PC exclusive title but in a none-jokey way! So for that I give much thanks to the Flying Scotsman add-on for Railworks 1&2 real-time strategy game Shogun 2: Total War. I don’t really want to go into detail about it as I’d probably just jabber on for a good few paragraphs, but sufficed to say if you like the Total War games and/or Shoguns then you’ll probably enjoy it.

Multiplatform
Homefront (PC/PS3/Xbox360)
MotoGP 10/11 (PS3/Xbox360)
Monster Jam: Path of Destruction (DS/PS3/PSP/Wii/Xbox360)
Top Spin 4 (Wii/Xbox360/PS3)
Warriors: Legends Of Troy (X360/PS3)

DS
Emily Archer And The Curse Of Tutankhamen
Hollywood Files: Deadly Intrigues
Okamiden
HOP: The Video Game
Ni Hao Kai Lan: New Year’s Celebration

Xbox 360
Serious Sam HD: The First & Second Encounter
Alien Breed Trilogy [Seriously, all 3 games in this are nearly identical like some sort of bootleg gameboy cartridge.]

PS3
Motorstorm: Apocalypse
Yakuza 4
Fitness Coach Club (PlayStation Move Compatible)
Dance On Broadway (PlayStation Move Compatible)
Dance Dance Revolution: New Moves (PlayStation Move Compatible)
PlayStation Move Heroes (PlayStation Move Compatible)

Wii
Ni Hao Kai Lan: Super Game Day

PC
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood PC
Shogun 2: Total War PC
Sega Mega Drive Classic Collection Gold Edition
Flying Scotsman (Railworks 1 & 2 Add-On)
Trapped Dead

PSP
Gods Eater Burst

This week’s new releases! March 7th – 13th

Oh boy. I am sooooo late with this article, in fact I’m not too far off having to call it “Last Week’s new releases!” sorry guys, my bad! I blame the monstrous feature article I’ve been working on for the past two weeks; It was like a black hole that absorbed all my spare time. Still, at least there’s one upside to doing this late. It’s actually saved me from having to come back later to make a minor correction: We Dare, the European exclusive “Flirty fun for all” minigame collection from Ubisoft for PS3 and Wii has now been cancelled only days before release!

Basically We Dare was a “Truth or Dare” style party game that asks players to get up to all sorts of mischief such as spanking or striping, all of which was tracked in various ingenious ways using the wiimote or PlayStation Move in order to progress in the minigames. But why all the fuss? Well the big issue was that the game itself didn’t actually contain any graphic content as such, it just encourages players to partake in actives that you could say are somewhat….. adult. So our rating board the PEGI in an act of utter stupidity its infinite wisdom decided to give We Dare a 12+ age rating, which implies that their perfectly fine with 12 year olds being asked to strip for one another as a form of entertainment. As you can probably imagine, parents and Daily Mail readers across the country weren’t best pleased about the decision and made it their mission to denounce Ubisoft (who have absolutely no control over PEGI’s ridiculous decision) and get this sick filth out of the hands of our children! Well it seems to have worked because now Ubi have totally given up on releasing the game at all in the UK* and thus the moral fabric of society has been preserved.

Other than that the only new game worth much a mention is Bioware’s latest RPG epic Dragon Age 2 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. There seems to have been a good few reviews at either end of the spectrum for it so far, with some praising the game for continuing the Bioware tradition of masterful storytelling while others see it as an incredibly dumbed down PC RPG with console controls hacked on to make it play like a poor man’s God of War. I’m in the latter camp in case you’re interested. Hopefully we’ll have our own review (probably not done by me) up by some point so you can hear our own tuppence worth on the subject. So stay tuned!

*Just to point out, as far as i can tell its only the UK release that’s been effected so it my still become available in other European countries. Just though you should know that. You know, just in case you’re absolutely DESPRATE for yet another minigame collection on your console.

Multiplatform
Yoostar 2 (X360/PS3)
Brunswick Pro Bowling (X360/PS3)
[We Dare (PS3/Wii)]
Dragon Age 2 (PC/PS3/Xbox360)
Stoked: Big Air Edition (PC/Xbox360)
MLB 11 The Show (PS2/PS3/PSP)
[No that’s not a misprint. Yes, in 2011 people still release new PS2 games]

Xbox 360
PopCap Hits! Volume 2

Wii
Challenge Me: Word Puzzles

DS
Challenge Me: Brain Puzzles 2
Youda Safari

PC
The Settlers 7: Paths To A Kingdom – Gold Edition
King’s Bounty: Crossworlds – Game Of The Year Edition
[Can't say I recall anyone giving an expansion pack  "game of the year"....]
Enlightenus II: The Timeless Tower – Collector’s Edition

Crazy Pokémon Black DSi Bundle at GAME

Not got your hands on Pokémon Black yet? Thinking of getting a little upgrade on the old DS? Well head on over to GAME today and grab yourself one of their crazy bundles for just £119.99!

Inside, not only do you get the Black version of the latest Pokémon game and the limited edition DSi but a copy of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue! Not a bad deal if you were thinking of upgrading your old DS and can’t quite afford a 3DS just yet!

Click the image below and you will be linked directly to the product!

Pokemon Tops Charts

The latest Pokemon releases have secured the top two spots in the UK gaming charts. Despite the incoming 3DS, demand for Black and White has seen them outsell some of the major releases of early 2011 and shows that the DS remains hugely popular.

Fight Night Champion, landing at number 3, failed to go toe-to-toe with Game Freak’s series, which appears to show no signs of losing popularity, despite it’s age. Each new release seems to find a new market, and the re-release of Gold and Silver drew fans back to the games.

Bulletstorm, number 2 last week, was at 4, while last week’s number one – Killzone 3 -  was at 5.