This Week In Reviews - Oct 26th
For an astonishing one week, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has been bringing you the definitive guide to that week's PC gaming releases. So let's cast our mind back all that time to the very first ever This Week In Reviews, and see some of those highlights. And those haircuts.
"Here’s the coming week’s releases..."
"Each stage begins with a..."
"where they have to push the"
Good, good times. But enough with nostalgia. As one era ends, another begins, and so it is we enter a second week of This Week In Reviews*.
Alan Hansen's Sports Challenge
Bringing unique challenges to the world of sports, Alan Hanson introduces two main modes of play. First is "How To Spell Your Own Name" - Alan demonstrates the difficulty of this with his own failed attempt at writing his name on the box. And secondly, how to play any sports - other than a goalie in foot-to-ball - with his giant mutant handfeet.
Bringing unique challenges to the world of desperately trying to still have a career, Keith Chegwin introduces two main modes of quiz play. First is "How To Spell Your Own Name" - Oxygen Entertainment demonstrate the difficulty of this with their own failed attempt at writing his name on the box. And secondly, how to scare the living crap out of John with the most frightening cartoon ever created.
After the ailing CBS series was given a last minute reprive at the end of last year's US television season, attempts have been made to improve ratings for this year's mid-season pick-up. Namely, bringing in Clive Barker to add a whole different sort of horror to the series. And here's the inevitable tie-in game. Things begin when fussy old shopkeeper Gracie comes back from the dead, determined to get revenge on all in the town. You help her to slaughter each of the miserable actors, slaying each of them when halfway through some ghastly fifteen minute-long monologue about how their feet are so sore, or whatever it is those half-wits witter on about while the rest of the country blows up.
John Carpenter decides to follow up Escape From New York, and Escape From LA with a videogame-only release. You play Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken, as he shimmies along on his zimmerframe in a desperate attempt to leave Paradise City Nursing Home before it's time for tea and someone notices he's missing.
EA once more brings us all the thrills and spills of everyone's favourite annual book award. Featuring all the contenders for the 2008 award, recreated using their patented Looks Vaguely Like Them If You Squint technology, you can play either the entire competition, or one-off book judgings. There's a hefty career mode, which lets you manage a particular author right from their first publication, all the way through to next year's awards, and even a classic mode letting you play through the awards from 1950 to 1960. The only concern is it's very similar to last year's NBA Live, and the year before that's, and the one before that one, and the one before.
As the conflict between Creationists and the scientific establishment gets completely out of hand, Konami are releasing a rival game to the recent hit, Anti Evolution Soccer: Intelligent Design Champions League. Where AntiEvo famously has you create your players from the dirt of the field, riding on the backs of dinosaurs, and of course the constant risk of a flooded pitch, ProEvo instead features the most lengthy career mode to date. Starting with single cell lifeforms, you must select your team of amoeba, kit them up, and manage them over 4.4 billion years until they have devolved into modern soccer players.
Possibly a poor choice of direction for the series, trying to create enough business to encourage visitors into your completely empty zoo, to stare at cages containing no animals, proves overly tricky for the target audience. No amount of hotdog stands or guidemaps can do enough to make up for the anticlimactic feeling after the entry fee has been paid.
*We cannot guarantee the authenticity or accuracy of these reviews, as they are all lies. Oh, and The Witcher is also out, but you try misinterpreting a made up word.