What's New?

Another Friday in January, another week light on big name videogame releases, despite the presence of Capcom, EA and Ubisoft on the release schedule.

However the quality of Ubisoft's Christmas releases is unlikely to find equal in the ridiculously terrible Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was so poor on the PlayStation 2 that poor Martin quit his job and went to live in the mountains. If only to find out why mountains are apparently made using transparent rope bridges. It's out on Xbox today, and you should avoid it.

Meanwhile, EA's Need For Speed: Underground may top the charts thanks to console (and maybe a touch of PC) success, but it'll take a masterstroke to get GBA owners interested in the pared down handheld offering of the same name. As with most EA releases we've seen neither hide nor hair of it, but if we get a sniff we'll let you know - current reviews vary between mid-fifties and high eighties percentage scores...

Elsewhere Ubisoft is also releasing MMORPG Shadowbane this week - on both PC and Mac - for relatively little dosh! Having never played it I'm not about to pretend I know anything about it (online RPGs aren't really my thing), but there's plenty of info on the official website as you might imagine.

Finally this week we have another delightfully cheap and cheerful sounding Capcom PS2 production, Bombastic, the follow-up to a little PSX puzzle game called Devil Dice, which Capcom snapped up earlier this year. Expect to see a review of that in the near future, just as soon as yours truly tracks down a copy in the local sea of retailing inadequacy...

• Bombastic (PS2)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Xbox)
• Need For Speed: Underground (GBA)
• Shadowbane (PC)