What's New? (29th June, 2007)

Anger! Vitriol! Rage! Fury! Shift-F7! Ire! Spleen! It's that kind of week. PR people have shouted at us, dogs have bitten us, additional supporting examples have deserted us, and there are approximately 874 very cross-looking games pouting their moody way over the finish line and into shopland, including The Darkness (pure evil), Overlord (ironic evil), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (angst/blasphemy), Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (angst/blizzards), and Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (people emailing us to complain that Dave McCarthy is wrong because they've seen it on YouTube and he's biased and shut up).

So, with much to discuss, let's talk about my new PC instead! "Jeffrey" is his name - and he's a looker! He's got a neon light thing on the front that shows his internal temperature. 31.4 degrees at the moment. He's got a window on the side, so I can make sure the graphicsability isn't on fire. He's got a door on the front too, like a house. And who lives in the house? Why, it's Mr Core2Duo 2.4GHz! And his wife - Mrs GeForce 8800 GTS! She's got 320MB of RAM. Some people like bustier modules, but I'm not greedy. And wait until you see what happens when they go at it! Sparks fly, and so do endless particle effects, barrels, antlions, sawblades and high-dynamic range lighting. But you won't hear them banging their little heads off, and have to get up and knock on the bedroom door and wake mummy up and ask what "Fugme fugme fugme" means, because the house of Jeffrey is so quiet you can only hear it when you stop typing. And I don't stop typing. Ever.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom submitted the above as this week's complete What's New, arguing that he and the text "had reached an impasse" and that "nobody cares about how Puzzle League DS is yet another example of how Nintendo can take an old puzzle game, in this case Panel de Pon, and do so much to it on the DS that you can genuinely recommend people buy it all over again" and moreover that "nobody wants to hear about how Call of Juarez on the PC was really underrated", adding that "the clever use of levels to support two distinct characters on related but wildly differing quests is exactly the sort of thing What's New is renowned for failing to acknowledge in favour of simply doing the Trendy McZeitgeist joke again". However, little did he suspect that I could flesh it out for another 200 words by copying bits out of his email and then contriving this clichéd and entirely sub-standard extenuation in his entirely imitable fashion of rambling incoherently. Although he probably did suspect it, since he wrote this bit too.]

[REAL EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom submitted the above as this week's complete What's New, arguing that the ludicrous conclusion helped the column "assail new heights of off-puttingly self-indulgent irrelevance in a climate of growing indifference, potentially allowing us to retire the column soon so I don't have to spend an afternoon each week doing it even though it doesn't count towards any of the quotas we set out after that week I didn't write anything publishable and you had to blow half the freelance budget to compensate". I agreed, or would have done, were I in fact writing this bit of it, but now is the time to remove the mask and reveal that it is Tom, once again, pretending to be the Editor, which he normally only gets to do when real-life-me is off having a baby or going to Corsica or whatever the toss else I use to excuse myself from 90% of the working month before coming back and whinging about everything. Tom wishes I'd die.]

[GENUINE REAL ACTUAL EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom submitted the above as this week's complete What's New. Tom will not be writing the next one.]

...

[You're not getting out of it that easily. - Ed]

This week:

• Call of Juarez (Xbox 360)
• Carcassonne (Xbox Live Arcade)
• Dino Master (DS)
• Driver: Parallel Lines (PC, Wii)
• F-24: Stealth Fighter (DS)
• Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Wii)
• Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA)
• G1 Jockey (Wii)
• Harlem Globetrotters World Tour (DS)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, DS, PC, Wii)
• Hour of Victory (Xbox 360)
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (PC)
• MechAssault: Phantom War (DS)
• More Brain Training from Dr. Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain? (DS)
• Nacho Libre (DS)
• Overlord (PC, Xbox 360)
• Project Sylpheed (Xbox 360)
• Puzzle League DS (DS)
• Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Wii)
• Super Black Bass Fishing (DS)
• Super Stardust HD (PS3)
• Tenchu Z (Xbox 360)
• The Darkness (Xbox 360)
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (PS3, PSP)
• UFO: Extraterrestrials (PC)
• Vampire Rain (Xbox 360)