What's New?

Plenty has been written about Halo 2. From all angles. It's been loved, it's been hated, it's even been fingered as a piece of liberal propaganda (beware mild spoilers) by people who reckon the dynamics of the struggle between the Covenant and Earth strike a bit too close to home. But rehashing the arguments for and against it at this stage almost seems redundant. It is, as Kristan identified in his review, "a crafted, well thought out evolution of the series that will satisfy the millions of fans around the world," but one which won't soften the doubters' resolve. In other words, you're already equipped with the knowledge required to make a purchase decision, and most of you already will have.

What probably is worth explaining however is why yours truly hasn't been skitching the bandwagon quite as excitedly as the rest of the EG staff. It seems to bother people. But it's not their fault, and it's not Bungie's either; the Microsoft-owned developer has once again produced a first-person shooter that nails control, combat, AI, story and multiplayer by taking careful note of all the teachings the vast FPS genre has to impart. The problem is that in the years since Doom and Quake this writer has lost his passion for those base elements through simple saturation, and finds it harder to extract as much enjoyment from the genre output as used to be the case. These days it takes something sparkling, inventive and unusual to command my attention without distraction. The Chronicles of Riddick managed it, for example. For me though, playing Halo 2 is like watching the world's finest philharmonic orchestra performing a song I've already heard 500 times. It's an awesome spectacle, and I wouldn't deny it or try to persuade anybody it isn't, but it's not my first-choice activity.

What I'll be interested to see is whether, as Halo 2 brings together everything we've come to love about the first-person shooter in reportedly near-perfect harmony, next week's Half-Life 2 can repeat the original's trick of steering the genre in a new direction. If we haven't all been led astray and it genuinely does, then the post-mortem examination of why certain people favour one over the other will be doubly intriguing.

But let's leave those two well alone for now, as there's much more to talk about, starting with a triple-header on PlayStation 2 that's bound to appeal to gamers lurking at all ends of the console's various demographics. First there's the game seemingly destined to be prefixed "the stupidly named," WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw, a title that our American brethren are infinitely better equipped to expound on - by virtue of actually caring about wrestling outside the bounds of the games industry - and which they seem to concede doesn't keep up the same pace of improvement as its predecessors. The names may get sillier and sillier, it seems, but the rate of change is perhaps in decline; some reviewers said it felt transitional, and that the under-utilisation of online options and stripping of certain features took the shine off the technical and mechanical improvements that otherwise sell the game single-handedly. Mind you, they still recommended it.

Ratchet & Clank 3 came even more highly recommended, and it's only thanks to a slight scheduling hiccup (read: they messed us about on the dates) that we haven't already ripped it apart in some detail. Rated more highly than Jak 3 in many quarters, the assertion is that the single-player adventure, while slightly easier than R&C2's, retains the inventiveness and sense of humour that characterised previous instalments, and that the multiplayer endeavours not only don't detract from it but give you something fairly different and unique to tuck into once you've put the interstellar platformers to bed. People are saying it's better than any other PS2 Online game, in fact, which is either heady praise or hardly surprising depending on your view of Sony's online service to date...

Rounding off the trio on Darth's toaster though is what, for us, has proven a crushing disappointment. The Getaway: Black Monday. And it is certainly a dark day, because having defended the first game - which, while flawed, arguably overcame its own problems and emerged as something very relevant and engaging - the second has now slipped into the realms of mediocrity we so hoped it would pull clear from. Painful driving sequences, overly straightforward mission design, and a storyline full of characters you probably won't like and motives you won't be able to relate to. Still, at least residents of central London can enjoy the novelty of finding their own house and admiring it from the outside, although we wouldn't recommend parking anywhere without a permit... Hopefully the series' future isn't irretrievable, but we do hope that the response to Black Monday encourages the team to sit back and think hard about which elements of the first game made it stand out, and how they can bring those back to the fore in any future instalment.

Which is not unlike Intelligent Systems' approach to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, this week's big GameCube exclusive. You can expect to see a full review of this later on, but in short it's exactly what we wanted - a wholesome, comfortable adventure full of entertaining characters, Nintendo in-jokes, stylistic and yet functionally important visual flair, and battle and advancement systems that serve as an indictment of any RPG developer still relying on random battles and convoluted methods of character development. It's a game with spirit, and as long as you're prepared to accept that it's all in the name of fun, you will undoubtedly find yourself having plenty.

Which is something we also hope holds true when it comes to The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, released on Game Boy Advance this Friday. Hold up, you may be thinking, there's a new Zelda game out today!? Tell me about it. Whatever the reason - presumably something to do with the fact it's not out in the US until January 10th - Nintendo has been very coy with its latest handheld Link-'em-up, and we only received review code this morning. We'll have a review of it up next week, you can be sure, but in the meantime there's not a great deal we can tell you.

Fortunately, the above-lot are far from alone on the shelves this week, so there is more we can say in general. Although, as you can see from the rapidly dwindling number of paragraphs left between your eye and the requisite list-out, we choose not to overdo it. EverQuest II is out though, to surprisingly little fanfare, really, although presumably half the population of Earth will be playing it by this time next week, while PC owners can also get their hands on the spruced up version of Men of Valor: The Vietnam War. Now, we weren't overly sold on it on the Xbox, but the PC version multiplayer seemed more interesting when we played it in July, and the visuals are certainly much more advanced. The thing is, we just can't imagine you need a PC shooter today what with Half-Life 2 and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault both due out next week...

Another game whose success we'll be interested to follow in next week's charts update is EA's The Urbz: Sims In The City on PS2, Xbox, Cube and GBA. As you probably already know (for the record, we're not trying to finger you as Sims fans here; we're just conceding that it's impossible to avoid the bloody things these days), The Urbz takes the Sims out of their usual habitat and puts them in the big city, where they'll rap with the Black Eyed Peas and build up a coffee shop empire on the streets of Amsterdam - to a degree that seems to have earned the game an average rating of somewhere between 7 and 8 marks out of 10. [Note from our lawyers: The Urbz has nothing to do with drugs. And anybody wishing to form a class-action suit against Tom on account of his ramblings can get hold of us by holding a pinch of salt in front of a torch and shining it at the nearest cloud. -Legal Ed] The reason we're interested in its fortunes, naturally, is that it's not explicitly called "The Sims", and we want to see how much that hurts it, and also that it's up against Halo 2 and all the rest; there's surely never been a sterner test of the power of the Sims brand than this.

All of which incessant spouting leads us inexorably to the state of the import scene, and, having been off for a week, I'm recounting a fortnight's worth of games-we-can't-buy-yet-and-won't-be-able-to-for-a-bit. Amongst them there's Jak 3 (November 26th in Europe), which I can tell you, having finished it, is probably weaker than Jak II but still marvellously playable, Mario Power Tennis for the GameCube (February 25th over here), which we're hoping to get our hands on in the very near future, and a couple of Xbox treats in the shape of Fatal Frame 2 and Dead or Alive: Ultimate, both of which we expect to see over here in early 2005. The latter, in particular, has been impressing our friends across the pond, including one who tells me, hand on, er, heart, that "it's hideously unbalanced, but it's so much fun you just don't care".

Not unlike What's New then. Join us again next week, hopefully by which time your humble correspondent will have played Metal Gear Solid 3 and Half-Life 2 into submission. Drool overflow on standby. Over and out.

• PAL Releases
• Axis & Allies (PC)
• EverQuest II (PC)
• Finding Nemo: The Continuing Adventures (GBA)
• Halo 2 (Xbox)
• Lilo & Stitch 2 (GBA)
• Men of Valor: The Vietnam War (PC)
• NBA Live 2005 (PC)
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Cube)
• Ratchet & Clank 3 (PS2)
• The Getaway 2: Black Monday (PS2)
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (Cube)
• The Urbz: Sims In The City (PS2, Xbox, Cube, GBA)
• TRON 2.0 (GBA)
• WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (PS2)

• Key US Releases
• Dead or Alive: Ultimate (Xbox)
• Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly (Xbox)
• Jak 3 (PS2)
• Mario Power Tennis (Cube)
• Scrapland (PC)