What's New?
Plenty, if you like Xbox budget titles...
You may have spotted that the list is a bit lopsided this week. That's thanks to the efforts of Microsoft, whose Xbox Classics line launches today, vomiting forth a collection of older titles at a new price point of £19.99 - some classic, some crud. For the benefit of those who haven't kept in touch with the format since March 14th, 2002, here's a rundown of the ones we'd recommend, the ones we'd probably buy, and the ones we'd have destroyed:
Recommended: Amped (tricky but authentic snowboarding), Buffy The Vampire Slayer (fantastic combat), Burnout (may not be Burnout 2, but it's still brilliant), MotoGP (stunning), Project Gotham Racing (indispensable at £40, doubly so here), RalliSport Challenge (just phenomenal), SSX Tricky (one of my top five games ever), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (a good entry point for the series).
Probably recommended: Dead or Alive 3 (well, at £20 you can hardly say no), Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (again, comes into its own at £20).
Burn it: Agent Under Fire (has aged really badly, and just doesn't match up to anything current), Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (rubbish), Max Payne (get the PC version for a tenner and try some mods!), Spider-Man: The Movie (it's not hateful, but it's not worth buying really), Wreckless (so rubbish that we didn't even review it).
And the fun doesn't stop there for Xbox owners. Kung Fu Chaos is one of the best full price games out this week, and Kristan will be taking us through that later. Throw in a price cut for the console itself to £129.99 this Friday and it's a good week to be green.
Unfortunately, the other formats really pale in comparison this week. Sony are backing the wrong horse with Primal, which is really not as good as some people have told you it is (review later today), and we don't know much about Batman: Dark Tomorrow but it doesn't sound revolutionary. Neither does Monsters, Inc. - Scream Arena, or Rugrats: Royal Ransom.
However, the PC gets a couple of little enigmas this week in the shape of Casino, Inc. and Restaurant Empire. We should have a review of at least one of them soon, so stay tuned for that, and in the meantime, buy some Xbox games.