Out This Week - 15/04/2011
Michael Jackson! Clash of Heroes HD!
Three million sales later, and Michael Jackson: The Experience finally lands on the exciting platforms: Xbox 360 (Kinect) and PlayStation 3 (Move).
Learn to dance like the man who influenced so many of today's chart-topping poplets. Johnny Minkley crotch-thrust a commendable 7/10 at the Wii version back in December. And at the very least, the Move adaptation should be more responsive and visually more sparkly than that. The Kinect game, meanwhile, welcomes full-body scanning and myriad more possibilities. Does Dance Central have a worthy competitor? Eurogamer will let Ellie Gibson be the judge. She'll be literally shaking her baby - she's pregnant not mad - to the Kinect game (and possibly the Move release) and delivering her unmissable verdict soon.
Tomorrow - that's even sooner that Friday - World of Tanks trundles into Europe. This free-to-play, WWII-era MMO holds the record for the most people online, on a single server, at once: 93,000. Goodness! It's bonkers and popular - Howitzer world not already going bananas for World of Tanks? There's an outside chance of a Eurogamer review.
Snooker game WSC Real 2011, developed by Hydrophobia dev Dark Energy and published by Koch, arrives this week - as does LEGO Ninjago on DS.
This Week in Shops!
- Michael Jackson: The Experience
- Developer: Ubisoft
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Formats: PS3 (Move), Xbox 360 (Kinect)
What is it? A dancing game. What does Eurogamer think? Ellie Gibson will have the final say soon. Johnny Minkley reviewed the Wii game last December, awarding 7/10: "And really, if Michael Jackson: The Experience isn't for fans, then who is it for? You could spend a long, joyless day skewering the game for its technical limitations and inadequacies. And while you're doing that, I'll be flailing drunkenly in a four-man dance troupe doing zombie moves in a pretend graveyard. And loving every moment of it."
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD
- Developer: Capy Games
- Formats: PSN (13th April), XBLA (13th April)
What is it? A spruced up port of DS puzzle RPG Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. What does Eurogamer think? We won't separately review the online HD release, but Dan Pearson's glowing 8/10 for the unaltered DS original should suffice. "Eurogamer MMO editor Oli Welsh popped up on my MSN to ask me if I thought it was a puzzle, RPG or strategy game. It has enough elements of each that I honestly couldn't say. What I did do was recommend it to him wholeheartedly, because, whatever it is, Clash of Heroes is a very good game indeed."
What Else?
- LEGO Ninjago (DS)
- WSC Real 2011 (PS3, Xbox 360)
- World of Tanks (PC Online - 12th April)
- Yar's Revenge (XBLA)
Chart Predictions!
Each week one of the team will step up to predict the UK all-formats chart. The following predicts the outcome for the week beginning Friday 15th April (to be reported on Monday 18th April).
Wesley Yin-Poole, News Editor
"Given the lack of new releases this week, I can't see much change in the top five. Exciting, huh? But with the launch of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version of Michael Jackson: The Experience, a game that's already shifted a whopping three million copies on DS, PSP and Wii, we have a guaranteed new number one. Sorry, Zumba Fitness. Jackson's Moonwalk to the top of the chart will shift everything else down a place. So, Zumba Fitness will drop to second, Crytek's visually striking shooter Crysis 2 to third, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars to fourth and Tiger Woods propping up the rear in fifth. It's April!"
- Michael Jackson: The Experience
- Zumba Fitness: Join the Party
- Crysis 2
- LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters
Eurogamer reviews editor Oli Welsh attempted to predict the future last week. We've put together a fancy table to show how he did.
Position | The Truth | The Prediction | Result |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Zumba Fitness: Join the Party | Zumba Fitness: Join the Party | YES! |
2 | Crysis 2 | Carnival Games: In Action | NO! |
3 | LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars | Crysis 2 | NO! |
4 | Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters | LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars | NO! |
5 | Shift 2: Unleashed | Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters | NO! |