Friday Downtime Feature

Friday Sunday Downtime is here, only two days late.  All we can offer is apologies and the fact that Street Fighter IV is just a little too good...

Nevertheless, SFIV is obviously last week's news, apart from the fact it found itself bumped off the top slot by Killzone 2 and Halo Wars.  Make sure to buy it if you haven't it's utterly brilliant - or perhaps enter TVG's Game of the Month competition to stand a chance of winning the Special Edition.

But seriously back on track.  This week we took a first look at Need for Speed: Shift.  Before you cynically scoff at 'just another Need for Speed', remember that EA is taking something of a gamble with this one, toying with the format of one of its biggest earners by bringing in Slightly Mad Games to develop.  Slightly Mad Games is perhaps not a studio with instant familiarity, but previous credits on hardcore racers such as GTR2 and GT Legends should give an indication of where this title is heading.

Elsewhere this week's releases were dominated by the release of Wii Play: Mario Power Tennis... no seriously who am I trying to kid, this week was all about the return of Total War.  Setting sail to the New World with the premise of a new 18th century setting, advances to the turn-based gameplay, and the inclusion of proper naval battles, we found Empire: Total War to be a tactical masterpiece, even if the naval battles weren't particularly great.

Joining Empire: Total War and the re-release of a five-year old GameCube title, sorry I mean the Wii-enhanced version of Mario Power Tennis (we never received a copy, so we can't be too harsh), the return of the Tom Clancy brand with H.A.W.X entertained us enough to drag out our aviators and enjoy a bit of man-on-man volleyball.

With DLC rapidly becoming a serious avenue for increasingly elaborate expansion packs and wider profit margins, Rockstar is leading the charge of the digital download revolution.  Following fast on the heels of GTA IV's Lost & Damned, we recently took a look at the South Central pack arriving soon for Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Although it was a relatively quiet time on the headlines a couple of snippets made for interesting news.  Continuing the recent wake of PSP news, rumours surrounding the return of Kratos gave extra weight to the challenge issued by David Perry to deny the rising rumours of the PSP2.  An apparent leak of details allegedly breaking the silence of Infinity Ward's return with Modern Warfare 2 looked far too good to be true... Infinity Ward later confirmed you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. 

In addition, a couple of impending sequels gained teaser websites - Bioshock 2 undoubtedly showing Army of Two 2 exactly how it should be done.  Elsewhere, Ubisoft's disaster title, I Am Alive, showed its troubles with confirmation that the little heard of title has switched hands from Darkworks to Ubisoft Shanghai.  Read into that whatever you will, but I'm pretty sure it's not usually a good sign.  With the release of Resident Evil 5 timely slotted for next week's Friday the 13th (look out for the review tomorrow), Capcom's head-honcho Keiji Inafune's love of the Xbox 360 became apparent in an interview with the man behind MegaMan, Dead Rising and Capcom's recent overseas success.

Finally, we're introducing a new bit to TVG's Friday Downtime, where we trawl through the bile and hatred to reward one reader's opinion as standing out beyond all others.

TVG's Comment of the Week

Goes to...  Anonymous (March 5th) who rightfully pointed out to Evil Genius fans desperate for a sequel and hoping that rumours of Rebellion acquiring the IP are true:

"I sincerely doubt there will ever be an Evil Genius 2, since the first one didn't sell particularly well and the developers have long since gone under.</p>

Even if Rebellion did develop a sequel as suggested in post #50, they don't exactly have the best record of late (Shellshock 2, anyone?)."

Can't really argue against that evidence.

Until next week.