If you've been having a hard time finding Super Mario Galaxy this week, you're going to find a lot of new games waiting for you instead. Each desperately hoping, puppy-like, that you might decide to take one of them home instead. Most of even the notable stuff shipping this week is junk, but there's still a few games that might legitimately tempt you with an impulse buy... and you might be surprised which ones they are.
(Editor's aside: Yeah, I got my copy of Super Mario Galaxy this week... just in time for my 32" HDTV to go completely on the fritz. So I can play Mario Galaxy at lousy resolution on my lousy PC monitor, or just sit around and stare at the screen until the TV repair guy gets off his butt and gets over here to do the repairs. Which probably won't be until Saturday. The fates, they mock me.)
Although there's only one review in from it, IGN's coverage of Medal of Honor 2: Heroes is so enthusiastic that it leaves me thinking this game could take this week's top spot. It's loaded with Wii-exclusive features and online play (with 32 players, all managed friend-code-free on EA's servers). It's far and away more robust than any previous Wii shooter-- yeah, even Metroid Prime 3. It's also an interesting review given Bozon's impassioned plea for Nintendo to give Wii FPS players all of the same options their 360 brethren have, including the right to be sworn at by strangers.
Likewise, the only online review for Contra 4 is at IGN. I find the final score here a little lower than what the text would indicate, so I'm expecting Contra 4's metacritic rating to start to soar as the reviews from more openly fanboyish outlets begin to trickle in during the weeks ahead. Personally I don't agree with Craig Harris that Contra 4 needed to be any easier... being ridiculously difficult is the point of Contra, right? But this is really a game that would've been better with the ability to save your progress, and more subtle encouragements to replay and replay early levels until you get them right.
Rounding out the top three this week is another game that's all about the shooty: Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. This stands with a Metacritic average of 80%, which should tell you a lot about how crummy the rest of this week's game glut is. Thus far all of the reviews take a positive tone, with low-ish scores largely recognizing that Umbrella Chronicles is little more than House of the Dead drenched in Capcom's own zombie IP. On the high end there's GamePro's Tae Kim, who seems to think it'll be a bit too short for most players. On the low end, there's Nick Suttner at 1up, whose only issue seems to be that there's not much that's fresh about the gameplay or graphics. If I was only buying one game this week, it would probably be this one, since this is one of the rare games I can get my husband to play co-op with me.
Ah, now to the dregs. WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007's only been covered in print for the Wii, with opinions ranging from "good" to "lousy". To be honest, I expect most other reviews to fall in this spectrum as they start coming in. (My personal opinion is distinctly tilted toward "lousy".) IGN has a review of the DS version up, if you were curious how that turned out. The premise sounds pretty interesting, though I'm expecting future reviews to be a little less kind to it. Think "weird" where IGN says "innovative".
Cooking Mama 2 for the DS sounds like the kind of thing you'll like it if it happens to be the kind of thing you like. GamePro is positive but gives the impression that at heart this game is little more than a Cooking Mama expansion pack. Game Informer seems to agree.
The Wii iteration of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Anniversary limps in to stores far later than just about every other version of the game, but fortunately with some fun-sounding exclusive content and some decent Wii-exclusive controls. IGN's Matt Casamassina still ends up dinging it pretty hard when it comes to score, mostly for using the PS2 version's lousy graphics when the Wii can do much better.
EA's Smarty Pants is a pretty good idea for a Wii game: a trivia competition designed for families and groups of friends to play. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's both overpriced and hampered by some really bad game design decisions that take away from the basic fun of proving that you're the smartest person in the room. IGN's Matt Casamassina offers a handy-dandy breakdown you might want to show to any casual gaming friends who thought Smarty Pants looked like a good buy.
The original Rayman: Raving Rabbids was a hit largely be virtue of being one of the few decent Wii launch titles that wasn't The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was also the first really good mini-game collection for the system, and probably the best launch title for playing with kids and family members as a group. In comparison, Raving Rabbids 2 seems not to have even managed to hit those none-too-lofty goals, offering fewer and lousier minigames. From the time I've spent playing the game at press demos, I'm inclined to agree with Gamespot's dismal evaluation: the games always felt repetitive and left my arms hurting from all the shaking you had to do, but I didn't really feel like I had any fun.
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