Penguins & Friends Hey! That's My Fish!
On the Wii, this week, you could download Penguins & Friends Hey! That’s My Fish! from the WiiWare collection. This is a multi-player board game in which you compete with your friends to be the penguin who catches the most fish for the hungry penguin tribe (flock?). The board is assembled randomly from hexagonal pieces with fish on them. Use your penguin markers to claim the fish before your opponents.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The major cross-platform release this week is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Previews for the ridiculous new movie started showing up in theaters and on television the last few days, so I’m sure you’ve seen Darth Vader and Emperor Nero facing off west-side-story style (I prefer the depiction of Nero from Jose Farmer’s Riverworld, even in the movie adaptation—which is excellent, by the way—where he’s portrayed as a complete douche, rather than just extremely ambitious, but I digress). As with most movie tie-ins, this game will allow the player to take on the role of the movie’s protagonist, Larry the museum guard, and play out the story of the movie with some 3D platformer levels (2D on the DS) and a few puzzles. We’ll just have to see if it hits the other main features for movie tie-ins: counter intuitive controls, glitchy engine, and low-production-value graphics.
Imagine Music Fest
From the Imagine series, Imagine Music Fest for the DS is all about running a band. Design their logo, buy them clothes to wear, send them out on stage. It’s just like the tour mode of Rock Band¡
Free Realms
This week’s Icrontic Spotlight Release is Free Realms for the PC. This is an MMORPG with many of the features and conventions we’ve come to expect from other games in the genre, like customizable avatars and widely scalable graphics. The kicker for this one, as it’s name implies, is that it costs nothing to play (unless you want premium content, of course). I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “but CB, I’ve played those free MMORPGs, they’re always crap”. Well, this isn’t another indie MMO from Korea, this is from SOE, and it has very high production value for a free game. Its movement controls, graphics, and UI are similar to what you’re used to if you play Guild Wars or World of Warcraft. Where this one strongly differs (other than in price) is in its gameplay—combat is not the main focus of the game. Sure there are other MMORPGs that feature skill systems which allow you to play combat-free, and still advance, but in Free Realms, combat is really is just one path among many. If you’ve played Puzzle Pirates, then you might have some idea what I mean, and the comparison to Puzzle Pirates doesn’t stop there: Many of the tasks your avatar can focus on involve completion of various puzzles. Unlike other puzzle RPGs, however, there are some aspects which do not use puzzles, like combat (works like WoW), kart racing (works almost exactly like Mario Kart and even has little question-mark item boxes and ‘blue-shells’), and CCGing (works like Magic: The Gathering Online). The only standard feature this one seems to be missing is a good party system, since all of the activities are either in single-player instances (e.g. combat and resource gathering) or competitive mini-games (e.g. kart racing and CCGing).
Following is a list of all releases this week:
PC
- Free Realms
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
- Secret Files 2 – Puritas Cordis
Wii
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
- Secret Files 2 – Puritas Cordis
- Penguins & Friends Hey! That’s My Fish! (WiiWare)
- Tower Toppler (VC – C64)
DS
- Aqua Panic
- Imagine Music Fest
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
- Secret Files 2 – Puritas Cordis
XBox
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
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