Game Releases for the Week of 11/26-12/2

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Dan here with this week's gaming buying guide, thankfully light after last week's onslaught of titles, as publishers spit out the remaining games before the holiday buying season begins in earnest. Looking for a game? Check out last weeks list and the week before that.

Wii

11/28 Rapala Trophies - Use the Wii-mote to cast in this fishing game, a conversion of a PSP budget title that showed up for that console back in August. Unlike that game, however, Activision has used the Wii's launch to justify the full price for this title. Thanks, Activision!

11/28 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent - Sam Fisher completes his 10 game trek onto every console in the past month, ending his run with the Wii version, which comes with a reduced level of graphics (it's based on the GC version) but with added Wii features, such as the ability to shake the Wii-mote to pick locks.

11/28 Metal Slug Anthology - See game of the week, below.

11/30 Open Season - September's movie tie-in gets shovelwared to the Wii, with the same basic gameplay and added Wii functionality.

11/30 Barnyard - August's movie tie-in gets the Wii treatment, with the original mini-game heavy, open-world adventure making a good candidate for Wii control.

PS3

None

Xbox 360

11/28 Pimp My Ride - Cheap(er) 360 title based on the hit Discovery Channel tv show and developed by Activision. Players will enter "Pimp City" in this game and be lead by show host Xzibit in customizing vehicles and challenging rivals to races.

PSP

11/28 Justice League Heroes - A month or so delayed from the rest of the consoles, this relatively poor-reviewed title gets a PSP port, with the same kind of action as in X-Men Legends. Developed by Snowblind Studios ("Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance").

11/29 Online Chess Kingdoms - In the grand tradition of the late, great, Battle Chess (Interplay4Life!) comes this PSP title, your basic game of chess with 3D graphics, 5 different chess "sets", and online action.

11/29 Shrek Smash 'n' Crash - It's Shrek on a go-kart, on your PSP.

11/30 The Sims 2: Pets - Essentially the same Sims game the consoles have seen for awhile now with an expansion pack tacked on, the emphasis here is, obviously buying, mating, and raising pets. There's 40 breeds of cats and dogs stuffed in, and all can be customized, from adjusting intelligence and personality levels to deciding what kind of bow your poodle should have.

11/30 Puzzlescape - It's your basic block-busting puzzle game, where players maneuver colored falling bricks into 2x2 blocks, which then explode and clear the way for more colored falling bricks.

DS

11/28 Cartoon Network Racing - The various Cartoon Network properties (all of which have their own games, incidentally), come together for some good ol' fashioned kart racing action.

11/28 Hamsterz Life - Told you it was coming! Teach irresponsibility to your kids with this title, that has players customizing their virtual hamsters home and food.

11/30 Xiaolin Showdown - Based on the cartoon, this is an action game with cartooney graphics (makes sense, doesn't it?).

Xbox

None

PS2

11/28 Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer - Delayed from 2 weeks back. >From the people who brought us State of Emergency comes this a game set in Native American mythology (hmm, Native American mythology seems popular this year), with 3rd person platforming action.

11/28 Cartoon Network Racing - See the DS description

GC

11/28 Radirgy - Holy crap, a GC game that's not a crappy port or based on a Cartoon Network show! This is actually a new version of a recently released Dreamcast game, if you can believe that, a fast action vertical shmup (shoot em up) developed in Japan.

PC

11/28 Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II - The Witch King - Experience the battles that lead up to the LOTR movies in this first expansion pack to the popular LOTR RTS. Requires the original game.

GBA

11/28 Superman Returns: Fortress of Solitude - The GBA flavor of this multiplatform release is a side-scrolling beat-em-up.

11/28 Rayman Raving Rabbids - Ubi's flagship mascot is heading to the other non-Wii consoles next month, but arrives first on the GBA. Unfortunately no word as to how the GBA version plays. My guess? Side-scrolling actioner.

Game of the Week:

Metal Slug Anthology, Wii, 11/28

Not much to choose from this week for GoTW, but it's hard to imagine when SNK was working on the first arcade Metal Slug back in the 90's they could have imagined one day it would have such a bizarro control scheme. Indeed, the Wii port has a variety of control options to choose from, including one called "arcade" that has you hold the Wii-mote like an arcade stick -- very intriguing. But any way you choose to play it, the 6 Metal Slug games you get here is hours of awesome 2D fun for $40 bucks, not a bad deal at all.

Game I'm Playing:

Yoshi Island DS, DS, 11/14

Yoshi's Island DS makes no bones about it: pure and simple, it's a homage to the great SNES title that was the pinnacle of 2D action platformers when it was released in 1995. And developer Artoon tinkered very little with the simple formula, which retains the same Baby Mario-based gameplay but adds a few tweaks, such as the ability to switch between baby Mario, Peach, and DK at specified locations in levels. Since each baby has they're own abilities this adds a bit of strategy into the mix. Like this year's Super Mario Bros DS, there's a lot of extras to unlock and things to do in the levels besides just finish each board. Unlike SMB, however, getting 100% on each level is devilishly hard, as Artoon has hid red coins in the craziest, most obscure places. If you play as I do, obsessed with getting 100% on every stage, you may be pulling your hair out in frustration. Other than that however, the game does very little wrong and proves once again the same basic platforming goodness that SMB pioneered more than 20 years ago still holds up today.