Cheap This Week - 13/07/11

Welcome to Cheap This Week, our weekly selection of discounted games. There's a great selection of games available for good prices this week, including two hot pre-orders for less than 20 quid apiece. If you want still more cut-price gaming, make sure to visit home of cheap games on the internet: SavyGamer.co.uk.

Here are this week's deals:

Crackdown 2, Xbox 360 - £6.85 delivered

Christian liked this to the tune of an 8/10 in the Crackdown 2 review. Here's what he thought:

"Everything clips into place sweetly and creates a game that, beneath its generic coating of crime, mutants and street-battling, is surprisingly hard to classify. Pacific City is snug compared to the likes of Just Cause 2 and in the very early stages you may find yourself longing for the speed offered by Rico's grapple hook - but you're rewarded with more detail and thought per square inch than Panau could ever afford you, and a gradual expansion of your own powers that makes your progress intoxicating."

I was quite fond of it too. I wasn't keen on the recycling of locations from the first game, but it's far from a big deal, and at this price, fairly forgivable.

Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon - £19.85 delivered on Xbox 360 or PS3

Coupon "20JULY15-1" will get you 15 per cent off, but only if you spend £20 or more - so if you add something else to your order, you can save a bit more.

EDF! EDF! EDF! Have you got a phobia of insects? That's probably the only reason not to get this game, and even then it might help cure your fear. EDF is about getting to play with a big pile of guns and getting to take on an even bigger pile of baddies.

The series has had a change of hands this time round and is being developed by Vicious Cycle of, uh, Matt Hazard fame. Still, it looks like it turned out OK, going by the 8/10EDF: Insect Armageddon review from Christian.

New to the series for this entry is three-player online coop, in addition to the two-player split screen co-op from EDF 2017. I bet all the troops have come up with new, funny one-liners too.

Rock Band 3 - £12.99 delivered on Xbox 360 or PS3

Like a large portion of the playing audience, I was kind of done with rhythm action games by the time Rock Band 3 came around - but it's got a banging selection of tracks and the pro mode gets closer to actually playing an instrument than any game has previously. Johnny was more than sold on it, describing it as "the greatest music game ever made" before awarding it a sought-after Eurogamer 10 in the Rock Band 3 review. Here's what he said:

"[Rock Band 3], taken as a whole, utterly eclipses everything that has come before it. The leap from Rock Band 2 is vast - and a salutary lesson to Activision, which has milked Guitar Hero dry, of what is possible when a gifted developer is given the breathing space to innovate."

Will we be seeing more Rock Band games in the future? A comeback tour in a couple of years perhaps?

Limbo, Trials HD and 'Splosion Man, Xbox 360 - £6.98 delivered

Three of the best Xbox Live Arcade games going, shoved onto a disc, and now heavily discounted. Works for me.

John awarded a 9/10 in Eurogamer's Limbo review, saying "Limbo pivots between joy and despair with devastating efficiency, such as when the silhouette of another boy lounging in a tree offers the promise of a new friend - and then you notice a little hand, dangling limp from what you realise is his slouched, long-dead body." Lovely.

RedLynx can also brag about getting a 9/10, courtesy of Tom's Trials HD review. He said, "Even playing it from start to end will take hours, and it's a game built for endless replay and community expansion beyond that."

Dan gave a less impressive (but still worth your time) 7/10 in Eurogamer's 'Splosion Man review. "'Splosion Man is certainly an improvement over The Maw, if only because it feels more like a game you can sink your teeth into for more than an afternoon. Its immediate charms are tarnished only by some repetitive level design and some minor control frustrations."

Three great games that would each normally cost more than this on their own - I'd say it's easily worth the price of entry for any one of these games.

Deal of the week

Child Of Eden, PS3 - £14.99 delivered It's now the same price at Amazon, but Play.com include a free T-shirt too.

The price keeps dropping on this one. A couple of weeks ago I was highlighting this for £20 as being a really good deal, and here it is for 25% less.

The PS3 version of Child of Eden has been confirmed to support Move controls, and I have an inclination that might be the optimal control scheme for the game. Move has both precision waggle aiming like Kinect, but also buttons for direct control of shooting.

It's not out on PS3 for a while, so you're going to have to be patient on this one, but I strongly recommend ordering it as soon as possible if you want to ensure you get it at this price.

Simon gave the Xbox 360 version 9/10 in his Child of Eden review.

Also of note this week...

• Xbox 360 250GB – £159.98 delivered, and selected games for £15.
• Heavy Rain, PS3 - £9.98 delivered
• Brink, PC - £9.98 delivered (registers on Steam)

Visit SavyGamer.co.uk for your gaming bargain needs throughout the week, and hassle me on Twitter if you ever want a particular game for cheap.