New PAL Releases Roundup
Haze! Conan! Rock Band! Bank Holiday!
So, Rock Band is out on Friday, and it costs GBP 140 for the game and the kit, or perhaps a bit less if you shop around, or steal one, or wait outside a games shop with a knife and mug people. Is it worth it?
You'd like us to tell you, and we would like to! In fact, we already sort of have - having taken the PS3 version apart just before Christmas when we (foolishly) imagined that our GBP 200 decision to import it would be miles more expensive than the local equivalent.
A lot of the things we wrote in that 8/10 review hold true in the PAL Xbox 360 version, which we've been playing ever since EA finally got us a copy late last week.
However, we'd like to give it just a few more days of co-operative play amongst ourselves to set our arguments in stone, and felt you would probably accept the delay if it meant we were entirely comfortable with the result and not in a rush.
Deficiencies in Haze, meanwhile, have been documented quite thoroughly elsewhere by an unusually vicious Kristan, who really wasn't a fan. And remember, he liked Brute Force, so it must be bad.
Present sins aside though, we do wish Free Radical the best of luck with the new TimeSplitters - a series for which we've had a mountain of affection ever since the morning we first unwrapped our PS2.
Elsewhere on this week's release list is the meaty-looking MMO Age of Conan, which Oli Welsh and the goblins of Eurogamer MMO have been taking apart this week - with a last-minute preview and commentary from the launch event and an examination of the classes. Tomorrow will bring Oli's extended impressions of the beta and ruminations on the state of the game at launch.
Whichever way you turn for gaming this weekend though, make sure you don't go outside. The sun is not good for you, and you will probably fall over or drop your shopping and you will be ostracised by friends and family on account of your inadequacy. So play games instead.
This week: