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(This week's European releases.) Athens 2004, NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, Soldiers, Kirby, and various bad jokes that we can't publish anywhere else.

Feature by Tom Bramwell Former Editor-in-Chief

Published on 2 Jul 2004

10 comments

With Euro 2004 a fading memory down our way (and down yours too, we fancy - unless we have more Greek and Portuguese readers than we realise), and Henman and co. out of Wimbledon, our sports calendar would be rather empty were it not for the Olympics in Athens. Frankly, we don't get that excited about that sort of thing very often, but we were more than happy to get acquainted with the Athens 2004 spin-off game when it turned up recently; waggling and mashing our way through it like some sort of crazed back-half-of-dog/potato-pummelling hybrid creature sprawled on the couch making rapid, easily misconstrued arm gestures as our little virtual men and women gradually conquered each and every event. Not a bad way to spend a day. Particularly if you have friends. Friends with thumbs.

Hockey dokey

Athens isn't the only sporting event of the week though - we also have wrestling and hockey to contend with. Both are fairly American-o-centric pursuits, but it's worth pointing out once again that NHL Eastside Hockey Manager was actually developed here in the UK by Sports Interactive, and based on the tech behind the developer's incomparably popular Championship/Football Manager series. We know nothing of the sport, sadly, but it appears by all accounts that game is rife with the sort of attention to detail that CM fans have come to expect - and if you're waiting eagerly for the next instalment in that series (called Football Manager 2005, don't forget) and prepared to broaden your horizons, it might fill a gap this weekend. If it doesn't, feel free to give us some stick. (Eurgh.)

Or, you could fill that same gap with Legends of Wrestling: Showdown, the latest in Acclaim's series of wrestling games featuring oldies like Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and various others we actually recognise. Then again you might read some reviews of that and realise that it seems to suffer from largely the same problems that afflicted its various predecessors - it's visually and mechanically rough round the edges, and doesn't compare all that favourably to the various titles published by THQ using up-to-date World Wrestling Entertainment characters and movesets. Obviously it's one of the only places you can go if you want to put Jake "the Snake" Roberts into the same ring as Randy "Macho Man" Savage, but the argument seems to be that doing that took attention away from the package's various gameplay problems.

War on terriers

But enough of all that. Games should be about conflict! Guns! War! Raaaar! (We've been playing too much Full Spectrum Warrior.) Er, which leads us on to Kirby And The Amazing Mirror for the piddly GBA. Although quite how... Anyway, Nintendo has released quite a few interesting little GBA games lately, including the rather excellent F-Zero: GP Legend (which we are still playing, incidentally), Donkey Kong Country 2 (which we're not, since we finished it ten years ago. Twice) and now this new Kirby title. Heck, there's also the prospect of Fire Emblem to look forward to later on this month, but that's a subject for another column. For now, we're interested in the pink blob's latest exploits, which apparently include a squadron of backup Kirby troopers (that's more like it) who can be called in by mobile phone. Assuming you can find a signal. It sounds interesting, no? Hopefully when we get a copy in we'll be able to tell you more. For now though, we'd suggest trying F-Zero: GP Legend and waiting for a verdict on Kirby. Or saving up for Fire Emblem... Mmm...

Enough of that too. And onto the rest of these week's delights, including one of Codemasters' recent PC acquisitions, the oh-gosh-another World War II title Soldiers: Heroes of WWII. And yet, despite being another take on a conflict that seems to have become almost as essential to publishers as football and first-person shooters, it's apparently rather different. Indeed, reviews we've read claim that it's not simply out to rehash the past (in gaming terms anyway - obviously it doesn't just make up what happened in Europe in the 40s), and actually does things it's own way. Having just come off the back of another war game that does just that (the aforementioned Full Spectrum Warrior), we're quite intrigued by the sound of a game that mixes RTS and Commandos style ideas and largely succeeds, even if the general consensus seems to be that it doesn't do so absolutely all of the time. We'll probably take a closer look soon. In the meantime, we recommend having a read around - it might be that little burst of something different the genre needed.

Im-port-ant update

Anyway, with that we're left with a couple of games that seem to be out, but very well may not be - the PC port of Acclaim's surprisingly popular Alias title, and another Acclaim-published PC title, Russobit-M's FPS Kreed, of which we've heard virtually nothing. Perhaps, in retrospect then, it's not the most exciting week in the history of this column, but there are certainly some items of substance if you're prepared to dig a little deeper than usual. Fortunately though, next week will require less digging, and we fancy that plenty of you will wind up saving your money (and the use of your spades) when you discover that the likes of Onimusha 3, Spider-Man 2, Richard Burns Rally and the Classic NES Series are on their way. If only because we're clearly going to wind up moaning about being expected to pay £15 for each of the eight 8-bit NES-to-GBA ports that Nintendo has lined up for us. Perhaps we'll use the Onimusha sword peripheral to beat them down. Expect carnage. Tune in again to find out who dies...