Wii: 12 Games of Christmas Article

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Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure

• Release date: 7th December (TBC)
• Gamepage

Rumblings suggest this might actually slip to 2008, but we're going to stick it on here anyway in hope of affecting the coal-like hearts of whichever accursed humans might be conspiring to hold it up. We like adventure games - we make no secret of that, except when we're hiding from the people from the recruit agency downstairs - and the critical acclaim heaped on Capcom's latest left-field effort in the US, where it's already out, suggests we're in for the sort of treat we usually only get on our birthday (yes, Toblerone).

Compared to Gregory Horror Show and Phoenix Wright by our name-dropping editor in terms of its "quirky spirit of adventure", it sounds like an adventure game where your Wiimote is the physical embodiment of the props your character relies on to solve puzzles. Pick up a bell and you can ring it by shaking the remote. USE monkey WITH wrench this ain't. Although there is a monkey in it. Come on Nintendo! Give it to us this year!

Speaking of monkeys: I bought the DVD of Congo the other day for a fiver. I had seen it ages ago and liked it but couldn't find it on the, er, at my video shop. Well, it has killer monkeys, Bruce Campbell, a parachuting gorilla who can talk and paint and Joe Pantoliano wearing Hawaiian shirts. So I was right.

Rockstar Games presents: Table Tennis

• Out now!
• Gamepage

Surely 'Liu Ping' is a bit racist? Uh oh! It's Hot Coffee all over again!

I really liked Table Tennis on Xbox 360. It was cheap, cheerful, and surprisingly deep and rewarding. It was also rock hard in single-player, so it's a good thing Ellie is around to lose to me semi-regularly on Xbox Live. And now, on the Wii! Except there's no online play. And Rockstar doesn't send me games any more because I was mean to them. But still, if I ever go to her Lewisham deathtrap hovel and fancy playing a Wii game, I will fancy playing this, because the clever mixture of spin attacks and the game's gentle hand-holding for positioning combine in worthy fashion.

And hey, surely this is the archetypal Christmas Wii Sports game? After all, it's tennis. Even Gran understood that. And - you can thrash everyone at it, destroying their self-esteem and reversing the flow of goodwill Nintendo has created by making games about dogs and all that nonsense. Fight the power.

I did some sport once: I was on my primary school's table tennis team. We used to play in a huge room so we all did that trick of serving from really far back. Yes I've run out of ideas for funny facts. Stick it in your **** and ****.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

• Release date: 23rd November
• Gamepage

My hair looks like that.

After nearly a year of people cooing over Rock Band and lazily forecasting the death of Activision's newly acquired Guitar Hero series, November's arrived and everyone's crawling back to the now Neversoft-fronted axe-matcher because, you know, it would take a lot of effort to cock this up.

Legends of Rock certainly doesn't seem to, and whatever you make of the track list the fact it's heading to Wii for the first time - among others - gives us the sort of excitement tingle usually reserved for when the pretty one who lives upstairs comes down to complain about the noise.

(It's all right, we know this sort of behaviour "heads in a bad direction". This is why we have Guitar Hero. And why she has mace, probably... You know what, that isn't funny, it's just sinister. The truth: we live beneath what occasionally sounds like a "hub" of Brighton's gay community.)

We did not have sexual relations with that woman: Because she is fictional. Not like Keeley.