Out This Week - 08/04/2011

Ah, the quiet lull of early April. Financial years are over and the money men around the world are pounding calculators to make ends meet. You won't find many blockbusters here. Luckily it's not an entirely barren month, as Portal 2, Operation Flashpoint: Red River, Mortal Kombat and Virtua Tennis 4 are all still to come. But this week, I'm afraid, offers little.

Unless you like Duke Nukem! Wow! It's out already?! No not Duke Nukem take Forever; I'm talking about Duke Nukem: Critical Mass. It's a DS game that we know next to nothing about. It appears to be the salvaged first part of the Duke Nukem Trilogy for PSP and DS that evidently wasn't to be.

Other games you'll probably ignore but might top the UK charts anyway are Carnival Games: In Action for Kinect and Brunswick Bowling for Move and Kinect.

Shops may be bare, then, but online there's promise. This comes from The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and Red Faction: Battlegrounds. The former, a sequel to The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, is a side-scrolling hack-'em-apart for Xbox Live Arcade. Creator James Silva promises Vampire Smile will be bigger, better and bloodier than ever. Earmark this one.

Red Faction: Battlegrounds is a top-down twin-stick Destruction Derby-style take on Red Faction. Developer Volition described Battlegrounds as a "snack" for fans of the series. Let's hope it's got some substance to it.

This Week in Shops!

• Dynasty Warriors 7
• Developer: Tecmo Koei
• Publisher: Tecmo Koei
• Formats: PS3, Xbox 360

What is it? Next instalment in the vaguely historical one-man-chops-down-army series. What does Eurogamer think? It's Dynasty Warriors being Dynasty Warriors with some improvements. Solid, dependable hack-and-slash fun. A quick gaze around the world (where DW7 has been released) shows a favourable reception to a strong series addition.

of

Caption

Attribution

What Else?

• Carnival Games: In Action (Kinect)
• Brunswick Bowling (Move, Kinect)
• Duke Nukem: Critical Mass (DS)
• The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile (XBLA)
• Red Faction: Battlegrounds (PSN, XBLA)
• StarDrone (PSN)

Chart Predictions!

Each week one of the team will step up to predict the UK all-formats chart. The following predicts the outcome for the week beginning Friday 8th April (to be reported on Monday 11th April).

Oli Welsh, Reviews Editor

"As the days lengthen, so reclusive, nocturnal gamers retreat into their hovels and the new releases dry up. I'm kidding, it's actually because the end of the financial year in April forced a glut on us and everyone's catching their breath - expect normal service to be resumed in May. In the meantime, though, smiling, fit lifestyle families will prop the games business up, now operating in a deadly Wii/Kinect pincer movement. This week's shock new entry Zumba Fitness will be joined in the top five by the first Carnival Games for Kinect, while EA will rue the decision to drop over Need for Speed branding from Shift 2 when it vanishes from sight."

1. Zumba Fitness: Join the Party
2. Carnival Games: In Action
3. Crysis 2
4. Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters

Eurogamer TV editor Johnny Minkley predicted the future last week. We've made a fancy table to highlight his errors and see how he did.