What's New? (16th Feb, 2007)

Unsustainable rubbish with a list of new releases on the bottom.

Feature by Tom Bramwell Former Editor-in-Chief

Updated on 23 Feb 2007

CRITICS HAIL THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF WHAT'S NEW

"This is completely unreadable."

"If the content on here continues in this way the site will eventually be completely inaccessible to the common gamer."

But enough fanfare - because fanfares, particularly those directed at your ears, are no laughing matter, and can actually be dangerous to your health, as New York senator Carl Kruger has been explaining. Carl wants to fine pedestrians caught listening to their headphones or playing games while crossing the road - because a couple of his constituents have died doing just that, and obviously it's harder to get re-elected if your constituents are dead.

It's not clear if the people from Brooklyn who danced into buses were going to vote for Carl, but I certainly wouldn't, and not just because he sounds like the kind of moss-licking dolphin-hugger who makes his own potpourri. He reckons it's a public safety issue, and I agree, but we differ on points of emphasis. My thing is, if these people were too busy listening to music or playing Mario to not get smashed to bits by cars, how safe is my world with them still in it? And don't imagine these silly Americans are any different to the people in Sainsbury's who stare pensively at microwave tikka masala packs for hours and then swing their trolleys violently into your knees as they spin away in the direction of Snack-a-Jacks, often tutting with disapproval as you writhe on the ground in a pool of Dolmio. And don't be fooled into thinking this is frivolous grandstanding - this is a hard call for me, because I would dearly like to fine people for walking around with PSPs, but we cannot continue to save idiots from themselves. It's not because it's the only way they'll learn; it's because we shouldn't rebel against natural selection. There's a reason god doesn't allow respawning.

Which will probably all come back to explode my plane over the Pacific as I fire up West Wing eps on a PSP next week, but in the meantime here's a couple of games worth playing on the streets of Brooklyn while you still can: 1. ArmA: Armed Assault. The need to carry a brutally heavy laptop around to play it notwithstanding, ArmA is ideal for crossing streets without looking in either direction thanks to its focus on slow, painstaking build-ups and radio silence. It's so realistic you might even learn the odd thing about road safety, bombs and the correct sort of grass to lie on when the scary man with the knife tries to take your laptop. 2. Mario Slam Basketball. You don't need to hear anything to play it, so you can take the headphones off, improving your chances of survival, and the clever 'tap the screen to dribble the basketball' mechanic is the sort of thing that might give rise to original ideas while you walk. Like a free-roaming action game where you hold the stylus like a credit card and whack it against the touch-screen to cut lines for your crackwhore, or something involving dropships. Anyway, join me again in March when I'll probably have found some tenuous way to link Lily Allen to Final Fantasy so I can do jokes about "grudge-pumping" her.

Next week: Tom won't be here, because he wasn't lying about going on holiday.