Wii Gaming News

Packed with exciting new features, brand new graphics and animations, and an engrossing storyline, horse sports fans will be treated to the most complete equestrian experience and the most realistic horse simulation ever seen in a game. My Horse and Me: Riding for Gold will let players live the ultimate bond between them and their horse. The My Horse and Me series boasts the exclusive worldwide license from the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI), the world’s leading horse sports organisation.

Release Date:Tue, 28 Apr 2009

Make no mistake about my affinity for Star Trek (even if Mr. Anthony Gallegos and myself occasionally get into heated “I’m the bigger Star Wars fan because…” conversations). I feel I could also hold my own pretty well when it comes to all things Trek. For example, how do you defeat a Behemoth Alien? You kick it in its knees. So when Naked Sky Entertainment was going to bring by Star Trek: D-A-C for a hands-on demo, I snatched up the chance to see how the new Trek game has come together.

In short, it’s a casual, top-down space arcade game that has little connection to the movie besides the official sound effects, music, and starship models. If you’re looking for a deeper Trek game, then I suggest you look into the vault of PC and console games to find yourself a few gems (Jeremy Parish and I will be talking about classic Star Trek games on the next Retronauts). The point of D-A-C really depends on the mode of play you pick from the game’s menu at the start. There are three game types available: Versus (six on six over LIVE or PSN), Co-Op (six players over LIVE or PSN versus six AI controlled players), and Solo (you plus 11 AI controlled players).

The News: The Sega Genesis classic Gunstar Heroes may be coming to Xbox Live Arcade, if a list of achievements on Xbox360Achievements.org is any indication. This wouldn’t be the first time an achievement leak spilled the beans on an announcement, and the game has already been ported to the Wii. The rumor sounds believable, but we can’t be sure until an official announcement comes.

Our Take: Treasure’s answer to the popular Contra series was a stylish hardcore game and still embraced by the community. Add in the possibility of online co-op play for overcoming the game’s challenges, and this seems like a win-win for developers and fans.

Take a look at the screens for Rogue Warrior, particularly the ones from when Bethesda announced the game back in 2006. Note how it looks completely different today — that’s what re-evaluating a project and then changing the developer and the general direction will do for ya.

Originally, Rogue Warrior was going to be a sort of open-world, modern-day Navy SEAL shooter that used a tile-based level-generation-algorithm for multiplayer. The Rogue Warrior that will be hitting shelves this holiday will be a more traditional military-themed shooter that takes place during the ’80s (there are numerous references to the Star Wars program, which firmly puts it back decades earlier than the game’s original North Korea-centric premise), ditches the tile system, and stars Mickey Rourke. It’s made quite a transformation within these past two years.

The News: Joystiq reports that Criterion has priced its upcoming “Cops and Robbers” downloadable content for Burnout Paradise. The pack, which goes live this Thursday, will be priced at $10, or 800 MS Points.

Our Take: Ten bucks is generally on the high end of DLC pricing, so if the pack were simply offering a new mode it might seem like a hefty cost. But it also includes 33 new international-styled police cars for your thief-chasing pleasure, which makes the pack a pretty sound investment for Burnout fans. Criterion still has yet to announce a date and pricing for Big Surf Island, but this pack could be a look at where it will land.

The News: From the department of not-quite-great deals, this week’s Xbox Live Deal of the Week features the “365″ subscription for NBA Live 09, which entitles you to Dynamic DNA updates to the game throughout the NBA season. The DLC’s price has been slashed 30%, from 800 points ($10) to 560 ($7).

Our Take: The obvious problem here (aside from this arguably not being worth the cost to begin with, as NBA 2K9 offered a similar feature for free) is that the NBA season is winding to a close and the playoffs are already underway — hell, we’ve already seen the Pistons eliminated. That means more than half of the entire league is inactive; combine that with the smaller number of players teams tend to use in the playoffs, and you’re looking at some extremely gimped DLC. With the NBA season coming to a close in June, it’s hard not to wonder why Microsoft isn’t offering deals on things the Xbox Live community would be more interested in buying.

The release date of the second game in the Banjo series has been known for a few weeks now, but the price remained a mystery — at least officially. Unsurprisingly, given the price of the original Banjo-Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade, Banjo-Tooie will come in at the somewhat steep price of 1,200 points ($15). For longtime fans of the series, that should be a small price to pay as the game will finally, at long last, deliver the fabled Stop ‘N’ Swop functionality that’s been waiting on the sidelines for nearly ten years.

Releasing alongside Tooie this Wednesday is Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, a port of the second game in the Virtual On series. Originally released for arcades and later Dreamcast, this game will also run you 1,200 points ($15) and features online multiplayer support for two players.

$15 seems a bit pricey for games that were originally released in 1998 (Virtual On) and 2000 (Tooie), but I know that won’t stop me from immediately picking up Banjo if for nothing other than nostalgia’s sake.

UPDATE: In addition to the two aforementioned games hitting XBLA on Wednesday, you can also expect to see the previously announced DLC for The Maw called “Speeder Lane” for 100 points, as well as Hasbro Family Game Night adding Sorry! to its lineup of games for 800 points. Between all this and Max Payne and MP2 hitting Xbox Originals today, it’s looking like a pricey week already on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

It’s the dawn of a new era for Square Enix, but president Yoichi Wada still has time for a bit of self-reflection. Speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, he took a moment to look in the mirror and comment on what he perceives to be the publisher’s problems.

Asked whether Square Enix wants the public to have more trust in the quality of Eidos products, Wada said, “Yes – that’s what I hope to achieve for the entire group. But we at Square Enix also have a problem – it takes too long for us to produce a game.”

“In reality I think the issues we have are basically the same. On one side you might say that because of the budgetary constraints they released the games without having the games polished to perfection, but on the other side we take too long to release the game.”

In addition to the previously announced Jane’s Addiction album that’s releasing tomorrow, owners of Rock Band 2 on the Wii will also have the opportunity to purchase DLC from The Police and Oasis — not to mention another full album’s worth of songs from Megadeth. As is pretty much always the case with Rock Band DLC on the Wii, each track will be sold individually for $2 (200 Wii Points) apiece.

A full listing of tomorrow’s downloadable tracks follows:

• “Up the Beach” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Ocean Size” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Had a Dad” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Ted, Just Admit It…” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Standing in the Shower… Thinking” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Summertime Rolls” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Idiots Rule” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Thank You Boys” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Pig’s in Zen” by Jane’s Addiction
• “Wake Up Dead” by Megadeth
• “The Conjuring” by Megadeth
• “Devil’s Island” by Megadeth
• “Good Mourning/Black Friday” by Megadeth
• “Bad Omen” by Megadeth
• “I Ain’t Superstitious” by Megadeth
• “My Last Words” by Megadeth
• “Sleepwalker” by Megadeth
• “Truth Hits Everybody” by The Police
• “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis

You’re bound to find something to like in that diverse cluster of rock. If not, we suggest expressing your disdain for this week’s DLC by spending the next week or so arranging the above collection of song titles into the most pretentious sounding poetry you can muster. By the time you perfect your Frankenstein’s monster of sonnets, you’ll have an entirely new set of music to complain about, as well as the respect of every angst-filled teen in the neighborhood.

One by one, the titles lost in the Activision-Vivendi merger have found new publishers. Wet is the latest title to be given a new home, with Bethesda confirming that they will be publishing Artificial Mind and Movement’s third-person shooter.

Wet stars Rubi, a woman described as a “gun-for-hire who has expertise in wetworks — covert operations that get a little messy.” The acrobatic shooter is being produced with the flavor of a retro film, and will be filled with “original 70′s-inspired music.”

“We were looking for a publisher who shares and supports our creative vision of bringing a stylized, daring approach to the shooting genre,” said A2M creative director Patrick Fortier. “With its impressive track record, Bethesda Softworks is the ideal publisher for Wet and we are thrilled to be working together.”