On this weeks Gamesweasel we cover:

• Condemned Bloodshot
• Mario Party 8
• Metal Gear Solid 4
• PaRappa the Rapper
• Heavenly Sword
• Final Fantasy Fables Chocobo Tales
• God of War Chains of Olympus

Thanks for the emails, keep them coming in to gamesweasel@mevio.com . We also have 5 copies of Final Fantasy Fables Chocobo Tales for the Nintendo DS, just download this episode and listen out for the question. Full instructions of how to enter are on the Gamesweasel web site .

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This is a brand new rhythm game for the DS called Elite Beat Agents. This game was originally Japanese but has finally come to the UK with a rock, dance and disco soundtrack and a very sill cartoon-strip storyline that can’t help but raise a smile as you tap your feet along to the beat.

You play the Elite Beat Agents, three secret men in black with funky hair, helping people around the world through the power of dance. What that means to you the gamer is tapping the touch screen in time to the beat as circles appear on the screen, and also dragging the stylus across the screen in time to a ball. This doesn’t sound like much fun but when you take into account the tapping is all well timed to the music and thanks to the game’s design, you’re not just pressing the same buttons but moving the stylus in different ways all the time, this makes for a highly infectious game that really gets you into the groove.

To begin with I wasn’t too chuffed with the teen rock soundtrack but as I played through the game I got to groove along to some Bowie, The Village People, Jamiroquai, Madonna and even Cher. A warning to you now, if you don’t like silly camp disco and gaudy colours, don’t bother this game isn’t for you.

For everyone else, you’ll enjoy the stupid stories told with captions on the top screen as you tap out the beat on the touch screen. To begin with you have to help an American Footballer babysit his girl’s sister which is pretty standard stuff, but it’s not long before you’re helping two bimbos seduce animals on an island to get food and a tan, going on a quest to find some treasure with a pirate and even shrinking into an athlete’s body to help fight off some germs Incredible Journey stylee.

This game’s a lot longer than PaRappa the rapper and the learning curve’s just right. After you’ve finished the single player game you can even play along with a friend with or without another game card and even save replays to watch later. My only gripe is you sometimes miss the great animations on the top screen as you concentrate so hard on keeping the beat.

If you’re looking for the best rhythm game on the DS, look no more. Elite Beat Agents is it. 9 out of 10.

I’ve got an update on Heavenly Sword after we all got to see a little bit more of the tasty looking game at E3. For anyone not in the know, you play Nariko, an athletic warrior who’d punch Lara Croft’s lights out no questions asked. She’s on a quest for vengeance against a king and his invading army. When the king, played by Andy Serkis, destroys the warrior clan that protects the Heavenly Sword, the clan’s leader nariko takes up arms to kick some serious butt.

The good news is that this very good looking game isn’t as repetitive as we once thought. I was a bit worried it would just be lots of arena battles but it looks like there’s much more variety. Levels demoed were Nariko defending a castle as men in flaming barrels rolled towards her and also a side-scrolling scene where she has to knock as many enemies to their doom as possible.

There’s also a some cool looking context-sensitive bits to battles similar to God of War where the game goes into a mini cut scene and you do things that look spectacular by pressing buttons at the right time.

Another big surprise is a new playable character called Kai. She doesn’t have any melee weapons, instead she has a crossbow and you aim by tilting the Sixaxis controller.

Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning there’s a cool motion-capture movie which shows the superb facial animation that went into making the game.

This review is a new one on the PSP but it’s a game that came out on the PSOne a looong time ago. It’s PaRappa the Rapper and it’s a rhythm game with a great sense of humour and lots of silly songs that get in your head and won’t go away.

You play a dog called PaRappa and must copy other rappers in a simon-says type game, pressing buttons on the PSP in time to the music.

The first character you rap with is Chop Chop Master Onion Head in his dojo, you then go on to have a driving lesson with a Mouse called Moussolini, then take part in a cooking programme with a big chicken.

You follow a timeline at the top of the screen and have to be very precise to hit the buttons bang on with the rhythm. Do it well and you stay in the cool zone, start doing badly and ducks start quacking along to the music and the meter drops to bad or awful. If you’re in these zones at certain stages of the song it’s game over and time to try again.

When I first played this game on the PSOne it took a couple of hours to finish because some of the stages got a bit tricky. However, having finished the game and knowing all the songs, when I tried this on the PSP I finished this game in less than 20 minutes and it wasn’t long before I got to the stage where all the characters are queueing for the toilet and you have to work your way to the front, then you end up on stage for the grand finale.

Although a short game, it does have a couple of extras on the PSP. You can rap through a song with a friend now, and you can even download extra songs from the internet.

It’s a great game but very, very short. It would have been nice to get the collection with the sequel and the guitar version of the game, Um Hammer Lammy in a special edition but maybe that’s one for a future release.

PaRappa The Rapper gets 7 out of 10.

If you want to see what Metal Gear Solid 4 actually looks like when being played, now you can. This week sees the 20th Anniversary of Metal Gear and Mr Kojima gave it a spin. See it in all its glory a http://www.konami.jp/kojima_pro

Those of you who didn’t manage to get a copy of Mario Party 8 before it was pulled off the shelves for having a bad word in it can now get excited all over again at the new relaunch date.

It’ll be back in the shops on August 3rd. Those of you who got a copy, hang on to it, it may be worth something to someone one day, maybe.