I’ve always ben a bigger fan of the Zelda games on handhelds than on the consoles. It just comes down to a time thing, even though I love the games, I just don’t get time to finish them on the GameCube, N64 or even the Wii. However, on the Gameboy Color, Advance or the DS, I can make use of dead time and get really involved when on the move.

Which is why I’ve been looking forward to Phantom Hourglass so much and it hasn’t disappointed one bit.

Looking very similar to Wind Waker in terms of cell-shaded graphics and being set on a number of islands you have to sail to, the game starts with princess Zelda being kidnapped by a ghost ship. And so your adventure begins as you talk to townsfolk, swing your sword and solve more puzzles in dungeons before fighting the bosses.

So, in many ways this feels like a conventional Zelda with a very unconventional control method – as the whole game uses the stylus. To make Link move you just drag the stylus on the screen and he follows where you point to. To attack you either tap, strike through or spin round Link to make him twirl around. Again, tap objects to interact with them or to push, pull, throw or drop them.

They even give you clues and puzzles where you must make notes on maps and plot routes through mazes and areas full of danger.

You also use it to plot where to go in your ship on sea charts, and to look around and fire your cannons and pirate ships and amphibious enemies that pop up from time to time.

Graphically, this game looks amazing. It’s not far off the GameCube graphics and must really push what the DS can do without slowing the game down. It’s such a departure from the last one I played The Minish Cap yet if you like the Zelda games, you’ll get into this one just as quickly and instinctively know how the puzzles and combat work.

Also, they’ve put a multiplayer mode in the game where you play as Link or an evil knight in a deadly game of tag. At the moment I haven’t had a chance to play it as I have a US copy but it does look like a lot of fun and something to extend the life of the game once you’ve finished the single player mode.

My only gripe is that during combat, you sometimes walk into baddies instead of hitting them because everything is controlled using the stylus, but this never results in getting too annoyed as if you do die, you don’t have to repeat lots of the game to get back to where you were.

If you own a DS, you have to get his game. It would get a 10 apart from the combat issue I just mentioned. So, it gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10.

Time to preview a game which really should be out by now. It’s Zack 7 Wiki Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure and it was going to be published by Capcom but now Nintendo are looking after it and we won’t see it until next year.

This one’s interesting because it’s a return to the point and click adventures of say Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, but being on the WIi, a lot of the puzzles are solved by pointing your remote or by using it to do the actions of what you need to do on screen.

So, Captain Barbaros has turned himself into treasure ad scattered himself round the world, and you and your flying monkey Wiki are on a quest to find it all again. Wiki’s handy because he uses his tail like a helicopter to fly about and gives you useful advice and tips like a good sidekick. In a way, you’re getting a fun story and adventure with lots of mini games thrown in, but because there’s a reason to do them it doesn’t feel pointless like in some other games that use the remote for the sake of it. You may use it to saw down a tree, catch a big fish, to turn keys in locks or even as a weapon.

This looks like a really fun cartoon adventure and something that should amuse adults and kids alike. If you wish for a return of games like Monkey Island, then this is probably the closest thing to it for a long time. I’ll give it a nice lovely big review is I get my hands on it in the New Year.

First up a kid’s game which may appeal to adults too, just like Disney Pixar films do. This one’s Ratatouille for the Wii and it’s really not that bad for a film license aimed at younger gamers.

The game follow the plot of the film quite closely. You play a rat called Remi who gets separated form his family, makes his way through the sewers and pops up in a gourmet restaurant in Paris. That’s quite lucky really as he’s a rat with taste who knows how to cook. He then befriends a skivvy in the kitchen, helps him make great food and lots of other fun stuff happens which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen the film yet.

This is first and foremost a 3d platformer, with the first few stages taking you through how to control your rat. You can sprint, jump, balance and climb around levels indoors and out, also avoiding enemies like humans, dogs, chickens and cockroaches. The obligatory training level was a bit too long for my liking and me and my girlfriend were both quite shocked where at one point you had to hit cute chicks that look like Tweetie Pie with a wooden spoon.

As you move round the streets, kitchen and other rooms, you’re set task, such as knocking down food for your friends at night, collecting apple cores, or distracting enemies blocking your way. You also get to interact with lots of items such as balancing on balls like a circus elephant, using tin cans to bounce on to reach higher parts of the levels and running up brrom handles and along rafters to make your way about. There are also mini games where you must slide down tubes collecting stars and make soup by pointing at ingredient and clicking when you’re told to.

As a game, this one works really well. The cut scenes are close to the look of the film and use the voices of the actors and the game works without any noticeable bugs – something quite rare in a movie license (I mean, just look at Superman Returns or Transformers for how not to do it).

If your kids have seen the film and love it, they’ll love this game too, and if it’s you picking up the controller, it should keep you interested. I know it did with me and I’m still playing my way through Heavenly Sword and Halo 3.

Ratatouille doesn’t quite get a Michelin star but it does get a very good 7 out of 10.

This week on Gamesweasel we talk:

• Wii Remote Jackets
• PS3 price cuts
• Halo 3
• Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
• Heavenly Sword
• Realplay Puzzlesphere, Racing and Pool

We want to know what you think about the show, so if you’ve got some constructive comments then pop on over to the Gamesweasel page in the iTunes store and share your thoughts. We’ve got £100 of gaming goodies up for grabs, so email gamesweasel@btpodshow.com and let us know you’ve put your review up! For your chance of winning one of 5 copies of Guild Ward expansion pack for the PC then download this episode and listen out for the question. Check the Gamesweasel web site for full instructions of how to enter.

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This is for anyone who doesn’t yet own a Wii, may have a PS2 but feels they’re missing out on all that oving about malarkey when playing your games. Do you remember the GameTrak that came out 4 years ago? Basically it was a device that sat on the floor with two strings on gloves which you wore. The device could then track where your hands were in 4d space and let you play golf and one where you punch people in the face. It’s still probably cheaper than joining a golf course or brawling after 10 beers on a Saturday night I suppose.

Well, now they’ve made three games, each with their own peripheral which lets you control the game. One’s a driving game, one’s a pool game and the other’s called Realplay Puzzlesphere. What you get is a Marble-Madness type game and a controller that looks like the jack from a game of bowls, with a d-pad and a red and green button on it. Rotate the ball in your hand and the ball on screen moves in that direction, thanks to a Mercury sensor. Press the green button and it applies the brakes to slow the ball down.

Realplay Racing is a pretty simple racing game with a small lightweight steering wheel.

Finally, Realplay Pool comes with a small pool cue, again with a d-pad on the handle so you can line up shots before cueing for real.

These are all going to retail at just under £30 each and be sell well before Christmas as presents that still buy games for PS2 owners, and considering 40% of all software sold is still for the PS2, these will sell, but I’m sure they won’t be used for more than a couple of hours of distraction.

My main criticism with all these games is that so much effort has been made on the peripheral, someone forgot to make the graphics any good in these games or make you actually play it for any other reason than you’re not using a joypad. Imagine if all Wii games were just you changing channel on the TV using your remote – just because you were holding something shaped like a remote!

They also plan to roll out Bowling and a new golf game, as well as tennis, so there’s something there for everyone. Personally, I still connect better with games using a joypad, I think these are for the casual gamer, so if you want to check them out, you can see screenshots and pictures of the peripherals in action at gamesweasel.btpodshow.com.

Related: PS3mote Playstation 3 motion controller

It’s another much-hyped game, this time for the PS3. It’s Heavenly Sword. This one’s pretty much hailed as the truly big title for the PS3 since its launch and there’s no doubt it looks pretty, but does it play well? Please listen for the next two minutes so I can tell you.

So, brief backstory first. You play a red-haired lady called Nariko who is given the Heavenly Sword to protect. Use it, however, and you’re cursed. My parents used to tell me that about about stealing biscuits but that’s another story. Unfortunately, a camp bad guy played by Andy Serkis and reminiscent of the Sherrif of Nottingham in the Robin Hood movie kidnaps your Dad, and you use the sword to kick some ass and rescue Daddy.

What follows is basically a lot of arena battles with a bit of running around in between as you mash buttons to defeat hordes of enemies. To begin with, you can just hammer square and triangle to kill enemies and hit circle to occasionally flip someone in the air and kick’em in the balls, but soon you have to string together combos using light, medium and heavy attacks, and use these stances to block enemies’ attacks too. Trouble is, after a while the combat feels very samey but thankfully, it’s the story and fantastic presentation that carries this one through to the end.

With Andy Serkis playing a big role in making the characters believeable, even the facial features of the main characters have been motion captured, bringing an almost cinematic feel to the whole game. For some reason the Japanese-styled warriors have English or even worse, London accents which doesn’t sit well. I mean, can you imagine Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films going, alright My Precious, how ya doing treacle? No, me neither.

Also, something I didn’t know was in the game are some strange shooting gallery parts right near the beginning. In one of them you indulge in a bit of crossbow skulduggery as you pick people off who are invading the base, then you fire cannon balls to stop an invading army. A nice addition is the ability to use the Sixaxis to add aftertouch to your shots to steer them on target.

As a fighting game this works, although it can get very repetitive and samey after a while, and it draws very close comparisons with God of War, even down to the ‘press the button at the right time to avoid dying’ cut-scenes within fight sequences and boss battles.

To be honest, I’m also playing through God of War 2 at the moment and I’m preferring that to Heavenly Sword, but if you want a game that really showcases what the PS3 can do, get this and show it off to your mates. It’s also a pity they spent so long on Nariko’s face but her polygonal hair really lets the side down.

Heavenly Sword gets a respectable 7 out of 10.

It’s almost ten years since the blockbuster PSOne role-playing game Final Fantasy VII captured gamers’ hearts and made some people cry during a certain death scene – you know who you are. That game sold 4 million units in Japan alone and almost another 6 million in the US and Europe.

Now it’s back as a prequel with Crisis Core- Finfal Fantasy VII for the PSP and I’m sure it’s going to sell very well if recent PSP bundle sales in Japan are anything to go by.

Once again, the game takes you back to the land of mako reactors and materia as the crises extends to the very core of the planet. The story this time revolves around Zack, some geezer who had already returned to the Lifestream before the vents of the PSOne game.

In this game we’re promised we’ll find out more about Shinra, the evil money making corporation and take part in an adventure with new improved graphics and more insight into the world of Final Fantasy VII.

When fighting in the game, you use a new battle system called Digital Mind Wave, a sort of mini fruit machine that spins in the top right corner of the screen. Match up the symbols and you get a Power Surge resulting in a devastating attack. Unfortunately those random encounters are still thee to annoy you when you’re just trying to travel about but that’s part of what Final Fantasy is.

Unfortunately there’s not much more to go on and the game name hasn’t even been fully finalised but I’ll be bringing you a full review when I know more myself.

Let’s just come out with it, I’ve never been a massive fan of the Halo games. Call me ill, mental, or not a proper gamer, call me anything you like, but they just don’t do it for me.

My main problem with the first game was that the guns didn’t feel meaty enough, the aliens weren’t scary and there was no sense of urgency. So much was that problem I didn’t even play the second one.

A few years on and I’m approaching this one without listening to the hype and trying not to prejudice it with what I thought about the first game.

So before I begin, I’ll tell you now this isn’t getting 9 or above out of 10. Let me tell you why.

So, if you don’t know the back story, Master Chief, the badass super soldier has now come to Earth to save the world from the comedy aliens and the slightly scarier aliens The Flood. After the summer the Uk’s had we all don’t like anything to do with floods. Cue lots of shooting, ducking for cover, weapon switching and vehicle riding for not more than 10 hours gameplay.

I’m sorry to say that for the initial 2 hours of gameplay I just plodded through the game, unmoved by anything, going through the motions of a standard FPS.

Being on the 360 and considering the amount of time they spent on this, the graphics are stunning. The first levels are set in a forest to show off just what they’ve done and the grass, trees and water are beautiful. It almost spoils a good walk in your wellies having to shoot things round every corner.

I then encountered the bugs. When you’re a passenger in a Warthog your AI team mates sometimes just sit there leaving the engine running as if someone’s just popped to the garage to get a pasty, other times your AI friends just hang back and let you do the fighting like you’ve invited the Golden Girls to fight with you and I got stuck on a wall.
This just shouldn’t happen in the game of the century or whatever the Sun said so they could get a ticket to the party that even Pharell thought was a bit pants.

Despite the moans, after about 3 hours the gameplay does ramp up and become more engaging thankfully and what you get here is an accomplished FPS with fantastic graphics and a fantastic orchestral score.

Although the single player campiagn’s a bit short, multiplayer will keep you going for much longer and you’ll probably think it’s the best thing ever if you haven’t ever played Counter-strike or Battlefield on the PC. Due to keeping this review short, sorry but I can’t go into more multiplayer detail.

So when all’s said and done, it gets 8 out of 10. In my books that’s 8 for excellent. Microsoft, I’m sorry I didn’t give it 11.