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.

Sony has at last announced it’s dropping the price of the PS3. An Italian Games Magazine has leaked that from October 10th, Italian customers can get a 40gb machine for €399, about £275. Hopefully, that’ll mean a UK price of £299 will be announced soon and eventually, PS3s will start to sell better than VHS copies of Gone with the Wind.

Been playing Halo 3? Soon you’ll hear what I thought of it but just so you know, it’s the second fastest selling game ever after GTA San Andreas and it’s straight in at number one with 460,000 copies being sold in the UK alone.