So… let’s talk about Postal. You know, Uwe Boll’s latest, movie-based-on-a-game? Specifically, let’s talk about it’s release on May 23rd.

Of course if you were actually planning to go see this one (are there still people out there who pay full price to see his films?), you might have a hard time of it. The movie will only be opening on four screens, nationwide. Yes, you read that right. Four.

As if it weren’t bad enough that Postal is opening against Indiana Jones, at this point, it might as well go straight to DVD. Boll is basically blaming everyone and everything except his own craptastic film-making for the situation. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that he attempted to turn a mostly plotless game into a big screen political piece. Or the fact that his last (how many now?) movies have been spectacular boxoffice failures.

But what’s even funnier than Postal opening on a paltry four screens is Boll’s barely-coherant rambling on the movie’s official website.

Have you picked up Okami for Wii yet? If not, why? Haven’t I smacked you over the head enough telling you to buy it?

Well, if you’re still holding out, you may want to head on over to Best Buy. According to their weekly ad, it’s on sale for $29.99 through May 24. Or, if you’re too lazy/can’t afford the price of gas anymore/have a paralyzing fear of the sun, you can grab the same deal at their website.

Not a lot out this week, though a lot of people are still very excited due to the imminent arrival of Wii Fit in stores on Wednesday.

WiiWare

Critter Round-Up (1,000 Wii points) - an action puzzle game by Konami in which you fix fences to keep your livestock in line. There are 50 levels, plus a number of mini-games.

Star Soldier R (800 points) - From Hudson, a small shooter in which players try for the best score under a 2 to 5 minute time limit.

Wii

Wii Fit
Well, if you’re planning on picking up Wii Fit this week, I hope you preordered it early. Even Amazon had to stop taking preorders a few weeks ago due to limited supply. Wii Fit puts your whole body to the test with Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance Games. It lets you track you fitness progress as you play, and even lets you “compete” against family members. Apparently exercise has officially become a competition. And if you’re worried about that nifty Balance Board collecting dust when you get tired of doing yoga poses on it, you’ll be happy to know that there are other games in the works that are compatible with it, like last week’s Wii Ski. And don’t forget to pick up a Rechargeable Battery Pack for your Balance Board, and save yourself a small fortune on batteries.

PS3

Haze
A first-person shooter from Ubisoft, in Haze, you play as an elite soldier in the employ of Mantel, a shady group that controls their troops with the performance enhancing drug, Nectar. As you gradually realize the truth of what Nector is, your loyalty shifts and you side with the rebel group, The Promise Hand. The game boasts an entirely dynamic enemy AI in which nothing is pre-scripted, and supports several online, multi-player, and co-op modes.

SingStar Bundle | Stand-Alone
Available bundled with two microphones, or as a stand-alone, SingStar is a karaoke title that we first saw on the PS2 not so long ago. The PS3 version, however, has gained a few extras, including the SingStore, which provides a large array of additional songs and videos, as well as a community experience that lets you upload your performances and rate those of others. The game has both solo and multi-player modes

XBOX 360

UEFA Euro 2008
Also available on: PS3 | PS2 | PSP
Enter the soccer world, and play against all of the teams that will be part of UEFA Euro 2008, from qualification though the championship tournament. You can earn the captaincy of you team, customize your pitch, and play online in the Battle of Nations. If you actually understood any of that, then this game is probably for you. Me… I haven’t got a clue what any of that actually means. Damn sports games.

Top Spin 3
Also available on: Wii | PS3 | Nintendo DS
Continuing on in the sports vein, we also have a tennis title this week. Top Spin 3 features online play, dynamic weather changes, and a player creator that will allow you to customize everything from body shape to tattoos, as well as the ability to play against more than 20 of the top ranked players in the world.

PS2

Garfield: Lasagna World Tour
Play as everyone favorite fat cat as he travels around the world as he competes in a treasure hunt to win his weight in lasagna for life. You can gain special powers by obtaining new costumes, and can also play as Odie… or just order him around.

Damn you Square-Enix. You do this to me every time… I’m busy playing one game, and then you go and release something new, and said game instantly begins collecting dust on my game shelf (in this case, Dead Rising is the poor unfortunate). It happened with Final Fantasy XII, it happened with Crisis Core, and now, of course, it’s happened with My Life as a King.

My Life as a King is available as WiiWare from the Wii Shop Channel for a somewhat pricey 1500 Wii Points (it’s actually the most expensive off all the U.S. WiiWare launch titles), and I’ll be honest… I’m cheap. If it hadn’t had the Final Fantasy moniker, I probably would have passed.

The first thing you might notice when and if you download Square-Enix’s first foray into WiiWare is that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is *gasp* not an RPG. Apparently they can make other kinds of games over there in Sephiroth-ville. No, My Life as a King is, in fact, a civilization simulator in which you are a king and you must rebuild your kingdom.

That’s not to say the standard Final Fantasy gloss hasn’t been put on this game. Even though it is a sim, it still sort of has the feel of an RPG. There is a battle system, even though you yourself don’t do any battling, and there is an engrossing (if somewhat simple for the franchise) plot that is revealed gradually through cutscenes that seem to come up about once a month (game time, obviously) or so.

To be honest, the first few days in your kingdom are a little boring. You spend a fair amount of time talking to Chime, your chancellor, whom you summon to your side by ringing a bell. Chime is in charge of the command menu, and will help you build, boost morale of your citizens, and tell you when it’s time to go to bed. Things are linear, you have almost nothing to work with, no one to talk to, and you’re stuck in tutorial city learning how to do the fun stuff but not really doing much of it.

And then the fun begins. Once you pick up the necessary fundamentals, you have a lot more freedom, and things get a lot more interesting. Instead of just doing what the game dictates, you can begin to commission adventurers, send them out to fight monsters, and build new structures to bring in more people to get more money to hire more adventurers to fight more monsters, and so on and so forth.

Initially, the days are short, cash is low, and buildings are limited (all you can build at first is one kind of very simple house). What really makes this game work for me is the desire to find more stuff. You know there’s stuff out there to unlock and you want it, damn it, so you start sending people out to unlock it.

Half the fun of the game, like many sims, is trying to keep up with the needs of the people. The adventuring system adds a nice touch, because in addition to keeping your adventurers in good spirits, you must also make sure they’re trained well enough to complete the the dungeons you send them to, make weapons and other equipment available to them, and ensure that they have time to rest. Things may start out slow, but they pick up quickly, and soon you have a lot of people who need bakeries, and parks, and sharp, pointy swords.

My Life as a King is also the first (and currently the only) WiiWare title to utilize the Pay to Play feature, which allows you to download additional (but optional) content for the game. There are already a number of options currently available:

1. Dungeon Pack (300 Wii Points) - adds 11 new dungeons to the game

2. Lilty Hut (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Lilties

3. Selkie Den (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Selkies

4. Yuke Shack (300 Wii Points) - adds dungeons to unlock houses for Yukes

5. Triple Race Pack (800 Wii Points) - combines the Lilty Hut, Selkie Den, and Yuke Shack content into one, slightly discounted download.

6. New Royal Outfit (100 Wii Points) - a new costume for the king

7. New Chancelor Outfit (100 Wii Points) - a new costume for Chime

8. Luxurious House (100 Wii Points) - unlocks a new house style that greatly increases income.

9. Sacred Shrines (200 Wii Points) - unlocks Shrines, which temporarily boost your adventures’ stats.

The nice thing about My Life as a King is that you can pick it up and play it for ten or fifteen minutes, or you can sit and play for 3 hours at a time, depending on what kind of mood you happen to be in.

The downsides? Well, for one thing, there’s a lot of repetition. For the most part you’re really just doing the same series of actions over and over to unlock more content and advance further into the game… but then that’s true of just about every sim I’ve ever played (which is probably why I don’t often get into them). For me, though, the story and the adventuring system somewhat make up for the repetitive nature of the game.

On the whole, it’s by no means my favorite Final Fantasy title, but it’s still fun and strangely addictive. I give it an overall 7 out of 10.

You may recall last week a post of mine that spotlighted a little PS2 game called Beyond Good & Evil… an awesome game that just didn’t get the respect it deserved and left off with an annoyingly open ending that implied more to come (which unfortunately never came).

Well, apparently Ubisoft has not only been planning a sequel, they’ve actually been working on it for more than a year now. According to an interview the game’s creator gave to JeuxVideo, the game is in pre-production. That’s the good news.

Here’s the bad. Ubisoft hasn’t yet bumped this into full official production mode yet. So basically it’s been confirmed that the title is not officially confirmed yet. Come on, Ubisoft. Green light this one already!

Let’s face it… the weather isn’t very nice, and it’s not looking to get much better. Cloudy all day, with rain on and off, and more rain tomorrow (and honestly, I don’t think my yard can take much more flooding…). What to do, what to do? Of course, there’s always the obvious… plug in the *insert console of choice here* and play something! Here are my top ten picks.

10. Soul Blade
Also known as Soul Edge, this is the first entry of the Soul Caliber series, which appeared on the original PlayStation. In fact, my sister won our first PS1 playing this game in a contest. It has always been my favorite of the series, for some reason. Maybe it’s the nostalgia… or maybe it’s the unique way Sophitia can leap up onto her opponent’s head and snap their neck with her thighs… Yeah. That’s probably it.

9. Mario Paint
What? Mario Paint for Super Nintendo (going old-school here…) is great for killing some time on an otherwise crappy day. Sure, you can do pretty much the same thing on your PC with MSPaint, but you just don’t get that same trademarked Mario experience there. The game has no purpose other than to bring out your creative side in a gimicky, Nintendo-y way, and come on… you’ve got to love playing with the music editor. Everyone loved the music editor… right? Or was that just me?

8. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Twilight Princess was great, and Windwaker was none too shabby either, but Ocarina of Time has been my favorite of the series ever since it knocked Link’s Awakening out of that spot years ago. Bonus points if you can grab the special edition for GameCube that contains the Master Quest version of the game (which one of these days I really need to get around to finishing…). Ocarina also gets points for introducing us to Sheik.

7. Kya: Dark Lineage
A great little platformer for PS2, that’s a bit of an unknown (and which I spotlighted in one of my Hidden Gem posts, so you know it rocks…). It just plain fun, and it’s also very colorful, which is nice on a drab day like today. It’s got everything from speed courses to platforming to melee combat and puzzle solving all rolled into on convenient game, and the controls, while varied, are nowhere near as complex as they sound. The developers did a great job of making it easy to play but challenging to complete. Give it a try.

6. Super Mario Galaxy
Mario titles are always fun, and the first proper Mario title for Wii is no exception. The Wii controls give it a whole new spin, and it’s got a bit more story than usual, and it even has a whole new princess with help out in addition to rescuing Peach from Browser’s clutches. I have to admit, I still haven’t collected every star in the game yet. I suppose that’s a good project for a rainy day, right?

5. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
For those of you who are more interested in playing a game during a stormy night than on a rainy day, how about a good scare? Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for GameCube fits the bill, and has some pretty unique gameplay elements, and has some of the ickiest scenes I’ve ever seen on GameCube. Eternal Darkness is kind of a mind trip. Your character can start to hallucinate as they get more freaked out, and at some points it’s hard to tell what’s the hallucination and what’s really there trying to gnaw your head off.

4. Final Fantasy Crystal Chonicles: My Life as a King
Available on Wii via the WiiWare section of the Shop Channel for a mere 1500 Wii Points, My Life as a King is an addictive little kingdom-building sim (that will be getting a full review here on Another Castle in the very near future) that’s great to sit around and play for a couple hours or just for 15 minutes here and there. Your choice.

3. Dark Cloud
An action-RPG for PS2, that also features city-reconstruction as you quest to find the missing pieces of towns that have been trapped in spheres called Atla. It’s very easy to get into, and hard to put down. One nifty feature of this is that your characters don’t level up, but rather your weapons do. Weapons can also be transformed into whole new configurations. There’s a sequel floating around somewhere out there that I’ve yet to get my hands on.

2. Dead Rising
An XBOX 360 title I only just recently became personally acquainted with (having finally shelled out the cash for a 360, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more titles for the console in these lists and elsewhere on my blog in the future). Killing zombies is fun. Everyone knows it, no one argues with it. It’s just a fact. It’s even more fun when you can do it with just about anything you can pick up.

1. Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
Another platformer for PS2, the Jak & Daxter series is awesome all around, but this is the one I absolutely had to get 100% completion on and is perfect for days like today. Daxter is great comic relief, and the platforming is some of the best around on PS2.

So, you may have heard that WiiWare launched yesterday. With it came a brand new Final Fantasy title, which naturally I had to immediately download and play. Well… maybe “immediately” isn’t the right word.

My first issue was with the Wii Shop itself. I could connect, but the connection kept getting dropped right as I was about to add Wii Points to my account so I could buy the game. Now if I were a smarter person, I would have saved myself the headache and Googled the error code before I did anything else. But I’m not. I’m an idiot.

So after attempting six or seven times to buy Wii Points and failing miserably, it (*cough*half an hour later*cough*) finally occurred to me that, gee… maybe my connection keeps getting dropped because my router is having some sort of emotional crisis or whatever it is that gets into those things when they stop working right.

Since yelling at the damned thing never seems to work, I decided to skip that step and try the age-old fix-all of unplugging it and plugging it back in. Well, that didn’t work, either. Now, I should probably, at this point, explain that I’m not a hardware person. If the issue is software-related I can usually figure out where the problem is, but when my hardware starts acting funny, my usual recourse is to format C:\ and cry myself to sleep.

As that solution seemed a little extreme for a router problem, so it was off to the Nintendo support website in the hopes that someone out there had the same problem I did. Handy thing that site. I was right… the problem was with my router. Support told me to try changing the broadcast channel from 1 to 11.

Except, since I’m not a hardware person, I had no idea how to do that. In the end, I decided to do the unthinkable… I referred to the manual. Funny thing is, my Wii always connected to the internet just fine before Comcast took over my service. Bastards. They forced me to read a manual.

Anyway, I guess the whole point of this post is to let you know that around 11:00 last night, I did finally get my hands on the WiiWare title Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (look for the review coming soon) and also if your Wii’s internet connection keeps getting dropped, save yourself some time and try your router on channel 11.

You may have heard me mention something about today’s launch of WiiWare (four or five times over the last week or so…). Well, since it’s finally available, how about we take a closer look at what it is and what it has to offer at launch?

First of all, you may ask (if you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months), what is WiiWare, anyway? WiiWare is a new addition to the Wii Shop Channel. Much like the Virtual Console, it lets you download games directly to your Wii in exchange for Wii Points.

Unlike the Virtual Console, though, WiiWare games are not simply ports of older games for older systems. WiiWare games are games designed specifically for the Wii as downloadable content. Some of them are entirely new IP (like LostWinds), and some of them are simply new renditions of older ideas (like Dr. Mario RX, which unfortunately didn’t make the starting lineup).

So… now that we all know what it is, lets take a look at what’s available.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King

Developed by Square-Enix (as if the Final Fantasy in the title didn’t give that away), My Life as a King is civilization sim in which you play as a king who must rebuild his kingdom. The game takes place in the Crystal Chronicles timeline, and by using the power of a great Crystal you find in your realm, you can place buildings and attract new residents. To use the Crystal you will have to amass Spirit Power, which can be replenished by sending out troops to explore dungeons and the surrounding lands and collect smaller crystals.

My Life as a King also makes use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay & Play feature, which allows you to download additional content (for a price) in the form of bonus stages, specialty items, costumes, buildings, and recruitable races.

Price: 1500 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1

Lostwinds

From Frontier Development, Lostwinds is a platformer in which you control a boy named Toku who can wield the power of the wind. You must use this unique ability to control Toku’s jumps and glides, attack you enemies, and solve puzzles in order to release the curse placed upon the world of Mistralis and its people by evil Elemental, Balasar.

In LostWinds, you not only control Toku, but you must simultaneously control the speed and direction of the wind, making the game a challenging addition to the WiiWare launch lineup.

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-2

TV Show King

TV Show King comes from developer GameLoft and is a game show-style trivia game. You can play by yourself or against friends and family. The title is a little misleading, in that you are supposedly on a TV Show… not necessarily answering TV-based trivia. Topics includes geography, literature, science, sports, entertainment, and history, and there are more than 3000 questions.

Players must answer timed multiple choice questions by selecting the correct answer on their screen with the Wii-Remote (faster selections get you more prize money), and can also take their chances for greater rewards by spinning a wheel between rounds.

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

Pop

Courtesy of Nnooo, in Pop, you must pop bubbles to score points. The more bubbles you pop, the more time you have to pop more bubbles. The game has both a Casual level and an Advanced level and can be enjoyed solo or with up to four players.

In the end, Pop is all about popping bubbles as fast and accurately as you can. In multiplayer mode, items can be collected to hinder the other players, to add that extra level of aggravation to family fun night.

Price: 700 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack

As the title implies, High Voltage Software brings a Blackjack title to the table (oy, that was a lame pun, wasn’t it…). The developer’s own description of the game labels it as “the most realistic blackjack game ever made”. I’m sure they’re just being modest.

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack has both single player and multiplayer modes, as well as tournament play. So if you’ve ever wanted to bankrupt your older brother at the card tables, here’s your chance.

Price: 700 Wii Points
Rated: T
Players: 1-4

Defend Your Castle

From X-Gen Studios comes Defend Your Castle. The object of the game is to… well… defend you castle. You are in command, and you must stop the invading hoards from descending upon you and taking your castle for themselves.

There are several methods of accomplishing this task, including picking them up and throwing them, and attacking them with magic spells and arrows. Over time, power-ups and new weapons become available in the hopes that you’ll be able to hold the enemies off just a little longer.

This game is based on the original Flash game by X-Gen Studios, which you can try out here for free before you pay good money for the WiiWare version.

Price: 500 Wii Points
Rated: E
Players: 1-4

So there you have it. Personally, I’m looking forward to trying out that Final Fantasy title, along with LostWinds (which, naturally, are two of the most expensive titles on the list…).

There are only a handful of new physical, go-out-and-buy-the-disc titles out this week… But who cares? WiiWare launches today!

WiiWare

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (1500 Wii Points)
LostWinds (1000 Wii Points)
Defend Your Castle (500 Wii Points)
Pop (700 Wii Points)
VIP Casino Blackjack (700 Wii Points)
TV Show King (1000 Wii Points)

For more info on WiiWare titles available today, check out my post on the subject.

Wii

We Ski - If you can’t guess what this is from the title, you need to pay more attention. We Ski, pretty obviously, is one of those sports games that try to be cute and family oriented. Bonus, if you’ve pre-ordered Wii Fit, the game is also compatible with the Balance Board. Of course, Wii Fit doesn’t come out until next week, so you’ll have to wait to try out that feature.

Deca Sports - Much like Wii Sports and Wii Play, Deca Sports takes a bunch of casual sports games and compiles them into one package. As the title implies, there are 10 sports to choose from, and up to four people can play. You have your choice of Beach Volleyball, Snowboarding, Badminton, Basketball, Curling (yes, seriously, Curling…), Figure Skating, Archery, Supercross, Soccer or Kart Racing.

Castle of Shikigami III - The laster in the Shikigami series, Castle of Shikigami III is a scrolling shooter that offers the choice of 10 characters and Dramatic Change Mode that lets you swap between two characters on the fly as you attempt to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of the country of Alcaland’s people.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - Wii | 360 | PS3 | PS2 | Nintendo DS
Oh look… another attempt to cash in on a highly anticipated movie with a half-assed video game featuring the characters, environments, and basic plot of said movie. And it’s on every system known to man. Again. Yeesh.

Nintendo DS

Myst - The classic puzzle RPG Myst comes to DS. Not really surprising, but hey… Myst rocks. The DS version includes re-mastered video and audio, new music, and a new Arctic world, as well as an interface redesigned to accomodate the DS stylus.

Drone Tactics - This one is a turn-based tactical RPG. You used cybernetic mechabugs called Drones to save the world of Cimexus. Build, customize, and optimize your forces, and play against friends using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

PS2

Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure - This little guy was released on Wii WAAAAAY back in January. Now you can play it on your PS2, if you are so inclined.

Today’s Hidden Gem: Beyond Good & Evil
Released 2003 by Ubisoft for PS2, XBOX, and GameCube

Beyond Good & Evil is a part platformer, part stealth title from Ubisoft, publisher of such exalted titles as the Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Rayman, and Rainbow Six series. Unfortunately, Beyond Good & Evil, while an excellent game, didn’t benefit much from it’s more famous cousins, and even though it has gained something of a cult following, it still remains relatively unknown among gamers.

In the game, the planet of Hillys is under siege by an alien force called the DomZ. You play as a young woman named Jade who, along with her “uncle” (a large anthropomorphic boar with a talent for all things mechanical), takes care of a number of children who have been orphaned during the siege. When funds begin to run low, and the power for the shield generators that protects their home is shut down, Jade takes up a photography assignment to make ends meet and protect her charges, but it’s not long before she falls in with a rebel group called the IRIS Network… a group dedicated to stopping the DomZ.

Using a combination of of physical attacks and stealth, Jade sets out to help the IRIS NEtwork reveal to the world the secret conspiracy that they believe exists between the invading DomZ forces and the planet’s apparent “saviors”, the Alpha Section. The game contains a variety of different gameplay options, including racing of various types, puzzle solving, stealth sequences, platforming, and a photography sidequest that allows you to earn money for weapon and vehicle upgrades.

The plot is engrossing, the controls are excellent, and even the camera is pretty decent for a game of it’s age, and still Beyond Good & Evil’s sales figures failed to impress (which may have had something to do with the fact that it was released against Ubisoft’s own Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell).

While the end of the game does wrap up the main story for the most part, it has an open ending that implies that Ubisoft had a sequel in mind when they wrote it. It’s a pity they never continued it as a series, because it’s a great plot with very well-done gameplay. If you ever happen upon a copy of this game, I highly recommend giving it a try.