JOE’s Gaming Round Up

JOE's Gaming Round-up features the launch of Crysis 2 and the Nintendo 3DS, while Serena William's bottom is the star of a cancelled Top Spin 4 advert.

JOE

JOE’s Gaming Round-up features the launch of Crysis 2 and the Nintendo 3DS, while Serena William’s bottom is the star of a cancelled Top Spin 4 advert.

By Emmet Purcell

Welcome to another week of JOE’s videogame round-up. As always, we’re looking to provide you with up-to-the-minute news, download reviews, weekly charts and forthcoming release dates on a weekly basis.

So if there’s anything you think we’re leaving out, or would like us to shine a spotlight on, feel free to leave a comment below.

News

Serena Williams stars in racy ‘unauthorised’ Top Spin 4 advert

The sexiest tennis video game advert of all time? Probably, it’s a fairly narrow field

Is Serena Williams the ‘World’s Sexiest Tennis Player’? 2K Sports certainly think so, as an ‘unauthorised’ and scrapped trailer for last week’s tennis release Top Spin 4 hit the interwebs this week.

2K have already sought to distance themselves from the clip, stating that “as part of the process for creating marketing campaigns to support our titles, we pursue a variety of creative avenues. This video is not part of the title’s final marketing campaign and its distribution was unauthorised.”

As gaming looks to increasingly garner public acceptance and move from it’s stereotypical image, we should be thankful the advert was pulled. With gratuitous arse shots, female grunts and little more than a few seconds of gameplay footage, the clip, featured above, is embarrassing rather than arousing.

Also, surely Standards & Practices woud be getting in touch under the grounds of false advertising for referring to Serena as the ‘sexiest’ player? Though Serena does have a lovely bottom, Ana Ivanovic wants a word.

Dead Space movie still going ahead

Who else reckons Isaac versus Necromorph children will get cut?

First, the good news: despite plenty of silence from movie execs, Dead Space is still coming to the silver screen. The bad news? The PG-friendly director of I Am Number Four is still directing it. Director DJ Caruso confirmed his commitment to the project in an interview with Area Games, promising the movie would not be a prequel.

“We had one attempt of trying to do a prequel, but the story didn’t quite work out as well as we wanted it to” said the director. “If we can capture how – I don’t want to say, I guess, how scary or horrifying it would be to play that game because it’s really, really fantastic – it’d be fun to make that into a movie.” Let’s just hope frequent collaborator of Caruso’s, Shia LaBeaouf, doesn’t get cast next, unless of course the movie resembles this YouTube video.

Purchase/Download of the Week

Wackylands Boss (€4.99 on PSP Minis)

One of our favourite screenshots ever

The screenshot above has a jousting night poking a giant karate monster that is wielding a club. What more do you need to know to convince you to purchase Wackylands Boss this week? Hopefully not much more, as Wackylands puts players in control of an customisable and overpowered video games boss character in a side-scrolling beat ’em up. If you thought the Super Mushroom sections of Super Mario Bros DS were all too brief, this could be the title for you.

Friday Releases 25/03/11

What are you looking at?

Yes, yes, this week is exciting for the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, yet for many gamers, there’s nothing bigger this Friday than Crysis 2. While Nintendo has packed plenty of titles into their launch day, not too many could be described as ‘killer apps’, though we had fun trying them out last week nonetheless. Expect a hardware review and plenty of launch day reviews in the coming days for the 3DS, though we maintain that Crysis 2 is probably the biggest and best individual title for players this week.

Out this Friday:

Xbox 360

Battle Vs Chess

Crysis 2

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

Swarm (XBLA)

The First Templar

Playstation 3

Battle Vs Chess

Crysis 2

Dynasty Warriors 7

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars