In Beijing, hundreds of athletes from around the world are still dedicating hours to crucial training and meticulously watching their diet in hopes for Olympic gold. In bedrooms across the world, gamers are charging up electric toothbrushes and practising “the rub” in hopes of Xbox 360 achievements. The two worlds are incomparable.

The same goes for the events; elegant diving board dismounts and sinuous spins and twirls become a confusing analogue stick revolving game. The only painfully confusing abstraction that works is the button mashing sprint, but that’s only because Konami’s drilled it into our brains since 1983.

But somehow, in a strangely satisfying way, these horridly counterintuitive manoeuvres work because they require study, practice and tuition. No event, not even sprinting, can be effortlessly grasped just by playing; you must watch the tutorial to understand. It’s a game designers’ nightmare, but it does help strengthen the feeling of training and exercise.

The main Olympic Games mode, an extremely difficult and strenuous culmination of almost every one of Beijing 2008’s thirty eight events, is near unbeatable without practising every discipline in advance. When Beijing throws Judo or Kayaking your way, you better have practised them if you are looking to take home gold.

Beijing 2008 is an obvious example of jack of all trades, master of none. Every event, from skeet shooting to parallel bar gymnastics, is presented with good graphics and attention to detail, but none are particularly memorable or essential. The simplicity of high jump’s rhythmic scuttle to the bar or pole vault’s quick adjust from button mash to trigger smash, make them some of the most enjoyable, but far from substantial gaming experiences.

2008’s Olympic Video Game will find its most appreciative crowd when in multiplayer (intoxicated weight lifters optional) but will bore and frustrate in singleplayer. The online mode helps find challengers, but fails to recreate the experience of playing together.
A sufficient, but far from essential, addition to a party game pile this summer, but unsubstantial and rarely enjoyable alone.

In Pop, you, uh, pop bubbles. That’s it. See a bubble? Point at it. Quick, press B. Popped. Congratulations.

No depth at all.

Well, apparently there’s a bit more to it. Pop is actually a high-score based game, which just happens to be based around the world’s simplest concept, popping bubbles. 4 different colours of bubbles float on screen in separate ‘waves’ (no, really. That’s not one of my puns.), all of different sizes. The bigger they are, the more time is added to how long you can stay in the Crystal Maze. Sorry, I mean popping bubbles. It’s one of the two, anyway. And if the bubbles are smaller, you’ll get more points: combine this with the bonus points for hitting multiple ones of the same colour in the row, and you end up with a tricky balancing act between getting a big enough score, and not running out of time to get that score in.

After a while, you’ve move on to the next wave: the bubbles might move across the screen in a different direction, change colours and how many of them are there, or you’ll see the introduction of special bubbles such as the skull one that’ll take a few seconds off your time, or one that’ll momentarily slow down time; allowing you to get a more precise with the bubbles you hit, maybe so you can get a few small ones for a point boost or build up a good combo.

This pattern repeats, with the pace of the game changing back and forth, throwing in a few special stage style bonus waves, and despite the fact that so little is changing, it feels like there is a definite shift between each waves… even though the basic formula isn’t getting mixed up at all. Bubbles. Pop. Bubbles. Pop. They’ve changed direction? Oh well, on we go, Bubbles. Pop. Rinse, rise, repeat.

Can it only be bad to be so utterly basic? Apparently not, as there’s something oddly soothing about playing Pop. It’s a far cry from other puzzle games where the progression is the speed of the game increasing by phenomenal amounts meaning you have to have split-second reaction times to figure the best place for the block, making it as exhilarating as any 100MPH race. Yet despite this, Pop is relaxing, but challenging at the same time thanks to the clean visual style and the calm music creating the oceanic atmosphere, but both changing regularly to keep you on your toes, as the Wii remote pointer works perfectly hitting the bubbles with no problem at all.
It’s enjoyable, but not for the fact it gets you going: in fact, just the opposite. Getting a high score on Pop doesn’t carry the same level of achievement as hitting 999 lines on Tetris or getting to the top of the Geometry Wars leaderboard, but as something soothing and fun, sitting there on the Wii menu between sessions of more energetic games? Hey, it’s cheap, it’s hard to say no.

Games are made in Japan, they get ported to America and then months later they’ll see release in Europe; that was the classic set up. This worldwide wheel turn, churning out games from the east for the west and slowly funneling them down for us in the middle; the weast, if you will.

Once in a while, on a rare occurrence where the moon is a deep shade of blue and two zodiac stars align, Europe will miss out on a treat. There are just not enough funds to turn that rusty, games industry donkey wheel a full rotation.

Once in a while, on an even rarer occurrence where the moon is covered in polka dots, cats are living with dogs and every star in the astrological handbook are aligning and talking to each other, the wheel will break. America is forgotten.

Maybe it’s because the sheer size of the United States means distribution is impossible. Maybe Japan prefer us to those fat, gun carrying, racist pigs in America. That’s the Japanese speaking, not me; send your hate mail to japan@asia.world

Maybe we’re more accepting of wacky ideas like talking cucumbers and girls with chainsaws for knockers and sharks ruling Italy and people who live in gigantic shoes. Maybe they see Europe and our guards that refuse to move and our wooden clogs and our obsession with elongated sausages and our siestas in the middle of the day and go “You know what, they’re almost as bat-crap crazy as us loons”.

(Read on …)

Thanks for all your entries to the Crisis Core competition, we received over 250 emails! There can only be one winner though, and congratulations go to Zahrah J, who won a brand new Slim and Lite PSP with Final Fantasy graphics and the Crisis Core game.

Don’t be too heavy hearted if you didn’t win; check back later this week as we will publish a brand new competition.

Prizes Provided by Newitts.com

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This brand new video of Pandemic’s Mercenaries 2 shows off each character’s approach to a mission where they have to take out a chopper, disable an anti-air unit and get out alive.

Mattias, the beardy bloke from most of the screenshots, is an all guns blazing, rocket launching badass who blows up the building that the anti-air unit is on, which makes it crumble to the ground. He then straps a beacon on his car, lets it sail into a tank and calls an airstrike on the vehicle. To get out, he calls a giant incendiary bomb on the area and drives off into the sunset.

Chris and Jen are slightly less dramatic and are classed as Tactical and Covert, respectively. Chris hijacks vehicles and uses the anti-air unit on the enemy chopper, and Jen snipes the cannon operator and uses a grapple hook to hijack the helicopter.

Looks like Mercenaries 2 is going to be one to look out for when it launches at the end of August.

Insomniac has released two new screenshots of Resistance 2 to celebrate a cover story with GamePro.

These two shots show a boss Chimera called a Leviathan (not to be confused with the Leviathans in Ratchet and Clank) and an out of order theatre in Chicago.

If you’re craving more Resistance 2, you could sign up for the fight against the Chimera at getawarjob.com

SquareEnix has revealed an enigmatic teaser site which is baffling people around the globe. The phrase “Nintendo DS” juxtaposed with a ticking chronometer… or a clock, if you will.

The website URL ends with “CTDS”; Crazy Taxi: Doppelganger Spectrum? We can only hope.

Chrono Trigger DS: Countdown Site »

Update: Japanese Magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump has confirmed that Square Enix is reviving this classic SNES RPG for the Nintendo DS.

Sony has released firmware 2.40 for Playstation 3 that provides access to the cross media bar during games and gives support for trophies. Games will have to be patched for trophy support, such as Super Stardust HD’s Patch 4.0 which unlocks the ability to earn 17 trophies.

In an interview with Gamespy, Eric Lempel confirmed another firm favourite; “We can officially confirm that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune will also receive a patch at some point in the foreseeable future.”

Always wanting to stick out from the crowd, Criterion has announced via Playstation.Blog that their trophies will be retroactive once the patch is live; any accomplishments you’ve performed in Burnout Paradise so far will be instantly debited to your account.

Other currently released titles, like Lair, Warhawk and this week’s Buzz Quiz TV, will also require a patch before you can start hunting trophies.

Treyarch and Activision have released the first official screenshots of James Bond’s latest video game; Quantum of Solace.

A first person shooter built on the Call of Duty 4 engine, the camera will swing out into a third person perspective for action scenes and when Bond takes cover; much like Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Vegas.

The game, although given the Quantum of Solace name, will feature all the intense action scenes of Casino Royale; the sinking house in Venice, the construction site chase in Madagascar and the search for Le Chiffre in his casino.

With elements of James Bond, N64’s Goldeneye and Call of Duty 4 all behind this title, it’s sure to sell a ba-billion copies.

Majesco has announced that it will publish another entry in the Cooking Mama franchise with “World Kitchen” on Wii. Developed by “Cooking Mama Limited”, this new title features 3D graphics, new recipes, fresh modes and some mini-games.

Like before, you utilise the Wii Remote as a variety of utensils to chop, grate, slice, stir and roll. This time round, however, additional rhythm and motion makes cooking easier.

Cooking Mama World Kitchen for Wii will be released for the Christmas season.