It’s a good thing you managed to fill your time with replaying Portal 2 over and over again last week. Because now, we’re finally getting some decent releases again. We’ve got a shooter, which seems to be heavily influenced by Mirror’s Edge. Take that however way you want. And we got even more Lego licensed games. What? I said the releases were decent not spectacular.

Remember. Release dates are quite literally made at the whims of the publisher.  The following are subject to change without any warning.

Releases To Watch For This Week

Brink (Xbox 360, PS3)

Tuesday May 10, 2011
Objective based shooters don’t have the best of luck on consoles. The ones that thrive on the console tend to be the one-man army style First Person Shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. Not to say that those don’t have an objective based mode, but unlike Team Fortress 2 and Brink, you can play COD and Halo multiplayer without ever needing to work together with anyone. Brink on the other hand always forces you to work with your teammates, either human or AI controlled.

In a sense, Brink doesn’t have a single player mode per se. You play the same maps and the same missions regardless of whether or not you’re playing by yourself or with other people. When you’re by yourself, the computer controls the other players. Brink doesn’t even segregate your character progression between the two modes either. All the neat abilities and kick-ass weapons you gained, which differs depending on your class, playing by yourself carries over when you play online with other people.

Like most objective based shooters, Brink gives you 4 classes to pick from: Soldier, engineer, medic, and operative. All of which does exactly what you expect them to do, but Brink makes it so that only specific classes can complete specific types of missions. Only the soldier can plant charges, or only the engineer can hack into a computer terminal.

Speaking of missions, Brink utilizes a dynamic mission structure. Each map has an overall objective, but during the course of a match, Brink assigns specific missions to each player based on what your team needs. If your team has too many soldier, you might get the mission to head over to a command post where you can change class, and you’re rewarded experience points for this. You’ll also get other missions like building a turret nest on a specific location, if you’re an engineer that is, or gain control of a command post.

Brink seems to have taken some notes from Mirror’s Edge and added an element of Parkour into the game. By holding down a button, your character will vault over objects, jump across gaps, slide under stuff, and various other cool Parkour-y things that will keep you moving across the map.

As I said before, the console space hasn’t been all that kind to purely objective based shooters, but Brink might just have the recipe to make it successful this time around.

Honorable Mention

Dream Trigger 3D (3DS)

Tuesday May 10, 2011
What do you do when invisible, albeit colorful, enemies invade your dreams? You go in there and blast them out, 3-D style! In Dream Trigger 3D, you do exactly that. This shoot’em up adds a wrinkle to the usual shmup formula by making the enemies invisible. You have to use the Sonar to expose their location before you can blast them. You’ll have to hurry though. They won’t stay exposed for long.

Dream Trigger also sports a very trippy aesthetic to complement the dream world conceit. Enemies explode in spectacular ways, and the usually abstract background never sits still. Also in keeping with the dream world aesthetic, the bosses represents emotions that most people bury deep inside themselves but run rampant in their dreams.

Of course, shmups don’t exactly garner all that much attention, but given the relatively lackluster and somewhat dry landscape that is the 3DS lineup, this original, intriguing take on a shmup could be what us 3DS owners are looking for to pass the time until bigger releases come out.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, DS, PSP)

Tuesday May 10, 2011
Do I even need to describe to you what this game does? You run around, jump onto platforms and whatnot, build various Lego contraption out of Lego pieces lying around the environments, and kill enemies as Lego representations of Pirates of the Caribbean characters through all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies. You collect a whole slew of collectibles like golden Lego pieces or something like that. All the while you sit back and chuckle at the pantomime versions of the movies. So yeah, barely anything has changed between this Lego game and the bazillion other Lego games before it. Although I suppose the ability to change into any other character at anytime during the game does count as something new. Odd as this may sound, the 3DS version may end up being the version to get.

Unlike most of the available 3DS games, LEGO Pirates will be supporting the Street Pass function. Like Super Street Fighter 4 3D, you pick a character to fight for you, which has been assigned one of three attacks and one of three defenses. Basically, your LEGO Pirate save file plays a little game of Rock Paper Scissors with other LEGO Pirate save files that you come across. Winning gets you jewels, which you can use to unlock characters. Or you could just bypass all that nonsense and use your Play Coins, the little coins you get just for walking around with the 3DS.

Back when LEGO spoofed Star Wars Episode 1 with LEGO Star Wars Episode 1, we fell in love with its charming, dialogue-free take on the movie. Admittedly, this formula still has a lot of charm, but can’t they change it up a little bit?

Coming This Week

Tuesday May 10, 2011

MX vs. ATV Alive (Xbox 360, PS3)

Chronicling the eternal conflict between Motocross and ATVs, MX vs. ATV Alive pits you in a race on a Motocross or an ATV in a bid for survival! Or not. Or is it? One of the mechanics in Alive encourages you to rough up your competitors by bumping into them with your vehicle causing them to lose some speed or crash outright. Unless of course, you miss then you’re the one who ends up losing speed or crashing outright. Rough sport.

Virtua Tennis 4 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)

It's time to put the controller down and cause a racquet. Virtua Tennis 4 features motion controls through the PlayStation Move, Kinect, and Wii Motion+ that put you directly on the court. And just in time as World Tour mode cast you as a tennis star with off the court decisions to make that can grow or destroy your on court success. Now grab your headband and head to centre court. Nadal is waiting for you.
-Wolf96

The First Templar (Xbox 360)

Thanks to Assassin’s Creed, the Templar’s reputation has seen better days. Maybe a 3D action brawler like The First Templar will be able to fix that? In it, the Templar, Celian along with his partner, Marie must find the Holy Grail. They’ll have to travel through the wide open world of Cyprus in the year 1291. The two characters plays differently, so you may want to switch between Celian and Marie on the fly or have another player take over the second character at any time. Unfortunately, none of the trailers I’ve seen look very promising. The action seems extremely stiff and repetitive, and it barely passes as an HD video game. It might explain why the price is at $50 instead of the usual $60.

Brainstorm Series: Treasure Chase (DS)

You know those sliding block puzzles where you have to slide a specific piece out of the puzzle box? This here Treasure Chase has 300 different puzzles of that style waiting for you to take a crack at it. As the game progresses, new pieces will make an appearance like ice blocks that must be moved all the way until it hits something. If you can’t get enough of these kinds of puzzles, Here’s the DS game just for you.

Touch ‘N’ Play Collection (DS)

When mini-game collection developers can’t think of a theme for their latest mini-game collection, they have an unfortunate tendency to just stuff it with everything they can think off and slapping on a generic as hell title. This here collection comes with 50 games spanning the Classic category, Puzzle category, Arcade category (Whatever that means), and the Card Category. You’ll find the likes of Mahjong, Dominoes, Snakes and Ladders, and even Ant Invaders! Make room for this puppy in your DS collection folks!

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s World Championship 2011: Over The Nexus (DS)

I’m still surprised to see this series still kicking around. Seriously! In what doped up mind does the natural progression of a card game you play on a table involve playing it while racing futuristic motorcycles? Anyways, this iteration will be the official game for the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship of 2011, which I’m guessing is a big deal. Over The Nexus does feature a rather intriguing mode though. The Duel Puzzle Editor enables you to create dueling situations that you can share with other people over the Internet. Cool.

You know you’re a Street Pass Addict when a LEGO game with promise of a barely worth utilizing Street Pass function actually sounds enticing. Between that and Brink, I have to wonder if I have enough money to get all the games I want this week. How about you guys? Anyone up for a little nightmare busting in 3-D?

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