The LoadDown - 06/08/2009

My Wii is in the shop this week, fixing a glitchy graphics card, so I will not get to sample any of this week's downloadables first-hand. But I can still offer a few Monday thoughts on the new stuff.

The Virtual Console adds yet another Koei strategy game for the SNES -- odd that after the initial release of Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire way back in early 2007, we saw NOTHING for a long while, and then three of Koei's titles have hit the VC this year. This week it's Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf -- a game I must confess does not ring a bell AT ALL with me. Which probably means I will check it out in more detail at some point, as the best thing about the VC sometimes is getting to play worthwhile titles I completely missed.

The big one on WiiWare this week is Swords & Soldiers, a cartoony but fairly sophisticated real-time strategy (RTS) game. Reviews and advance buzz have been very positive, so I plan to check this one out when my Wii is back up and running. PC-style RTS titles usually don't port well to consoles, so the fact this one is designed for console visuals and controls bodes well.

Also on WiiWare this week, Fish 'em All, which offers a weird pseudo-fishing action game where the object is to catch jumping fish in a NET, rather than, y'know, actually fishing. The press release pushes its "coin-op flavor" and "excitement of the great arcade classics," which seems to be a way of saying "this design is really limited and dated, so we hope it feels like an old-fashioned arcade game, even though it's not." Not on my to-play list.

Back to XBLA, where I have finished Wallace & Gromit: Fright of the Bumblebees once and am working through it again to catch a few missed achievements, between levels of Wolfenstein 3D.