Game Stooge

This Week In Downloadables: May 6 - May 12

• Scribbled on May 13th, 2007 by Devin Grimes
• Filed in Microsoft Xbox 360, PlayStation Network, Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox Live Marketplace

Calling All Cars! That’s right. After a little debacle involving blog to blog and developer to reviewer battling, David Jaffe’s long awaited Playstation Network title finally hit this past week. The game has gotten mixed reviews so far, and although I can’t personally testify to it, this might be a legitimate reason to turn your PS3 on.

Priced at $9.99 USD, the arcadey crackdown on criminals looks to have all the essentials for your standard pick-up and play downloadable.

On the demo front we had two high profile games this week, including Forza Motorsport 2 and Blacksite: Area 51. Although I’m not exactly a car nut, Forza 2 does manage to impress. The game looks buttery smooth running at 60 FPS, although some of the finer details leave a little to be desired. With over 20 cars packed into the demo (including three different classes) it’s definitely worth your time to check out.

Blacksite: Area 51’s short, but sweet presentation in the 583 MB demo really makes the game look promising. The Unreal Engine 3 once again proves its visual dominance with some of the best rain/water textures you’ve probably seen. All that comes at a cost though, with the frame-rate starting to chug when there’s a lot of action on the screen. The demo doesn’t last too long (maybe 10 mins.), but what’s there definitely impresses.

Premium Content:

Crackdown came out with quite a nice package of both free and premium content, which, while enticing seems a little iffy — at least right now. The problems many users are having with getting their characters wiped to a clean slate seems a little haggard, but those willing to risk their hard work may come out of the download feeling rather satisfied.

Also dishing out some freebies was NBA Street: Homecourt with two free courts (Melo’s Cloverdale and Perkins Park) as well as a 300 MS Point pack of clothing.

Finally for this week’s edition, released for 800 MS Points we have a pack of seven remastered maps from previous iterations of the Ghost Recon franchise available for GRAW 2.

Quick Reminder:  Those of you wondering what arcade game will be hitting the Xbox Live Marketplace next week, we got you covered.  Soltrio Solitaire will be released on May 16th, alongside the Beta version for some game called Halo 3.