Mass Effect’s Bring Down the Sky to be free on PC

According to BioWare, Bring Down the Sky will be free for Mass Effect when it becomes available for the PC on May 28th. Oddly, there’s a clause to this. You have to be a registered community member (sign up on their forums?). And thanks to EA, that’s as vague as it gets.

Strong Bad game launching on WiiWare

This was somewhat suggested when Strongbad GameWays was featured on Youtube. Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People is going to be episodic and will release monthly. So far, 5 games in the series have been announced. The first one is scheduled to release in June, in the WiiWare section of your Wii Shop Channel (if you have installed the recent Wii System Update).

Now, what game company is pro at making episodic games that it’s annoying? You guessed it, TellTale Games. You might remember them from Sam & Max.

As with all of TellTale’s other games, SBCG4AP will be also available on the PC, but it’s primarily focused on the Wii.

You can check out the product page for SBCG4AP here and the advertisement announcement here.

Ikaruga coming to XBLA

Ikaruga is a game most gamers have never heard of, probably due to it’s horrible sales on the developer’s console of choice, the GameCube (after being on two SEGA systems). In Ikaruga, you play as a fighter pilot in futuristic Japan (the details are complex), who is the sole pilot of a freedom fighter brigade that was wiped out by a group calling themselves the “Divine Ones” because their leader found unspeakable powers from something he digged up.

This game is really different from most top down, horizontal arcade shooters. Enemies and bosses come in two different ways, powered by black and white polarity (think magnets), and your ship can switch between these two polarities. For example, if an enemy is firing white polarity powered bullets, you would want to switch to white polarity to cancel out the damage (and charge your laser), and then kill the enemy by switching to black and firing black polarity blasts.

Ikaruga will be having a second chance (its sales were quite high for a port, but unfortunately, since it released on the GameCube and the Dreamcast [a year after the DreamCast was discontinued by SEGA], its the sales weren’t too well for a videogame). And this time, it will be able to see a new audience. Ikaruga is available this Wednesday for 800MS Points.

New Virtual Console games. Pass them on.

Nintendo has updated the Virtual Console list with two new games, Yoshi’s Cookie and Bases Loaded. This might be one of the most personal Virtual Console announcements thus far.

Having played Yoshi’s Cookie before, I can tell you it is one of the most boring games I’ve ever played. Despite it’s title (the reason I bought the game way back when), it’s not an adventure game, instead, it’s a puzzle game that’s kinda like a messed up form of Tetris. And don’t let the fact it has an “adventure” mode fool you. It’s really just a survival mode of how long can you last before blocks fill the screen. This game isn’t worth 500 Wii Points. And Yoshi isn’t really in this game (except if you play with another person). This game is not what you think it is. Don’t waste your points. You’ve been warned.

Bases Loaded, I’ve never played (or heard of), but from the looks of it, I wouldn’t recommend this title either. It was great for its time, when graphics were…a big glob large colored squares, but now it seems like a waste.

These two titles are both worth 500 Wii Points each. Personally, I’m passing, and I would advise you to do so as well.

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New Call of Duty 4 Maps LIVE

Fire up Call of Duty 4, and you’ll see an update ready for you. Download it and go to Multiplayer, Download Maps, and buy it (on the 360) for 800 Microsoft Points. There are four new maps: Creek, Broadcast, Killhouse, and Chinatown, the last of which is a remake of Carentan from Call of Duty 2.