If you're a Kiwi Lego lover with a musical streak, Warner Bros may be about to release your perfect video game.

The console game Lego Rock Band, arriving in New Zealand stores on Friday, combines the quirky Lego series of games with the popular Rock Band franchise.

It allows up to four players at once to rock out on the now well-known bass, drums, guitar and microphone controllers to a soundtrack of 45 songs from artists including Queen, Foo Fighters, Jackson 5, The All-American Rejects, Jimi Hendrix, Good Charlotte and Tom Petty.

A Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment media release said Lego Rock Band included a Rock Power Challenges feature that allowed players to "unleash riffs so intense they can demolish a building, thwart an angry octopus or send gamers on crazy missions".

Unlike previous incarnations of Rock Band, the Lego version also allowed players to customise their minifigure avatars, band and entourage, Warner Bros said.

Lego Rock Band will be available on the Xbox 360 (RRP $89.95), PlayStation 3 ($89.95) , Wii ($79.95), and Nintendo DS ($49.95). As you might expect, the DS version allows play using its standard controls rather than the drum, bass, guitar and microphone peripherals.

A promotional video for the game can be viewed here.

Posted by James Heffield at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

Call of Duty fans can now take their bloodlust on the road thanks to today's release of Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The mobile app, announced today by Activision, allows bloodthirsty gamers to enjoy the hit zombie-slaying gameplay mode from Treyarch's blockbuster title Call of Duty: World at War. It offers both single player and co-op gameplay in 3D, allowing up to four players to join a game via Wi-Fi, locally or across the internet, and up to two players via Bluetooth.

Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies would allow gamers to "to take the fight against the Zombie masses" wherever they went.

"Zombies is a single player and co-op gameplay mode that people from all over the world have enjoyed playing and have spent countless hours conquering limitless waves of Zombies."

The app can be purchased from Apple's App Store for $14.

Posted by James Heffield at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

What kid of the '80s didn't see himself as Luke Skywalker, valiantly manuevering his X-Wing fighter down the Death Star trench, the fate of the whole galaxy resting upon him and his loyal astromech droid?

Seeing as most of those '80s kids probably have an iPhone now, we imagine that THQ Wireless didn't even consider the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field when producing the $6.50 Star Wars: Trench Run game.

The iPhone game is kind of like a "special edition" of the classic Star Wars arcade game, dropping you into Red 5's orange flight suit at the pivotal Battle of Yavin. You can engage waves of TIE Fighters over the surface of the Death Star or make the legendary trench run to nail the small thermal exhaust port (right below the main port).

The controls use the iPhone's accelerometer to steer the ship and you tap various parts of the screen to fire the X-Wing's weapons, toggle between cockpit and third-person camera modes, or activate a slow-motion feature (presumably, the equivalent of using the Force).

The Mission Mode incorporates scenes and dialogue from the movie while the Arcade Mode lets you choose from the trench run or dogfighting. Both make great use of authentic Star Wars sound effects and John Williams's soaring score. You'll need an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later, and apparently the game is optimised for different devices, providing extra graphics on the iPhone 3GS and second-generation iPod touch.

Of course, as a Star Wars fanatic, I was legally obligated to download the game and give it a run. The game sports a variety of different difficulty settings ranging from Easy to Jedi. The accelerometer controls make it flying pretty challenging, despite the fact that I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. Even on easy, I found myself crashing into trench walls or getting turned into a cloud of vapor by a passing TIE fighter, so clearly I am not a Jedi yet--hey, reckless am I.

While Star Wars: Trench Run may not be up to the gold standard set by LucasArts's venerable X-Wing series, I'd rank it as at least as fun as a visit to Tosche Station.

Now let's blow this thing and go home.

Dan Moren

Posted by James Heffield at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

The latest PlayStation 3 title Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time was released in New Zealand by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) yesterday.

The latest version of the game is the third Ratchet and Clank title released on PS3, following on from Ratchet and Clank: Quest For Booty.

It allows players to play as Ratchet, a hot-head 'Lombax', in a quest to rescue his robot friend Clank. As well as mastering the art of bouncing bad guys with an array of outlandish weapons like the Groovitron Glove and Omni-Soaker, you'll also need to master the laws of time to travel backwards and forwards through the ages and find the clues that'll solve the mystery of Clank's disappearance

To celebrate the release, SCE is encouraging gamers to submit their own weapon design to a Ratchet and Clank competition page at www.tvnz.co.nz/ratchetandclank. The winning design, as judged a panel including Ratchet and Clank developer Brian Allgeier, will be crafted into a one of a kind weapon by Wellington-based WETA Workshop.

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time has a New Zealand RRP of $120.

Posted by James Heffield at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )