This week's new games

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Xenoblade Chronicles, Nintendo Wii

While remakes of Japanese role-playing games are commonplace, new ones are anything but, making Xenoblade Chronicles a rare specimen. Set in a world that has sprung up on the vast fallen body of a Titan, this features all the Final Fantasy fixtures, from tactical combat to the epic grandeur of its scenery and plot to the tousle-headedness of its hero. For fans of Dragon Quest IX or the far more venerable Chrono Trigger, this will feel like coming home; albeit one infested with increasingly powerful monsters.

Nintendo, £39.99

Driver: San Francisco, Nintendo Wii, PC, PS3 & Xbox 360

Following the all-out catastrophe of Driver 3, a game so broken it was scarcely playable, it's a relief that Driver: San Francisco actually works. It also returns to simulating the uproarious skid-prone muscle cars that made the series great in the first place and comes with a twist: following serious injury, hero, John Tanner discovers he can leave his body and "shift" into any car, bus or lorry at any time. That means ready access to a city full of dares, stunt challenges, races and mischief, from shifting into someone's car and taking them on a white knuckle ride, to takedown missions that involve beaming into oncoming traffic to give villains a nasty head-on surprise. It's stylish, witty and brilliant fun.

Ubisoft, £39.99-£49.99

Inazuma Eleven, Nintendo DSi

Mark Evans is captain of his school's football team, which at the beginning of the game can only muster a highly apathetic, untrained, seven-man squad. Your job is to rebuild the team, a process that demands exploration and a lot of talking to bystanders. That's right, it's a football-themed role-playing game. Although an unprepossessing prospect, the reality is deftly handled by developer Level 5 (responsible for the superb Professor Layton games), forging a broad and interesting set of missions and distractions off the pitch, while making the gently tactical and increasingly deep game of football unlike any you've played. It's spawned a clutch of sequels in Japan and playing it you'll understand why.

Nintendo, £29.99

Games news

Those looking forward to a dose of controller-free lightsaber action this Christmas will be disappointed by LucasArts' announcement that Kinect Star Wars will be delayed until next year, although that may not be entirely bad news given the game's desultory showing at this summer's Electronics Entertainment Expo …

Notch, the ebullient inventor of runaway download indie hit Minecraft, has challenged publisher Bethesda Softworks to a Quake 3 tournament to settle a copyright dispute over use of the word "Scrolls" in a forthcoming release …

And Australia's notoriously sensitive classification board has refused a certificate for Sega's House Of The Dead: Overkill Extended Cut, a title unafraid of bathing itself in cartoonish fountains of gore …

Other games out this week include Driver: Renegade 3D for Nintendo's black sheep, the 3DS, and We Dance, the newest way to get out of breath using a Wii.

• Games

Nick Gillett

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Charles Arthur 03 Sep, 2011

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/03/this-weeks-new-games
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