Hiya all. Last week I got paid for the last time for being a soldier as I'm closing my release (excuse the errors in vocabulary); to celebrate, I bought these games:

- Resident Evil 5 (PS3)

- House of the Dead : Overkill (Wii)

- Madworld (Wii)

- Valkyrie Profile : Covenant of the Plume (DS)

Resident Evil 5

Amazing graphics, fast, action paced and quite hard sometimes; dissapointingly tending to become a Gears of War clone though, while keeping the some10 year old clumsy controls of its predecessors. A shame since Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition showed us what could have been done there. It just doesn't feel like a Resi anymore, and it simply cannot keep up with any version of RE4.

Verdict - 8.5

House of the Dead : Overkill

Pretty graphics, great humor and fast action contribute to making this game a great one; especially in 2 player co-op, this game really picks up. Longevity is the main issue here, as a moderate player can see it through to the end in less than 3 hours. If SEGA could implement a online co-op mode, this would become AAA. A bulk of unlockables and extra modes, not to mention its highly addictive nature make this replayable.

Verdict - 7.5

Oh gosh, this is a mixed bag. On the one hand, great controls, very gratifying and enjoyable. Humor, twists and amazing boss fights (challenging those of No More Heroes easily); Easy to grasp and very enjoyable to rock the high score table if you can stomack the blood and violence. On the other hand, no 480p make this game a pain in the eyes sometimes, even if it scores big time artistically; the game's quite short although it's pretty big for a beat 'em up and highly replayable. It overall lacks polish.

Verdict - 8.0

Valkyrie Profile : Covenant of the Plume

A big, great surprise here; this game has amazing production values, great graphics and music score and most importantly, great gameplay mechanics (except sin which is a mixed bag - overkilling enemies or else face impossible enemies in the next scenario) and multiple endings. Comparing this to FFTA2 (oddly, as the game steers away from its predecessors' pure RPG roots) it lacks the depth and customization of the latter as well as the visual presentation. VP's more serious tone, with sacrificing your own team members to pull through and a dark script throughout. If I had to choose between these two, VP would be my choice.

Verdict - 9.0

Just a quick note, MadWorld does run in widescreen. Just not 480p.

VP will be mine!!!

I bought House of the Dead Overkill instead of Madworld, and I REALLY wish that I hadn't. It's really a one trick pony. The black guy say "mother fucker" a lot, and the narrator kicks in at strange times. Aside from that, I didn't enjoy it even though I really wanted to.

Resident Evil 5 is awesome, in my opinion. Madworld will be mine soon enough. We certainly have similar tastes in games!!

You called Resi 5 a Gears of war clone, leading me to believe you haven't played it. The only thing it and Gears of War have in common are over the shoulder views and guns.

It runs in the old-school letterbox mode, but not in true anamorphic widescreen. Seeing as how the OP is from the PAL region, it's in 50 hertz with sluggish framerate and black bars on all 4 sides, too.

MadWorld just isn't "AAA", in fact, it has one of the lowest production values of any game on the Wii.

Did you try co-op? The game really shines there. IMO Overkill plays a lot better than UC yet the latter is a more complete package.

RE5 is the most obvious best game if only for the "mercenaries" mode.

I will be buying VP though. I'm a long time fan of VP.