New PS2 games

There were many games released for PS2 in MY the past week. Did not bother to jot down the entire list (yeah.... i was lazy), but will do that soon. Chose for myself 3 games from the bunch.

1) ATV Offroad Fury IV (SCE, Sony). The fourth installment (isn't it obvious from the title??) of Sony's own dirt racer. You can choose to race in an ATV (duh...), bikes, buggies and trucks. Offering many offroad tracks, stadium tracks, motocross tracks to race on, and you can even pull off tricks when your vehicle gets "air". Cool. Graphics is real smooth, and beautiful. The vehicles handles nicely, and the AI is good despite some rubber banding (where the games don't allow the AI racers to fall to far away from you).

Overall, a very fun racer. My rating: 7/10

2) Eragon (Vivendi Games). The game based on the soon to be out movie based on a fantasy novel. Now where have we hear of this before?? Yup, the LOTR games. This games follows the plot of the movie, and not directly from the book, the exact same setup as the LOTR games by EA. Players take control of Eragon, and repeated hacks and slashes (with very limited moves) the enemies that fill the screen to progress. Some jumping is required, but nothing too hard. Oh yeah, there are secret eggs on each level to be found too, so its not just blind hacking alone. Graphics is pretty enough and minor slowdown do occur when too many enemies fill up the screen. Dont worth much of your time, unless you are a HUGE Eragon fan.

Overall, its a boring game to hack thru, similar to the LOTR games before it. My rating: 3/10

3) Mercury Meltdown Remix (Ignition Entertainment). This is the PAL (Region 2 version) of the game. This puzzler game appeared originally on the PSP, and now we are getting the PS2 updated version. The game will have you maneuvering a blob of mercury from the start to the end point, with many obstacles in the way. U can physically change the condition of the mercury with several gates (heat - makes it easier to break and moves faster, cold - makes it slower but harder to break, solid - makes it solid like a ball, and even color gates to pass... uhhh.... matching colored gates). To complete the level, player have to tilt the mercury to the end gate, with the amount of mercury required as indicated by a gauge on the left of the screen. Lose the required amount of mercury and its game over. There is a timer too, but that's mainly for gathering more bonus points. Meaning you can still finish the level even as the timer runs out. Visually, the game is the same as the PSP version, so its very beautiful on the big screen as well.

Overall, a very addictive puzzler. My ratings: 8.5/10