TITWTWB - 4 November

Or... This Is The Week That Will Be, starting 4 November.

In a new excuse to waste time and further delay fixing that pesky Domino server s u d 0 is going to cast his beady eyes over next week's UK releases, picking a few notables for each platform, the Game Of The Week and the Turd Of The Week.

Here are next week's hopeful candidates.

For the 360 we have Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, NASCAR 08, WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008, Beowulf and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Beowulf looks good but as it is a movie tie-in it thus wavers on the knife edge of mediocrity depending entirely on how the box-office goes for the film.

For the Wii this week's selection includes Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. This is the first time Lego has come to the Wii and I can't see that it will take the old-timer's favourite tennis-sim console into new heights of originality. Endless Ocean (the diving sim) looks like one of those non-games that's fun for about 10 minutes but ends up gathering dust on top of the DVD player within days. With the WWE game and My Word Coach also on the roster, it's hardly the most exciting week for Wii owners.

PSP owners see the ubiquitous WWE Smackdown and The Simpsons Game featuring the actual voice talents from the series, but probably no plot, and no funnies. Much like the movie then.

And what do the lucky DS gamers get next week? Strawberry Shortcake: The Four Seasons Cake, Deal or no Deal, and WWE Smackdown. Back to the 'homebrew' there then.

PS3, PC and PS2. Do we care about these enough to write about them? If you do, let me know and I'll include them next week.

All in all a fairly humdrum week I think. Ignoring Munchk's penchant for role-playing oiled-up beefcake actors aka pro wrestlers (never forget) I think I'm going to have to roll with Simplicitly's in-depth Beta-test preview and favour CoD4 for the 360 this week. Despite that fact that a) It's another CoD game and 2) it's still too close to Halo 3 for another multiplayer online battle sim, I'm naming Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as my Game of the Week.

My Turd of the Week is going to Deal or no Deal. Even granted that it doesn't feature the diminutive, jumper-wearing, minge-faced Edmunds I can't imagine playing what is essentially a random number generator for any length of time. Most modern calculators or a simple batch script will give you just as many minutes of psuedo-random fun. Plus you can play it free online now anyway.

Glad to see that Metacritic backs me up here. Nice scores, lads.