Welcome to the Loadout. Our philosophy is that the working week is a recurring boss battle that you’ll need the proper weapons to take down. The supplies at hand won’t always be pretty but you might just be able to hold out until the weekend. Green means add it to your arsenal, yellow leaves it up to your discretion and red means back away slowly. With that, let’s see what we’ve got this week.
The Game: Green Day: Rock Band
Specifications: The pop-punk superstars get the Harmonix treatment in a new game dedicated to their catalog of hits. Along with a slightly grittier graphical style, the game’s chock full of behind-the-scenes videos and rare photos, making it kind of a virtual scrapbook.
Ideal Usage Scenario: Not much has changed from a gameplay perspective, so you’ll probably only really want GDRB if you’re a diehard fan of Billie Joe and the boys. (And if you are, be sure to check out our vid where Mr. Armstrong goes off on the iPad.)
The Game: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
Specifications: Scandal? What scandal? It’s driving-and-putting business as usual here in Tiger’s yearly golf game. Some changes have happened, though, to the gameplay system. The drills from last year are gone and you can now earn XP as you play and a new True-Aim camera only lets you have an ultra-realistic view of the course for an increased level of challenge.
Ideal Usage Scenario: Tiger’s still the best bet links fans have at a simulator for their favorite sport, so they’ll probably grabbing it for those days when the local course is rained out. However, this year, everyone will have to contend with the Online Pass gateway for multiplayer gameplay. We’ll see how all that works out.
The Game: Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker
Specifications: The legendary stealth action series by Hideo Kojima returns to PSP in an all-new game. Peace Walker turns back the clock and looks back at the mysterious history of what really happened at Outer Heaven mission with Big Boss/Naked Snake, the man whose genes would be cloned to create Solid Snake.
Ideal Usage Scenario: With a beefy Story Mode, 100 extra side challenges and co-op missions, Peace Walker boasts more depth than any recent PSP game… hell, maybe more than any PSP game ever. Seriously, Sony should send Kojima and his Konami crew some cupcakes and champagne.