Cheap This Week - 22/06/11

Unknow release

Prince of Persia® HD Trailer

As we head into the season of sales, you'll want to keep your bank account tightly girdled lest you snap up every game under the summer sun. That's why we're here to guide you; we've got a few great bargains this week on some classics of the past few years, as well as some more contemporary greats.

To make sure you never miss out on the best gaming discounts, head over to SavyGamer.co.uk for round-the-clock updates.

Here are this week's deals:

AssBro - £12.99 on PS3 and Xbox 360

Brotherhood takes every lesson learned from the previous games and wraps them all up in a package that never leaves you short of anything to do, while simultaneously able to round out all of the questions left hanging from the previous game and leaving a few of its own, as Tom detailed in his review:

"Never before have we seen a game whose open world is so densely packed with things to do while maintaining such high quality. Whatever your particular taste, you simply cannot run from one area to another without encountering something else that you want to stop and do. Thanks to the Animus, which frees the developer to break the fourth wall at will, Brotherhood builds an intriguing mystery around compelling characters, surrounds them with collectibles and secrets, and encourages play – and nothing feels out of place."

This instalment is the first to have multiplayer, taking the stealth element of the game and transforming it into an exciting game of cat and mouse. With Revelations coming later this year, it's an ideal time to make sure you're caught up with Ezio Auditore and Desmond Miles in all their conspiratorial stabbing glory in what Tom billed "one of the best games of 2010."

Child of Eden - £28.99 delivered

Tetsuya Mizuguchi returns with what might as well be called Rez 2. With Microsoft's renewed vigour with making sure that a wide range of games support Kinect, Child of Eden goes a long way to prove that it's perfectly possible to end up with an elegant result that benefits from the peripheral.

"You move with the light and music and as the chords rise wave after heightening wave; it's close to a transcendent experience," says Simon in his review. And that experience can be yours for less than thirty pounds.

Video: Waving like a serpent.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - £23.99 delivered

If after playing through the original Galaxy you were left thirsty for more, the follow-up will take that urge and satisfy it completely. Ostensibly a full sequel, Mario Galaxy 2 is really a beefed-up level pack – but one that expands on the brilliant original in ways that both defy and fit very comfortably within Mario's gravity-manipulating repertoire.

Oli sang its praises with a review at launch that gave it full marks:

"Although it's by no means an easy game, it's astonishing how easy Super Mario Galaxy 2 is to enjoy. With multiple gameplay styles and perspectives, and level design so contorted and multi-faceted it's cruel, the camera faces challenges no other game can match, and yet it never puts a foot wrong. The behaviour of the game's gravity and physics can change in an instant, and yet you always instinctively know how to thread our hero through it, that telepathic connection between Mario and gamer as strong as it's been in the last three decades."

Prince of Persia HD Trilogy - £10.99 delivered

Prince of Persia's rewinding time mechanic is so useful it would benefit almost every game. Aside from being a joy to use, it reduced the most frustrating obstacle of the puzzle platformer: learning by dying. This means the player can free themselves of caution enough to grant the game a rarely equalled fluidity, and it enabled the puzzles to be a little more challenging.

The collection visually upgrades the beautifully designed Sands of Time, the misguidedly angst-ridden and combat-focused Warrior Within and The Two Thrones, the third game that found a happy middle ground between its predecessors.

Here's what Tom thought:

"It was no real surprise that Ubisoft struggled to recapture its former glories with the subsequent 2008 reboot and this year's already-forgotten Forgotten Sands. The spirit of the Sands lives on though – most notably in Assassin's Creed – and for those gamers who weren't around eight years ago to see where that began, this is an enjoyable history lesson that survives the test of time."

There's the occasional misstep in the presentation - the jarringly low resolution menus and cut scenes in particular - but for such an influential trilogy, this is a steal.

Deal of the week

Fallout: New Vegas - £9.99 on PS3 and Xbox 360

The apocalypse is no reason to frown; New Vegas brought back the humour of the first two games and combined it with the first person engine of the third.

Video: What happens in Vegas.

That engine is starting to show its age, but the joy of impotently hitting a giant mutated scorpion with a golf club while wearing a cowboy hat or plotting the demise of an all-seeing super mutant in a blonde wig cannot be denied. This is a smartly designed game that isn't afraid to encourage you to enjoy some very silly situations.

But this was no quick or lazy expansion, as Dan noted:

"Obsidian could have restricted its ambition to inheriting Bethesda's game engine and turning out more of the same, and most of Fallout 3's sizeable fanbase would have been quite happy. That it's gone to the trouble of developing both the series' narrative and it gameplay mechanics speaks highly of the studio's attention to detail."

There's hours of game to lose yourself in here.

Also of note this week...

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