And The Rest: Friday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) Club Football 'Precision Trigger' details, THQ humps Pixar some more, UT2004 patched, Codename: Panzers and Soldner demos, Custom Robo for GBA, another Shining Force on way.
With the game due out on PS2, Xbox and PC this October, Codemasters is starting to chat about the specific new features that help Club Football 2005 stand out - apart from the bagillion different club-specific versions, that is. The latest of these is the Precision Trigger system, which enables you to slow the play down to help with your close control, allowing you to drag the ball away from other players, shimmy, jink, and turn extravagantly without having to perform thumb gymnastics at a rate of knots. It sounds quite handy, and we look forward to seeing how it works out.
THQ and Pixar have struck up a new publishing deal, which will slide into place in 2006 after the existing deal - which covers The Incredibles and Cars - expires and Pixar breaks off its relationship with Disney. The new deal covers Pixar's first wholly-owned film and three others and should see THQ publishing games on PC, consoles, portables and phones the world over for up to four years after each game's release.
Unreal Tournament 2004 has been patched to version 3270, fixing plenty of bugs and making various changes to Onslaught mode, menus, networking, demo recording and general gameplay. Blah blah blah. It's probably best if you consult the readme for specific details, our brains are a bit slow this afternoon (must be all the ants). Oh, and you can download the 12MB patch here.
Speaking of downloads, today also marks the release of a pair of war-related offerings, namely Codename: Panzers, which is now available in multiplayer demo form, and Soldner - Secret Wars, which you can also get your hands on now. We don't have much to say about either, although in the case of Soldner, one of our reviewery chums said it was the funniest game he'd ever played for all the wrong reasons, some of which were so funny we've forgotten what they were.
Famitsu Weekly reckons that Nintendo is planning a Custom Robo title for the Game Boy Advance this week, although it doesn't have any specific information yet. The Japanese mag was right about Marawu Made In Wario, though. According to the report, the GBA game uses 2D arenas big enough to stretch beyond the bounds of the screen, lots of robots (um, yeah) and some degree of customisation. (We might really just have mentioned the title, to be honest.)
According to the diary of Sega PR Tadashi Takezaki, another Shining Force game is on the way for some platform or other - in addition to the GBA and PS2 titles already announced (and in the case of the GBA, released). "We've started a project for the next-next-next title (fourth release). I'll work hard as the head in charge of overseeing the [Shining Force] series and make sure the series is released consistently, so that fans can enjoy it for a long time," Takezaki wrote in his official diary, although we'd imagine - with other SF games still yet to come out - it'll be a while before we hear anything else about the next Shining Force.