Latest Articles (Page 2548)

News over the weekend that iPhone hacker George Hotz has "hacked the PS3" has been met with shock, surprise and incredulity. Sony's console is undisputedly the most secure games machine ever made, yet Hotz claims to have achieved a full hack in just five weeks. PS3's security fail is generating incredible interest both inside and outside of the games industry, to the point where an interview he gave to the BBC became the most popular news story on the site last night.

In this era of ubiquitous online connectivity, finding a decent split-screen game is much harder than it used to be. Despite studios spending boatloads of cash on fashioning a fully-fledged online multiplayer experience, and despite them working with technologically advanced systems, good old-fashioned split-screen multiplayer appears to have fallen by the wayside.

There are few things in this line of work more beautiful than genuine enthusiasm. It inspires you as a writer - not quite so much as to fool you into giving a shoddy product a critical reach-around, but certainly enough to make you want to commend its creators for giving it a try. And when the enthusiasm accompanies a genuinely excellent piece of interactive craftsmanship, well, that's when you stop regretting the fact that you didn't get a real job with regular pay and overtime and superannuation and everything.

Spoiler alert: We've tried not to give much away here, but if you haven't finished ACII and don't want so much as a hint of what's to come, best come back when you're done.

"Playing this game is almost like taking a holiday from gaming," I wrote when reviewing the first Endless Ocean a couple of years ago. Nintendo and Arika's mild-mannered scuba diving sim was so dreamy, so dull, you could almost have called it the world's most involved screen saver. It seemed to be designed to fill the space on the TV when you didn't want a game to be there: it was pretty, relaxing, untaxing and completely unexciting. It was a lovely respite, but as holidays go, it was a few days on a good beach with a bad airport novel.

It's a classic Rockstar moment. The nocturnal calm is shattered by the shrieks of a prostitute bursting out of a saloon as a man chases her down and assaults her in the street. I move swiftly to her aid but, still acquainting myself with the controls, succeed only in kicking her in the face as she writhes helplessly on the ground.

In videogames, bigger has always equalled better. Marketing men spray ever-greater numbers at us like schoolboys competing to see who can pee furthest up a wall. 'Wonder at how many colours a Mega Drive can display!' they say. 'Marvel at how many minutes of cut-scene you can store on a PlayStation disc!' 'Quiver at the number of polygons that now comprise Lara Croft's cleavage!'

This week's biggie is Mass Effect 2, at least for those people that own a PC or Xbox 360. I'm not going to bang on about it, as we've done quite enough of that in our shambles-slash-podcast. Check out our 10/10 Mass Effect 2 review if you really must know more.

This week I was given the privilege of blasting a brand new Yamaha R1 around the Stowe circuit at Silverstone. Although it was on a cold morning where I couldn't get any heat into the tyres, for those brief 20 minutes of amateur riding I was reminded of all the reasons I love biking.

The cat's out of the bag. Apple's much-vaunted tablet isn't the premium-priced touchscreen MacBook that many thought it would be, it's a completely re-engineered bigger brother to the iPod Touch, running an enhanced iPhone OS and featuring brand new applications with a typically stunning user interface.

Namco Bandai has slapped a 16th April release date on its PS3 and 360 action game, Dead to Rights: Retribution.

It's easy to look upon the DSi LL with questioning eyes, but it would be wrong to claim that a fourth version of the same Nintendo handheld device is unprecedented. As illustrated by last week's Nintendo handheld retrospective, the humble Game Boy went through much the same thing.

You'd be forgiven for dreading the appearance of the Looney Tunes name nowadays. The heydays of the classic shorts are long gone, characters replaced by pale shadows of their former selves trying to act hip in a world of Family Guy and Naruto. Stick to what you know - the old ones really are the best.

The Nintendo DS is a phenomenon almost beyond our understanding. Sales in the UK are stunning, with the device proving appeal across all of gaming's traditional boundaries. But it as nothing when compared to its success in Japan. It's frankly bewildering.

Mistwalker, the studio established by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, is working on a new game for the Wii.

Peter Moore's revealed that EA Sports has "nothing at all" to offer 3D gaming this year.

Turbine has detailed the next Book update to The Lord of the Rings Online. This takes the MMO version of the Tolkien saga into Volume III: Allies of the King with Book 1: Oath of the Rangers.

PlatinumGames, developer of Bayonetta and MadWorld, has revealed its next game - Vanquish.

With the Star Trek Online servers opening for pre-ordering players today, and the game's official launch next week, Cryptic has detailed its plans for the space MMO in its first two months.

Codemasters has thrown bank robbery game Hei$t in the bin.

There's an exciting planet-friendly WiiWare game on offer today called 530 Eco Shooter.

Capcom has announced that it's releasing a compilation cart of all four Mega Man Zero games for the DS.

2K and Gearbox have officially announced the new batch of downloadable content for Borderlands.

Polish publisher CD Projekt has suspended production on They, a first-person shooter for PC, PS3 and 360. Developer Metropolis Software will be put to work on The Witcher 2 instead.

EA Sports this morning revealed FIFA Online, a free-to-play, web-based PC title "aimed at football fans, not just gamers".

Rockstar has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City will be released for the PS3 and PC on 30th March.

Microsoft has announced its financial results for the last three months of 2009, revealing a drop in sales of Xbox 360 units.

BioWare's Dr Ray Muzyka has been answering your questions live on Eurogamer today.

God of War III has been given a firm North American release date of 16th March.

In its latest state of the game post, Cryptic has revealed that it's working on an expansion for Champions Online, as well as detailing the contents of a "kitchen sink" patch that has just been applied to the superhero MMO.