Latest Articles (Page 2563)

The Christmas and New Year break affords us a chance for reflection; a glance over the shoulder at a year passed, the games released, the games announced, the shows that have been and gone and the promise of the year ahead.

The trend of nothing much happening after E3 continued throughout July. EA annoyed some more people with another promo idea someone probably didn't think through properly, and really wound up Dana White by allegedly telling him UFC isn't a real sport. Well, it's certainly no WWE.

So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody's having to do end-of-year features because there are no more games to review. Time then for our annual look back at the highlights of the year, which involves raking through more than 4000 news stories - all of them hand-crafted, most of them accurate and only a handful written while drunk.

Festive greetings Eurogamer reader! We hope work has finished, your slippers are on and you're snuggled up with your families. As in, your individual families. I'm not saying you're a bigamist or whatever.

You've seen what we have to say on the matter. Now it's time to see what our beloved, awesome readership thought were the best games of 2009. Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill in the form and write a comment about their favourite games of the year. Will there be a union now between the two towers?

Eurogamer needs you! Specifically, we need you to kill our enemies.

So, six months on from my review I'm still playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Granted, it's not the all-consuming, four-hours-each-and-every-day obsession that it was back in June, but the UMD is still a regular lodger in my PSP. Incredibly, or perhaps predictably, I still absolutely suck at it.

Just to recap: roughly 30 years have passed since the days of Pong, and people are pretty good at making videogames by this point. Genuine twitching abominations are on the decline - rather handily, for a while, they all had Gamecock written on the box - and even the most mundane title will generally have a few ideas worth admiring lurking somewhere within it.

If you've read Eurogamer for more than a few months, you're probably aware that we traditionally end the year with our rundown of the writers' top 50 games of the preceding 12 months. As we always point out, it's a list of games the editorial staff and freelance contributors have played and selected as their favourites, and it's assembled based on their orders of preference. It's meant to illustrate what we've played and liked, and give us a forum to exchange views about them with one another on the site. It's a list of some of the best games of the year, but it's not a definitive order by any measure.

By now you've had time to read part one of our interview with Crackdown 2 producer James Cope and development director Gareth Noyce. Although, you know, fair enough if you haven't. It's only our livelihood.

US Microsoft bigwig Aaron Greenberg has described Crackdown 2 as a first-half 2010 game.

Gran Turismo helmsman Kazunori Yamauchi has taken his love of motorsport to the next level by completing a 25-hour endurance race, reports Kotaku.

Assassin's Creed II's dad Patrice Desilets has confirmed that the Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities download packs due next year were originally meant to be in the main game.

Head over to Xbox Live this morning and you can download a demo of Larian Studios' Divinity II: Ego Draconis.

Konami has patched Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and released some free DLC in the process.

Valve's been quietly building AI bots for its multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 on PC, and it's now ready to let players test them out in beta.

Sony has announced plans to run an open MAG beta at the start of next year.

36 years on and there's still inspiration to be drawn from Breakout, Atari's formative, blockbusting arcade game that helped define the very vocabulary videogames have been jabbering ever since. A sort of inverse Peggle, with Bjorn the Unicorn swapped out for a missile-riding Tron nanobot, Reflect Missile does little to advance upon its primal inspiration's simplistic visuals. Instead, it snuggles up to the primitive 8-bit aesthetic, placing cool monotone green or red Amstrad blocks atop school exercise-book graph-paper backgrounds and soundtracking them with chiptune lullabies. Only the tiniest flashes of contemporary flair are permitted here: fading missile trails that bisect the screen or pixel-art fireworks that bloom when a stage is completed.

Codemasters has released a second bout of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising DLC on Xbox 360.

Jordan Thomas is a games journalist's dream. He talks a mile a minute, hitting a dozen tangents in the process, but is consistently fascinating and entertaining - even when, as was the case with this interview, he's soundtracked by the alarming sound of a dozen dogs barking from the house next door.

Croteam has said that Serious Sam 3 will be finished sometime next year.

Activision's Modern Warfare 2 has taken Christmas number one in the UK All-Formats chart.

Microsoft wants your Avatar to actually look like you, judging by a patent application for "Avatar Individualised by Physical Characteristics".

Cryptic will be promoting its superhero MMO Champions Online with a new update, an iPhone app, a recruitment initiative and a free demo this Christmas.

Ubisoft's Ghost Recon 4 could be subtitled Future Soldier, judging by a new Ubisoft trademark spotted at the weekend by superannuation.

Sony has filed a trademark protecting the name Qriosity, perhaps reflecting its ongoing love for names beginning with the letter Q (Qore, Qrios, etc).

According to 1UP, SEGA and Microsoft have announced that Banjo-Kazooie and Xbox Live Avatars will be playable characters in the Xbox 360 version of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing.

Darksiders creative director and comic-book hero Joe Madureira will be headlining a special London launch of Vigil Games' new title on 7th January 2010.

Traveller's Tales director Jon Burton has said he is more excited about the Sony motion controller than Microsoft's Project Natal, although he admits the latter's technology is "amazing".

Sony has said that the SOCOM: Confrontation expansion pack Cold Front will be released in Europe on 7th January, although pricing is still to be confirmed.