Latest Articles (Page 2948)

Ultimate Play The Game is a company synonymous with producing ground breaking titles for the ZX Spectrum with their 1983 debut, Jetpac, re-setting the benchmark for shooters on Sir Clive's Technicolor wonder machine that other game developers thereafter had to measure up to.

It's so easy to forget how gaming habits change. We look back now, and most every game stamped with the retro seal is considered simple. They might be, in comparison to modern titles, but at the time we had very particular and demanding requirements which varied wildly depending on format. Jack the Nipper, therefore, should be considered quite carefully when placed in line for retro scrutiny.

Great unanswered mysteries of the Spectrum age: just what the hell was Horace supposed to be? His torso is utterly baffling. Are those supposed to be... eyes? Vacant holes? What? Perhaps the shameful truth is that a demented blob was simplest to animate.

Rock Band's US release will be supported by a community minded relaunch for the game's official website - www.rockband.com - to help encourage the game's early buyers to play together.

Highway Encounter is quite special. Although constructed from familiar pieces, the result is a unique, um ... how to put this ... road clearance simulator. Which is not to say the player is cast as a diligent council worker. Far from it. In fact, this is perhaps the closest anyone will get to taking on the role of a Dalek. Or at least a laser-fitted dustbin.

No-one had posed the question "what happens if you mix Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, a Sisters of Mercy b-side and some Spectrum code?" but in 1986, Odin Computer Graphics answered it anyway. As it turns out, you get a surrealistic platform game with an unusual approach to level design. And an unusual approach to pretty much everything else really.

The PS2 and Xbox 360 versions are already screaming along further up the track, and the PS3 version is lining up on the grid for tomorrow, but the PC version of Juiced 2 is still around a month away, and THQ has released a demo version to try and sell you on its merits.

Despite the vagueness of its title, Hall of Things is perhaps best thought of as a Tolkeinian arcade graphical adventure maze game. Actually, Hall of Things is probably a better, more accurate and concise description of what this popular title was all about.

Ubisoft has secured the voice acting talents of the principal Beowulf film cast members for its upcoming next-gen and handheld adaptation.

Having heroically declared that all modern games are rubbish just the other week, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has gone back on his comments to some extent and paid tribute to Tetris, The Sims, Spore, Wii Sports, Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero as laudable examples of innovation.

MotorStorm has been patched to version 3.0, introducing support for the upcoming DualShock 3's rumble (hurrah) and tweaking a number of other variables.

Epic Games' Mark Rein says it's "too early to know" whether Unreal Tournament 3 will hit PS3 this year.

I spent much of the N64's lifetime cursing Nintendo for failing to continue the story of bounty hunter Samus, whose 2D adventures against the nefarious Metroid creatures I had so enjoyed on the Super Nintendo, GameBoy and NES before that. However, the double-act of Metroid Fusion (GBA) and Metroid Prime (Cube) has seen the series return so phenomenally in excess of my expectations that I'm left panting and wheezing, wondering just where the hell any of this came from!

Forza Motorsport 2's first downloadable race-track will go live tomorrow, 26th October, developer Turn 10 has said.

Naughty Dog and Sony will release a playable demo for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune "sometime mid-November" according to AI and animation programmer Christian Gyrling.

Will Wright has said that Spore is about six months away from release on PC, suggesting that Maxis' ambitious life sim is on track to launch in line with publisher Electronic Arts' most recent estimate of early fiscal 2009.

Having struggled to come to terms with the concept of paying more than your average budget price for Dr. Mario and Castlevania, we thought we'd be slightly more tempted by Metroid. After all, this is the consistently brilliant series that has in recent years brought us two excellent Cube and GBA titles, not to mention the seminal SNES classic back in those prime days of 2D. This reviewer was genuinely taken with the idea of rewinding to where the series began, to see what he'd missed in his gaming youth. Now now, there's no need to toss missiles at your humble correspondent; it's just this one was too busy messing around with tape loading errors, colour clash, rubber keyboards and the like to have ever afforded that glamorous NES thing. No sir. In the 80s, more or less the only thing Nintendo succeeded with in Europe was the Game & Watch and a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet in every local chippie up and down the land. The prospect of playing the very first Metroid was as much of a history lesson to the likes of yours truly as it probably is to most people reading this. Given how much love we have for a lot of Nintendo's 8-bit output we were almost excited. This was to be a voyage of discovery.

The Church of England has forgiven Sony for not asking permission before recreating Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man.

If you've already slogged your way through Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, you might imagine that you've seen enough bombs, boomerangs, bows and hookshots to last a lifetime. Well, you haven't, so sit down and stop sulking.

Achievements have been in the news recently. What originally smacked of pointless gimmickry from Microsoft has now revealed itself as a stroke of slowburning, evil genius amongst those transformed into horribly addicted gamerpoint whores (you know who you are, Kristan).

Hyper Sports certainly had ambition. Instead of diligently retreading the steps of its predecessor, Konami's sequel to Track & Field introduced seven new events. T&F's three-button control system (two for hammering at speed, one to cover jumps/gymnastics/breathing/taking steroids) returned though - as did a familiar requirement for brute force and deft timing. The game also proudly holds the gold for "seediest wink ever seen in videogaming."

Jade Raymond wants to meet you lot and answer your questions this Saturday at the HMV on Oxford Street.

In Mr. Do!, players control an evil circus clown who tunnels underground in search of innocent, soil-dwelling creatures to steal fruit from. If these hapless beings attempt to cross his path, he crushes them with apples or throws a power ball in their supple faces. Some might spin this tale in a more positive way, but that just makes them deviant clown sympathisers.

Midway also confirmed to us this afternoon that Blacksite: Area 51 will launch on PC and 360 in November.

Midway has confirmed that Unreal Tournament III will be released on PC here in November.

To play Valhalla upon its release back in 1983, the gamer had to spend a whopping £14.99 for the privilege. For most people this amounted to many weeks of accumulated pocket money, and suggested the game must be something extra special to warrant such a price.

Some would argue that those involved in developing games on the 8-bit computers had a much easier time of it than their equivalents today. With a clean inspirational slate, the creative juices of the game designers could really let rip and turn pretty much any concept, idea or situation into a title the public would lap up.

Would you believe that Tony Hawk will be 40 years old next year? You wouldn't if you'd seen his performance at this year's Leipzig Games Convention, where he wowed the crowd with some of his bestest skateboarding stunts and didn't look like he was getting on a bit at all.

Amongst this Top 50 you'll probably stumble across a fair few instances of reviewers hailing spectacular graphics, the staggering use of 48K of memory, or acts of maverick genius. Well, add Tornado Low Level (T.L.L.) to the exulted selection of games which exhibit all three, because here comes some incredulous praise.

It's nearly a year since we got a Wii, and still the people come. The ex-gamers, the non-gamers, the women, the children, the Dads. "Have you got one, then?" they say. They "don't normally like games", but they've seen the Wii on telly and it looks like fun. They ask if they can come round and play it, and we say yes, and we know exactly how things will go.