Latest Articles (Page 3042)

It is, as Elton John once warbled about cartoon lions, a circle of life kinda thing. The first Fast and the Furious movie brought the underground subculture of import car modification into the mainstream, and it didn't take long for the impact to trickle down to our little gamesy paddock. Established racing titles suddenly went all hip and urban, as if they'd always had a neon green rear spoiler in the garage but had only now realised what to do with it. Yes, Need for Speed - we're looking at you.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. isn't the only long-awaited East European traveller arriving this Spring. Theatre of War - a real-time WW2 tactics title that first turned heads back in 2002 - should be with us sometime in April. For the last few days I've been sat in a ruined church tower with a pair of binoculars spying on the preview code. This is what I've observed so far...

To celebrate its joining the glitzy golden ranks of gaming, Frictional Games has released a tasty demo for Penumbra: Overture, ahead of the first episodic instalment due on 30th March.

Bethesda has finally confirmed that Shivering Isles will be released everywhere on 27th March, for PC and Xbox 360.

Lylat Wars is expected to appear on Virtual Console very soon, but Nintendo is keeping quiet about exactly when.

Rebellion has acquired Ignition's Banbury-based development studio Awesome Developments.

Publisher Take 2 Interactive may undergo vast changes in the wake of its annual general meeting - including, potentially, a sale of the company or of some of its business units.

Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz' widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial is a weekly dissection of one of the issues weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer a day after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.

With so much going on at GDC last week, we almost forgot to tell you that Q Entertainment's Every Extend Extra is on its way to Xbox Live Arcade, so we're asking for a time extension - something the game would presumably allow.

We've known for a while that LocoRoco is set to return, but last week's GDC session covering the game's development brought the strongest hints yet that the PSP platformer will make the transition to PlayStation 3 in some form.

Epic Games has poured cold water on reports that Gears of War 2 was quietly confirmed at the Game Developers Conference last week.

Those of you looking forward to The Behemoth's Castle Crashers might want to clear your mouths for a sharp intake of whatever's floating in front of your face: it's not coming out until 2008.

Beautiful Game Studios has issued a patch for Championship Manager 2007 on PC that most notably brings player and staff data into line with transfers made in the January window.

Last Thursday's news... today! Or, rather, more Xbox Live updates that we were too busy to mention last week. So: Test Drive Unlimited has been boosted by the addition of a new car pack (including a freebie taster car) and a new "Hardcore Mode" that gives owners of the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel incentive to plug it in again.

Codemasters' Korean MMORPG import RF Online is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a free item for everyone who's still playing it.

With UEFA Champions League 2006-2007 due out in just under a fortnight, there's a demo of the Xbox 360 version up on Xbox Live Marketplace, which we thought we'd mention in case you hadn't spotted it. (Plus, obviously, it's not going to take much to get me writing about the Champions League after last week's not-at-all-surprising Liverpool defeat/victory.)

Like an aeroplane flying from Singapore to Heathrow that sodding well decides to do laps around Bovingdon just before it lands, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved has spun wearily to a halt on MSN Games' Windows Vista channel, where it's now available for US$ 7.95.

Bungie's latest Halo 3 update reveals that the developer has been toying with depth-of-field effects, but has ultimately decided not to make a big deal of them for gameplay reasons.

You can say what you like about GRAW. Admire the lovely visuals, wax about the intuitive control system, or the tense duck and cover squad-based gameplay, but you can't say the single player portion was exactly polished. It had some of the most infuriating, sofa-punching difficulty spikes of any of the big games of 2006, with inconsistent checkpoint spacing, the worst night vision system of any game ever (seriously), ridiculous health issues, ammo problems, graphical glitches, you name it. There was a real feeling of the game being so close to greatness, but being rushed out before it was ready. Happily, almost every single thing that we complained bitterly about last year's version has been fixed. In many respects, GRAW 2 is the game that last year's version could and perhaps should have been - though this is an admittedly shorter game than last year's.

The Entertainment Software Association has begun sending out 'save the date' invitations for this year's E3, which will take place between July 11 - 13.

I must begin, in the manner of Dave McCarthy, by declaring an interest. Super Swing Golf is an adaptation of a fantasy golf MMO called Albatross18 (or Pangya in Japan and Korea) - a game to which I have been harbouring a substantial addiction for the better part of six months. Pangya is freely downloadable and free to play on the PC, but they sucker you out of your money by plunging you into an insanely bright, colourful world populated entirely by people who are much, much better than you. Want to stop losing so embarrassingly often? Better buy yourself a better character, then, or a nicer hat, or prettier gloves, or more advanced equipment, or a caddy, and so on and so on until you’re sitting there in your socks and underpants having sold all your worldy possessions in order to kit out a cutesy virtual golfer, whose incessant V-popping (the peace sign, not Viagra) and gleeful dancing soon begin to take on an air of mockery.

EA sure is trying its darndest to get us all fired up about Medal of Honor: Airborne, and with good reason. Parachutes have routinely proved themselves to be the most fun ever when they appear in games, and the idea of them being the focus of one gets us giddy. We can't wait to be part of one of those dramatic WW2 airdrops that movies love recreating, dropping through a sky heavy with planes and flak fire and bright with searchlights and tracer rounds. And the chance to choose exactly where you land in a freeform level that dynamically adapts to your location and plays different every time? Just superb. And then you've got the whole thing topped off with the ability to customize your weapons, just like real GIs did. So that's all well and good for the gamers who've fork(lift)ed over the cash for a PS3 or 360 or have a top-notch PC, but what about everybody else?

In many ways videogame critics are a bit like bum-bagged, Polaroid-snapping tourists. We dash from game to game, scribbling down points of interest with furious scrawl; we take scattergun snapshots of the defining architecture and characters from illuminating angles as we listen to PR tour guides pointing out with practised turn-of-phrase the game's outstanding, unusual facts and histories. Finally, we write down our thoughts for the folks back home before heading for the minibus and the next new attraction. You see, like tourists, videogame critics rarely visit a game for any more than is absolutely necessary. Time is money and no sooner is a game spent than most of us are on to the next one.

It'd be very easy to saddle up on my gigantic building-straddling horse and fire rockets down at Rockstar for the bloodless cash-in exercise that is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Five and a half years (and five games) down the line, and barely a technical improvement worth a damn. This is a game that's not only showing its age, but begging for loose change.

NCsoft has announced it will be adding crafting to City of Heroes / Villains by introducing a new Invention System, which will allow players to equip user-created items to enhance a character's super powers.

Epic Games' Gears of War has won three awards at the annual Game Developers Choice Awards, including Best Game - with Capcom's Okami and Nintendo's Wii Sports also picking up multiple honours.

Microsoft has revealed that Forza 2 will feature a new Livery Editor that will let you add your own personal touch to cars through logos, decals and unique paint schemes.

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison has told GamesIndustry.biz that the company is set to focus on software now that the "challenges" of recent months are in the past.

Square-Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales will be available throughout Europe in May.

Guitar-based action is coming to the DS, according to Level Up, with Ubisoft releasing Jam Sessions across the US in June.