Latest Articles (Page 3175)

Galactic Civilizations II design lead Brad Wardell says the developer has accepted an apology from Russian copy protection firm StarForce over an incident that saw pirated copies of the game linked from StarForce's forum.

Telltale Games is planning to release the second in its episodic series of adventure games based on Jeff Smith's nine-volume Bone book series next month - just over six months after the first episode came out.

Much like every other band that has prefixed its name with 'The' in recent memory should be politely informed that it isn't the seventies anymore, somebody really needs to tell SNK what year it is. For the last few we've been seeing Playmore milk the back catalogue seemingly at random, throwing out titles whose names make their ages perfectly clear to prospective purchasers. So almost exactly three years on from its Neo Geo release, does SNK's attempt to compete with the likes of Capcom Vs SNK 2 still cut it?

In case you haven't been involved in any of the other beta weekends, NCsoft is inviting MMO fans to have a go at its post-apocalyptic drive-about Auto Assault this weekend.

The latest attempt by Sony to overturn a court ruling in favour of Immersion Corporation has been foiled, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. Immersion has successfully sued Sony for infringing copyright of vibrating controllers.

It's hard not to get a sense of déjà vu when you read a Nintendo press release these days. "The wait for the interstellar bounty-hunters, and gaming's toughest heroine is finally over," the platform holder hurrahed yesterday, announcing a Metroid Prime: Hunters release date you've all known about since January. Sometimes though you can find a tiny scrap of news in one of them - and "tiny scrap" is certainly the operative in this here news item, which is telling you that Pokemon Link is due out on May 5th, not April 28th as previously stated. [That's "Journalist of the Year" in the bag then. - Ed]

A fleeting glance at the all-formats top ten this week reads more like a product catalogue for Electronic Arts, the US giant utterly dominating the charts with three new entries in the top five and a total of seven titles in the top ten.

Polish developer Techland is working on a sequel to Chrome, its sci-fi themed tactical first-person shooter for the PC which came out in 2003.

Japanese outfit Level-5, currently at work on PS2 sci-fi RPG Rogue Galaxy, is already looking toward its next project - and surprisingly enough it's another RPG.

It'd be easy to write that it'd be easy to dismiss Jewel Quest as yet another Bejeweled clone, but that would be lazy - spend more than half an hour with it and it's fairly obvious that it's actually put an interesting slant on it. Instead I will dismiss the allusion-to-the-ease-of-hapless-dismissiveness approach, and focus on the other obvious intro fodder: the incredibly brilliant story that nicks all sorts of bit from the Mayans and uses them to justify tile-twizzling.

Reports from development sources close to Sony Computer Entertainment are indicating that the firm is planning a major digital distribution service for game content, which could be a key element of PlayStation 3 - or even of a relaunched PS2.

Want to win an OutRun2 arcade machine? No! No you don't! Think about it - the wife/girlfriend/your mum wouldn't allow it, you'd spend so much time playing around with it that you'd probably wind up failing an exam/losing your job/I forget which order I'm doing the separatey-slashy things, and frankly people would laugh at you in the street. That's not even related to the arcade machine. They just do anyway, don't they?

Anti-piracy software firm Starforce has been accused of posting links to pirate copies of Stardock's PC strategy title Galactic Civilizations II on its official website, in the latest in a series of PR blunders for the controversial company.

Lavod Corporation has announced that it has a pair of MP3 players ideally suited to those of you who feel no need to distinguish between serviettes and toilet paper.

I am occasionally forced to think that someone is having a laugh at my expense. "Please review the last ten years of the Command & Conquer franchise (enclosed)." Ten years? So that's five games and about as many expansion packs? And I still get paid the same rate, right? Right.

The American bit of Ubisoft has reportedly denied the contents of a release schedule that lists a bunch of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Revolution games, quite a few of which haven't been announced yet.

The "Friends" feature of Steam, which has been offline for ages, is apparently set to make an appearance in the near future.

A big, steaming pile of dog poo. No, not the game silly, but one of the trophies you can collect during your Metal Slug 5 adventure. Oh, the mischief!

The president of startup studio Ready At Dawn has told GamesIndustry.biz that developers must stop making excuses for producing handheld games that aren't up to the same standard as their console counterparts.

Under normal circumstances it's pretty difficult to get too worked up about another EA boxing game. Sure, they're the best boxing games by a country mile (by virtue of, um, being the only boxing games released in recent years, come to think of it), but the art of pugilism has rarely translated to being a gripping videogame. Whether that's been a technology or a design issue is a tough one to argue. With the notable exception of Rage's excellent Rocky, on a design level the genre's often laboured through unsatisfying and inflexible control systems that never quite give you the feeling of being fully in control, and from the technology perspective the animation's never really been fluid enough to give you the feeling of true, convincing impact - despite the huge strides in character model realism.

Classical music critics regularly have to review well-known compositions from long dead composers reinterpreted by a contemporary conductor. Be it Fritz Busch orchestrating Mozart's Operas, Serge Koussevitzky recreating Tchaikovsky's symphonies or Sir John Barbirolli's defining interpretations of Mahler, a classical critic essentially weighs one person's interpretation of another's idea.

Let's not fanny around with a smart-arse introduction to Jacked; let's just deal with the pain like grown-ups. From the makers of Moorhuhn Invasion, Schnappi and Catch the Sperm 2, Jacked would like to be a cross between Burnout and crusty old Megadrive favourite Road Rash. Players scream around tracks on nitro-guzzling motorbikes swinging a collection of bludgeoning instruments at rival racers. It's a simple enough concept but it's rendered pointless by awful design decisions, ropey controls, mediocre presentation and a complete lack of... well, just a complete lack, if you get our meaning.

You can't blame the general sense of incredulity that accompanies any discussion about the relative merits of the Xbox 360 Live Arcade. As several people are quick to point out, not unreasonably, it's a bit odd to shell out all that money for a brand new next generation console and then spend tens of hours hooked on cheap retro titles - most of which have been available on the PC for yonks.

After countless delays due to patch issues, Electronic Arts has announced that new expansion pack Battlefield 2: Euro Forces will be released on March 15th via the EA downloader.

Incidental background writing isn't something that games are traditionally very good at. These days, though, the standard is rising - developers don't rely on Dull Tony in the programming and fiddliness department to write all the dialogue, and instead they knuckle down in drama class and start to make things a little bit more convincing. It's a testament to the excellence of breach ‘n' flashbang sim SWAT4's writing that you barely notice how believable and well scripted it is. Dialogue, briefings, situations - they're all naturalistic and integrated into the muscular corpus of the game. Even the 911 calls, which are of no real concern to the budding Swatistician, are competently acted and lifelike in delivery. True gaming brilliance is in the details, and SWAT 4 was full of them.

Information from a number of independent sources is suggesting that Sony may announce further details of its plans for PlayStation 3 next week in Tokyo, with the revised launch schedule for the console being at the top of the agenda.

A new demo has been released for the expansion pack to PC RTS Act of War: Direct Action - and it's now available via Eurofiles.

Thinking Man Studios has revealed that it's currently developing a new survival horror MMORPG that will let you play as either a human or a flesh-eating zombie.

Ubisoft's announced plans to publish Taito's Xbox 360 jet fighter game Over G Fighters in Europe. Known to those of you in touch with the console's Japanese line-up as World Air Force, OGF pits trusty old you against the mean old terrorists, who seem to have got hold of yet more planes, only this time they're going to shoot at other planes in them (weirdoes).

Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade game catalogue continues to grow with the addition of iWin's Jewel Quest - already very popular on mobile phones.