Latest Articles (Page 3268)

IGN GameSpy is to make its first step into the portable gaming market by licensing its technology to Nintendo, which has announced plans to set up a wireless gaming network for Nintendo DS owners.

Just as we finished typing up Namco's E3 line-up, Vivendi-Universal Games' line-up landed in our inbox. If they weren't coming to the beach with us on Sunday to play Frisbee we'd be quite indignant. [Er, I doubt that's the way to drum up sympathy from the readers. -Ed]

Namco has unveiled its E3 line-up ahead of the show next week, although there's no mention of any next-generation content yet. Presumably that's the sort of thing we'll have to wait for the show or pre-E3 platform holder conferences to hear about.

In a period dominated by brain scrambling American election shenanigans, intense action games obsessed with violence, death and retribution, a frantic media obsessed with games obsessed with violence, death and retribution, the death of John Peel, and the hideously unlucky plight of Norwich City, it's good to know that the warm bosom of Sports Interactive is never far away.

Intros are hard. You have to keep things short. You have to grab people's attention. You have to state your intent. You have to make a point. Often, to achieve all this, you have to say something new.

Sometimes we just feel like poor old Darth Vader. We can feel his exasperation. "Why doesn't this pitiful offspring of mine understand the power of the dark side? If only he knew, he wouldn't question it." Too many people are reluctant to play SingStar because they think it's karaoke, which they assume they don't like. These people are, sadly, fools. Obi-Wan never told them just how much fun you can have with it. How it's the best and most universally appealing party game since Twister. How it's not only designed to make you sing, but how it's made singing into a viable competition, and how many things there are to make you laugh - through playback, voice filters, EyeToy video-capture, and through the exposure of unlikely falsetto voices in once-reticent couch-dwellers. If you don't play it, or continue to evade it, you're only delaying the inevitable. It is your destiny.

After such a resoundingly disappointing demo release a few months back it's fair to say that the long-awaited second PC Medal Of Honor had somewhat fallen off our radar. We'd probably go so far as to say that we were fully expecting Pacific Assault to be - at best - generic, scripted, corridor-based fare, and at worst a disgrace to the brand in the same way that Rising Sun completely insulted the intelligence of any right-thinking gamer. We awaited the results of EA LA's four-year long toils with the bated breath of underachievement.

It would be impossible to argue that EA had done a bad job of its partnership with New Line and the Lord of the Rings films so far. The Two Towers and The Return of the King were shining examples of the handling of film licenses, if not the brightest instances, showing a commitment to the property's assets and the mirroring of the movies themselves in taking a full action stance. Everyone wants to be Ian McKellan in a huge beard with a death wish, don't they? It turned out they did. The games were huge successes, and rightly so.

Does anybody know the Japanese for "Or, you know, we could just make a new 2D Mario platformer"? Nope, neither do we. And we're guessing the folks who commission Nintendo's handheld projects don't either. Having seemingly exhausted their back catalogue of traditional 8- and 16-bit Mario games for the loved/hated Mario Advance series, this shadowy cabal of commissioners now appear to have set their sights on another classic formula - that of the arcade Donkey Kong.

"Eastern Europeans drunk on freedom". That pretty much sums up what to expect from the latest Getaway title, the pseudo sequel that started life as an expansion pack and to all intents and purposes is exactly that. Dispensing with the East End old school violence of 2002's original and running with a more sinister, but somehow more faceless Eastern European theme, it's once again a semi-linear romp through a series of missions (22 this time) that don't quite match up in terms of intrigue, atmosphere or the tension that infused Team Soho's massive debut success.

"If you think you've got what it takes to be or beat the likes of Ferguson, Wenger, Robson and Mourinho, put your tactics to the test..."

20th Century Fox has announced that it's to launch five of its movies on the new UMD disc format used by the PlayStation Portable this summer, with further titles due to be announced later in the year.

You're going to read two types of review of this, written by two types of people. Type 1 is the rubbish type written by lazy hacks who haven't seen wrestling since ITV stopped showing it in 1988. They will speak in clichés, mentioning men in lycra, thigh-slapping, the fact that it all "looks a bit gay" and will name-check the only two wrestlers they've ever heard of - Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Both of those men are dead. This is a Type 2. We know about post-1988 wrestling and can tell the difference between JBL and Garrison Cade by looking at their elbows.

Fans of Disney's swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean franchise will have no less than three gamess to choose from next year, following the announcement that Bethesda Softworks is hard at work on PotC: The Legend of Jack Sparrow for PS2 and Xbox.

Codemasters has revealed a few more details about its forthcoming cricket title Brian Lara International Cricket, which is due out on PS2, Xbox and PC this July.

May 20-22 is officially WarBirds 2005 weekend, according to developer iEntertainment - which means you'll be able to try out their PC flight sim for free.

Michael Ironside, otherwise known as the voice of Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell series, has signed up to star in a game based on forthcoming TV show Ice Planet.

With Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 E3 plans set to become a lot more apparent later tonight (see here), the company's PC division has taken the opportunity to spit out its own line-up of Windows-based games for the show, and it's certainly a promising catch.

We've found life in the desert. We've learned why Sig was in Haven City. We've found out who's behind the latest Metal Head incursions. We've met the precursors. We've unmasked Mar. After nearly 40 hours in front of Naughty Dog's trilogy of PS2 platformers, we have said goodbye to Jak and Daxter, and although the developer insists that it hasn't closed the door on the multi-million-selling duo, it's difficult to see how any further tales from Jak's world could muster the same gravitas. There are no more mysteries. This is the end. And it's not quite the end we expected.

Another week, another Japanese RPG review. It's one of the busiest few months we can remember for the genre; admittedly, our pals across the pond are faring rather better than we are, with the likes of Baten Kaitos and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne gracing their shelves but showing no sign of reaching European shores, but for a change, we're not being too badly done by. Star Ocean 3 may have suffered in the conversion to PAL, but at least it got here; and Tales of Symphonia is out today, giving Cube owners a shot at one of the finest RPG titles ever, albeit a few months after most American gamers got their hands on it.

Following the recent announcement of a publishing agreement between SEGA and Silicon Knights, the developer has signed a deal to license Epic's Unreal Engine 3 for use in all its next-gen titles.

"Jump anywhere, climb anything and smash everything!" screams the blurb on Radical Entertainment's forthcoming console title The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. In a gratuitous attempt to prove that the angry green giant is the most powerful superhero of them all, Radical Entertainment is readying a relentless display of comic book carnage that takes The Hulk's superhuman strength to new extremes.

With the world's biggest videogame trade show, E3, just around the corner, publishers are starting to vie for our attention. Among them is Activision, whose second World War II-themed Call of Duty first-person shooter is due out later this year. As a little teaser prior to the game's full E3 showing next week, the publisher has released the following brief question-and-answer session with two of the game's military advisors - decorated US Army veterans Hank Keirsey and John Hillen - who discuss the significance of the desert tank battle that took place at Toujane as part of the Africa campaign. This transcript is published unedited.

Increasingly bold and interesting US publisher Majesco has unveiled its E3 line-up, headlined by next-gen games from Terminal Reality/Clive Barker and Swedish dynamos Starbreeze and backed up by plenty of interesting current-gen and handheld content.

US publisher Majesco has secured the rights to develop a game based on Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and plans to release one on PS2 and Xbox in summer 2005 - to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the film's original opening.

Stormfront Studios, the Californian developer of Atari's forthcoming hackandslash-with-esteemed-voice-talent-like-Patrick-Stewart title, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, is working on a PSP title and a major movie tie-in, and planning next-generation products too.

Japanese giant Nintendo is set to focus strongly on the handheld market at E3, with a new revision of the GBA hardware and the unveiling of the DS online service set to take centre stage while Revolution - the Japanese firm's highly anticipated next-generation platform - is consigned to a video presentation.

SCI Games has revealed that it has a new game called Overdose in development at an unnamed Scandinavian studio for release in 2005, and has also commented on next-generation consoles and online gaming services, as part of a strong financial report for the year ended 30th September 2004.

Ubisoft plans to release four Xbox 2, five PSP and three Nintendo DS titles within the next 12 months, the publisher revealed today as part of its latest financial statement.

Speaking at a business writers' convention in the United States, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has confirmed that the next-generation Xbox console will launch this year, and once again promoted the new system's multimedia capabilities.