Latest Articles (Page 3270)

SEGA has registered the trademark "Sonic Rush" with the US Patent and Trademark Office, but declined this morning to comment on what it might be.

Comparing game compilations to music compilations is quite entertaining. Just look at the fun we've had.

Thinking about it - in a wholly rational, detached sort of way - there's absolutely no doubt that Tecmo make some very attractive polygons, and indeed textures. Whatever your thoughts on being, ah, "stimulated" by such artificial representations of flesh may be, if you take a step back and just look, you may well find yourself looking a little longer, and a little harder (bad choice of words, perhaps) than you first intended. It's a talent almost unrivalled among other development studios; Dead or Alive simply contains more characters per square inch likely to make you go "hubba hubba!" than any other videogame in history.

Flight combat games seem to have pretty much died a commercial death on consoles in recent years, with even outstanding efforts like Crimson Skies and Totally Games' hugely entertaining Secret Weapons Over Normandy failing to lure the punters into splashing out on them. With Ace Combat: Distant Thunder also suffering a similar commercial fate, it seems that the gaming public at large just don't care about flying planes anymore.

The PSP version of Virtua Tennis will be a European launch title, SEGA has confirmed, and we'd say it will almost certainly be at E3 in just a few days time. See here for screenshots.

You can't beat a bit of aggressive military propaganda thinly disguised as interactive entertainment, so three cheers for the news that a sequel to America's Army is currently being developed using the Unreal Engine 3.

THQ has confirmed its line-up for this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. The publisher's stand will play host to a number of Xbox 360 titles, some current-gen sequels and expansions its unveiled lately, and some unidentified PSP, Nintendo DS and GBA titles.

Square-Enix's European office said today that it is in discussions over bringing Final Fantasy soundtracks to the UK iTunes Music Store following their unveiling on the American version of the premium music download service in the USA.

There's nothing we can tell you about Champions League that you don't already know. But then, you know this. Anyone with half a brain will have mumbled over their pint, as soon as the game was announced by EA, "That'll be FIFA 2005 with half the teams taken out, then."

A new action RPG for PC is on the way from Iron Lore Entertainment, the studio set up by Age of Empires co-creator Brian Sullivan.

Let's face it, who needs a convincing plot, character development and an interesting environment when you can "blow stuff up", "blow the living hell out of it" and "blow the living hell out of it some more"? LucasArts is quite happy to try and appeal to our basest destructive instincts and hope that amongst the rubble we don't mind or don't care that there's very little of substance holding Mercenaries together. And, given that it has just hit the Number One spot in the UK charts, we're guessing you're all quite happy to be manipulated.

Four GBA titles on from that megabucks deal, the long-awaited arrival of Banjo Pilot says more about the current shenanigans at Rare central than any amount of scurrilous gossip could generate about what Microsoft got for its $375 million and what the hell's going on with various Xbox titles. That the once-prolific and heroic developer finds itself having to continually redesign its Xbox titles must be irritating enough for all concerned, but to be reduced to the humbling anonymity of creator of low-key handheld titles is enough to make you draw a sharp intake of breath, clench your buttocks and make a concerned face. A quirky, chirpy, plane-based Mario Kart clone for kids? It really wasn't meant to be like this.

Next year will mark 30 years since Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver first appeared in cinemas, and to mark the occasion Majesco plans to publish the first videogame based on the film.

Sucker Punch has come up with a novel way to give Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (But No "U" Within Honor) something over its excellent predecessors. The game will make use of 3D glasses for specific missions and mini-games.

CAPSLOCK of Europe (sorry: SEGA) is encouraging people to download the full version of Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst for the PC and take part in an open beta.

Agent 47 may have a barcode tattooed on his bonce, but Io has firmly established the silent assassin as one of the most popular gaming icons of this generation. Already onto his fourth adventure, publisher Eidos is currently cranking the PR machine into life ahead of E3, fleshing out the details of the game, along with new screenshots.

Photographs have emerged from a Microsoft-run launch soiree, held in Los Angeles last night, of the Xbox 360 hardware including controller, Live headset, EyeToy-style camera and DVD player/Media Centre remote control.

Both Half-Life 2 Xbox and Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast will be on show at E3 next week according to developer Valve Software, which made the announcement as it rolled out a service update on its Steam content download service.

While developers at Lionhead crack on with a sequel to Black & White, US publisher Majesco has revealed that PSP and DS versions of the 2001 god sim are also on the way.

When I first played Alien Hominid, within a few minutes I had decided that there ought to be a fundamental rule about unavoidable green instant death lasers in games. And that that rule should read or at least rhyme with "Cluck the hell off!" A couple of hours later though, I didn't any more. The difficulty level still makes me cry from time to time (and I'm too proud to go for "Easy"), but there's just too much charm and personality in this engaging little side-scrolling shoot-'em-up for me to be cross with it for too long.

Rockstar has announced Bully, a PS2 and Xbox game about, well, school bullies, developed by Rockstar Vancouver (formerly Barking Dog, of Homeworld: Cataclysm semi-fame).

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has unveiled new plans for the DS's Wi-Fi capability, revealing that the handheld will connect wirelessly to the next-gen Revolution console.

Sports Interactive really hit the ground running when it released Football Manager 2005, its first 'footman' for Sega after its departure from Eidos in 2003. It was always going to be tough for the London developer to establish a new brand from scratch after building Championship Manager into such an unassailable position, but the team pulled it off thanks to another stellar product and some heavyweight marketing from publishing partner SEGA.

An enormous bullet-point list of specifications pertaining to be those of the Xbox 360 next-gen console, due to be unveiled in a Microsoft MTV special in the US this coming Friday, and the accompanying Xbox Live service have appeared on the Internet this week.

Massively-multiplayer online games developer NCsoft has revealed the titles it'll be showing off at this year's E3 - and whether you prefer your MMOs with cars, space, evil geniuses or elves, there's something for everyone.

NCsoft has released City of Heroes Issue 4: Colosseum, a new add-on for the massively multiplayer online game that's free to subscribers via automatic download.

Freedom Force is something of an anomaly in the Irrational universe. For a company whose games have tended to brood on the dark side (System Shock 2, The Lost, Thief, even Tribes Vengeance gets fairly grim at times) the wholesome nature of Silver Age comic heroes seems a bit at odds. The team's boundless creative energy and passion for their product was evident though and the first game became a hit with critics and gamers alike.

"It's interesting," says Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive managing director, butting into our conversation. "In the Scottish league they've got the first team and the under-19 team, but you're actually allowed to play two overage players in the under-19 team to get them back to full fitness." Blink.

The second in Konami's double header of UK-developed titles (see yesterday's Regiment preview for details on the first) concerns the emine(m)nt marketing subject of urban gang wars. Crime Life is a "free roaming crime-based beat-'em-up with a great story" according to the self-titled G-Fella, the producer on the PS2, PC and Xbox title that's due for a September release.

Is the adventure game dead, or has it merely evolved? There's little doubt that the traditional 'point and click' style is now commercially dead at least; the last rites surely having been administered when LucasArts declared the (apparently rubbish action adventure travesty) Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max: Freelance Police unworthy of an apathetic audience - or perhaps it was the other way round. They may have got that call badly wrong, but when rivals Revolution failed to hit big with the THQ-published Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, you could concede they may have been right to play safe. Rightly or wrongly, the vast majority of buying public just doesn't seem to care for deep, involving, narrative-heavy games anymore. Even Silent Hill and Resident Evil - the last big-name concessions to puzzle-rich narrative-heavy adventuring - have become far more action-oriented in their respective fourth incarnations.