Latest Articles (Page 3293)

Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has revealed that Final Fantasy XII has slipped beyond its previous spring release date and admits the publisher still isn't sure when it will launch the PS2-exclusive RPG.

VU Games has announced a distribution agreement with Majesco to distribute BloodRayne 2 (PS2, Xbox, PC) and Advent Rising (Xbox, PC) across Europe in the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

Midway this week unveiled the third instalment in its Arcade Treasures series, which it plans to release on PS2, Xbox and GameCube in the States this autumn for $19.99. Historically these titles have then appeared in Europe for around £15-20.

Sony has revealed that it will charge between $19.95 and $28.95 for movies released on the PlayStation Portable's proprietary UMD format, and has added The House of Flying Daggers to the release list.

Brilliantly, Namco is preparing to release a side-scrolling 2D racing title for Game Boy Advance this April based on Popeye.

The reaction to reports last week stating that component shortages and other factors could potentially hold up the European release of the PlayStation Portable for another three months has been one of apathy and antipathy. Indeed, the most positive response we've seen was one of, "Who cares? WipEout Pure's been delayed anyway." When Sony's American arm revealed last Thursday that it planned to charge $250 for the machine at the tail end of March - with software costs to be added on top of that - there were few besides those brave enough to import who had anything particularly positive to contribute. If we'd been sat at our PCs when the news originally broke, we may well have been in amongst the crowded forums and comment threads blurting sanctimonious babble about Europe retaining its reputation as Sony's Third Place.

LucasArts' Xbox and PC title Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has gone straight in at number one in the UK charts this week, narrowly beating Blizzard's hugely anticipated online game World of Warcraft.

Japanese publisher KOEI has opened a new development studio in Singapore, and its first project will be an online Romance of the Three Kingdoms title due to launch in 2007 in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, with America and Europe to follow.

Sony has declined to comment on reports that it's preparing to announce SOCOM III for PlayStation 2 or that a version of the popular online shooter is in development for the PlayStation Portable handheld.

Square Enix has permanently banned the PlayOnline accounts of more than 800 Final Fantasy XI players after they violated the massively-multiplayer game's user agreement.

Although several EG staffers are firmly allied to that other evil black liquid Diet Coke, if we were Japanese we'd probably have to consider buying some Pepsi this coming March in order to get our names in the hat for a new Nintendo/Pepsi cross-promotion giving away a rather special-looking blue-tinted Nintendo DS.

Former DMA Design man Dave Jones and his Dundee-based development studio Real Time Worlds have signed their massively-multiplayer turf war title to South Korean publisher Webzen and plan to launch it in 2007.

The first evidence of Core Design's labours since it was "refocused and restructured" in the aftermath of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness has come to light this week in the shape of "Smart Bomb", a PlayStation Portable puzzler which involves defusing bombs.

"Wild Things Interactive Ltd is pleased to announce the UK launch of the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller," says this 'ere press release. Not half as happy as we are - having agonised for literally several minutes before deciding not to import it last month.

(Well, it's a better headline than "World of Warcraft Euro sales trump American success", isn't it? Anyway...)

After Hardware Online Arena on the PS2, we weren't all that fired up about Fired Up, but this really surprised us; in fact it's an early favourite amongst the Euro PSP efforts we've tried. Between the single-player story mode (eight hours of collecting tokens, killing enemy vehicles, and scouring every nook and cranny of three two-kilometre-square free-roaming environments for bonuses) and the eight-player wireless multiplayer (a mixture of Hardware-style deathmatch and team-based vehicle combat modes and straight checkpoint racing affairs), it's a game that always has something to keep you occupied.

Although the original Singles was a touch impotent when it came to tackling EA's monopoly on the making-little-people-happy genre, it obviously aroused enough interest at retail to prompt a sequel - with publisher Deep Silver and developer Rotobee announcing Singles 2: Triple Trouble this week for release in May.

SEGA Europe is seeking beta testers for MMOG The Matrix Online, which we now know is due to launch in Europe on 8th April with a US release taking place a fortnight earlier on 22nd March.

Following the critical and commercial success of its Games Workshop-backed real-time strategy title Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, publisher THQ has announced that its subsidiary Relic is busy at work on an expansion.

Mastiff has announced plans to publish a PS2 and Xbox version of arcade dance game Pump It Up: Exceed, although it's not clear when it'll come out yet or whether it'll make an appearance outside the USA.

It's the last diary entry. We knew we needed some vague climax to our four-week mission into the heart of Paragon City. We thought we'll save the universe. Or something.

No one can be told that Shiny's working on another Matrix game; you knew that already. However, Atari has finally given the persistent rumour of another Matrix title substance by announcing that The Matrix: Path of Neo for PS2, Xbox and PC will be released in Q4 2005.

Magazine publishing giant Future has confirmed that it is to acquire rival publisher Highbury House, in a deal worth around £97 million which will give the company almost total dominance of the UK videogames magazine market.

A listing on EBgames.com for a Nintendo DS title called "Metroid Pinball" due out this 5th December has prompted speculation that Samus's morph ball may be about to take on a starring role on the dual screen handheld.

About a fortnight ago we mentioned in passing that a group of homebrew development enthusiasts had managed to get something to appear on the Nintendo DS handheld using a pass-through.

Sony has announced the forthcoming summer release of a new third-person PS2 action-adventure developed by Edinburgh-based VIS entertainment.

Sony will release four more movies on the PlayStation Portable's proprietary UMD format in the States on 19th April, the platform holder announced on Friday, and plans to start shipping UMD movies in Japan soon after "with Europe to follow".

Digital Jesters and French developer Nadeo have decided to reward fans of the original TrackMania by making a beta version of the sequel available to them a full two months before the game is expected to ship on 8th April.

Neatly enough, we're far more likely in the Eurogamer household to have a TIF over which is better, FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer, than we are to actually drag Sony's This Is Football series out as a neutral alternative. And, going into a room with Football, London Studio's PSP footy effort, we weren't expecting to be that excited by it. That was until we realised that a) it's a pleasantly enjoyable game of football in the first place, capable of making you look pretty damned good and rendering some fabulous goals, b) it's still got that brilliant "deliberate dive" function that so tickles us, and c) the "Challenge" mode transforms it into a football game with a high score system. Which, as it turns out, was just what this series needed to turn our heads.

When the time's right to look back at this console generation's most important games, surely TimeSplitters 1 and 2 will rank among them. Sure, both games had fairly throwaway single-player story modes that took only a few hours to crack, but both also sported the hilarious and original Challenge mode and a control system so slick we swear it's never been bettered. Throw in an amusing and unique visual style and you've got a series that stands out from the generic mass of po-faced me-too sci-fi schlock that every publisher and his dog has churned out. Colour us excited about a long-awaited third in the series.