Latest Articles (Page 3319)

Japanese console giant Nintendo is considering a foray into the movie industry, it emerged today, with former president Hiroshi Yamauchi telling a press conference that he plans to propose an animated film project to the firm.

Oddworld's EA-published Stranger could be an Xbox-exclusive after all, according to whispers from net behemoth IGN, whose 'source close to EA' claims the PS2 conversion has been canned.

The developer behind the No.1 Conflict series dropped the first hints on the direction of its next title in the series, following the chart topping success of the recently released Conflict: Vietnam.

The ongoing Half-Life 2 pre-load saga hit its fifth phase last night, with Steam account holders able to continue downloading the Counter-Strike: Source maps in encrypted form.

Valve Software head honcho Gabe Newell has revealed the developer's extensive plans for distributing Half-Life 2. There's still no word on a release date, but anybody buying the game via content delivery service Steam should be given advance access to the full Counter-Strike: Source package from next week onward to tide them over.

Electronic Arts has ordered the recall of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 for PlayStation 2, according to a report on MCV this afternoon, after the publisher uncovered an unspecified technical problem, later characterised by director of European corporate communications Tiffany Steckler as an "unprecedented disc production issue".

SEGA has officially confirmed that OutRun2, due out this Friday n Europe and reviewed here, will feature a number of classic OutRun tunes remixed by composer Richard Jacques. And if you can't be bothered to buy the game to hear them, or fancy having them in your car or something, you can also get hold of them on a limited edition CD bagged with issue 38 of XBM magazine, which is out on October 14th.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

The Official US PlayStation Magazine reports this month that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lead character Carl Johnson has been voiced by Young Maylay, a relatively unknown US rapper. Maylay follows in the footsteps of Goodfellas star Ray Liotta, who voiced Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

The PC version of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay will be a special "Developer's Cut" version, publisher Vivendi-Universal Games confirmed this week, although there's no word yet on what sort of changes Swedish developer Starbreeze has decided to make to the critically acclaimed first-person action game. The PC Riddick is due out in the US this December.

Electronic Arts is preparing to steal a march on Konami by releasing FIFA Football 2005 on October 8th on PS2, Xbox, Cube, PC, GBA and N-Gage, the publisher has confirmed, a week before rival Pro Evolution Soccer 4 launches on PS2.

While the world waits to find out whether Half-Life 2 will actually come out this year, or whether lawyers will manage to bind it in so much red tape that no crowbar in the world could cut it free, developer Valve Software has quietly begun the fourth phase of the game's pre-load via content delivery service Steam.

Broken games rejoice, for today appears to be the day of patching. Doom III has hit version 1.1 officially (download link, list of changes), following successful testing of the beta version of the same patch over recent weeks. Star Wars: Battlefront has been upgraded to version 1.00a just days after release (download, changes) in order to improve its networking, and likewise Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War hasn't got too far out of the blocks ahead of this 1.01 patch (download, changes), which "merely prevents the English edition from playing the non-English editions". We're not sure how that's beneficial. Finally, Codemasters has patched Colin McRae Rally 2005 to version 1.1 (download, changes), ironing out a few creases in McRae's otherwise immaculate (albeit slightly dated) threads. There we go - all fixed.

Electronic Arts' The Sims 2 remains at number one in the UK software charts this week, beating off a challenge for the top spot from Lucasarts' Star Wars Battlefront, which comes in at number two.

Just when you thought it was safe to wind up the EyeToy cable and bury it under a mountain of tacky control pads, eh? Your lounge, and the neighbours living downstairs, may never forgive you for the havoc SEGA SuperStars is going to rain down upon them, but having now seen and played with the complete suite of mini-games that make up SEGA's first EyeToy title (and hopefully not its last), we reckon it's worth the Doritos crunched into the couch cushions by a cycle of friends' arses.

X2: The Threat publisher Deep Silver has signed third-person action-adventure Scrapland and plans to publish it on Xbox and PC across Europe in January 2005.

Expansion packs are the gaming equivalent of an extra helping of pudding. You've doubtlessly already gorged yourself on the single-player main dish, picked out the stringy bits between your teeth and cleansed your palate with a fruity multiplayer dessert. At that point you should be quite content, unless the chef was having an off day. Maybe the portions were a little on the meagre side, or maybe you're feeling a bit gluttonous. Sometimes, when offered, you just can't resist the thought of more, even if it will probably result in loosening a few notches on the belt to make way.

The Tokyo Game Show is in town again. In Makuhari Town, Chiba, Japan. We spent the weekend there playing games, watching games, listening to games, and now we're going to talk to you about games.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

Our friends at Atari have released a demo of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 this week, giving you the chance to see how Frontier Developments has fared dragging Chris Sawyer's theme park-'em-up into three dimensions.

A pretty good day for downloads, this. Not content with Ninja Gaiden content and a RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 demo, we've also got a batch of new downloadables for Rallisport Challenge 2, which should be available on Xbox Live by the time you read this.

With the Tokyo Game Show closed and the Master Ninja Tournament presumably over (who won?), Tecmo has released the second Hurricane Pack of downloadable content for Ninja Gaiden via Xbox Live.

Ubisoft has laid bare its plans for the multiplayer component of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, revealing that while Ubisoft Montreal is busy tinkering with the single-player and co-operative game modes, the Annecy studio responsible for Pandora Tomorrow's multiplayer is once again at work on the third Splinter Cell.

Florida-based Infinium Labs has announced that the launch of its Phantom Game Service and console has been postponed to next year, following consultation with retail and marketing partners for the device.

An ongoing legal struggle between developer Valve and publisher Vivendi Universal Games, could lead to a further delay to Half-Life 2 as both companies sue one another in the US District Court.

Although we're struggling to get our heads round what it actually is, it's nice to hear that the first game from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment studio was playable on the show floor at TGS this weekend. PSP title Lumines, which will be published by Bandai, is reportedly some sort of puzzle effort, where you attempt to line up groups of four orange and grey blocks so they get blasted away when a spaceship passes. Unsurprisingly for a puzzler, you can form chains out of your blocks if you're careful, and typically of a Mizuguchi title it sounds like there's much more to it. The English reports we've read point out that the music appears to react to your performance, but we fancy it's yet to be sussed out completely. We'll let you know once it is. In the meantime, here's a screenshot.

With Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas just over a month away, Midway has announced plans to release its own criminal third-person title set in Los Angeles, and has tapped film director John Singleton - the man behind Boys N the Hood, to which San Andreas seems to owe quite a bit - to collaborate on the project.

Wanda and the Colossus - the latest game from the team behind ICO - made an appearance at the Tokyo Game Show this weekend, although disappointingly it was only available in video form. And while it was nice to see the game often referred to as NICO in action for the first time, the presentation didn't really tell us anything we hadn't already heard in the run-up to the show.

Rockstar Games has released another official trailer for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is due out on PS2 in just over a month on October 29th. The new trailer, mirrored on Eurofiles here (82MB), is just over a minute long and takes us on a tour of some of the game's locations.