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In the grand scheme of things, we know that humans survived. Presumably because we're fittest (whatever you made of that two-seat lady on the Tube last week), or at least fitter to survive than the average dinosaur, many of which can't even kill Sam Neill and a pair of kids in a locked room. However, back in the day, it was far less than a foregone conclusion that humans would become somewhat dominant. Hence B.C., which puts you in charge of a group of tribesmen and women living in a hostile prehistoric environment - rife with dinosaurs, rival ape-men and other evolutionary conflicts waiting to happen - and tasks you with guiding them to supremacy.

"This is for kids, right?" the man in the suit asked, cautiously thumbing the analogue stick like he was sifting through stapled profit forecasts. The man in the Capcom shirt on his shoulder exhaled at length. "It's actually not. It's more of a hard core thing. It's kind of deceptive," he offered in response. "It's what the people who were kids ten years ago are playing these days. It's a lot harder." There was a pause. "But it looks like a cartoon!" the suit retorted, his eyes shifting nervously to and fro, abandoning the screen every so often as if his boss might pop out of a thumping speaker ten feet away and demand an explanation. We felt his guide's eyes roll before we even saw them, but we knew how he felt.

Is this the end of Jak & Daxter? With Jason Rubin on his way out of Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog, and press releases flying around discussing the end of the trilogy, it's easy to get the wrong impression. "You know, we're not killing Jak or Daxter off," game director Evan Wells jokes at one point during a presentation of Jak 3, the latest instalment in the platform-cum-action-adventure series. "The franchise will continue on and there may be more games in the universe." The question, then, is not so much what happens to Jak and Daxter next, but what happens in their world - and what happens to the developer post-Rubin? It's a question Naughty Dog probably doesn't know the answer to yet.

Following yesterday’s spellbinding interview with Rockstar legend Dan Houser from Official PlayStation 2 magazine in the UK, we’ve dug up another rarity from the same issue. Aaron Garbut, Rockstar North’s art director, outlines in this interview what will make San Andreas the definitive game of its generation: its style.

Interplay's Fallout franchise has finally found a new home, with Bethseda Softworks today announcing that it is to develop and publish Fallout 3, having licensed the exclusive rights to the property, excluding online gaming rights.

The long-awaited Halo 2 is now available for pre order and has the following features (drum roll)...

Valve boss Gabe Newell has revealed the hardware requirements for Half-Life 2, ahead of the game's expected late summer release.

Capcom has issued an update to its latest release schedule, with no fewer than 12 games due to emerge from the Japanese giant between now and the end of the year, with a further seven listed for release in the early part of 2005.

Eagle-eyed US online retailer watchers have spotted the existence of an as-yet unannounced deluxe DVD-edition of The Sims 2, which sports the requisite bonus material that fans will be selling their grandmothers for when the game hits the streets on September 17th.

Sony's ill-fated PSX will not get a European or North American release until 2005 according to Sony Electronics America president Hideki Komiyama.

Majesco has reportedly licensed BloodRayne out to comic book publisher Echo 3 Worldwide, which now plans to adapt the half-vampire-lady-slashes-everything-in-sight-'em-up into several books, the first of which is due out alongside BloodRayne 2 this October. Each book will apparently consist of its own self-contained story. This isn't the first time Majesco has licensed BloodRayne out for publication in other mediums of course - earlier this year German filmmaker Uwe Boll announced that he would be transferring the game onto the silver screen with a $30m budget. BloodRayne 2 is due out on PS2, Xbox and PC.

Intrepid Games has confirmed that it plans to develop a sequel to ambitious Xbox action-adventure title B.C., and that one of the sequel's key features will be multiplayer on Xbox Live.

Moved house recently. That was fun. There were two highlights - dropping a 36" widescreen television on my toe, which is now broken, and knocking my cherished Game Boy Advance SP onto the floor, breaking that as well. (I fully expect to get shot tonight, since bad things generally come in threes.) Anyway, the main problem with a broken GBA SP (there isn't actually much of a problem with a broken toe when all you do is sit around playing games and hurling barbed comments at flatmates) is that it's forced me to turn to the Game Boy Player, and that's not really my bag. I prefer to lie upside down on the couch with my legs splayed and my face cushioned by Amazonian beauties (stitched into the upholstery, see), and my television doesn't exactly operate on an axis. Heck, I'm never going to touch it again having broken another one trying to play Ikaruga properly.

As you may have heard, Dino Dini is back doing what he does best - making footy games. In the days when creative mavericks ruled the roost, and Kick Off 2 was duking it out with Sensible Soccer, Mr Dini was a household name. A follow up, Goal!, appeared in 1993, but after that he upped sticks, went to work in the USA and seemed lost to gamers forever, to be remembered by a bunch of thirty-somethings who still cherish those sepia tinted days of sprites and pure gameplay. We often wondered how Dini's knack for producing pure football gaming experiences could ever be translated to 3D, but assumed that in these days of huge teams and big budgets that his purist vision was lost in the crowd, part of a bygone era that could never come back.

Sony Online Entertainment is offering gamers who have never played EverQuest the chance to sample the game and two of its expansions for free for 30 days.

Microsoft has issued a release this morning revealing that Halo 2 will hit UK retailers on Thursday, November 11th of this year, just a couple of days after the November 9th American date announced at E3 this year. Perhaps Peter Moore can get "/ 11th" added to his November 9th tattoo...

A few hours in to Fire Emblem, apprentice tactician SirMugs (that's your humble reviewer right there) and his saviour Lyn, an orphaned warrior-in-the-making from the Sacae Plains, have joined forces with a pair of knights, the chivalrous Kent and his headstrong brother in arms Sain, and they're all on their way to Caelin - one of the several kingdoms of Lycia. All of a sudden, the group is thrust into a battle on the edge of a forest, at which point a pair of young sorcerers appear - the quiet, dedicated Erk and his rather dotty charge, Serra - and offer their services. With their help, the battle is won, and 'Lyn's Legion' grows to benefit from the duo's magical prowess; and the amusing juxtaposition of mild-mannered fire-wielder and tempestuous healer returns to tickle us from time to time in manga-style static image cut sequences from thenceforth.

However many times Sega insists on tugging on the creamflow teat of Sonic, be it fully fledged 3D romperamas, pinball games, party games or even really terrible RPG-tinged franchise exercises, we always come to the same conclusion: the original was best. It's something of a small, albeit predictable victory that 13 years on since it all started that the latest title to feature the not-very-spiky hedgehog is a return to the very style that got people interested in the insanely fast platforming game in the first place.

Late last month, Ignition Entertainment announced plans to release Metal Slug 3 on PS2 and Xbox and Metal Slug Advance for GBA this October. Today the publisher has announced plans to further that deal and bring even more of SNK's franchises to Europe between September of this year and early 2005, including King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug and SNK Vs. Capcom. Ignition also plans to publish King of Fighters: Maximum Impact, the beat-'em-up series first foray into three dimensions.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that development studio Swingin' Ape is to take over the completion of StarCraft: Ghost, following the end of original developer Nihilistic's involvement with the project last month.

Valve Software plans to conduct a limited beta test of Counter-Strike: Source via its Steam content delivery service, the developer revealed this week in a posting on Steam's official website. The beta will be open to subscribers of the "Valve Cyber Café Program" initially, then extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Nintendo will not release the E-Reader Game Boy Advance peripheral in Europe, the company's head of European PR has confirmed this week, following more than a year of indecision and miscommunication on the subject.

When it comes to beating the underpaid life out of bit-part extras on the silver screen, there are always plenty of actors eager to fill the role. And given his obvious capacity for choreographing this sort of thing - thanks to years of soft-punching his way through the ranks of the wrestling world - Dwayne Johnson, aka 'The Rock', is starting to figure in more and more of them.

Dino Dini, creator of the Kick Off and Player Manager football titles, has launched a scathing attack on the industry's lack of appreciation for development talent, and accused it of losing focus on gameplay in favour of production values.

The official LCD monitor and speakers for Sony's PSone console, which made it possible to play the diminutive system without a TV attached, is set to be discontinued by the company later this summer.

Fans of Project Gotham Racing 2 screeching into the lounge this evening will arrive just in time to get their hands on a brand new batch of downloadable content, Microsoft announced this morning. As reported here yesterday, this time it's a Long Beach Booster Pack (screenshots) consisting of eight new cars and tracks set in the eponymous Californian city. As a piece of 'Premium' downloadable content, it will set you back £2.99, or €4.99 on the continent.

It's a bit of a generalisation, but you could probably make a strong argument that says that PC gaming moves through a cycle of two distinct phases. You go from real-time strategy games to first-person shooter games, then back to strategy and back to shooters once more - a cycle which has continued, in some form at least, since id incubated Wolfenstein and Westwood dreamt of Dune 2.

CDV is planning to release the Combat Mission Anthology on August 6th "at 0900 hours" amusingly, and priced just £19.99. It's a set that comprises all three Combat Mission titles, covering the action on the Western front of World War II, the Russian campaign, and of course the desert campaigns detailed in the most recent instalment of the historically sensitive strategy series, Afrika Korps.

Nintendo is planning to release a third batch of Famicom Mini titles in Japan on August 10th, according to reports on Game Watch and elsewhere this week. Priced around 2,000 yen (less than €20) the new range takes in a number of Famicom Disc System titles, and includes the likes of Metroid, Castlevania and Kid Icarus.

Vin Diesel has lent credence to speculation that a PS2 version of celebrated Xbox film spin-off The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay is in development, claiming in a recent interview that he wasn't sure why it was Xbox exclusive and that he was "trying" to ensure a PS2 version would be on retailers' shelves this Christmas.