Latest Articles (Page 3336)

Electronic Arts has released another brief trailer for Need For Speed Underground 2, its forthcoming mole-based drug empire simulation [put a pound in the jar, Brambles -Ed] in development at Black Box. Developers, we might add, of the phenomenal and criminally ignored Sega Soccer Slam, which has no bearing on anything at all. [And another. -Ed] Anyway, this clip of NFSU2 runs about 30 seconds and shows off an area of the game called "The Tuner Playground". It's only 6MB, so have a look. It's on Eurofiles here.

Midway has confirmed its line-up for Game Stars Live, and what it lacks in volume it makes up for in quality. NBA Ballers and Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy will both be there, and the event also plays host to the UK public debut of Mortal Kombat: Deception.

As a number of you will have spotted already, the Counter-Strike: Source beta is now open to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, as well as gamers who bought an ATI graphics card as part of the Half-Life 2 cross-promotion around the turn of the year. Last week Valve rolled out the beta to a number of Cyber Cafés. You can read our first impressions of CS: Source here.

Publisher Deep Silver has used the Leipzig Games Convention to launch an expansion pack for Egosoft's space trader X2: The Threat. X2: The Return should be released on PC in February 2005 according to its publisher.

Nintendo of America is extending its Classic NES Series offering this October 25th, adding some of the games recently released in Japan to the Game Boy Advance retro label, which consists of ported versions of various titles from the company's 8-bit heyday.

Microsoft and Electronic Arts are planning a FIFA Interactive World Cup tournament - sanctioned by the sport's governing body - to be held between October and December of this year on Xbox Live and at real-life events around the world.

PlayStation 2 and Xbox are set for European price cuts in the coming days, with Sony to cut its price to £104.99 effective immediately. Microsoft announced a pre-emptive drop in the price of Xbox to £99.99 price this afternoon.

Namco's Star Fox game will not be released anywhere in 2004, according to reports. A story on IGN this week quotes "insiders" who claim that the previous November target has now been scratched in favour of something in 2005.

Metroid Prime 2 will form the backbone of Nintendo's Christmas Cube offering in Europe, while Pokémon Leaf Green/Fire Red and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap stand tall in a diverse list of first party GBA offerings.

RTS games. We think we know them. According to Frenchmen Eugen Systems, we don't - their forthcoming Atari-published title Act of War: Direct Action is built on different ideas, like the need to medevac your wounded soldiers instead of just clicking on a Barracks and building some more, and the need to take prisoners rather than killing enemy combatants. Guantanamo Bay doesn't just fill itself.

Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Davis and Michael Madsen have joined Kristanna Loken and Sir Ben Kingsley on the cast list for Uwe Boll's forthcoming movie adaptation of Majesco's BloodRayne.

Capcom in the States has confirmed an official release date for Viewtiful Joe 2, having previously listed the quirkily innovative 2D scrolling beat-'em-up as "fall 2004". According to reports, those of you in the US will be able to pick it up from November 23rd onward on both PS2 and GameCube - and we'd imagine importers will do a fair trade in the latter version in particular. From us if no one else.

From gi.biz: Publisher BAM Entertainment has updated its release schedule, revealing that State of Emergency 2, currently in development at Scottish studio VIS Entertainment, has been pushed back in to 2005. The game is the sequel to VIS' original State of Emergency, published by Rockstar Games, which was billed as a riot simulator and sold over a million units in the wake of the enormous success of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 3. BAM acquired the rights to the title when it bought VIS in a takeover deal earlier this year. VIS had formerly been developing the game under the auspices of a separately funded subsidiary, with no publisher yet signed for the title.

Simply Games' summer sale was launched today, giving punters a chance to grab some old classics for next to nothing and offering chart games for some of the cheapest prices in the UK. Simply's summer scorcher (sorry) is cheaper than massively undervalued chips.

Shop for games now with Simply Games.

Microsoft is inviting you to race against the man who created Sudeki. This August 23rd between 7 and 9pm GMT, you can hook yourself up to Xbox Live and take on Climax's Games Director Jason Avent, who will be hanging out on Live and playing Project Gotham Racing 2. All you have to do to take part is add some Gamertags to your Friends list so you can be invited - XboxLiveEURO2, XboxLiveEURO3 and XboxLiveEURO4. Do that and come the night of the 23rd, you might find yourself racing against Jason. Sudeki, while we're on the subject, is still on track for release in Europe on August 27th.

Microsoft has revealed that a number of games - including high profile titles like Max Payne 2, Command & Conquer: Generals, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and WarCraft III - may experience compatibility problems with its forthcoming Service Pack 2 for the Windows XP operating system.

id Software's Doom 3 has stormed to the top of the UK software chart in its first week on sale, racking up stronger first-week sales than former incumbent Spider-Man 2 and becoming the first PC game to take the top spot in 2004.

Tecmo has confirmed what many suspected - that the Worldwide Finals of Ninja Gaiden's Master Ninja Tournament will be held at the Tokyo Game Show towards the end of September.

Much as we love Valve, we do wonder if they smashed a few mirrors whilst running under rows of ladders and rubbing black cats against their faces sometimes. Having managed to avoid major calamity since the infamous Half-Life 2 source code theft late last year, now it appears that the developer has accidentally uploaded a file containing all of the dialogue from Half-Life 2 to Counter-Strike: Source beta testers, according to reports originating with fansite HL2World.com.

Rockstar continues to flesh out the world of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas this week as part of its understandably fastidious promotional campaign with news of some of the extra curricular activities available to CJ in his hometown of Los Santos. Basketball and burglary are in evidence today, along with the opportunity to dress the man up to gain some respect from the locals. Scroll down here here for a bunch of new screenshots.

Dutch developer Guerrilla Games is already working on a sequel to ambitious first-person shooter Killzone, according to a report on IGN this week. Apparently publisher Sony is so confident of the game's success that it has already commissioned work on a follow-up, although neither the publisher nor the developer has made an announcement.

SCEE has announced the signing of an exclusive publishing deal with Evolution Studios, the UK-based developers of the World Rally Championship series, which will see the firm working exclusively on Sony platforms.

It's been a long wait. A looooong wait. We could be talking about a number of things at this point; the summer football drought, Norwich City's unjust nine year exile from the Premiership, or the chance to play Sports Interactive's latest footballing creation. In all cases the wait is over. While all of the above are cause for shirt over the head scenes of mass celebration (except for Ipswich fans), from the perspective of most women anything involving football, real or imagined, is most definitely a bad thing. Missing persons' reports will be filed, celibacy declarations signed, strops thrown. We're not going to see daylight for months.

Being greeted with The Chronicles Of Riddick for the first time back at a Vivendi press event in April created the kind of exasperation rarely seen in a sequel/me-too obsessed business where excitement can be in short supply. "Where the hell did this come from?" we all muttered as the best looking Xbox game ever played out in front of our disbelieving eyes. And then to find out the game was practically finished and being released in the US in just a few weeks time - we almost fell off our chairs. How on earth had such a top notch title just fallen from the skies like this? Did Vivendi not realise how obviously superb this was? In an era of bloated five/six-year development projects, to be told this game had been put together quietly in around two years seemed unfathomable. It put things in perspective, that's for sure.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

Radical Games will apparently 'blow' the lid on its Scarface adaptation in the next issue of US mag Electronic Gaming Monthly. Trailing the issue, website 1UP has a couple of shots and a quote from producer Peter Wanat, who says: "Players have seen the movie -- the movie does a great job of telling that story. We would much rather give the player a unique experience. We're gonna get away from games [where] you've seen the movie, [now] play the movie." The shots are slightly reminiscent of GTA, but then that's to be expected. They're not abundantly detailed, really, but you do get to see Tony Montana in his usual red shirt riding on a boat and firing a rocket launcher. We look forward to hearing how Radical and VU plan to handle a South Florida drug empire sim in more detail... Speaking of details, there should be more on the otherwise barren www.scarfacegame.com fairly soon.

No Pat, it's not a joke. Rare's GBA team is planning to turn out a puzzle game based on its Mr. Pants mascot at some point this year, with THQ on board to publish. Dubbed "It's Mr Pants", it's basically a retooled version of a game called DK Coconut Crackers, which appeared on Nintendo's E3 stand as long ago as 2001, then disappeared. Only now it has squiggly animations, crayon backgrounds and, er, Mr Pants sings the odd song between levels.

id Software's next game will be a first-person shooter with a single-player focus and a simple multiplayer component, engine supremo John Carmack told the audience at the annual QuakeCon event this weekend, also commenting on the new game engine and some of his aspirations for the project.

The Rock will not play the central role in the forthcoming Doom movie, id Software reps confirmed over the weekend, although it's possible that he will figure in some way.