Latest Articles (Page 3344)
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Splinter Cell 3 on Xbox/PC this Christmas
With further console versions to follow in Europe in early 2005. Ubisoft also confirms the name change, dropping the "3" in favour of something else entirely.
Splinter Cell 3 will launch on Xbox and PC in time for Christmas, Ubisoft confirmed this week, and on other formats in the first quarter of 2005 in PAL territories. This means the PlayStation 2, GameCube and probably GBA, as if it needed spelling out.
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Interview | Mr. Onimusha speaks
Keiji Inafune on Jean Reno, the upcoming movie, multi-platform possibilities and whether this is the end of Capcom's popular hackandslash series...
Onimusha 3 is probably the best hackandslash game mere mortals will play all year. Having been out in Japan and the US for a while now, PAL gamers can finally pick it up today, July 9th, and can expect another thoroughly entertaining action-adventure. The hardcore Ninja Gaiden brigade might find it a little easy, but for anybody without time for the exacting uber hardcore Ninja action, Onimusha 3 may well fit the bill perfectly.
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Review | World War Zero: Ironstorm
The war's different, but the tactics are the same.
Never, in the field of human conflict, has so much been "borrowed" from so many by so few. Never has the game-playing public seen such a melange cobbled together from the great and good as it has in World War Zero. It's apt to twist Big Winston's words, as World War Zero - the Rebellion-developed first-person shooter - paraphrases the entire 20th Century in its guts, telling us that the War started in 1914 and is still raging 50 years on, and the Russians and Chinese have joined forces against America and, well, everyone else. America has put its armies on the stock exchange to fund the war, everything's dirty and trenches are full of semi-Samurai men in gas masks. And exploding dogs.
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Interview | Championship Manager 5
We talk to the game's senior producer Dave Rutter about Beautiful Game Studio's "faster, more user friendly and more accurate" take on football management.
One of the great shake ups in gaming history occurred last year when Sports Interactive upped sticks from its long-term publishing partner Eidos and set up a long-term deal with Sega, leaving Eidos with the brand name, but no-one to develop it. Realising the massive brand awareness of the series, it knew that it had to do all it could to keep one of its most valuable franchises alive.
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Interview | Dan Houser: The GTA San Andreas interview
Rockstar won’t talk to nobody, fool. You can’t see Rockstar. Until now. Eazily Dan approach, the microphone because he ain’t no joke…
Dan Houser, in a mammoth interview with UK’s Official PlayStation 2 magazine, has revealed GTA: San Andreas to be the game of dreams. Unbelievably, San Andreas – set in the early 90s Los Angeles of Eazy E, NWA, Bloods, Crips and the old skool, fool – is a monstrous five times the size of Vice City and contains more updates, tweaking and downright major improvements that its role of the biggest selling video game of its generation is already sealed. Forget raising the bar. Rockstar creative VP Dan Houser is about to snap the bar over the rest of the industry’s collective heads.
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Interview | Intrepid Explorer
We chat to Intrepid Games about B.C., its hugely ambitious Xbox action-adventure title, and how you go about teaching cavemen to survive and evolve in a land rife with dinosaurs and other natural rivals.
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.
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Return of the Mach.
"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.
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We go hands on with the concluding chapter in Naughty Dog's trilogy, and chat to game directors Evan Wells and Amy Hennig about what comes next, how the game fits in with previous instalments, and the speed with which it's all come together.
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.
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Interview | Rockstar Speaks: The Art of GTA San Andreas
Rockstar North’s art director, Aaron Garbut, gives the rarest of interviews on the look of the biggest game of all time. Pray silence, for the man in charge of the San Andreas style.
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.
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Bethseda licenses Fallout rights, announces Fallout 3
New franchise sequel in the works, but Interplay retains online rights.
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.
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Halo 2 Deluxe Limited Edition available for pre-order
We're not sure how limited, but click inside for full details...
The long-awaited Halo 2 is now available for pre order and has the following features (drum roll)...
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See whether your PC is up to running Valve's long-awaited FPS opus...
Valve boss Gabe Newell has revealed the hardware requirements for Half-Life 2, ahead of the game's expected late summer release.
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Capcom confirms upcoming release dates
Big games on the way
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.
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Deluxe edition of Sims 2 planned
Extras galore for the DVD version.
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.
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PAL PSX launch moves back to 2005
Hybrid PS2 now likely to ship early 2005 in Europe
Sony's ill-fated PSX will not get a European or North American release until 2005 according to Sony Electronics America president Hideki Komiyama.
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And The Rest: Friday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) BloodRayne gets comic book treatment, Digital Act plans to launch GBA video phone in Japan.
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.
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B.C. sequel goes live, says Intrepid
Ambitious Xbox exclusive title will return, with multiplayer modes, Intrepid tells Eurogamer exclusively this week.
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.
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Feature | What's New?
(This week's European releases.) The Classic NES Series is here. Woo. And Spider-Man 2 and Onimusha 3. Come on then - chop chop.
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.
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Interview | Dino Dini kicks off
The man behind Kick Off 2 returns to the dugout to give his first in depth interview and talk about his first football game in ten years. And why all the other ones are rubbish.
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.
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SOE offers 30-day free EverQuest trial
Never played EverQuest? Now you can try it for free.
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.
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MS confirms Halo 2 European release date
It's not November 9th. Ooh, we're such teases. Now with dates for the whole of Europe!
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...
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Review | Fire Emblem
Hrm. Tum te tum. How to get you interested... Ah yes: The natural successor to Advance Wars. Anyone?
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.
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Review | Sonic Advance 3 review
Back to its roots, or decade out of date rehash?
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.
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Ignition plans full line-up of Euro SNK releases
Publisher announces raft of titles including King of Fighters: Maximum Impact and its 2D predecessors, more Metal Slug releases, Samurai Shodown and SNK Vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos.
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.
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Swingin' Ape to complete StarCraft: Ghost
New developer on board to finish work on delayed action title.
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.
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Valve plans CS: Source beta test
Starting this summer and using Steam, naturally.
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.
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Nintendo will not release E-Reader in Europe
NOE finally offers closure on the subject of the popular GBA peripheral, arguing that "the market potential isn't great enough" to sustain the device in Europe.
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.
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The Rock could star in Doom movie
News on the Doom movie that doesn't have anything to do with bartering over the rights. Hurrah! Although... The Rock?
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.
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Dini slams industry's failure to champion talent
Outspoken developer takes the industry to task over "creative crisis".
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.
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Sony to stop PSone LCD manufacture
Snap-on LCD monitor and speakers to make last shipment in August.
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.
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