Latest Articles (Page 3347)

White boots. When a footballer steps onto the pitch in white boots, there's a sort of air of expectancy around him. He looks like he's running differently. He looks like he should be special. So, when it emerges that he's actually Phil Neville, and he gets nutmegged by some random Swedish attacker, we understandably get a little angry. "Get back in your clunky 20 quid knock-offs you back-pedalling moron!" we all yell at the TV screen.

EyeToy: Chat will be the next title to utilize Sony's popular webcam, the company announced this afternoon, with the London Studios-developed online title set to introduce "a whole new world of communication" to gamers living rooms when it hits the shelves later this summer.

Britsoft developer Sports Interactive continues to grow its roster of sports management titles, announcing the addition of Out of the Park Baseball to its line-up this afternoon.

Following on from Namco's E3 line-up announcement yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has confirmed that it will publish the latest Time Crisis title Crisis Zone on this particular continent this autumn. Crisis Zone joins an array of other PS2-exclusive Namco titles on SCEE's release list, including Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 (May 28th), Death by Degrees and Ace Combat 5 (both Q1 2005).

As promised last month, full versions of Tribes and Tribes 2 are now available for free, both for FilePlanet subscribers and folks who have registered for the basic, free account, thankfully. Tribes 1 weighs in at 135.7MB and can be had here, while the heftier 538.6MB Tribes 2 package can be found here. If you've never played Tribes, you really ought to give it a go, and Vivendi-Universal Games deserve a bit of credit for taking this bold step - even if it is just to drum up support for the forthcoming Tribes: Vengeance, which should be on display at E3 in LA next week.

Having confirmed our original story some time ago, EA has finally taken the wraps completely off its new GoldenEye title for PS2, Xbox and Cube, and not only is it nothing to do with Free Radical Design - a developer consisting of many ex-Rare personnel who worked on the celebrated N64 GoldenEye title - but in narrative terms it is also about as far removed from the N64 original and its cinematic progenitor as you could feasibly get without dispensing with the name completely. Which, given the recognition factor in the name and the publisher's desire not to completely piss off the hardcore with its sacrilegious efforts, was probably the idea all along.

It was obvious that the Knockout Kings series had run its course. EA had to draw a line under the title to totally reinvent it for a determined return to the ring, fighting fit and ready claim the crown back from Rage, which unexpectedly landed a killer blow to the chops with Rocky just before the Britsoft publisher's inevitable demise.

Codemasters has announced this year's range of its Club Football titles, with PS2, Xbox and (for the first time) PC versions set to launch this coming autumn as the 2004/05 footy season gathers pace.

When we first fired up Transformers (formerly Transformers Armada: Prelude to Energon), we had to check our PS2 for false screens, mirrors and secret branches of Pixar. No way in hell was a PS2 doing that, we blurted, as an aircraft carrier we were running around on transformed and started attacking us from about a mile above sea-level. But it was. And we were impressed. And with the game out this May 7th from Atari, we tracked down the game's director and executive producer Andrew Carter at Melbourne House and demanded answers...

IO Interactive scored its first UK All Formats No.1 today with the release of the third Agent 47 title, Hitman Contracts (No.1 PS2, No.2 Xbox, No.3 PC), which prevented EA scoring yet another chart topper, as Fight Night was forced to settle for a No.2 debut (No.2 PS2, No.3 Xbox). Last week's No.1, TOCA Race Driver, slipped to No.3 after one week at the top.

Often, when it comes sports games, the desire for authenticity of statistics, tournaments and players is more than enough in the punter's mind to justify certain shortcomings on the field itself. FIFA Football, for example, outsells the vastly superior Pro Evolution Soccer series on an annual basis, largely thanks to EA's skills in moulding David Beckham, Thierry Henry and the like out of digital clay, as Andy Gray and John Motson's commentary faithfully charts their convincing path through prestigious tournaments we all watch on television year in, year out. As a result, reviewers are just as often left gasping for superlatives in a hopeless attempt to play down the significance of the presentation, and tip a few more people in the direction of the superior product. It doesn't work.

Ubisoft has announced that it will publish Square-Enix's Star Ocean: Till The End of Time on PS2 in Europe this autumn, proving once and for all that we were right to yell things about "dirty old slappers" when we trudged through the developer's chunkily bordered Final Fantasy X a couple of years ago. If there's one thing you can say for Squenix, it doesn't discriminate when it comes to leaping into bed.

Eidos has announced Commandos developer Pyro Studios' latest project, Imperial Glory, which is due out on the PC in early 2005 and promises to be "the most extensive strategy game ever", whatever that means. [Urgent whispers] Oh, apparently it means you can lead one of five 19th century Empires (Great Britain, France, Russian, Prussia or Austro-Hungary) into battle around the globe as you juggle the needs of local politics, trade, international diplomacy, resource management and technology research.

One of this year's most anticipated games is undoubtedly Atari's stompy robot shooter Transformers. We almost screamed our faces off during one particularly manic preview session, so we were keen to have a chat with the chaps down under at Melbourne House, the developer of the unbelievably impressive PS2 exclusive.

Let's get one thing absolutely straight. Devil May Cry was one of the best action games ever made on the PS2. Its mentalist hackandslash action gothic rock style was the perfect answer to doubts over the PS2's graphical abilities, and it was as intense and as stylish a game as there has ever been from Capcom ever since.

Gearbox is readying a new version of Halo called Halo Custom Edition, the developer has announced, giving the game's many fans the chance to create mods and other custom content using the v1.04 codebase of the game as a template.

With the EverQuest 2 beta test sign-ups apparently already sealed up, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment leapt on the large number of MMORPG fans still lusting after something new this week by opening applications for the beta test of The Matrix Online. Although The Matrix has certainly fallen from grace somewhat since the second and third instalments hit cinema screens, this is still bound to be huge, and if you like the idea of running around a fake version of a fake real world then you can sign up for it here. Is it going to be any good? It's the question that drives us.

Leading publisher Electronic Arts has committed to supporting the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS platforms, but the recently rumoured move to develop Xbox Live titles is still under negotiation, according to senior company execs.

As the world and its leather-gloved dog prepare to wrap their eyes round Gran Turismo 4 next week, Konami of Europe has announced Enthusia Professional Racing for PS2, which seemingly aims to compete with the Kazunori Yamauchi's renowned 'driving simulator'. Well, that's not expressly what it says, but you can't really put "the most realistic racing game to date" in your PR and hope to avoid comparison.

Although The Suffering will inevitably wind up lumped with Resident Evil and Silent Hill in the 'survival horror' category, in actual fact it feels more like an 'action horror' title when you get round to playing it. In games like Resident Evil, risking the last half an hour's play every time you take an uncertain step arguably does just as much to promote tension and accentuate every fright as a mutant dog leaping through a window. And while The Suffering is heavy on the otherworldly sights and sounds, it dispenses with the slower pacing and inventory juggling of 'survival horror' titles and throws in a pretty comfortable checkpoint system to boot. A good idea, or a bad one? Well, it's a Midway game called "The Suffering", and we haven't made the obvious joke yet, so the signs are fairly encouraging...

Industry veteran Bill Gardner, who was formerly president of Capcom North America and was instrumental in the founding of the Japanese company's European operations, has announced that he has started up a new publishing and distribution company.

When publishers commission games out to development studios, do they actually bother to consider how crowded the market is beforehand, or are they so mind-numbingly arrogant to believe that going down the me-too route is somehow a worthwhile strategy? Case in point - Eden Studio's Kya: Dark Lineage. We've literally lost count of how many cutesy platform games have landed on our desk for review over the past 18 months or so (it's definitely over 20), and do you know how many of them have been hits? About two of them. Even the very best have floundered. What makes Atari think this is going to work where near-classics like Sly Raccoon and Voodoo Vince failed so dismally?

The drought is well and truly over. And, as if to illustrate that fact, it's raining so hard that you'd think the heavens were sobbing tears of joy (although it's possible they're just sobbing because they've played Star Trek: Shattered Universe). There's a (what's the collective term for loads of good games? Ah yes) veritable bankruptcy of good and indeed top games out this week, including Hitman: Contracts, Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly and Fight Night 2004, and Onimusha 3 has just launched in the States, some way ahead of its July 9th debut in Europe.

For all the killers and the hundred-dollar-billers, EA has gone and, er, 'spillers-ed' the details on the name of the next Def Jam Vendetta game. Until now, the EA Canada-penned sequel had been operating under a working title, but EA's latest conference call reveals that we're actually looking forward to a game called Def Jam: Fight for New York. You can read all we know about that game (and find some shots) by clicking... here.

Codemasters has officially announced Colin McRae Rally 2005, this year's inevitable vintage of the celebrated rally series, and the biggest new feature on the cards is an eight-player head-to-head online mode which should be available through both PS2 Online and Xbox Live - mirroring the Britsoft developer's efforts in other franchises like England International Football.

Electronic Arts has revealed the title of the next TimeSplitters game in its quarterly conference call this week, having announced a deal to publish it earlier in the year.

Sega came clean about the console conversion of Outrun 2 today, confirming the game has been naturally ported from the Chihiro arcade board for Xbox, while making no mention of a PlayStation 2 version.

British independent developer Kuju has announced the signing of a new development contract, this time with leading publisher Activision, for a title being created at the company's offices in Godalming, Surrey.

We liked Worms 3D. There's no shame in that. Some people might argue there is, but those people are very wrong and mad...

Back in November 2002, a little Xbox-exclusive game called Blinx The Timesweeper launched to critical and commercial indifference, despite a lot of plugging from platform holder Microsoft, for whom the game represented a first stab at character-based adventuring and an adventurous application of the Xbox hard disk technology.