Latest Articles (Page 3347)
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Review | F-Zero: GP Legend
From the house of Zero comes another hero. But is it worth your dinero?
Back on June 4th, when Nintendo released F-Zero: GP Legend in Europe, we remarked somewhat testily that we had no idea whether it was any good because Nintendo of Europe had failed to send out review code. And in the absence of the usual saturation coverage from the States (the game's not due out there for some months yet), and negligible marketing push from NOE, there was an unspoken assumption that GP Legend - derived from a Japanese anime - might be a slightly simpler, less significant entry in the series. A kind of F-Zero Lite. Something we weren't supposed to see.
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MS announces Rallisport 2 challenge
Win a weekend in Belgium watching people drive very fast.
Microsoft is offering Rallisport Challenge 2 fans the chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the LG super racing weekend in Belgium at the end of July - as part of its latest Xbox Live tournament.
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GameCube Golden Sun title in the works?
Another RPG joins the Cube's swelling line-up, courtesy of Camelot.
Reports from Japan over the weekend have indicated that Nintendo is set to announce another addition to the GameCube's line-up of RPG titles, with work on a home console version of GBA RPG series Golden Sun apparently underway.
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Aims to remain true to the original storyline, whilst fleshing things out in a few places. Includes shots of a few sample pages from early on.
Kris Oprisko, the writer of the forthcoming Metal Gear Solid comic book, has shed some light on how the project came about and what he and artist Ashley Wood are attempting to do with it in an article published on The Comic Wire here.
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U Move Super Sports for EyeToy due soon
Konami's sports-themed EyeToy title is on track for release in Europe this September, the publisher has announced.
Konami of Europe has announced plans to release U Move Super Sports, a package of fifteen sports-themed mini-games, for EyeToy this September. Rather like the original EyeToy: Play suite of challenges, UMSS is high score-based and features support for small multiplayer tournaments.
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Bits And Bobs: Monday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) Painkiller expansion announced, Riddick soundtrack and original Ground Control available for free, Def Jam 2 lacks online play, Jackie Chan Adventures announced for PS2.
DreamCatcher Games has announced puntastic FPS expansion pack Painkiller: Battle out of Hell, and plans to release it "well in time for the holidays". According to today's press release, Battle out of Hell picks up where the gung ho shooter left off, and offers ten levels, new multiplayer modes, maps and models, "an amplified arsenal of un-deadly weapons", huge bosses and a Software Development Kit. Painkiller was released earlier this year on PC, and an Xbox version is due out in early 2005.
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Half-Life 2 set to go gold in August
Valve aiming to get its opus out the door by the end of summer. More details on various Source ports and the question of disk space, too.
Valve Software boss Gabe Newell has revealed a few more details of the forthcoming Half-Life 2 in a post on a popular web forum - including the fact that the company is currently aiming to finish work on the title in August.
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Brothers In Arms trailer released
Finally, a World War II game that embraces the minutiae of the conflict. Gearbox's multiformat FPS catches our attention. Trailer available now from Eurofiles.
Ubisoft has released a fourteen-minute trailer of Gearbox Software's World War II first-person shooter Brothers In Arms, and if you were sceptical of the need for another WWII shooter when you first heard about the game, we recommend you give this a watch. It's doing stuff that none of the others have even attempted. The file's available right now from Eurofiles.
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Lead designer Jay Wilson on how the project came to be, how Relic developed the idea, and how he feels it'll go down with fans.
Hi, my name is Jay Wilson, I'm the lead designer on the upcoming RTS game Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and this is my designer diary. The role of the Lead Designer at Relic is to be the gameplay "vision-holder" for a game, to work with the team to establish the gameplay vision of the game and then make sure that vision is maintained through the development of the project. I'm in charge of the design team, which means I'm supposed to make sure the whole thing is fun to play as well! Given that role, I'm probably the ideal person to tell you all how Dawn of War came to be, and our strategy in utilising the Warhammer 40,000 universe to make an awesome RTS game.
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Feature | What's New?
(This week's European releases.) DRIV3R's out. But then you know that. But so are Full Spectrum Warrior, Ground Control 2, Champions of Norrath and others.
We're not going to talk about DRIV3R. We would, because it's obviously a very thorny subject on this here old Internet at the moment, but with so many top quality games out this week, there simply isn't space to waste on games we don't like. No, actually, that's not it. (This thing wouldn't be fun if we didn't do that.) It's more to do with the fact that we've already said, at length, why we wouldn't buy it and why we feel you shouldn't, and we'd far rather talk about games like Full Spectrum Warrior, Champions of Norrath and Ground Control 2 instead.
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Tecmo plans monster Ninja Gaiden update
Free content for all, which makes the game, er, harder. New monsters, weapons, etc, all geared towards the second round of the Master Ninja Tournament.
Tecmo is planning to update Ninja Gaiden via Xbox Live this August ahead of the second round of the Master Ninja Tournament. Interestingly though, there's no restriction on who downloads the freely available update, and as well as toughening the game up in some areas and adding new equipment, it also serves as something of a patch - giving players full 360-degree control of the camera, for instance, in light of critical response from reviewers and fans.
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Ignition to publish Metal Slug 3, Advance in Europe
Hopefully they'll do better over here than Metal Slug X.
In a brief but tantalising announcement this morning, Pool Paradise publisher Ignition Entertainment has announced a deal with SNK Playmore to release Metal Slug 3 for PS2 and Xbox and Metal Slug Advance on the GBA in Europe this October.
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Chaos League MP demo, £2,000 tournament
Digital Jesters gives you money to play its games over the Internet. Which isn't a bad deal at all.
Digital Jesters has released a multiplayer demo of Chaos League, giving players a chance to get to grips with French developer Cyanide's American Football-esque future sports title online, and announced a demo tournament with a prize fund of some £2,000 to run next month. The full game should be released in August.
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Sony recruiting team for PSP, PS2 network
Development set to get underway on integrated PlayStation network system.
A new job posting on Sony Computer Entertainment's Synthesis careers site indicates that the company has started recruiting a team to build a common network platform for its PlayStation home consoles and the PSP handheld.
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Doom III set for August 3rd launch?
Retailers promoting "just announced" date, Activision denying knowledge.
Key US retailers GameStop and EB Games have updated their web stores to indicate that id Software's long awaited Doom III will be on shelves in North America on August 3rd, with a large banner on the GameStop site proclaiming the "just announced" date.
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Review | Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
Another 16-bit remake. This time it's the follow-up to the game everyone got for Christmas.
2D platformers. Back in 1996, when DKC2 first graced these shores (that's Blighty, by the way - I'm sure it came out in other places beforehand), the Super Nintendo was rife with the things. They were to that generation what third-person action games are to this; ubiquitous, varying in quality, largely the same sort of thing, and generally flawed in all the same ways. It was inevitable then, that when Nintendo decided to re-release 400 of them on the Game Boy Advance, we were going to get cross with one sooner or later.
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Review | DRIV3R
You've heard of the disaster movie - now read about a disastrous game. But just how disastrous? Well, the clue is in the title...
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Things And Stuff: Thursday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) Colin McRae rallies support for N-Gage, Ground Control 2, Pandora Tomorrow and Joint Operations patched.
Codemasters has decided to get a handle on the Nokia N-Gage this year, announcing that one of its most successful franchises will be downsized to fit the Finnish hardware. Colin McRae Rally 2005 is in development at Ideaworks3D, and when it's finished we can expect both single-player racing modes ala the bigger console versions, and competitions and ghost racing via N-Gage Arena. CMR2005 is due out in the fourth quarter of 2004. If it proves popular, we can probably expect to see more Codies games on the format - we'd certainly be interested to see how management title LMA Manager translated...
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Cube on sale for £39.99 in the UK
Index selling the cheapest Cubes on the high street, but this isn't a stock clear-out.
UK catalogue retailer Index has slashed the price of the GameCube by 50 per cent as part of a sale promotion, and is currently selling the console for £39.99 in high street stores - but it will not be dropping the console from its range, according to Nintendo.
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VU Games announces Robots adaptation
Multiformat, film-based titles from Eurocom and Griptonite Games.
Vivendi has announced plans to release console, PC and GBA titles based on Twentieth Century Fox's latest computer animated film, Robots. Eurocom will be handling the PS2, Xbox, Cube and PC versions, while Griptonite Games will work on the Game Boy Advance version. All are due out in Q1 2005, presumably in time to coincide with the film's cinematic debut on March 11th.
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Street Fighter producer founds new developer
Craft and Meister formed by former Capcom pair.
Noritaka Funamizu, best known for working as producer on the seminal Street Fighter II, has left his role as boss of Capcom's Research and Development Division 1 unit to found a new independent development studio.
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Feature | Reader Reviews
More of your thoughts on games both great and small. (And crap.) Highlights include Metroid: Zero Mission, Sonic Advance 2, StarCraft, Crimson Skies and, um, Dragontorc.
Unprecedented! Anyway, following Monday's splurge, here's another selection of recently submitted reviews from you lot. It was difficult to think of a decent prize for a while, then I stumbled upon Kristan's box of old review code, so I reckon we can just feed off that for some time. Free games! Hurrah. And for this week's retro-obsessed winner, a copy of Midway's Defender remake for the PS2 seems ideal. Check back next week for more reader reviews. (I know, I know - what are the chances?)
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TOCA Race Driver 2 set for PS2 launch
Fancy a midnight TOCA? No? Done that joke? Okay bye.
Codemasters plans to release TOCA Race Driver 2 on the PlayStation 2 this October, the publisher announced yesterday, presumably following the expiration of whatever deal was tethering "The Ultimate Racing Simulator" exclusively to Xbox and PC.
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EA releases Rogue Agent E3 trailer
See the new 'GoldenEye' title in action for yourself.
Electronic Arts has released a 10MB QuickTime format trailer for GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, which originally appeared on the publisher's enormous cinema-dwarfing wide display at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this May.
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Review | Breakdown
In Japan, Derrick sounds like a cool name for a lead character in a videogame.
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SI dates, demos for Eastside Hockey Manager
UK developer prepares to tackle other markets with a game SI boss Miles Jacobson believes is "very important" to the firm. Demo available now from Eurofiles.
NHL Eastside Hockey Manager will be released in Europe on July 2nd, developer Sports Interactive announced today, and will be made available both at retail and via digital distribution online. The developer and publisher Sega also plan to roll (or perhaps skate) the game to market in the Czech Republic in August, with a North American release planned for September.
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Nihilistic no longer involved with SC Ghost
StarCrafters head off to work on something else following latest delay.
Nihilistic Software has "completed its contribution" to Blizzard's StarCraft: Ghost, the developer confirmed in a statement this week, adding that the decision to withdraw was partly on account of the game's latest delay, and partly due to contractual obligations elsewhere.
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Viacom considering in-game advertising
New ways to make money from games being explored by media corporation.
Media empire Viacom is investigating the possibility of making money through advertising and product placement in videogames, according to a presentation given by CFO Richard Bressler at the Global Digital Summit.
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Review | Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
A year late? That's the Nintendo of Europe difference, that. Still, it's got dragons, monkeys and Charles Martinet, but can they match the Tiger's roar?
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For once, at least, in a good way.
Much as we like our plasma and wide screen TVs around here (if and when Security lets us near them), we're still forced to measure things in inches. Stroll into an IMAX theatre though and it's all feet. Hell, yards. And the thought of playing games on a screen the size of a five-a-side football pitch fills us with the sort of joy usually reserved for, well, watching the Italians go out of Euro 2004 thanks to some mathematically improbable Scandinavian goalscoring. Tee hee!
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