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Ubisoft continues to trail new products ahead of next month's E3 trade show (May 12-14th), popping up this week to opine on what's going to make the next Myst game brilliant. "Myst IV: Revelation will take players into the twisted minds and worlds of two evil brothers, deep inside an intense family drama," says Ubi producer Genevieve Lord, heralding its announcement.

When Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven was released on PS2 last year, it was hailed - third-person camera issues notwithstanding - as a gruesome and generally competent example of fleet-footed slaughter, and topped the charts. Upon closer inspection though, it was hamstrung by technical problems that regularly conspired to derail our ninja fantasies in punishing and frustrating ways, and ultimately it fell some way short of achieving its full potential. Yet, despite our initial misgivings, the thought that Return From Darkness might address Wrath of Heaven's technical failings was more than enough to tempt us back for another helping. And with so many look-but-don't-touch stealth titles doing the rounds, all that painstaking murder sounded slightly cathartic, too.

Fresh from playing the game and visiting Chernobyl itself, we sat down with GSC's Oleg Yavorsky to talk about how S.T.A.L.K.E.R is shaping up. You can read what we thought of the game ourselves elsewhere on the site.

Rather unsurprisingly, given all their past collaborations, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has emerged as the publisher of Namco's aerial shoot-'em-up Ace Combat 5, which it plans to release exclusively on PS2 around this time next year. "Quarter One 2005," it says. Set in the near future, AC5 has you protecting the nation of Osea from an unidentified threat, which needs dealing with over the course of thirty levels. New features in this one include Wingman Command, which allows you to bark instructions at wingmen and join forces with them to carry out group attacks.

With an official announcement in the offing, RollerCoaster Tycoon designer Chris Sawyer has spoken out about his latest project, which is said to be very much in line with what he was doing on Transport Tycoon. "Internally we're calling it Locomotion," he told GameSpot last week.

Nintendo has Intelligent Systems busily beavering away on a Fire Emblem title for GameCube according to reports originating in Japanese V-Jump magazine. The first images and details of the strategy-RPG appeared in the magazine late last week, and scans were on the Internet soon after. (And we're pretty sure they're not fakes this time, by the way.)

Nintendo will discuss the successor to GameCube, or N5 as we're calling it, at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, according to the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing Reggie Fils-Aime.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has revealed that it plans to release several new consoles, including a PSX-style PS3 for 6-700 Euros, a slimmed down PlayStation 2 dubbed the PS Two, and also confirmed that it intends to kick off digital distribution on the PS3 as early as 2006.

With Colin McRae Rally 04 currently screeching to a halt at a retailer near you, publisher Codemasters has decided to mark the day by releasing a multiplayer PC demo of the game via its website.

Although we don't generally mention the black art of speed running much around here, certain members of the EG team have been known to dazzle spectators by beating a hasty path through the first episode of Quake from time to time, and we all thought that Super Mario Bros. 3 video that did the rounds on the forum a while ago was stunning to behold. Which is why we feel we can get away with mentioning one man's insane 1 hour, 10 minute completion of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. On Extreme mode. With no saves or anything. It's utterly dazzling, although obviously we wouldn't recommend watching it unless you've completed the game yourself or never have any intention of playing it...

At E3 2002, Red Dead Revolver was one of the most promising titles on the Capcom stand. With superbly atmospheric Wild West visuals and gun slinging action it marked a welcome change of direction for the Japanese publisher. It all looked set to be a big hit for them, and then, just a couple of months later it all went a bit pear-shaped for the Angel Studios-coded project.

This week we've brought you our transcription of John Carmack's GDC 2004 keynote address. In parts one and two the Id legend discussed how games would look like movies, and spoke about AI, development cycles and the impact of new technology. In the third, and concluding part of our transcription, Carmack discusses the slippage problems advancements in technology create and his hopes for smaller teams to breakthrough using this technology, and expands upon his theory that games will feature movie quality graphics sooner than you might think...

Happy Easter, March is over. Rather like October, March is an incredibly busy period for the average gamer as publishers both great and small inexplicably attempt to cram as many titles as possible into our laps, like Laurel and Hardy faced with a narrow tar-lined doorway and a pot of gold on the other side. April, meanwhile, is a graveyard strewn with minor titles, tardy ports and would-be triple-As that sort of fell off the March bandwagon as the party on the back got a bit rowdy, and April 2nd does a rather good job of emphasising this.

Yesterday we brought you the first part of our transcription of John Carmack's GDC keynote address. In this second part, the Id Software supremo discusses AI, game development cycles and how new technology is forcing the developer to think of new ways of speeding up production - such as a Quake II remix...

Nintendo of America has restated its first party plans for the States this year, and pending slippage it looks like the Cube could be in for its first respectable Christmas line-up, with Geist, Mario Tennis, Metroid Prime 2, Paper Mario 2 and Star Fox 2 all down for release between October and December, with the inevitable Mario Party 6 rounding things off.

"Gathering", one of Take-Two's daftly named publishing labels, sends word that it has united with Destineer Publishing (okay, that clearly tops 'Gathering') to bring two new Close Combat games to PC and Xbox; Close Combat: First to Fight and Close Combat: Red Phoenix.

It's taken a while to get here, but F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu finally has a UK release date. It's set to appear on the shelves of your local gaming emporium this June 4th under the banner of "F-Zero: GP Legend". This is obviously a crap name, but still manages to beat "F-Zero: Maximum Velocity" for acceptability without using a single recharge pad.

Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 4 will include a driving school along with revised licence tests, more European cars, and a handicapping feature that punishes you for ramming opponents to gain an advantage, according to new details on the web this week. The game will also reportedly make use of the PS2 HDD, which launched in the States last month as part of a Final Fantasy XI bundle. It's unclear how the new peripheral will be used by GT, but downloadable content would seem to be the most obvious option.

Vivendi-Universal Games today announced that Van Helsing, Hugh Jackman's big-screen turn as Bram Stoker's fabled monster hunt, will be making its way to Game Boy Advance on May 14th. We're not quite sure why they didn't mention this when they announced the PS2 and Xbox versions of the game last October, but never mind. VU Games will be hoping that the Van Helsing movie lives up to its billing - "think of it as a sort of Wolverine-done-darker with vampires and crap," our resident film buff offers - and that the games can capitalise on its success this May. On the GBA however it faces some strong competition in the vampire hunting, er, stakes, courtesy of Konami's Castlevania titles. We never get sent GBA games these days so if you want to know if it's any good you'll have to extrapolate from these screenshots.

April 1st is a difficult day for the likes of us. So often in the past we've woken, forgotten what day it was, stumbled wearily in the direction of the nearest newswire and put our trust in some truly enchanting spoof, only to recoil in horror a few seconds later when a red-eyed jester popped up and danced a merry jig on our humbled faces.

EA has renewed its courtship with the Def Jam music label in order to deliver another Def Jam Vendetta game on PS2, Xbox and Cube later in the year, the two companies announced today. Def Jam Vendetta 2 (working title, screenshots) is being developed by EA Canada in conjunction with Japanese AKI Corporation.

Flight sim fans will be pleased to hear that Oleg Maddox's IL-2 team is busy working on a new and even more expansive dogfight and bomb-'em-up in the shape of Pacific Fighters, announced by publisher Ubisoft early yesterday evening. It's due out before the end of 2004.

Following revelations earlier this month concerning Metal Gear Solid 3's Camouflage Index, Konami Europe has this week released details concerning the game's context-sensitive Close Quarters Combat system, and confirmed that the game will appear in playable form at E3, if only behind closed doors.

Ubisoft and Microsoft have released a minor auto-update for the latest Splinter Cell title, which addresses a show-stopping multiplayer bug that managed to infiltrate the final build of the game ahead of its release last Friday.

NovaLogic has released its promised demo of Joint Operations, an ambitious multiplayer FPS set in near-future Indonesia. The demo features one map (Twin Island), and lets you choose from five different player classes and wield up any of 27 weapons whilst pootling around in a variety of vehicles. As with the full game, the Joint Ops demo is also capable of hosting over 100 players at a time - no mean feat.

Kuju Entertainment has quashed rumours that it is developing a Castlevania title for the GameCube, telling the UK press there is "categorically not one iota of truth in this story". The rumour began life on a big American website (you know the one; it sounds a bit like "gaijin") after an individual claiming to be Kuju QA manager Asad Habib said something ambiguously enthusiastic like "Castlevania for GameCube!" on a forum thread. This seems to have been taken by some as confirmation that Kuju is working on such a product, and, rather unhelpfully, Kuju representatives in the UK were all fast asleep when the Americans started chasing the story. Still, Kuju is working on a first-party title for Nintendo GameCube, and has also announced a collaboration with Castlevania leash-holders Konami in the past year, so it's easy to see where all the confusion came from - although apparently not for everyone, as there's plenty of pot/kettle/black action doing the rounds elsewhere in the online press today...

One of the undoubted highlights of this year's Game Developer's Conference was John Carmack's hour long keynote address at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. Billed as "A candid look at the issues and rewards of bleeding edge engine development," Carmack didn't disappoint, giving a rare and unique insight into the challenges facing Id Software and other bar-raising developers in today's demanding era of increasing realism, and the associated issues with lengthening development cycles, ever increasing team sizes and of course costs.

Gimmicks in games, as with most things in general, are as welcome as Osama bin Laden at chez Dubya Bush's annual Thanksgiving ho-down. Take food gimmicks. Take cheesy strings. Everyone sees the advert and sits in embarrassed silence, squirming in the knowledge that even though it's going to taste revolting, you want to buy it because you can pull it to pieces. It's the hideous, compelling world of capitalism thrown into grimly sharp relief by processed milk products. The same applies to football games. Without the cheese.

Following the closure of a number of Capcom's studios outside of its Osaka headquarters, the Japanese publisher has announced the formation of a new subsidiary in Osaka with Viewtiful Joe producer Atsushi Inaba at the helm.

It's slightly odd that it should happen on the sunniest day in recent memory, but we were still pleased to find some Downloadable Content for Amped 2 waiting for us atop the imaginary piste this morning.