Latest Articles (Page 3358)

Developer Mythic Entertainment has announced it will offer Dark Age of Camelot subscribers a new "account splitting" service beginning April 27th (next Tuesday). Quite simply, it allows players to transfer one or more characters from an existing account to a new account.

Eidos has officially confirmed the multi-platform sequel to Backyard Wrestling, which was first mentioned in a financial results document accidentally uploaded to a public area of the publisher's website last month.

With Tak and the Power of Juju ticking past the one-million-unit mark globally, THQ has wasted no time in announcing the sequel, Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams, which is in development at Avalanche Software for release on PS2, Xbox, Cube and GBA as soon as this October. The game will be one of THQ's key products at next month's E3.

Open-mindedness is the key to a long and healthy gaming life. Some of you are bound to agree with that - and we're guessing that anybody who does also took a chance on ICO, Viewtiful Joe, Mario & Luigi, perhaps even Gregory Horror Show, and in doing so bucked the growing trend of safety first when it comes to buying videogames. And it is a growing trend. And a worrying one. These days the charts are crammed full of the very rubbish we're supposed to be trying to avoid, and the laughable part is that we're going out and buying this stuff because we're unwilling to take risks on games we're unfamiliar with. It didn't used to be like this. Once upon a time, "I don't like RPGs" wasn't even intelligible English. These days it's common. Plug it into Google. Plug in a few variations. Cry.

True Crime developer Luxoflux is looking for a bit of help crafting the game's inevitable sequel, and instead of just culling ideas from rivals and putting some motorbikes in, the developer sent us an email asking if we'd solicit some help from you lot. Which we're only to happy to do. If you played the original True Crime and have any comments about what you felt worked or didn't work in the original game, then you're encouraged to head here and take part in the survey. "No prizes are offered, to help assure objective feedback, but it is a rare chance to have a direct impact on the course of game development!" Couldn't have put it better.

Although we're still waiting to get our hands on the original over here, Konami of America has announced a sequel to Karaoke Revolution (or Karaoke Stage as it will be called here), featuring a bunch of new songs and a new medley mode, which lets players create a sort of montage of up to five song clips and compete for the audience's approval against their friends.

LucasArts has unveiled Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed this week, an expansion for the MMORPG of the same-name-minus-the-bit-after-the-colon. It's due out this autumn, and as the name suggests the main addition is space exploration and combat, which we seem to recall was due to appear in the original release of the game until time constraints went into overdrive.

Further details of Capcom's recently founded development studio, Clover Studio, have emerged, revealing that Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and Devil May Cry director Hideki Kamiya will be joining the new company.

French publisher Ubisoft has announced that it plans to hire some 200 additional staff for its flagship development location in Montreal, Canada, with the bulk of the new positions being in the core skilled roles of programming, design and art.

Capcom has finally confirmed persistent rumours that Viewtiful Joe is set to appear on PlayStation 2, following its exclusive appearance on the Cube last year. The PS2 version, which is being overseen by Capcom's newly formed and star-studded Clover Studio, will be out in the States this autumn. And what with the recent unveiling of a sequel, PS2 owners ought to be smiling today. What's more, given that VJ2 is due out this Christmas or thereabouts, the PS2 version of the original should be with us in Europe before then.

THQ UK has rather cleverly announced plans to release Battle For Troy on the PC during Q2 2004. The Zono-developed RTS (more details here) is published by Valusoft in the States and will cost just £19.99 over here. The clever bit, of course, is that THQ doesn't actually seem to have the licence to the Troy movie, and yet with the movie trailer we saw on TV last night fresh in the memory, we were quite interested when we saw a small fact sheet for this pop up on the publisher's press site. Presumably that's the desired effect. Bloody deceptive horses.

Atari has announced a new game in the long running Test Drive series. Called Test Drive: Eve of Destruction, it's in production at NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona developer Monster Games, and should be released on PS2 this autumn in the States.

We didn't much care for RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. It felt like a cash-in. We like Chris Sawyer, we really do, and we felt he let us down a bit there. We probably weren't the only ones. Looking at this trailer for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, however, we felt our little hearts throbbing faster and faster in excitement.

The brilliantly named Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is to be followed up this autumn by the slightly less Japlish-sounding Godzilla: Save The Earth, Atari announced this week. Original developer Pipeworks is working on the new game, which will appear on PS2 and Xbox - complete with online options for both consoles.

The incredibly successful Sims franchise is set to take a new direction on console platforms, with EA today revealing details of Maxis' next console title, The Urbz, which is expected to launch towards the end of this year.

Activision has issued another patch for Call of Duty, version 1.4, containing a new multiplayer map (Stalingrad), Punkbuster support, and various adjustments and fixes, detailed in the readme file. Apparently the patch will update all retail copies as well as versions patched to previous 1.2 or 1.3 patches, although you might want to hold off installing it if you can't find your COD box, because it will also ask for you to re-input the CD key. The patch weighs in at around 30MB.

Formula One 04, the second game based on Sony's exclusive F1 rights deal, looks set to debut on PlayStation 2 this June, with PS2 Online options based around posting fastest times and racing against ghost cars. You can see how it's shaping up thanks to these screenshots.

Nintendo of America has announced that the company is throwing its weight behind Majesco's GBA Video playback technology in the most tangible way possible - by releasing episodes of the Pokemon TV series for the system.

Microsoft UK has finally confirmed that the PAL version of Ninja Gaiden has been stripped of its gory decapitation routines, despite playing down reports to that effect earlier in the year.

11 weeks after its release, Sonic Heroes has returned Sega to the top of the UK software chart this week, deposing Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow after three weeks of covert dominance.

Capcom USA has finally announced Viewtiful Joe 2 for PS2 and GameCube, after reports of its development originally appeared early in March. The scrolling beat-'em-up sequel will appear on both platforms this winter, with a co-operative mode and various new VFX tricks amongst the new weapons in its arsenal. On bringing the game to the PS2 as well as the original Cube platform, VJ creator Atsushi Inaba said yesterday that he simply wanted more people to see the game. He also nipped speculation over platform-specific bonuses in the bud, stating, "The game will have the same content for both platforms."

Capcom Production Studio 4's interstellar PS2 prank-'em-up Panic Maker will be receiving a Western release after all, according to reports appearing in the US of States overnight pointing to an autumn release. Going by the decidedly less exciting title "Under the Skin", it's a slab of peculiar Day-Glo quirkiness that rather caught our eye when we first stumbled upon it earlier this year, and it's the sort of game we generally don't see outside Japan due to a lack of interest from us fickle Western types. Cuh.

Japanese developer Capcom have shown in the past that they're not too shy to re-use a winning formula. The hugely successful Street Fighter series of games have undergone many revisions and re-issues and still fall off the shelves at the games stores. Now they're trying the same trick with the popular Resident Evil formula by adding growling Jurassic-Park style dinosaur goodness to the zombie-fest to create an entirely new survival horror game.

The latest issue of Japanese Shonen Jump magazine has shed a bit more light on the cast of Square/Disney-themed RPG Kingdom Hearts 2, revealing that Hercules and Beast (of Beauty and the Beast) will return, and that Auron (of Final Fantasy X fame) and Hercules' main squeeze Megara will also make an appearance. They join the likes of Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck, all of whom have been confirmed since the first Tokyo Game Show trailer appeared last year revealing a much darker looking adventure.

If you reckon you're good at Project Gotham Racing 2, then you might be in with a chance of earning a free trip to the States next month. As part of a worldwide PGR2 Tournament, the European Xbox Live users who post the top three lap times on Princes Street East between now and midday (BST) on May 10th will be flown out to the NASCAR Speed Week in North Carolina next month to represent Europe against two drivers each from the US and Canada. All expenses paid.

LucasArts has confirmed reports that the forthcoming Star Wars Trilogy DVD box set, which is due out in Europe on September 21st, will feature previews of two upcoming Star Wars titles, including a previously unannounced Episode III spin-off.

Industry sources have suggested that the new Nintendo first-party title from British developer Kuju Entertainment will feature strategy-focused gameplay with some action elements.

With Take-Two's Global Star label set to release the budget-priced Serious Sam: The Next Encounter on PS2 and GameCube this Friday, the publisher is understandably trying to "big up the mayhem", pointing out that in a world of first-person shooters increasingly devoid of just-plain-shooting, The Next Encounter represents a return to the heady days of walking into a room and having to kill legions of really bizarre and stupid enemies with memorable catchphrases. Like "AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!" We were only too happy to help convey the message, so here's a recent Q&A the publisher conducted with the game's producer at Climax, Matt Cooper.

EA has officially announced Battlefield 2 after first details of the game appeared in the US press yesterday. BF2 is in development at Digital Illusions (DICE) as expected, and promises to follow Battlefield: Modern Combat's example by dragging the online conflict into the 21st century when it's released next spring.

Namco has released a new trailer for Ace Combat 5, the next instalment in the really rather good console flight sim series. Unfortunately, the publisher has only released it in the really rather bad streaming WMV format, but if your connection (and eyeballs) can handle such hideousness, get yourself along to the Ace Combat website where you'll find the new movie in the Download section. This is the first gameplay footage we've seen from the new game, and it looks great - with tons of licensed planes flying around, gorgeous graphics and the usual wide range of different missions that you expect from Ace Combat. It's pencilled in for autumn in the USA; expect it to appear over here sometime before Christmas, with any luck.