Latest Articles (Page 3389)

A popular American crime writer has taken legal action against Activision over Christmas heavyweight True Crime: The Streets of LA. According to reports, Robert Crais, author of books including LA Requiem and Free Fall, is seeking an injunction to stop Activision shipping the game, undisclosed monetary damages and destruction of all infringing works, on the grounds that the game's star Nick Kang is a little too close to the author's own creation Elvis Cole.

Ubisoft has announced plans to release psychedelic PS2 pinball title Flipnic in Europe and Australia this Christmas. Developed by Sony Japan, Flipnic is a pinball game which mixes traditional flipping with bizarre objectives.

The house I share with our esteemed deputy editor has been home to a lot of shouting recently. Tom says Jak II is mostly to blame, although I did vent some Anglo Saxon myself when I burnt my hand cooking an omelette... But now there's a new force fuelling bad language at ferocious volumes, and that force, ladies and gents, is Commandos 3: Destination Berlin.

Embattled German publisher CDV has cancelled Psychotoxic: Gateway to Helland Sabotain: Fist of the Empire, it says, and postponed the next instalment in "erotic action" series Lula 3D until the beginning of 2004. No reason was given for the cancellations and Lula's delay.

Two years, two releases, and more fiercely defensive fans than a Korean dictator - if you haven't played Halo yet, then you've missed out on a very significant event in gaming. Wait no longer. Thanks to those affable gents at Gearbox, you can now get your hands on a PC demo (or, in Microsoft style, 'trial version') containing The Silent Cartographer section of the single player game and the charmingly named Blood Gulch multiplayer map. It's 131MB in size, and there are links all over the place, including a BitTorrent download at 3D Gamers. While you're waiting to play it, you can enjoy our review.

The moment you boot up Time Crisis 3, you know exactly what you're going to get: wave after wave of cannon fodder enemy, ludicrous amounts of ammo, on rails 'duck and fire' gameplay, cackling end of level bosses, bad English voiceovers; it's all present and correct. We could probably save you all a few minutes and tell you our verdict now; but we'd rather surprise you.

Apologies to regular followers of this item, but this week there will be no weather commentary or feeble anecdote to kick things off. Instead, I'd like to reallocate these precious opening words to discussion of the game I finished last night, Jak II. You can go out and buy it right now, and if you're a fan of platform games then you absolutely must.

Those of you bored of the various flavours of Murdoch and the BBC's variously rubbish digital offerings will be pleased to hear that you can now pay £1 a day to play Tetris on the television. Instead of finding it on the Internet and playing it for free. Or digging out the Game Boy version (everybody owns it - it probably came with your birth certificate).

According to Japanese reports, Nintendo is planning to release F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu (Legend of Falcon) for the Game Boy Advance on November 28th. Based on the forthcoming weekly Japanese anime series, Falcon Densetsu will see the familiar faces of Captain Falcon and Samurai Goro facing off against TV series mainstay Ryu Suzaku.

Media shy developer Valve [ho ho! -Ed] has spoken out about Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, the maligned single player adaptation of the renowned multiplayer mod, clarifying the role of Turtle Rock, the third developer in the game's troubled history after Gearbox and Ritual respectively took swings at it.

Electronic Arts has bought Studio 33 for an undisclosed sum, the publisher announced this morning. The Liverpool-based developer's 30 employees are set to join the existing team at EA Northwest, with the now 75-strong team scheduled to move into a new facility in Warrington shortly.

Datel is set to launch a smaller, lightweight alternative to Nintendo's Game Boy Player on October 24th. The "Advance Game Port" will cost £29.99 (the GB Player generally retails for £39.99) and acts as a sort of bridge adapter for GBA carts, slotting into a memory card slot and drawing power from the GameCube, and allowing you to play GBA titles on your TV screen using the Cube pad (including the analogue stick) as a controller.

Two years on, despite Microsoft's megabucks, the Xbox still doesn't have the thing that all consoles are supposed to have: a platforming icon. Blinx, the grinning, time-shifting cat failed spectacularly to translate into a mass market Christmas hit this time last year, and Sega's re-launch of Toe Jam & Earl exclusively to the platform was another commercial flop earlier this year, despite actually being quite good. Can the Redmond giant make it third time lucky with a bulgy-eyed cloth-eared Voodoo doll called Vince, and join the exclusive icon club?

Popular Hong Kong-based importer Lik-Sang has launched a "Free Shipping Worldwide" programme, significantly reducing the amount that import-hungry gamers will have to fork out for the latest Japanese and American treats.

Ah yes, Freedom Force. "For freedom!" and all that. We liked the curious blend of superbly realised comic book superheroes and action-packed strategy RPG gameplay rather a lot, and should Irrational go on to develop a sequel then we'd be particularly interested to know what it's all about. Well gosh; as luck would have it GameSpot has conducted a Q&A session with Irrational Games' Jonathan Chey on that very subject!

UK developer Bits Studios' promising stealth action title Rogue Ops has gone gold, publisher Kemco has announced. The game will appear on PS2, Xbox and GameCube on December 5th according to European distributor Capcom.

The multiplayer GameCube adaptation of arcade classic Pac-Man, which Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated prior to this year's E3 (and, in a silly skit involving the yellow blob's creator Toru Iwatani, begged to be allowed to release), will be made available for free to punters who buy any of three upcoming Namco releases for Nintendo GameCube, the two companies have announced.

Space used to be the final frontier. There was a time when we'd gaze up at the stars and say 'what's it all about eh?'. And then we'd finish that bottle of vodka. Not any more, though. The universe no longer holds any mystery to us - its secrets are secrets no more. Because while NASA are busy sending probes off to boring, dusty, real-life Mars, we've learned everything we need to know about space from games. And if Mace Griffin is anything to go by, space sucks.

Microsoft, hailing from Geneva today, apparently, has announced that when Xbox Live launches in eight more PAL countries next month, 22 broadband providers will be there to welcome potential MechAssaulters and Midtowners with open arms.

Vivendi-Universal Games will publish Hunter: The Reckoning sequels Wayward and Redeemer this year as planned, and continue to sell Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, despite ongoing legal hostilities between Interplay and the embattled French publisher. Hunter: The Reckoning Wayward (PS2) will be released on October 17th, and Hunter: The Reckoning Redeemer (Xbox) will appear sometime in November.

Do you know football? Konami knows football. Pro Evolution Soccer 3 is the ultimate fan's game. With a proper appreciation of the controls and the right players, PES3 makes it possible to sculpt opportunities out of opposing defences like the finest strikers in the world, without enduring the years of hard graft and rubbish hairstyles.

VIS Entertainment has found a way to finance the sequel to State of Emergency, and is projecting a late 2004 release for the title. According to an announcement this morning, VIS shareholders have backed a special-function company formed specifically to provide project finance for SOE2 and seek a publishing deal.

Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 clocks up a second week at the top of the UK sales charts this week, while there are new top ten entries for Codemasters' Club Football and the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved.

While Tiger, Club Football and friends were busy scrapping over the big boys' chart positions, fledgling Nokia N-Gage titles were vying for the dubious honour of being the best-selling game on the system after a week at retail.

Last week we brought you word that unashamed GTA rip-off The Simpsons Hit & Run had gone gold and would be out on November 7th on PS2, Xbox and Cube. Well, now Vivendi has seen fit to make liars out of us by doing the unthinkable - moving the game forward to October 31st.

Pool is one of the most universally accessible and rewarding sports known to man. As long as you can reach the bar, you can play pool, and if you can buy and quaff a pint then you can probably play it pretty well. Enhanced self confidence and lowered inhibitions means that you can waltz up to a table in any establishment, blearily slide the cue behind your back, play the ball off four cushions and still pot something useful to a shower of congratulations. It's just fab. The best. Carlsberg invented it. Probably.

Activision wants everyone to know that Creative Assembly's Rome: Total War is on schedule for a late 2004 release. Given all the high profile slippage of late, that's nice to know - although by the end of next year we'll probably have all the games we're pining over this Christmas anyway.

Nokia's fledgling N-Gage console got off to a rather inauspicious start over the weekend, with less than 500 gamers picking up the machine in ChartTrack's registered panel of over 6,000 retailers.

Munch: an Amphibious Gabbit with Odditude on a quest to save Break Wind Hill with his Mudokon buddy Abe. Need we say more? Well, probably, seeing as you're doubtlessly here to find out how on earth an Xbox launch title has fared in the translation to the small screen.

We like monkeys around here. Who doesn't like monkeys? Right you, out, leave the rest of us monkey lovers in peace. For the rest of you, we bring great news that our hairy little friends may well be joining us on the sofa for a spot of PES3 in the coming years, thanks to the advances of science.