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Squenix released the first details of its upcoming “profound tragic saga” Drakengard at E3 this year. Developed by a team which has a combined resumé including Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Bust-a-Groove(!) and Ace Combat, the game is an RPG adventure which sees the player as Kyme, a young prince attempting to rescue his sister from his Empire-besieged kingdom. The twist is that his only hope of rescuing her is to form a dragon pact, for which he sacrifices his power of speech (that’s part of the deal).

Nintendo is continuing the tradition of re-releasing vaguely enhanced Mario titles on the GameBoy Advance, finally treating gamers to the fantastic Super Mario Bros. 3, one of our favourite NES games. We had a quick go on it during E3 and it looks just as it should do, with all eight worlds, various bosses, Koopa Troopers wandering around the maps and such. We can't wait for the excuse to play through it again.

No surprises at the top of the UK sales chart this week, as Atari's Enter the Matrix pushes Legend of Zelda off the top spot - and there are strong showings for GTA Vice City on PC and Return to Castle Wolfenstein on Xbox.

Sony is expected to announce that it's to cut the price of the PlayStation 2 in Europe at last, with the console dropping from €249 to €199 in a move which brings the hardware price in line with the Xbox and GameCube.

As you may have gathered during the show, Konami's jungle-based Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is set to be a PS2 exclusive, and due out during 2004. It's safe to say that all who saw it enjoyed the massive 12-minute E3 trailer, but the game's reception wasn't quite up to the air of awe-filled expectancy swirling around ECTS and E3 a few years ago when MGS2 was still some ways off. But that score still does strange things to us.

When Microsoft parted with $375 million to wrench Rare from Nintendo's clutches, it sent shockwaves across the industry, or at least had done several months previously, and spelled out the lengths that Redmond is prepared to go to capture market share in the console war.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is pleased! Pleased to announce that EyeToy is going to be called "EyeToy: Play" and released with 12 games included during the month of July. As you may have seen at PlayStation Experience in August (or at E3 just last week), EyeToy is a system whereby a USB camera interprets the player's actions in a number of cute little mini-games, all of which your truly sucks at.

Whilst we were busy playing games and pretending to find people funny and/or interesting, Sony and Microsoft announced their respective US price cuts. Sony led the way, cutting the cost of PS2 to $179.99 in order to "clear inventory" ahead of the launch of a revamped unit in line with the new Japanese model, which includes a built in IR receiver and cuts Firewire support amongst other things. And of course Microsoft quickly followed suit, announcing a matching reduction to $179.99.

Although we didn't get the chance to play it [which is shorthand for 'it looked the same' -Ed], SCEA and Zipper Interactive had SOCOM II: US Navy SEALs waiting for us on the show floor this year. Created "in association with Naval Special Warfare Command" (the cat's truly out of the bag these days, isn't it?), SOCOM II will offer a mix of 12 single player and 22 online missions similar to its predecessor, dragging the player and other elite special units across treacherous terrain in Algeria, Albania, Brazil and Russia amongst other countries (not Iraq?).

Konami will release Silent Scope on Xbox this coming November. The game will be a conglomeration of three titles in one package: Silent Scope, Silent Scope: Dark Silhouette, and the console exclusive Silent Scope 3. The first two games will receive graphical enhancements over the original versions, and the game will also feature light-gun support for the first time on a home console. And thank goodness for that, because playing a fast-paced sniping game with a bloody joypad is pretty naff [Dreamcast version seemed fine to me! -Jetlagged Tom]. Pah.

Having launched Xbox Live in eight European countries on March 14th, Microsoft is now preparing to roll it out in another six. Before the end of the calendar year (as opposed to the financial one), gamers in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland will be able to beat Kristan at any game he's playing, which should include the likes of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Brute Force, Midtown Madness 3 and Midnight Club II - all of which will be Living it up by the end of June. We don't have any specific dates or beta details, unfortunately, but if we find anything we'll let you know.

Apart from a rather dodgy game engine, Conflict: Desert Storm was easily SCI's best game in ages. For some, it was the next Ghost Recon. Not for Ubi Soft, obviously, who are busy working on Tom Clancy's Xtreme Recon 2004, but for some.

Ubi Soft revealed at E3 (we're only just now picking our way through the mountains of press releases... oh you have no idea) that Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield will be winging its way onto the Xbox in – wait a minute – March 2003? Yeah, we have no idea what they're on about there, but it definitely didn't ship in March.

It was announced a few days ago while nobody was looking that Capcom and Buena Vista will be bringing the videogame incarnation of Tim Burton’s animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas to the PlayStation 2 late 2004. No further details have been released about the title, but we smell platformer.

Empire announced at E3 its five-year licensing deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment, enabling them to develop and publish an official Starship Troopers title based on the movie and animated series. We have to admit that the Starship Troopers license lends itself well to a videogame context, and thus far all we've seen is a decidedly average RTS from Microprose three years ago. No details yet about what type of game we're going to see from Empire, but we'd put money on a squad-based FPS.

Our pals at Vivendi have announced their publishing deal for Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit. The Omikron developer has crafted an "interactive thriller" set in New York, where ordinary people are murdering total strangers for no apparent reason (what's new, then?). The player, as one Lucas Kane, finds himself in the shoes of a murderer haunted by strange visions and the need to find out exactly what's going on whilst on the run from the police.

Vivendi has released some details on a new Simpsons title due for release this September on PS2, Xbox and GameCube. The Simpsons Hit & Run combines mission-based driving with out-of-car platforming - so when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater isn't being shamefully ripped off, it's GTA3.

2015, developer of the often great Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, is once again defiling our fine language by releasing some press about its newest title Men of Valor: The Vietnam War, for Xbox and PC. Surprisingly, it portrays infantry combat in the Vietnam War, following a Marine as he guides his fellow soldiers through the early stages of the war to the Tet Offensive.

TDK has released details on its forthcoming Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey. Developed by Vicious Cycle, the game is centred on a civilization in which humans and dinosaurs live alongside and quite probably eat each other, on the island of Dinotopia.

As regular readers will no doubt acknowledge wearily, we're quite partial to a bit of monkey magic at Eurogamer, and the prospect of a game involving herding up a group of cheeky chimps merely increases our intake of bananas to ludicrous levels.

"If in doubt, revenge." Walking around the GDC last year I was half expecting to see a number of placards offering advice like this - like real life tooltips for developers. "If in doubt, revenge." "Game too difficult? Bullet time." "Off a project? Pitch a rally game." Ahem. Fortunately I didn't see any such signs or slogans, thus restoring my faith in humanity, and of the lectures I attended I certainly didn't hear anybody evangelising such nonsense. Although EA did tell us how one of its big flops of 2002 took a mere six months to build…

We've nabbed and locally hosted a teaser trailer for SOE's forthcoming massively multiplayer Star Wars title, Galaxies. The 19mb QuickTime movie has a fair amount of in-game footage detailing character creation, environments and communities, and is well worth a download if you've been longing to see the slippy mmorpg in action. There's no sign of the space combat sections, or any imperial machinery for that matter, but what's there has whet our appetite for the game's release this summer.

We know the exclusive presentation has now leaked out onto the net, but any game that makes us physically shake with excitement deserves some measure of evangelism nevertheless. With Half Life 2, Valve has taken the FPS by the scruff of the neck, whirled it around its head, and drop kicked its sorry arse into another dimension. The five years of quiet hype-free development have positioned the US team so far ahead of the competition it's almost embarrassing. Better than Doom III and Halo 2? Yep. But how?

We never expected to be writing about Pac-Man at E3, right from the day we bought the plane tickets to about five minutes after Miyamoto brought the subject to life on Tuesday. Even after we'd seen Nintendo's creative overlord locks horns with Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani, Hideo Koshima and NOA's George Harrison at the Nintendo conference, the prospect of spending as much as a minute of the show this week hunting down ghosts and munching pills was farther-fetched than the notion of our trading Matrix Reloaded tickets for magic beans. But as we strolled somewhat disgruntled from Kirby's Air Ride this afternoon, we just so happened to fill the fourth seat at one of the Pac-Man consoles. And so we renewed our friendship with the first Man of gaming.

We're sure you've spent many an hour raking about the web trying to find some Half-Life 2 videos to lap up and get yourself all sweaty about Valve's forthcoming goliath. We know we have. That's why we were especially chuffed to come across this FTP archive of GameSpot footage straight from the show, mirrored on Blueyonder games here in the UK. Now we've not had the opportunity to watch most of the content, so we're not sure how much of it you're likely to have seen, but we're sure you wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to have a peek anyway. Knock yourselves out (not literally, natch).

Rockstar has announced the full title of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne - and has been showing it off to a select audience at E3 by invitation only. Sadly, Eurogamer wasn't one of the lucky invitees (sniff), but I've been assured that our boys over there are trying their best to "get a look at it somehow". The game is being billed as a "Film Noir Love Story", suggesting that the ham and cheese machine at Remedy is still in full effect for this one. Hopefully we can wring some more details out of Rockstar by going up to its stand and giving them a stern look or something.

InfogramesNotAtari and Turbine have announced that they've got Dungeons & Dragons Online in development. The game will typically involve mooching about in dungeons, knocking seven shades out of a variety of monsters, and rival guilds having power struggles over their particular patch of grass. With Turbine simultaneously developing Middle-Earth Online, it looks like they've suddenly become the poster boys of online beardy fantasy entertainment.

Nintendo has announced from E3 its intention to release a retail bundle that includes the GameCube system and the GameBoy Player, the device that enables players to play any of over 1,200 GameBoy/Advance games on their Cube. For a "limited time" the deal will be priced at the current cost of a regular GameCube system. The offer will launch on June 20th over here at a price of 199.99 euros, while the US price will somewhat irritatingly be set at $149.99 - cheers for that, Nintendo.

When the doors of E3 opened this year, Eurogamer made several bee-lines, and one of the first was in the direction of Factor 5's Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike. Like most of the staff (with the exception of Rob), I was a big fan of Rogue Leader, lapping up the delightful mixture of familiar movie-based sections and challenging new scenarios like a thirsty dog on a hot day. And as one of the most popular third party launch titles in any console's history, it's probably safe to say I'm not alone in this.

After the terrific success that Sonic Adventure 2 enjoyed on the GameCube, it isn't too surprising to discover Sega brewing another Sonic title in the same vein; giving you control of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in various 3D worlds that Eggman currently has in his easily loosened grip. And it's equally unsurprising to find it on the show floor, in a trio of 20 per cent complete versions running on Xbox, Cube and PS2.