Latest Articles (Page 3419)

Rally games aren't much of a commodity these days. Neither is the promise of six prestigious global rallies, 33 stages, 25 licensed vehicles in five classes, and four game modes including split-screen multi-player. If you didn't know I was talking about Rally Championship from Warthog and SCi, you might just as soon imagine I was talking about WRC2 (Sony), Colin McRae 3 (Codies), Rally Fusion (Activision), Pro Rally (Ubi Soft), V-Rally 3 (Infogrames) or Sega Rally 3. Even if I throw in realistic car damage systems, real car physics, advanced weather effects and actual rallying techniques, I could still be talking about pretty much any of them. And you know that's just marketing guff anyway.

Sony has put us at ease by confirming that it will be showing Gran Turismo 4 at this year's E3, GamesRadar is reporting. A large press event will be held on 14th May, with series producer Kazunori Yamauchi running us through the major features and changes we can expect in GT4.

Ubi Soft has announced its E3 stand contents for this year. These will include the intriguing Beyond Good & Evil, action shooter Far Cry, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Raven Shield Xbox port, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, and cel-shaded first-person shooter XIII.

Many moons ago, when everything Nintendo touched turned to gold, the idea of the GameCube and GBA co-existing in link-up heaven seemed fantastically innovative, and provided gaming possibilities that would finally see the convergence of handheld and console gaming.

Online gaming on consoles has been a stop start affair in Europe, but the launch of Xbox Live last Friday across Europe looks capable of providing a service that can drag the online gamer into the living room, with a fast growing selection of games. But will it just be an exercise in expanding your swear word vocabulary or is this really the brave new world of gaming? We sat down with Microsoft's head of Xbox platform, Michel Cassius, and reminded him once again that while France may have good players, they were shocking in the last World Cup...

Last Friday, Shigeru Miyamoto and entourage descended on London's Oxford Street to meet and greet fans of his many games. But before he signed your bare chests and you ran screaming from the building like jubilant teenage girls at a Blue concert, Mr. Miyamoto and Zelda's director Mr. Aonuma spoke at length to assembled journalists in the underbelly of Virgin Megastore. What's more, Nintendo was good enough to take notes - we're sure you'll find them most enlightening!

Dreamcatcher is the latest publisher to expose us to its list of wares for showing off at this year's E3. We can expect to see first-person shooter Painkiller, the World War II-themed escape-'em-up Pilot Down, and X-treme Beach Soccer. Of particular note on its roster, however, is the Xbox port of first-person RPG Arx Fatalis, and BattleCruiser Generations, the fourth title in the acclaimed BattleCruiser series.

Let's cut to the chase straight away: you'll either love Resident Evil or you'll hate it, and most of you will already have your mind made up about the fifth in the zombie-slaying series before you've even clapped eyes on it. Whatever your allegiance, there are fundamental truths about this series that remain as relevant today as they did way back in 1996.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando is to be the next instalment in Insomniac’s superb platform series, with a PS2 only release pencilled in for “later this year”, which loosely translated will mean late October/early November.

This is a very rough calculation, but we'd say it took 15 hours before we broke our first pad on Super Monkey Ball. It was as we munched the 'Advanced' banana for the fifteen-bagillionth time, dashing our chances of continuing by going for a distant ribbon up a narrow gangway, ironically in the hope of catapulting ourselves further into the game. Conscious (to some degree) of the short length of the controller cord and the potential of the GameCube to go flying off the shelf, we beat the smirking crap out of a stuffed Pikachu for a whole minute. We survived. Pikachu survived. The pad did not.

In 1991, the idea of Sonic The Hedgehog on a Nintendo console was ludicrous. The idea of seven Sonic games on one tiny piece of at the time unheard of proprietary media, sold for £30 at the average games shop, was even wackier. If you'd turned to us at the time and said that in 2003 we'd be playing Sonic 1-3 on a Nintendo, we'd have said "what are you talking about, man? I don't play videogames, man - games are so uncool!" Yeah well, we all did it, didn't we?

Sega of Japan has announced that the first of its Sega Ages titles - PS2 conversions of Sega classics - will be released in Japan this August. Phantasy Star, Fantasy Zone, Monaco GP and Space Harrier will receive updates to their graphics and sound and will retail at 2500 yen, which roughly translates to about £13.

Namco has announced a cross-licensing deal with Todd McFarlane Productions, which will see the companies releasing products based on each other's franchises. The first of product to see the light of day as a result of the deal will be the Spawn action-adventure currently in development by Namco's US branch, Namco Hometech, for Xbox, PS2 and GameCube.

LucasArts has finally revealed full details and images for Full Throttle: Hell On Wheels, the long awaited sequel to the much loved original, released on the PC in 1995.

The first "details" of the Tekki/Steel Battalion online title have been scraped from the game's official Japanese website by IGN. Firstly, the game is now apparently titled Tekki Wars in Japan, though whether this means the Western counterpart will be rather awkwardly named Steel Battalion Wars remains to be seen - we would prefer Steel Battalion Online. The following piece of translated Japanese from the site reveals... well, not a lot:

We love a good slice of phat Funk here at EG. That's not to say we've got da Funk, because we clearly haven't, but that doesn't stop us shaking our booty every time a bit of down and dirty groin music pumps out (you should see Rauper's moves). But according to the alien trio of ToeJam, Earl, and 'hot new homegirl' Latisha, the Earthlings just haven't got the groove. How patronising.

Nintendo's E3 line-up isn't all that difficult to guess - particularly when it's laid bare (for the most part, we expect) on this rather helpful page, which sheds some light on each of the games featured. Before we get onto that though, they will be "Mario Kart Double Dash!!", F-Zero, Pikmin 2, Kirby Air Ride, Wario World and Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising. No sign of Mario 128, but we wouldn't be too surprised if the portly plumber rears his moustachioed head in some capacity during the show.

"The awesome sequel to 'The Fighting Game Of The Year', Capcom vs. SNK," Capcom proudly boasts of this one. Indeed, that would be a good claim, if it weren't for the fact they probably mean the year 1999.

BuenaVista have quite proudly announced that they've managed to sign Rebecca Romijn-Stamos up to lend her voice to Mercury in forthcoming sci-fi shooter TRON 2.0. The character itself acts as a sort of mentor for the player, easing them into their power as a 'User', and revealing the back-story to the game in the 20 years that have passed since the original TRON movie. Apparently she is very pretty as well.

JoWooD and Infogrames have signed a deal that will see the French firm publisher the Austrian one's Piranha Bytes-developed RPG Gothic II all over the world. Except Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where JoWooD has already released it (as far as we can make out).

Racing games are hardly uncommon, now, are they? With each passing year, we all watch the endless procession of increasingly beautiful and expansive racers pass us by, like little blurs of metallic lightning. Some are crap and some are good, but the truly excellent ones have uniform stunning visuals, all manner of vehicles to toy with, and varied, authentic tracks. The top one or two per cent will play better than Ridge Racer Type 4. If you only buy a couple every year, the chances are that any given driver has to have Heidi Klum's looks, Michael Schumacher's skill behind the wheel and Jay-K's fleet of sports cars to even come close. Unfortunately for WorldRacing, at first glance it doesn't seem to check all the right boxes.

EA has named the Allied Assault expansion pack mentioned during its recent announcement of the Pacific Assault line of World War II-based shooters. Medal of Honor Allied Assault: Breakthrough is being developed by EALA and TKO Software and is due out by the end of the year.

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball is bound to inspire a lot of hot-tempered emotions in some people, not least of all Eurogamer's resident moral guardian Rob Fahey, whose rather venomous first impressions piece left a lot of people either sighing in accordance or seething with rage. Then again, any game that aims to make money by giving blokes a brace of virtual Barbie dolls under the guise of a sports game will obviously polarise opinion.

A few details of LucasArts' Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike have been revealed over at Gamers.com. The game will feature a return to the ice planet of Hoth, just like every other Star Wars game ever, and players are also seemingly able to enter and exit vehicles, probably only at specific points, to indulge in some third-person action. This is evident in one of the screenshots showing the player dangling beneath the chassis of an AT-AT, attacking it with a lightsabre, and another depicting some interior action that looks like it could be on board the Death Star.

Sam Fisher remained the nation’s favourite stealth hero, clinging onto the No.1 slot for a second straight week, fighting off the All Format might of The Sims, which crept back up to No.2. The record breaking CM4 slipped to No.3, while the heavily-discounted Primal remained at No.4 for a second week.

It's bizarre to recount that the best Indiana Jones game ever made was in fact a point and click adventure; the several half-hearted attempts over the past decade and a half have merely disappointed those looking to LucasArts to come up with a whip cracking adventure worthy of sporting the Man With The Hat's license.

Sony has David Braben's Frontier Developments working on a dog simulator for the PS2, PlayStation.com is reporting. "Dog's Life" is aimed at youngsters, and gives you control of Jake, a happy puppy from Clarksville, USA, whose little life is thrown into disarray after the dognapping of his best pal Daisy. Jake immediately sets out to rescue Daisy, travelling across the US, visiting everything from ski resorts to bustling cities.

CDV has seen fit to offer PC gamers a little late Easter present, in the shape of Rosso Rabbit, a free download. Sadly, the download only consists of one level to try out, after which you can upgrade to the 18-level version for a measly €9.99/£6.95.

We're just drawing your attention to them really. They're here. What does everyone think? We like the idea of having multiple characters per Kart, chariot-racing style, and the split-screen modes are an unsurprising but welcome inclusion. And on the whole, it looks very pretty - perhaps a bit conventional compared to Nintendo's recent revamps (Metroid, Zelda, etc), but as long as the gameplay lives up to its billing we shouldn't have anything to worry about. With any luck, Mario Kart will be playable at E3.

Another new patch for Master of Orion 3 has been released over at the official website, again addressing some balancing issues and fixing a few bugs, including tech development slowdown, slight improvements in military strategic AI, changes to race picks, and easier off-road travel.