Latest Articles (Page 3435)

Eidos is muscling in on the wrestling sim genre, having picked up the license to Backyard Wrestling and set developer Paradox to task bringing it to PS2 and Xbox this summer. You can see the first fruits of their labour here.

As you may have gathered from our rather stinging review of Contra's PS2 debut, we don't have much time for this recycled style of memorise 'em up gaming when the platform and the developer are clearly capable of so much more. However, Konami's decision to port the last SNES Contra ("The Alien Wars") to GBA is a more understandable one, and we do have some excitingly positive, dewy-eyed recollections of how much time we spent with that one - so in some respects, we're less inclined to slag it for the same reasons; for being a ten-year-old game.

Having lost its grip on Medal of Honor superstars 2015, (who went to Vivendi of all people with their Vietnam inspired FPS), EA has taken steps to cement its relationship with Swedish Battlefield 1942 developer Digital Illusions, C.E. (or DICE).

Newbury Racecourse. It doesn't sound like the sort of place that one thousand avid gamers would gather to blow chunks out of one another, does it? But, for as far back as we can remember (three years), Multiplay's I-series LANs have drawn huge numbers of people to this most peculiar of venues. And pizza. Lots of pizza.

Congratulations. The fuss kicked up about Reflections' Driver 3 has apparently convinced Impact Pictures to pick up the film and TV rights to the game from Infogrames. Let's face it; it can't be anything to do with the game's most recent instalment on PlayStation one…

Contra is the videogame equivalent of those wire-buzzer games you used to get at school fetes. You remember the ones. You had a little metal ring on a stick, like a needle with its eye opened wide enough to fit your index finger, and you had to move it slowly along a bumpy course without touching the magnetised wire in the centre. Touching said wire rang a buzzer so loud and obnoxious that you'd stutter and do it again and again, until you ran out of chances and everyone gathered around would chorus that "you got so close", yes, and you lost your five pence piece forever.

Benchmarkers favourite 3D Mark has been given its traditional annual overhaul, giving hardware boffins the chance to sit around comparing numbers in a new "and even more relevant" suite of tests. As with the previous Marks, this one runs the player through a series of gorgeous game-like sequences - in this case a flight combat showcase, a stroll through nature, a troll hunt and an FPS scene entitled "The Battle of Proxycon". It tests all sorts of other things too, and eventually spits out a number - which you can be assured someone, somewhere, will be able to beat. That's the rule.

Ubi Soft tells us that the GameCube and Game Boy Advance versions of Splinter Cell will be able to link up with one another and swap some sort of data, although amusingly the whole thing is very classified for the time being.

Mindscape plans to release the rather enjoyable O.R.B (Off World Resource Base), a Homeworld style space RTS, during March for £19.99 in the UK.

Big Mutha Truckers developer Eutechnyx has delayed the PC and GameCube versions until April to add some new features. "We wanted to put some more stuff in to reward people for the wait," an Empire spokesperson said in a statement.

Hunter is returning to Xbox with a new character and new areas to clear, Interplay and US publisher Vivendi have proudly announced. Even better, Hunter: The Reckoning Redeemer (another product of the Interplay Stupid Name Committee), will feature downloadable Xbox Live content in a vaguely timely fashion but, alas, no Live multi-player that we can see. There will of course be a big single/multi-player campaign for those gathered around the TV though, with new weapons, power-ups, edges and combat moves. As big Hunter fans, we can hardly wait! Let's just hope someone actually manages to release it over here, eh?

3DO has stopped making Army Men games for the GBA, the company has announced in its quarterly conference call for Yank journos. The move is down to appalling sales of most recent GBA games which didn't fit the so-called Triple A bracket. Which is pretty much all of them - even the "exciting" 16-bit conversions which Nintendo famously set up an automated production facility to continue pumping out [stop lying - Ed].

Reports from the US suggest that Activision has cancelled Enemy Territory, the single/multi-player standalone add-on to Gray Matter's fondly remembered Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

It isn't long since we were zooming around the world in the shoes of Colin McRae's third iteration, with pretty much only the disappointing view to complain about. But as you might imagine, The Codemasters haven't been sitting on their laurels parping their trumpets into the night - instead, they have been planning Colin McRae Rally 4.0, according to Codemasters Customer Service. No surprises there then. There is of course no information on dates, features, etc, but given the amount of questioning the confirmation is likely to prompt on that forum thread, it might be an idea for fans to keep an eye on it for further revelations.

Shigeru Miyamoto will be on Oxford Street signing our bare, naked bodies on Friday next, but ahead of that unmissable spectacle, Ninty's father of gaming has told journalists that he expects both Mario 128 and Pikmin 2 to be released in Japan by the end of 2003, with a sequel to The Legend of Zelda potentially reaching completion in 2004.

The next Xbox is looking less and less like a games console, and more like a set top box PC if comments made by Microsoft uber-boss Bill Gates are to be taken at face value.

Selling us back our childhoods is something publishers have been doing for some time now, and with varying degrees of success. While we all love to wallow in some dewy eyed nostalgia from time to time, it's often disconcerting to come face to face with the reality of the past. Sometimes things are just as fantastic as you remember them - except maybe even better because you can appreciate their greatness with the benefit of your wisdom and perspective. We call this the Fine Wine syndrome. But in the other camp is a rubbish bin of memories that's so potently distressing that when you're greeted with the painful truth of How Wrong Can You Be it's almost harrowing. This should, perhaps, be referred to as the Rotting Corpse syndrome.

What with PS2 Platinum and Cube Player's Choice, budget titles are well represented on both consoles - and generally by the cream of the crop, too.

Last week we told you about Empire's licence to make a Bad Boys II game, and we expressed mild scepticism about the whole thing. Shame on us?

Phantasy Star Online's American audience of Cube owners will be no doubt thrilled to learn that Sega is providing a special Valentine's quest for them, running until February 17th.

Remember Syberia? The game you voted 28th best game of 2002? Well, its developer, The Adventure Company, has just finished work on Port Mortem, its mystery of the macabre, which puts you in the role of a private detective working on a homicide case.

Legend/Epic's long awaited First Person Shooter Unreal II only made it to a disappointing No.4 on its first week in the chart, failing to dislodge The Sims (No.1) or the immovable pair of Vice City (No.2) or The Getaway (No.3).

Sega of America says it has pulled its GameCube Sega Sports line-up, and sources (including sales data) suggest that's because nobody bought it. Sega still pledges to deliver high quality "entertainment" titles to the console, like shameless ports of three-year-old platform games. Furthermore, the Sega Sports line will not be abandoned on PS2 and Xbox.

The Yanks just aren't buying The Sims Online to the extent EA had been hoping (well, it's about time The Sims floundered, isn't it?), and so the flirtatious publishing its pimping its wares rather more directly in the hope of snagging lonely hearts on this Friday, February 14th - Valentine's Day.

Microsoft Game Studios tells us that Freelancer has gone gold and will be released in the UK on April 11th. The news follows plenty of positive coverage of the beta version recently distributed to the press (including real life freelancers).

Insane Logics (cute name) has released a demo version of their in-development FPS, Sabotage, featuring levels one (sewers, 80 per cent complete) and five (modern setting at bio-genetic corporation, 50 per cent complete) of the single player game in one sleek 92.1MB package. Available here.

As reported last week, Konami is preparing ISS3 for a PC debut in April, in an attempt to wrestle some of the PC market away from Electronic Arts. However, Konami is also - as ever - planning versions of ISS3 for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, and these will be wrapped around the PC version. PS2 in March, PC in April, Cube in May.

With PlayStation 2 still firmly outselling both of its (cheaper) rivals, it's been confirmed to us unofficially that the console is not about to undergo a price cut. Sorry about that. However, it has become apparent that Sony is planning a few little schemes to encourage sales.

A long-running legal spat between NVIDIA and Microsoft over the price of components being supplied for the Xbox has been settled at last - but NVIDIA's involvement in Xbox 2 remains doubtful, with many sources continuing to suggest that ATI remains the front runner in the race to supply the graphics chipset for the system.

Microsoft has pulled Beat 'Em Up Kakuto Chojin from stores in North America and Japan. According to reports, Microsoft Japan has been saying it's down to "religious references" in the game, which may have caused offence.