Latest Articles (Page 3436)

Empire has signed the rights to Sony Pictures' forthcoming summer-targeted Bad Boys II, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, and plans to ship an internally developed game to coincide with the Christmas DVD launch, on PS2, Xbox, Cube and PC.

We awoke this morning to find FreeLoader sitting on our doorstep. We didn't know what it was until we ripped the padded envelope to shreds of course, but once we had it in our hands it wasn't long before it was in our Cube, booting the likes of Metroid Prime faultlessly first time. Perhaps all the things being said about Datel's latest are, as one of our forum pundits put it yesterday, "an RTFM issue".

Bruce Lee is returning to 16-bit consoles*. It's been years since the success of Bruce Lee: Enter The Dragon on Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, and now their estranged sibling the Game Boy Advance is welcoming Bruce Lee in his aptly titled Return of the Legend - due out this March from Vivendi.

Who cares about war in Iraq, when there are more pressing issues like Square's blanket refusal to bother doing decent PAL conversions?

Sorry folks, I know I got you excited. Say hello to Friday, February 7th. The day on which Unreal II: The Awakening first rose and shone in all its beauty. Unfortunately as we mused at length yesterday, when it comes to everything besides the technology, the whole thing is a rather paint-by-numbers approach to the First Person Shooter.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Unreal II. Skaarj fan? You've come to the right place. Nali sympathiser? You'll enjoy this. But before we head inside, let me ask you a question: just what do you want from Unreal II? Because if you know what you want, I can give you a buying decision right now. It's very simple. Are you an FPS fan who just wants another enjoyable, well-rounded Shooter in the sci-fi vein? Great stuff. Turn yourself around, and enjoy our complimentary plane-ride home. You can buy the game tomorrow. By the way, your in-flight entertainment is a choice of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier Of Fortune II: Double Helix and Jedi Knight II…

Nintendo is to launch its Player's Choice range of budget Cube games in Europe. Starting April 4th, Cube owners will be able to pick up the likes of Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Pikmin for "an estimated retail price of around 30 Euros".

What is wrong with LucasArts these days, eh? They seem to get so very excited when they realise they can complete the Herculean task of porting their average Star Wars Shoot 'Em Ups to other consoles and cram in stuff in the intervening year.

Unsurprisingly, given the success of Silent Assassin, IO Interactive is working on a third Hitman title, due out next year, according to reports.

We haven't got ours yet. Bit of a shame that, but Datel promises we'll be FreeLoading by the end of the week. Meanwhile, we've been watching with great interest the fairly broad response on Datel's CodeJunkies.com forums. You'll need an account to do the same, but here, let us save you the bother…

Konami The Publisher and Konami The Developer may spit out a new Pro Evo shaped sprog somewhere in the world every few months to universal acclaim, but as fans with broader interests will know, they still have Major A on the books churning out ISS titles - and the latest one is heading to the PC.

Microsoft won't be publishing Kakuto Chojin in Europe, the publisher has admitted, after the game met with a poor critical reception in both Japan and the US. Instead, MS will concentrate on first party Beat 'Em Up Tao Feng, which would have been released in the same timeframe.

Several months ago, mobile phone giant Nokia slipped out something of a bombshell when it announced its new range of phones for 2003. Nestled among the various futuristic looking handsets was one that looked radically different from the rest of its kin; a peculiar little device called N-Gage which was clearly designed from the ground up as a merging of mobile phone and handheld games console. Nokia had officially declared war on Nintendo - game on.

Bumpy, synaesthesically gifted Shoot 'Em Up Rez has been recognised by the 17-year-old annual Digital Content Grand Prix for 2002, winning the coveted Sound Design award in a competition curiously sponsored by the Ministry of Economy. The award is of course designed to recognise outstanding digital content productions, which includes videogames, and Rez was deemed the most suitable in the Sound Design category. And rightly so.

Quite a long time ago, a little-known Japanese developer called Tecmo made a beat 'em up game called Dead or Alive for the Saturn and PlayStation. It had nice graphics, a fast and fluid fighting system not dissimilar to the mechanics of Virtua Fighter, and although it was sold as a serious fighting game (and it was indeed a very good one), it did have one fun little feature - the ability to set the level of "bouncyness" on the breasts of the female characters.

"Legends of Wrestling II". It doesn't really have the same kick to it as "WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth", does it? There's none of the flamboyance, egotism, showmanship and outright lunacy of a SmackDown title in the words "Legends of Wrestling II". As a brand, it sounds more like one of those 60-minute-long videos full of cheap archive footage, which you only see advertised on second-rate digital TV channels. And if you do buy it, you have a 30 day no quibbles money back guarantee, as long as you can get hold of the company before they leg it with your dosh.

NovaLogic and NVIDIA have unveiled the latest demo of Delta Force - Black Hawk Down (scroll to the bottom of the Q&A for the link). As you may recall, the demo features a single player mission ("Diplomatic Immunity", where you recapture a prisoner), and a new multi-player map for use over the NovaWorld network ("Bridge over the Jubba River", CTF).

Boring, pointless action movie Ecks vs. Sever will no longer be supplemented by a matching Xbox/PS2 First Person Shooter according to IGN, who confirmed that the game has been officially cancelled. Apparently their suspicions were raised when the game didn't make it out alongside Lucy Lui's DVD during 2002. Meanwhile, we honestly hadn't noticed. Sorry BAM.

Blizzard has updated its World Of Warcraft website with news of Dun Morogh, a snowy stronghold for the Ironforge Dwarves. The mountains provide the dwarves "with a limitless supply of ore and stone for their ambitious engineering endeavours," we're told. It sounds like they've had a bit of a rough ride though.

GameAccount ("Online games for cash prizes") has launched three new web-based golf titles, giving you the chance to have a quick round for free or play a bit more seriously and earn some cash. Given the somewhat obsessive personalities we're up against around here we can't imagine that's a terribly good thing, but nevertheless!

It's hardly much of a coup to get some proper music on your game soundtrack these days, and more often than not a sign of laziness (EA TRAX, for instance), but nevertheless Ubi Soft are "stoked" (no less) to announce that Groove Armada's track "Madder" will "provide the sonic signature" for Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc.

Codemasters has updated the already brimming IGI2: Covert Strike website with another trailer for the game, this time demonstrating "how integral the game's accurately modelled real-world weapons are". Ba-boom-tish, presumably. As ever, it's available in a variety of flavours; a medium quality offering (7.9MB), a higher quality one (21MB) and the same again in MPEG4 (15.6MB).

Shigeru Miyamoto is coming to the UK, and he isn't here to wander around private functions with slobbering journalists eyeing his every move, and embarrassing everyone with their feeble attempts to converse in Japanese. Instead, he's making a public appearance at Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street on February 21st between 1 and 3pm, and fans can buy or bring along any title the great designer has put his name to - numbering over 70 - and get it signed. He's here to see you!

Dark Age of Camelot expansion Shrouded Isles is due out on February 21st, and we hope to have a review with you sometime shortly afterward, but in the meantime developer Mythic wants you to have a look for yourself - that's why they've released a 3.7MB trailer for the game, highlighting changes like the updated visuals, the pack's three new continents and added races and character classes. The trailer can be found via this page, or if you're cheeky like us you can download it direct (right-click job).

The multiplayer demo of Pterodon / Illusion Softworks' Vietcong has been patched to remove a handful of meddlesome bugs. The patch is about 12.5MB and can be downloaded direct from publisher Take-Two here.

EA's all conquering The Sims has returned to the top of the UK ELSPA/ChartTrack All Formats Top 40 after a gap of two and a half years, thanks to the release of the PS2 version.

Devil May Cry is undoubtedly one of the most stylish games to appear on the PS2 to date, and Capcom deserves high praise for managing to make a Goth half-devil hero somehow cool. Honestly. Its relentless assault of enemies, superbly judged difficulty curve and well executed combat system made it an instant favourite with the more action oriented gamers - and lead character Dante was elevated to gaming icon status immediately.

XenGamers reports that Xbox MMORPG True Fantasy Live Online is being overhauled by developer Level 5 to appeal to a broader demographic than previously.

EA/DICE have released the latest update to Battlefield 1942, version 1.3, which does such wonderfully vague things as "optimising server priorities", switching ASCII strings for text and wiping out lag prediction for vehicle-bound soldiers. There are, in fact, rather a lot of fixes - outlined in full in the patch's readme file. You can of course find that on the web - one such method being to "click to see more information" on FilePlanet's download page. Other locations to get the file from include FileShack, 3D Gamers and WorthPlaying. The only snag is that this is the North American patch - regional versions are expected to follow.

We've seen possibly more than our fair share of shoddy, loveless ports on the Xbox over the past year, and we can't help but finger some of the big name publishers for their attitude towards the new formats. The basic premise over the last 18 months seems to be to design everything for the PS2 and then if it's a hit, bung it out as "cost effectively" as possible on the Xbox and GameCube, and presto, a whole new sku to service the cash rich early adopter.