Latest Articles (Page 3457)

We've already discussed at great length the variety of multiplayer options available in Red Faction II; how you can tweak just about anything, add bots to the play scheme, emulate your favourite multiplayer modifications right down to instant gibbing and much more across several main play modes.

Oh baby

After selling 4.5 million copies with its two Rally titles, it's fairly obvious that Codemasters has got this genre sussed. And two years on, the level of expectation for the third in the series is understandably high, especially given that it's the first to appear on next gen consoles. Being lucky sods, we managed to get our sweaty paws on an Xbox preview copy, and it's shaping up nicely.

Novalogic's Delta Force - Black Hawk Down has slipped to November 29th, as the developer apparently wants to spend more time tinkering under the bonnet. BHD now occupies a spot on an ever-growing list of November twenty-niners, poised to rotor its way into the Christmas rush.

Both EA and Vivendi have finished work on their Lord of the Rings games, according to reports from the US. Vivendi's literary adaptation, developed by Seattle-based WXP and entitled The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is shipping on Xbox and GBA in the US right now, and will ship on PS2 and PC this October. Meanwhile, EA's movie adaptation, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which is based on the forthcoming cinematic release and also derives content from last year's instalment, has also gone gold, and will appear on PlayStation 2 and GBA in the US in early November.

Having revealed plans for a new secret agent-'em-up called Critical Bullet last week, Capcom has gone back to its fantasy roots with its most recent announcement: a "fantasy opera" with RPG overtones called Chaos Legion. Based on a series of tales in a Japanese fantasy magazine, Chaos Legion stars Sieg Wahrheit (translates to "hail the truth" in German according to the developer), a knight on a mission to repremand his former friend Victor Delacroix, now a member of a sinister religious sect called Yami (Japanese for "darkness").

Bond games have been the staple diet of the gaming menu since the mid 80s, but just one, Rare's 1997 masterpiece GoldenEye has actually been worth owning. Can EA's latest finally do the franchise justice?

The Sims. No introduction needed, I'm sure. The Sims: Unleashed is the fifth in a series of what I call hairline expansion packs. They don't add enough to really justify the £15 asking price, but they supplement the game's basic functions enough that obsessive players will happily cough up.

Looking uncannily like PC classic Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem Advance is more than just a straight port - it's a whole new adventure - and that's bound to count for something in the surprisingly saturated FPS market on Nintendo's handheld. But can the ageing Duke deliver the goods necessary to trounce Ecks Vs. Sever and dominate Doom?

Details of Sports Interactive's Championship Manager magazine have been released on SIGames.com, and punters from across the globe can now pre-order the mag, which will go on sale on October 24th priced £5.49. Apart from a huge, no-access barred preview of CM4, which was to be expected, the mag's cover disc will play host to a rolling demo of the game, showcasing the new match engine, as well as the CM 01/02 patch v3.6.67, which includes updated data, the addition of the South Korean league and an updated pre-game editor.

To celebrate the-week-after-next's release of TimeSplitters 2 on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Eidos has launched Monkey Assist, a service dedicated to answering your requests - whatever they may be. So, if you want someone to pay off your debts, make you king of the world, or just to fetch you another beer from the fridge, Eidos' Monkey Assist service aims to answer your call, as long as you live in one of the areas they'll be visiting; London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh, Southampton, Birmingham and Brighton, over the next few weeks.

Nintendo has secured a major sports sponsorship deal to promote Super Mario Sunshine in Europe. Having thrown Americans into vats of spaghetti and measured tongues, Nintendo is being slightly more reserved about things on this side of the pond. Instead of smearing fans with Italian food or measuring organs, the platform holder has instead sponsored the foremost moustache in English sport: that of ITV football anchorman Des Lynam.

Koei's Mystic Heroes, which looked so impressive at E3 earlier this year, will be published in Europe by THQ on Nintendo GameCube. The game will hit retail on November 29th, just in time for the Christmas rush. Rather like From Software's Lost Kingdoms, the game is built around a system or rune attacks, with four elements, each of which has strengths and weaknesses, to use in battle. There are more than 70 runes in the game's story and survival modes, and with as much as 300 square metres of ground on-screen and occupied by enemies at any given time, you're going to need to learn their strengths and quirks with great haste. And as with Lost Kingdoms, each stage culminates in a climactic boss encounter.

Microsoft has told News.com that it has taken legal action against Hong Kong-based games importer and modification stockist Lik Sang. The web-based retailer was popular amongst those importing games from Japan and those in search of illicit mod chips, which allow Xbox (and other consoles) to run games from all regions as well as pirated software and homemade programs.

Mario is an institution. How many videogame characters are recognised ahead of Mickey Mouse? Just one. It's his instant accessibility and the courageously groundbreaking design of his platform games which continues to excite and astound fans of the series.

Ever belligerent, Microsoft has launched an aggressive Xbox bundle to battle Sony in the US this Christmas. Featuring the console, a Controller S pad and two free Sega games; Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future, the only thing missing from the bundle is a DVD remote control, which is, as ever, sold separately.

It's another week for big releases, headlined peculiarly enough by a certain Italian plumber on Nintendo GameCube. Super Mario Sunshine has been a long time coming - it's arguably the only viable successor to Super Mario 64 - and for fans of Miyamoto's inimitable platform finesse, there is no finer videogame this Friday. Elsewhere though, the Cube is a barren landscape dotted only with also-rans. THQ's MX Superfly is the only other highlight, with Ubi Soft's Pro Rally and Infogrames' Taz Wanted making up the numbers.

We love this time of year, we really do. As developers rush to get their Christmas goodness onto the shelves on time, us lucky gaming pups have a feeding frenzy at the gaming zoo as quality software arrives on a thrice daily basis.

The original Onimusha held the distinction of being the first PS2 title to sell a million copies in Japan, and was arguably one of the few must-have games in the early months of the console's life.

Instead of seven mindless 80s compilations, Take-Two's seven Vice City soundtrack CDs announced last month will each unlock access to a special area of http://www.vicecityradio.com. In turn, this 'special area' of the site will give access to cheat codes and other useful perks for players, thus elevating this expensive merchandising gimmick above the status of vague association.

As with Earth & Beyond and Command & Conquer Generals, Electronic Arts will be conducting an online play test before the official release of The Sims Online, although due to the popularity of the game (most popular PC game ever don't you yawn know), play testing will be by invitation only.

It's no great secret that Cossacks is one of my favourite real-time strategy games of recent years. With epic battles that can feature literally thousands of troops on-screen at once, superb multiplayer support and a variety of historical single player campaigns following more than a dozen European nations through two centuries of conflict, it was a truly spectacular affair.

AMD was kind enough to let us borrow one of its latest CPUs, and they run rings around everything except for Intel's top-of-the-line Pentium 4 2.8GHz. The 333MHz FSB-toting Athlon XP 2700+ (2.17GHz) and 2800+ (2.25GHz) almost equal Intel's top chip in pretty much every test we threw at them, but Intel still edges it on everything except the latest motherboards. Indeed, our American cousins were ordered to review the chips on NVIDIA's immature nForce2 platform, which produces results across the board in the likes of Quake III Arena, Serious Sam Second Encounter, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Commache 4 that top Intel's. Stick an XP2800+ on a KT400-based motherboard though and the story is quite different, slipping below Intel's standard by a few notches. On a general PC use level, the latest Athlons pip Intel to the post - again, particularly so in the company of an nForce2.

American Cubists will be able to buy Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II from October 29th - assuming Sonic Team can fix some irritating bugs between now and then - but those paying their $8.95 per month subscription fee will be able to do more than just group with other online gamers. Sega of America today announced that as with the Dreamcast version, players will be able to download newer and greater quests as quickly as Sonic Team can invent them. Having played for free on the Dreamcast, PSO addicts are being forced to cough up for the privilege this time out, and Sega hopes to lure them back with the promise of gimmicks and extras. The recent revelation that the Cube's first online game would allow for full GBA game downloads - including NiGHTS - is only part of it.

Westwood's Command & Conquer series has been awaiting an evolution for years, and according to the publisher, it can certainly wait a couple of months more. After the brilliant-but-arguably-a-bit-lazy Tiberian Sun three years ago, and the good-but-this-is-taking-the-piss-now Red Alert 2 two years ago, we've had only rubbish Renegade and Yuri's Revenge to keep us ticking over - it's time to wage war again. But despite looking incredible in the corporate mosh pit that was this year's EA Play event, Westwood is holding the game back to apply a bit more spit and polish, and hopes to have the game on store shelves by the end of January. Hurry up, chaps!

Never before have the words 'adrenaline fuelled' and 'aaaaargggggh' had so much relevance when playing a videogame for the first time. To say that Burnout 2 is quick is like saying that John Major likes a Curry.

Upon its PS2 release nearly a year ago, Silent Hill 2 was undoubtedly the blackest, most sinister, twisted game ever to grace the world of videogames. Successfully splicing the survival horror and adventure genres to brilliant effect, Konami was universally applauded for producing one of the games of the year - thankfully the public thought so too, and bought it in droves.

German development studio Westka Interactive has gone under, with the remaining 44 employees at the company being laid off as of yesterday, Monday September 30th.

Divine Divinity has been patched (or "hotfixed") to version 1.32 by developer Larian Studios. The patch weighs in at a wholly acceptable 3.5MB, and tweaks issues ranging from boss difficulty levels to colour depth management. Plus, you can no longer quick save when you're dead. No doubt useful to those of you with a tendency to hit the wrong button. Oh there's no shame in it - we've been doing it since the days of Doom.

Vivendi has snapped up the rights to Quentin Tarantino's latest movie exactly one year prior to its theatrical release date. Due to start showing in October 2003, Kill Bill is the tale of an assassin (Uma Thurman) on a quest to kill her double-crossing boss Bill (David Carradine), whilst avoiding an untimely demise at the hands of his entourage, which includes Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Madsen. Although having survived a bullet to the head and sat in a coma for four years, Uma seems to have a knack for living through things.