Latest Articles (Page 3586)

Its weird how the games industry throws up its stars. The people it offers up, those that are to become famous. In some companies the lead programmer is the chosen one, others a great modeller or level maker. The extreme case being in ION Storm case, its was the one with the biggest boobs! One of the people who is well known for just plain great games is Peter Molyneux. I can honestly say I have played all his games from Populous on my 386 in 1991 all the way through the great Syndicate and the awe inspiring Magic Carpet. The latter a game 6 years old that looks better than a large amount of games still being made today.

These days there seems to be almost constant chatter about games engines. It seems more and more people spend time talking about the stuff that makes the games work, maybe giving that as much, if not more, attention than the nice graphics or the amazing net code. While this is the case now, it was not always the case, and small players and their engines did not have the success they now seem to be enjoying. The perfect example of this is Monolith, makes of the Lithtech engine. The engine has almost made the company its fortune and also lost the company a fortune on more than one occasion.

The inevitable first patch of Daikatana has arrived. Its not for the faint hearted, not only is it 43.5 megs in size, ION Storm say it could take about 30 minutes on a normal PC to apply. Those of you actually playing the game are going to loose your save games. The list of things being patched is quite long, in fact, it may have been quicker to list the files that were not being patched!

If you thought that overdue games were a new phenomenon, think again! In an interview on RPGVault, designer DW Bradley, the man behind the later games in the Wizardry RPG series of the late 1980s, reveals that "I had started work on my first computer RPG about the time the original Wizardry appeared".

Friday is normally release day for new PC games here in the UK, but this week we've come up empty. Fox's two titles which were due out today - "Aliens vs Predator Gold" and "Die Hard Trilogy 2" - both failed to materialise, and the latest word is that they will now be out on July 28th. Thanks to Nemesis as usual for confirming the (lack of) new releases.

This week's interview here on EuroGamer is with Cristina Neamtu of AMC Creations, a Romanian developer which is currently working on an innovative real time strategy game called "No Name War". To find out more about the game, the company behind it, the emergence of a Romanian gaming industry, and the proverbial much much more, read our interview, which also includes a pair of exclusive new screenshots of the game in action.

The most popular first person shooter on the net today is not Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena, but Counter-Strike, a free user-made add-on for the two year old Half-Life. With these "mods" now attracting more attention than ever, it's hardly surprising that the more promising ones are being contributed to by professional designers.

Over the last few years eastern Europe has become something of a hotbed of computer software development. Recent games to come out of the former Soviet bloc include Hidden and Dangerous, Theocracy, and Odium.

sent word that Razer, makers of the Boomslang gaming mouse, will now be the main sponsor for the Frag 4 event in Dallas at the end of September. Previously HEAT.net had been lined up to sponsor the event, but since then HEAT.net owners Sega have announced that they are selling the company off, reportedly to rival American gaming service MPlayer.

Shiny's "MDK" was one of the most innovative third person action-adventure games of its day, introducing us to such joys as the zoomable sniper rifle. Despite getting great reviews though, sales of the game were lousy. Now Bioware, the developer behind "Baldur's Gate", has brought us a sequel to MDK, adding improved graphics and the ability to play as Kurt's sidekicks Max and Doc Hawkins to the classic gameplay of the original. Can it live up to the MDK name? Read our review of MDK2 to find out!

Today's eye candy treat for you all is a second batch of eight exclusive new screenshots from "KISS : Psycho Circus", the first person shooter from Third Law Interactive and the Gathering Of Developers based on the comic book series of the same name by Todd McFarlane Productions. As before, the shots are taken from a review copy of the game provided by publisher Take 2 Interactive. If you missed the first batch of shots, you can find them here...

The premise of MDK2, rather like MDK before it, is that an alien race from another dimension has come bounding through space on streams of light and intends to repopulate the Earth by first steam-rollering the indigenous inhabitants. This would be all well and good from their perspective, except that nobody on Earth is terribly pleased about it. In a way you can feel their pain.

Everybody's favourite monopoly, Microsoft, has announced that it has bought NetGames USA, makers of the ngStats system used by Unreal Tournament, as well as the ngTourney system that has powered recent CPL professional gaming events in America. NetGames USA's technology now will be used by Microsoft's "Zone" gaming service, as well as in future Microsoft published games, starting with MechWarrior 4.

has cancelled its planned Scandinavian and French Open events, and has announced that they will instead be running an event in Copenhagen, Denmark from October 26 to 29th. The Danish event will feature a $25,000 Quake 3 tournament, a $10,000 Counter-Strike tournament, and room for up to 1000 players to attend the LAN party.

Liquid Edge Games have just announced RoboForge, a new multiplayer game which allows players to construct their own robotic gladiators, practice against AI opponents, and then take the battle online over the internet to play against real human opponents.

It seems every week these days another mega, must play demo gets released. Most of the time you will see that a demo is huge and just wait to get it on a magazine cover CD, or until the next LAN. The last top demo I spent ages downloading and playing was UT, I remember waiting up all night, and then getting the demo early and playing it for 2 days solid. The only other time that has happened was a couple of weeks back when the Deus Ex demo was released. I was a fan of System Shock 2, and by all accounts Deus Ex was System Shock 2 with more FPS and less RPG, which was right down my street.

Surface Tension is a new site from Iikka Keranen (formerly of Ion Storm and Looking Glass, and now working on Alice) which houses all the free textures he's released over the years, now converted for use in Quake 3

One of the most innovative games of recent times has to be Alien versus Predator. Pitting two of 20th Century Fox's big movie franchises, the Alien from the alien movie series against the Predator of the Predator movie series and of course the customary amazing, virtually indestructible US marine. All this being done in a first person shooter environment. The first game was a sleeping success, it may not have the hype and pomp of Quake, but it has thousands of people playing for hours every night online across the world.

In a further step forward today for the 'evil' empire Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5.5. According to Microsoft web developers will be doing cartwheels today as IE 5.5 has made their job much easier, Microsoft say, "Internet Explorer 5.5 will make it faster and easier to create rich, Web-based applications and services". For you and me, the home and casual user, IE 5.5 is a joy because it will "make the Web easier to use, how they automate common tasks and how they provide the flexibility to use the Web any way one wants"

If your interests cross space and games there is a very good chance that you played far too many hours of last year last year's strategy game of the year, Homeworld. Even if they don't, chances are that one or two of you played it anyway. You will then, more than likely, be aware that Homeworld: Cataclysm, a full price enhanced update to Homeworld is soon to be on its way to your local games store. Interestingly, Relic, the developers of the original Homeworld are not doing the 'update', Barking Dog Studios are the ones that have been chosen to bless us with that. While Relic are not doing this, word is that they are doing a massive RTS game, to be entitled 'Homeworld 2' (or words to that effect!), although they refuse to confirm this.

Midas Interactive have announced that they have signed Chelsea manager Gianluca Vialli's talents for their new football (that's "soccer" for any Yanks reading this) management game, the aptly titled "Gianluca Vialli's Premiership Manager". Due for release in October, the game will let you test your skills by managing clubs in England, Italy, Germany, France or Spain, with ten championships across the five countries to take part in. For more information about the game, read the press release.

Today's visual treat for you here on EuroGamer is another batch of eight exclusive new shots of "4x4 Evolution", the 3D accelerated off-road racer from Terminal Reality and the nice people at the Gathering Of Developers. Feed your eyes some well-earned candy - check out the new shots now! If you missed the first batch of "4x4 Evolution" shots, which are taken from a preview version of the game, you can find them here.

New today on EuroGamer is our preview of Infestation, an action-strategy game due for release from UbiSoft this summer. Infestation sees you taking on all manner of alien scum across more than twenty worlds, piloting a vehicle capable of morphing between different forms, including a buggy, hovercraft and armoured truck, as well as carrying the usual array of highly destructive weaponry. For the full scoop, read our preview!

Mankind has always dreamed of reaching the stars, and yet all too often in computer games that dream turns into a nightmare. Infestation is no exception...

have posted a fairly lengthy Q&A session with Morrowind Project Leader Todd Howard, in which he discusses many aspects of this upcoming single-player RPG. Morrowind is the third game in the Elder Scroll series which has included the classic RPGs Arena and Daggerfall, and uses a brand new 3D engine which, according to Howard, should bring RPGs (which have traditionally lagged behind action games in terms of graphics technology) right up to date with the latest shoot'em'up releases.

Tribes 2 - which, you may recall, was actually initially scheduled to be released around now - has finally gone into Alpha-testing, according to Dave "QIX" Georgeson, Senior Producer on the project. Posting on the Tribalwar.com messageboards, Georgeson mentioned that like all Alpha versions, the current build is slow and contains many placeholders, but he seems confident that most issues can be dealt with quickly and that a Beta-test program will be announced within the next few weeks.

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at Rising Sun, the latest turn-based strategy from Talonsoft. Set in the Pacific during World War Two, can it live up to the promise of its subject manner, or is it just another slow paced and badly produced strategy game? Read our review to find out if its worth your Yen, or if you would be better off leaving it to fester in a rice paddy somewhere in south east asia...

Today's visual treat here on EuroGamer is another batch of eight exclusive new shots from "X-Tension", the massive add-on for last year's space trading and combat game, "X : Beyond The Frontier". If you missed the first eight shots, you can find them here. Look for a full preview of the game here on EuroGamer within the next week.

Mankind has an undeniable fascination with war. We watch images of unfolding conflicts, on the one hand clucking sympathetically about the suffering of the people on the ground, while inside we thrill at every deep boom of the heavy artillery, and shiver with excitement at the sharp cracking of assault rifles.

According to Victor "Makaveli" Cuadra, who was runner-up in the massive $100,000 Razer-CPL Quake 3 tournament in Dallas back in April, "the biggest obstacle [to the growth of pro-gaming] is getting the general public to except it as a sport. Even now when I think about that I won $20,000 from playing Quake it just blows my mind. I think its quite funny that I made this much from it."