Latest Articles (Page 3604)

If you're bored of the TV coverage of the Presidential election Stateside (lets face it, we are amused by it, not interested in it) then perhaps this new Quake3 mod will tickle your fancy. Entitled Political Arena, the mod lets you take on the guise of your favourite campaigner, be it Al Gore, George Bush, Joe Lieberman or Dick Cheney. It's certainly amusing although I'm sure it will cop some flak for the subject matter, so grab a copy while you can - the models are interesting enough anyway. Sadly Al Gore can't be made to finish off an opponent by choking them with his tongue. Perhaps in a later version..

I think it was about three years ago that I first discovered the dominatrix that was Grand Prix 2. Geoff Crammond's seminal Formula One racing simulation still stands strong today, although graphically it's been on the falling edge since 3D card evolution started speeding up in the middle of 1998. Back in the day it was all you could do to try and prise me away from Monza and Silverstone, and the game was so versatile that despite winning season after season and getting my lap times down to inhumanly low numbers I kept on playing, chugging away on my P233 until my eyes bled. Well not literally, I did have some limits. As such I've been quietly awaiting Grand Prix 3's arrival with baited breath. Could Crammond really win us all over again, would I be able to put up with the 1998 track data, would the new graphics engine put me off? Thankfully, after an eternity of waiting the time has arrived to assess the alluring pseudo-sequel for real, and it has to be said, Geoff has done a simply stunning job of it. The ease of use is unheard of - I loaded her up on my uber gaming rig and the game immediately proposed to decide upon the optimal graphics settings for me to be going on with. I could alter these at my discretion if I so wished, but having now tested the game on several PCs I've come to the conclusion that it hits the spot with a very small margin of error.

The finals of the Unreal Tournament duel competition have just ended here at the Battletop event taking place at the Millenium Dome in London. Played out on Deck16, Liberator picked up the first frag but his sniper rifle fetish didn't really work out, and Dougal had soon rocketed his way back into the lead. By half time Dougal seemed to be in control, and pulled out a 5 : 1 lead at one point. Liberator came back hard, picking up a couple of sniper shots followed by a shrapnel strike to make it 5 : 4. In the end it was Dougal who came through though, picking up two late frags to take the lead out of Liberator's reach. A good game, and both players will be flown to Korea to represent the UK at the World Cyber Games Challenge in Korea...

The final of the "Age of Empires II" competition has just ended here at the UK's first BattleTop tournament, taking place at the Millenium Dome in London. The game was somewhat confusing, as it was taking place on a very small map and the two players had chosen yellow and green as their team colours, making their units almost impossible to distinguish on the big screens showing the match. The game was close throughout, with DevilZ.HigH getting the early initiative with a first strike before claiming the center of the map, which became a battlefield strewn with corpses and burnt out buildings for the rest of the match. In the end it was HigH who came through and took the victory from his clanmate DevilZ.Loko, taking home the £1400 first prize. Nice.

We were shown a couple of impressive new PS2 racers and then demonstrated Oni, a third person action title due out in March of next year on PC, PlayStation 2 and Mac. Our host Jen explained that it was about 50% done, but it looked pretty complete to be honest, and with that March 2001 deadline looming you could be forgiven for hoping that it was farther along than that. The game centres around an anime-style plot and graphical style, with central character Konoko, an elite Tech Crimes Task Force agent on a mission to infiltrate a ruthless crime syndicate and bring it to its knees in a day-after-tomorrow futuristic Japan. Unfortunately she is framed for the murder of a couple of security guards and has to prove her innocence and fight her way to the truth through 17 large levels, using her martial arts training and weaponry skills to overcome her oppressors. As far as plots go it doesn't look like anything particularly to shout about, but the idea of mixing martial arts and shooting action into one seamless environment is quite endearing.

Not content with simply playing Half-Life : Dreamcast and its new episode Blue Shift at ECTS 2000, we've got onto the UK press office and squeezed 22 new screenshots out of them, with Blue Shift shots to boot. These shots really show off the new and improved weaponry and facial texture-mapping in particular, and also some classic areas of the original Half-Life are reinvigorated too with new textures and graphical jazz. Check them out!

The grand final of the StarCraft competition here at the BIGL tournament at the Millenium Dome in London has just ended, with strategy veteran Daishi coming through against Duellist. It was a close start .. literally, as the two players began the game within a stone's throw of each other. Daishi soon gained the upper hand though, surrounding Duellist's base with marines and turrets and ambushing his troops as they emerged. It was all over rather quickly, with Daishi's troops moving in for the kill and Duellist having nothing left to respond with. Both players will be flown to Korea to represent the UK at the $300,000 World Cyber Games Challenge though, and both walk away with cash prizes to show for their efforts. Next up, Quake 3.

The final of Battletop's "FIFA 2000" soccer tournament here at the Millenium Dome in Greenwich has just ended, with Karma Killer beating DomiGod 3 : 1 to walk away with the £1700 first prize. It had looked like a walk-over until half time, when DomiGod started to recover, and a spate of second half fouls left Karma Killer two men down. In the end DomiGod managed to claw back one goal in injury time to keep at least some of his dignity, but it wasn't enough. Congratulations to both players, who will be flown out to Korea to represent the UK at the massive World Cyber Games Challenge later in the year. Now, on to the Quake 3 and StarCraft competitions!

Last minute preparations are being made tonight at the Millenium Dome in Greenwich for the London qualifier of Battletop's "World Cyber Games Challenge Final" taking play in Korea next month. Various network issues are still at large but the team working to solve the remaining issues are confident that they will be ironed out by the morning and the tournament which kicks off at 1pm. A Shoutcast or Real server is due to be available for live streams about what's going on, and more details will be available via Quakenet IRC (irc.barrysworld.com) in the channel #battletop all day. We will be providing coverage after the event is over, with our roving reporter John Bye on hand to cover the games.

Over the last year NVIDIA has built up a strong position in the 3D graphics market, replacing 3dfx at the top of the pile when it comes to innovative new features and raw performance with the release of the GeForce 256 in September 1999, and dominating the top end of the graphics card industry with virtually no competition for almost a year, until the recent arrival of 3dfx's Voodoo 5 5500 and ATI's Radeon 256. During the recent computer games trade show ECTS 2000 in London, NVIDIA were again showing an impressive new graphics card, this time the GeForce 2 Ultra, which boasts an improved manufacturing process and faster memory to make the most of the old GeForce design. We spoke to the company's European marketing director, Alan Tiquet, to find out more about how NVIDIA got to the top, and how they plan to stay there...

Apparently it's all too much for Retro Studios, the company to develop the GameCube version of Metroid, as they publicly seek help via our friends at IGN (whose review of the Electronic Arts toilets is still up in the air apparently). It seems that the company is after Sound Engineers and Programmers to head up the development on "next-generation products", something which will do little for the confidence of fans who treasure the Metroid series, which made its name with the inexplicably popular Super Metroid on the SNES five years ago. To be frank, this is a rather enigmatgic and altogether worrying cry for help from a GameCube second-party. Several days ago we questioned the sensibility of Nintendo revamping all of their classics for the GameCube after such limited success on the N64 with the likes of Mario Kart and Yoshi's Story. Surely attempting to reinvigorate such archetypal brands as Mario and Metroid once again is a little risky for the Japanese giant. After all, there is only so much more that can be done in each case. It would appear to be very easy to sit in an office in Tokyo and say "we need a new Mario game for the GameCube", but actually creating another exemplary title and living up to the legacy that is Mario or Metroid is another matter entirely. This sort of pussy-footing around with no particular brief other than "new Metroid game" is incredibly perillous, and the fact that the company doing the development itself hasn't the staff to do it yet does no good at all for its credibility. We'll watch the way this one unravells with baited breath.

, the German developer behind the impressive tech demo which NVIDIA were using to show off their GeForce 2 Ultra card at the recent ECTS trade show in London, has announced its first games. X-Isle is a first person squad-based shooter which forms the basis of the NVIDIA tech demo, and features a single player campaign as well as team-based multiplayer modes, while Engalus is a futuristic action-adventure game in which you play an assassin, rebel and mercenary called Jordain.

It's Friday so it must be UK release day! Soccer fans are in for a treat today, with two new EA Sports titles available - "Football Manager 2001" and "FA Premier Legue Stars 2001". EA have also released their big new add-on for The Sims, "Living It Up", which gives you a whole range of funky new accessories for your Sims characters, as well as a host of other new features.

For years now everybody has been saying that the internet is the future of gaming, but online focused games are still the exception rather than the rule. Pat Wyatt, Mike O'Brien and Jeff Strain, formerly of Blizzard, see that changing, and their new company Arena.net is based around the idea of selling their games direct to the public over the internet. And with previous work on Blizzard's Battle.net service and multiplayer code for Warcraft II, Diablo and Starcraft amongst other hits, the team certainly has experience on its side. According to Pat Wyatt, speaking in an interview with RPGVault, "Internet publishing has a number of clear advantages for game fans and game developers".

One of the more unusual massively multiplayer games currently running on the internet is SimCorps, which uses the results from matches played in a whole range of different games to effect the situation in a persistent online world. There are currently two campaigns running - one real world campaign based around a fictional invasion of the Panama Canal, and one science fiction campaign set in deep space over a thousand years in the future.

And so ends ECTS 2000, the first ECTS of the new millenium, or the last of the old for the pedantic amongst us. Three days of madness, exhaustion and the overwhelming cacophany of thousands of conversations and the buzzing of hundreds of badly adjusted and overheating computers, consoles and outsized video screens.

A noticeable diversion from the PC version of the game, and something that I noted immediately, was how much brighter and colourful the textures appeared from the original palette. I must stress that this doesn't mean the game looks garish, but rather it strangely suits its console environment I suspect a great deal more than the comparatively washed-out original. Randy explained that this was an unexpected side effect of the port to the Dreamcast hardware, indicating an especially "happy accident". Framerate-wise, things were steady apart from when venturing into a large, open area, but it's really only a minor niggle, and not something that ruins the game. Concerning, however, were the loading times between level sections, which appeared overly lengthy (around 15-20 seconds at some points), but I was assured this should be down to less than 5 seconds come release time. During play, I was experiencing frequent pauses whilst hefty amounts of information and music were being pulled off the CD.. I was told that this was simply a case of optimising the way information was loaded to the Dreamcast via the CD drive, and it's something I'm eager to see sorted out. Controlling the hero Gordon Freeman (or security guard, Barney.. more on that later) was immediately intuitive and suited the DC's control pad perfectly in its default mode. The settings for the buttons when you start the game are similar to that of Turok 2 or Quake 2 on the N64, with the 4 right-hand buttons providing forward, backward and strafing movements, and the analogue stick controlling the aim. My only gripe with the control set would be the position of the crouch, which is handled by the d-pad, right under the analogue stick. This proves rather clumsy when wanting to move, look around and crouch at the same time. Needless to say, the controls will be completely reconfigurable in the retail version, as well as support for the Dreamcast keyboard and soon-to-be-released mouse, for those PC gamers who really can't bear to give up on their roots. But let's face it, keyboard and mouse is truly the FPS Control Set of Champions™.

Those of us that saw the Pentium 4 1.4Ghz behemoth at ECTS earlier this week will testify that it was incredibly impressive in action, and that it seems to be the way forward for the x86 platform. But it appears that the very people who will sell it are not so sure, and there is a dilemna over how Intel are actually going to sell and market the chip. The Register has posted a summary of the situation, and the problems which Intel may face. Basically, the price tag is going to be exponential regardless of what they want you to think, Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers are seemingly unwilling to play ball, and the benchmarks will have to place it some miles further off the scale than its predecessors before people treat it as a viable option. After all, this writer is pretty pleased with his new 850Mhz Thunderbird Athlon - the performance differential between this setup and a P4-based unit will undoubtedly not be enough to sway me when it hits, and the price tag will hert, if you'll forgive the pun. It's an interesting dilema for the company, especially since the P4 should take Intel way out ahead of AMD, but now things are looking up for the latter, whose Thunderbird 1.1Ghz CPU launched last week at a price that makes Intel's 1Ghz PIII look silly. The real trick is trying to second-guess Intel's marketing campaign for this one. Even its most trusted OEM Dell must be running out of ideas. Is it a web machine? Nope, we've been there. Is it a games machine? No, apparently Intel are staying well away from games after the Columbine massacre last year. So what's left? Multimedia? Heaven forbid...

The Warlords series of games have had a relatively successful run, building a loyal following amongst turn based strategy players. Developer SSI have taken the brave step in shifting the games mechanics to a more mainstream real time strategy style for this latest incarnation though, presumably gambling the wrath of the die hard fans against a potentially larger audience.

Sega today entered the Internet Service Provider market for real with the launch of their ISP SegaNet. At the moment it's only available in the US, but details of the UK launch are doubtless not far behind. Sega has been in need of new sources of income for quite some time, as they face inevitable sales problems with the PlayStation 2 in the offing and the X-Box / GameCube dominating the presses. Their new price tag of £149 may help matters, as may their DVD player plus console for £299 option, which they hope will give Sony a run for their money this Christmas, but the ISP market (especially in the States where subscription charges are basically all you pay) is a very lucrative side option. SegaNet will have to prove itself before people start handing over their cash in large numbers, but with all sorts of rebate deals planned as well as 50 hours free with each Dreamcast purchased they should make a decent enough go of it.

UK Finalists in the online Chu Chu Rocket competition run by Sega throughout July will battle it out for goodies at Level 1 in HMV next Sunday. A young person by the name of.. Shaun_2.. (from Northumberland) will be representing the UK at the event against people from all over Europe, having beaten off the cream of the domestic talent in the UK qualifier on the 1st of September. The UK and Ireland representatives will be at Level 1 at HMV while their counterparts will be at similar venues in the likes of Madrid, Frankfurt and Paris. Read the entire press release for full details on the event, and our Chu Chu Rocket review for details on the game, which revolutionized console gaming by genuinely uniting gamers around the globe.

Publisher Sierra sent word that their space-bound real time strategy game "Homeworld : Cataclysm" will now be released in the UK on Friday September 29th, two weeks later than originally announced. Featuring a tweaked engine, better graphics, improved interface, new units and technologies, and a whole new single player storyline set years after the events in the original "Homeworld", Cataclysm looks set to be a great sequel to a great game.

Black & White was virtually in a class of its own this year, a stunning game in which you rule over a tribe of primitive villagers as their god. You can manipulate almost anything in the game world, train enormous creatures to do your bidding, lob terrifying spells of suitably biblical proportions at your opponents, and even make your followers dance along to your favourite CDs. The game is massive in scope, a beauty to behold, and looks like it could be terribly addictive - EuroGamer is likely to grind to a halt when I finally get my grubby hands on review code... Honourable mentions : "Sacrifice", "B17 - The Mighty Eighth"

One of the more unusual games we've come across in recent times is "Banja", a web-game all about "a little peace-loving Rastafarian" called Banja who lives on the island of Itland. The game features an entire island full of whacky characters to explore, a whole host of mini-games to play, cutesy cartoon-style graphics, and quite possibly the most funky game soundtrack I have ever heard. New events and zones are added regularly with new episodes every month, and the first episode is already available to play online. It doesn't cost anything, so what have you got to lose? Well worth a try if you're looking for something completely different...

Last year I made the mistake of passing over "B17 : The Mighty Eighth" at the European computer games trade show ECTS, writing it off as yet another flight combat sim. This year we weren't about to make the same mistake again, and so we dropped by Hasbro's stand early on the Sunday morning to find out more about the game which looks like it could shake up the flight sim genre...

Konami and Umbro today announced a union that will bring a much needed sponsorship deal to the International Superstar Soccer brand. The first title to show the fruits of this bonding will be an early PlayStation 2 footy title, the details of which both companies are keeping close to their chests. In terms of development this is largely irrelevant, except for the fact that it provides decent funding for the series. The press release was of course written by a consultant with a degree from the university of hype and a masters in exaggeration, but nonetheless it helps bring some decent branding to Konami's previously unlabelled series.

Our coverage of the third and final day of ECTS is now online, taking a look at some of the great (and not-so-great) console, hand-held and PC games which we saw on the last day of the show. Page 6 of our ECTS Diary feature covers the console side of things, including Virtua Tennis (DC), Smuggler's Run (PS2), and the DVD Dreamcast bundle amongst other highlights. The PC side is covered on page 7 of the Diary, covering games such as Oni, Gunlok, Sacrifice and Gunman, as well as featuring a rather fetching picture of one of Empire's sheep outside the show.

Although they now have a new company called Mythos, the Gollop brothers are probably still best known for their classic X-Com series of turn-based strategy games. Their latest title "Freedom Ridge" is something of a return to X-Com territory, with the player fighting alien invaders with a mixture of tactical combat, base building, resource management, and scientific research of captured alien technology.

Valkyrie, the developers behind the anime-inspired RPG "Septerra Core", are currently working on a new Unreal-engined game called "Seraphim" which puts you in the role of one of the eponymous fallen angels, banished to Earth after the war in heaven which formed the basis for Milton's "Paradise Lost". The game is taking some liberties with the Judeo-Christian myth though, and in an interview on 3D News the developers explained that they were "also heavily influenced by things such as Norse, Japanese, Babylonian and other mythologies. Add a bit of modern over-the-top Anime and a wrap it around an original fantasy world and you've got Seraphim."

Early September sees the normally fashionable Kensington district of London getting over-run by an army of geeks, gamers and journalists as the Olympia exhibition hall plays host to ECTS - Europe's biggest computer games trade show.