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X360/PC Preview - 'Star Trek: Legacy'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: Mad Doc
Release Date: September 26, 2006

Star Trek: Legacy was one of the first games that we checked out at Bethesda's booth, and it immediately became apparent that the title is definitely not one to be balked at. Previous games set in the Star Trek canon have had varying degrees of quality attached to them, no matter how old or new the particular facet of the timeline was. Star Trek: Legacy not only ups the ante by promising gameplay that spans all five television series of the popular show, on its

PS2/Xbox/PC Preview - 'Jaws Unleashed'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Appaloosa Interactive
Release Date: TBA

Long in the making, Jaws Unleashed will be gracing consoles in the near future, bringing with it what can only be defined as wanton violence to the nth degree. Taking place around 30 years after the original "Jaws" movie, this game continues the story in a unique way, as this time, it is seen from the eyes of the shark. With design by the makers of Ecco the Dolphin, this game is in the capable hands of Appaloosa, who have become experts in the niche of

X360 Preview - 'MotoGP '06: Ultimate Racing Technology'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Racing
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Climax Group
Release Date: June 14, 2006

Vim and Vigor

The diversity of experience hidden beneath the rather reductive genre label "racing" can be mystifying to gamers for whom tooling around a paved loop – modeled on a real-world counterpart or not – falls somewhere beneath precision jumping and key-collecting on the scale of exciting leisure-time pursuits. It doesn't matter if we're talking car or kart, bike or motorcycle, tuner or arcade racer. The varieties and possibilities are lost on many potential consumers who aren't already fans of a particular sub-genre before

PC Preview - 'Pirates of the Caribbean Online'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: MMORPG
Publisher: Buena Vista Games
Developer: 10tacle Studios
Release Date: Q2 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Disney franchise of the same name. The goal here is to undertake enough adventure quests and gather enough treasure to become the Caribbean's most legendary pirate. You'll learn tactics and skills from Jack Sparrow, which will teach you how to battle evil undead forces, forge alliances, and hunt for buried treasure.

PotCO promises to be enjoyable by all ages and a treat for any serious fans of the movies. Players

PS2 Preview - 'Guitar Hero II'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Rhythm/Puzzle
Developer: Harmonix
Publisher: Red Octane
Release Date: November 28, 2006

Take one of the greatest, if not the greatest, rhythm-music games to ever enter the market. This is a game that lets you act like a virtual rock star, using an innovative controller that really makes you feel like you're on stage playing a guitar. It's got tons of songs that have universal appeal, and difficulty modes that challenge even expert guitar players, yet are still accessible to the complete newbie.

Take all of this guitar perfection… and now, pretend as if it were just practice

PSP Preview - 'Guilty Gear Judgment'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Arc Systems Work
Release Date: September 1, 2006

Guilty Gear Judgment is the next game in the popular 2D fighting franchise from Sammy. Although the title of the game only mentions "Judgment," the disc itself actually is two games in one – the aforementioned Final Fight-style GGJ and the neoclassic fighter Guilty Gear X2: Reloaded, a practically perfect port of one of the best 2D fighters around.

GGJ itself is a side-scrolling brawler featuring almost the entire Guilty Gear cast, minus Justice, Kliff, and Robo-Ky. That's 20 characters in all, which is

PC Preview - 'Titan Quest'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action/RPG
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Iron Lore
Release Date: June 2006

Your Own Private Titanomachy

It was neither difficult nor rare to catch developers using words like "accessibility" and "casual" to describe the titles on display at the THQ pre-E3 summit. Talking with Iron Lore Entertainment, co-founded by Age of Empires veteran Brian Sullivan and currently putting finishing touches on PC action-RPG Titan Quest, those words came up plenty often, too, but this time, they were frequently accompanied by the word "Diablo," which of course makes all the difference.

In the years since Diablo's arrival, no truly satisfying

NDS Preview - 'Cooking Mama'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Taito
Release Date: Q4 2006

Cooking Mama is poised to take over the US in a whirlwind of Japanese-influenced culinary awesomeness. This title, a hit in Japan, is quite possibly the first in a new genre of cooking games, being followed up later this year, of course, by Devil May Cook and World of Foodcraft.

All kidding aside, Cooking Mama features over 76 real recipes for Japanese dishes such as yakitori (meat and veggie skewers) and okonomiyaki (a kind of Japanese pancake). The game is laid out as a series of mini-games which divide up

NDS Preview - 'Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: Fall 2006

The year is 1944. Thirty-three years ago, John Morris and Eric LeCarde defeated Dracula's niece, Elizabeth Bartley, and in so doing, saved the world. As usual.

Now, in the middle of World War II, another vampire has raised Dracula's castle. Two mysterious girls are using the chaos of the war as cover to raise Dracula yet again. John's son Jonathan – the current wielder of the Vampire Killer whip – and his childhood friend Charlotte Orlean are the only people who can prevent Dracula's newest resurrection.

If history is

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'Bioshock'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational
Release Date: 2007

It's been long enough that quite a few gamers have never heard of the System Shock games, two benchmark PC games that set the bar for challenging FPSes and, in their own way, for survival horror. When you hear older gamers talking about SHODAN or crawling through hallways with only a wrench to defend themselves, they're referring to the arguably classic System Shock 2.

(It's also unfortunately out of print. Would it be too much to ask that somebody run off another batch of those?)

Bioshock is a

PSP Preview - 'Tekken: Dark Resurrection'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Namco Bandai
Release Date: Q3 2006

This year's E3 featured an astounding number of PSP titles that were just plain fun to play, which is something that the handheld console has been lacking until now. Tekken: Dark Resurrection was among those titles, and it was perhaps the single game I put in the most time with during E3. While it is largely a straight port of the limited arcade release by the same name, T:DR is certainly more portable than an arcade machine.

The most important facet of any fighting game is

PS3/X360 Preview - 'Army of Two'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Montreal
Release Date: 2007

We live in perilous times, my friends. These days, the game industry is either all about the single-player experience, or the dynamics of (God help us, sometimes massive) multiplayer. Remember back in the day, when it was only about two people? In games like Streets of Rage, Contra and Final Fight, you had to help out your partner every step of the way, or face mutual destruction. These days, we're lucky to get a "cooperative mode" in the games of our choice.

Enter Electronic Arts, who wants

'Ridge Racer 7' (PS3) - Features & 18 New Screens

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under Tokyo Game Show - Tokyo Game Show 2006 Day 1

Drift around corners at speeds over 160 mph taking the lead as Ridge Racer 7 brings gamers a driving experience unlike any other.

With a new platform comes new territory as RR7 promises to reinvent itself, allowing players to choose from 40 different machines and over 20 courses. With reversed courses, the total grows to 40, most in the series ever! Players can further enjoy the drift racing experience by taking part in the new customization mode, opening up the experience with up to 200,000 customization combinations. With full support of Sony’s new network service, Ridge Racer fans have an entirely

Wii Preview - 'Red Steel'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Release Date: TBA

Nintendo has been pimping Red Steel unusually hard for it to be a third-party title, especially a third-party FPS with a Western developer. It's because Red Steel embodies Nintendo's promise that the Wii's games are going to cater to every possible type of gamer, including the aggressive, predominantly male demographic of FPS fans that felt distinctly ignored by the GameCube. Red Steel is not just an FPS, either, but almost a tech demo that shows third-party developers just what kind of an experience they can create

NDS Preview - 'Elite Beat Agents'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Puzzle/Rhythm
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Inis
Release Date: Q4 2006

With companies like Konami and Harmonix making rhythm/music games popular in the 'States, we've begun to see lots more than the latest Dance Dance crazes coming our way. We've had taiko drums, regular drums, virtual karaoke bars, guitars, and now ... well, now we've got touch-tapping.

It's really fun touch-tapping, though.

Elite Beat Agents is the localized pedigree of a Japanese DS game by the name of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, in which male cheerleaders are summoned everywhere they can be to solve the problems of the world through dance.

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Historical Tactical Shooter
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Gearbox Software
Release Date: Q1 2007

Brothers in Arms is one of the great things to come out of the military game boom, and certainly one of the franchises that keeps driving massive demand for World War II shooters. This spring, the latest entry in the franchise, Hell's Highway, hits the XBox 360, PS3, and PC in full 720p high-resolution. This is the kind of game that will move 360s, make you think twice about the PS3, and send you shopping for a new top-of-the-line graphics card. Ubisoft displayed the

Xbox 360 Preview - 'Enchanted Arms'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Enchanted Arms

Genre: RPG
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: From Software
Release Date: August 2006

Come On, What Was Wrong with [eM] -eNCHANT arM-?

Horse armor and wizards' towers won't keep Oblivion players saddled up forever. Well, maybe they will, but at some point, you'll need to take a breather and find something other than shutting down Oblivion Gates to do with your Xbox 360 role-playing time. Excellent RPG alternatives remain scarce, much as they always were on the original Xbox, so it was disappointing to find the Enchanted Arms demo station somewhat under-mobbed next to the tangle of squirming E3 attendees trying

PC Preview - 'Armed Assault'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: TBA
Developer: Bohemia Interactive Studio
Release Date: Q3 2006

When you look at the first-person shooter genre as a whole, they can largely be broken up into gameplay that is either based on strict linearity (heavy use of hallways, such as Half-Life or Doom 3) or the somewhat less linear collection of larger, more open areas (e.g., Ghost Recon series, Half-Life 2). The original Operation Flashpoint came out on the PC a few years ago and was critically successful for two reasons. Firstly, the title absolutely oozed atmosphere, from the well-written yet totally

PSP Preview - 'SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: Action
Publisher: SCEA
Developer: Zipper Interactive
Release Date: November 2006

If you're a SOCOM fan, then you've probably played the original SOCOM Fireteam Bravo for the PSP. Because of the title's success, the team at Zipper Interactive has decided to bring out a new release with tons of fixed features and additions, such as increased visual quality.

My favorite features are the crosstalk option, which has been completely revised, and the increased interaction between this game and the new SOCOM: Combined Assault for the PS2. This means that while you play Fireteam Bravo 2 and perform missions,

PC Preview - 'Call of Juarez'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2006

Genre: FPS
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Techland
Release Date: September 2007

If you're a PC gamer, then you are practically drowning in options when it comes to playing FPSes. There are games with every possible gimmick, control scheme, and emphasis looking to cater to some gamer with very particular tastes. Call of Juarez is one more game from that school of thought, with an emphasis on storytelling, single-player campaign, and its Wild West setting. You can do a lot of the typical FPS stuff in Call of Juarez and experience it with a genre twist, and there