Computer And Video Games - Previews

StarCraft II

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:46:00 GMT

What a rush!.
This is terror incarnate. I am in deep, deep trouble, and national pride is at stake. It's a 2v2 match, UK versus Germany, on a lush forest map. Germany are the Zerg. The UK are the Terrans. The Zerg have spread their sinister influence over two-thirds of the map, dropping their hatcheries and hives near the majority of resource points. The Terrans are hemmed in, facing a constant barrage of Zerg ground troops: little Zerglings that form a mass of flailing grey-brown limbs. They have hordes of Roaches - weird balls on legs that spit acid and slash at their enemies with vicious claws. And they have Banelings - suicidal bugs that charge at their enemies, blowing themselves up in a gloopy green explosion.

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Assassin's Creed II

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Steve Hogarty climbs a tower, doesn't know how to get back down again, and screams for help.
Venice, Italy, the 15th century. In reality this seemingly picturesque town is an overcrowded, plague-ridden pit. A hairy miasma-hole perched on the rudest bit of long-legged Italy's suggestive coastline. You wouldn't go there if you could help it, you'd probably go to the far prettier Florence to do your wine shopping. Sure, there was a Renaissance happening and Senora Vespucci down the way says that hot young thing Da Vinci is zipping about the city streets in a hello-copter - but the place smelled like poo. No amount of culture can waft away a poo smell.

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Dragon Age: Origins

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Get down and dirty with some pointy-eared folk.
I'm not a big fan of dogs, but when a fantasy RPG from BioWare includes one as a major character, Isit up on my hind legs and prick up my ears. If nothing else, Dragon Age: Origins will be the first game Iknow of that'll allow you to level up a canine in the same way as a wizard.

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BioShock 2

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Origin tales, Fort Frolic replacements and playable flashbacks...
Stomping around Rapture in the shell of a Big Daddy, adopting Little Sisters and unleashing them on fresh corpses to gather blood and harvest Adam. You know the score, but Bioshock 2's single player premise poses one question that no one's yet dared ask: isn't the game now simply one elongated escort mission?

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New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:10:00 GMT

Preview: Four times the fun.
So it turns out that Mario's creator has wanted to make a simultaneous multiplayer Mario game for years and this is IT. Four players platforming through traditional Mario levels all at the same time. Sounds obvious, so why the wait?

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Modern Warfare 2

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:30:00 GMT

Will Porter is called out of retirement and heads out on his final mission.
When you're one of the first in the world to be shown what'll likely be the most successful shooter of recent history, it's bad form to repeatedly point at the game and excitedly bark which movies you've seen its setpieces in before. And, indeed, for flecks of your spittle to land in the eyes of its designers.

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ArmA 2

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:37:00 GMT

Donning his Kevlar and camocream, Jon Blyth ventures into battle.
One phrase sticks in the mind from the presentation of Armed Assault II. One phrase makes you ponder briefly what's changed in PC gaming, and what's changed inside our heads. When Marek Spanel says "We don't try to provide just fun - it's a deeper, more sophisticated experience than that", it catches your ear. It's not often someone derides the notion of fun, in a games presentation. Fun and games, right? They're like... shits and giggles. But Bohemia Interactive have never been frivolous, petty or whimsical. It's their continuing mission to give you an incredibly real location in which to wage a war. Whether you like it or not.

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Colin McRae: Dirt 2

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:45:00 GMT

Preview: Hands-on with Wii's first 'proper' racer.
It appears that what's true about buses all arriving at once is also true for racing games on Wii. Not content with releasing the console's first 'proper' racer in the form of F1 2009 (see previous page), Codemasters are also releasing its second 'proper' racer too.

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Uncharted 2 Beta Impressions

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:14:00 GMT

Hands-on: Off to a good start.
A multiplayer mode probably wouldn't have been on our list of hopes for the Uncharted sequel, but it's a pleasant surprise nonetheless and a decent enough shot at online carnage, too.

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Brink

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Single and multiplayer merge in Splash Damage's latest.
Splash Damage might have a tough sell with Brink. Not because the game doesn't look phenomenal (it does), but because the concepts and technology they're dealing with a pure gaming witchcraft.

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APB

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:45:00 GMT

Creative cops and robbers.
APB looks like a dream game; a massively multiplayer take on cops and robbers that exists in a persistent online world. It's a game powered by personal creativity and style, where you'll continue to play, not because you need to level up and improve your characters stats and skills, but because you love blowing stuff up or bringing the legal beatdown to crims.

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BioShock 2: What's Changed...

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Behind the scenes with single and multiplayer.
This is just part of Xbox World 360's BioShock 2 multiplayer report, from its exclusive visit to developer Digital Extremes and behind the scenes access with 2K Marin. Pick up the magazine next week on June 9 for a monster 14-page BioShock 2 preview with full exclusive details, screenshots and interviews - plus the first Xbox 360 review of Prototype.

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Halo 3: ODST

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Hands-on: Horde for Halo.
It's an exciting time to be a Halo fan. We've got not one but TWO games to look forward to (You heard about Halo Reach, right?), and this one is out within a matter of months.

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Red Dead Redemption

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Feature: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
When you hear the name Rockstar, you instantly think of the granny-grenading, cop-killing, car-jacking crime-a-thon that is GTA. Take out the skyscrapers, hip-hop and chicken shops, rewind the clock a few hundred years, and you've got Red Dead Redemption.

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Batman: Arkham Asylum

Sat, 23 May 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Still a serious house on serious Earth.
Batman is a mortal who stands among Gods. No different to any other man, Bats has gone toe-to-toe and stood side by side Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and The Flash. On those occasions, when he's been forced to fight them, he almost invariably wins. Batman is skilled and smart; a fighter, an acrobat, a detective, a puzzle-solver, and a genius inventor with a will of iron. But you know the truth? He belongs in an asylum.

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Blur

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Hands-On: PGR meets Mario Kart?.
Blur is the result of Bizarre's mission to "bring the fun back" to the racing genre. It's a faster, less reality-obsessed racer than PGR; 20 licensed cars tear around the track at once, with their headlights painting neon trails through the air and Wipeout-style power-ups shaking the foundations of the Los Angeles storm drain.

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Final Fantasy XIII

Sun, 10 May 2009 09:00:00 GMT

A critical hit to dull JRPGs.
Seems Square Enix has been lying to us. Remember the exciting battle footage from E3 2006? It's all false. In the long-awaited JPRG's final guise there are no sleek real-time menus, no mini-maps and no MP. Oh, and as a dollop of amnesia's on the cards you can forget about stylish attack-linking acrobatics too: in between their moves Lightning and her band of misfits need to stand around and wait for their Active Time Battle gauges to fill just the same as all the heroes that have gone before them.

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Supreme Commander 2

Thu, 07 May 2009 11:05:00 GMT

A new strategy.
"If I start the game and in the first 60 seconds I build a tank, I want that tank to be able to deliver the killing blow to my opponent 35 minutes to 90 minutes later."

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Lost Planet 2

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:48:00 GMT

Because he's a freezy lover...
So, who exactly gets to play Lost Planet 2? There's something ever so slightly suspicious about Capcom's exclusive announcement on the 360's Marketplace.

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Ghostbusters: The Videogame

Mon, 04 May 2009 07:14:00 GMT

Don't it make you feel good?.
Get used to seeing stuff like this. Every 30 seconds from now until 19 June you're going to hear or read something about Ghostbusters The Videogame because it coincides with the 25th anniversary of the release of the movie.

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Borderlands

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Graphically novel - new art style revealed.
Fallout was just the start of a floodtide of apocalyptic explore-'em-ups. Borderlands is the next wave, an open world RPG that plays closer to a traditional shooter than the clunky pistol flailing of Bethesda's effort. Oh, and you can explore it with up to three friends. In jeeps.

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BioShock 2

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Who's the Daddy?.
"The player of a first-person shooter is a plexiglass-faced powerhouse that thunders its way through corridors and occasionally is asked to care about things that it's never met." This is Jordan Thomas, Creative Director of BioShock 2. He's about to tell us who we play as this time.

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BioShock 2

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:15:00 GMT

First look: Who's the Daddy?.
For more BioShock 2 talk don't forget to read PC Gamer's massive first look too.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:00:00 GMT

With a more serious tone, and epic action Bad Company 2's war is no laughing matter.
War is serious business. When last we saw the soldiers of B Company, they were headed off into early retirement; four men with a truckful of gold. One year on and they're back in the fight. They've had their fun, DICE explain. The honeymoon is over and the AWOL team are drawn back into the new fight to combat a more personal threat. This time they're taking things seriously.

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Wolfenstein

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Preview: Bark at the moon...
Five years ago people would openly mock you for using "Google" as a verb. Five years before that, you'd have your teeth kicked in for using "email" as a verb. And before hit 2001 single Party Hard was released, the word "party" was rigidly considered a noun in most civilised social circles. Now we've got a new doing word courtesy of Raven: "Wolfenstein", meaning to take regular World War II history and skew it in a hugely entertaining, highly embellished and occult-twisted way. You might as well tear up the dictionary now.

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