GamesRadar - Previews

E3 07: EA Playground - hands-on (EA Playground)

Jul 11, 2007

Electronic Arts is promising to bring the pleasures of the playground to our screens. Not the playground we went to, thankfully, which means we can avoid the casual spitting, hair-pulling, and broken glass. Its all Wii Remote-controlled and in single-player it involves you wandering around at playtime, getting yourself into competitions to rise to the position of King of the Playground. The real heart is the multiplayer, though. Some games are real, such as ...

EA Playground (EA Playground)

Jun 20, 2007

The actual concept of an EA playground is one of the most wonderfully absurd things weve heard of in a while: a kind of compendium of EA games collected together in the style of a theme park. How excited you get by this prospect depends entirely on your age, because this one is aimed squarely at sticky-fingered youths. But theres no doubting it has a certain pizzazz. The minigame that were most looking forward to is Tetherball - the game that everyone loves until the ball swings right into ...

EA Replay - first look (EA Replay)

Oct 19, 2006

Younger gamers may find it hard to believe, but there was a time when corporate giant Electronic Arts didn't focus mainly on sports games, yearly sequels and movie licenses. This company was actually founded with the goal of helping individual developers bring their unique vision to the market. It resulted in a lot of great, original games. EA Replay brings those days to mind with a collection of 14 classic games that originally saw release on the SNES and Genesis consoles back in the ...

Earth Defense Force X - hands-on (Earth Defense Force 2017)

Dec 12, 2006

As Gears of War proves, shooters seem to be moving more toward the methodical and the complex: smart enemies, intense battles. But what happened to the old days, when twitchy trigger fingers ruled over swarms of mindless drones? Earth Defense Force X is one of the few games - maybe the only game - to ever try to meld together the intensity of an arcade style shoot 'em-up with the gameplay of a third-person shooter. When you begin to play, it seems odd that a simple rifle can blast the hell ...

Earth No More (Earth No More)

Jul 30, 2007

Bid welcome to Earth No More - a game thats an awful long way away (were talking 2009 here, people), but has a mission statement that makes it damn hard to ignore. From a development house splintered from Remedy (of Max Payne fame) and 3D Realms, its all part of a concept known as the “cinegame.” “Our ultimate goal is to bring games to the same level as film and television in terms of providing an interactive experience with emotional consequence,” says Samuli ...

Earthworm Jim hands-on (Earthworm Jim)

Aug 16, 2006

Back in April, we reported that Earthworm Jim, invertebrate hero of the 16-bit era, would soon crawl his way to next-gen consoles. Turns out we were half-right; Jim's coming back, but for now, he's only coming out of retirement on the PSP. And from what we've played of his new game - simply titled Earthworm Jim - Sony's handheld seems to suit him. Unlike the series' disastrous attempt at 3D, Earthworm Jim doesn't mess too much with the formula, featuring oldfangled 2D gameplay combined with ...

So who the hell is Matt Hazard? (Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard)

Oct 28, 2008

The game's called Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. It's a third-person shooter. It's coming out on PS3 and 360 early next year. It's being made by Dead Head Fred developer Vicious Cycle Software. But who exactly is Matt Hazard, where the hell is he returning from and why should we care? To clarify the first two points, watch the video below. To find out if we should actually give a monkeys, keep reading after the movie ...

Echochrome - import hands-on (Echochrome)

Apr 30, 2008

A monochrome game where a stickman chases shadows around logic-defying structures hanging in space, you say? Yeah, that’ll be Echochrome. But that hasn’t stopped us from loving every head-scratching minute. The first hour or two playing Echochrome was mostly spent just enjoying the novelty of its concept.

You don’t control the walking/jumping/falling character as such; you control the level (or the camera, ...

Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest - hands-on (Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest)

Dec 19, 2007

Dec 18, 2007 As we saw in our last preview, Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest, is a cutesy real-time strategy affair with a bit of an environmental twist. Starring what appears to be a large, sentient durian (quite possibly the most controversial fruit in the world), and an army of adorable wood spirits, the game tasks you with vanquishing tree-chopping industrialists and restoring your forest home to its former ...

Eco Creatures: Save the Forest - First Look (Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest)

Oct 5, 2007

October 05, 2007 Large, muscular men make great armies. So do all varieties of medieval humanoid, especially if they're vision-cloudingly ugly (orcs, ogres) or eyeball-shatteringly beautiful (elves). Zombies and insectoid aliens are right up there. Even huge platoons of robots with large guns will get the job done, provided they weren't designed by George Lucas with the purpose of making floppy-eared aliens with muppet voices look like highly trained infantry. Oh, and so do magical squirrels ...

El Matador hands-on (El Matador)

Aug 11, 2006

Following in the proud tradition of blatant rip-off pioneers like Coming to America 's McDowell's restaurant, the Chinese DVD black market, and the phrase "copy-and-paste" comes the third-person shooter El Matador. Let's just call this what it is: a sharp-looking clone of Max Payne. With no word of Max Payne 3 on the horizon, this may be happy news for some. El Matador comes complete with an exact replica of every game mechanic, menu system, sound effect, weapon and bullet-time ability that ...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Feb 13, 2007

Tuesday 13 February 2007 Every new platform needs an 'It' game. Like the horsey bleach-blonde toffs who preen and pout and draw clouds of admirers like desert birds to a carcass, a triple-A powerhouse videogame will attract more fun-hungry gamers to a new console than any number of lectures on the hardware's tetrafloppys, quadumaflips or ultrabits. And even the ever-so-slightly techno-mental Kaz Hirai can't argue with that. We've finally cosied up to TES IV: Oblivion on PS3, and, while it may ...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - hands-on (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Feb 9, 2007

First-person sword-and-sorcery fave The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which landed on more than a few best-of-2006 lists (see our own Platinum Chalice Awards) is coming to the PS3 this March. Sure, cynics will scoff that 360 owners have already been playing Oblivion for a year. But for Sony loyalists starving for triple-A titles, the cities and wilds of Tamriel offer an unprecedented chance to spend quality time with their $600 investment. Content-wise, everything in the PS3 release is identical ...

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Feb 17, 2006

Stop reading this right now. You need to go and look at the screenshots at the bottom of this page. Without question, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion takes the status quo and kicks it to the curb. Oblivion flat-out defines the next-generation. From what has been shown so far, its fantastic, almost photo-realistic graphics make every other role-playing game to date look dated and boring in comparison. So, what do you do, exactly? That's the thing; you pretty much make that decision yourself. ...

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

Feb 17, 2006

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles)

Feb 27, 2007

Expansion packs dont come much more expansive than this. This is a lot more than just an add-on for Oblivion - this is a 180-degree directional shift for Bethesdas epic RPG. When this 30-hour-long pack is available for download on Xbox Live Marketplace at the end of June, youd better pack your possessions in a box and have a straightjacket on hand, because Shivering Isles will have you foaming like a dog on a boat full of ...

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - Shivering Isles (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles)

Feb 13, 2007

Our afternoon spent sojourning in the Shivering Isles was like stepping into the mind of a manic depressive who has renounced lithium. Nurse, prepare a syringe of Thorazine: we're going in. You'll begin your questing on an Oz-like journey to see the Wizard, or should we say Sheogorath, the delightfully demented Daedric Prince of the Shivering Isles. But rather than following the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, you wander through the psychedelic briar-patch of Mania and Dementia to ...

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles)

Feb 6, 2007

As job interviews go, itll be short and relatively painless. Its just you, a disinterested man named Haskill, a bare room, a desk and a chair. After such an imposing entranceway, surrounded by otherworldly vegetation thats leeched through its tableau of linked screaming faces into the lands of Cyrodiil, you were perhaps expecting something a little more grandiose within. Then, as the interview concludes, the dull, featureless walls melt away into a cloud of butterflies. And then it happens: ...

Elebits (Elebits)

Dec 20, 2006

Wednesday 20 December 2006 We all know how annoying it is to lose something in your own home. During the ensuing room-to-room search, sofas are shuffled, TV stands tipped over and don't even get us started on old jeans pockets. Can you imagine what it would be like if, instead of car keys, you lost a million cuddly personifications of electricity and all the appliances in your house went down? That's super bogus. Luckily, the Wii remote in Elebits functions as a beam-shooting capture gun, ...

Elebits - hands-on (Elebits)

Dec 4, 2006

We all know how annoying it is to lose something in your own home. During the ensuing room-to-room search, sofas are shuffled, television stands tipped over and don't even get us started on old jeans pockets. Can you imagine what it would be like if instead of car keys you lost a million cuddly personifications of electricity and all the appliances in your house went down? That's super bogus. Luckily, the Wii remote in Elebits functions as a beam-shooting capture gun, capable of lifting even ...