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Obscure II hands-on (Obscure: The Aftermath)

May 9, 2007

Survival horror can be a lot of hard work, especially when there's no light relief to break up the gore-filled barrage of trouser-filling frights. So just as the movie world has Scream and The Faculty to have fun with the formula, so gaming has Obscure - and we've been given hands-on access to a nearly finished PS2 build of its sequel, Obscure II. The game's unique in that its co-operative two-player mode runs for the entire game. We were impressed with the sheer number of dialogue lines as ...

Yoot Saito's Odama (Odama)

Mar 22, 2006

Katamari's out, Colossus tops the charts, Phoenix Wright is around the corner and Chibi Robo is on its way in May. Publishers' willingness to put esoteric Japanese games on European shelves seems to be at an all-time high, but you still have to wonder if this voice-activated hybrid of feudal military strategy and pinball would be getting a global release, let alone a near-simultaneous one, if GameCube's schedule wasn't quite so desolately empty. Its creator Yoot Saito (also father of the ...

Odama (Odama)

Mar 9, 2006

We love pinball. We love strategic battles. Nintendo is betting that when Odama combines the two, we'll love the new concoction as well. The game has been lurking in the file marked 'coming soon' for a while now, gradually gaining new features and visual polish. But the core gameplay, in which players use a giant metal ball to knock down enemies, looks so weird and addictive that the wait should be worth it. There is a story behind the strange proceedings; something about feudal intrigue. ...

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath)

Dec 15, 2004

Oddworld's back, but not as you might remember it. No longer are you playing as a gawky, flatulent Mudokon or cute little Gabbit. Now you're a properly cool character. An outlaw who goes by the name Stranger, a dude with a voice deep enough to threaten Michael 'voice of Sam Fisher' Ironside's masculinity.Set in the wild west, Stranger's Wrath doesn't only feature a new lead character, it also strays away from the puzzly platforming gameplay of the previous games. Third-person jumping bits are ...

Okami (Okami)

Jan 4, 2008

Jan 4, 2008 Try playing Twilight Princess after staying awake for 72 consecutive hours and youll be well on your way to understanding what Okami, formerly developed for and released on PS2, is all about. Taking control of a Sun Goddess reincarnated in the form of a white wolf, and accompanied on your travels by - yes! - a talking flea, you set out to do… er… slay some demons, indulge in some lady rescue, that kind of thing. The plot (of which there is plenty, admittedly) isnt so ...

Okami Wii: First look (Okami)

Oct 23, 2007

Oct 23, 2007 It all makes sense. Okami was brilliant on PS2, its lush visuals and dreamy atmosphere combining to excellent effect and helping to make it one of the console's greatest games. Even the 'draw shape/line to trigger attack/event' gameplay, which could have been awkward, worked adequately with the analogue sticks. But on Wii, the paintbrush now commanded with a flick of the Wiimote, Okami comes together like a masterpiece. At least, we expect it to. Our first look comprised of the ...

Okami hands-on (Okami)

Aug 16, 2006

Some games, like Shadow of the Colossus or Ocarina of Time, have that intangible "something" that makes them more than just a bunch of polygons thrown up on a screen by a wheezing plastic box. Add one more game to that list. In our eight transcendent hours with Okami, we're already convinced this water-colored adventure will rank among the most unique, beloved fables on the PS2. Okami will affect your life. But this gushing praise wasn't our first impression. You're awoken as a goddess that's ...

Okami impressions (Okami)

Jul 19, 2006

Capcom stopped by yesterday to give us another taste of Okami, its stunning-looking Zelda -style adventure game for the PlayStation 2. We've already covered the general gameplay elements and story (you're a goddess in the form of a wolf, trying to bring back life to a world soaked in darkness), but this time, we were able to get a better look at one of the game's most potentially exciting facets: its boss ...

Okami (Okami)

Apr 13, 2006

Thursday 13 April 2006 We're hungry like the wolf for exciting, original ideas and Okami is one of the most exciting and original PS2 games since Killer 7. Originally announced almost a year ago, Okami's unique visual flair and brilliantly bizarre world is now well on its way to hitting PS2 in the autumn, so we got our hands dirty with an early version of this brilliant-looking title. In Okami you play a wolfish embodiment of Amaterasu, an immensely powerful sun god. A legendary and ruthless ...

Okami (Okami)

Mar 13, 2006

A few years back saw the dawn of cartoon-like cel-shading, which was as nifty as it was soon overused. Now, Capcom is pushing gaming's visual boundaries once again with Okami, a beautiful game that resembles "sumi-e," an ancient Japanese art form. It's one of those cases where we didn't know we wanted something until we saw it, and now we really, really want it. Okami means "wolf" in Japanese, and so you play the role of a white canine who's actually the earthly incarnation of the sun god ...

Omega Five - Xbox Live Arcade (Omega Five - Xbox Live Arcade)

Sep 12, 2007

Sept 12, 2007 Xbox Live Arcade doesnt appreciate your stereotypes, dammit, and its ready to do something about it - that something being Omega Five. With its mercilessly ball-busting difficulty, this old school, side-scrolling shooter will never be mistaken for anything remotely resembling a “casual ...

One Piece: Grand Adventure hands-on (One Piece: Grand Adventure)

Aug 11, 2006

The comic has driven Japan mental for almost a decade. The show has ping-ponged around the US cable networks as the comic is published in the nation's most popular anthology, Shonen Jump. But the bizarre saga of the Straw Hat Pirates... well, maybe it should be played to be believed. For those who've somehow avoided the phenomenon, One Piece is a long-running series that takes place in a steampunk-style world of endless oceans. The Age of Piracy is at its peak, and One Piece follows the ...

One Piece: Grand Adventure hands-on (One Piece: Grand Adventure)

Aug 11, 2006

Pre-E3 06: One Piece: Grand Adventure (One Piece: Grand Adventure)

May 9, 2006

Pretty soon, you'll be able to play the entire Cartoon Network lineup of new-to-America anime. Granted, many of these games aren't too hot (Inuyasha, for one), but the last One Piece game surprised us all by being a mindless-but-fun pirate ...

One Piece: Pirates' Carnival (One Piece: Pirates' Carnival)

Apr 10, 2006

One Piece must be a charmed series. Most anime-based games rely so heavily on their source material to make them interesting that anyone who doesn't, say, fall asleep clutching a life-size Inuyasha pillow will be clawing their eyes out within moments. Not so with last year's fun fighter One Piece Grand Battle, and the same is holding true with Pirates' Carnival. Its screwed up cast and simple minigames should appeal to just about anyone who can stand the idea of sitting down in front of a ...

Onechanbara: vorteX - hands-on (Onechanbara)

Dec 12, 2006

The question at this point isn't whether Onechanbara: vorteX will come out in the US. The question is why it's taken this long. Now a long-running budget series in Japan, the Onechanbara (a Japanese pun meaning "big sister sword fight") games are built around a very simple concept: hot chicks with very little clothing slice up hordes of slow, dull-witted zombies and get covered with gore in the process. It's exactly as stupid and repetitive as it sounds, but it's hard to imagine a game that's ...

Onechanbara heading to the 360 (Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad)

Aug 4, 2008

We can now cross “bloody babes battling zombies” off our list of strange things from Japan we’d like to see in the West since D3Publisher has announced that Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad will be heading to the Xbox 360 in early 2009. ...

Onechanbara's coming to the Wii (Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers)

Jul 9, 2008

In case you haven’t noticed that we’ve been hosing down our pages with cosplay cuties, it’s GamesRadar’s [Week of Babes]. So we’re excited to announce that Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers will be heading to the US and UK in early 2009.

If you’re not familiar with the Onechanbara series, you’ve been missing out on one of the best examples of wildly weird titles that could only come from the ...

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams)

Feb 24, 2006

Capcom once swore up and down that the Onimusha series would end with the third installment, but that didn't stop it from blatantly setting up a sequel at the end of Onimusha 3. And sure enough, it's not even two years later and we're only weeks away from the release of Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. In a sense, though, Onimusha as we knew it has ended. None of the old characters are coming back for the sequel (at least not in playable form), and the old "samurai Resident Evil" approach has finally ...

Operation Darkness - updated hands-on (Operation Darkness )

Apr 28, 2008

Not since Return to Castle Wolfenstein has killing Nazi zombies felt so good - but after 45 minutes with this strategy RPG-cum-WWII shooter, it becomes apparent that something’s weird about Operation Darkness. About the second motionless cutscene in, it hits you: this game is a zombie made up of parts of rotting genres. Those genres typically don’t have much to do with each other - fantasy RPG and strategy RPG might brush up ...