For over a decade the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (aka E3) has been the highlight of the gaming calendar. But - with many of the big players deserting the show - the doors have closed on this incredible circus of sensory stimulation. E3 as we know it might be "evolving" but it's not going to be the same mind-blowing spectacle.
To celebrate the relatively short - but always raucously enjoyable - lifespan of the show, we look back and remember why, for one week every year, gaming was
Chaos, mayhem, uproar and riots. That's what GamesRadar seems to have triggered with last week's feature, "The Ten Greatest Years in Videogame History ". We might as well have burned down the internet, for all the email and forum flaming we inspired. Some folks praised us, some wanted us crucified, and one called us "wankers", ignoring that the feature only covered the US market.
Granted, we set ourselves up. We knew this feature was so vast, so subjective and so dependent upon reader
The Xenosaga series, like any great story-driven role player, is filled with many different characters. Each has his or her own secrets, and his or her own path through the world. Each has a different look, a different tone of voice, a different way of thinking or fighting.
Xenosaga doesn't limit things to a single world - it's a galaxy filled with alien menaces and shadowy organizations that manipulate the lives of people for their own ends. This cast of memorable characters must fight
Three weeks ago, our sibling site NextGen posted the article, "The Ten Greatest Years in Gaming." It was full of cool industry info, but the first thing we asked was, "So, the PlayStation was first designed as an add-on for the SNES. We get the irony, but what were we actually playing in 1993 that made it so great?"
We checked it out. We made a huge list of the best games of the past 34 years, taped it to the wall, and fought for days about stuff like whether one Zelda is worth more than two
Step into the future
.hack//G.U. is unique because it straddles two worlds. There's the real world - the one we live in... 11 years in the future, 2017. It's a future that already feels familiar: in which network gaming is universal, thanks to advanced technology and a game-friendly society.
The backdrop to the events of .hack//G.U. is a massively multiplayer RPG, known as The World R:2, built literally on the ashes of the troubled online game that served as the backdrop to the .hack story
In the original .hack saga, The World is a massive online game played around the globe. The trouble is that it contained a terrible secret - players would fall into comas after playing the game. Fortunately, two players known as Kite and BlackRose, among others, battled the malicious entities living in the game world and brought safe play to everyone. In the aftermath, the game itself was completely destroyed.
But companies can't resist dicing with fate when money hangs in the balance,
If you thought you had it rough in school, be thankful your teachers (and fellow students) weren't lobbing razor-sharp needles through your guts or chopping you in half with a five-foot sword. As we tore through Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, these uber-violent moments of ninja-awesomeness consistently slapped our jaws to the floor. We've compiled six of the coolest moments in our exclusive video, or you can read on for the play-by-play details.
Up first is Neji Hyuga, a student who's well on his way
With its flaming bad guys and slo-mo headshots, Urban Chaos has become a favorite of ours as an absurdist humor goldmine. With cheats, it's even sillier than you can imagine... fortunately, you're at GamesRadar, so you don't have to imagine anything (unless you really want to). We've stitched up six different cheats into a mash-up video of hilarious proportions, just click the movies tab above to drench yourself in awesomeness. Combining headless mode, disco lights, the mini-gun, incendiary
Never played Valkyrie Profile, right? Sure, a few of you out there did, but the game's developer tri-Ace didn't hit it big till years later - with Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. That PS2 RPG captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of gamers. But it was hardly the first epic adventure tri-Ace had taken on. No, the company's roots reach much further back.
The original Star Ocean debuted on the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo. Arriving almost comically late - July 1996, almost
By now, you've probably had a chance to try out the $20 PS2 version of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. Maybe you've even finished it. Perhaps, through some sheer force of dedication, you've even managed to tear your way through its dozens of side missions and bonus tasks.
But even so, we're willing to bet that there's some stuff not even you've done. Horrible stuff. The kind of stuff that makes grown men sit bolt upright in the dead of night and cry out, "Damn! I wish I'd thought of
