GamesRadar - PS2 Previews

Baroque (Baroque)

Feb 13, 2008

Purged by flames, the world’s remaining population is mutated by distorted fantasies, created to help stomach the inhospitable remains. Heartless meshes of flab, cogs and metalwork - enough to give even Silent Hill’s freaks the willies - these ‘meta-beings’ crawl the world, devouring humanity’s leftovers. Distorted fantasy being the very definition of ‘baroque’ itself. Animal Crossing it ain’t. It ...

Batman Begins (Batman Begins)

Mar 22, 2005

Games based on Batman, one of the most famous comic book caped crusaders, have a reputation for being stinkier than a pile of freshly laid bat mess, which is absolutely criminal considering the wealth of creative potential that's loaded into the source material.Hoping to buck this depressing trend is Derby-based developer Eurocom and publishing powerhouse Electronic Arts, who have been charged with the task of producing the eponymous game of the upcoming Batman Begins movie.Focusing intensely ...

B-Boy - hands-on (B-Boy)

May 23, 2008

For years now, the "dancing" genre has been dominated by Dance Dance Revolution and its many knockoffs, all of which require players to hop around, rhythmically stomping along to music while a dull cascade of arrows floats by. But it wasn't always that way, and B-Boy - a breakdance sim released nearly two years ago in Europe and only now headed for a US release - is a throwback to a time when dance games were more about rhythm than legwork. It aims to do for breakdancing what Tony Hawk's Pro Skater did for skateboarding: make it accessible to people with zero fitness or leg coordination. ...

Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer - hands-on (Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer)

Jun 20, 2006

For all its rich history and action-packed stories, Native American legend is one of the few branches of folklore that video games have left largely unexplored. The problem might be that it's a little too rich, if Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer is anything to go by. A messy hodgepodge of tribal mythology and symbols from all over the US, Brave has about as much in common with pre-Columbian America as The Lord of the Rings does with medieval Europe - which, for anyone who demands realistic ...

Brothers In Arms (Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30)

Aug 24, 2004

The Utah Beach Museum at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont is the answer. It's the answer to all those questions fired at developers about the morality of making wargames. The questions may be expressed in different ways but they always amount to the same thing: How do you feel about turning a painful, traumatic conflict into entertainment?Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software, uses the Spielberg defence: "We're fulfilling a fantasy, but also retelling a story as authentically as possible. I think ...

Bully - updated hands-on (Bully)

Oct 12, 2006

First, let's clear something up: Bully both is and isn't Grand Theft Auto in a school. It uses the GTA game engine, so anyone familiar with those games should have an easy time navigating Bullworth Academy and the surrounding town. But while it's a mission-based, free-roaming adventure, you can't jack cars in Bully. You can't mug people, and you can't use deadly weapons or kill anyone. No hookers, sex or blood, either. So, is Bully the dangerous game everyone says it is? Only if you think Bart ...

Canis Canem Edit (Bully)

Sep 29, 2006

Friday 29 September 2006 Canis Canem Edit - the schoolyard adventure game formerly known as Bully - is only four weeks away now, but you could be forgiven for being a little clueless about how the game will work. We've been hands-on with Canis once before but to give you more of an idea of what Bullworth Academy has in store, we've picked the three best missions from Chapter One. This is your School Your first task is scoping out the school. Gary, an ADD-suffering megalomaniac who befriends ...

Bully - hands-on (Bully)

Sep 1, 2006

If you listened to all the insane parents and random, ignorant groups out there, Bully is the reason you cry yourself to sleep at night. They all took one look at this schoolyard tale woven by the same company that sells Grand Theft Auto and assumed the game was all about beating the crap out of kids, stealing their lunch money and glorifying everything we all hated about growing up. In reality, Bully is almost the exact opposite. Jimmy Hopkins isn't out to cause trouble, or pick on students ...

Canis Canem Edit (Bully)

Sep 1, 2006

Friday 1 September 2006 There's not even a splash of the red stuff in the whole of Canis Canem Edit's boarding school adventure. But that hasn't stopped the 'ban that' pack slurring Rockstar as "irresponsible", or prematurely labelling Canis Canem Edit as a "Columbine simulator". So it's a good job that Canis - albeit with its new, not-so-contentious title - is set to tackle all the ridiculous fuss with a quirky, characterful and quality experience. Canis is set in and around Bullworth ...

Bully (Bully)

Aug 11, 2006

The cheeky bastards at Rockstar have built an empire on letting gamers do things they'd probably never do in real life: stealing cars, running with gangs and stabbing skinheads in the face, for example. Now, despite frantic protest from watchdog groups, they're just months away from offering up a chance to slip on the shoes of everyone's childhood nemesis. In Bully, you'll play as Jimmy Hopkins, a burly little miscreant with a permanent sneer and a mastodon-sized chip on his shoulder. After ...

Burnout 3 (Burnout 3: Takedown)

Jul 15, 2004

Check out this latest trailer and see what the fuss is all about:We'd bet our monthly wage packet that you've played one of the first two Burnout games. Then we'd bet Adam's wages for an entire year that you absolutely loved them, perhaps even more than any other racing game, ever. And who wouldn't? Driving at insanely fast speeds down the wrong side of six lane highways, causing bigger pile-ups than you ever see on Police, Camera, Action, super-slick graphics, loads of different game modes, ...

Burnout 3 (Burnout 3: Takedown)

Mar 30, 2004

The preview build of Burnout 3 we're being shown isn't hugely impressive. It is, in effect, Burnout 2.5 - a slightly enhanced version of admittedly one of the finest racing games of recent times but which shows little in the way of the significant leap the game enjoyed from its first to second iteration. This particular version, however, is a month old. We're travelled to Criterion's Surrey headquarters to play the very latest code - the first magazine in the world to do so - and the developer ...

Burnout Dominator - hands-on (Burnout Dominator)

Feb 14, 2007

Well come straight out and admit it - Burnout is GRs favorite racing series, period. Sure, we occasionally like to amble along in a Honda Civic with tweaked rear suspension in Gran Turismo 4, do a couple of laps of Tokyo in Project Gotham 3 or hurtle through a deadly canyon in NFS: Carbon but nothing, nothing quite sends the adrenaline coursing through our veins like a sweet signature or revenge ...

Burnout Dominator - hands-on (Burnout Dominator)

Jan 22, 2007

Monday 22 January 2007 Developer Criterion is slaving away on Burnout 5 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 right now, but if you're one of the millions of speed freaks still rocking the PS2 or PSP, some last-gen love is on the way in the form of Burnout Dominator. Due out in March, Dominator promises a "pure racing experience" that'll take the crash-happy series back to its high-speed ...

Burnout Revenge (Burnout Revenge)

Mar 7, 2006

Burnout Revenge could have been just the same on Microsoft's 'next-gen' 360 as it is on the Xbox and PS2. After all, a straightforward port with slightly shinier graphics would hardly stand out right now, as even the machine's cheerleaders would be forced to admit. And Revenge is hardly lacking excitement as it is. Yet, despite a development push that won't exceed six months, Burnout Revenge 360 is looking shockingly more next-gen than many of the more established standard-bearers. Are we ...

Burnout Revenge (Burnout Revenge)

Feb 23, 2006

How many driving games invite you to crash, let alone reward you for it? In genre-shattering defiance of everything we know about racing games, the Burnout series has taken crashing, the racer's kryptonite, and morphed it into an art form. As if the series' trademark style of full-contact racing wasn't rough enough, Burnout Revenge adds the new Traffic Attack mode, which actually requires you to slam into as many cars as possible for maximum score. Crash Mode, a sort of puzzle game in which ...