GamesRadar - Wii Previews

FaceBreaker - First look (FaceBreaker)

May 19, 2008

FaceBreaker is the spearhead title in EA's new gaming 'brand', Freestyle. Freestyle is all about accessibilty and approachability, apparently, which translates into a cartoon boxing game that puts high value on 'old school' gameplay - which is what EA reckons everybody loves. But can we love FaceBreaker? ...

FaceBreaker (FaceBreaker)

Mar 28, 2008

Peter Moore used to lead the line at Microsoft’s games division; before that he worked at Sega and helped launch the Dreamcast. Why the walk through Moore’s resume? Because he moved to EA last year and FaceBreaker is the first sign of where he feels the publisher’s been going wrong. FaceBreaker aims to take the core gameplay of Fight Night Round 3 and push it through a cartoon filter, injecting arcade nonsense into the genre not ...

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)

Mar 27, 2007

Theres something troubling about superhero teams. To us, the term superhero denotes an extraordinary lone wolf with enough dazzling abilities to banish evil alone, so surely the fact that he needs three buddies to thwart neer-do-wells suggests there are underwhelming powers in the mix. While it takes only one Spider-Man to bring down Green Goblin, it takes four, er, Fantastic Fours to bring down Dr. Doom, meaning they are each, in effect, one-quarter of the hero Spider-Man is. That, or Green ...

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)

Mar 14, 2007

The last outing for Marvel's fab four, published by Activision, not 2K Games, was a mediocre affair with predictable button-bashing action that barely tested your skills. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer benefits from PS3's bolder, crisper graphics, while the gameplay's been enhanced to test your wit as well as your rapid-finger ...

Far Cry Vengeance (Far Cry Vengeance)

Jan 5, 2007

Thursday 4 January 2007 The popularity of Nintendo's Wii is as mainstream as it gets right now. Everyone - from little kids to teenage girls and radio DJs - is presently in a furious arm-swinging, remote-flinging frenzy over the sleek white box. So how ironic is it that the "family-friendly" system is also playing host to so many first-person shooters, that most bloody and controversial of all gaming genres? It may be incongruous but it also makes perfect sense. The Wii-mote screams to be ...

Far Cry Vengeance - hands-on (Far Cry Vengeance)

Nov 29, 2006

The popularity of the Nintendo Wii is as mainstream as it gets right now. Everyone - from little kids and teenage girls to radio talk show hosts and cable pundits (Stephen Colbert, anyone?) - is presently in a furious arm-swinging, remote-flinging frenzy over the sleek white box. So how ironic is it that the "family-friendly" system is also playing host to so many first person shooters, that most bloody and controversial of all gaming genres? It may be incongruous, but it also makes perfect ...

Far Cry Vengeance - first look (Far Cry Vengeance)

Oct 25, 2006

The thing was bigger than a house, it was uglier than a pitbull and its performance in Japan couldn't have been more of a disaster if it had launched with a game based on Hiroshima. But one thing the original Xbox was pretty much untouchable at was first-person shooters, and right at the top of the tree, just behind the powerhouse Halo twosome, was Ubisoft's fantastic Far Cry Instincts. Instincts was magnificent for two reasons. Firstly, it flipped the FPS template on its head by setting the ...

Fatal Frame IV (Fatal Frame IV)

Jun 20, 2008

The Fatal Frame games have established themselves as the byword for suspense-filled horror. There are no showers of blood or shotguns, no hideous demons with heads attached to their backsides, and definitely no muscle-bound heroes called Jack. Instead, you play as a fragile-looking Japanese schoolgirl and are only ever armed with a flashlight and a special camera that can exorcise the ghosts that haunt whatever spooky location it is that you ...

Fatal Frame IV - coming soon? (Fatal Frame IV)

Jan 15, 2008

Jan 15, 2008 Fatal Frame IV (or Project Zero in Europe) is set to be another example of how the Wii dominates Japan via Nintendo-exclusivity. In this survival horror series, ghosts are your enemies; and because being incorporeal makes them resilient to sticks and stones (words will never harm them), the only way to defeat them is to take their photo, thus sealing their souls in the film. (The current iteration uses SD cards ...

FIFA 08 - hands-on (FIFA 08)

Jun 7, 2007

In direct opposition to its big bro, mini FIFA is certainly a case of tweaking and fine-tuning over any wholesale alterations. For instance 07s defensive intelligence was a weak point, something that EA was keen to remedy. Thanks to the new right analog player switching and vastly improved AI, any goals you concede will now fall firmly at your feet. This new realistic defending includes increased spatial awareness regarding threats and danger zones, putting more pressure on the ball carrier, ...

Kiddy FIFA 09 better than PS3/360? (FIFA Soccer 09)

Jul 10, 2008

EA hasn't taken the easy option of shoehorning the same game into every platform for FIFA 09. No, instead we get the home console version, a dedicated PC version and a special Wii game. Or rather, two Wii games in one. ...

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers (Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers)

Jan 10, 2008

Jan 10, 2008 Got a GameCube, four GBAs and three friends? Then youll agree that the original Crystal Chronicles was brilliant. Square Enix have learned their lesson well from the original Crystal Chrons logistical nightmares, crafting Crystal Bearers (the Wii installment) into more of a single player-orientated ...

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King and the Promised Country - WiiWare (Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King - WiiWare)

Feb 13, 2008

Popping out to say hello at the recent Jump Festa geek-stravaganza - a massive fan festival organized by the good folks at Shonen Jump magazine - the WiiWare title we’re most excited about is still looking great.Playing as the distinctly kingdom-less King Leo, we already knew that the architectonic force that allows him to pluck buildings from the ground was powered by spirit stones; it’s the hunt for these stones that is ...

Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn)

Feb 26, 2007

It would appear that Fire Emblems slow take-your-turn battle mentality has seeped into Nintendos publicity machine as Goddess of Dawn begins a news offensive after a long period of waiting. Maybe this is overstating things a bit, for what we see in these newer screenshots is less of a radical game engine overhaul war charge and more of a light spear-prodding as elements are tightened and dressed up. Visually the game is striving to step away from the rather play-board-ish flat battle grounds ...

Fishing Master (Fishing Master)

Aug 3, 2007

For many of us, fishing represents that last desperate option for preserving our survival if stranded on some desert island or in a remote forest. So, of course, leave it to the Wii to take some activity that we would only consider in the real world if our lives literally depended on it (the exception being our office hillbilly, who goes fishing on purpose) and turn it into a game that actually looks pretty interesting. In this case, Fishing Master. Fishing Master is built on a simple but ...

Furu Furu Park - Hands-on (Furu Furu Park)

Oct 5, 2007

October 05, 2007 Following in the grand tradition of Japanese game shows in which people dress in costumes and let themselves be put into life threatening situations comes Furu Furu Park. Like many other Wii titles, it's a collection of 30 mini games, many of which utilize the motion sensitive Wii remote in unusual ways. However, Furu Furu's claim to fame is that it's much more strange than most of its competitors. Which we honestly really dig. Part of it is the game modes: in addition to the ...