Thursday 4 May 2006 With its satisfying combat and clever gameplay ideas, Urban Chaos: Riot Response is our bet for sleeper hit of the year. We've already bashed heads in the single-player mode, but when Eidos offered us the chance to try the gang-war action online we dusted off our truncheons and waded back into the fray. Urban Chaos's multiplayer modes are eight-player skirmishes between the hi-tech riot response team, T-Zero, and a gang of molotov-obsessed bad guys, the Burners. There are ...
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27 Apr 2006

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Xbox Preview | Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Ghost Recon games obsess over reproducing reality, so graphics and animation play a pivotal role. In the past, only PC gamers got to gloat about fresh lighting and molecular detail ... but times have changed. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter shotguns realism directly into your retinas. The supple, reactive shadows play across the streets of Mexico City with dazzling accuracy while you're fed a constant diet of military authorities barking critical orders and hailstorms of bullets and ...
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25 Apr 2006

Rogue Trooper

Xbox Preview | Rogue Trooper

Set in a desolate, but still incredibly colorful, future world, the third-person shooter Rogue Trooper pulls no punches with its unflinching brutality. At every turn, you're presented with violence so obscene that it becomes hilarious because it is so blatantly ruthless. Take the cutscenes, for example, in which one of your brothers in arms falls to the enemy and you knife him in the base of the skull to pull out his biochip (which you later implant in your gun, backpack or helmet for increased ...
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24 Apr 2006

Painkiller: Hell Wars

Xbox Preview | Painkiller: Hell Wars

Under a constant hail of putrified flesh gibs and congealed blood, Daniel Garner fends off an overwhelming horde of monstrous demons ... with a shotgun (among other blunt projectiles). Painkiller: Hell Wars slams you into a nightmarish world where you play as Daniel and attempt to claw your way out of Hell. Set in a strange sort of purgatory suffering from a plague of demonic beasts, Painkiller: Hell Wars hurls gore and zombie bits at an amazing pace. This game is alarmingly fast, and the Xbox ...
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21 Apr 2006

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Xbox Preview | Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Set in a fractured futuristic land of oppressive government rules and bleak dystopian perspectives, Dreamfall - the sequel to the classic adventurer Longest Journey - pits you against forces that are seen and unseen. There are three major characters in Dreamfall that you'll need to assist in their struggle to discover the dimension-spanning conspiracy that threatens us all. Zoe is an apathetic youth who's lost her direction (having broken up with her boyfriend and quit college) when her life ...
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21 Apr 2006

Over the Hedge

Xbox Preview | Over the Hedge

We've been manipulating furry little critters in video games for years, so how come the 3D platforming in Over the Hedge didn't hit us as an exercise in boredom? The short answer: multiplayer. The slightly longer answer: a decent sense of humor. Over the Hedge takes its characters from an upcoming Dreamworks animated feature (code for "kiddie cartoon") in which a bunch of woodland creatures mount an assault on suburbia. As you can imagine, the idea is that hilarity ensues ... what makes this ...
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20 Apr 2006

The Da Vinci Code

Xbox Preview | The Da Vinci Code

Think of your favorite novel. Now know this: The Da Vinci Code kicked its ass. Dan Brown's thriller about secret societies, hidden messages in famous paintings and some controversial theories about Jesus Christ is officially the best-selling novel ever, nearing almost 40 million copies in print. So what can the game provide that all those dead trees can't? More puzzles. Without giving too much away, you'll take up the role of Robert Langdon, an art expert who finds himself a key suspect in a ...
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20 Apr 2006

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Xbox Preview | Urban Chaos Riot Response

The city is on fire, and it's your job to put it out - with bullets. The civic-minded shooter Urban Chaos: Riot Response is shaping up nicely for its June release, and we recently went a few rounds with the PS2 version's frantic online multiplayer mode. Where we got shot. In the head. A lot. (Seriously, click here to see for yourself.) Our abysmal performance aside - and the lesson here is not to play against the guys who made the game - multiplayer in Urban Chaos is promising. While the ...
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14 Apr 2006

OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

Xbox Preview | Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

You won't find any metal-munching car wrecks or realistic control in OutRun 2006 Coast to Coast. Hell, there isn't even a reason why one track bleeds into the next - it just does. You'll go from the pyramids to San Francisco to Easter Island in just under six minutes. Thing is, there's so much burning rubber in between each of those stops that you won't even notice how little sense they ...
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12 Apr 2006

WarPath

Xbox Preview | WarPath

Send us to a distant planet, slap a shotgun in our hands, and we're usually pretty happy. The budget-priced WarPath, currently on track for a June release, delivers space-shooter carnage in its not-quite-complete stages, but we're not sure if its best ideas are enough to give this bargain blaster ($30 on Xbox) an edge against its toughest opponent: Halo 2. WarPath frames its first-person blastfest within a Risk-style board game that determines whether your next battle is a round of Capture the ...
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