Poker: America's new national pastime? You'd think it from the sudden explosion of TV shows, books and paraphernalia littering the pop culture landscape. Video games have jumped on the bandwagon, too, but every poker title seems to be missing ... something. Usually it's either smarts or speed. Stacked featuring Daniel Negreanu promises both. Stacked is powered by the Poki AI, which doesn't sound like much, but has the potential to make all other poker games look utterly ridiculous. Developed ...
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17 Mar 2006

Major League Baseball 2K6

Xbox Preview | Major League Baseball 2K6

Forget about “the cream” and “the clear” - baseballs back in the one place its guaranteed to be steroid-free: on your favorite videogame console. With a third-party exclusivity agreement with Major League Baseball in publisher 2Ks back pocket, MLB 2K6 steps onto the field as the only pro hardball title on Xbox and GameCube, and just the second on PS2. And while longtime fans of the digital diamond may be nervous at the thought of a pro MVP-less season, youve got to like ...
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17 Mar 2006

FlatOut 2

Xbox Preview | FlatOut 2

Last year's racer FlatOut is remembered mainly for two things: drivers who went flying violently through the windshield with every serious collision, and minigames that revolved around how far you could launch your driver out of the car. Some critics dismissed the actual racing as unremarkable, but the horrible-accident minigames stood out so well that the game is getting a sequel. FlatOut 2 features everything a good sequel should: more cars, more varied tracks, more personality and twice as ...
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17 Mar 2006

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Xbox Preview | LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Lego Star Wars didn't so much secure the support of a wide audience as capture, for entirely separate reasons, the hearts of two. Children warmed to its unpatronising approach and to adults it provided an antidote to George Lucas' wavering prequels. For its successor - at first glance a project with everything to gain - the use of Episodes IV to VI as source material is, in the eyes of adults at least, of significant concern. Will innocent parody earn the same appreciation when applied to ...
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16 Mar 2006

The King of Fighters Neowave

Xbox Preview | King of Fighters Neowave

Dead or Alive? Bah. Keep your Virtua Fighter, too. For a lot of fans out there, 2D fighting games are alive and well, thanks in no small part to SNK Playmore. The company has delivered a seemingly endless stream of King of Fighters games over the last two years, and it's not done yet: here comes Neowave. For the last decade or so, the KoF series has pioneered the idea of 3-on-3 team fighting; when one character gets taken out, another steps in to pick up where the fight left off. They were ...
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16 Mar 2006

WarPath

Xbox Preview | WarPath

It's a tale as old as time: three separate races arrive on a resource-rich planet of their collective dreams and are forced to blast away at each other until two of the races have been completely annihilated. Why these dudes can't share baffles us all, but it would make for an awfully boring shooter if they weren't warring, so we just have to accept the flimsy story and move on. WarPath adheres to this formula by providing players the option of fighting for the planet-eating Ohm, the homeless ...
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14 Mar 2006

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter:...

Xbox Preview | Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

When you're a member of the United States' premiere fighting force, life is a constant barrage of other people's problems. Sometimes, you're just minding your own business, protecting the head of a foreign government like you're supposed to, when some chump with a rocket launcher comes along and frags your Blackhawk. Okay, so maybe that exact example doesn't happen in the game, but we don't want to spoil the plot for you. The point is, judging from our hands-on time with the single-player ...
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14 Mar 2006

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent

Xbox Preview | Splinter Cell 4

Splinter Cell shares the spotlight with Metal Gear Solid as the other major force in stealth-action gaming - and the more realistic one of the two. It's also maturing as a franchise. Sarcastic middle-aged super spy Sam Fisher has only grown more short-tempered in each of the series' first three entries. Meanwhile, the Splinter Cell gameplay has in turn expanded to a more open-ended, replayable experience that culminated in last year's Chaos Theory. In Chaos Theory, Fisher's character was much ...
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10 Mar 2006

Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers - the creator...

Xbox Preview | Full Spectrum Warrior Ten Hammers

Let's be clear about two things: one, Full Spectrum Warrior was a great game. Two, the imminent sequel, Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers is smarter, and it's going to pound you into the firmament if you don't know your stuff. But we're here to help. We've got the game's own training videos exclusively in our Xbox video section (click here ), and we've also recruited Creative Director Wil Stahl to give us a quick debriefing. Read on, or be blown away before your boots hit the ...
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10 Mar 2006

Teen Titans

Xbox Preview | Teen Titans

"Back in my day,” say the oldest of the old-school gamers, “all we had was the local arcade, and we loved it! We happily dropped 25 cents a game to get our asses handed to us." Those days of traveling places to play games are gone, but a property from about the same by-gone era, the recently revived Teen Titans comic book franchise, will try to bring the arcade-style button-masher glory days back. Just because it's an old idea, it isn't necessarily a bad one. In Teen Titans, you ...
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