GamesRadar - Xbox Previews

Scarface: The World is Yours hands-on (Scarface: The World is Yours)

12/07/2006

We got our first real crack at the newly redesigned Scarface: The World is Yours back in March, and while it was still in early form - having been recently torn apart and redesigned from scratch - it was already shaping up to be much more than just another Grand Theft Auto clone. Tony Montana looked and sounded slick, the city of Miami was intricately detailed and the cars handled much more smoothly than GTA's bar-of-soap-on-wet-tile rides. The game looks even more polished since then, and we ...

Scarface: The World is Yours (Scarface: The World is Yours)

31/03/2006

When it was shown at last year's E3 expo, Scarface: The World is Yours got a lukewarm reaction. Its graphics were chunky, the gameplay seemed sketchy and overall it looked like a bad Vice City clone. "It didn't pop," said Pete Wanat, the game's executive producer, as he explained why the game was essentially torn apart and rebuilt after the showing. "We view this as a long-term franchise. ... We can't mail in the first one." And so, the entire virtual city of Miami was rebuilt, the driving ...

Scarface: The World is Yours (Scarface: The World is Yours)

22/02/2006

Imagine if, after taking a nosedive into a mountain of coke and getting perforated with bullets, Tony Montana hadnt died at the end of Scarface. Hard to believe? Sure. Strips the film of its central message? Hell yes. But for better or worse, thats the premise of Scarface: The World is Yours. As the game opens, players replay the final scene from the movie, with one important twist: after trading fire with assassins sent by rival drug lord Alejandro Sosa, Tony escapes his burning mansion. ...

Second Sight (Second Sight)

19/07/2004

From developers Free Radical (creators of the excellent TimeSplitters series) comes Second Sight, a third-person stealth-action adventure that revolves around a character with psychic abilities.It's not had quite as high a profile as is it perhaps deserves - which is unfortunate because, after getting stuck into the game for a good few weeks now, we've discovered a game that's quite remarkable. It's so full of character, so full of wonderfully original touches and so refreshing to play, that ...

Sensible Soccer (Sensible Soccer 2006)

23/03/2006

With its speedy action and cartoon visuals, Sensible Soccer - Sensi to friends - is the anti-Pro Evo, and the nemesis of realism. It's not about simulating weight-perfect Premiership counter-attacking cross balls, it's about 35 yard goal-thwackers that bend like squashed bananas. Fifteen years after the original, the veteran footie game is returning for PS2, Xbox and PC this June as an antidote to "dull, drab sims", according to the creator of the series. But Pro Evolution Soccer is no ...

Sonic Riders (Sonic Riders)

22/02/2006

It's hard to believe it took until March of 2006 for Sega to strap Sonic's feet to a plank and point him downhill. Everyone from Final Fantasy VII's Cloud to Solid Snake have already geared up for some video grinding over the years. It's not exactly skateboarding or snowboarding, but Sonic Riders is close enough. You'll choose one of 16 characters and guide them down a mountain, through a steamy jungle or into a machinated wasteland while busting tricks and staying ahead of the pack. These ...

Spider-Man 2 (Spider-man 2)

29/06/2004

Five-and-a-half thousand miles is a hell of a long way to travel to see a videogame, especially when the woman sitting next to you on the plane has arms the size of Venezuela. Folds of mottled flesh spilling over into your already miniscule portion of personal space is more horrifying than anything The Suffering has to offer and when you're served with a meal purporting to be sausage and mash but in fact looks like a brace of dog's todgers topped with baby sick, you begin to wonder if it ...

Splinter Cell: Double Agent hands-on (Splinter Cell 4)

18/07/2006

Sam Fisher's heading off in bold new directions in Splinter Cell: Double Agent on Xbox 360 and PC, but the current-gen hardware just isn't strong enough to support his open-ended new adventure. So instead of simply trying to strip down the big, open battlefields and daylight runs of Double Agent for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, the developers took an unusual route: make a whole new game. The current-gen Splinter Cell: Double Agent shares its next-gen cousin's plot - secret agent Sam Fisher goes ...

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent (Splinter Cell 4)

14/03/2006

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 ...

Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run - hands-on (Spy Hunter Nowhere to Run)

2/08/2006

In an effort to add more depth to the classic driving/shooting hybrid series Spy Hunter, a new wrinkle has been thrown in. Now, you're forced to get out of the badassed ride known as the Interceptor (that sweet, James Bond fantasy car) and run around on your ...

SSX on Tour (SSX: On Tour)

18/08/2005

You experience a 'love at first sight' moment when you see SSX on Tour running. It's a simply stunning game - a hallucinogenic trip down the sides of mountains pulling off outrageous moves that are somehow just within the bounds of plausibility (a feature from the Tony Hawk games that reached its pinnacle in THPS2 and has never been quite so perfectly replicated since). If other games in its annual sports sequel portfolio seem to be resting on their laurels, the EA team behind SSX are pushing ...

Stacked featuring Daniel Negreanu (Stacked featuring Daniel Negreanu)

22/03/2006

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 ...

Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith)

6/05/2005

If Han Solo had a bad feeling about watching the walls of the trash compactor close in on him in the original Star Wars, he would have had a coronary at the sight of Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith. We've yet to see how George Lucas handles the transformation, but we know it involves lava - lots and lots of lava - and we know it's bolted on to a lightsaber battle so huge, so long, so dark, so downright dirty and jaw-droppingly slick, insiders on the film set reckon ...

Stolen (Stolen)

21/12/2004

If ever a game of the Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones movie Entrapment had been made, then we reckon it would play something like Stolen, the debut Xbox title from London's Blue 52 studio. This month we wandered up the bustling and uber-trendy Camden High Street to the coders' swanky offices for a first-play of the title and - rather happily - found things very much in order. Lithe, really busty, acrobatic, leather-clad heroine? Check. Older male mentor whispering advice in your ear and ...

Stubbs the Zombie (Stubbs the Zombie)

15/02/2006

The 30-second pitch for Stubbs the Zombie is supposed to be: 'It's the zombie game where you're the zombie!' That leaves two problems, however. The first is what to do with the remaining 26 seconds, and the next is that, for many gamers, the real 30-second pitch is: 'It's that game which Alex Seropian, who founded Bungie and then left, is making with the Halo engine!' Even that leaves you with a few spare seconds, which is still for the best, because there's more to Stubbs than meets the ...

Superman Returns returns (Superman Returns)

12/10/2006

EA popped in the other day to show us how Superman Returns is progressing, and, as it turns out, it's chugging along quite nicely. There haven't been many new additions to the gameplay side of things, so the mechanics that we saw at E3 are the same as we remembered them. The major differences come from the level of polish and detail infused into every pixel - Superman Returns looks spectacular even if it plays like half a dozen other games based on ...

Superman Returns hands-on (Superman Returns)

20/06/2006

Thursday 11 May 2006 EA's heroic action game, Superman Returns, is ready to launch on 26 June for PS2, Xbox 360, Xbox, PSP and DS. So like some magical Kryptonite-wrought typewriter, we got personal with the game to drain the Man of Steel's essence and put it into words. Clark Kent's home, Metropolis, is faithfully reproduced - and ready to be bombed, broken, burnt and torn to pieces if you fail in your super-saving duties. The whole city is there to stretch your muscle in, but thanks to ...

Superman Returns updated impressions (Superman Returns)

17/05/2006

We got a chance to view the new Superman Returns game in all of its primary color-lovin' glory, and that tiny taste leads us to believe that this could be Superman's best console adventure yet. Focusing on the non-linear style of gameplay found in other superhero favorites (like Spider-man 2 and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction), Superman Returns delivers an open Metropolis with a sprawling 80 square miles and over 7,000 ...