GamesRadar - Xbox Previews

2006 FIFA World Cup (2006 FIFA World Cup)

Mar 30, 2006

You wouldnt be remiss to consider EA Sports latest soccer game a quick sequel to the annual chart-topper, FIFA Soccer. No doubt the publisher wants to cash in on its massive investment in the worlds biggest sporting event. Curiously though, this games producer goes to great lengths to pitch 2006 FIFA World Cup as a sequel to the 2002 World Cup iteration, and not the recent FIFA Soccer 06. This matters why? Mainly because FIFA Soccer 06 was generally considered to be pretty stinky, particularly ...

And 1 Streetball (AND 1 Streetball)

Mar 7, 2006

There's a handful of genres for which we probably don't need any more games: World War II shooters, medieval fantasy RPGs, and street basketball showdowns. Still, the makers of And 1 Streetball think they've got something fresh for gamers stuck at the intersection of NBA Live and NBA Street. That something is primarily a new control scheme, designed to let you express yourself with creative moves while still bringing the thunder with a nasty dunk. And 1 calls this "I Ball," but we'll call it ...

Area 51 (Area 51)

Mar 24, 2005

Before we make complete fools of ourselves again - after all, we were as guilty of everyone else of calling Killzone (sorry) a Halo-beater - we'd just like to point out that one of our dear chums from a neighbouring Xbox-magazine, and we quote, claims, "Area 51 is brilliant". In fact, he's gone as far to say it's the best thing he's played since Halo 2. Not better than Bungie's epic - that would be an extremely bold/mental claim to make about 80% finished preview code - but very, very good. In ...

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Avatar: The Last Airbender )

Oct 2, 2006

During the formative years of most of GamesRadar's veteran staff, games like Disney's Ducktales and Aladdin were often amazingly polished and fun, in spite of their obvious kid appeal. But somewhere along the line this changed, and cartoon-licensed games started aiming squarely at the rugrats. Good for them, but older game fans were left out. This is why THQ's upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender is rather interesting. While it's not akin to the best of those old games, it's a very capable, ...

Avatar: The Last Airbender - hands on (Avatar: The Last Airbender )

Jul 7, 2006

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the coolest cartoons on Nickelodeon these days. A far cry from the misshapen adventures of the Rugrats, it blends action and magic into a tasty blend of kick-ass Asian action. Just as a show like this can bridge the gap between kids and adults, the game THQ is cooking up brings the series' slick cartoon visuals together with the kind of action RPG gameplay mature gamers have come to love. Think X-Men Legends, and you're getting there. Avatar's world is ...

American McGee's Bad Day L.A. hands-on (Bad Day L.A.)

Aug 8, 2006

Fact: one in 1,368 readers will be struck and killed by a falling meteor while reading this. Okay, so that's not entirely true, but similarly absurd situations and scenarios jam the subversive, satirical action-title Bad Day LA way past chock-full. Rock star game designer American McGee pokes fun at our national pastimes of racism and classism during our Bush-Era culture war of fear - but does so using everything from a guy in a hamburger suit to toxic waste-spawned zombies. Our hands-on look ...

Bad Day L.A. (Bad Day L.A.)

Feb 24, 2006

The checkered history of Los Angeles suggests that on occasion it can help, ahem … redefine the concept of the human love/hate relationship. Even so, the city's seen nothing like this. In the third-person action game Bad Day L.A. you'll face missions involving plane crashes, zombie hordes, meteor showers, riots, a tsunami, an earthquake, and more. Crips vs. Bloods this is not. At the center is misanthrope and reluctant hero Anthony Williams. He's a former Hollywood agent so disenchanted ...

Bad Day LA (Bad Day L.A.)

Feb 15, 2006

We're used to gradual evolutions in gaming, be they in technical, graphical, even artistic fields. And you might have expected the same as gaming explores other new horizons, such as politics, current affairs, satire. But with Bad Day LA, American McGee has taken a tradition that had long since become dormant (in mainstream games at least), and has pushed it from a standing start to a racing finish. Taking on fistfuls of current taboos - terrorist attacks, immigration, obesity, tsunamis - it ...

Batman Begins (Batman Begins)

May 3, 2005

Based on Frank Miller's superb Batman Year One comics, if its Xbox mirror image is anything to go by, Batman Begins promises to be darker than a black hole and edgier than a dodecahedron. No more tights. No more comedy sidekicks. No more remote controlled Batmobiles with optional bulletproof shields either. Batman Begins - the movie - will be a Batman with its roots in the real world. He'll hunt criminals, he'll scare them shitless, but he'll feel pain, anger and lose control too.Of course, as ...

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII (Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII)

Mar 7, 2006

Why don't Top Guns get any love? Crimson Skies and Secret Weapons Over Normandy were a blast, and we demand more. Ubisoft's WWII era flight opera Blazing Angels is primed to deliver the kind of experience that has been sadly lacking on the consoles for the last ...

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

Jan 7, 2005

If Full Spectrum Warrior was your idea of an exciting squad-based shooter, Brothers In Arms is going to make you just as trigger-squeezing happy.The two games are similar - both set in the thick of war, both with you playing as an American squad commander and each high on strategy and non-existent on Medal of Honor-style running and gunning. The big difference between the two games, though, is that Ubisoft's Brothers In Arms is a real-time game where you have direct control over your character. ...

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 ...

Pre-E3 06: Call of Duty 3 confirmed with video (Call of Duty 3)

May 8, 2006

Call of Duty 3 was officially confirmed this morning by Activision. The latest chapter in the World War II shooter series is currently in development for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. All versions are due to be released this fall. Very little was announced beyond those core details. We do know that the game deals with the Liberation of Paris, which pegs the action in late 1944. That was the final stage of Operation Overlord, better known to many as the ...

Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 - hands-on (Capcom Classics Collection vol. 2)

Oct 13, 2006

Outside of a few nitpicky graphical issues, Capcom's classic game compilations, released over the last year, are among the best on the market. No, this isn't terribly surprising considering the company's rich arcade heritage. But between the handheld and console versions, it's been hard to keep track of what classic game's on which retro compilation. And just when you thought you had it all straight, here comes yet another version to muddy the waters. Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 is more ...

Cars (Cars)

May 18, 2006

Lately, we've seen a lot of movie-based games that try to expand on - instead of directly adapt - the story of the film they're based on. The Godfather did it, Over the Hedge did it and this summer, Cars will do it. Picking up where the movie left off, Cars casts players as red stock-car Lightning McQueen and sets them loose to explore the colorful desert town of Radiator Springs. ...

Cold Fear (Cold Fear)

Feb 24, 2005

Cold Fear is not your usual lumbering horror-fest. Dispensing with an exhaustive inventory and minimising puzzles, this is an in-your face nautical terror blaster with the tension heightened by the intervention of a particularly violent storm. The storm can sweep you and your enemies off ship and causes all manner of naval machinery to become dangerous slapstick pendulums, endangering yourself and your evil mutant pursuers. More importantly, it causes a constant - and impressively tense - roll ...

Commandos Strike Force (Commandos Strike Force)

Feb 25, 2006

There's a lot to worry about with Commandos Strike Force. You could worry about the basic idea for a start, which in the words of developer Pyro's CEO, Ignacio Perez, combines "the tactical approach of the previous Commandos games with the intense action of an FPS." The whole point of the series was its lack of intensity - just slow-burning, top-down puzzles in a WWII setting. You could question the stripping down of the characters you switch between; of the original six, only three remain: ...

Conker: Live and Reloaded (Conker: Live and Reloaded)

Dec 15, 2004

A lot of people are scoffing at Rare's meagre output for the Xbox to date, but it's hard to see Conker: Live And Reloaded as anything but a win/win situation. Are you a fan of the N64 original, with its balls-out approach to humour at the expense of producing a 'normal' videogame? Then you'll be gagging to see the whole thing decked out in its funky new Xbox strides. This is the Conker of old, pimped up to heavenly new visual levels.But what if you're new to the whole swearing squirrel thing? ...

Conker: Live and Reloaded (Conker: Live and Reloaded)

Jul 16, 2004

A game with a gigantic, opera-singing boss-turd called the Great Mighty Poo? That you defeat by lobbing bog roll into its peanut-studded gob? While playing as a foul-mouthed, toilet-obsessed squirrel? Welcome back, Conker...Live And Reloaded is a complete reworking of 2001's 18-rated Conker's Bad Fur Day for the N64, featuring the original one-player mode revamped with snazzy Xbox graphics and, yes, even more potty-mouthed language. It's full of movie parodies (there are scenes nicked from ...

Constantine (Constantine)

Feb 4, 2005

We are over it. Seriously. We are over the fact that one of comicdom's most enduring British characters - Hellblazer's John Constantine, a cynical, trenchcoated scouse mage with a habit of getting his friends killed and the hordes of hell on his tail - has been turned into Keanu Reeves. The mind boggles, but, y'know, we are over it.Besides, the film might be brilliant. Might be. Going on what we've played of the game of the film of the comic, this month, it's certainly going to be interesting, ...