GamesRadar - Xbox 360 Features

The sneaky history of stealth games (Vampire Rain)

3/02/2009

Hide and seek is one of the oldest playground games in existence. It only makes sense to translate the thrill of escaping your friends’ clutches into a digital form. After all, “don’t get caught” is a parameter gamers can instantly recognize.

It’s a simple premise that has expanded from outwitting a single enemy unit into outthinking collective AI. ...

Most Annoying Game-Over Screens Ever (Vampire Rain)

16/04/2008

Nobody likes to see a Game-Over screen. As if knowing you suck isn’t bad enough, some games rub it in by torturing you with really annoying Game-Over screens. What could be worse than having to watch your demise from multiple angles, or sitting through the same long-ass cutscene of the world ending every time you fail? Tack one of these onto a tough boss fight, and you have a perfect formula for gamer rage. We’ve hand-picked this ...

The worst screenshots of E3 2009 (Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment)

9/06/2009

The whole point of E3 is for publishers and developers to show off their new games under controlled conditions. You know, to let them show them in the way they want them to be seen without journos choosing to show the flaws.

AND YET. We still get sent screenshots that look like someone deliberately picked them to make the game look bad. Look at these amazing examples of fail from this year's show ...

This is This is Vegas (This is Vegas)

21/04/2008

Whereas some people feel the need to keep the map of their open-ended sandbox city under lock and key, a mysterious conglomerate called Boyercrop has seen fit to send us a detailed, and remarkably tourist friendly, visual aid on the thrills that await you in Midway's This is Vegas. It's everything you need to plan your descent into debauchery later this year, packed with enough coupons and boobies to keep the Missus safely at home. (They had us at the 99 cent Texas-Mesquite Fudge Sundae!) ...

Busted Cheats: Week 1 (Viking: Battle for Asgard)

29/05/2008

Here at CheatPlanet we're always trying to sort through the cheat submissions to find the tiny nuggets of helpful information hidden among the hundreds of moronic submissions we receive each day. It's a thankless job, one that we keep working on only because of our love of cheats and the happiness we feel when looking into a child's smiling face after he or she unlocks the second set of weapons in GTA IV (Call GUN-555-0100) and ...

Yu Suzuki's five finest moments (Virtua Fighter 5)

6/04/2009

Today is a sad day for Sega fans, as news breaks that 50-year-old creative genius Yu Suzuki has stepped down from his post as R&D Creative Officer at Sega, taking up a much-diminished role as R&D manager at the AM Plus division.

So, as a tribute to one of the greatest visionaries the industry has seen (or is ever likely to see), and as a history lesson for anyone too young to remember, here are five of Yu Suzuki's greatest moments ...

The games they couldn't kill (Virtua Fighter 5)

20/03/2008

Whether it's by timeless game design, rabidly loyal community, or a fat slice of both, some videogames just keep coming back for more. Meet the games that will be around longer than you will. ...

2007 - The best gaming year ever (Virtua Fighter 5)

20/12/2007

20th Dec, 2007 Gaming is an up and down experience. Some years cram top quality titles into our every orifice until were bursting with videogame joy and have excess polygons dripping messily out of our ears, while some other years… Well, some other years are 1983. In 2007 though, weve had a very good year indeed. A scarily good year in fact. One which has provided us so much brilliance on every format that its a genuine worry that the laws of karmic balance will soon bring us a plague ...

Retrobot presents: Hardcore games (Virtua Fighter 5)

7/08/2007

This is hardcore. Or so everyone says. But what is "hardcore?" To us gamers, it means the kind of game that serious gamers devote their time to. You know, hundreds of hours of time. The kind of game that kept Granny away from gaming until Wii came along. It's about depth - of learning and understanding a game before truly mastering it. Hardcore games present the greatest (and often longest) challenges, yet also the biggest payoffs, assuming you understand how they work. Of course, ...

Virtua Fighter 5 - interview (Virtua Fighter 5)

6/07/2007

Earlier this year, we were able to travel to Japan to see an early version of Virtua Fighter 5 for the Xbox 360. At that time, the developers were certain that online play could not be included - as it would compromise the quality of the play experience too much. That changed today. Sega has announced that, when it ships this fall, Virtua Fighter 5 for the Xbox 360 will, in fact, feature an online versus mode. To find out more, we spoke again to Yoshihiro Tsuzuku, the 360 version's ...

Virtua Fighter 5 - interview and arcade video blowout (Virtua Fighter 5)

1/05/2007

Virtua Fighter is more than a simple game to the Japanese - it's a phenomenon. Players gather at the Club Sega arcade in Akihabara, Tokyo to battle it out in massive tournaments - or just play for fun, as the best players gather at that spot. We were allowed to enter that domain with a camera, and we caught the 43 screens of Friday night VF5 action. We even interviewed Shinichiro Nagamine, a manager at the popular arcade, to find out the juiciest details about the competitions at the six-floor ...

Would YOU date a game character? (Virtua Tennis 3)

10/07/2009

Everyone is looking for love. Whether you're beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, bald or hairy like Robin Williams; we're all tied together by an insatiable need to find a mutual soul mate... and to get the sexy time. Game characters are no different. So we've stepped in to help them out. Below, we've made four created characters and then shoved them head first into the online dating scene. We signed each one up to a different site and within ...

Virtua Tennis 3 - the 360 interview (Virtua Tennis 3)

6/02/2007

As part of our exclusive look at Virtua Tennis 3 for Xbox 360, we were lucky enough to score an interview with Darren Mills, creative director for Sumo Digital, the developer making the Xbox 360 version. This is no mere port, says Mills - read on to find out more details. If you haven't yet checked out our hands-on, you can find it here. Be sure to check the Images tab above for exclusive screens and hit the Movies tab for two exclusive gameplay movies. Search hard for the flicks labeled with ...

If video games were... candy bars? (Viva Pinata)

18/08/2009

Sometimes, games are so good we say they're 'good enough to eat'. That's usually not strictly true, of course - DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and the human mouth do not mix. But what if games were turned into candy bars? Now there's an idea.

If our Photoshop attempts are anything to go by, there's a huge market of untapped potential just waiting for some entrepreneur to take a lucrative bite. Just try not to dribble on the keyboard, ...

Games invade Google Street View (Viva Pinata)

25/06/2009

Have you ever seen Google Street View in action? It's incredible, and already coming up with some amazing images... it's a wonder the world survived without it. But we've spotted some more familiar faces in the passers by.

Can you spot them too?

...

The secretly sinister storylines of your favourite games (Viva Pinata)

12/06/2009

You never knew they were so wrong... ...

These games are not what you think they are (Viva Pinata)

18/02/2009

Why Sonic isn't a platformer and Final Fantasy isn't an RPG at all. ...

The very best and worst of games merchandise (Viva Pinata)

8/01/2009

We collect a lot of gaming merchandise at GamesRadar. While we buy some of it ourselves, one of the perks of working in the industry is that a week rarely goes by without some new item of promotional gaming paraphernalia finding its way to our desks. And generally it's a pretty even mix of awesome and crap ...

TalkRadar 30 – co-starring Jeff Gerstmann! (Viva Pinata)

5/12/2008

In case you missed TalkRadar 28 (and shame on you if you did), we couldn’t fathom why Giant Bomb awarded MK vs DCU a five star rating (their highest score). That led to forumites on both sites to start a-feudin’ an’ a-fussin’ about integrity and other such nonsense, so we simply called Jeff Gerstmann up and now you can hear the results of said conversation. Hint: we’re bitter enemies now. ...

Top 7... Cutesy Characters We Want to Beat the Crap Out of (Viva Pinata)

21/04/2008

Admit it - you’ve thought about choking quite a few videogame characters to death. Whether it’s an annoying sidekick or a particularly tough boss, there’s no denying that the urge to bust somebody in the mush hasn’t seized you. There are a lot of deserving punks we could put into this article - but the most aggravating offenses come from the cutest characters. Those fluffy types just there to make a game more ...