Life & style and Play

Play - 2000AD

17 Jan 2008

While movies based on superhero comics are still doing big business (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight are coming in 2008), comic books remain as ghettoised as ever. The genre’s mass appeal has been on the wane for 20 years, with comics…

Play - Crysis

17 Jan 2008

PC (EA) Did Santa bring you a nice new shiny computer? Is it so powerful you need your own wind farm to run it? Let’s hope so because Crysis demands it. Actually, that’s not fair. The new shooter from the Far Cry team is perfectly playable on a…

Play - Guitar Hero III

17 Jan 2008

XBOX 360/PS3/PS2 (Activision) Guitar Hero is always a joy. As a party game it is unsurpassed, producing some of the silliest sights you’ll ever see. The game’s perfectly pitched balance of piss-take and rock reverence always delights while the…

Play - Super Mario Galaxy

17 Jan 2008

WII (Nintendo) Richard Dawkins, Oxford University’s Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, believes humanity’s ability to understand the world is limited by its interaction. Because of our size, our lifespan, the pace at which our lives…

Preview 2008 - Gadgets and Gizmos

4 Jan 2008

From James Bond to your office colleagues, everyone loves gadgets. Technology is growing at such a fast pace that buying that new phone or MP3 player sometimes seems a bit of a gamble. You never know when the gadget you’ve just bought will be replaced…

Review of the year - video games

13 Dec 2007

What promised to be a rather mundane year in gaming turned out to be a surprising 12 months. Two lessons were learned in 2007: firstly, discount Nintendo’s infectious innovation at your peril. And secondly, punters can’t get enough of imaginative…

Weird Websites - book review

John Blake

13 Dec 2007

WEB GUIDE JESSICA ASHBY Weird Websites (John Blake) A good few years back, when the web was in its infancy there were tons of books, magazines and guides to the internet. But these seem to have slipped into the shadows of late. Split into topics…

Letters to eBay - book review

Hodder

13 Dec 2007

Subtitled ‘antics of a virtual prankster’, Letters to eBay is a prime example of a man with way too much time on his hands and ‘obsessive-compulsive tendencies’. A school teacher by day and internet time waster Art Farkas by night, the author scours…

Edge presents: The 100 Best Videogames - book review

13 Dec 2007

If you really appreciate the art of videogames there’s only one magazine that matters: Edge, the serious gamer’s magazine that takes a genuinely adult and considered look at gaming culture. So when they produce a top 100 you know it’s likely to be an…

Hitman - Blood money

29 Nov 2007

Hitman is the latest in a long line of videogames to make the jump from console to big screen. Despite the flops (think Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter) studios just don’t seem able to keep their hands off videogame properties, with the Resident…

The Orange Box

29 Nov 2007

PC/XBOX 360 (Valve) ‘Oh Mr Valve, with zees expansions you are really spoiling us!’ The Orange Box is ridiculously good value, containing the genius of Half Life 2 and its episodic expansions, the mind-bending challenge of Portal and Team Fortress 2…

WWE Smackdown! Vs Raw 2008

29 Nov 2007

XBOX 360/PS3/PS2 (THQ) You know the score by now: lots of grunting, grappling and men in lycra as yet another in the seemingly endless, but always popular, WWE wresting series hits the market. As you’d expect, on the next gen machines this looks…

Assassin's Creed

29 Nov 2007

XBOX 360/PS3/PC (Ubisoft) How refreshing to enjoy an interesting story well told: thanks to an imaginative, if slightly bonkers, flashback device, Assassin’s Creed tiptoes nimbly through the obvious modern politics of a story set in the Holy Land…

Ghostbusters receive call to join new computer game

16 Nov 2007

The original cast of the hit movie Ghostbusters will lend their faces and voices to a new computer game due to be released next year. Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis have signed up for the project, with the latter two - who…

Festive Wii demand expected to outstrip supply

15 Nov 2007

Games company Nintendo has said it is doing ‘everything possible’ to ensure stocks of its Wii meets the clamour of shoppers keen to get their hands on the popular game before Christmas. Consumers however have been warned to expect disappointment as…

Crime & punishment - breaking the virtual rules

1 Nov 2007

These days, when we talk about crime in the cyber world we’re not referring to the joyriding depicted in Need for Speed or the multiple murders of Manhunt. These are crimes against computer controlled characters within games. This may sound…

Tenori-On

23 Aug 2007

It’s hard to neatly sum up the Tenori-On. The bare facts are these: it’s a new music device from Yamaha; it produces a light show that corresponds with what is being played; it can be programmed in real time and is a new innovative, intuitive…

Colin McRae: Dirt

Codemasters

23 Aug 2007

Surely the most attractive thing about rally sport is its white knuckle, mud-spraying, knife-edge excitement? Which is where most rally titles seem to go astray, preferring to follow the F1 or Touring Car route of exactitude, anal technical precision…

Transformers: The Game

Activision

23 Aug 2007

It was looking good there for a while. Thirtysomething males were enjoying the resurgence of the must-have toy of the 80s: The Transformers. There was a pretty decent stab at a console title, then a summer blockbuster movie. And now comes the game…

Back to basics

Emerging talent in the world

9 Aug 2007

Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is a mere distraction while others see it as a formidable force in the gaming industry despite the odd ‘bad egg’ website devoted to vulgar cartoons and controversy.Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is…

The Darkness

(2K Games)

9 Aug 2007

Kids are invariably scared of the dark; they fear the unknown, the unseen things lurking in the shadows.

Call of Juarez

Ubisoft

9 Aug 2007

When you think about famous gunfights you don’t really tend to picture war or futuristic alien combat or even urban crime.

Overlord

Codemasters

9 Aug 2007

Overlord is somewhat counter-intuitive.

Play - Lord of the Rings Online

3 Jul 2007

How best to describe Lord of The Rings Online? World of Warcraft in the land of Tolkien? Too simple. Perhaps it’s time to find out for certain by setting forth through Middle Earth. So say hello to my character, Snide the dwarf guinea pig. Day One…

Play - War Room

Life & Style

24 Apr 2007

Gaming is great - digging out your console or powering up your PC for a dose of virtual action. It’s even more fun if you get a few mates together for a bone-crunching Tekken session or a pass-the-mic round of SingStar. Now imagine a group of 28 with…