05/05/08
Run-and-gun videogame basketball really
got its start in the arcades, when NBA Jam introduced its over-the-top style and mixed NBA all-stars with, if you knew the codes, a handful of unlockable players like Bill Clinton and "Air Dog." In the years since, Midway and EA have traded shots with their NBA Ballers and NBA Street franchises, respectively, both of which have brought the arcade action home with a bit more hip-hop flair. Midway's latest....
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04/30/08
It's safe to say most consumers' first
, if not only, exposure to Jason Bourne was the series of Bourne films starring Matt Damon. Sure, Robert Ludlum may have written a few novels, but Hollywood reigns supreme when it comes to mass-media action, and, well, Matt Damon's version of Jason Bourne is 100 percent action. With that in mind, it's a bit disconcerting to fire up The Bourne Conspiracy for the first time on the good ol' next-gen console....
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04/29/08
It's a shame a modern videogame based
on Krull has never seen the light of day. The campy '80s fantasy flick has myriad game-worthy elements such as horses that run with fire under their feet, a Cyclops with attitude, swallowing walls and rooms that sprout defensive mechanisms like blowfish. Best of all, Krull gave us the almighty glaive. The shiny, pointy throwing star slices and dices anything in its path, while its hero handler steers it....
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04/23/08
Dead Space, a new survival-horror
franchise for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, is set to ship this Halloween, which means the development team is knee-deep in code and bug fixes. Amid the madness, the developers are updating gamers periodically via their blog -- and now, through DailyGame as well. In this exclusive article, EA has provided DailyGame readers a complete look at what they'll be posting in the next Dead Space blog entry. We know....
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04/14/08
Codemasters' DiRT, previously known as the Colin
McRae Rally racing franchise, has had somewhat of a stranglehold on the rally-racing scene for the past half decade. Other publishers and franchises have given it a go, from Microsoft and Rallisport Challenge to Sony and Motorstorm to Sega and Rally Revo, but nobody's succeeded in toppling Codemasters' game. Even the fabled Gran Turismo has included off-road racing, but that series....
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04/14/08
Condemned: Criminal Origins was the
most underrated game of the Xbox 360's launch. Part survival-horror, part first-person shooter and part adventure game, Condemned flew under the radar of those more interested in Perfect Dark Zero, even though it was arguably a better game. So with Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Sega and Monolith spiced-up the gameplay in an attempt to reach more a few gamers, a valiant attempt that ironically makes the....
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04/14/08
Slipping the G36C's ACOG sight up to my eye,
I whisper ever-so-calmly into my headset mic, "OK, this time, let our two AI guys frag and clear the door...OK?" And sure as the sun shines on Sunday, my teammate pops open the door and runs in with guns blazing...and leaves yet another bloody teammate-shaped pulp on the floor. After I've swept the room with my AI squadmates, my less-than-useful real-world squadmate returns to the co-op....
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04/11/08
The most successful action games of late 
have featured characters and/or times of historical significance. Kratos (God of War) relied heavily on Greek mythology, for instance, while Altair (Assassin's Creed) jumped his way through the Third Crusade. But no characters or period is quite as universally recognized as the four horsemen and the apocalypse, which will provide not only the basis of THQ's action game Darksiders: Wrath of War....
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04/09/08
Sure, we've all been through it. Wedgies,
book reports, football games. Maybe you were never the bully in high school (please, don't hurt me), but most us probably have had fantasies of what it must feel like to pound the living daylights out of a bespectacled bookworm (please...don't. I also wear contacts!). Many years ago, Rockstar fulfilled every child's fantasy of joining a street gang with controversial game Bully. Now, if you missed your chance on PS2....
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04/08/08
It's quite an accomplishment to
go from "cute little GTA 3 clone" to "distinct open-world game that gamers are excited about," but that's exactly what THQ's Saints Row 2 has achieved. Before the original game's launch, Saints Row was viewed as little more than a "me too" title, an open-world gangster game unabashedly trying to capitalize on Rockstar's success with the Grand TheftAuto series. But as gamers actually played Saints Row, as they....
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04/08/08
When Crackdown shipped for Xbox 360, 
it proved that online co-op in open-world games was not only feasible but incredibly enjoyable. The crew at Volition and THQ were apparently taking notes, because amid all the improvements and additions to Saints Row 2 (read our hands-on Saints Row 2 preview), the team is also including hop-in/hop-out online co-op. This feature isn't just a simple tack-on addition, though; it's turning into as....
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04/07/08
With the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware
, many developers claim they're finally able to achieve destructible environments. The thing is, Red Faction achieved it in 2001 on the PlayStation 2. With that background, it's not surprising to see Volition pushing the envelope once again with Red Faction: Guerilla, which ships for PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year. As the third game in the series, Red Faction: Guerilla marks a step forward for the....
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04/04/08
Space. It's very big and often home
to hordes of horrible monsters that want to kill us. In the case of Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, our enemies' home is just a stone's throw away on that big red ball known as Mars. Yes, it is a little cliche, but so are many things in this Xbox Live Arcade original. And it still manages to be fun. You play the part of Rocketman, a character whose appearance is customized before you ever start your adventure. Technically....
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03/28/08
Dear diary, Having spent the past three days playing 
the Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer beta with other Xbox 360 gamers, the Xbox Live connection issues had all been worked out, and the online fighting had grown more intense. People aren't exploring the levels anymore; they know where the hard and soft points are, and they're exploiting them left and right to make every battle much more punishing. With such intense....
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03/27/08
Dear diary, Can I just say that I love blue skies? It's such a relief from the sepia tone filters we have to deal with so many of today's games. Thanks, Battlefield: Bad Company. Connecting to the Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer beta was a snap today, with no lag and no waiting around. We decided today to test the destructibility of the environments. We fixed grenade launchers and tossed a bunch of grenades, and sure enough, those buildings....
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03/26/08
Dear diary, So I was playing the Battlefield: Bad Company Xbox 360 multiplayer beta today. For some reason I woke up at 5:00 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Finally, after tossing and turning, I verified the time by checking the clock radio. It was now 6:00.
"Hmmm," says I, "'tis the 25th, and EA's Battlefield Bad Company beta servers are supposed to go live. Let's go see if those servers are indeed live, shall we? OMG they are up!" Thank....
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03/21/08
Faithful followers of ABC's Lost have had to wait 
more than three seasons for Ubisoft to release the first official videogame adaptation of the hit mysterious drama. As Lost: Season Four's climatic eighth episode's jaw-dropping cliffhanger approaches (c'mon, it's inevitable), the arrival of Ubisoft's Lost: Via Domus brings with it the promise of a new chapter in the Lost saga, seamlessly intertwined with the show's canon, characters and locations....
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03/17/08
Generally when a developer reaches the 
fourth installment in a franchise, the game takes a dramatic turn for the better or the worse. In the case of Devil May Cry 4 for the PlayStation (PS3) and Xbox 360, Capcom has undeniably taken its series in a positive direction, with incredible graphics, solid gameplay and a new character whose attributes introduce some new elements to the franchise. However, for everything new the game....
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03/05/08
When Electronic Arts first announced Army 
of Two, DailyGame was among the first members of the media to see the game in action at E3. At the time, Splinter Cell had just delved into the world of co-op gameplay, and our excitement at the Army of Two demo was fueled more by the then-new concept of co-op play than it was by Army of Two's actual gunplay or graphics. Fast-forward a few years, and EA has just released Army of Two for....
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03/03/08
A large home nestled deep in the woods is
no place for children to take up residence. The home is guaranteed to be haunted, or some fantastical element is surely poised to turn life upside down, inside out and every which way in between. Such luck is the case for a trio of siblings in The Spiderwick Chronicles, the latest in a storied string of children's adventures whose narrative virtually guaranteed a video game counterpart. No surprise....
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02/26/08
Lost Odyssey is the second Xbox
360 game to come from Mistwalker, the Japanese game developer so touted by Microsoft for working on Xbox 360-exlcusive role-playing games. Having recently released Blue Dragon, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu wasted no time in teaming up with artist Takehiko Inoue and writer Kiyoshi Shigematsu. Their goal with Lost Odyssey was not to reinvent the wheel, but to give Xbox 360....
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02/26/08
Released on the PC well over a year ago, Dark
Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements is Ubisoft's Xbox 360 update to the game that addresses the issues from the PC version, adds a few new levels and improves the multiplayer mode to work on Xbox Live. To fans of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, this overview sounds like Elements might just be worth picking up. Sadly, it isn't -- and the fact that Ubisoft released it at full price is downright....
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02/08/08
How do you turn a word search, something
that comes free on newspapers and cereal boxes, into something people will actually shell out money to buy? Well, the people who created Word Puzzle tried to figure this concept out, but they fell far, far short of coming up with a decent answer. The premise of this Xbox Live Arcade title is, well, doing a word search. It really doesn't get much more complicated than that. The....
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02/07/08
It's February, it's cold outside, and
some big football game called the Super Bowl just saw an incredible upset by the New York Giants. It's also the time of year for EA to roll out the latest incarnation of arcade fueled football in NFL Street, which has been neatly re-branded into NFL Tour. IN this re-branding, authentic NFL players travel from city to city playing in overly simplified smash-mouth football where the playbook is slim, the....
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01/30/08
The Devil May Cry series originally spawned from taking the Resident Evil franchise in a new direction, with the director of Resident Evil trying out some experiments after RE2. These experiments soon grew into a game of their own, and a new and now-beloved franchise was born. The first Devil May Cry was good enough and warranted a sequel, but Devil May Cry 2 stumbled by most accounts. The series quickly regained its footing....
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01/28/08
EA and Criterion must like Las Vegas.
Whether Vegas likes them is another matter entirely. EA acquired Criterion hoping to capitalize on other developers' use of Renderware, Criterion's proprietary middleware, and that gamble hasn't exactly panned out. Meanwhile, Criterion has re-tooled its popular Burnout racing franchise so often that it's basically asking to "hit" with 19 points. The latest outing, Burnout Paradise, recently....
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01/28/08
There has never been a genre
more classic than that of the side-scrolling shooter. There is just something about constantly scrolling to the right that brings a tear to a gamer's eye. The Xbox Live Arcade gets a fresh new spin on your father's scrolling shooter in the form of Omega Five, a game that will definitely bring tears to your eyes -- but for a vastly different reason. First of all, there really aren't any visible signs of a story here. That isn't....
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01/23/08
For all the talk about Xbox Live Arcade and Wii 
Virtual Console simply re-hashing old franchises, it's funny to watch gamers get giddy about Capcom's announcement that it's updating Bionic Commando for the current generation of consoles. A 20-year-old, eight-bit game, being re-mastered for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC? Yep. And gamers couldn't be any happier. Capcom is bringing Bionic Commando....
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01/18/08
The MX vs. ATV series technically has a storied
history, albeit under a different guise. Developer Rainbow Studios first released the PC-only game Motocross Madness in 1998, marking the first time a videogame motorcycle and its driver had separate physics. Say what you will about FlatOut and its driver-through-the-windshield hilarity, but Motocross Madness was actually a bit more fun, both due to its novelty and the sheer....
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01/09/08
It seems as though highways have always
been a tad on the boring side. Where are all the loops, dinosaurs, whales, black holes and bottomless pits? Luckily, Gripshift solves all of these problems, and even adds a soundtrack to boot. The controls in Gripshift, an Xbox Live Arcade game, are fairly simple, and the game will gradually guide you through them in the beginning stages. It basically boils down to the accelerate button and the....
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01/08/08
To a guy, there's just something about the beauty of
a steel chair to the face that goes beyond description. It is a widely known fact that violence solves everything, and this has never been more true than in the world of professional wrestling. The WWE Smackdown series has pretty much cornered this market, with its digital headlocks and pile-driving pixels, but this year's outing, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008, seems to try to appeal only....
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01/07/08
The Need for Speed series has always been a car tuner enthusiast's 
wet dream because of its endless list of customization options, beautifully rendered cars and gameplay that truly mimics the racing underground world. Thankfully, EA has taken the third in the series up a notch by reinventing the car models to look more realistic, enhanced damage effects, and vehicle performance that....
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01/01/08
I went to college at the University of Oregon, not
exactly a basketball powerhouse or household name for college hoops, but a school that's quietly made its way to the Elite Eight and sent several players to the NBA (Luke Ridnour and Freddie Jones among them). Some might call The University of Oregon a small school, and by many accounts those claims would be correct. But the atmosphere and passion of small-school hoops simply....
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12/28/07
Gamers love their Guitar Hero. The first two games
in the Activision-published series and subsequent expansion packs have all been met with high praise and record sales numbers. Perhaps this tidal wave of success is why Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock steers clear of straying too far from its proven and successful formula. True, the game includes some nice new multiplayer modes and boss battles, and yes, it has....
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12/18/07
Monsters, carnage, brutality ... Angelina Jolie. Yes
, it's about time for another hack-and-slash adventure, and it's no surprise that Beowulf is ready and willing to let the bodies hit the floor in this Xbox 360 gorefest. Our story begins a long, long time ago in the age of Vikings, mead and Jesus. Beowulf is one of the first adventure stories ever written, and it's a great tale for anyone who still practices the archaic art of reading books. However, this....
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12/13/07
I'll be the first to admit World War II 
shooters are getting insanely old. Yeah, yeah, "greatest generation" and all that...I don't disagree. But to re-live the same basic battles with the same basic weapons against the same basic enemies is now tedious beyond belief, so Infinity Ward's decision to create a modern shooter for its next Call of Duty game was refreshing. Honestly, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare could've ended up being....
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12/10/07
It's hard to talk about Mass Effect without talking
about KOTOR, which if you know what those initials mean you know what I'm talking about, but let me say right from the start: Mass Effect is nowhere near as good as KOTOR. Many times as you're playing through Mass Effect, though, you feel like an old friend has come back around, because what made KOTOR so great is still alive inside this game, and pieces of it are all over the place to....
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12/10/07
The Xbox 360 is no stranger to the open-world
style game, but games in this genre haven't really seen a world as beautiful as that of Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft has credited themselves for creating almost exact duplicates of some of the Crusade's most famous cities, and although they may or may not have succeeded in that venture (if anyone lived during that time and can verify this, send us an email--and then sell your story to the National....
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12/07/07
Chair Entertainment comes out of nowhere to bring us one
of the most surprisingly fun Xbox Live Arcade games we've played this year. Undertow mixes all the great elements of a dual analog stick shooter (like Geometry Wars), but throws your character in the depths of the ocean as you set out to protect your base and take over the enemy team's control points.
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12/05/07
As most of us know, the music-game
genre has been practically monopolized by a certain guitar-wielding giant of a franchise. However, there is no "I" in "rock," a fact Harmonix is trying to prove with its latest creation, Rock Band. To be fair to snubbed bass players, Guitar Hero did have co-op and multiplayer modes, but the two instruments (lead and bass guitar) were played exactly the same. Yet Rock Band does its best to....
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12/03/07
It should come as no surprise that Microsoft
chose to publish "Scene It? Lights, Camera Action" for the Xbox 360. If one looks at the number of casual games and older titles on Xbox Live Arcade, Scene It (even as a retail disc) fits right in. Why? Because it's technically six years old. Scene It? first appeared in 2001 as a DVD game for movie aficionados to test their trivia of all things silver screen. This latest version for the Xbox 360 includes....
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11/29/07
Those of you who were expecting a
full-fledged "Viva Pinata 2" will probably be disappointed with Viva Pinata Party Animals. It's not a bad game at all, but Viva Pinata Party Animals does a complete 180-degree turn in terms of gameplay from last year's original Viva Pinata. Rather than micro-managing your own garden full of Pinatas, you take control of one Pinata and participate in fast-paced foot races and an assortment of mini-games....
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11/21/07
Now this is how you use a licensed
property. The Simpsons Game is hands down the best use of a license this side of E.T. using Reese's Pieces, as EA has pulled from two decades of humor to create what amounts to an interactive episode of The Simpsons and, quite possibly, the funniest Simpsons content to hit a TV in years. The great irony of this achievement is that The Simpsons cartoons were built on parody, a heritage....
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11/21/07
Jerry Seinfeld. The very name connotes puffy
shirts, close talkers, cold swimming pools and the Soup Nazi, all of which are a far cry from cute animated films. Yet there we were this fall, listening to Seinfeld voice Barry B. Benson in Bee Movie and, now, lend his vocal chords to the same pollinating character in the Bee Movie Game. Like many Dreamworks pictures, Bee Movie is predominantly designed for a younger crowd, with just....
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11/16/07
The NBA season is upon us, and
the only thing that can mean for gamers is a new version of the game they played to death the previous season. This time, it's NBA Live 08. Year after year, developers pump out essentially the same game with some slight tweaks and enhancements to try and entice you to drop an additional $60. And we do exactly that; we buy the game. The game is the same; it's NBA Live all over again. The same old....
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11/12/07
Recently I sat down in front of the TV 
with my nine-year-old daughter with two interactive DVDs from Brighter Minds Media, Jurassic Park Explorer and Marvel Heroes Breakout. Each game comes with a game board, a six-sided die, four player pieces, a deck of dinosaur/villain reward cards and an interactive DVD that plays in any DVD player. One game is obviously about dinosaurs while the other is about Super Heroes; other than that, the....
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11/07/07
When it first appeared on PC, F.E.A.R. rightly earned
a host of accolades, from its outstanding graphics to its crazy-good AI to its simple but fun use of slow motion in gunfights. The console version was equally well-received, and VU Games hopes to re-capture that momentum with F.E.A.R. Files, a single disk containing two standalone expansions, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. VU is clearly banking on the mantra "if it ain't broke....
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11/06/07
Although Bethesda Softworks may seem like
a niche publisher, one could easily make the argument that its few releases are simply a matter of quality over quantity. Granted, the company has historically struggled with patching issues, but other than that, there's a reason Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series has won numerous game of the year awards. The latest outing, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is no exception, and upon its....
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11/06/07
If Maverick from Top Gun were judging the Ace
Combat series prior to Xbox 360, he'd drop some suave remark about the graphics not being up to snuff with the real deal. Namco Bandai, in turn, would want to knock those silly sunglasses off his head. Instead, the longtime developer of the only consistently released modern air-combat game on consoles has harnessed Xbox 360's high-definition engine to churn out a much better-looking....
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11/01/07
The old Looney Tunes cartoons have all 
the elements for generation-spanning entertainment. Unique characters. Fun storylines. Multidimensional humor. Fantastic music. Basically, the Warner Bros. cartoons of yore have what it takes to be called "classic." Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal does not. In spite of its excellent source material and association with Warner Bros. Interactive, Acme Arsenal lacks the....
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11/01/07
If you wanted one word to sum up the Katamari 
series, it would be "quirky." Originally released for the PS2 as a $19.99 budget title, Katamari Damacy proved to be quite the surprise hit in North America, in spite of its simple premise of rolling a sticky ball around various levels to pick up random objects. This success was much to designer's Keita Takahashi chagrin, as he was more than happy to cross an item of his life's to-do list ("create a....
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10/28/07
Fans of the PSP game Every Extend Extra are well aware that Every Extend 
Extra Extreme has been coming for Xbox Live. With a name so difficult to remember that even Xbox Live shortens the name to E4, there is no doubt that gamers will be utterly confused when they first play E4. If we were to simplify what E4 is about we'd compare it to a music visualizer with intense explosions and a point system.
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10/28/07
Tetris has seen so many variations of itself that it can almost be called a 
template at this point. Its humble beginnings on the Gameboy has spawned a legion of sequels from 3D variations to new games featuring popular mascots. It's no surprise, though, because its simplistic gameplay is both addicting and fun and appeals to the masses like no other game. Tetris Splash literally changes nothing...
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10/24/07
I live in an NBA town. I used to have season
tickets for the local team. I've followed the NBA since the mid 1980s. And I have no doubt that NBA 2K8 captures the energy and presentation of a real-life NBA game better than any video game before it. From the animations to the commentary to the new camera angles, NBA 2K8 is about as close as you'll get to a real NBA game without being there. It's unfortunate, then, that....
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10/22/07
If you're confused about the release of two Spider-Man 
titles released this year then you're not alone. However, the differences between the titles become quite clear once you play Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. It takes a more linear approach as opposed to the sandbox style of Spider-Man 3. The story is elementary at best, but don't let that detour you because this game is completely aware of it, as evident in dialogue, and offers an overall....
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10/22/07
Rally racing at times feels like a dying
sport in the videogame world, a hardcore racing style appreciated almost exclusively by hardcore racing gamers. When part of a larger racing game (a la Gran Turismo), rally does just fine; on its own, it's a different story. Sega hoped to breathe new life into the genre with Sega Rally Revo, a game with a bit of arcade flair and a surprisingly cool new feature called....
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10/19/07
Blue Dragon launched on North American shores 
in BioShock's wake. Considered a success in Japan, Blue Dragon's ad campaign was an award winner, and it even shifted a few Xbox 360 consoles, which can't be overlooked in Japan. Part of the reason for this overseas success was the fact that Blue Dragon represented Mistwalker's first collaboration with....
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10/13/07
For all the grief Electronic Arts has taken in years 
past for powering through sequels, the company has made strides recently to introduce a bevy of new franchises. One of those new games, Skate, is EA's attempt to do nothing less than dethrone the heretofore skateboarding-game champion "Tony Hawk" series. Dominance is a tall order for any new series, but it's particularly ambitious to go head-to-head against the....
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10/10/07
It's a good thing the team at Infinity Ward is comprised of honest-to-God gamers, because they were among the first to realize that the WWII shooter genre has been beaten to death. Twice. With Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the originators of the COD series are taking the franchise in an entirely new direction, one that's based on modern weapons and often feels like a Tom Clancy game on steroids. Of course, the irony of Infinity....
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10/05/07
When Guitar Hero 2 stalwarts cried foul on the game's flimsy peripheral, Red Octane moved to re-engineer a new guitar that's shaping up to be one of the best game peripherals with which we've ever played. However, gamers also made it clear that Guitar Hero 3 needed to step up with a few gameplay enhancements, most notably in the areas of better balancing and online play. When Neversoft took the wheel for Guitar....
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10/05/07
When the first Guitar Hero received critical and social acclaim
, Activision naturally green-lighted a sequel and promised a few updates to the winning formula. Guitar Hero 2 once again struck commercial gold, but the most hardcore fans found several elements less than stellar, one of the most glaring being flimsy hardware. With Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, Red Octane hopes to fix that issue, and after spending several hours....
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10/01/07
With NBA training camps set to start this week, the time seemed right to sit down and ask a few questions of the development team behind NBA 2K8. The game is on track to ship soon, so the developers are winding down just as NBA players are gearing up. Fans of the series are also gearing up, but in a different way: flexing their thumbs in preparation for the sim-likegame and its new slam dunk competition. For those rabid and casual fans alike....
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09/27/07
Last year, EA turned the hockey gaming world upside down when
it tossed aside the tried-and-proven face button control scheme for more accessible free-form Skill Stick analog controls. The experiment was deemed a success and helped catapult EA's NHL franchise back on top, much to the chagrin of 2K Sports. The button-free Skill Stick controls returns in NHL 08 for an encore performance with a few new twists. The right analog stick....
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09/26/07
In the world of WWII shooters, it's hard to stand out 
from the pack. In fact, at this point many gamers loathe anything even related to WWII, save for grandma and grandpa. To combat gamers' WWII fatigue, EA has introduced a new element in Medal of Honor Airborne: the ability to parachute into the battlefield and thus determine where your level begins. This freedom is a nice new addition, and it's generally quite a bit of fun, because....
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09/24/07
Bungie has insisted for years that the final chapter
in the Halo franchise was going to be the game the developer always wanted to make. From refined combat and great graphics to a map-editing tool and robust online features, this was going to be the ultimate Halo experience. For the most part, Bungie has delivered on those goals; Halo 3 is without a doubt the most beautiful and feature-packed Halo game to date. It just doesn't have....
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09/17/07
With Burnout Paradise not scheduled to ship until 2008
, gamers may be wondering how they'll scratch their itch for high-octane, car-based crashes. DiRT, Forza 2 and PGR4 are great for pure racing, but sometimes gamers just want to blow stuff up. When those destructive urges arise, they're not easy to ignore. Fortunately, the latest build of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage isn't easy to ignore either, and its mix of racing and over-the-top....
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09/12/07
The Burnout franchise is one of those guilty pleasures here at DailyGame HQ. True story: after getting in a car wreck involving our Mini Cooper and a Subaru driven by two drunk-and-just-knifed-some-dude perpetrators, the DailyGame staff filled out the necessary police paperwork and headed immediately to turn on Burnout and purge our memories by unleashing some massive wrecks. So it should go without saying that....
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09/08/07
As popular as EA's Madden NFL series might be, I've always been 
drawn to the presentation and quality of the NFL 2K series. Unfortunately, when EA nabbed the exclusive licensing rights to the NFL, the beloved 2K series fell by the wayside. This past month the series made its All-Pro Football 2K8 return with a lineup of former NFL stars, but its return is actually bittersweet. Although it's great to experience the presentation again....
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08/30/07
Codemasters' Colin McRae rally series has played to a
niche racing audience over the years, never quite able to achieve the same mass appeal that other venerable racing franchises have enjoyed. The blame can likely be attributed to America's ignorance when it comes to rally racing and the Colin McRae name/brand, as well as the sport's point-to-point racing style that translates to imminent boredom for many. The leap to the next-generation consoles presented...
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08/24/07
On August 27 at high noon, Infinity Ward and Activision 
will unleash a free playable multiplayer beta for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Xbox Live Marketplace. Members of the media were given early access to the beta this past week so we could pass along our early thoughts and provide a sneak peek of what you can expect. As with Halo 3, the COD4 beta is strictly multiplayer via Xbox Live. The beta offers four match types: Team...
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08/22/07
Last year at E3 2006, BioShock was one of three games
I told everyone they had to see. "If you have any chance at all, go see BioShock," I insisted. The gameplay, graphics and concept were just that good. Having now played BioShock for a week, I'd still recommend BioShock to any gamer who owns an Xbox 360 or PC, but for different reasons. The game is still solid, don't get me wrong, and it earns every one of the nine points we're...
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08/16/07
The rush of classic arcade games on Xbox
Live Arcade will continue this fall with a host of old-school Atari titles, among them Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe and Tempest. Tempest is one of those original coin-op games that newer gamers might not "get," but that older gamers remember fondly while reminiscing about its dial-like controller. Fortunately, Atari is giving both types of gamers...
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08/13/07
While Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 
got most of the Xbox 360's Live Arcade buzz during launch, I was actually more enamored with Hexic HD, a puzzle game that was decidedly less twitchy and much more strategic. With Hexic 2, I was expecting more of the same, which in my little corner of the world would've been just fine. But this time around, Hexic offers a multiplayer component that's far more combative than I would've...
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08/12/07
I consider myself an "old school gamer," though 
I never did play Pong in its original state. Asteroids was actually my first videogame experience, and having recently played through a pre-release version of its Xbox Live Arcade counterpart, it's clear that the game was an equally early entry into the videogame arena. Like several "retro" Xbox Live Arcade titles, Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe come in two next-gen flavors: original and evolved. Ironically, the early versions we've...
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08/09/07
Eternal Sonata is a RPG about the final hours of composer Chopin's life as he travels 
through his own dream world. Your party consists of three generic archetypes. Your brazen hero, Allegretto, sports all the necessary features a standard melee happy character should. The healer, Polka, carries a cute parasol that seems absolutely worthless but generally deals sufficient blows on the enemies we came across. Finally, the gun wielder, Beat, seems well fit to attack from great distances as his defense is weaker than the other two. Overall, the group is...
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08/01/07
In the beginning there really was only racing sim worth 
having on a console: the Gran Turismo franchise. With a car list that got increasingly large and a learning curve that was equally daunting, Gran Turismo was one of the few titles that I honestly couldn't be bothered to "finish" or achieve 100-percent completion. Forza 2 changes all that, and in a good way. First, the game provides a series of handicaps (Traction, Braking and Stability) that are...
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07/20/07
Why waste time breaking countless objects and battling swarms
of foes when others can do it for you? This simple concept anchors the basic premise behind Overlord, a refreshing and surprisingly strategic third-person action-adventure game where issuing commands to gnarly minions ousts traditional do-it-yourself gameplay mechanics. Need a door opened? Let the minions do it. Need...
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07/16/07
Tell me if this sounds familiar: as the pilot of a spaceship,
you're on a mission (many missions, actually) to shoot down multiple waves of enemy ships with varying sizes and strengths, and on occasion, this action is broken up by timed objectives and escort missions. This core gameplay could be ripped from TIE Fighter, Starfox, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek Legacy, or at least two dozen more 3D space shooters. But we're not reflecting on games of the past. We're talking about...
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07/13/07
When LucasArts and BioWare released Knights of the Old Republic,
they probably didn't realize just how big a hit they had on their role-playing hands. When it came time for a follow-up, BioWare was employed elsewhere, which left Obsidian to take the reins for a sequel that turned out to be not quite as compelling. For BioWare's next hit-in-the-making, Mass Effect, Microsoft wanted to avoid that fate, signing the developer to create...
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07/12/07
Arcade translations of professional sports have been a mainstay 
in video games for decades, and no sport is arguably more fun in a gravity-defying setting than baseball. Is there no better triumph than clocking a 100+ mph fastball into the stratosphere twice as far as Barry Bonds ever did? While the answer is debatable, the lack of arcade baseball games on next generation home consoles since Xbox 360 launched is not. Sensing this...
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07/09/07
Electronic Arts crossed the bridge that made real-time strategy 
games a viable option on home consoles when the company released The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth and an interface custom-designed for the Xbox 360's controller. In the time since that game's release, EA collected feedback from users and reviewers and took the best of the LOTR control scheme to make an...
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07/09/07
I was a fan of Starbreeze Studios long before The Chronicles
of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, so don't think for a moment that I believe Starbreeze is a one-hit wonder. The developer's first Xbox game, Enclave, was one of the console's best-looking and most underrated games, so the quality of Riddick really wasn't all that surprising. What was surprising, though, was the feeling of finishing The Darkness, a comic-based game that...
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06/30/07
06/10/07
A good use of the franchise. A bad example of a video game.
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06/06/07
The web-slinger is back...and so are his camera and gameplay snafus.
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06/02/07
05/21/07
Normally a videogame preview is fluffy, happy and espouses 
all things great about an upcoming game. People get excited about a game's premise, gameplay or graphics, and they want to share with their friends (or readers) what excites them so for the game's release. This preview for Tenchu Z will be no such article. "Microsoft and From Software" sounds like a great combination, a tandem of big-time publisher and a solid niche developer, but the execution of this...
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05/06/07
We do love a good pinball game, and this one's pretty solid.
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04/12/07
WarTech Senko no Ronde, an arcade fighter for Xbox 360, thrusts 
the player into a distant future where humanity has colonized countless new galaxies and Earth has become a planet mined for its natural resources. A violent war has erupted as nations struggle for world domination. Rounder Mechs fill the skies as the fate of the world is determined through aerial combat.
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04/05/07
For the first time, play as the Orc faction and recruit heroes,
build armies and manage cities as you explore and conquer legendary lands. Use tactics, skills and magic to outsmart fantasy armies while developing your heroes and unveiling the dark plot that threatens to tear the world of Ashan apart. Heroes of Might & Magic V: Tribes of the East chronicles the final chapter in the epic struggle that began...
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03/22/07
02/26/07
02/22/07
From the makers of Blitzkrieg, comes another....tank game in WWII.
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02/19/07
An amazing superhero-style game held back by some nasty bugs.
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02/19/07
The attention to Xbox 360 details takes away from fixing some 'older' issues.
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02/19/07
The broom and flying monkeys are traded for big guns and tornadoes.
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02/05/07
It's very short and has a bad ending, but the online modes are fun.
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01/21/07
It leaves a legacy, all right. Just not the one we'd hoped for.
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01/21/07
The squad returns sans Ding, and its comeback is most impressive.
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01/07/07
So far it's a better superhero game than Superman. And you're a cop!
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12/19/06
It's got force feedback, pleather grip and a high price tag. Is it worth it all?
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12/04/06
Sega should kill any more next-gen concepts for this dying franchise. Now.
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11/29/06
The Xbox 360 and PS3 go back to WWII. And we actually enjoy the trip.
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11/26/06
Yes, he does. But he should now leave the Xbox 360 forever.
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11/24/06
A fun romp through the Marvel universe, albeit not a perfect one.
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11/19/06
Burger King drops a fun marketing bomb on the Xbox 360 and Xbox.
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11/18/06
11/14/06
The "other" Microsoft game debuting this month deserves respect, too.
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11/12/06
Lots of customization, but the "next-gen" racing itself gets boring.
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11/12/06
Sam Fisher's latest is good, but multiplayer still isn't quite right.
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11/07/06
Its small innovations are surprising, and its graphics are simply untouchable.
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11/06/06
An addictive puzzle game that's great for PC owners with time to spare.
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11/02/06
The single-player aspects of the Xbox 360 shooter are impressive so far.
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11/01/06
A solid addition for multiplayer fans, but not so much for single-player.
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10/29/06
One of the deepest and best-looking PC racing sims ever created.
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10/29/06
Still no next-gen innovation? That monopoly on the NFL is looking bad.
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10/26/06
PLAY! A Video Game Symphony North America has recently seen a few incidents that are new to this continent but commonplace in Japan: concerts devoted to the music of video games. Soundtrack Otaku in the West were largely an underground D.I.Y movement, but with the introduction of the Internet that changed, and the number of fans is increasing daily. Growing up in the Golden Age of videogames as I did, lots of games had only the bare bleeps and buzzes to keep the action moving. As this has changed, soundtracks have begun to get more sophisticated, namely with new arrangements or even remixes of some very recognizable and classic pieces. I took them all for granted growing up. Sure some stood out, like the Final Fantasies, Marios and Zeldas, which would welcome you to their latest incantation with their familiar tunes. But it wasn't until much later that I began...
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10/22/06
In an odd turn of events, the Xbox 360 version is better than the current-gen.
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10/18/06
The Xbox 360 gets its first taste of EA's vision for next-gen hockey games.
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10/15/06
It's more of the same, but that's not a bad thing, even when it's on Xbox 360.
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10/10/06
Ubisoft tries a Japanese RPG on the 360, but it seems they missed a few spots.
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09/27/06
We take a peek at Microsoft's attempt to dethrone the EyeToy.
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09/18/06
09/18/06
Yet another indistinguishable hack-and-slasher set in feudal Japan.
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09/13/06
We take a look at the budget-minded alien-blasting fun on PC.
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09/13/06
09/10/06
09/10/06
Merely adequate in some regards, but truly sub-par in most everything.
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08/24/06
08/23/06
A few more features this time, but still a bit short of expectations.
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07/29/06
When gameplay realizes the apple doesn't always fall "down."
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07/24/06
EA nails all but one part of RTS control. The important one.
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07/23/06
07/03/06
Steel Battalion it isn't, but it's still shaping up to be fun online.
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07/02/06
06/27/06
06/22/06
Let's go out to the ballgame in the PC's first baseball MMO.
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06/16/06
It's got lots of style but doesn't stand out from the pack.
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06/11/06
06/11/06
06/10/06
05/31/06
05/29/06
It's got it where it counts, but the "it" isn't anything more than average.
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05/29/06
05/22/06
Saying it's The Sims in space doesn't do justice to its scope.
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05/22/06
It's like Deus Ex on ecological crack. In other words: really good.
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05/21/06
05/20/06
The original trilogy gets sassy and blocky at the same time.
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05/19/06
05/15/06
05/10/06
Hands-on with one of Microsoft's standout next-gen trilogies.
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05/08/06
04/30/06
Zombies, Supersoldiers and Nazis duke it out in a new FPS.
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04/24/06
04/22/06
04/14/06
04/13/06
04/08/06
04/02/06
04/01/06
03/30/06
03/18/06
03/17/06
03/12/06
03/07/06
The next-gen version may be even better than the current outing.
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03/03/06
02/22/06
02/21/06
02/15/06
It's time to visit the original trilogy with our blocky friends.
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02/15/06
01/31/06
01/28/06
01/23/06
Stripped down but pretty, it still leaves something to be desired.
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01/15/06
The 25-foot monkey looks better, but the game's still the same
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01/15/06
It's lost some magic from its last outing but is still a lot of fun.
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01/08/06
01/08/06
Best-looking videogame people ever. And it plays great, too.
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01/02/06
12/18/05
Not quite Zelda, but it’s probably the closest you'll get on Xbox 360.
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12/17/05
11/13/05
10/30/05
10/18/05
09/07/05
It’s looking like this game might set a new bar in the RTS genre.
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08/29/05
08/26/05
Laid-back, hack-and-slash fun that mom wouldn’t want you to play.
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08/21/05
08/16/05
Read how the updated Fable is looking for its Windows debut.
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07/18/05
You ain’t seen the "real" West until you’ve seen this game.
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07/10/05
06/23/05
06/20/05
Forget WWII strategy, this one's getting Napoleonic on you!
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06/19/05
Soviet spies mixed with nuclear armageddon in a tactical RPG.
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05/24/05
05/08/05
A WWII strategy game for the most hardcore of micromanagers.
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05/01/05
04/13/05
04/01/05
Is the magic from the first Massive Assault game still here?
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03/28/05
03/14/05
03/02/05
02/19/05
02/14/05
Think you're a hardcore chess player? This may be for you.
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02/06/05
02/05/05
The recent build of LucasArts' squad-based shooter looks good.
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01/18/05
12/12/04
12/01/04
11/01/04
10/17/04
09/28/04
07/03/04
07/02/04
06/03/04
05/25/04
05/03/04
04/26/04
04/26/04
04/18/04
03/18/04
02/29/04
The second (and probably best) Neverwinter Nights' expansion.
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02/22/04
02/14/04
01/23/04
01/16/04
01/04/04
