Genre : RTS
Publisher: TBA
Developer: Sunflowers
Release Date: Q1 2006

I was sold on ParaWorld almost from the word "go." A real-time strategy game from the German developer Sunflowers, it features, among other things, the ability to field an army of heavily-armored dinosaurs, several of which have siege engines or companies of archers strapped to their backs.

ParaWorld was about half-finished and unnamed at last year's E3. Now, it's about six months from completion, as the team tweaks the balance and completes its character animation. It's really more of an issue of their having a perfectionist streak than anything

Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Vivendi
Developer: Krome Studios
Release Date: October 2006

Spyro's newest venture is entitled A New Beginning, and for good reason. With this new game, the reset button's been hit on Spyro; all past adventures have been forgotten in favor of giving one of the hardest-working mascots in video games a fresh start.

In this case, it means shifting the onscreen action's focus from cutesy platforming to surprisingly intense action. Krome Studios, the dev house that gave the world Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, has set out to make Spyro's newest adventure feel like "playing through a

Get the Knights of the Temple 2 Trailer off WP (27mb)

Genre: Sports
Publisher: Vivendi
Developer: JC Entertainment
Release Date: Q1 2007

It is within the bounds of possibility that you could sell a million copies of anything in Korea, as long as it was a massive multiplayer online game. Ideally, it should be an MMO you can play with one hand, freeing up the other hand to smoke a cigarette.

Freestyle Street Basketball is, at once, a demonstration of this principle and an idea I'm surprised we haven't seen before now. This is a game where you can create and kit out a cel-shaded cartoon avatar, and then

Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Publisher: TBA
Developer: TKO
Release Date: 2006

God is Pissed. And when God gets pissed, Satan gets cranky. And when Satan gets cranky, humans tend to die. So goes the premise of TKO's upcoming RTS, Heaven vs. Hell. Set in the not-so-distant future, God is finally fed up with his prized creation, man, abusing technology to mess with the fabric of creation and attempt to "play God" themselves. However, he has an idea to get the Divine Plan back on track – wipe out creation and start over. First, however, He needs to save all the

Genre: FPS
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Release Date: Q4 2005

One of the things that surprised me was Star Wars: Battlefront was the best-selling Star Wars game of all time. Given that it's almost a mod of Battlefield 1942, I guess that's not too surprising. Set for release in Q4 this year, Battlefront 2 looks to do all the things a sequel should do: keep what made the original game great and add the requisite new things.

The big addition is space combat. Perhaps now, finally, we can relive what I feel is one of the high-water marks of

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: SNK
Developer: Noise Factory
Release Date: June 7, 2005

SNK's popular 2D fighter series, King of Fighters, finally made the leap from quaint sprites to full polygonal glory in the form of King of Fighters: Maximum Impact for the PS2. Now, Xbox owners can see what they missed and enjoy a few new features, not the least of which is full Xbox Live support. Heck, SNK even added the word "Maniax" to the title, which makes the full name King of Fighters: Maximum Impact – Maniax. WorthPlaying spent some time with a preview

Genre: FPS
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Epic
Release Date: 2006

Unreal Tournament, everyone's favorite futuristic blood sport, is once again making its way to the PC in the form of Unreal Tournament 2007. UT2k7 is essentially the same style of game as the series has been known for but contains enough new content to differentiate itself from its predecessors. UT2k7 uses the new Unreal 3 engine to allow for incredible detail on the enviroments and the player models themselves, and the Karma physics engine has been dropped in favor of the newer Novadex physics engine, which looks a bit more

Genre: Party/Puzzle
Publisher: Vivendi
Developer: Dimps
Release Date: October 2006

Well … Crash is back.

Crash Boom Bang! is sort of weird, in that it's the first game in the long-running Crash series being made by a Japanese developer. For Crash's DS debut, the reins have been given to Dimps, the house behind Dragon Ball Z: Budokai.

As a result, Crash Boom Bang! has taken a turn for the anime. (Look, Mom, I'm using nouns as adjectives!) The game is more colorful than its American predecessors were and definitely more cute; Crash has gone from looking insane to looking

Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Publisher: Vivendi
Developer: Massive
Release Date: Spring 2007

It may look like another World War II RTS when you see the screenshots, but it isn't. World in Conflict is actually a World War III RTS, set in an alternate universe where the Cold War did not end in 1989.

Instead, it heated up rapidly, culminating in Russia invading the United States via Alaska, forestalling the collapse of their economy by shooting the hell out of people. As a result, the settings of World of Conflict aren't the usual Eastern European/Middle Eastern hellholes; you'll be fighting