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Rainier's Articles


Wii Preview - 'Monster Lab'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Action/Role-Playing
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Backbone
Release Date: Q4 2008

Who doesn't love mad scientists? From their crazy hair to their bizarre fixations on anything from raising the dead to launching someone into space to watch terrible movies, they're the crazy nutbags that everyone loves. That's why it's so surprising that so few games actually put you into the role of a mad scientist. It seems like the perfect thing for video games: tons of innovation and the lack of morals or common sense to question if said innovation might, say, doom mankind. Thankfully, Eidos is

'Street Fighter IV' (PS3/X360/PC) - Screens

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - E3 2008 - July 17th

Street Fighter IV brings the legendary fighting series back to its roots by taking the beloved fighting moves and techniques of the original Street Fighter II, and infusing them with Capcom's latest advancements in next generation technology to create a truly extraordinary experience that will re-introduce the world to the time-honored art of virtual martial arts.

Everything that made the legendary Street Fighter II a hit in the arcades, living rooms and dormitories across the globe has been brought back in Street Fighter IV. Players will be able to play their favorite classic characters, such as Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li

PS3/X360/PC Preview - 'Dead Space'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Survival Horror
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Electronic Arts
Release Date: October 20, 2008

Survival horror's a genre in transition. It began as a sort of half-assed, 3-D subcategory of adventure games, and while the involved technology changed, many of the tropes didn't. From 1996 to 2006, you were still using tank-style controls to steer some luckless chump through a terrible situation.

Resident Evil 4, while not really horror by any stretch of the imagination, reinvented the genre while also giving action games a good swift kick in the ass. Dead Space is the first post-RE4 survival

'S.L.A.I.' (PS2) - Screens

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - E3 2005 May 19th

NDS Preview - 'Away: Shuffle Dungeon'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Role-Playing Game
Publisher: Majesco
Developer: Mistwalker
Release Date: October 2008

Last year at GDC, Hironobu Sakaguchi was at Microsoft's hotel talking up Lost Odyssey. He was seriously jet-lagged and, in response to another reporter's question, mentioned that Mistwalker Games' next project was going to be a DS game. He was promptly hushed by a PR agent.

Away: Shuffle Dungeon is apparently that project, with character design by Sakaguchi and music composed by Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu. Unsurprisingly, it's an RPG; specifically, it's an action-RPG starring a brash young hero named Sword. (The name is meant to

PC Preview - 'ParaWorld'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2005

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

'Knights of the Temple 2' (PS2/Xbox/PC) - Screens & Trailer

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - E3 2005 May 20th

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

Wii Preview - 'Castlevania Judgment'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2008

Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Eighting
Release Date: Fall 2008

Three-dimensional Castlevania games have always been a bit lackluster than their 2-D counterparts. While Symphonia of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow are considered among the best games on their respective systems, Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: 64 are generally held to be mediocre at best and borderline unplayable at worst. There's just something about the trip into 3-D that makes Castlevania lose its magic. Perhaps this strange curse is what made Konami decide to make the first Wii Castlevania title into something completely different. Castlevania: Judgment

PC Preview - 'Heaven vs Hell'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2005

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

PC Preview - 'Star Wars Battlefront II'

by Rainier on Jan. 1, 2006 @ 1:30 a.m. PST | Filed under E3 - Post - E3 2005

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