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PC
If the Colin McRae demo didn't impress, this one might. The graphics are certainly better, and there's online multiplayer. Finding a good online game can be somewhat problematic, as there doesn't appear to be a time limit for races and some people don't understand that if you just want to do virtual donuts you can start your own LAN game and screw around to your heart's content.
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Xpand Rally Multi Player Demo
If the Colin McRae demo didn't impress, this one might. The graphics are certainly better, and there's online multiplayer. Finding a good online game can be somewhat problematic, as there doesn't appear to be a time limit for races and some people don't understand that if you just want to do virtual donuts you can start your own LAN game and screw around to your heart's content.
More »
PC
Top Spin Demo
Top Spin is a tennis game that was originally relased for Xbox but is now being ported to PC. If the demo is any indication, the game's main feature will be that when the game asks you to push a key, sometimes it's actually asking you to make the game crash. Thus, no patented Kotaku mini-screenshot. I expect no less from the QA masters at Atari these days, though. More »
In Brief
Credits
- Editor: Brian D. Crecente
- Associate Editor, Japan: Brian Ashcraft
- Associate Editor, Europe: Florian Eckhardt
- Associate Editor: Eliza Gauger
- Associate Editor, Weekend: Michael McWhertor
- Identity Design: PK at House of Pretty, Ltd.
- Gawker Media Credits
PC
World of Warcraft 7 Day Stress Test
Blizzard is giving FilePlanet subscribers first dibs on a week long stress test of the download, patch, and play servers for the phenomenon-to-be World of Warcraft. They plan to sign up 100,000 people and give them a week to run free with the latest version of WoW, albeit on a separate world from the already-in-progress closed beta test. More »
PC
Valve has started sending a chunk of Half-Life 2 to users of its Steam network. The chunk is about 1GB in size, is encrypted, and contains art and sound assets to be used when the final game is released, whenever that may be. The more I think about it, the more I think they'll go for the joke and release it on September 30th, which was the original release date except for the year part. But as they say, better exactly one year late than never.
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Half-Life 2 Half Available
Valve has started sending a chunk of Half-Life 2 to users of its Steam network. The chunk is about 1GB in size, is encrypted, and contains art and sound assets to be used when the final game is released, whenever that may be. The more I think about it, the more I think they'll go for the joke and release it on September 30th, which was the original release date except for the year part. But as they say, better exactly one year late than never.
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PC
Kotaku doesn't have a racing wheel with force feedback, or even any idea what the nice co-driver man means when he says "long three right, don't cut, into jump hairpin tarmac", but if you do, you probably want to grab this 291 MB demo of Colin McRae Rally 2005, due out in about a month. It has very shiny cars that don't get dirty when they race on dirt.
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Colin McRae 05 PC Demo
Kotaku doesn't have a racing wheel with force feedback, or even any idea what the nice co-driver man means when he says "long three right, don't cut, into jump hairpin tarmac", but if you do, you probably want to grab this 291 MB demo of Colin McRae Rally 2005, due out in about a month. It has very shiny cars that don't get dirty when they race on dirt.
More »
Gamecube
Sega quietly ships Amazing Island for the GameCube today, at a low price of $39.99. It's as if they're not sure that a game with a googly-eyed flying cowchicken would have a big enough draw at $49.
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Amazing Island
Sega quietly ships Amazing Island for the GameCube today, at a low price of $39.99. It's as if they're not sure that a game with a googly-eyed flying cowchicken would have a big enough draw at $49.
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Playstation 2
Viewtiful Joe's PS2 port is shipping today, and for $29.99. Like we said last month, it adds an unlockable character, and as we didn't say last month, it adds a super easy difficulty level ambiguously named "Sweet". We love the GameCube version, even though we totally hate fighting the giant bat.
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Viewtiful Joe PS2
Viewtiful Joe's PS2 port is shipping today, and for $29.99. Like we said last month, it adds an unlockable character, and as we didn't say last month, it adds a super easy difficulty level ambiguously named "Sweet". We love the GameCube version, even though we totally hate fighting the giant bat.
More »
PC
Alienware Sponsors Kornelia Tourney at QuakeCon
Alienware is putting up a notebook computer and other prizes for QuakeCon attendees who want to challenge Kornelia to a game of Doom 3. She'll be playing matches all day Friday at the giant covnention taking place this weekend in Dallas. In case you've never heard of her, Kornelia is a professional gamer, so you will more than likely not get any prize, even though you have to kill her only once to qualify.
Playstation 2
San Francisco to Receive Exclusive DBZ Budokai 3 Demo
Budokai series creator Daisuke Uchiyama will be at the San Francisco Metreon (Metreons are big Sony-owned arcades) on August 18th at 3 PM to demo the third iteration of the Dragonball Z fighting game. Only two groups of 50 will be admitted, and people who are dressed up as DBZ characters get to cut in line. More »
Business
Mist Walker Starts Off with Two Games
We told you a while back about Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer of the Final Fantasy series, leaving Square to start his own studio. At first, he didn't want to say what he's working on. Now, though, he says he's working on two RPGs. While you might be concerned about what he calls a small studio working on two RPGs at once, you have to remember this guy used to work at Square so small to him is probably 75 people. More »
Xbox
Madden 2005 ships today. This year's revision includes a new defensive feature they're calling the "hit stick", which gives you options for exactly how you would like to take down the ball carrier. Enh, we don't know really if that's good or not; Kotaku is not hardcore when it comes to football, and that's why the $19.95 ESPN 2K5 Football game seems better to our casual, hockey-is-way-better minds. We're sure that lots of people will just get both, and of course Madden is the one with the nationwide tournament with prize money.
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Madden 2005
Madden 2005 ships today. This year's revision includes a new defensive feature they're calling the "hit stick", which gives you options for exactly how you would like to take down the ball carrier. Enh, we don't know really if that's good or not; Kotaku is not hardcore when it comes to football, and that's why the $19.95 ESPN 2K5 Football game seems better to our casual, hockey-is-way-better minds. We're sure that lots of people will just get both, and of course Madden is the one with the nationwide tournament with prize money.
More »
PC
Nothing perks us up at Kotaku like seeing a fresh visual style for a video game. It's not that we think games that aim for more humdrum motifs like "realistic" or "anime" can't be good games, it's just that we always like to see new things. At this point we'd settle for "something not set in WWII", so we're very pleased to see this movie come along.
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Darwinia Movie
Nothing perks us up at Kotaku like seeing a fresh visual style for a video game. It's not that we think games that aim for more humdrum motifs like "realistic" or "anime" can't be good games, it's just that we always like to see new things. At this point we'd settle for "something not set in WWII", so we're very pleased to see this movie come along.
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Video of Gran Turismo on the PSP
All I can say are two things:
1. Neat!
2. It doesn't matter because the battery life is too short. PSP Gran Turismo Confirmed as Port [Ferrago]
All I can say are two things:
1. Neat!2. It doesn't matter because the battery life is too short. PSP Gran Turismo Confirmed as Port [Ferrago]
Playstation 2
More GTA: SA Info at GameSpot
Care to see how the Scottish folk at Rockstar North perceive 1990s Los Angeles? Then check out the latest feature on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at GameSpot, which covers the in-game city of Los Santos. Spoiler: It looks a lot like how L.A. looks in movies about L.A. gangsters. Excuse me, "gangstas". The last two GTAs never suffered from Hollywood clich envisionings of the setting, though, so we don't know why we're complaining. As long as it's got the GTA sense of humor, we don't care. More »
Housekeeping
The reviewing community is solidly divided between those being highly critical of Doom 3 and giving it 8.5/10 and those who say mostly good things and give it a 9.2 or a 9.4. Isn't that absurdly awful? Well, we here at Kotaku use five stars, with no half-stars. And Doom 3 gets all five. Five stars doesn't represent hyperbole about it being the best game ever, or even better than the top FPS games of past years; it represents our highest recommendation. We'll frame our review in the context of why we think the game has gotten some of the (by game review standards) hard reviews it has.
More »
Doom 3 Review
The reviewing community is solidly divided between those being highly critical of Doom 3 and giving it 8.5/10 and those who say mostly good things and give it a 9.2 or a 9.4. Isn't that absurdly awful? Well, we here at Kotaku use five stars, with no half-stars. And Doom 3 gets all five. Five stars doesn't represent hyperbole about it being the best game ever, or even better than the top FPS games of past years; it represents our highest recommendation. We'll frame our review in the context of why we think the game has gotten some of the (by game review standards) hard reviews it has.
More »
