Mass Effect

Captain’s Log. Stardate: just before breakfast. I’m Shepard. Commander John Shepard. You can call me whatever you like though. In fact, via the means of plastic surgery my face can be altered in any way you fancy. You can even turn me into a female. Sheila Shepard – now that’s catchy! I’m on a mission …

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Harvest Moon DS

You might be aware that this was originally released in Japan just a few short months after the DS itself. The lengthy delay for its Euro appearance is due to a couple of things – the publisher being one; it’s gone from being handled by Ubisoft, to upstart outfit Rising Star and has ended up …

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Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers

This sequel to one of the more involving war games of recent times didn’t get a dedicated news article on these hallowed pages when it was announced: instead we bundled it in with details of EA’s SSX on Tour. If we had to go back in time and give it its very own article, we’d …

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Dragon Blaze

There isn’t a polygon in sight, but that doesn’t stop Dragon Blaze from being one of the most charming 2D shooters in quite some time, with lots of colourful enemies, nicely rendered bosses and detailed backgrounds. The fantasy theme is welcome too, replacing the formulaic spaceships, robots, tanks and flying ninjas with crossbow-wielding bats, mutineer …

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Micro Machines V4

Micro Machines V3 was the last Micro Machines game from Codemasters, but it wasn’t the last title to feature the tiny toys – Atari had a stab at resurrecting the overhead racer with a multiformat offering back in 2002. The V4 at the end of the title of this long-time-coming continuation suggests that Codemasters are …

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Disney Pixar’s Cars

Rather than being farmed out to an unheard of development studio to knock out on the cheap, THQ handed the development rights to Cars over to Rainbow Studios, best known for the publisher’s own MX Unleashed and ATV: Off Road Fury titles. This makes perfect sense to us given the source material. A lack of …

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Homura

We may not know what Homura means, but we do know that this is another retro-styled shooter from 505 GameStreet, originally published by Taito in Japan and developed by the team behind Psyvariar. The original Psyvariar wasn’t up to much, with stupidly short levels and hackneyed bosses, but its sequel – not released outside of …

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Ultimate Fighting Championship

The first thing that will strike you in Ultimate Fighting Championship is the rather long introductory FMV sequence, which comprises of action taken from the real UFC. You will then notice that it is violent. Really violent. Not comedy grappling a la WWF – these people are punching and kicking (and almost anything else) the …

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Project Justice: Rival Schools 2

The idea behind Project Justice sounds like the type you might read in a “Your game ideas” section in a computer magazine. Teachers and pupils from rival schools band together and fight it out in 3D to uncover a mystery following a chain of events. Of course, only such an idea would come from the …

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