What's New?

Magic, twitching ladies with guns, whips and imperialism.

Feature by Martin Taylor Contributor

Updated on 1 Sep 2003

Right, I've never done this before and trust me - Tom's shoes are some sizeable shoes to fill. Everyone's still away at ECTS and I'm left back here to run the show, such is the life of, well, me. But I'm not bitter at all! No sir. So anyway... what a week! Well, for us anyway - feeding you the deluge of gaming goodness streaming from the ECTS halls has been a task and a half, and it's a task that looks set to continue over the next few working days as well. You don't know how lucky you all are! Quiet, you.

As for the game-buying public, this weeks looks set to be a little more flush than the last pathetic showing for new releases, and there's a couple of actual quality at that! Take Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, for example - a game that's taken Tom by great surprise for being a PC turn-based strategy empire building thing that even he likes. It's apparently pretty good, but we'll have more considered opinion with you soon.

P.N.03 on the Cube is a tricky one to gauge, with Tom granting Capcom's stylised shooter a healthy 7/10, concluding that the game sadly fails to develop upon the genius indicated in its initial stages. One for the hardcore crowd then, unless you like to rent. We urge that you at least give it a look.

Indy arrives on the PS2 this week, paying a friendly visit to the Emperor's Tomb. The PC and Xbox versions swung by in March, and unfortunately slipped through our reviews net in a similar fashion to the PS2 port, but the lukewarm critical reception the game's earned so far tells us to be cautious. Just depends how hungry you are for some more Indy love we suppose, although he'll probably do a better job of raiding tombs this year than his female protégé.

The final highlight this week comes in the shape of Elixir's now-infamous Republic: The Revolution. Yes, it's actually in the shops, and we can reliably inform you of its deeply average qualities via Rob's handy review.

Of the other less interesting titles this week, SCI's The Great Escape sneaks its way onto PC, PS2 and Xbox. We're not too well informed on this one sadly, but the general consensus seems to be "not great". We'll leave it at that. And for the sake of completion, there's THQ's Rocket Power Zero Gravity Zone on the GBA, which nobody in the world seems to know much about at all; while we'd like you all to think we're some kind of incredible all-knowing scary unified brain type thing, we're not. Sorry.

Duck! Low-flying summary!