Key events
7th May 2010
10th July 2009
18th June 2009
27th May 2009
22nd May 2009
19th August 2008
GamesAid launching PS3 Triple Pack
Three games, 30 quid, all profits to charity.
Never mind eh? Make yourself feel slightly better this morning by taking note of the upcoming GamesAid Triple Pack for PlayStation 3.
Due out on 25th June for £29.99, the GamesAid Triple Pack consists of Tomb Raider: Underworld, SEGA Superstars Tennis and FUEL.
Yes! Three games from three different publishers! The key to this miracle is that all the profits go to GamesAid charities.
Battlefield 1943 heads PSN update
Ghostbusters and FUEL demos too.
Battlefield 1943 tops the bill on the PlayStation Store this week, with GBP 10 the asking price for a slice of Pacific World War II online multiplayer madness. There's a free trial to test the waters, and you can expect our final verdict later this morning.
Also up for grabs are Ghostbusters and FUEL demos. We've reviewed both, and prefer the former over the latter.
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift gains tracks, variants, vehicles, characters, paintjobs and Trophies as part of an Adrenaline expansion, while Skate 2 emulates the Maloof Cup skateboarding event through DLC.
FUEL demo today on PC, PS3, 360
Check out Asobo's openworld racer.
Codemasters will offer a post-release demo of FUEL for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 today.
Xbox 360 vs. PS3 Face-Off: Round 20
Ghostbusters, Prototype, Bionic Commando, FUEL, Wolverine, Red Faction.
We've reached a new Face-Off milestone as the series reaches its 20th compilation-based instalment and with it, Eurogamer is happy to reveal that its coverage has evolved once more. Our comparison features have traditionally been rich with video and screenshot-based assets that are the best they can be possibly be, but with the arrival of this landmark, the brand new Eurogamer HD video player comes into play, giving you the choice of watching either the cropped 1:1 pixel-mapped embedded video streams, or else a higher-quality 720p presentation.
Just click the HD button where appropriate to get the full picture. It's worth pointing out that the default setting for the HD player is 960x540, with the 720p encoding scaled down to fit the window. To bypass this resizing, hit the full-screen button at the bottom of the screen. CPU-rending h264 encoding techniques, combined with running the full 60Hz output of each console at 50 per cent speed, allows us to retain enough quality to make the comparison videos actually work, and now you get to see the full picture. Every frame, every pixel. Nice.
Onto the games then - a six-strong line-up of the most recent high-profile releases. All killer, no filler!
UK charts: The Sims 3 rides high
Red Faction close, Star Ocean not.
The Sims 3 enters the UK all-formats Chart at number one this week, claiming the fourth biggest opening weekend for a PC game here - behind the two World of Warcraft expansions and Championship Manager 4.
Spent.
Speaking to friends about Asobo Studios' FUEL, it's jarring how many are expecting an open-world follow-up to the last Race Driver. The name - perhaps introduced following Codemasters' acquisition of the publishing rights last year - is no doubt designed to bring it into line with GRID, and on that basis it's perhaps a mark of the publisher's confidence, and augers well for something new and interesting. But in truth, FUEL is no more an extension of Codemasters' excellent track racer than Overlord II is, and it doesn't even use the EGO Engine.
The engine it does use, however - one of Asobo's own creation - is certainly no slouch, and that's just as well in a game that promises the sort of open-world racing sandbox we haven't seen since Test Drive Unlimited, with a range of vehicles that echoes MotorStorm, and environmental factors more consistent with the cinematic output of Roland Emmerich. This is an all-terrain racer, an astonishing 5000 square miles of North American wasteland crisscrossed by winding mountain roads, rivers, hills and more categories of bracken and brush than you'd find in the Eden Project.
It's even got something of a story. As a surviving petrolhead in a post-apocalypse USA, you're competing for the fuel to survive, which you earn by winning races and challenges - and that's winning, not coming second. Fuel can then be spent on new vehicles and liveries to suit your needs and wants. But the game doesn't dwell too much upon this, which is just as well lest anyone suggest "fuel" might as well be "dollars", or, for that matter, that competing for combustible fossils by burning through them over hundreds of miles of arduous terrain is a peculiar logic.
FUEL release date slips by a week
New racer won't be out till June now.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of new racers FUEL have been delayed by a week.
Codemasters confirmed the delay earlier today, according to VG247. There's still no word on when the PC version will appear.
The console games were due to launch next Friday - but now they won't be here till 5th June.
On track.
Codemasters has really made a name for itself in the driving genre. 2007's DiRT and 2008's GRID set the bar high for accessible, solid racers. Continuing the obsession with capitalised four-letter words, FUEL takes things to a bigger, louder and more light-hearted place: to the other side of the apocalypse.
Pumped.
I always try and avoid falling back on such tired journalistic devices as claiming a game is "X meets Y", but in the narrow confines of the racing genre, where there can be barely a hair's breadth of distinction between different titles, I'm prepared to indulge in a little cliché. It's especially tempting to break out the comparisons when discussing FUEL, the latest racing franchise starter from Codemasters, home to such genre standards as TOCA, GRID and the Colin McRae Rally series.
Petrol Codies' new openworld racer.
Petrol Codies' new openworld racer.
I feel my temperature rising.
I feel my temperature rising.
Paradise City tiny compared to Fuel map
So says man making Fuel map.
Codemasters producer David Brickley has claimed the gameworld in Fuel will be much larger than that in rival racer Burnout: Paradise City.
Pre-alpha glimpse of Codies' openworld racer.
Pre-alpha glimpse of Codies' openworld racer.
Multiformat openworld racer.
Codemasters has unveiled FUEL, a brand new openworld racing game promising the "largest racing environment to appear in gaming - ever".
Developed by French outfit Asobo Studios, the game's due out on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in 2009.
Set in an "alternate present" where the world's been wrecked by the effects of climate change, FUEL claims a 5,000 square-mile playing area with "no boundaries" and 16-player racing.
