What's New?

Publishers: pay attention. We don't care if your turnover can be measured in gold bars, if you drive around killing hookers in a car made out of mushed banknotes, or if you've just secured a licence to print your own currency, we just want you to tell us honestly and without then royally screwing it up when exactly your bloody games are coming out! Why is this so unfathomably difficult for all of you? Why do we have to sit around researching this nonsense every Friday morning when you are the people pushing the buttons? Gah.

Anyway, this week's list of games, which may or may not actually be available for you to go and buy, will fit on the fingers of one regular human hand, while your thumb gets Die Hard Vendetta on Xbox, a game we were assured came out on June 27th but which now appears to be out today. Or next Friday. We don't even care, right? It's a crap game. Just release it so we can get on with forgetting about it.

Meanwhile, the rest of this week is... surprisingly exciting. Cube, Xbox and GBA owners haven't much (or, in fact, anything) to shout about, but that's their bed and they seem to have no trouble sleeping in it. PS2 owners on the other hand can bask in the splendour of Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis)' rather excellent Formula One 2003, along with Capcom's Resident Evil Dead Aim, a lightgun meets control pad games which could feasibly be better than the likes of that Dino Crisis one. In fact, it's been described to us (and not by our friends at Capcom, though we do hang off their every word since they sent us a copy of Viewtiful Joe) as "the best Resident Evil lightgun title yet".

Finally, there's Tribes: Aerial Assault for PS2. Now we're not sure if this is any good yet, because every time yours truly tries to play it, someone dies. Seriously. Whether it's a sign or not is difficult to say, but reviews have been erring on the positive side without committing to true greatness. We'd advise budding PS2 Networkers to give it a week and see what the world thinks before skydiving in.

The other concluding saga this week (hopefully) is Midnight Club II on the PC. We've been told this is out this week, but we also heard that last week, the week before, the week before that - we'll just assume that if it is out, you'll consider buying it, as it's very good. Not Midtown 3 good, or Burnout 2 good maybe, but good all the same.

And with vast apologies that's all we've got this week. Such is summer. Kristan's in San Francisco fairying it up at Camp EA (deliberately self-deprecating or just coincidental?) so we can't kill some paragraphs lambasting him about anything - we'll just have to leave you to it and go and play Tribes. Shazbot!

• Die Hard Vendetta (Xbox)
• Formula One 2003 (PS2)
• Midnight Club II (PC)
• Resident Evil Dead Aim (PS2)
• Tribes: Aerial Assault (PS2)

Disclaimer: All of the above release data is verified against four online stores (Amazon, GAME, Gameplay and Play) as well as our latest release schedules and, where available, publisher extranets. If it's wrong, then quite honestly it really is someone else's fault. If you find out who, please email hitlist@eurogamer.net and we'll kill them forthwith. And you.