It’s called “The Lord of the Rings: Conquest”, and it’s basically a new Star Wars: Battlefront game with all the Star Wars-y bits taken out, orcs and elves thrown in, and the name changed. Sound exciting? No? That’s probably because I’ve made it sound a bit naff whereas IGN made it sound really really cool.

Woo! Looks nice!

Apparently you’ll be able to choose to play any battle from the books and films (as well as some completely made up ones) and fight as pretty much any role. So be an elf archer defending Helm’s Deep, for example. Sweet, eh? Still no? Oh heck, I’ll just quote a bit of what Eurogamer said instead, and then you can pop over to IGN and read all about it properly.

The best bit about The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is that it lets you be almost everyone from Middle-Earth, including the baddies. You can expect to be Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, Ents, Balrogs, and even the Witch King, Saruman and Sauron himself.

There is an entire evil campaign waiting to be unlocked after you finish the good story, and it begins with you as a Ringwraith capturing Frodo and delivering the Ring to Sauron.

You can play both campaigns with up to four friends online or in split-screen, or just hop into eight-player competitive battles.

Oh, and it’s for PC, PS3, and XBox360.

Proper article at IGN.

What a challenge! How do you turn some of the most iconic and well-designed videogame characters of all time into 3D equivalents without compromising the style?

Capcom show us how:

Stylish!

Facial Animation!

Dramatic!

Yep, it all just goes to prove that it’s not the size of the tool it’s how you wield it. All we’ve got here are polygons, normal maps, some textures, and lighting - just like every other PS3 and XBox360 game - but with an added extra pinch of talent. Actually, lots of talent.

Source: Eurogamer

I don’t know why I bought Devil May Cry on the PS2 when it came out.

Because if there’s one thing that annoys me - and I mean really annoys me - in games, it’s the fixed-point camera system. You know the one, where the camera flicks to a stupid ‘arty’ perspective at inopportune moments that completely disorientates you and usually results in having to dispatch enemies who are now off the screen.

It annoyed me in the original Alone in the Dark (although that I forgave because rendering about 100 polygons was basically the machine’s limit, and all the backgrounds were hand-drawn) and it’s annoyed me ever since.

It’s why I never got into the Resident Evil games despite being told over and over how great they were.

But for some reason I bought Devil May Cry, and for some reason the perspective changing stupid camera system didn’t annoy me at all. If I was a proper journalist or games commentator I could probably make some sort of hypothesis about that, but unfortunately I’m not so I can’t.

Anyway the point is, that the original Devil May Cry was amazing and an utter blast from the joyous start to the proper videogame ending, “YES! That’s what all final boss battles should be like!”, etc. I’ve not played the sequel, or the sequel’s sequel but I’ve been told they’re more or less the same.

But now we’ve got number 4, and this time it’s on XBox360 and PS3 which means even more ridiculously good-looking graphics rendered from a fixed perspective. And I think it’s about time I got back into the series. Yes, the game looks like it’s been well and truly designed for adolescent teenage boys - as Eurogamer puts it:

it’s also the quiet comprehension that Devil May Cry 4 is an incredibly adolescent game. I sort of don’t want that to sound as pejorative as it does, but hell, this is such a teenage boy fantasy that it is, at times, flesh-cringing in its audacity. The moment when female executive of the Holy Knights, Gloria, shows up on a snowy bridge wearing a strip of cling-film is astonishing. She’s made of Japanese gelatinous lady-physics (you know the kind of hyper-elastic bounce I’m talking about) and - I swear to God - there’s a Matrix slow-motion shot up the cleft of her exposed arse. I mean seriously boys, there’s exploitative attitudes towards women and there’s… yeah. Upskirt bullet-time bum zooms.

But in spite of that, the stupidity is kind of what made the first game fun. If you take the “bum zoom” and apply the equivalent to “shooting things and whacking them with an improbably sized sword” then you’d probably get the idea of how stupid, but at the same time amazing the action is.

Read Eurogamer’s first impressions here.

As build-up to the almost inevitably prematurely canned T.V. show Lost increases, Ubisoft are set to release the accompanying videogame on PC, PS3, and XBox360.

Something like this, as was the case with the game of 24, is generally a bit of a mixed bag - the franchise has a tendency to overshadow the actual gameplay. That somehow the pressure to live up to the hype of the series results in somebody somewhere forgetting to insert a fun engaging game in there.

However, all is not Lost. In their preview, Eurogamer reckon that there’s just an outside chance that this might turn out to be pretty good. Maybe not Earth-shatteringly good or anything, but definitely something worth picking up if you’re a fan of the series.

We have yet to be convinced that Lost is going to be the game to relaunch the adventure genre into a glittering new future - but we’re certainly convinced that it isn’t yet another bargain-bin TV tie-in. Sparkling production values and some genuinely thoughtful gameplay decisions, combined with very professional script-writing and a striking narrative, mean that this is shaping up to be a game that Lost fans will enjoy - and others may well find a soft spot for.

Read the full preview here!

As everyone knows, the only reason to really want a PS3 is ‘Little Big Planet’, and that isn’t out yet.

But as this Tech Demo shows, Sony have got some faily clever bits of magic up their sleeves with the EyeToy.

The true future of VideoGames? Drawing your own games and then using your own wobbly genitalia as a tank.

Bring. It. On.