THE LATEST NEWS FROM APRIL 2004
APRIL 2004 – The spring slump hits the consoles, but whispers of the forthcoming console generation and a stellar remake keep things interesting. So let’s do the time warp again! Actual time travel, that is – Nick Thorpe does not dance
The Xbox and Gamecube have barely been out two years in the UK, but it’s already time to start talking about the next generation of home console hardware. According to Edge, Microsoft had shipped out development kits for its forthcoming successor to the Xbox, under the codename Xenon. The hardware sounded suitably beefy, with two Power Mac G5 units running in parallel, and an ATI Radeon 9800 in place of the forthcoming custom graphics hardware. Further details were hard to come by, with Edge’s source claiming “The non-disclosure agreement is like nothing you’ve seen”, but it was expected that demos from the new hardware would be seen soon. Also on the subject of software creation, 25 UK developers were rumoured to have development kits for Sony’s forthcoming PSP handheld.
Regardless of what was on the horizon, Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance was still receiving classic games as the existing king of handhelds. Rather than taking the expected step of porting
Super Metroid, Nintendo chose to remake the original NES Metroid as
Metroid: Zero Mission. Gamesmaster described it as “the Rubik’s Cube of adventure games” in an 88% review, as “it writhes about unpredictably, teasing and rewarding alternately, always one step ahead”. NGC scored the game 89%, stopping short of the 90+ mark because “it’s a bit on the short side”. Edge agreed in an 8/10 review, but noted that “Five hours’ play can lead you straight to the finale, yet most will find that they have exposed only half of the game’s secrets”. Also on the GBA this month, Rare’s revival of Sabre Wulf (NGC 85%, Edge 6/10, Gamesmaster 80%), action-puzzler Mr Driller 2 (NGC 79%), and multiplayer action-rpg Shining Soul 2 (NGC 84%).
Crytek’s beautiful first-person shooter Far Cry was inspiring plenty of PC upgrades, such was its demand on your hardware. However, the investment was judged to be worthwhile. “Far Cry is what Halo could have been had it continued to be a PC game – markedly more in-depth, more serious and more freeform, and sadly, a touch more frustrating on occasion”, opined PC Gamer’s Richard Cobbett in a 91% review. Edge was also impressed, awarding the game 8/10 and describing it as “frequently beautiful in every sense”, but complaining of less open, less visually striking sections featuring “monsters out of control, indoor tunnel sections
and lots of grey”. Other notable PC releases for the month included a belated port of Colin Mcrae Rally 04 (PC Gamer 91%), and Counter Strike: Condition Zero (PC Gamer 75%), a spin-off of the squad first-person shooter designed for solo play.
Sam Fisher’s return saw him drawing way more attention than a spy would normally want, as Ubisoft’s stealth sequel Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow earned widespread praise. Edge felt that the developers had “missed an opportunity to move the franchise along” and created “what can only be considered Splinter Cell 1.5”,
but still awarded it 8/10 based on the strength of the “ingenious” online play that pitted spies playing in third-person perspective against mercenaries with first-person views. Gamesmaster’s
90% review of the Xbox version offered a similar perspective, noting that the solo campaign didn’t have “quite as many sections that make you smile at their ingenuity”. The 85% review in PC Gamer offered similar sentiments, as well.
Other multiplatform games doing the rounds provided the few remaining highlights of this annoyingly quiet month. Football management sequel
LMA Manager 2004 (Gamesmaster 83%, Official PS2 Magazine 8/10) arrived on PS2 and Xbox, as did Acclaim’s World Championship Rugby (Official PS2 Magazine 7/10, Official Xbox Magazine 8.0/10). Also from Acclaim, the TV licensed actionadventure game Alias (Official PS2 Magazine 8/10, Gamesmaster 75%) proved surprisingly enjoyable, while the post-nuclear action-rpg Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel (Official PS2 Magazine 6/10, Official Xbox Magazine
7.2/10) surprisingly didn’t manage to do justice to its traditional RPG predecessors. Also underwhelming everyone this month were the platform pairing of Tak And The
Power Of Juju (Official PS2 Magazine 6/10, NGC 69%, Gamesmaster
70%) and Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (Official PS2 Magazine 5/10, Official Xbox Magazine 6.4/10, NGC 48%,
Gamesmaster 72%).
All of the multiplatform love was welcome, because there weren’t many exclusives of note doing the rounds. On the PS2, faux-mmo .hack// Infection scored 6/10 in Edge and Official PS2 Magazine, and 83% in Gamesmaster, with Edge describing Bandai as having “taken a basic RPG, bolted on a captivating plot and a lot of ideas”. The highest rated Gamecube game in NGC was the slightly belated multiplatform arrival Pool Paradise, with Archer Maclean’s latest scoring 80%. On the Xbox, Tenchu: Return From Darkness was essentially an upgraded version of the PS2’S Tenchu: Wrath Of Heaven, and scored 8.4/10 in Official Xbox Magazine, which called it “a slowburning beauty that could have done with a little more gloss”.
Join us again next time, when we might hear more about those Xenon demos. Won’t that be exciting?