Back To The Noughties
Nick encounters great games and another pandemic while visiting June 2003
– The critics have their hands on the blockbusters Soulcalibur II and Enter The Matrix, but will they live up to the hype? Nick Thorpe brings a nonexistent spoon to a sword fight in an attempt to find out
the environment,” as the magazine outlined various scenarios involving the gravity gun and other objects.
Valve appeared to be incredibly confident about the game’s prospects too, with Gabe Newell claiming, “We knew, given the strength of our fanbase, that we would be successful with Half-life 2. So we said, ‘Let’s take everything we can and see how far we can push it with the next generation of technology, gameplay and character design.’”
Anyone who had ever wanted to see Ghostface Killah smack
DMX in the face would have been pleased with the strong reviews for Def Jam Vendetta on PS2 and Gamecube. The collision of rhymes and rumbling scored 87% in Play, which commended it for “great sounds, addictive gameplay, an imaginative plot and plenty to unlock”. The game also received 7/10 in games™ and 8.9/10 in Cube. Elsewhere on the
PS2, horror games were the flavour of the month, with both Silent Hill 3 and Clock Tower 3 arriving. Edge felt that Konami’s game merited 7/10, praising it for atmospheric presentation but criticising it for a lack of new ideas, while games™ scored it 6/10. Clock Tower 3 earned the same score, drawing praise for simulating the protagonist’s panic, but Edge felt it was “never scary” and worth just 3/10.
The first of the famous ‘Capcom Five’ arrived this month too, to a muted reception. The deceptively simple third-person shooter PN03 earned 7/10 in Edge and 6/10 in games™, with the former comparing it to the likes of Nemesis, 1942 and Space Invaders due to its old-school sensibilities. Unfortunately, Gamecube owners couldn’t look forward to any further highlights, with the rest of the month rounded out by belated ports such as Splinter Cell, and extremely belated ports like Resident Evil 2. The Xbox release schedule was similarly underwhelming – if you weren’t set on Soulcalibur II, a selection of ports like State Of Emergency or disappointing original games like Batman: Dark Tomorrow awaited. The best of the bunch was Tao Feng: Fist Of The Lotus, a fighting game created by ex-mortal Kombat developers including John Tobias. Edge gave it 5/10 and
XBM awarded it 6/10, with the latter complaining that “for every welldesigned character animation there is a hideous cheap-feeling collision”.
For online gamers though, it was a good month. The space trading, combat and diplomacy simulator EVE Online: The Second Genesis was out on PC, and scored 8/10 in Edge. The review praised the game’s “vast sense of potential” and “large and helpful community”, noting that the trade specialisation options meant that it “isn’t a game where high-level players do exactly what low-level players do, only with more fireworks”. The review concluded “time will tell whether it reaches the heights it’s aiming for”. Today, we can say it did.
Join us again next month, as the gaming world takes its annual trip to Los Angeles for E3.
– Yu-gi-oh! Worldwide Edition (Konami)
– Donkey Kong Country (Nintendo)
– The Legend Of Zelda:
A Link To The Past (Nintendo)
– Sonic Advance 2 (Atari)
– Crash Bandicoot 2: N-tranced (Vivendi)
– Bring Me To Life (Evanescence)
– Ignition Remix (R Kelly)
– I Know What You Want (Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey)
– Say Goodbye/love Ain’t Gonna Wait For You (S Club)
– Gay Bar (Electric Six)