1UP has reported that Roogoo and Aces of the Galaxy will be making its way to Xbox Live Arcade this week.

Both titles will be available this Wednesday for which Roogoo and Aces will cost 800 Microsoft Points each.

• Alone in the Dark by Atari
• Bionic Commando by Capcom
• Conflict: Denied Ops by Eidos Interactive
• Empire: TOtal War by SEGA
• LEGO Indiana Jones by LucasArts
• Microsoft Train Sumulator 2 by Microsoft Game Studios
• Sins of a Solar Empire by Stardock
• Space Siege by SEGA
• Tomb Raider: Underworld by Eidos Interactive

Look below for 14 new images from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. Arguably the "must-have" title for the console at launch, Link's latest adventure is said to capture a darker tone, much like Majora's Mask did on the Nintendo 64. ]]> Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:55:00 -0600 Tim Grube http://www.gamebump.com/go/left_behind_eternal_forces_demo_now_out http://www.gamebump.com/go/left_behind_eternal_forces_demo_now_out http://www.gamebump.com/go/left_behind_eternal_forces_demo_now_out# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

Left Behind Games just informed us that they have launched a new demo for their upcoming PC real time strategy title, Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The demo contains four-missions. You can download the file below: 

FileShack]]> Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:18:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_to_publish_faces_of_war http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_to_publish_faces_of_war http://www.gamebump.com/go/ubisoft_to_publish_faces_of_war#

“With Faces of War™, Ubisoft is bringing an intensely exciting title to PC gamers,” said Jay Cohen, vice president of publishing at Ubisoft. “The game brings an enhanced human and emotional element to the World War II genre and delivers breathtaking detail and spectacular game play.”

Faces of War is developed by Best Way and will be available in March 2006.

The first five games Activision will distribute under the terms of the agreement are games based on Mattel Entertainment's upcoming movies, including "The Barbie Diaries" for the PC and Nintendo Game Boy Advance, and "Barbie In The 12 Dancing Princesses" for the Sony PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system, PC and Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Activision will also distribute titles based on some of Mattel's best-selling videogames from past years, including "Barbie Fashion Show," "Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus" and "Barbie Beauty Boutique."

All you need to know about the buzz surrounding The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, is that the line to play it is nearly four hours long. Fortunately, our tour with Nintendo started with Zelda, and I was able to play all four parts of the demo, logging almost an hour with one of the most anticipated games of the show. Since the demo was broken down into four separate parts, I’ll talk about each portion on its own.

Toanu Village

The game opens with the camera panning around a farm, and centers on Link, who is getting off of work early. Your boss tells you to call your horse, Epona, by blowing into a piece of grass. Of course, the tune is Princess Zelda’s familiar theme from Ocarina of Time. As you finish playing, Epona comes barreling out of the barn, and you hop on to wrangle some animals into the barn. This teaches you the basic mechanics of riding Epona, and is quite fun. You basically circle around a few of the twenty goat-like animals, and hit the A button to “whoop” and send them scampering towards the barn. After you finish, your boss shows you how to clear jumps with Epona, which is as simple as pressing A to get some speed, and letting the computer do the rest. A girl named Ilia, whose father is the mayor yells at you for injuring Epona by performing jumps, and you are scolded for being late to a meeting for which you are representing the town.

It was after making a few jumps that everyone’s favorite pastime, torturing chickens, from the SNES Zelda, came into play. You can grab a chicken, lift it over your head and then run and jump off a ledge to glide down to the ground. Of course, you don’t have to use the chicken for something useful; you can just toss it around, but beware the wrath of angry chickens. This portion of the demo concludes when you help a pregnant woman retrieve her baby’s basket, which is floating down the river. I didn’t get to finish this last part, unfortunately.

Horse Battle

The Horse Battle takes place a few hours into the full version of the game, and opens with a scene of a young boy, that has been kidnapped and tied to a pole. The pole is attached to the horse, which is being ridden by a quite nasty looking villain. Of course, Link is there to save the day, and hops on Epona to rescue the boy. The boss calls for reinforcements, who surround Link, swing swords, and shoot flaming arrows to keep you from the fleeing Boss. You can knock them off fairly easily with your sword, but you also must use your limited “spur meter” to speed up and attack the boss at the same time.

This battle is quite tense, and while not terribly difficult, does require quite a bit of concentration. When I struck what I thought to be the final blow, I noticed how hard I had been gripping the controller, and eased up a bit. Little did I know, I was about to have a head to head confrontation, where both Link and the boss charged at each other while riding across a bridge. I rode straight for as long as I could, turning to the left at the last instant, and just landed a blow that knocked my foe off the bridge, no doubt to his death. The camera panned out, showing the silhouette of Link and Epona against the backdrop of a setting sun.

Forest Temple

The Forest Temple felt quite a bit like one of the temples in Ocarina of Time. It was here that I got the boomerang, mapped it to whatever button I wanted, and immediately took out some pesky spiders that were impeding my climbing. The basic battle mechanics are introduced here, and they are very, very similar to what was found in The Wind Waker, and Ocarina of Time. There is a new finishing move, which is performed by pressing the attack button when a foe is near death. The game actually prompts you to do this, but it doesn’t seem like the prompt will be there in the final game.

As you make it through the Forest Temple, one of the suspension bridges collapses, leaving you stranded. A chimp-like creature comes out, and you learn that you can help each other out. The chimp can hang from the ropes that cross the chasms and catch you as you leap, swinging you to the other side. You’ll have to let a few more of the creatures out of their cages in other parts of the temple, in order to have enough of them to cross the biggest gap. Jumping is automatic, and Link will jump when he gets to a ledge, just like he has done in the last few games. You also learn to perform the roll maneuver, which will help you dodge attacks, and in this case, allows you to roll into a pole to knock a caged chimp off. I also spent some time smashing pots to get hearts and rupees, and also wasted a few minutes chopping some of the tall grass.

Temple Boss

The Temple Boss was the last of the four part demo, and featured Link against a plant-like creature, who then gave way to a sort-of demon. Using the boomerang, you could target bombs that were set on platforms surrounded by lava, and then target the boss. After holding down the button long enough, the boomerang charges up, unleashing a tornado that picks up the bomb, carrying it to your second target, and blowing it up. Things get a bit more complex as the next set of bombs are being carried by a chimp, who is swinging back and forth across the screen. You have to target him, lock on with R, and then target the boss, again unleashing the tornado. As he is hit with the bomb, he falls forward, and you must rush towards him and slash at his head. After repeating this process a few times, he dies in grand fashion, leaving just his giant eye on the ground. The game then thanks you for playing the E3 2005 demo, and fades to black.

It’s no secret that people have been clamoring for a realistic looking Zelda, and Twilight Princess delivers a visual style that will certainly please anyone. The graphics are crisp, and feel like a naturally evolved version of the Nintendo 64 titles. There’s no voice acting in the game, but there are the “grunts” from previous Zelda’s when you being a conversation.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is poised to be a great last hurrah for the Nintendo GameCube. The game was a blast to play, and didn’t seem to disappoint anyone – even the people that only got to play for 10 minutes after waiting for four hours. You can’t find another game on the show floor that can do that. ]]> Thu, 19 May 2005 19:49:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_hellforces_pc1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_hellforces_pc1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_hellforces_pc1# This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Aaron Thomas.

There’s no shortage of first-person shooters on the PC, and the genre looks like it’s in no danger of losing steam anytime soon. One of the upcoming FPSes is Hellforces, due out sometime in the vague period of "Q1 2005". Developed by Orion, and published by Buka Entertainment, Hellforces promises all sorts of revolutionary features, but after spending some hands-on time with the game, it doesn’t appear to be doing anything now that anyone else wasn’t doing three years ago.

Hellforces opens with your character being interrogated about his former girlfriend, a drug addict who ended up choosing drugs over you when you finally laid down the law. It seems that she was somehow involved with the wealthy biophysicist Henry Alfred Cole who has found a way to extract the soul from the body and use it for a power source. The now soulless bodies roam the city, which begs the question of who is using all this newfound power. Of course, it’s all up to you to find out what happened to your ex-girlfriend and put an end to all the zombies that don’t need energy that are flooding the streets. This is all revealed to you through some painfully bad voiceacting that is almost so bad that it’s amusing - but not quite.

Make no mistake about it; Hellforces is a shooter through and through. Just moments after starting out, you’ve already got two weapons, a metal pipe and a pistol, and you will need them as fast as you can equip them, because as you step out of the alleyway you’ll encounter the first of many zombies that want you dead. Nobody expects zombies to have tons of intelligence, but the AI is underwhelming, even for the undead. Zombies will attack in waves, not "activating" until you get to a certain point, and then don’t do anything more than walk up to you and do the same attack over and over. There’s something to be said for wasting wave after wave of bad guys, but with so many other games offering a bit more complexity, Hellforces feels a little dated.

The controls are standard PC shooter fare; "WSAD" moves you around, the space bar makes you jump, the scroll button on the mouse cycles weapons, and of course, you look and aim with the mouse. These controls work fairly well, though it will take a little bit of time to learn the many shortcuts for things like saving and weapon selection.

Buka promises "Perfect graphical realization with advanced DirectX 9 effects", but at this stage, the visuals aren’t particularly impressive. There’s nothing wrong with them per se; it’s just that they look a bit dated, and the "zombies overrunning a dreary city" thing has been done so much that there’s not a whole lot you can do from an originality standpoint. The zombies don’t react to bullet fire until they’re dead, and when they finally do show damage, it’s always in the same place, regardless of where you are shooting them. There is plenty of blood, and the zombies do look rather gruesome, so if you like gore, then you’ve certainly got something to look forward to.

In all honesty, there’s absolutely nothing so far to make this game a compelling purchase. At this point the graphics are dated and the gameplay is woefully stale. The story may be interesting, but the voiceacting is so horrific that it makes the game tough to take seriously. There’s also no online feature, so the only way you’ll be playing against friends is via LAN. It hasn’t been released yet, so that means there’s still improvements that can be made, but as of right now things aren’t looking too good for Hellforces. ]]> Fri, 11 Mar 2005 17:14:24 -0600