Did you get that...thing we sent you? It's a first look at High Voltage Software's Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law for PlayStation 2 and PSP. A Capcom-published courtroom comedy with gameplay styled after Capcom's own Phoenix Wright series and cameos from Capcom video game characters, Birdman seems to be hitting the right notes. Carlos Bergfeld investigates.

Even this case had a Capcom cameo--Street Fighter 2's red-blooded all-American, Guile. Birdman demonstrates what he believes to be a fake lighter by setting Guile's hair ablaze. Ever the badass, Guile, with a fawning female in tow, allows his hair to burn. No time for pain when you've got M. Bison to deal with.

As one of the games Microsoft is hoping to use to snare casual gamers, an audience not always associated with the Xbox line, Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action isn't as exciting as many of the games showcased during E3 2007, but our own Chris Faylor had a blast when he checked it out firsthand. Read his impressions of WXP's Xbox 360 port of Screenlife Games' movie trivia game.

As a dark and stormy sky came into view, I once again fell prey to my gut instinct, buzzing in and choosing Twister. This was the wrong answer. Immediately afterwards, a distinctive clock tower and a familiar white-haired scientists appeared, indicating the proper choice was, of course, Back to the Future.

Hardly anything has been shown from Ensemble Studios' Xbox 360-exclusive real-time strategy game Halo Wars, but as it turns out the game has been in development for over two years--with the first six months just spent on refining control. Chris Faylor grabbed a first look of the game during E3 to get a handle on how Bungie's Halo universe is translating over to the RTS realm.

The ideals and quirks of Halo permeate every aspect of the game, from the rotating circular objects in the blue-heavy menus to the familiar sounds of the distinctive Halo weaponry and alien battle cries. In the opening cinematic of the demonstration, which showcased an impressively detailed ship hovering near over a lush horizon, even the camera angles and movements were reminiscent of those in Bungie's work.

During E3, I attended a closed-doors presentation of BioWare's epic Xbox 360 space RPG Mass Effect, as demonstrated by company president Greg Zeschuk and project director Casey Hudson. The pair showed off a particularly affecting scene involving an understandably frustrated party member, and gave a sense of the vast scale of the game's world. Check it out..

All in all, Mass Effect is a gorgeous game, with clearly a great deal of effort expended on both its locales and its characters. The level of detail extends far and wide: during a trip to a planet from which a static-obscured distress call had been sent, the team dropped a six-wheeled transport vehicle into shallow water on the surface, and after zooming in it was possible to see droplets of water cascading off the vehicle's armor.

Ubisoft's Nate Mordo gave us the rundown on Free Radical Design's newest console shooter, Haze. A PlayStation 3 exclusive for the holidays at least, the game pits players in an epic struggle of technology versus nature, or man versus performance-drug-enhanced man. Hopefully, the multiplayer will be reasonably radical as well. Take a clear look.

Making use of a drug called Nectar, Mantel soldiers have several abilities to afford them advantages against unlucky uprisers, in addition to mentally blocking the horrors of war. An ability called Nectar Perception highlights enemy bodies among the dense forest for easy targeting, and Nectar Focus takes this one step further by offering headshot-enabling superaim. Nectar Foresight creates a nice looking ripple effect to warn of incoming danger like grenades, and Melee Blast powers soldiers up for close range rebel-ramming smashes.

Chris Faylor attended Activision's pre-E3 event, and met with Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane at E3. From his experiences he has assembled a Frankenstein's monster of a Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock preview, providing plenty of detail about Neversoft's first foray into the series and containing plenty of expletive-laden quotes from the involved parties. Read and/or rock on.

One of the first things Dodge did was hand me the new Xbox 360 wireless guitar, which has been modeled after the Gibson Les Paul. I'd been looking to get my hands on the wireless guitar ever since that earlier event, when Neversoft president and co-founder Joel Jewett had ruthlessly smashed one of the wired Xbox 360 guitars into the ground until it was nothing but a shamble of broken wires, plastic and circuitry. "One thing though that fucks me off, is the fucking cord," he said at the time.

Following THQ's announcement of Darksiders: Wrath of War (PS3, X360) at E3 last week, I had a chance to go hands-on with the game, which is currently aiming for a 2008 release. And although the Darksiders team at Vigil Games may have an artistically-experienced leader in Joe Madureira, I was unenthused with both the look and gameplay of this early build. Share in my apathy.

While the lead character in Darksiders--one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War--certainly looks different in a superficial comic book sense, the gameplay doesn't differ much from the wild combo-stringing attacks of God of War's Kratos. Using a giant sword as his weapon of choice, War trots through the standard post-apocalyptic landscape, cutting down the standard monsters and demons on his mission of standard revenge. Continue reading...

NCsoft's new CryENGINE-powered MMO probably doesn't innovate enough to interest anyone not already endeared to massively multiplayer gameplay. For those into that kind of thing, however, it's looking to be a piece of cake--familiar enough to immediately pick up, and sugary sweet in every sense. Check it out.

As is often the case with certain games, none of the screenshots have accurately captured what Aion looks like in motion. One civilization's capital city hovered in the air like an uprooted potato, whisps of cloud encircling its exposed roots and furling around the edges of the rocky mass. There wasn't much bloom at work, and yet every tree and mountainside popped with an aural permeance, leaving a room of jaded journalists looking pleasantly surprised. Read more...

In the inaugural ShackCast (that's like a podcast, but on Shacknews), we touch on Peter Moore's departure from Microsoft and upcoming role as head of EA Sports, and discuss this year's new E3 as held last week in Santa Monica.

In the wake of E3, we also give impressions of a whole bunch of games including, but not limited to, Rock Band (PS3, X360), Metroid Prime 3 (Wii), Mass Effect (X360), Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3, X360, PC), LittleBigPlanet (PS3), and StarCraft II (PC). Look at all those games! Video games!

Play now, download, access it through iTunes, subscribe to the RSS feed, or check out the full breakdown. ... Read more

The onslaught of E3 coverage continues here at Shacknews with Carlos Bergfeld's thoughts on Naughty Dog's first PlayStation 3 title, the exploration-heavy Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The visuals are certainly impressive, but does the gameplay match up? Read on to find out.

We've already reported on all the crazy blend shaders, facial mapping and procedural animation layering--needless to say, this game looks damned good. Sam Thompson, line producer at SCEA, demoed a new build of the game for me at E3, slipping in details like the target of 7,000 animations for the game's hero, up from the 3,000 of the build shown.
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During last week's E3 Media & Business Summit, fellow Shacknews editor Chris Remo and I each had the chance to check out Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 3. Arriving this fall, and recently confirmed as a timed exclusive for the PlayStation 3, the highly anticipated shooter looks to make a huge splash on the console scene with its insanely detailed graphics, smooth controls, and most importantly, support for user-created mods. If you're at all a fan of first person shooters, you really should start reading.

Upon seeing Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 3 running on PlayStation 3, the first thing that struck me was the game's ridiculous attention to detail. Everything, from the caulk between bricks to the wood grain of a window frame to the rusted girders on the sides of buildings, has a textured appearance to it, a far cry from the usual flat images slapped on the side of a model. Numerous neon signs of various colors illuminate different portions of the map. Legible traffic signs appear overhead. Trash and old flyers litter the walls and ground.
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With BlizzCon and a playable build of StarCraft 2 looming, we had the chance to sit down and chat with Blizzard rep Bob Colayco at last week's E3. The talk covered topics such as Blizzard's early developmental discussions, plans for the company's Battle.net service, single player advances, and other crafty concerns. Check it out.

On improving single player: There are definitely some ambitious plans in place to do something different with the story mode campaign. Add some elements of replayability to it and give you a chance to really do something different. We'll probably have more to say about that later, but right now, it's not going to be--I'll just say, it's not going to be one mission at a time. There'll be some new stuff in there.

Following up on our previous coverage of Kratos' first PSP outing, I go hands on with Ready at Dawn's God of War: Chains of Olympus. Check out my intitial impressions.

The graphics appeared nearly identical to those of SCE Santa Monica's original God of War on PlayStation 2, complete with all the brutal graphics, stage-altering boss battles, and detailed environments for which the series is known...Within seconds of picking up the PSP, I was pulling off familiar combos, swinging Kratos' chains overhead, throwing enemies up into the air and then slamming them back down.
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