Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars

I have been waiting for months to play Command and Conquer 3, my friends and I have been drooling on every screenshot, movie, and article you can find on the net. I was extremely excited to get this game and put it in my PC as I knew what awaited me: pure RTS bliss from one of the granddaddy’s of this genre. After playing this game for a few missions, I realized how much I truly missed this series, playing Generals was great, but nothing beats the original game Universe.

Incase you didn’t know the story for Command and Conquer, here is a quick rundown. The game is set in the year 2047, and there has been a long and vicious war between the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and The Brotherhood of Nod. Both of these factions are fighting over an alien resource called Tiberium, which is a green crystal that is both extremely powerful and dangerous for the environment. It has come down to whoever controls the stockpile of Tiberium will hold the fate of the planet in their hands. In Command and Conquer 3 both GDI and Nod are about to find out that they are not alone in the Universe and that they have a hunger as well for this precious resource. Now you will have to fight off two different factions if you want to become the ruler of this world, are you up to this monumental task?

As stated previously in Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars you will get to play as three different factions. Before you rush off and go into a skirmish to try each race out, I highly suggest playing though the campaigns for each race to get a firm understanding of how each faction operates. The way the mission structure is designed will allow you to get acquainted with all of the faction’s military units and tech tree that will help you out when playing against human players. It also shows you how to counter act some of the opponents military, which is also very useful.
Once you are finished with all of the games campaigns, you will want to hop in to the multiplayer aspect where this game really shines. The multiplayer for this game is really well done. Playing online or even on a LAN gave no difficulties. The only thing that is a disappointment is that there are not unique and new multiplayer modes for this game. It is a shame, but what players are given is great. One of the things that I like the best is that if you decide to play against computer AI, there are five different AI personalities that help give the game diversity.

First off there is the balanced typed that favors an even handed style of gaming, meaning it doesn’t go all out offense or defense. Next up is the Turtle which focuses on all out defense and resource gathering. The opposite of this is the rusher which will set out immediately attacking you once you start the game. Then there is Guerilla which means you must always expect the unexpected, this AI type will harass you with many diversion tactics to get you confused before it goes in for the kill. Last up is the Steamroller which likes to beat you with overwhelming forces. It is great to have this many options to play with if you are hankering to play a computer to get your skills up.

BattleCast is new and allows you to view various battle matches going on throughout the world. If you think that you are the best around, then you can prove it by “televising” your matches to other players and show them how you get things done. This is a pretty cool option if you want to learn various skills and strategies from other players around the world to use in your own games. There can also be an announcer that tells you what is going on in the game. This feature is bound to get better as players get to know more about the game.

The graphics for Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars are really outstanding. All of the character models are extremely detailed and have a nice animation set. Then you have the environments that are being overrun with the Tiberium and just look dilapidated. The best part is when you start to fight and destroy enemy buildings that people are taking cover in start to chip away until they come crumbling down realistically. Then you have all of the enemy gun and laser fire that sparks up the battlefield rains down a beautiful looking death to your soldiers. Everything in this game looks just fantastic; you can tell the developers took plenty of time with the graphics engine as it shows.

What I really enjoy about the Command and Conquer series is that the developers do something different then everyone else for their cut screens. Instead of using the in-game engine or getting CGI movies, the developers get real live actors and make it seem like you are watching this on TV. It really draws the players into the game and makes it feel more realistic. When you see the news conferences and various actions from both sides going on makes you want to get into battle and fight the enemy as soon as possible. The actors did a great job of conveying the seriousness of what was happening during the game and made it really believable.

The music is wonderfully done. The musical score will carry you throughout all of the missions egging you to continue on your quest to beat your enemies. During the more tense moments the music picks up and has you ready for the impending battle that is just ahead. To compliment the music the sound effects are also really well done. The various explosions that you will hear sound extremely realistic and give you the sense that you are in the middle of a heavy battle for life. Lastly the voices for all of the units are really good and have some pretty hilarious lines.
Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars is rated Teen for animated blood, mild language, and violence.

The system requirements are as follows:Windows XP or Vista (32 bit)2.0 GHz or greater processor512 MB of RAM8X or faster CD/DVD drive5.6 GB of disk space64 MB Video CardDirect X 9.0c

The Lord Of The Rings Online-Shadows Of Angmar

Rather than a long-winded discourse on personal history with the world of Middle-earth, let is suffice to say that long before there were movies (including the Ralph Bakshi animated film), the books were read, both at a young age and many times through the years.
Though there have been bumps and even ruts in the road, Turbine also is fondly remembered for bringing in the one MMO that turned this casual MMOer into a diehard fan of the genre – Asheron’s Call 2 (not what it became, but what it was when it started).

As for Lord of the Rings as an online game, it had been in other hands before landing in the laps of the dev team at Turbine. The vision that Sierra had for the online game is long gone. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Turbine has taken the license, and the video-game franchise and tweaked it to allow players to hop onboard and explore Middle-earth during one of the more perilous times outside of a hobbit’s journey to Mt. Doom with the One Ring.

So before delving into the nuances of the title, let’s cut to the heart of the topic: In regards to the license, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar does a very nice job of opening up the world of Middle-earth and allowing players to venture forth to seek fame, fortune and perhaps aid the pending war against the forces of Sauron. As an MMO, LOTRO is fun, entertaining, with a few original concepts, and – at this juncture – it is one of those MMOs that you can't wait to jump into and explore.

The timeline of the game runs concurrent with the Fellowship of the Ring, and it is said that, at times, you might even cross paths with them. Still, if you are a fan of the Tolkien books, you can’t help but get a small thrill each time you encounter one of the characters from his stories.
The game begins as almost every MMO begins, picking a character and entering a tutorial phase to learn about the game’s controls. There are four races to choose from, all are considered good and players will only fight the evil races, not have the opportunity to be part of them. The four playable races are humans, dwarves, elves and hobbits.

There are seven professions – burglar, captain (pets and a buffing class), champion (damage-dealing melee class), guardian (the tank class), hunter (ranged class), minstrel (healing class), and lore-master (mage class with pets) – each with their own ability trees, which include both triggered (by hot key) skills and passive skills. As you level, you can buy new skills from trainers located in most of the major city/towns within the world.

Armor can hold permanent buffs as can weapons – but both deteriorate through use and you will need to see an NPC in town (mostly those involved with sales like armorsmiths or general merchandise merchants) to get them repaired. Let it go too long and you may find the piece of armor or weapon going beyond the ability to repair.

In addition to profession abilities, players can also earn skills and abilities through deeds, traits and virtues. Deeds are achieved through exploration, slaying a number of certain mobs, using a skill repeatedly to reach a higher degree of proficiency, or completing all quests in a region. Easier deeds will earn a player a new title while the harder ones will gain skills.

You can earn deed status without even being aware of it. For example, one night’s hunting of Dourhand dwarves, looking for spell drops, resulted in achieving a ranking for killing dwarves. It was an unexpected reward for an evening’s work.

Traits are gained through completing deeds, or leveling. The resulting reward, which has to be applied by a bard (and for a small fee, of course), can be bonuses to skills or attributes, or – at the higher end – unlocking heroic skills. There are, in addition, 20 different virtues that can be applied to improve attributes.
Quests are indicated by rings over the heads of NPCs. The rings can indicate what the quest is. A gold ring, for example, indicates a quest within your grasp, while a flaming ring would indicate a quest that is part of an epic series. You can also pick up fellowship quests, which are quests that will be given to parties and are harder than the regular quests that single players can accomplish (though it is much more fun to fellow up for the quests).

LOTRO also has a solid crafting system. There are 10 vocations that players can pursue – cook, farmer, forester, scholar, jeweler, metalsmith, prospector, tailor, weaponsmith and woodworker. Some of these go hand-in-hand, such as the forester and woodworker, but players cannot specialize in two, like woodworker and metalsmith. Some quests will require that you get items that a crafter can make. You can either buy them from another player or look for them on the auction boards, which are located in some of the major towns.

Each vocation does have tools of the trade, and they can also wear out and thus need to be repaired. As you work at a skill, you acquire a level of skill within that which will allow you to attempt harder crafted items. You can find or buy recipes for a crafted item and each item may require that you build parts before you can build the whole item. Unlike some other MMOs, there does not seem to be a failure rate with this game. If you have the ingredients, you simply click the ‘make’ tab in the crafting window and you create the item – simultaneously earning experience crafting points for making it.
Yes, there is some grinding involved here, but as the gathering is tied to adventuring, and there is a physical reward, it does not seem to be too monotonous.

Skills used in combat are timed and are also tied to a ‘mana’-type meter. Each skill has a power cost and as you use them, they need time to recharge. Some skills are tiered with other skills, requiring that you fire off other skills before they become available for use. You can drag and drop your skills from the abilities menu into the hotbar for easy access, and there are a lot of hotbar slots available for players. And yes, there are zones for player-versus-player - the Ettenmoors - where you can build up renown.

Resting your character will allow you to build up bonus experience availability. This is indicated by a blue bar attached to your experience bar. A nice little feature this allows players who have not been online for a bit of time to acquire XP faster and get caught up to friends who may be more frequent players. Dying is not a hardship either. While you do lose morale (which can give bonuses to attack damage), there does not seem to be a loss of experience points or experience debt. You won’t get a title that reflects your tact at avoiding death, but you also will not run away when the going gets tough to protect that dubious distinction.
It was good to know that hanging in, sacrificing a life, in an effort to defend a fellow was not penalized by the game.

LOTRO seems to be very intuitive in the interface and general game design. If you have played an MMO before, you may find some of the ideas of LOTRO new and worth cracking open the manual to read up on them, but generally you can hop right in and play.
The sound of the game is fairly decent. The music has some nice variations, and the sound effects are well suited to the action.

Graphically this game is very nice. It is a step up from Dungeons & Dragons Online, and the environments are inviting full of eye candy. There are a few animation glitches (as in when running and changing directions, the characters do some odd quick stepping), and while the game does employ line-of-sight targeting, at times you will fire through a tree or hill if the target is moving away.
The AI is also solid. Mobs, taking a lot of damage, may try to run away rather than to be killed. A goblin that first talks about killing you in a nasty way, may yell “leave me alone” as it tries to run away from the beating you are administering.
The community seems very strong as well. Finding a fellowship was not that hard and something about the game seems to lend itself to role-playing. Either there are an awful lot of Tolkien fanatics that want to embrace this world fully, or the game lends itself easily to that feature – which is purely a bonus.

LOTRO is a solid entertaining MMO that captures fun and translates it into the realm of the MMO genre in an enticing manner. There is a sense of joy, being a Tolkien fan, that permeates the game when you realize that Turbine has done a very good job it realizing the world and allowing players to be a part of it.
Shadows of Angmar may have been a pivotal game for Turbine, as a development studio, not to mention Midway’s first foray into the online massively multiplayer space. This game is a success, on both fronts.

HALO 2

Halo 2 was released on the Xbox back in 2004, and as you're probably aware of by now, it was a huge success. The first-person shooter added online multiplayer to the proceedings, and despite a universally reviled cliff-hanger ending, it was really something special on the Xbox. Three years later, it's now available as one of the first Vista-only PC games. It's still easy to see why this game was so loved on consoles in its day, but when you put it in direct comparison with recent PC shooters, it loses a ton of its appeal, making it best suited for Halo fans who want a good way to play or make custom maps.

The single-player campaign in Halo 2 isn't particularly lengthy, and it should take the average player 10 hours or less to crawl through on its default difficulty setting. The story starts you out as the Master Chief, the intrepid space marine that blew apart the Halo ring, a devastating galaxy-destroying weapon, in the first game, much to the dismay of the Covenant, a group of alien races who regard the ring as a religious artifact that will send them on "the great journey." The plot of the second game deals with the Covenant attempting to go on this great journey using another Halo ring, called Delta Halo. But there's plenty of political upheaval going on in the Covenant ranks, making it tricky all around. Add in a Covenant invasion of Earth, and you've got all the pieces required to throw these factions together again for another round of fighting--though since some of the Covenant races will be fighting each other, too, it's often easier to just run past all of the action. Even though the hour count for completing the campaign is already low, at times the game feels like it's dragging on, repeating the same corridors and same enemies a little too frequently. Toss in a couple of extremely underwhelming boss fights, and you've got a pretty solid campaign, with some good vehicle sequences to break up the first-person action, but it's also one that feels like it could have been a lot better.

The multiplayer side of Halo 2 is the part that still gets attention to this day, and it translates to the PC fairly directly. The game has support for 16 players. Halo's multiplayer moves relatively slow when compared to other popular shooters, giving it a more methodical, tactical feel. You really need to know the capabilities of all your weapons to succeed with any regularity, as at any moment you'll be able to toss grenades, fire one of your two weapons, or close in for a melee attack, which satisfyingly kills instantly if you hit someone from behind. Death comes quickly if you're left exposed for long, as your shield drains quickly and takes some time to recharge. This, too, forces you to play somewhat carefully.

There are plenty of game types built into Halo 2, and these games work on any of the 23 included maps. Aside from standard deathmatch, called slayer here, most of the modes are team games, like capture the flag, team slayer, and so on. There are also a ton of built-in variants for the modes, such as team shottysnipers, which arms every player with a shotgun and a sniper rifle and removes all the other weapons on the map, or rockets, which is a game of slayer with only rocket launchers. All this variety is nice, but it can also get supremely confusing, because you can make your own variants, too. What, exactly, is RumbleSWAT X? The game doesn't offer any immediate clues, so in some cases you'll just have to jump in and find out for yourself.
As a Games for Windows-branded game, Halo 2 has full support for the Xbox 360 controller. While the game plays just fine with a mouse and keyboard, playing with a controller is a bit closer to the original console experience, right down to force-feedback support. This creates some really weird and potentially unbalanced trade-offs in multiplayer. By default, a player with a mouse will be able to turn more quickly and, if that player is skilled, more accurately than a gamepad user. Gamepad players can increase the right-stick sensitivity to turn faster, but they also get another benefit that feels downright dirty. Like the console version, the PC game employs a certain amount of auto-aim when you're using a gamepad. This makes sticking to other players for up-close shotgun blasts or melee attacks significantly easier with the gamepad, and there doesn't appear to be any way to disable it or even detect that another player is using a pad. After pumping up the gamepad's sensitivity, we found ourselves doing more damage when armed with a gamepad, which makes the two control schemes feel unbalanced, is sort of crazy when you consider how tournament-focused the current Halo 2 Xbox scene is these days.
On the Xbox, Halo 2 introduced an innovative server finder, known as matchmaking. With matchmaking, you'd create a party, select a game type, and hit go. It would then match you and anyone else in your party up with similarly skilled players. The PC version of the game maintains a few of these concepts, but it also offers a standard server browser, which works better and faster when it comes to quickly selecting a server and getting into a game. Additionally, the game doesn't appear to keep track of any player rankings.

Halo 2 is the first game out there with support for the PC version of Xbox Live, the console's pay-to-play online service. There are two levels: a free silver level and a paid gold tier. The game comes with a free month of gold access, or if you already have an Xbox Live account, you can log in using your e-mail address and password. The split between silver and gold on the console makes some form of sense--if you pay for gold, you can play online games; if you're silver, you can't. Of course, that sort of tactic wouldn't work on the PC, where the standards for free online multiplayer are firmly entrenched, so Microsoft has made some seemingly arbitrary limits for silver members on the PC. Headset-based voice chat is available to all users, which is nice. Silver members are limited to using the server browser to find games, while gold members can hit a "quick match" button to get into a game quickly. This button has a habit of throwing you on empty gold tier servers, and the server browser works better anyway, so this is hardly a reason to sign up. It's also worth noting that one of the gold tier abilities will be to play against Xbox 360 players in select games, but Halo 2 does not have this sort of cross-platform support. Lastly, the game will only let you get multiplayer achievements if you have a gold account.
Achievements were an unexpectedly popular feature on the Xbox 360 that give you a "gamerscore," and each retail game supporting the service has up to 1,000 points to earn. Halo 2 one of the first PC games to offer achievement points, and they'll go right onto your Xbox 360 Live account if you already have one. In Halo 2, you'll earn points for completing each level in single-player, but most of the better achievements are on the multiplayer side, where you'll get points for ending someone's energy-sword killing spree, killing four people quickly, running someone over, jacking a vehicle, and so on.

The visuals in Halo 2 aren't going to win any awards. Yes, it certainly looks better than its Xbox counterpart, but that's mostly due to antialiasing and support for resolutions up to 1680x1050. On a fairly modern machine that bypasses the minimum requirements, things like fog in the single-player will have a pretty heavy impact on the frame rate. The multiplayer is also much more demanding than the single-player, which can also reduce your frame rate. But beyond the technical limitations involved in trying to make an old game look, well, less old, the game does have a sharp art style that still works. The early battles on Earth look nice, and your time spent on alien ships and worlds reveals a great attention to detail, making each environment look like a cohesive part of a sci-fi universe and not just a thrown-together clump of vaguely futuristic textures. The sound effects also do a good job of driving this point home, with plenty of good ambient sounds and quality weapon noises. The single-player campaign uses music in specific situations, usually around plot points, and the music is dramatic and appropriate in all the ways you'd want a sci-fi movie's score to be.

While the game has maintained a great deal of popularity on the Xbox, Halo 2 feels like something of a relic when you put it out as a 2007 PC game. The single-player campaign is interesting, and the cliff-hanger doesn't feel so horrific when you consider that Halo 3 is going to be hitting consoles to finish the story in just a few months. The multiplayer side is fun, too, but all of it feels overshadowed. The PC has more than its fair share of amazing shooters that blow Halo 2 away in every possible way, making this one best suited for Halo fans that want an easy way to play custom maps. However, even those fans are just as likely to be put off by the imbalance between the game's two controller options, making it a bit of a no-win situation, despite its high production quality.

Need for Speed Pro Street First Look

It's been 13 years since EA's Need for Speed series debuted on the 3DO in a pixelated flurry of burnt rubber. The ensuing years have seen the racing series evolve in name, platform, gameplay, and, of course, visuals to stand as one of the most long-running racing franchise's around. While the last few entries in the series have been adding street-racing culture to the mix, the recently announced Need for Speed ProStreet looks to expand on those elements in some interesting ways. We were recently treated to a presentation and live demo of a very early version of the game at EA Canada, which was a promising tease of the ambitious game.
The next Need for Speed game is taking a turn towards a slightly more realistic approach to street racing.

As with every entry in the series, the team had a look at the street-racing scene for inspiration. This time out, they found that the culture is evolving into a new driving experience that's more focused on performance. As a result, they set out to have the upcoming game offer a new racing experience that they're hoping will feel more realistic and believable. The action in the game will be focused around fictional weekend events and festivals set in iconic locations that will span the globe. Race weekends will offer different events that include old and new challenges such as drift, drag, grip, and speed challenge. Your goal, as always, is to be the best racer in the world--this year's moniker is "street king." The game's story mode will be different than the last few games, which have mixed in live-action cinematics to tell their narratives. While details weren't given out, the team noted that you'll get context and motivation for your actions in the game.
Hard details weren't given out on the game's multiplayer or online modes, but the team did drop a few tidbits on what to expect. The big-picture view of the modes revolves around the team wanting players to interact and build a community around the game, and the wicked amount of customization will be key to making that happen. You'll find a robust car customization editor in the game again, using the autosculpting feature fans have come to dig. This time out, the customization has been buffed out in a big way. Besides offering feedback on what your modifications are doing to your vehicle's performance, the editor will let you score or create blueprints for cars that you can then share with friends.

The visuals in the work-in-progress version of the Xbox 360 game, though early, were looking very cool. The 21,000-polygon car models sported a razor-sharp level of detail that busted up in a promising, showy fashion. Realistic crash damage is the order of the day, and along with the crazy deformation we saw happen in real time, the team is quite proud of the game's material-type-based damage, which makes for cool crash effects. The smoke effects were impressive, featuring a flashy level of physics. The most nascent aspect of the graphics were the track environment, modeled after Infineon Raceway in northern California, which looked good, though it was thin on ambient objects such as crowds and the like. Despite that, the brief demo showed off a considerable amount of promise that may wind up offering the same level of kick to the visuals that the first Underground game did. The smoke effects appear to be the big, snazzy element, akin to Underground's crazy lighting and water-soaked streets. We definitely wanted to see more of the game proper as well as how it's going to look on the PlayStation 3.
Though the audio in the demo didn't offer as robust a sampling of what to expect as the visuals did, it sounds like engine effects will be front and center. As for the mix of tunes you'll be racing to, the team noted that the music in the game will take a more worldly approach. You can expect to hear a mix of the expected music and genres for a Need for Speed game, as well as more adventurous tracks that tap world music to give the game an international vibe.
Watch how you drive that thing: More realistic damage will be a big part of the Pro Street mix.

Based on what we saw, Need for Speed ProStreet looks like it's taking the series in a smart direction. The gameplay's more realistic skew should be a good fit for those hungering for a deeper racing experience. The visuals are looking very swank, with the crazy smoke effects and deformation that we saw really adding some kick to the experience. However, the big hook for us right now is the promise of the blueprint system, which is looking very cool. It has potential to help create a community of racers and builders of varying skill levels, which seems like a very cool extension of the game. Need for Speed ProStreet is set to ship this fall for the PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Look for more on the game this July at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, as well as in the coming months.

FIFA Soccer 08 First Look

Subtract all of the managers, trainers, administrative support personnel, and entourage hangers-on and you've still got 15,000 players in FIFA Soccer 08, EA Sports' next game in its long-running soccer series. That's more or less the population of your average small town, stuffed into the code of the game--and a number that's roughly 20 percent bigger than that of last year's FIFA 07 on the PlayStation 2. At a recent press event at EA Canada, we got an early peek at FIFA 08 to see how the game is coming along.
That huge population of real-life playing talent in FIFA 08 is a result of more leagues being added to the series than ever before. Producers said they are aiming to have more than 30 leagues in the game--including Italian Series A, Bundesliga, Spanish Primera Division, Mexican Primera Division, English Championship, English Division One, and, naturally, the English Premier League.
Practically all of EA Sports' multiple franchises have the FIFA series to thank for their next gen animation systems.

To put those 15,000 players to good use on the pitch, the developer behind the game has taken time to examine that very basic aspect of the game--the shot. The focus on the shot comes as the next stage in the series' development toward a more realistic approach to the sport--with things like independent ball movement and improved player animation being hallmarks of the progress so far. As opposed to canned shot animations, FIFA 08 is working to add more variety to shots than ever before. For this year's game, the success or failure of a shot will depend more than ever on the force you apply on the ball, coupled with the skill of the player who is doing the shooting. A shot with spin, for example, is going to travel a much different arc than one without; in addition, factors such as air resistance and backspin will also alter the path of the ball through its arc. As a result, you can expect to see multiple shot types off your player's foot depending on the situation.

Since its migration to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the FIFA series has come to be the standard-bearer for player movement--so much so that practically all EA Sports games, from Madden to NBA Live, are now using the improved player animations that had their beginnings in the FIFA series. That improved branching animation--which basically provides more points for a player's movement to react and change--will work into the new shooting system as well. A player dribbling at a full sprint, for example, only to stop, turn, and shoot the ball, will have a tougher time finding his target than a player who has a wide open, straight shot to the net. In the game, tougher shots will be recognized as such thanks to a shooting meter that reacts to the situation on the field. Depending on the offensive player's skills, his defensive pressure, and other factors, tougher shots will cause the shooting meter to fill up more quickly than a typical shot.

While the rest of EA Sports has borrowed the animations from FIFA, the soccer series isn't above borrowing some ideas from other games. Take, for instance, the new "Be a Pro" mode, a simplified, soccer-centric version of the Madden NFL series' superstar mode that will be available only in offline exhibition games in FIFA 08. Here you'll play the position of one player--from striker to sweeper--on the field and will be responsible for his assignments and roles accordingly. As you play, the camera will follow you on the field (complete with a Gears of War-inspired chase cam when you break into a full sprint with the ball) and will pull back to show you more of the field to give you a general idea of where you need to be. In addition, helpful arrows will show your areas of responsibility on the pitch and, additionally, which members of the opposite team you're assigned to cover. At halftime you'll get a feedback on your progress as a player, and after the match is over, you'll be ranked depending on how much you contributed (which will also tie into the 360 version's achievements system).
Wayne Rooney will have moves in FIFA 08 that might not have been possible before.

While Be a Pro mode will be limited in FIFA 08 (no online play and only in exhibition mode), producers said they are very excited about the possibilities the feature holds for the future of the FIFA series. Specifically, they referred to the ultimate goal of having 11-on-11 play online in the series--something that's unfortunately still a few years away.

The preview version of the game we played featured Barcelona's great Ronaldinho on a nighttime pitch, and it let you move the great attacking midfielder around and take shots on a goalkeeper. Playing the game, you'll quickly get a feel for the improved locomotion of the player, as well as the improved trick system that borrows a page from the trick system in NBA Street HomeCourt. No, you won't see players doing triple back flips on their way to the goal, but rather the way in which you link various tricks such as step-overs, passes, and jukes will be feel more organic and natural than simply the canned animations of the past. The GOW-style chase cam is a fun addition, too--as you're running at top speed, you'll be less agile and less skillful with the ball until you break out of the sprint. The game is also looking nice, with the dramatic lighting and detailed player models that you've come to expect from the series. Of course, the demo featured only one player on the field (other than the goalkeeper), so we're curious to see how it will run once the pitch is filled with players. FIFA Soccer 08 is currently scheduled for release this fall, and we'll be keeping you abreast of its progress throughout the year.