Time to look at something that’s already out on the PC and soon it’s coming to the PS3. It’s Unreal Tournament 3! Previous Unreal Tournaments didn’t make it to consoles properly as consoles have never been powerful enough to cope with the extreme level of detail in the graphics, which high end PCs would run without breaking stride. This has all changed and with the power of the PS3 Midway are promising lots and lots of lovely stuff to please your eyes and your reaction times.

Of course there’s online battles to take part in with other human players but also an offline mode where they say, the AI is unparalleled. Add to this some of the regular futuristic weapons and vehicles along with some new ones and we should have a great console FPS on our hands.

Old favourites include the shock rifle and the very up close and personal shock cannon. Over 24 weapons and vehicles have been given a facelift Janice Dickinson would be jealous of for maximum killing potential.

Also, instead of the offline mode just being arena battles, they’ve included a single player campaign so you’ve even got a story to play through. Online modes include, deathmatch and team deathmatch, capture the flag and an all-new warfare mode.

And if you don’t like what they’ve provided, you can mod your own levels and game types and download more online.

Hopefully it’s gonna be good, it’s out end of Feb and I’ll review it then.

Preview time and it’s time to let you know about a game FPS fans may have been looking forward to out in March. It’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Now, Vegas can be a dangerous place. You can walk out of there a hell of a lot poorer than you went in and in Ubisoft’s world, you can also get a bullet in the head. Once again a team of crack commandos will be sent in to fight amongst the roulette and poker tables when the chips are down.

The last game sold over 16 million units worldwide and in this one they’re promising an intense solo campaign which uses tactical play as well as just showing people the business end of your rifle, and they say they will break new ground in co-op and adversarial online modes.

They also promise 11 new weapons, more challenging AI and more Vegas. Cool, I wonder if Elvis can marry you and a hostage you find in the chapel and then, like Britney, you can get it annulled 24 hours later.

We’ll see if there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when I review the game in a few weeks.

So it’s a new year and we’re all going to be accidentally writing 07 on stuff and scribbling it out to write 08 on it when writing cheques or filling out forms. With a new year comes more great games hopefully so let’s see what there is to look forward to.

First up there’s the delayed GTA 4, originally pencilled for a pre-Christmas release it slipped quicker than a well-oiled person rolling out of the pub on New Year’s Eve to an Easter release date. In the game you play Niko, a not-so-happy chappie from Eastern Europe. You arrive on the shores of Liberty City and get involved in lots of violent corrupt stuff as usual over four boroughs. This being next-gen I think we’re in for a treat with the same great open-world gameplay, great detail in the scenery and characters and much more to do than ever before. One thing’s for sure, it’ll sell by the lorry load on all formats and get good reviews on the hype-wagon whether good or bad.

Then there’s Metal Gear Solid 4. Good to see Solid Snake’s still taking the Viagara – now he’s an older gent getting a bit fed up of war and wondering – what’s it good for? Anyway, looking at the trailers it seems Hideo Kojima is still into making Hollywood movies on consoles and is going to be back with a blinder. This time there’s nowhere to hide so you have to blend where you can round the city as you sneak past guards and get intot some pretty hefty firefights too. Expect some old favourite characters and plenty of surreal humour too – this time exclusively on the PS3 with no exceptions. Now where have we heard that before?

Nintendo promise us Wii fit, their sort of plate looking thing that goes on the floor and plugs into the Wii which lets you exercise without leaving your house! And if you want to fight on the Wii, Super Smash Brothers brawl will be massive with new guest characters including the afore-mentioned Solid Snake out to kick Mario’s ass.

Hurrying things up now we have yet more sequels. Capcom will be releasing hardcore fighting shooting game Devil May Cry 4, Sega will be scaring us again with Condemned 2, Resident Evil 5, Far Cry 2, Silent Hill 5 and RPGers will love Fallout 3 and Sony has high hopes for Killzone 2.

And let’s not forget Splinter Cell Conviction, Burnout Paradise, Ghostbusters and GT5.

That’s lots of games and not too everyone’s taste. I guess the proof of the pudding is in the eating so we’ll find out if all these games live up to the hype as the year rolls by.

Right now it’s not a preview as such but a rant about a game Atari sent me this week. That game is Jenga World Tour on the DS and I think it takes the crown as the most pointless game ever made.

If you don’t know, Jenga is a game where you remove blocks from the middle of a wooden tower and put them on top, thus making it taller and more unstable as you go. The loser is the person who makes it topple. This is a game based on touch and gravity and unfortunately, despite the touch screen it just doesn’t work on the DS.

You can’t touch the bricks, and even more galling is if you want to play this with another person they need to have a cartridge themselves too for wireless play!! Imagine that in real life “Wanna come round for a game of Jenga? Oh, you need to buy it too and bring it round otherwise the bricks won’t work”.

Could this be a blatant attempt to sell 2 copies of the game instead of 1? Methinks so. What’s next for the DS, Twister? You should be ashamed Atari!!

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Deus Ex 3 may very well be a prequel to the previous two games thanks to a trailer with the date 2027 on it doing the round. The original game was set in 2050 and the sequel 20 years later. Apart from this revelation we now also know it will use the latest Tomb Raider engine and replaying sections of the game is a major part of the storyline.

I’ve just seen the teaser trailer for and that’s it – just the teaser trailer. The game is Deus Ex 3 and all I know is they are going to try to recapture the essence of the first game and not the sequel. Good thing I say. When I played the start of the first game on the PC I didn’t like it much and then had to interview Warren Specter, the guy who made it. I told him my thoughts and he replied with ‘hey, a lot of people say that. Get past the first mission and you’ll love it.” I went back, persevered and now it sticks in my memory of one of the best PC games ever made. Luckily I also got to tell him that when I got to chat to him again a year later.

So, in this modern day we can be sure it’ll probably come out on consoles too, and maybe launch on the 360 first, it won’t be as long as the first one, and hopefully you’ll again get to play the game the way you want to play it, affecting how the story plays as you go. I’m very, VERY excited about this one and hope to be playing it by Christmas 2008 or at the latest Easter 2009.

Time now to look at another expansion pack for the game FEAR. This has fast become one of my favourite first-person shooters thanks to that fact it has great enemy AI, beefy guns and a supernatural element so scary it’s on a par with Silent Hill in terms of creepiness at times.

This one has a timeline that runs parallel to the previous full game and expansion, and features you as a new team investigating the incident Armacham. Your job In this new adventure is to find out what Perseus is, apart from a Greek man who ended up with Medusa’s head. Nice.

There are some new enemies in this one too, granted you’ll still have to fight super soldiers and weirdy things but also the Nightcrawler, and their lives again, and their lives will pull us through. Believe me, fighting him with his Peter Stringfellow hair would be scary.

The great news is this is a stand-alone expansion pack which basically means you don’t need the first game to play it and it’ll be cheaper than a full-price game. And they’ve included 16 player multiplayer in this one too for online shenanigans.

You can play it before the year’s up with the lights off and bicycle clips well fastened.

Time to preview a game which really should be out by now. It’s Zack 7 Wiki Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure and it was going to be published by Capcom but now Nintendo are looking after it and we won’t see it until next year.

This one’s interesting because it’s a return to the point and click adventures of say Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, but being on the WIi, a lot of the puzzles are solved by pointing your remote or by using it to do the actions of what you need to do on screen.

So, Captain Barbaros has turned himself into treasure ad scattered himself round the world, and you and your flying monkey Wiki are on a quest to find it all again. Wiki’s handy because he uses his tail like a helicopter to fly about and gives you useful advice and tips like a good sidekick. In a way, you’re getting a fun story and adventure with lots of mini games thrown in, but because there’s a reason to do them it doesn’t feel pointless like in some other games that use the remote for the sake of it. You may use it to saw down a tree, catch a big fish, to turn keys in locks or even as a weapon.

This looks like a really fun cartoon adventure and something that should amuse adults and kids alike. If you wish for a return of games like Monkey Island, then this is probably the closest thing to it for a long time. I’ll give it a nice lovely big review is I get my hands on it in the New Year.