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.

It’s almost ten years since the blockbuster PSOne role-playing game Final Fantasy VII captured gamers’ hearts and made some people cry during a certain death scene – you know who you are. That game sold 4 million units in Japan alone and almost another 6 million in the US and Europe.

Now it’s back as a prequel with Crisis Core- Finfal Fantasy VII for the PSP and I’m sure it’s going to sell very well if recent PSP bundle sales in Japan are anything to go by.

Once again, the game takes you back to the land of mako reactors and materia as the crises extends to the very core of the planet. The story this time revolves around Zack, some geezer who had already returned to the Lifestream before the vents of the PSOne game.

In this game we’re promised we’ll find out more about Shinra, the evil money making corporation and take part in an adventure with new improved graphics and more insight into the world of Final Fantasy VII.

When fighting in the game, you use a new battle system called Digital Mind Wave, a sort of mini fruit machine that spins in the top right corner of the screen. Match up the symbols and you get a Power Surge resulting in a devastating attack. Unfortunately those random encounters are still thee to annoy you when you’re just trying to travel about but that’s part of what Final Fantasy is.

Unfortunately there’s not much more to go on and the game name hasn’t even been fully finalised but I’ll be bringing you a full review when I know more myself.

Here is a review of a game which intrigued me last month when I saw a poster for it when I was absolutely drenched standing in a field in Stafford for the V Festival. It’s Kane & Lynch Dead Men. The poster shows a guy that looks like he’d kill you if you bumped into him in the street with a plaster over his nose and an older chap with a balding mullet and a shotgun.

It reminded me of a Tarantino film so I thought I’d check it out a bit more for you guys and report back.

Developed by IO Interactive, the same people who made the Hitman games, you take on the roles of both characters as you first break out of prison then go on a trail of murder and revenge.

One’s a psychopath constantly on medication, the other’s a flawed mercenary, both with brutal attitudes about what’s right and wrong.

This game looks amazing. You see the action from a 3rd-person view similar to Hitman and there are plenty of guns to choose from and lots and lots of bloody bodies. It’s even a cool touch that the scenery breaks around you as bullets fly, even pillars crumble like in the lobby scene of the Matrix. Although Keano Reeves isn’t there looking like a bit of a twat indoors in a black mack and sunglasses.

Also interesting is the addition of squad-based combat similar to Ghost Recon and the ability to play the game as both characters in co-op mode online, although in single player you only play as Kane.

If it wasn’t for the cool characterisation and cinematography of this game, this would probably just be another standard shooter, but something tells me this one’s more than the sum of its parts. I’ll give you guys a full review in the next couple of months if Eidos will be kind enough to send me a copy. And for the 360 please, I like getting those achievement points.