Shadows of the Damned has one of the coolest opening sequences ever. You play Garcia hotspur, a Mexican demon Hunter who, during a home invasion, loses his girl Pamela to king of the underworld Fleming.  This is the opening of the latest offering from Goichi Suda aka Suda51 and his development team, Grasshopper Manufacture. 

Warhammer. The name usually describes the tabletop game played in basements and the back rooms of comic book stores. THQ and developer Relic Entertainment however have successfully brought Games Workshop’s flagship title into the digital age with their third person action title Space Marine. A game designed to bring all the brutality of the Warhammer 40k lore to gamers around the world.

Today marks the end of GAMEfest 2011. The first of a new consumer video game show from UK high-street games retailer, GAME. With the first opportunity to get hands-on with some of the hottest upcoming releases, GAMEfest had no problem attracting 30,000 visitors to The NEC, Birmingham. We were there.

Were back from the unknown with a casual catch-up on games old and new. There's talk of E3 and other news, with discussion on LA Noire, Tribes: Ascend, From Dust, Street Fighter III: Online Edition, Starcraft 2, Warhammer 40K and more. Also in-depth review of Kinect including thougths on Child of Eden.

I’ve recently been revisiting some neglected titles on my shelf of shame, including Alan Wake. There’s a lot Alan Wake does right, in fact I’ll just say it’s a fantastic survival horror and all-round action game. Something has changed though. Where I would have found the many cut scenes well animated and cinematic, I find the characters lifeless and unconvincing. So much so, I can’t believe it was released only a little over a year ago.

Whatever you may have heard about From Dust, it marks the return to the game design scene for Eric Chahi, designer of the platform-adventure classic Another World (1991). With a firm nod to strategy god-game classics such as Populous (1989), From Dust goes someway to proving there’s plenty of unexplored potential in the genre.