Splash Damage is pretty well respected for its work on the Enemy Territory series, so a presentation on its new title Brink, at the Eurogamer Expo 2009 was worth a glance, at the very least. CEO Paul Wedgwood began with bold claims for his company, referring to its publishing partnership with Bethesda Softworks in 2008: “We announced our intention to make the transition from a pure multiplayer shooter studio for the PC, to a triple-A multiplatform game developer for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC, and Brink is the result of that partnership.” As is the way with these things, of course, Splash Damage hasn’t strayed too far from its ideological roots. It’s worth mentioning straightaway that Brink looks to be, at heart, a multiplayer shooter with narrative pretentions, rather than a game that has equal amounts to offer in both modes, as Splash Damage claims. Brink takes place on The Ark, a kind of above-water eco-Rapture. Wedgwood explains; “It’s an immense floating city, built at sea as part of a contemporary green vision, but now existing around 2045 and having lost contact with the rest of the earth it exists in total isolation and is an immense and artificial focus ...

This December sees the release of The Saboteur, a long-in-development third person action title for Xbox 360 and PS3 from Pandemic Studios. Having cut their teeth on well-received series like Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars Battlefront and Mercenaries, the developer's latest game continues in their tradition of wham-bam, blockbuster action shooters- at least at first glance. Pandemic have chosen to tread where many others have gone before by revisiting- you guessed it- World War II- as their setting. But that's where the inevitable groans of disapproval should stop- because there are good reasons to feel confident that The Saboteur will offer a refreshing take on a hackneyed subject matter. A distinctive, predominantly black and white art style, a unique twist on a familiar setting- the plot focuses on the travails of the French Resistance rather than on the conventional armies- and some interesting gameplay mechanics conspire to make the title feel infinitely more grown-up than, say, the same developer's Mercenaries games. The aptly named Tom French, lead producer on the title, is a jovial, enthusiastic advocate for the work of his studio, and is just as peppy and pleasant as his online interviews suggest. One concern I expressed to French was that with feel ...

Tim Schafer talks with the non-cynical enthusiasm of someone who is accomplishing exactly what he wants in his line of work. When I tell him that I’m playing Grim Fandango for the fourth time in preparation for writing an article about his work, he gives an excited laugh, and I can hear how happy he is to reminisce about the game. It was a ‘fun and special’ time for him, he says. Ever modest, Schafer talks about how lucky he was to have artists like Peter Chan on board, who could fully realise the polyphonically influenced Land of the Dead from the start of development. ‘No-one had made a game about Mexican folklore before’, which is useful when you're trying to make a 'completely unique' game. Schafer immersed himself in the game’s other influences too, on film noir; ‘I would go home and watch those movies every night’, and you can tell. Manny Calavera: Grim Reaper, Salesman When I ask whether his move away from straightforward adventure games is a signal that he thinks it is a dead genre, it’s a resounding ‘no’. Simply, he makes games that are made up of whatever he's interested in at the time. ‘When we made Grim ...

Adventure games have had their fortunes revived somewhat by releases that offer fresh takes on old series (Telltale’s necromancy on Sam & Max and Monkey Island being prominent examples), as well as new and interesting hardware and distribution options that suit the small scale feel the genre has in today’s climate. The original decline in these games came about as developers of other genres realised the importance of narrative to almost all releases, thus appropriating the USP of adventure games. But while FPS titles may have started to borrow action scenes from big budget Hollywood films, their plots often resembled creaky B-movies; featuring well endowed but vapid females, snarling macho stereotypes, and other stock characters. Nowadays, we often see that considerably more effort has been put into giving games an emotional pull that only well-rounded characters can bring; stylish narrative-heavy productions like BioShock, which I've written about recently, are a case in point. Still, there's often a seperation of game and plot; what you see in cutscenes may have very little connection to what you're doing in-game. Maybe there is simply a limit to the  narrative one can churn out about space marines. Given these reasons, it’s a delight to ...

After a relatively quiet start to 2009, the videogame release lists are starting to look a lot rosier- and with E3 just around the corner, there's going to be a veritable avalanche of new software and hardware thrown in our faces- and that's just the booth babes. We all have our favourite sources of breaking news and hands-on impression from around the web- be it Eurogamer, 1UP, Gamespot or heaven forbid, IGN- and like you, that's where I'm going to have my eyes trained on come E3. But what about the games that are going to get smothered in the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles? That's where No Added Sugar Comes in. Under the Radar is an occasional series that puts the most promising upcoming games under the microscope- not the likes of BioShock 2 or Final Fantasy XIII, but games that wouldn't otherwise get much of an airing, because of any number of reasons- for example the game might come from a small scale or indie development studio, might fall victim to inadequate marketing, or simply lack a big-name licence to gain the attention of the ADHD-afflicted media. In the first of this series, beginning right now, I'm going ...