At a recent press event held by Russia-based publisher 1C, we had a chance to see and try out a fistful of new games for both the PC and consoles. Here’s a blow-by-blow report on what we saw:
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Men of War: Red Tide.
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We get an early look at one of the later single-player missions in this hybrid action-strategy sequel.
Battlestations: Pacific, the follow-up to Battlestations: Midway, ships later this month. The previous game offered hybrid action-plus-strategy gameplay in World War II’s Pacific theater, including missions that were inspired by actual historical conflicts. The original game let you play as the American forces, heading out to battle as a strategic commander giving orders to your fleet of ships or squadron of fighter planes, but at any time, you could switch to direct control of any of your vehicles to dive into the action.
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If you want to make it as a Mafia don, you’ll need to be clever, cunning, and coldhearted. We do our best to be all three.
The Godfather II is a tale of two games, a blend of sandbox action and strategic resource management. The low-level mobster in you will want to parade around 1950s-era depictions of New York, Miami, and Havana causing as much wanton destruction as you possibly can, but you’ll need to get in touch with your inner Mafia boss if you want to successfully progress through the story. Taking over and managing various rackets and crime rings is key, but so is keeping an eye on your own family and those of other organizations. We’ve had only a taste of what sort of strategic depth The Godfather II might offer in previous looks at the game, but we’ve recently been spending some time with a nearly complete version of this EA Redwood Shores-developed game to see how far we could dive into the Don lifestyle.
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We take rival mafia thugs to the breaking point in this sandbox strategy adaptation of the classic film.

If you’ve seen The Godfather II recently enough to remember its story in detail, take a moment to choose which of these genres is best suited to convey its unique portrayal of Mafia drama: third-person shooter, sandbox action, or role-playing strategy. Got your answer? So does developer EA Redwood Shores, and it has chosen “all of the above” for its upcoming video game adaptation of the same name. As you take on the role of up-and-coming Mafia don Dominic Corleone, you’ll roam the streets busting heads, you’ll charm your way through dialogue trees, and, when your empire begins to take form, you’ll need to carefully allocate and manage your resources to make sure it continues to grow. We recently spent some hands-on time with The Godfather II to see how these disparate genres are coming together.
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Intel has been unchallenged on the desktop and laptop front since launching the Core architecture in 2006. The Core architecture trounced AMD at the high-end, forcing the Phenom manufacturer to fight back with aggressive value pricing. For the better part of two years, AMD has struggled to compete with Intel’s mainstream processors, leaving the performance and extreme categories completely unchallenged for Intel. Now with the release of Intel’s newest Core i7 CPU and the Express X58 chipset, the gap widens ever further.
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Tom Clancy’s EndWar
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Shanghai
Real-Time Strategy
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Left 4 Dead
Electronic Arts
Valve Software
Sci-Fi First-Person…
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Star Wars: The Old Republic
LucasArts,BioWare
BioWare , LucasArts
Sci-Fi Online…
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It took 20 years of forced slave labor to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. Using the map creator in Far Cry 2, it will take only about an hour. Last time we saw this game in action at Ubisoft Montreal, we were introduced to the basics of the map-creator tool, which gives you the ability to create and alter terrain on the fly with the push of a button. This time around, we take a look at several user-created maps from the Montreal team to show just how crazy you can get. Be sure to check out the recent-image pages for even more looks at these maps. The pyramids are just the beginning.
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Join us on a rooftop run as we race against the clock in the Time Trial mode in Mirror’s Edge.

Dice’s upcoming shooter-meets-parkour game is certainly an interesting direction for first-person action adventure games. After playing it for just a few minutes, it became clear that it was unlike anything we’d ever played before, and something that really has to be seen–preferably played–to be fully understood and appreciated. Set in a future dystopian society, the game’s protagonist Faith is a “runner” who uses rooftops to courier messages that her clients don’t want intercepted by the oppressive authorities. When things go awry, it’s up to Faith to save her sisters from the regime.
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