Electronic Gaming Monthly - Issue 206 August 2006

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SPECIAL PREVIEW ISSUE • SPECIAL PREVIEW ISSUE • SPECIAL PREVIEW ISSUE

TOP 50

COOLES T NE W GAMES

FOR GE T THE SEQUELS AND LICENSED CR AP... WE COUN T DO WN THE BES T OR IGINAL GAMES COMING YOUR WA Y

T H E

ARM Y OF T WO

:

EA'S BADASS VISION OF NE X T-GEN WAR FAR E

PRE VIE WED:

• LEGO S TAR WAR S 2• FINAL FAN TAS Y III

(OK, DON’ T FOR GE T

ALL

SEQUELS... )

KID DE VELOPER

HO W A 10- YEAR -OLD MADE AND SOLD HIS O WN VIDEOGAME

10

• ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY •www.1UP.com

EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief

Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Executive Editor

Shane Bettenhausen

Managing Editor

Jennifer Tsao

Senior Editor

Crispin Boyer

Previews Editor

Bryan Intihar

News/Features Editor

Michael Donahoe

Reviews Editor

Greg Ford

Editor-at-Large

Mark MacDonald

International Editor

John Ricciardi

Intern

Jay Frechette

DESIGN

Art Director

Monique Convertito

Assistant Art Director

Mike Cruz

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLYZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP

Intern

Rosemary Pinkham

CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Ashley, Karen Chu, KevinConvertito, Sean Dallaskidd, AlexanderDennis, Randy Dodson, Peter Hartlaub,Patrick Joynt, David Kushner, GarnettLee, James Lee, Demian Linn, Mark MacDonald, Patrick Mauro, James“Milkman” Mielke, Jeremy Parish,Patrick Talent Agency, Jared Rea, GregSewart, Evan Shamoon, Scott Sharkey,Luke Smith, Shawn Smith, MikeSpitalieri, Bruce Steinberg

Founder

Steve Harris

P

HEAD HONCHOS

President

Scott C. McCarthy

Senior Vice President and General Manager, 1UPNetwork

Ira Becker

Senior Vice President and Editorial Director

John Davison

Senior Vice President of Sales

Scott McDaniel

Vice President of Advertising Sales

Marci Yamaguchi

Vice President of Marketing, Research and Events

Rey Ledda

Vice President of Circulation

Dave Rock

Group Creative Director

Simon Cox

COPY DESK

Copy Editors

Kaitlen Jay Exum, Andrew Fitch

PRODUCTION

Senior Production Manager

Anne Marie Miguel

Production Manager

Monica Brent

SALES

Senior Vice President of Sales

Scott McDaniel

Vice President of Advertising Sales

Marci Yamaguchi

Director of Online Sales

Brent Martyn

Territory Managers & Acct. Execs.

Gaming AccountsNorthwest

Regional Sales Director

Amy Mishra

Southwest

Southern California and Arizona

Regional Sales Director

Leslie C. Gelfand

Senior Account Executive

Rita Kline

East

AL, AR, CO, CT

,

DE

,

FL, GA, IA

,

ID, IN,KS, KY, LA, MA

,

ME

,

MI, MN, MO, MS,MT, NC

,

ND, NE, NH

,

NJ

,

NM, NV, NY,OH, OK, OR, PA

,

RI

,

SC

,

SD

,

TN, TX, UT,VA

,

VT, WA, WI, WV, WY, Canada

Regional Sales Manager

Andrew Reedman

Account Executive

Jessica Reback

Consumer Accounts

Senior Director of Consumer Advertising Sales

Marc Callison

West Regional Sales Director

Laura Hill

East Regional Sales Director

Bruce Kaplan

Account Executive

Jessica Reinert

Automotive Accounts—Detroit

Regional Sales Manager

Ken Stubblefield

Promotions Manager

Wendy Donohue

Senior Advertising Coordinator

Tipler Ubbelohde

Administrative Assistant

Lynn Fortunato

Sales Assistant

Tiffany Orf

Editor-in-Chief

Sam Kennedy

Senior Manager of Client Services

Alex Jakovleski

Senior Manager of Ad Operations

Adam Carey

Audience Development Manager

Nopadon Wongpakdee

Advertising Campaign Coordinator

LeAnne Hsu

contents

issue 206 • august 2006

COVER STORY:

EA’s gritty, co-op-crazy

Army of Two

(check out exclusive details andscreens onpage 74) is just one of 50 upcoming games we rank thataren’t based on the same old licensed crap or from the sequel factory

TOP 50

COOLEST NEW GAMES

T H E

LETTERS

12

Ruffled feathers and opinionsgalore from our readers

PRESS START

The best news, features, andgaming tidbits on the planet

18 AMERICA’S LEASTWANTED:JACK THOMPSON

How things went bad forthe controversial do-gooder

24PREVIEW: LEGO STAR WARS II

Death Star attacks, wookies,ewoks, and much more

The music—andgames that inspired it

36MICROSOFT’S HANDHELD

Come on, you knowthey’re making it

38KID DEVELOPER

The best summer camp ever

40PREVIEW: NEED FORSPEED CARBON

A sequel with a lot of horsepower

A new

Batman

game and an

Earthbound

compilation are amongthe lies that just may be true

44PREVIEW: FINAL FANTASY III

The

Final Fantasy

that America never got

GAME OVER

Don’t leave just yet

98SEANBABY’S REST OF THE CRAP

A look at the peripherals of the future

100CROSSWORD/GRUDGE MATCH102EGM RETRO

We look back at

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

EGM

’s rookies go toe-to-toe

105NEXT MONTH106HSU & CHAN

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY •www.1UP.com•

11

ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA INC.

All content copyright © 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc. Reproduction,modification, or transmission, in whole or in part, by any means,without written permission from Ziff Davis Media Inc.is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

Chairman & CEO

Robert F. Callahan

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Mark Moyer

Executive Vice President& Chief Content Officer

Michael J. Miller

Executive Vice President,Licensing and Legal Affairs, General Counsel& Secretary

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Presidents

Scott C. McCarthy (Game Group)Sloan Seymour (Enterprise Group)Jason Young (Consumer Tech/ Small Business Group)

Senior Vice Presidents

Kenneth Beach (Corporate Sales)Ira Becker (Game Group)John Davison (Editorial Director,Game Group)Jim Louderback (Editorial Director,Consumer/Small Business Group) Angelo Mandarano (Sales &Marketing, Internet)Scott McDaniel (Sales, Game Group)Martha Schwartz (Custom SolutionsGroup)Michael Vizard (Editorial Director,Enterprise Group)

Vice Presidents

Aaron Goldberg (Market Experts)Barry Harrigan (Internet)Kristin Holmes (International Licensing)Michael Krieger (Market Experts)Rey Ledda (Marketing, Researching andEvents, Game Group)

MARKETING

Vice President of Marketing,Research and Events

Rey Ledda

Research Director

May Tong

PR Manager

Jason Freidenfelds

Marketing Coordinator

Vanessa Alvarado

Marketing Graphic Designer

Drew Hathaway

To contact Sales & Advertising,please call 415-547-8000 (Contact anyone on this masthead via e-mail using: firstname_lastname@ziffdavis.com)

Rick Lehrbaum (Internet)Eric Lundquist (Editor-in-Chief, eWEEK)Chris Maginn (Internet)Jim McCabe (PC Magazine)Paul O’Reilly (Event Marketing Group)Ellen Pearlman (Editor-in-Chief, CIO Insight)Beth Repeta (Human Resources)Dave Rock (Circulation, Game Group)Stephen Sutton (Audience Development,Consumer/Small Business)Stephen Veith (Enterprise Group PublishingDirector)Monica Vila (Event Marketing Group)Marci Yamaguchi (Sales, Game Group)Randy Zane (CorporateCommunications)

IT West CoastSenior Technical Analyst

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Desktop Administrator

Nick Kalister

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Any time you get that urgeto head to the game store,it’s easy to succumb to thatsecurity-blanket feeling youget by picking up the latest

Tony Hawk, Madden

, or

Ratchet & Clank

titleinstead of that unfamiliar but critically acclaimedgame next to them. And I can’t blame you. Thoseaforementioned games, which usually reviewquite well, are all great titles, fine-tuned to nearperfection in their respective genres. And if youplayed and enjoyed a previous edition, you knowyou’re probably in for a good time. You probablyalso know that you aren’t in for that first-timethrill—and when it comes to grading a game’strue value, that’s a problem. Yearly sequels are a vital part of the industry,no doubt (franchises like

Splinter Cell

and

Need for Speed

give publishers the means tofund games like

Beyond Good & Evil

and

Army of Two

), and typically they are fine games.Hopefully, though, like us, you can appreciatethe difference between a game that innovatesand responds to the always-evolving landscapeof each genre and one that essentially serves asa roster update or simply adds new levels and anew move or gun, leaving the core gameplay toshow more beauty lines of age. I’ll leave it up toyou to figure out which you could easily pass upfor something more scintillating.

EGM

is known for having the industry’stoughest reviews (in fact, more than one gamecompany has told us that they feared our reviewsthe most), which we take pride in. That’s alsowhy it should come as no surprise that we’retaking a harder stance on sequels running onthe just-good-enough machine and grading themappropriately. If this pisses off some publishers,so be it (we’ve been banned from somepublishers’ lists before because we were tooharsh on a game). Ideally, it’ll encourage readersto pick up games that would otherwise becriminally overlooked and publishers to releasesequels worthy of the new number or subtitle.To see that this isn’t a load of puffy-chestedBS, check out our review of EA’s

NCAA Football

(page 84). In years past, this franchise hasdeservedly taken home Game of the Monthhonors. This year, despite its jump to the Xbox360, incredible visuals, and solid gameplay,it didn’t do anything to wow us, so the scoresuffered a bit for it—we want games to win ourReview Crew awards only if they truly deservethem. Next, take a look at our cover story,which focuses on our top 50 picks for upcomingnonsequel, nonfranchise games. Will a majority—or even a handful—of these titles feature theinnovation needed to outscore the steadfastsequels this fall? I have no idea, but I can’t waitto find out.

—Greg Ford, Reviews Editor

EDITORIAL

TAKE THIS JOB:BOOTH BABE

What it takesto be gaming’seye candy

REVIEW CREW

PREVIEW:LEGO STAR WARS II

The force is strongwith this sequel

■

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II

■

NCAA Football 07

■

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

KID DEVELOPER

We spend some timewith this mini designerand review his game

Xbox 36084

NCAA Football 07

86

Lord of the Rings: The Battle forMiddle-earth II

88

88

Over G Fighters

PlayStation 289

Pirates of theCaribbean 2:The Legendof Jack Sparrow

90

Ruff Trigger: The Vanocore Conspiracy

Xbox90

Crusty Demons: Freestyle Moto-X

DS91

92

PSP92

Astonishia Story

93

Blade Dancer: The Lineage of Light

94

Valkyrie Profile:Lenneth

Extra Stuff95

97

of 00

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