Apple's announcement of the new super thin ipods yesterday in Cupertino got lots of geek's blood running hotter than usual. Of course TeXtra's very own Cali Lewis has a review of all the new models, capabilities and the pretty colors!!!  

Get the Gamesweasel video show now for free! We got hold of Draglade for the Nintendo DS recently but with so many other top games coming out this spring it was unfairly put on the back burner. However with this month’s pre E3 game drought we had a bit of time to see what it had to offer, so here just for you is our review of Draglade. Developed by Dimps, the team behind Sonic Rush and co developers of Street Fighter IV, Draglade for DS (or Kasutamu Bito Batoru Doragureido as it’s known as in Japan) is a side scrolling fighting game that uses music beats along with button bash timing to form attacks. There are 4 main characters to choose from in the game, each with their own separate but similar storyline which overlap here and there but generally remain individual enough. Each characters quest revolves round them needing or wanting to become a Major Grapper. Grapping is a new form of combat that uses bracelet type jewellery called G-Cons which magically turn into weapons called Glades when mixed with one of the four matter elements (fire, earth, lightning and water); these weapons are extra special ...

YouTube Direktvideo link Get the Gamesweasel video show now for free! Strangely this is Sega’s second Olympics release over the past 8 months - their first one being Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. This is the official game of this year’s Olympics and in fine tradition will have you waggling the analogue stick or mashing buttons until you develop RSI and, if you’re from the US anyway, try to sue. Brits will just complain quietly to the person next to them. The game covers all 38 disciplines including the standard track and field events but also table tennis, judo, archery, cycling, weight lifting and swimming. If you’re old enough to remember, this game takes ideas from both Konami’s Track and Field and US Gold’s Winter and California Games. Games are a mix of hitting buttons quickly and timing stick rotations , as well as matching button sequences as quickly as possible. The game’s at its best when things are simple - waggle or mash to run and press buttons at the right time to jump and set your angle for jumps etc. Stupidly there’s an annoying charge system for running off the blocks which often leaves you doing a false start or leaving ...

YouTube Direktvideo link Are you getting the free Gamesweasel video show? Finally the Unreal Tournament 3 Xbox 360 version - to be honest, this for me is the preferred format for a multiplayer game seeing as Xbox Live isn’t free and so has to have some degree of stability and speed. Developed by Epic, the same people behind Gears of War, this sees you fighting a race called the Necris as you battle to save the Earth. Quite how you do this by capturing flags, getting as many frags over re-spawning teams and destroying glowing red or blue nodes is beyond me but suspend your disbelief and get into the game and you’ll thoroughly enjoy it. The single-player campaign completely gets rid of the tournaments of previous games and uses the story as an excuse to play some arena-based battles. There’s Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Warfare, Vehicle Capture the Flag and more and it all rips along at a frightening pace with no drop in framrate. The game differs from the PC and PS3 versions in that it has extra content - 5 new maps, new characters and split-screen co-op and versus mode. They did it in Gears of War on the 360 so ...

The black art of battery life testing takes time—that's why every launch day review had some version of "we'll get back to you"—as well they should. Now, after a weekend of testing, some hard data on battery numbers are starting to trickle in. But the iPhone is such a complex device that your results will likely vary from the numbers above. There are some hedges that need to be made here that almost no one is making. Because of 3G, you'll kill batteries faster, but you're also downloading much faster, so can get more browsing done in a set amount of time. What's the math on the total number of web page refreshes vs. the old one? Secondly, no one yet is checking on the battery life while playing a high-end 3D-game like Monkey Ball or Motionx-poker; these games are not only running the GPU and CPU full bore, but the screen too. Gaming is probably the most intense activity you can do. Just wait for the multiplayer gaming to start and see what happens. Thirdly, because the apps give new functionality to the iPhone, you're going to be using it a lot more often than before. Especially ...

YouTube Direktvideo link I haven’t seen the new The Incredible Hulk movie, partly due to the fact that I found the Ang Lee one really boring and partly because I’m not sure why we need another movie. Well, another film means another official videogame - but what is there to do with the big green bogeyman that hasn’t already been done? Once again this game puts you in a free environment similar to the Ultimate Destruction game. This time you’re in the Big Apple as you play loosely through the plot of the movie and do lots of other missions along the way. Just find the icon on the map and press a button to activate the mission. Completing missions and other objectives gives you more points and new abilities with which to smash stuff up with. Standard punches and grabs will do for most enemies but you can also fill up your rage meter by smashing stuff up and go proper ballistic on your approaching enemies. And smash things up you do - a lot. Everything in the game can be destroyed and it’s great fun leaping from building to building, picking up taxis and throwing them at people, or picking up ...

YouTube Direktvideo link I have fond memories of the original Alone in the Dark on the PC where the game began with a polygonal Edward Carnby being chased from the attic by a rectangular blue wolf thing jumping through the window. Things have changed a lot since then and Atari are now able to deliver scares and action with Hollywood-style effects and they do this on the next-gen consoles to great effect. You begin the game in first-person mode waking up with a groggy head with some geezers discussing all manner of dark things. Next thing you know there are cracks in the walls eating people up and the building you’re in starts to collapse. The game switches into third-person as you try to walkthrough and escape - walls burning around you and things exploding everywhere. The sense of peril is amazing - however, you soon realise all this great atmosphere is spoilt by a control system that makes you as much use in an action situation as Professor Stephen Hawking. You see, you have to switch between first and third person modes depending on what you want to do; first-person mode is for putting out fires, firing guns etc and third-person for ...

YouTube Direktvideo link 18 months ago Okami appeared on the PS2. The arrival of Okami was a quiet one despite it being a game to rival any Zelda release and having great visuals and game design. As well as running around as a sun god that’s now taken the form of a wolf, you also got to paint parts of the scenery to solve puzzles and fight enemies and this did feel a bit clunky with an analogue stick. Thankfully you never run in to Kevin Costner in the game and now it’s found its rightful home on the Wii - it’s an almost perfect game now it’s on Nintendo’s machine. Your task in Okami is to restore light to the world after it’s been covered in darkness. In a very similar way to Twilight Princess you do this by fighting monsters and helping villagers in forests and townships and by exploring dungeons and fighting big bosses. As you move through the game you get rewarded with more powers and items to help you further if you seek out extras hidden around the maps. You now fight by flicking your wrist which takes a bit of time to get the timing right, but ...

YouTube Direktvideo link I love being pleasantly surprised by a game. So far I haven’t enjoyed Battlefield games on consoles as they just don’t cut it compared to Battlefield 2 on the PC. However, I think I’ve found something special with Battlefield Bad Company. Finally developers DICE have given us a game with a full single player campaign which doesn’t just feel like the multiplayer game with bots and this one’s very different to what you’ve played before! First of all, for once the single player game’s not all worthy like some others I could mention. You tag along with three others who are all actually good chums despite having the name of Bad Company. They’ll cover your back and make jokes about you being the new boy without descending into parody - I particularly like Sweetwater who keeps going on about a big vehicle called the ‘Truckasaurus Rex’. Each mission sees a number of goals to complete but it’s up to you how you complete it - you can drive in, run in all guns blazing or sneak around the back, it’s the sort of sandbox play that won’t leave nasty grains between your teeth. The scenery’s also very destructible. If someone’s ...

I wanted to let you know of a little known gem in the world of gaming that most of you young whippersnappers probably will never have heard of. Back in the mid-nineties there was the 16bit console battle between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive, what a lot of people didn’t know was that whilst Sega and Nintendo were slugging away at each other for console supremacy, the 16bit home computer; the Commodore Amiga A500 was going strong with games that matched the quality of those found on the consoles, only these were stored on floppy disk rather than cartridges. Anyway, the good news is that Valhalla has been redeveloped by its original creators Vulcan Software for the PC. Read the full review of Valhalla Classics