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Codemasters has just released a new trailer for Overlord: Raising Hell, the official expansion for the first Overlord game. The game will be available for the PS3 on June 24.

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Disappointing news for Master Chief friends today, as the Halo movie (if it's still in the works at all) has demoted MC to a supporting cast role instead of focusing on him as the main character. If you ever played a Halo game and noticed how MC sort of... lacks anything that would make people think he was a human (ie, a personality), this probably makes sense to you.

Explained Joseph Staten, Bungie writing director, "I think what it boiled down to with the film was really a question of 'Who is the main character of the movie?' Is it the Master Chief or is it somebody else? And over time I think everybody around the table agreed that the Master Chief is best left as the most important supporting cast member."

So if the movie ever does come to fruition it'll be a film that just so happens to have Master Chief in it. Feel free to use your imagination to the right.

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Tell me that doesn't look like the helmet of Master Chief's SPARTAN armor. Go on, tell me.

Compare this to the Hummer HX that looks a bit like a Warthog. Perhaps Halo-chic will become the next design trend.

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If you're a Halo and a Guitar Hero fan, you might be interested to know that Neversoft, Bungie, Activision/RedOctane, and Microsoft have teamed up to bring the Halo theme (MJOLNIR Mix) to Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Xbox 360.

The song is free and launches on the Xbox Live Marketplace on Thanksgiving day, Thursday November 22.

Here's some info on the theme if you're a music buff:


"It’s a real pleasure to hear one of the best loved and most iconic themes from Bungie’s Halo Universe in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock," said Marty O’Donnell, Composer and Audio Director for Bungie Studios. "As longtime fans of the Guitar Hero franchise, it was great to collaborate with Neversoft and Activision/RedOctane to offer this exciting free download to our fans."

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In some movie-to-game news, Codemasters Online has published Dirty Dancing the Video Game, the official interactive release paired with the title of the same name (minus the game part, obviously) to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary. Here's the word from Codemasters:

If you're intrigued you can download a "30 minute try and buy" demo, available here.

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Midway has announced that it is currently developing two unique handheld titles, including Touchmaster DS for the Nintendo DS and Hot Brain for the PlayStation Portable.

Touchmaster, designed for the more casual gamer, boasts a plethora of minigames for instantaneous and short gameplay sessions, including Trivia, Mah Jongg, Solitaire, and Gem Slide. The game will be wi-fi enabled and launch in June with access to tournaments and a ranking list.

Hot Brain, a puzzler, "presents challenging and fun mental activities that help ignite your mind in areas like logic, memory, math, language and concentration." The game features a three-player mode via ad-hoc as well as a thorough tutorial mode for those stumped by this PSP exclusive.

"With both Touchmaster DS for Nintendo DS and Hot Brain for PSP, we’re able to tap into our experience with the casual market to create games that work perfectly with the unique controls and features of each portable system," said Steve Allison, chief marketing officer, Midway. "Both titles will be able to provide quick three-minute gameplay experiences or extended play-session with puzzles, card games, brain teasers, trivia and more."

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Originally written by Shiva Stella

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Konami has announced a new card game based around the new television series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters World Championship Tournament 2006.

The game will include over 2,000 cards including ones from the new GX universe and the latest Structure decks. Each game upon release will also feature three limited edition trading cards from the GX universe.

World Championship Tournament 2006 will include a few new gameplay modes such as Duel Puzzle, Limited Duel, Theme Duel and Survival Duel. Duel Puzzle has players complete specific objectives per turn to win, while Limited Duel sets restrictions on the structure of each deck and moves available. Theme Duel forces players to accomplish certain conditions to win while Survival Duel has players taking on various opponents with a limited number of life points.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters World Championship Tournament 2006 is scheduled to release in March.

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Originally written by Brian Mohr

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Majesco has announced that they have shipped the upcoming Nintendo DS game Dino Masters.

The title puts players in the role of Dave the Digger who hunts for dinosaur fossils across the world. Once players are able to recover the bones, you are able to rebuild the prehistoric creatures and battle them against the computer or friends through wireless link. The game includes 100 various species of dinosaurs.

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Originally written by Brian Mohr

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This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Chuck Landry.

Apus Software actually released Astral Masters way back in February, according to the official website. Their card-based game serves as a follow up to Astral Tournament and blends elements of that game with influences from the card-based “Magic: The Gathering” genre. As it just recently arrived at the Gaming Horizon offices, we’ve finally had our chance to review this title, which proves easy to learn, but whose allure quickly fades.

There’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of Astral Masters, even though it has officially been available for over six months now. This game wasn’t graced with tons of page space on industry magazines or websites as insiders counted down the days to its release. In fact, it released under the radar, so to speak. Apus Software is no EA or Ubisoft, so it’s fair to consider Astral Masters a budget title. After all, you can download the entire 7 MB game from astralmasters.com and have the full version by entering a $20 purchase code.

But for such a small release it does an impressive job of basically cloning the Magic: The Gathering card game and translating it into an easy to play windows game. But if you’ve ever played a game like Magic, then you’re already equipped with a good foundation of what to expect from Astral Masters.

Continue reading...

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This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Shaman King: Master of the Spirits 2 is a sequel to last year’s under-the-radar title, which in turn is based on Fox Network’s Saturday morning cartoon Shaman King. For those unfamiliar with the anime, Shaman King involves a young boy named Yoh and his quest to enter the Grand Shaman Tournament which is held every 500 years. The winner receives the King of Spirits which grants considerable power – enough to change the world. But, the King of Spirits has grown silent and so the tournament has been delayed. That, however, isn’t enough for Yoh’s evil older brother, Zeke, to find a way to take the King of Spirits for himself to create a world of only shamans.



Knowing Shaman King’s main story isn’t all that important as the game mostly plays like a sidestory more than anything else. I don’t follow the show myself, but even I was able to pick up on the story, though in Master of the Spirits 2 it is pretty skimpy.

For those not familiar with this or the previous Shaman King GBA release, this game’s closest relative would be Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It plays like a watered-down version of that game which makes sense considering that both were developed by Konami and that MotS 2 is aimed squarely at the children. Though not setup in one large castle, MotS features an overworld map with a number of dots marking side scrolling stages in which Yoh will jump and slash his way through a fair amount of enemies.

In another nod to Aria of Sorrow, MotS features a guardian ghost system that has more than its fair share of similarities to AoS’ spirit system. As the game progress, you’ll collect a ghost here and there and each ghost gives Yoh some sort of ability, such as a longer jump, the ability to shoot projectiles, or block attacks, when equipped. What makes the system here a little more user friendly than Aria of Sorrow’s constant switching is that Yoh is initially given four decks (new decks can be bought at shops for a maximum of ten decks). You can set up each deck for a specific purpose. For example, you can have one deck that turns Yoh into a bruising tank while having two other setups for underwater and ice stages. And you can switch a deck on the fly by hitting select. Yoh only starts out with one equip-able slot per deck, but as he finds more equipment he’ll be able to attach up to five guardian ghosts per deck, which leaves you up to 50 slots to assign. Considering that there are over 70 Guardian ghosts to collect, the amount of combinations is tremendous.

The guardian ghost system goes deeper by introducing new techniques that are only unlocked by combining the right guardians together. The best part is that once you unlock the technique, you don’t have to remember the correct setup of ghosts as the game will add the new technique to your guardian list and will automatically equip the right guardians to a deck when the technique is selected. Though there aren’t more than a handful of these abilities, the fact that it is in the game is a welcomed addition.

Not having played a GBA Castlevania in quite sometime, it was nice to see that Konami didn’t shortchange the game in the graphics department. It doesn’t share the same dark gothic atmosphere as that great series, instead swapping the palette with bright colorful backgrounds which is very fitting. The character sprites are also very bright and colorful and feature wonderfully smooth animations. Also, when activating a guarding ability, the game will randomly freeze and a nicely drawn interpretation of the Guardian ghost will flash on screen. However, there are times I wish I could turn this option off as sometimes it really interferes with flow of the game.



On the technical side of things, there’s not much to complain about – decent gameplay, a deep spirit system, and some nice graphics and music tracks. Beyond that though, Master of the Spirits falls short, literally, in a lot of ways.

Shaman King is one short game. I was able to go from start to finish with more than 80% of the ghosts found in less than eight hours. That’s shorter than what seems like most movies these days. And part of the short game time is that the game is woefully easy. Some of the ghosts are given to you by defeated bosses, but most are either in clear daylight or the enemy that drops the ghost flashes white. Thus you could really just fly through the stages by avoiding every enemy except the ones carrying ghosts since you don’t gain any experience points by defeating them. The RPG leveling-type system from Castlevania would have alleviated this problem and probably would have added a couple of hours to the gameplay. But, that would have made this title a little less accessible to the kids, so I won’t condemn this game just for that.

Another gripe is that despite the large number of ghosts available, I only ended up using a handful of them. And despite using so little, I was still able to whiz right through the game, as the ones necessary to continue on are always given to you. And when you are given a new ghost, it’s one with an ability that just screams at you to tell you which stage to attack next.

And now for one last complaint. Though this is very nitpicky, I didn’t like the control when using the Chloe ghost, which gives you an extendable grappling hook – it just didn’t feel tight and refined. Though there aren’t many times when its use is necessary for progression, those parts can and will get frustrating because of the way Yoh controls in the air with Chloe.



If you can get past the brevity and the fact that this game is aimed for kids, then Shaman King: Master of the Spirits 2 may just be a game GBA owners with a penchant for action platformers could grow fond of. It offers some decent gameplay with a deep guardian ghost system along with some impressive graphics. Moreover, Castlevania fans will get a kick out of playing a game that really is just a stripped-down version Aria of Sorrow and may even fill the void until Soma Cruz’s sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, hits the DS later this year.

Deep Guardian ghost system. Castlevania-style gameplay is always a plus.

Bright colorful graphics and smooth animations complete the package.

Some tracks are nice, most are forgettable. Voices are used sparingly, but are loud and clear.

Again, you can’t go wrong by copying Castlevania.

Game is painfully short, and hunting for all the ghosts isn’t going to add more than 2 hours.

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