Atomic’s Game News Roundup – 23/11/06

Evacuate your homes! The Christmas games avalanche is getting bigger and closer!

With Christmas roughly a month away, things in the gaming world are heating up. You can sense it when you walk into a store and see big name games on display, all plastered with ‘coming-soon’ and ‘preorder now’ stickers. And don't forget the Nintendo Wii is going to be launched on the 7th of December.

We’ve confirmed that Rainbow Six Vegas, the latest installment in one of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises, will be released for Xbox 360 on the 30th of November. Between now and then, there’s a multiplayer demo available now on the Xbox Live Marketplace for you to sink your teeth into.

Speaking of big franchises, the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 3 is now on sale for $109.95. It’s also available on the Xbox for $79.95, and will be available on the PlayStation 2 on the 29th of November at the lower price point. So many evil Nazis to mow down, so little time...

Gears of War has sold a million copies within two weeks of its worldwide release. If you have read our review, the fact that it’s become the fastest selling title of 2006 and the fastest selling Xbox 360 game ever won’t be so hard to believe. As a freebie to promote Gears of War’s online multiplayer, all Xbox 360 owners will have Xbox Live Gold access from 3pm EST on Friday 24th of November until 10pm on Sunday.

Harry Potter. What cultural phenomenon would be complete without several cross-media retellings? The Order of the Phoenix, JK Rowling’s fifth book in the Harry Potter series, is being turned into both a film and a game, which are both slated for release in July 2007. The game is being developed for almost every platform bar the Xbox. All the next generation consoles as well as the PC, PS2, PSP, DS and even the veritable GBA will have a version of the game available.

Command and Conqueror 3: Tiberium Wars will make an appearance on the Xbox 360. The last time a C&C game appeared on consoles was back in the days of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. We have been told that the game will feature “an intuitive console-specific control scheme” which will hopefully address the problems we had when we played the original console versions.

Finally, we were informed this week that the new Colin McRae: Dirt game that is set to appear on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is, unsurprisingly, based on an entirely new game engine. And it’s about time too. The boys and girls at Codemasters are wetting themselves over it, and have dubbed the engine ‘Neon’. God is planned to be in the details, with wind dynamics, including the car’s intake, exhaust and more all modeled and having an impact on gameplay.