Developer Blue Byte has worked on The Settlers for quite some time, but the next game in the series, The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, will make big changes. The game is being developed with a brand-new 3D engine that allows for highly detailed close-ups on its colorful new landscapes, its long horizons, and its stylized characters and buildings, which recall the exaggerated fairy tale art of the motion picture Shrek and the colorful characters of Team Fortress 2. More importantly, it's being enhanced with a number of new changes and additions that will make the gameplay at once deeper, more varied, and potentially more appealing to a wider audience, thanks to the input of consultant Bruce Shelley, a cofounder of the dearly departed Ensemble Studios--creator of the Age of Empires series. We watched a brief demonstration of the game's features, then tried it out for ourselves.

The Settlers 7 will offer enhanced economic and military strategy with a colorful and attractive new graphics engine.

If you're a longtime Settlers fan, you may recall that the previous game in the series had a streamlined economy system which some players found to be a bit on the shallow side. The new game's economy has been retuned to not only return Settlers 7's economic game to the depth of its predecessors, but also to tie it in more closely to either military operations, or the game's new strategic track, research. Research takes place at religious structures, where studious monks (powered by such crucial economic resources as books and beer) can develop game-winning techs while your opponents are busy building their economies or their armies. However, military victory has been enhanced with the ability to give your armies direct move and attack orders, and should you care to, you can definitely opt to tilt your economy in favor of the gold and food required to commission an army quick.

Like with other games in the series, The Settlers 7 takes place on the planet we know as Earth, and focuses its early action in Europe approximately during the Age of Sail, where pikemen and musketeers march side by side into battle and where trade routes to India and Africa are potentially huge moneymakers. However, the story of the single-player campaign starts in the fictitious country of Tandria with the princess Zoe, who has been commissioned by her father, the king, to ride off into an unruly colony and take her place as monarch. The campaign will offer the usual requisite tutorial mission to open and lead into a comprehensive story-based set of missions, though the game will also include standalone skirmish maps and a statistic-heavy competitive multiplayer with extensive leaderboards to track anything from which players are the most successful in deathmatch to which players have baked the most bread.

More importantly, the game will have in-depth customization tools to create both your own custom castle (with a variety of options to customize towers, pennants, balconies, and other features), and an extremely powerful custom map editor which will let you tweak available resources, number of players, and victory conditions with a single click. For instance, a certain map might default to requiring players control a handful of key territories, and unflagging all key territories but one will automatically turn it into a king-of-the-hill match. And as soon as you've tweaked the map to your liking, you can start a skirmish or multiplayer map with a single click--no need to save the map or do anything else.

We then skipped ahead to a hands-on session with a single-player skirmish map set to standard victory conditions. Winning a basic game of Settlers 7 will be about securing key victory conditions--there will be 20 in all, which include military, economic, and research trees as well as accruing the most resources as possible. Once you secure enough victory points (in a basic game, you need to lock down six of them), a timer will begin to count down, and the player in the lead will win unless another player can seize away some victory conditions (by accruing more resources or tech), or eliminating that player with a military victory.

With enough beer and books, these jolly monks are bound to develop a guaranteed victory by way of research.

In our case, we decided to shoot for an economic victory by aggressively building up a strong infrastructure. The key to a good economy is quickly seizing as many resource-producing nodes on the map as possible, construct resource collection and processing buildings (and storehouses) nearby, connected smartly by well-maintained roads that can ferry your goods to your processing plants to produce advanced goods, such as higher-grade food and clothing. Finding these key resource nodes is easy, since they're marked in the world by floating icons, and since the game has a real-time strategic zoom feature vaguely reminiscent of the camera in Supreme Commander.

Placing key structures is simply a matter of opening up a build menu, then placing them in a smart location. Most basic buildings themselves are miniature hubs onto which you can build up to three add-ons--for instance, farms can be developed with grain fields or piggeries. However, many of these add-ons have co-dependencies with each other, different types of resources, and with other structures--grain fields need wells (which produce unlimited water), while piggeries need grain and water. While the series' classic base resources of iron ore, gold, stone, and coal are still the foundation of the economy, more-advanced structures and techs require different combinations of basic and advanced resources, such as forged tools to support workshops that upgrade your transportation infrastructure, or books printed on paper used to support the research of monks.

Smart use of small-scale and large-scale strategy will win you the day in The Settlers 7.

Even as an economy-based player, you'll still need to dip your toe into other areas of the game, particularly military development. This is because, like in previous games of the series, nearby territories on the map surrounding your initial holdings will be guarded by armies of neutral forces (or forces controlled by opposing players), and in order to get at these new territories and their precious, precious resources, you'll need to send troops into that territory to cut down the opposition, then occupy it to convert it to your side. The whole process is considerably more interesting than it sounds, and seems to require a good mix of micromanagement skills and strategic oversight, making sure each of your farms, workshops, and forges is working at peak capacity, while also keeping an eye on the bigger picture of how close to victory conditions you or your enemies are, and which key resources you either lack or have in surplus.

The Settlers 7 seems like it will offer deep economic strategy and lots of solid improvements to a series that has already carved out a legion of loyal fans over the years. It's scheduled to ship in March.

All this week we're taking a look at Sony's upcoming baseball game, MLB 10: The Show. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Today, we're finishing up the series with a look at some odds and ends I noticed after playing the game and speaking with the game's developers.

- I'm a Generic Pitch 38 kind of guy. I spent most of my time with last year's MLB 09 using my created Road to the Show pitcher, so I've learned the tricks to keep things moving. After all, even when you're playing as a starting pitcher and getting on the mound once every four or five days, the baseball season is a long slog. You take your shortcuts where you can get them, and in the case of a pitcher, that means shortening your windup as much as possible. Forget the seemingly eternal delivery of a guy like Chan Ho Park--when time is at a premium, I'm looking for the fastest delivery possible.

Bobby Abreu would never let a ball bounce off the top of his dome.

Having spent some hands-on time with MLB 10 earlier this week, one of my first goals was to find a pitch delivery that fit my schedule. That's not necessarily a simple task--MLB 10 has a full 310 deliveries to choose from, including pitching motions modeled after real-life pitchers and a bunch of generic models as well. It took me a while, but after some experimentation, I came to love the quick and to-the-point release of Generic Pitch 38. Now, here's hoping they don't mix the numbers up in the final version of the game, or else it's back to the drawing board�

- At the top of my list of questions for MLB 10 producers was when RTTS fans would be able to carry over their created ball players from one version of the game to the next year's game. As an ardent fan of career modes in sports games, I think that continuing your career from one game to the next seems like the next big step forward for the genre, one that would add a huge amount of stickiness and value from one game to the next. After all, continuing the career of your created star while still taking advantage of all the cool stuff that's added in each new version of a sports game seems like the best of both worlds. The developers agree, but there continue to be enough technical hurdles to cross that the feature was not included in this year's game. That said, it is on their radar for MLB 11, so I'm hoping it gets done next year. If you're reading this, guys: pretty, pretty please?

- One aspect of online play that I didn't mention in Wednesday's preview is the Scout Now feature--an extension of the game's online scout service that lets you filter through a bunch of different criteria like player skill and game speed when looking for a game to play online. With Scout Now you save those filter settings and then can instantly find a game with your preferences (assuming one is out there, of course). I tend to avoid MLB online as I swing at everything that's even remotely near the strike zone. With Scout Now, maybe I can find someone online who is as swing-happy as I am and actually have a shot at winning a game.

- Accurate ball deflections seems to me like perhaps the most underrated addition to MLB 10's gameplay. With the ball bouncing off of batters, umpires, fielders, and even pitchers (and, yes, injuries can happen on comebackers), it seems that a player's reaction time and fielding ability will count more than ever. In fact, now that the ball is acting more realistically, the burden on fielding animation was that much heavier. One of my favorite examples came while watching as a shortstop fielded a shallow fly ball that bounced on the ground just in front of him. As the ball leaped in the air, the shortstop had to make a similar quick hop to snag it and make the play at first. It was a tidy little animation that probably wasn't needed last year but made an impression this time around.

- Speaking of realistic ball physics, here's a feature that Jose Canseco won't appreciate. With the addition of new home-run-robbing wall catches, there are more defensive options for snagging a ball before it leaves the yard, including forehand, backhand, and straight-at-the-wall catches. That's good news for skilled outfielders. For the rest of us, couple delicate timing, necessary fielding ratings, and the improved ball physics, and it's entirely possible to re-create Canseco's famous "ball off the noggin'" outfield gaffe from 1993, when Jose was playing outfield for the Texas Rangers and a ball hit by the Indians' Carlos Martinez bounded off Canseco's head and into the stands for a home run. If it happens to you, I expect to see the video.

That wraps up our look at MLB 10: The Show, but we'll be bringing you more coverage in the coming weeks ahead of its release on March 2.

We know you�re probably going to ask, so we�ll get this out of the way right off the bat. Yes, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing shares more than a passing resemblance to Mario Kart with Sega characters in place of troublesome princesses and brothers in primary-coloured ensembles. Now that we have that out of the way, the obvious follow-up and, indeed, more important question is whether it�s fun. The answer is yes.

If you thought the arcade racing genre was about ripe for a new contender, then based on our hands-on time with a PlayStation 3 version of the game, we�re pleased to report that though the experience as a whole is as familiar as a home-cooked meal, All-Stars Racing adds a few new ingredients to an already tasty recipe.

We�ve taken the game for a spin a few times in the past, but to date, we haven�t had a chance to experience one of its most crucial elements--multiplayer. Online friend games and network matchmaking races are both supported, though we opted to grab a few controllers to go head-to-head in local split-screen play. After all, it�s much more satisfying berating your buddies and watching their reactions as you blast them out of first place with a giant boxing glove then zoom across the line to claim victory.

Offline matches support two, three, or four racers and divide the screen equally among the players. Though the final version will give you a choice from more than 20 classic Sega characters, our build offered fewer than half that number. Our roster featured: Tails, Amy Rose, Shadow, Dr. Eggman and the series namesake from the Sonic family, as well as Billy Hatcher, Amigo from Samba De Amigo, captive simian Aiai of Super Monkey Ball fame, and Shenmue�s Ryo Hazuki.

All of the characters have their own unique and personality-appropriate vehicle. Aiai races a banana car, Ryo straddles a motorbike, and Billy pilots a giant egg with wheels. As you�d expect, each vehicle has a performance and handling rating. You�ll also need to trade top speed for acceleration or speed for improved turning response. Even with the small selection of karts on hand in our version, each ride managed to offer a distinctive feel.

Why the world's fastest hedgehog needs a racing car is beyond us.

On top of the common power-ups that litter the circuit, each character also has an exclusive all-star ability that is triggered by using an item. They�re dolled out by the cosmos by picking up mystery jars on the track, and once activated Dr. Eggman�s monster truck sprouts arsenal-laden wings that allows you take pot shots at other racers ahead of you. Ryo�s bike transforms into the world�s fastest forklift to barge other players out of the way, while Billy rolls a giant impenetrable egg like he�s competing in a log-rolling championship.

The intended function of a power-up item isn't always so clear. While boxing gloves, red rockets, and Sonic�s shoes have fairly obvious uses, it took us a few tries to work out what others did. For example, rainbows obscure the vision of the road for other players, while using a star causes the other player�s screen to reverse and flip the world upside down.

Courses for multiplayer are recycled from the single-player and mission modes. The tracks are spacious and sprinkled with some subtle yet not-so-subtle nods to Sega�s previous works. These include red bounce-pad bumpers to steer you back on route and a giant leaping killer whale. With the pack clumped together, background visual animations, and power-ups spewing out of vehicles, we noticed a slight frame rate dip. We�re hoping this slowdown and some minor clipping issues will be corrected before the game ships later this month.

If you like your racing arcade-y, brightly coloured, and frenetic, then Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing might just be the game to get your engine running. Stay tuned for the full GameSpot review shortly.

When we last saw Monster Hunter Tri back at GamesCom 2009, we were taken with how impressive it looked. If bringing the franchise to a Nintendo system for the first time wasn't sweet enough, it was also one of the best-looking Wii games we'd seen to date. The visuals certainly go a long way in bringing the exotic monsters, environments, and characters to life. Originally released in Japan last year, the game is being localised by Capcom for Western markets, and this latest game in the series should be out this April in Europe. We recently got a chance to play the European version, including its two-player split-screen and four-player online modes.

Nintendo hosted a hands-on event in London, which kicked off with a presentation from producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and creative director Kaname Fujioka. The duo attempted to initiate the UK media in the ways of monster hunting, and given that the series hasn't been the runaway success in the West that it has been in Japan, this seemed like a sensible start to the day. During the presentation, Tsujimoto revealed a number of interesting facts about Tri, including the addition of several new weapons that weren't in the Japanese version, such as the Lion's Bane sword and the Grim Reaper-fashioned Sinister Saints switchaxe. Tsujimoto also confirmed that Monster Hunter Tri will support Nintendo's Wii Speak microphone peripheral. Text chat is also an option, and this feature will no doubt make communication between hunters easier during online matches. Lastly, he revealed that Capcom had direct involvement in designing Nintendo's Classic Controller Pro control pad. The redesigned controller appears to be the default control scheme for Tri, and while you can use a Wii Remote and Nunchuk or the original Classic Controller, we found that the pro's longer handles made it a better experience. In fact, Nintendo has announced two additional versions of the game for Europe: one that will be bundled with the Pro controller and another that will include the controller and the Wii Speak peripheral. After the presentation, we met with a Capcom spokesperson, who told us that you'll be able to copy your characters to a Wii Remote and play them on a friend's system, much like you can import Miis from one console to another.

Capcom has already revealed that the cute catlike Felynes won't be tagging along in Tri's single-player hunts, although they are available in the village to help you cook food and plant crops. Aiding you in battle this time around is Cha-Cha, a dwarf-sized fellow who looks a lot like the village witch doctor. We weren't able to see him in action, but according to Tsujimoto, Cha-Cha will become bigger and stronger and will unlock new abilities as you progress.

Monster Hunter Tri introduces underwater battles to the series for the first time. With the exception of two shoulder buttons to dive and surface, the main controls are the same whether you're in the water or on land. The Classic Controller Pro is particularly useful for underwater areas, as the inside shoulder buttons are easier to reach and sit underneath the outside ones, much like on the PlayStation 3's Dual Shock 3 controller. After kitting out our hunter with a great sword, we headed to the aquatic hunting grounds with our companions to hunt down the giant aquatic Lagiacrus dragon. The map had about a dozen sections, with several areas featuring bodies of water deep enough to conceal the beast. Diving into the sea and coming head-to-head with such a giant creature was cool, and he certainly proved to be a challenging opponent. Because you have to move in three dimensions underwater, combat is slightly more challenging at first, and unfortunately the series again fails to include a fixed camera angle behind you, so you need to use the right analog stick to keep the camera on the action. The Lagiacrus eventually moved to another area where we were able to attack it on land. Despite being a creature of the deep, the Lagiacrus was just as formidable on land, and it was great to see that the action continued unabated despite the location.

We also got a chance to play Tri's two-player split-screen mode, where we were able to hunt down a Great Jaggi and a Qurupeco. This mode took place in a single arena covered in sand and featured the backdrop of a beautiful, crumbling colosseum. Rather than fighting on regular hunting grounds, you need to fight it out man-on-beast in a single area; however, the overall gameplay remains pretty much the same. The starting area is adjacent to the arena, and if you die, it's easy to rejoin the battle once you've respawned. The monsters can't retreat to another area and recharge their health, and neither can you (although you can carry health potions and other items with you), so the battles are simple fights to the death. Despite having to share the screen with a companion, this mode does a good job of keeping the screen uncluttered while still managing to display all of the vital heads-up displays.

Monster Hunter Tri offers some of the most deadly enemies yet.

Nintendo and Capcom are still considering whether to charge a monthly subscription fee for Monster Hunter Tri, which would follow the model for the just-announced Monster Hunter Frontier Online on the Xbox 360 in Japan. Given that it's a four-player cooperative game rather than a persistent, massively multiplayer game, added fees might make it a difficult sell.

Monster Hunter Tri looks like it will be a delicious monster-filled treat for fans of the series when it comes out in April. Because multiplayer is such a vital part of the Monster Hunter experience, it's good to know that Capcom is working on its own in-game friends system, and we're hoping it will be as painless as possible for people to jump online and start slaying monsters. We're looking forward to seeing the final version and checking out all of the monsters and environments in store for hunters. For more on the franchise's Nintendo debut, be sure to check out our previous coverage and keep an eye on GameSpot for the full review this April.

Modnation Racers is the upcoming kart racer for the PlayStation 3 being developed by United Front Games that is set to carry on the �play, create, share� movement introduced in Littlebigplanet. The game was first shown off at last year's Electronics Entertainment Expo and offered a fresh addition to Sony's growing PS3 software library. While we've had a few updated looks at the game in the months since its debut, it looks like Sony has been keeping a secret that we discovered on a recent visit to SCEA's San Diego development studio: a PSP version of the game. While it may sound like crazy talk to hear that the Modnation Racers experience is being converted to the PlayStation Portable, we're pleased to say that it's happening and going shockingly well. We had the chance to get a look at an early, work in progress version of the game and were shocked by how well it's coming together.

If you haven't been following Modnation Racers, the unique kart racer features your standard single and multiplayer racing modes with a robust and easy to use content creator. If this sounds a lot like the model set by Littlebigplanet, that's because it really is the spiritual successor to Media Molecule's groundbreaking little title. One of the key differences to the experience--aside from the difference in genre--is an even more accessible, and surprisingly robust, content creation tool that's basically a triple threat. The game's three creation �studios� let you create unique mods (drivers), karts, and tracks using thousands of props and a freeform road-layout tool for a staggering amount of combinations. While this whole package makes sense on the PlayStation 3 given its processing power, a successful and faithful portable conversion clearly poses a pretty hefty challenge.

Sony tapped its San Diego development studio to take on the task of creating a unique Modnation experience on the PSP that was faithful to the PS3 game. In order to pull the ambitious task off, the team reached out to two studios, United Front Games who were obviously pretty well versed in the Modnation world, and, Studio Liverpool, Sony's UK dev house responsible for the awesome Wipeout games on PSP. United Front Games obviously offered guidance and assistance around the assets used for the game to ensure that the art style remained faithful to the overall aesthetics of the PS3 version. Studio Liverpool made a unique contribution to the project in the form of the game engine the team developed for the Wipeout games on PSP.

The result of this work is a full featured recreation of the PS3 game on the PSP that comes packing nearly all the content from the console game, sharp visuals and an impressive sense of speed. The game retains the urban vinyl look of its console cousin and sports a stylized look that fits the action. There are obviously some tradeoffs to detail given the PSP's horsepower and display resolution but Sony San Diego's work to tweak the Wipeout engine for its needs is paying off nicely. The game looks super sharp and retains its quirky personality.

On the content side, Modnation Racers PSP features a single payer story mode that has you working your way through a series of levels facing off against bosses. In addition the game features the three content creation studios that let you customize your driver and kart as well as create entire tracks from scratch. While this may sound daunting, each of the studios features an easy to use interface that makes drawing on the hundreds of different items to create something a breeze. Many of the items in each editor feature some level of additional customization, such as color or detailing, that you can use to finetune your items to your liking. The game stays true to the interface of the PS3 game's content creation modes and should accessible for just about anyone to play around with. The track editor is especially impressive given the scale that you work in.

As far as the multiplayer goes, there are a few options to choose from. The multiplayer experience lets you mix it up in adhoc or infrastructure matches for up to six players. You'll find all the different match types from the PS3 game on hand in addition to a brand new mode for the PSP. Besides the traditional multiplayer options, Modnation Racers will also let you upload your custom content as well as download the work of other players as well.

But, while this all sounds well and good, cool graphics and content creation tools don't mean much if the game sitting at the heart of everything blows. We got some hands-on time with two tracks in the game and are pleased to report there is no blowing going on here. The racing mechanics are sound and the controls are responsive, which makes for a fun kart experience. Your goal, as in the PS3 game, is to outrace your opponents through windy tracks filled with hazards, weapons, jumps, and shortcuts. An interesting new wrinkle to this solid set of mechanics is a new stomp move added to the PSP game that lets you smack around an opponent even if you don't have a weapon on hand. One of the big keys to the game's success here is the framerate which is fast and smooth even in its unfinished state. The game's audio wasn't quite as polished up as the visuals were so we didn't get a proper sense of what to expect, but we reckon it should be pretty close to what we've heard in the PS3 game.

So after going through Modnation Racers PSP, our big question was around how or if the game was going to synch up with the PS3 title. The team was pretty tight lipped on any cross platform communication or functionality, although they noted that their goal as well as that of United Front Games was to make the best possible game experience on each of the platforms. We'll be curious to see just what, if anything, ends up going on between the two platforms but we have to say that the PSP does stand up pretty well all on its own.

Based on what we saw and played, Modnation Racers is shaping up to be one of the most promising PSP titles we've seen this year. The game's smart and faithful conversion of the PS3 game is an impressive feat matched only by its smooth framerate. Anyone hungry for some kart racing or content creating on their PSP will do well to keep an eye out for the game. Modnation Racers is slated to ship later this year for the PSP in tandem with the PlayStation 3 game, look for more on both in the coming months.