If you dont know anything about the game this quote sums in up nicely

"Armies of Armageddon: WDK 2K takes place far in the future on a depleted and depressed Earth where game players must battle their way through 30 scenarios to complete the campaign game. The storyline is rich and beta testers have reported bonding with their in-game soldiers. With an awesome array of weapons and vehicles at their command, players have the variety they crave from today's strategy offerings."

This week Gamelinks has come up with a detailed preview on Diablo2. The preview doesn't show anything new but is a good summary for all of the newbies to the Diablo2 community. Read it here.

Let’s get this out of the way first: Nox may look like any number of the isometric RPGs that have appeared over the past couple of years, but it is, at its roots, an action game. Everything runs in real time, and a decent portion of gameplay consists of running around the various maps battling enemies with clicks of the mouse. The interface Westwood has created for all of this appears simple at first – run with the right mouse button, attack with the left mouse button – but becomes more complex as the player accrues spells or items. Luckily, there are also a series of hotkeys to make things easier.

SWAT 3 is a realistic style first person shooter, but this isn't just Rainbow Six with badges here. Unlike Rogue Spear, you do not have carte blanche to go around blasting everyone willy nilly. You are a police officer, and your first priority is to arrest and subdue the suspects in the game. From a more practical standpoint, you'll usually be on missions where there are innocent civilians or hostages present, so the less bullets you have to spray around, the better. Fortunately for us trigger happy Quake-types, there are times when you have no choice but to fire on the perpetrators. If you're good (or just feeling generous), you can choose to knock down criminals without killing them by double tapping them in the knees, or some other non vital area. In a lot of cases, it can be more effective to spray low anyway, because many of the enemies in SWAT 3 are decked out in body armor. But in general, you will get a better score if you can use tactics to get terrorists/bank robbers/kidnappers to surrender without having to shoot them. And yes, you perverts, this means that you get to play with handcuffs!

The first is a large article, found here on what info is revealed from the gameplay videos released a few days ago.

As for the weapons :-) we have ‘Pig Sticker’ Combat Knife, 9mm Black Panther, .44 Silver Talon Semi-automatic, B-42 (Berserker) 12-gauge shotgun, Raptor Submachine gun, Eagle Eye Sniper Rifle and M202A2 Rocket Launcher. The ‘Pig Sticker’ Combat Knife is the ultimate stealth weapon able to slice your enemies and a good aiming player can throw them. The 9mm Black Panther is compact but packs a nasty punch, especially to the head :-). The .44 Silver Talon Semi-automatic is basically a magnum and is very powerful. B-42 (Berserker) 12-gauge shotguns are devastating at close range but at a distance it will just piss them off :-). The Raptor Submachine gun is a nice fast firing gun good at taking people out fast. Eagle Eye Sniper Rifles are great for taking those long distance headshots. The M202A2 Rocket Launcher is very powerful but also make sure you are not standing behind it when fired due to the back blast.

The Rift stands out with its radical new unit designs, including two alien races like nothing ever seen in a 3D RTS, including an space-born race with organic, undulating motion; smooth Newtonian physics based motion, including intertia and angular momentum; and dynamic, 3D playfields across the galaxy that provide a new twist on gameplay: the solar systems are always in motion, so the battlefield is always changing.

Of course we all know that alternate timelines exist. Even academic types know it -- they just call them "counterfactual histories" to throw us off. The last such split between timelines occurred back in 1900. For a while, no one noticed the difference. The Boer War ended as normal, the teddy bear was introduced and Walt Disney was born. Seems normal enough, right? But things began to take a strange turn just before the Russian Revolution. Tsar Alexander murdered his aging father and took over control of the Russian Empire. The Revolution was averted and the Tsar got the drop on Hitler for the title of World's Most Evil Lunatic. He mobilized his country to invade all of Europe. The nations of Europe allied against him and World War II took a very different turn. Why hasn't Harry Turtledove picked up on this one?

The game based on this actual fictional history is Codename Eagle. At first glance it seems as if Codename Eagle is a simple first-person shooter with a WWII context. But this game is a lot more. Apart from the normal FPS action that you might normally expect, Codename Eagle also offers the chance to jump into the driver's seat of several vehicles including motorcycles, tanks and biplanes. You play as the special agent known only as "Red." Along with a lady named Goggles and a guy named Mortar, you will be sent deep behind enemy lines to sabotage the Russian war effort.

Battlezone 2 is a fun game that will keep you occupied, but is plagued with some fatal flaws in the AI as well as some simply boring missions. If you liked Battlezone I would definitely buy this sequel. If you never played the original you should consider picking up a copy, assuming you are a fan of other action/strategy games. While fun, it is nothing innovative, in fact the game may feel like a dumbed down version of the original to many veteran players. The game is fun, but is simply not groundbreaking.

In October 1999, C&C2: Tiberian Sun came along and stormed the charts. Yet it also divided the Westwood and Command & Conquer faithful into 2 opposing groups of thought. One thinks simply and straight that TS is the best ever, hands down. The extreme other yet thinks that Westwood is launching a freefall down to the depths of murky gaming, with worse and worse titles like Lands of Lore 3 and comical Red Alert expansion packs preceding TS. It's Firestorm's duty to unite these two... perfectly.

The first details from the Square Millennium conference in Yokohama Japan have just come in. Square has officially announced not just one Final Fantasy game but three. The focus of the show was the online capability of the PlayStation 2 and the future of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy IX was officially announced for the PSX and Final Fantasy X and XI for the PS2.

- A number of changes have been made in order
to fix the slowdown problems that have been
occurring. A broken resource servicing loop has
been fixed. An optimization has been made to
rectangle calculations for floater messages to
avoid doing it more often than necessary.
Finally, the capturing and releasing of resource
shares in the AI thread have been optimized.

- The disc swapping bug between CD2 and CD3
(and potentially others as well) has been fixed.
You should not be asked to provide more than
one CD during area transitions.

- After level 20, fighter's Attacks Per Round will
no longer drop to 1.

- The bug where a blank dialog box would pop
up when trying to advance levels has been fixed.

- A cutscene firing problem when first entering
the Dead Nations has been fixed.

- Numerous items that were improperly being sold
for 1cp have had their prices modified.

- Numerous infinite experience and/or copper
bugs were fixed.

- Numerous spells have been fixed in their
interactions with cutscenes as well as player
death and resurrection.

- A number of stats rolling over to 0 have been
fixed.

- Lockup when leaving Ravel's Maze through
portal should be fixed.

- Interactions between and number of spells and
the Autopause function have been fixed.

- Dakkon is no longer able to equip any weapons
except for his Karach Blade.

- Many spell tweaks have been made.

- Numerous bugs concerning Lothar have been
fixed. He should no longer kill the player
inexplicably nor disappear.

- A problem with equipping a faction-specific
weapon while in multiple factions has been fixed.

- A fix has been applied for the problem of AI
turning off after application of the patch.

- A problem with swapping portraits causing loss
of tooltips has been fixed.

- The problem with mulitple stat bonuses not being
applied that was introduced in the beta patch has
been fixed (the Charisma bug).

*Possible Spoiler
- You should be able to Raise Dead with the
Divine Censer now.

*Possible Spoiler
- A problem with firing off the Fhjull betrayal
cutscene has been fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- Bringing Morte to the Fortress after keeping
him out of your party for most of the game
should now allow the endgame movie to play
properly.

*Possible Spoiler
- Adahn's Dagger is no longer as fragile as it
was.

*Possible Spoiler
- Mebbeth can now cast Remove Curse on
the player.

*Possible Spoiler
- Training in axes with Marquez will no longer
allow you to get past 5 in proficiency.

*Possible Spoiler
- Nordom's infinite dialog loop when helping
Mourns-for-Trees is fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- A number of problems with Morte's kidnapping
cutscene have been fixed.

*Possible Spoiler
- It is now possible to get fake letters for Juliette
even if the Print Shop is closed to you.

*Possible Spoiler
- Lenny can no longer repeatedly train you as a
thief.

*Possible Spoiler
- The Transcendent One should no longer target
your dead companions.

*Possible Spoiler
- Annah's infinite dialog loop when talking to the
dead has been fixed.

To help attract both casual and hard-core gamers, Microsoft will offer gamers both a free server and premium server. In addition, with 3 unique civilizations, 18 types of fighter craft, 20 types of weapons, and huge space stations, Allegiance looks to offer the gut-wrenching fighting that action players crave, as well as deep and involved strategy that will allow for massive, fully orchestrated battles.

The game’s split into three sections; each section sports a different playable hero (Kurt, Max and Doc). The three character’s abilities are radically different, resulting in three totally different gameplay experiences; Kurt dons his super-suit, allowing him to glide and enter super-sniper mode. Stealth is the key to his survival, and long-distance battles are won with the ultra-powerful sniper scope. Max, on the other hand, can take the most hits; frontal assaults and overwhelming firepower are his tools of the trade (and when you’re running around, wielding four gatling guns, few monsters will block your way for long).

The first website is Gamefoolz. Gamefoolz is a new webpage with some rather cute and funny articles. Presently they have an article up BattleNet adds, Starcraft+Crack and Diablo Spotlight. You can visit Gamefoolz at http://gamefoolz.virtualave.net/. A good site I think I'll add them to my board list.

Secondly we have a preview of Theif2 over at Daily Radar. Yesterday I mentioned a Theif2 preview at pc.ign, this preview however covers different information and give some new detail. Read the preview.

Finally here is a preview of Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. The Fallen is an action FPS sci-fi game that should definately be looked out for. If you want to read the preview head here.

"Here is the latest online only game from Microsoft and it's really neat. Join a space combat force as a fighter, bomber, or even the commander. Work with other players to organize your forces and destroy the enemy. This open beta is a chance to play the game for free while bug-checking it for Microsoft. It's a great game and a new twist to the online only genre. Have fun!"

For a list of download mirrors to download the game go to GameRevolution here.

PC.IGN have a detailed preview of the up and comming Thief2 with screenshots aswell as older information on the game for people who dont know anything about it. Theif2 looks like it will be an AMAZING game so I recommend all of the FPS fans check out the preivew. PC.IGN preview.

"Fox Interactive, entertainment industry leader and developer of computer and video game software, announced today that it will launch 'Aliens vs. Predator Gold Edition' this Spring for the PC. AVP Gold features an enhanced version of the original game, Aliens versus Predator, plus new game engine enhancements, the Millennium Add-on Pack and the Official Strategy Guide from Prima Publishing"

NWGN: Now for the question that is on everyone's mind, how much money have you made from all the various tournaments you have won, and if you were to go full-time professional gamer, how much do you estimate you could make?

X'Ds~Grrrr: During the last 6 months I earned almost $35k US$, but I guess that if I go to Korea my chances to get more is good. However, the standard of play has increased so much

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Same Kool-Aid, different color?" If not, you can extrapolate its meaning and apply it here. There is very little about this expansion that can be deemed original or innovative. If Outrage had simply added more of the same great gameplay, I would have given Descent 3: Mercenary a better score. As it is, a truly fabulous game model has been reduced to mere mediocrity. There are a number of really cool features in this add-on, yet sadly, none of them live up to the high standards upon which the series is now judged.

It's boring, it's unoriginal, and it doesn't even live up to the eight-year-old game it's attempting to copy.

GSN: Now the game is starting to wrap up... any plans for the future? We know that Activision has the rights to Vampire: The Dark Ages and Kindred of the East from White Wolf.... Any plans on pulling a sequel from one of these licenses?

CH: Somewhere deep in the secret laboratory that is Nihilistic Software there are the seeds of a sequel to V:TM-Redemption. As of now, nothing is set in stone, but the Vampire universe is a rich and tempting treasure trove of material. Also, just to clarify: This current game is set in both the Dark Ages and the Modern Nights, with half the game occurring in each, chronologically.

"September 5, 1999, Blizzard shocked the world by announcing Warcraft III on their website, blizzard.com. It appears as though they are taking a bit of a turn from the traditional RTS game. They are calling Warcraft III the first Role-Playing Strategy game, aka RPS. Blizzard thought that Starcraft signified the climax of the RTS genre and decided it was time to move on."

I was excited to learn about a new gameplay type I have mentioned in the forums before called 'defend'. Tell us a little about this new gameplay option. Will we be able to play this in multiplayer?

Defend is really a single player game type. What we’ve done is given the player a starting location (a base, if you will), and you have to kill all the terrorists before they overrun your base. In some cases, the actual things you are defending can vary (a denonation button, a hostage, etc) but the gameplay is the same – keep the terrorists from reaching their objective! They will throw grenades at you, come in swarms or alternate attacking areas. Eventually, you’ll have to secure the area once you’ve fended off their initial attack, and that’s when they’ll ambush you!

Quick Note about Drivers:
If you play SoF on 3dfx hardware, you may experience a few driver bugs. On the DX7 Beta drivers, when the screen flashes to indicate you are hit, you may get random colors. Other cards / drivers may experience complete texturing problems (though SoF should disable those features in Gl which cause these problems). NOTE that these bugs are within the 3dfx GL drivers themselves, and are NOT SoF bugs! 3dfx is aware of these bugs, but I'm not sure when they will be able to address them.

GameSpot and Activision present the demo premiere of Soldier of Fortune. Take the role of a military mercenary and hit the road. You'll have to use your reflexes and your wits to negotiate tense hostage situations or take down terrorist encampments in any number of international locales; from the dark subways of New York City to the roof of a speeding train in Russia.

Raven Software has enlisted the help of real-life ex-Spec Op John Mullins to assist in Soldier of Fortune's development. Soldier of Fortune also uses Raven's new GHOUL rendering system, which adds a complex collision detection system to the game.

There are several new features in Version 333:

-Player ID (point your cursor at a player and see their name). It works with Disguise, too--moving your cursor over someone who is disguised will show the correct disguised name. You can turn this option off from the "Controls" menu.

-A voting system. Players can now vote to restart the server, kick an abusive player, ban an abusive player, and change a map in progress. In order for this to work, use the following syntax from the console:
vote restartserver
vote kick (example: vote kick TheAmazingFoodMan)
vote kickban (example: vote kickban Badaxe)
vote open (example: vote open arena_02)
In order for the vote to succeed, all players voting in the affirmative must type the same command. If you wish to vote no, simply do not enter any command. A majority is required before the command is executed. Only players who have installed this patch will be able to use the voting system.

-New log statements for players joining a team, leaving a team, and restarting the game, in order to better present the information to server administrators.

-A "Net Speed" menu option in the "Player Config" section of the "Multiplayer" menu. There are three settings: "Internet" (for 28.8 to 56K modem users), "Fast Internet" (for ISDN and cable modem users), and "LAN" (for DSL or faster connections)

Once the demo hits code release we will begin the final stage of the production schedule; balance and play testing. It is in this stage that we make sure that the game's difficulty settings are fully tweaked and that the game is a well-rounded, exciting, burst of action. It is also in this stage that we find and crush any stray level problems, code problems, sound problems, and art fixes. In short, we finish the game. There's still a lot to be done but we can finally see the finish line!

These 3 updates are strongly correlated and show my support for the Quake II Relay project (http://www.planetquake.com/relay). This Quake II server modification introduces an extension to the well known DM2 file format and it was my duty to describe it and support it in LMPC.

This project may show a new direction for the Machinima community. The modified server stores a recording during the game play in a file (similar to server recordings). This file can be edited (with LMPC and a text editor) and reloaded into the server. Now it can be replayed by any client, who connects into this server. If we can recreate a similar modification for Qake III Arena, we don't need any reverse engineering of the DM3 demo format or the network protocol at all.

The sport of Swamp Buggy Racing has been around as long as NASCAR, but it really is sport of Florida. That is where you will find the two tracks, one in Naples and the other in Fellsmere. It started out as a sport among friends racing their hunting trucks in the swamp. I have seen several Swamp Buggy Racing events on ESPN and TNN. Last year I made the trip down to Fellsmere to see first hand. It is a fun different motor sport.

If you've drank deeply from the well of expensive, high-end exotics but still come up thirsty with a raw Need For Speed, you've come to the right place. Hot rodders heaven. Motor City. The place where it all began but never ends.

A big thing I got in trouble for as child was complaining about having to stop watching a TV show called something like, "Why Didn't I Think of That?" to go help my parents stack wood. I wouldn't have been quite so perturbed, but Popeye had just made a guest appearance and coming up was an 8 year old's burrito holder invention… and it made me upset that I was unable to finish the show. I got in a lot of trouble for complaining about that, but let's pretend you live in a mystical world and go by the name of Joseph. Imagine now that you summon a demon to aid your fellow villagers in defeating enemy attackers only for the demon to turn around and slaughter your loved ones.

And I thought getting in trouble for complaining was bad.

Allegiance is about teamplay, its as simple as that. Every aspect of the game is geared towards cooperating with team members, and believe me, there is tons of aspects to this game. A good place to start is the scout role. This is the default ship in the conquest game, and one that is crucial to a successful mission. Scouts are meant to be skirmishers as well as the eyes of the entire team, at least until better sighted ships are invested. There are variables that each ship has, sight range, agility, speed, amt. of afterburners, armaments, shield and armor, and the list goes on. Each different ship is equiped with a combination of guns, energy weapons, and missiles.

You made some pretty amazing capture the flag levels for Unreal Tournament, what inspired them?

Thank you, I'm glad people like em. Each map had sort of its own way of being created. LavaGiant for example used to be a canyon type map, but I never liked it. Then I took that .dxf brush and turned it inside out. This created this big rock you could walk upon. Then I thought about the environment and turned it into a vast lava sea with that one rock sticking out from it. CTF-HallOfGiants spawned from listening to the Riven soundtrack and it was supposed to be a hall from a lost civilization that the Liandri miners stumbled upon deep down the earth. I had this picture in my mind; the miners breaking through the wall at the bottom of the Hall and realizing what they stumbled upon with some dramatic music and camera angles etc. So, basically, I never know where it will come from next.

Q: The screenshots show very dismal, gothic settings, which are very appropriate in relation to the Cthulhu Mythos. What were some of your visual inspirations that led to this particular style?

Researching how the environments should appear has been quite a challenge, especially as a lot of Lovecraft's stories were based in New England, and we all live in the original England! We have been scouring the web and libraries for a number of months in order to find source pictures, and we have a load of the Chaosium RPG publications that have been a big help. I have also been in contact with a number of Lovecraft fans via the Cthulhu newsgroup, and some of them have been able to provide me with photos they snapped while on pilgrimages to "Lovecraft Country," which have also helped out a great deal. It is clear from reading Lovecraft's writings that the visual representation of the world is very important.

BETA 5.2 changes :
- modified chasecam (to reduce lag)
mp_chasecam 0 : ghostmode only
mp_chasecam 1 : chasecam only
mp_chasecam 2 : both modes
- fixed crashing bugs
- updated de_train.bsp, fixed crash bug
- fixed scoreboard bugs (20 players not showing up)

DM-Aggressive-Tendencies][- by Chris "Plutonic" Blundell
DM-Brutality][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Meldrak][- by Sidney "Clawfist" Rauchberger
DM-Moribund][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Observatory][- by Mark "Oz" Austin
DM-Urban Arena][- by Rich "Akuma" Eastwood
DM-Siberia][- by Eric "Ebolt" Boltjes

I know that I'm going to get a ton of letters from Diablo addicts, but I have to say, straight out, that Nox's single player and multiplayer games are both worlds beyond what I've seen before. As we stated in our earlier previews (just scroll down to see what we've already written about this title), you are given three character class choices that will not only determine the abilities of your character, but also the entire storyline of the game. If you start as a Warrior character, for example, your journey will begin in the fortress city of Dun Mir. Here you must find a way to become part of the Warrior Lord Horrendous' elite band of Fire Knights before you move on to the land of Ix to try and find a solution to the problems that have been plaguing that realm. Conjurors begin in Ix, and have to face an invasion of Ogres before they're able to start feeling out other dangers in the realm. Finally, Wizards will start deep in the Southern Realms where they must try and rescue a powerful mage's apprentice from a cave filled with vicious critters. No matter where the players start, they will eventually began to see a pattern behind the horrors that face the land.

"The first time that you see the Saitek CYBORG stick 2000, it will instantly remind you of the movie Terminator II and it's dark glance into the future. This 23.5cm tall, 4-button flight-styled joystick immediately ignites the imagination, sending you that much closer to the ultimate simulation of your favourite game."