GAME.NET Weekly Newsletter 26th September 2003

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Fully clickable version here - http://play.game.net/newsletters/26thSeptember.htm


GAME.NET News
I mentioned last week about our new hardware site TechNation launching and already the boys & girls at the site have been pumping out the articles, here's a list of the most recent items:

Modding - Building a Fanbus
Modding - Building an LCD Display
Processors - P4 HT Extreme Edition vs Athlon 64 FX 51
If you are dreaming about a new computer sometime in the next few months then I would recommend checking out the third article as it compares the hottest new processors that are about to be unleashed on the PC market.

New to our Bookables & Clan Servers this week is the ChaosUT2: Evolution mod for Unreal Tournament 2003, the main selling point of this mod being the souped-up weapons that come with it that overpower most that are available in the original UT2K3 release. If you fancy giving this mod a try you will need to download the 38 MB pr102, along with the 28 MB Map Pack.

Server Updates this week are as follows, any files that need to be downloaded can be found in the Files & Patches section below:
Half-Life Adrenalin Game mod updated to v6.5 (Steam-compatible)
RavenShield booking pages now allow PunkBuster to be turned on / off
Unreal Tournament 2003 mutator AntiTCC now running v1.08
Counter-Strike preview server is now running AdminMod
SpearHead server dll's updated to help with crashing servers
BattleField 1942 mod Eve of Destruction patched to v0.21

What's On
Sunday 28th September 2003
Operation Flashpoint @ 17:00
Counter-Strike @ 20:00
Monday 29th September 2003
Elite Force II @ 19:00
Half-Life: Team Fortress Classic @ 21:00

Tuesday 30th September 2003
Battlefield 1942 @ 20:30
Vietcong @ 21:00


Wednesday 1st October 2003
Medal of Honor @ 19:00
Natural Selection @ 19:00
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 20:00
Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat @ 21:00

Thursday 2nd October 2003
Half-Life: Day of Defeat @ 20:30
Half Life: Team Fortress Classic (TFC) @ 21:00

Friday 3rd October 2003
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory @ 13:00

Files and Patches
Trailers
A fair range of games covered this week in terms of eye candy, the first to mention being for Mafia-style game called Chicago 1930, the twist in this RPG being that you can choose to be either the traditional Tony Soprano Jnr or, if you prefer, play the cops and try to bring down the crime families district by district. There's already been one trailer for this game that was packed with in-game footage, another (coming in at 36 MB) has been released and can be downloaded by clicking here. The battle between good and evil also plays a big part in the ongoing Max Payne storyline and following on from last week's trailer for the second game in the series we have five in-game movies featuring some of the amazing effects and uber-cool slow-motion that really does take expectations up another notch. You can download the 71 MB zip file that contains all five movies by clicking here, afterwards make sure you pre-order Max Payne 2, due out in under a month!

Vehicles of all kind play a big part in the next bunch of trailers, the first being for Ford Racing 2, the full game giving you the choice of 32 Ford cars (obviously focusing mainly on the Mustangs and Thunderbirds of this world rather than the Fiestas & Sierras) but until it is released in October you will have to make do with this 10 MB trailer that gives you over a minute of gameplay footage to look at. Another motorised sequel that has already been released is the Rush Hour expansion pack for Sim City 4, you can download a tank or skywriting trailer, both of which show off new aspects of the game with regards to clearing areas of land and keeping your Sims entertained.

With Medal of Honor's latest expansion pack Breakthrough being released this past week the battle is on to win the hearts & minds of those FPS gamers who like the WW2 sub-genre, the guys behind the rival Call of Duty releasing a flood of new gameplay footage in the following trailers, all about 10-15 MB in size:
Stalingrad approach (from Enemy at the Gates)
Squad Tank Assault
Medic Recovery
Squad Combat Movements
Shellshock Effect
Night Assault
Pathfinder
Vehicle to Vehicle Combat #1
Vehicle to Vehicle Combat #2
Close Quarters Combat
Also available for you to download is a movie for the extreme carnage FPS game Nitro Family, elements of fantasy very much in a real-life world with things like a girl riding on your back as you storm through levels, mid-air combo killing, hyper-bombing destruction and Ecstasy-induced hallucinations. As you would expect for a game powered by the Serious Sam engine this looks like a whole lot of "blowing stuff up" fun-orientated action, you can see for yourself by downloading the 15 MB trailer here.

Playable Demos
If you are as annoyed as I am with the news that Half-Life 2 has been delayed then you can pass some of the time between now and then by checking out the plethora (oo-err) of new demos released this week, enough to keep you maxxing out your download bandwidth for at least a day or two.

Starting off this section I should mention that an official version of the Worms 3D demo has been released, a leaked copy was available last week but you can now download the official 67 MB demo by clicking here, the demo giving you the option to play one map against a friend with a limited number of weapons. Instead of blowing stuff up you could alternatively try the more sedate and mentally taxing exploits of Bridge It, this Bridge building game featuring some lush graphics and a variety of scenarios to overcome, the 177 MB demo (available here) giving you the chance to see the game is not quite as boring as it might sound :).

Next up we have a couple of franchise games to mention, the first being the animal-loving Deer Hunter 2004, a game that even sports a Multiplayer aspect so you can kill Bambi in the company of your friends. If you fancy having a look you can grab the 120 MB demo by clicking here, it includes one of the various hunting areas from the full game for you to go roaming in. Even though I think most of us probably consider Deer Hunter to be for geriatrics only it is really popular over in the US of A, nevertheless a more popular export in this country has been the Tiger Woods series of games and a playable demo for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 has been released, the 85 demo (available here) lets you play a few holes from the St. Andrews course, having played the full game a little I would thoroughly recommend it.

A couple of futuristic demos to get your mitts on next with a 145 MB demo for the much-hyped FPS game Dredd vs Death being released, this demo allowing you to play a story section and a couple of the arcade portions from the full game. Also available is a 60 MB demo for Space Empires: StarFury, this being an Elite / Privateer / FreeLancer style game with the options to follow pre-set missions or "do your own thing", the demo (available here) giving you a good idea of what to expect in the full game, includes some of the ship vs. ship combat which is so often what makes or breaks these types of games.

Perhaps it is the time of the year but for some reason there has been a deluge of "Ye olde" fantasy-related demos released this week. In fact the only other demo to mention this week that doesn't go back to medieval times is for Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi, a game billed as a cross between "an FPS and survival horror story" you bid to free your friends and family from a massive gothic castle that has been infested with Vampires and other sorts of nasty ghouls. The 211 MB demo (available here) should give you a good idea as to what to expect from the full game that is already available in Europe, although I've found it hard to track down where you can get it from here in the UK.

Moving on to those "Ye olde" games then and the first two to mention are for tie-ins to The Lord of The Rings films, the first being the RTS game War of the Ring. The 119 MB demo (available here) gives you the chance to play two of the "good" story-based missions from the full game, meanwhile if 3rd-Person action games are more your cup of tea then you can download the 89 MB demo for the Return of the King game by clicking here, the demo allowing you to play as Gandalf and dip into part of the storyline as you battle an Orcish horde.

Rivalling the War of the Ring game for the hard-earned cash of RTS players in early November will be the Lords of EverQuest game, a massive 372 MB demo has been released for this one and allows you to play a Tutorial mission along with the option for a Multiplayer game with two of the Shadowrealm lords. You can download the monster demo by clicking here, there will be more to come as this is just the first in a series of demos that will be release in the build-up to the game hitting the shelves. If your Cable or DSL hasn't been melted already you can also download the 443 MB demo for KnightShift (aka Once Upon a Knight), due out later this year you can get a taste of this RTS / RPG game in this demo which features part of the first campaign and also an RPG quick-mission, hopefully also including some of the cow-chucking which has been such a key part of the publicity for this game that I have seen. Dwarfed by those two demos is the 104 MB one for Chaos Legion, this fantasy RPG game puts you in the role of a Knight who can summon warrior legions to aid you in your quest, if it sounds like your cup of tea you can check it out by clicking here.

Game Patches
The bulk of the proper game patches / new content I've come across this week relate to Chrome, the FPS adventure game that was released last Friday, here's a list of all the files that we've added to our FTP for it:
English version game patch taking it to v1.1.1.0 (8 MB)
5 Islands official map (11 MB)
Arena official map (17 MB)
BattledustEVO official map (7 MB)
Editor .dll fix (24 KB)
Also released this week was the Hellfire official map for the WarCraft 3 expansion pack Frozen Throne, you can download the tiny file by clicking here.

Mods
I'm thinking of renaming this section to "BattleField 1942 Mods" with another couple of mention this week, the first being an update to an existing mod we already support called Eve of Destruction which fixes various issues that were in the recent 200mb+ v0.20 release, the patch available in 6 MB form and taking it to version v0.21. New to our FTP is the Grand Prix mod for BF1942, taking advantage of the vehicle models in the game this modern-day F1 mod looks pretty decent although is still in the early stages, to play it you will need the 127 MB v2.0 full install and the tiny v2.0 to v2.1 patch.

Two other mods to mention this week include an update to the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Multiplayer mod called, originally enough, Multi-Theft Auto, the new version being v0.2 and allowing you to take on (and rob) your friends in a more stable environment than the previous version allowed. Carnage is also the key in Kanonball, a Half-Life mod with shades of the classic Speedball game that has been released in the past few days. As players you'll only need the 33 MB v1.0 client, although be careful what server you join as a server-side patch was rushed out to fix some bugs in the initial release.


Special Offers
If you have yet to lay your hands on a copy of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy then you should pop by the GAME shop site by clicking the game name, at the moment we are giving away a free Jedi Academy mouse mat when you buy the game online.

>From the same universe comes the Massively Multiplayer game Star Wars Galaxies, already a big hit over in the USA you can now pre-order the game from us with its scheduled release date currently the end of October.



Regards,

Dave "BigFoot" Angus
GAME.NET Community Liaison

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