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City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios has spoken about some of the changes it has planned for the forthcoming "issue three" update to its eminently popular superhero MMORPG.

With the Gulf War and Vietnam out of the way, SCi's Conflict series is turning its guns toward the war on terrorism, the UK publisher has revealed.

Continued shortages of PlayStation 2 hardware at retail have led Sony to take the drastic step of hiring cargo planes to fly consoles directly into affected territories in North America and Europe, according to the firm.

Former one-off awards programme Game Stars is set to become a regular fixture of TV schedules late next summer and autumn, the show's organisers announced this week.

Sports Interactive has patched Football Manager 2005 to version 5.0.2 on PC and Mac, and we've taken the trouble to mirror them on Eurofiles. Here be PC, here be Mac. And, for the record, it was trouble. Oh the faffing.

We can barely believe it either! But as Kristan toils away ceaselessly on something you've all been wanting to read for a few days now, here's another batch of your very own reviews to keep things fresh and interesting. Or, well, just interesting; some of these filtered into the wrong folder and only turned up when we were trying to find something else last night... Still, here they are, and if you have something to say about a game and need a place to say it (for example, a place which has more readers than any other gaming-related destination in these parts), please refer to the foot of the page for details on how to submit.

Typically, we're not inclined to sit around for two hours making small talk. We're not like that. Believe it or not, we have better things to do than arch our spines next to coffee tables making idle conversation about frightening-looking marble dogs perched in hotel lobbies. But then again, there are exceptions. Invite us round to see 25 minutes of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - the CG-based film that Square Enix is making to explore the fates of the cast of FFVII after the events of the game - for example, and, though we'll spend most of the time burning up inside with anticipation, we'll still sit around patiently for just about as long as it takes.

Publisher Oxygen Interactive has announced the latest addition to its release portfolio, with first person shooter Conspiracy: Weapons of Mass Destruction due to launch on PS2, Xbox and PC next March.

Although there's no word on when it'll be released (other than "When it's done."), the makers of Sven Co-op, the near-legendary co-operative play modification for Half-Life, have revealed that the Half-Life 2 version is well underway and outlined some of their plans for the first release and beyond.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture has declared Football Manager 2005 a threat to the country's "sovereignty and territorial integrity", claiming to have received "strong protests" from Chinese gamers about the inclusion of the Taipei region of Taiwan, the Hong Kong Macau region and Tibet as separate countries.

Codemasters has suspended development of its next Club Football game and made 18 people redundant as part of a review of its football portfolio, the British developer recently confirmed, but promised that its LMA series of footy management titles would continue and that most of the development team would be moved on to other projects.

Nintendo has revealed that Game Boy Advance title DK King of Swing (screenshots) - an unconventional Donkey Kong game featuring platform and puzzle elements, but largely based around swinging through trees using the L and R buttons - will launch alongside the GameCube's Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat (screenshots) on February 4th next year.

We have Ignition! ---'s press release here which says that Metal Slug Advance is due out on December 17th for £29.99. Hurray! According to product manager Peter Rollinson, MSA is "a new slant on one of SNK's most loved games," although said slant should in no way be construed as a third dimension, because MSA is another resolutely 2D side-scrolling shoot-everything-whilst-riding-a-camel-'em-up. We're looking forward to playing through its "five huge, gloriously detailed action-packed levels". On, er, December 17th.

Sony's American arm has confirmed (via sign language, presumably) that Rise of the Kasai, its forthcoming prequel to oft-underrated brutal sneak-and-kill-'em-up The Mark of Kri, will not feature an online co-operative mode as had previously been planned.

Need For Speed Underground 2 held off the might of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the second week running as driving games once again proved the biggest draw at the top of the UK charts.

As regular visitors to the site well know, we hold City of Heroes in high regard. High enough for the inimitable Kieron Gillen to call it "focussed excellence" in his 9/10 review of the US version. And although we imagine many of you have already been bitten by the superhero bug and saved the world countless times after buying it and downloading it online, we have a feeling that news that NCsoft Europe is accepting applications for a European beta will still be well received.

Having banned a whole bunch of users from the plains of Azeroth last week, World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has now ejected another 300 or so users guilty of using bot programs to automate their characters' actions and advance their progress without actually being at the keyboard.

An unlikely union of Halo 2 and Excel has been capturing the interest of statistically minded Xbox Live fans for whom Bungie.net's seven-day online game stats service just isn't detailed enough.

Electronic Arts has revealed that it's working on a new game in the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series in an email sent to fan site operators by VP and executive producer Mark Skaggs.

Laws banning the sale of 18-rated games to children need to be enforced more strongly and warnings on boxes should be clearer, according to the UK's trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt.

Sony Computer Entertainment America has offered to replace defective PlayStation Underground demo discs sent out recently in the USA with a free PlayStation 2 game, according to reports, following widespread condemnation of a bug in one of the demos which deleted Memory Card save game data rather unceremoniously.

We don't normally write about third party peripherals. Which begs the question: why don't we normally write about third party peripherals? Is it because we're peripherophobic? Is it because we don't have the time what with all the gamingness? Or is it because we only use first party stuff because the build quality is generally much better and we don't want to be that kid down the road who had the Turbo button who cheated at the mashing bits at the Millennial Fair in Chrono Trigger? Or is it because we waste our mornings writing useless paragraphs like this which serve no purpose other than to hold up the rest of the news item - news in general, in fact - and in the process rob ourselves of the opportunity to go out and seek new, brighter peripherals with better futures and functionality, which come from a land where all is pure and costs £12.99 or comes free when you buy two games for £19.99?

An internal memo from EA's senior vice president of human resources Rusty Rueff to staff at the company has revealed that the firm is contemplating a change to how it classifies jobs with regard to overtime eligibility.

With "Sid Meier's Pirates!" out now across Europe, and reviewed elsewhere on the site today, we tracked down the Firaxis chief and asked him what to expect, what happened to "Dinosaurs!", what's going on in the PC strategy genre right now and how he accounts for Firaxis's success in an increasingly tough market.

Blizzard Entertainment, developer of MMORPG World of Warcraft, has demonstrated that it intends to live up to its no-nonsense reputation when it comes to dealing with cheaters by revoking the accounts of a number of subscribers identified as using "speed hacks" to accelerate movement in-game.

Somewhat inexplicably, SEGA Europe has announced plans to release House of the Dead III on the PC, giving beige boxers the chance to tackle the company's most recent zombie lightgun shooter, which was released on Xbox in early 2003. The PC port will turn up next February, some two years late, and there's no word on the pricing; however SEGA has said the PC port will feature all the new bits that help it to stand out from HOTDs 1 and 2, including a big-old shotgun. We'll doubtless have a look at this when we can, but in the meantime you might like to refer back to Kristan's review of the Xbox version for a proper grounding.

It's easy for you. It's hot, you're invited to a mate's barbeque, and one of his other friends who you met in the pub once says "so, I'm a professional sheep-shearer from the mountains of Borneo - what do you do for a living?" Well, you say, I have a perfectly reasonable job that won't send attractive ladies into giggly fits, and won't provoke derisory comments from anybody over the age of 35. We, on the other hand, get to say "oh, I, er, I write about computer games for a living." Oh the stares. Oh the crippling agony of having your own eyes tunnelled through by Goldfinger-esque laser beams of pure loathing. Do they expect us to talk? No! They expect us to die! Whether it's a bloke or a bird, they'll probably find some reason not to like us. These days, we tell everyone that Eurogamer is a Norwegian, mafia-funded escort agency employing starving Danish buskers. Nobody gives a shit, and we escape unscathed.

As promised, here's another batch of Reader Reviews to round off the week, including a controversial take on DRIV3R amongst other things. For details on how to submit your own reviews, please refer to the bottom of the page.

Microsoft has released a swathe of new figures related to Bungie's Xbox opus, Halo 2, revealing that the title has now sold over five million units worldwide and become the most popular game in the history of Xbox Live.

Konami has revealed that the European version of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is definitely due out in March 2005 (various retailers have been quoting March 25th to us) and will feature various new modes to make up for the delay.