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Not to be outdone by... everybody else... DreamCatcher Games has announced its E3 line-up this week. DreamCatcher is one of those publishers who seem to be on the up lately, with a nice mix of interesting PC titles - the recently released Painkiller (which placed respectably in the UK Charts this week) proving in the eyes of CEO Richard Wah Kan that "we're serious about our action titles."

EA is to show six of its biggest games to press in California tomorrow ahead of May's nuclear games show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

US developer Point of View has denied rumours that it has started work on a game based on Kiefer Sutherland juggernaut 24, but has admitted that the Fox product it is beavering away on, The Shield, will cut close to the acceptability bone in every respect.

With E3 just weeks away line-ups for the show are starting to appear, and Cenega has joined the list of publishers vying for column inches to showcase its, um, showcase. We are of course only too happy to oblige. Cenega will be situated in the Kentia Hall (booth 6021), and its 2004 line-up will be supported by a first look at a couple of the publisher's big titles for 2005, which - judging by the press release - will probably appear on PC and next-generation consoles.

April is traditionally the month that publishers start to announce their line-ups for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and this morning Ubisoft became the first to unveil its plans in any detail. It's an arresting line-up, too. In fact, the French publisher stands a decent enough chance of having one of the most exciting line-ups at the show full stop. No wonder it was in such a hurry to come clean.

According to a report at Polygon by way of Dorimaga, Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki plans to unveil several new projects at E3 2004 in Los Angeles next May.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced another expansion pack for interminably popular MMORPG EverQuest. "Omens of War" raises the player level cap to 70, and introduces new zones, new epic weapons (available on completion of any of 16 "epic quests"), a new task system, and some other tweaks which are covered in some detail on the game's official website. Omens of War should be available via SOE's digital distribution system in July for $30, and we'd imagine Ubisoft will pick it up as they have with previous expansions for publication in Europe. More details no doubt to follow.

Britsoft company Codemasters has confirmed that it will publish Free Radical Design's ambitious psychic action game Second Sight on PS2, Xbox and Cube later this year, following our report last month to that effect. Second Sight will be unveiled properly at E3 next week on Codemasters' stand, and the publisher has released a number of screenshots along with today's announcement. You can read our preview of the game from February here.

Details of Vivendi's forthcoming Predator title have crept imperceptibly into the open this week courtesy of an official webpage uncovered by 1UP. "Predator: Concrete Jungle" is a third-person action game in development at Eurocom for PS2 and Xbox, and forms part of VU Games' E3 line-up, confirmed this week.

Activision plans to release a sequel to Tony Hawk's Underground (THUG) within the current fiscal year (which runs until March 31st 2005), according to comments made by chairman and CEO Robert Kotick in the publisher's latest financial report.

Speculation that Sony is preparing to unveil the sequel to ICO - one of the PS2's most beautifully emotive and absorbing adventure titles - looks set to increase as we close in on next week's E3 trade show, following a report on Quiter that claims Sony Computer Entertainment registered "NICO" as a trademark in Japan towards the end of February.

Rockstar has announced Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition for PS2 and Xbox, due out in both Europe and the States this Christmas, currently undergoing development at the publisher's San Diego branch (better known in the past as Angel Studios). There's currently no word on PC or Cube versions.

As part of EA's E3 line-up announcement today, the all-consuming uber-publisher finally took the wraps off Free Radical Design's TimeSplitters Future Perfect, which is now officially due out on PS2, Xbox and GameCube in early 2005 with online co-op and competitive play in the PS2 version.

Ubisoft has officially announced the final name for the latest game in The Settlers series, which previously went by the working title of The Settlers 5. According to the French publisher, The Settlers: Heritage of Kings is the name of the Blue Byte-developed strategy game, which we can look forward to playing by the end of 2004, and even sooner if we happen to make our way past Ubisoft's booth at the E3 trade show next week. For (a few) more details on the next Settlers title, look to our previous coverage, which also includes a few screenshots. More next week.

THQ has officially announced its plans for the WWE franchise during fiscal 2005 (ending March 31st 2005), spanning PS2, Cube, Xbox and indeed Game Boy Advance.

Ion Storm has finished work on the PC version of Thief: Deadly Shadows, publisher Eidos announced this week, and American gamers should be able to get their hands on it from May 25th onwards. European gamers will have to wait a little longer, probably around a month, but the expectation is that we'll see it before the end of June. An Xbox version of the game is due in late 2004.

If you turned up at our house today wearing dark glasses and a sharp suit, strapped us to a chair and demanded we single out one brilliant thing about Introversion Software's Uplink, we'd probably have to point to the game's timeless quality. Unlike, for example, all the other games we play, it wasn't reliant on hefty poly counts, bump mapping and other technical words we pretend to understand, instead offering a conspiratorial hacking game set on the internet of 2010, and a fairly enjoyable one to (re)boot.

Britsoft developer Argonaut has updated its website to reveal that the company is working on software titles for both Sony's PlayStation Portable and Nintendo's DS handheld platforms.

White boots. When a footballer steps onto the pitch in white boots, there's a sort of air of expectancy around him. He looks like he's running differently. He looks like he should be special. So, when it emerges that he's actually Phil Neville, and he gets nutmegged by some random Swedish attacker, we understandably get a little angry. "Get back in your clunky 20 quid knock-offs you back-pedalling moron!" we all yell at the TV screen.

EyeToy: Chat will be the next title to utilize Sony's popular webcam, the company announced this afternoon, with the London Studios-developed online title set to introduce "a whole new world of communication" to gamers living rooms when it hits the shelves later this summer.

Britsoft developer Sports Interactive continues to grow its roster of sports management titles, announcing the addition of Out of the Park Baseball to its line-up this afternoon.

Following on from Namco's E3 line-up announcement yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has confirmed that it will publish the latest Time Crisis title Crisis Zone on this particular continent this autumn. Crisis Zone joins an array of other PS2-exclusive Namco titles on SCEE's release list, including Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2 (May 28th), Death by Degrees and Ace Combat 5 (both Q1 2005).

As promised last month, full versions of Tribes and Tribes 2 are now available for free, both for FilePlanet subscribers and folks who have registered for the basic, free account, thankfully. Tribes 1 weighs in at 135.7MB and can be had here, while the heftier 538.6MB Tribes 2 package can be found here. If you've never played Tribes, you really ought to give it a go, and Vivendi-Universal Games deserve a bit of credit for taking this bold step - even if it is just to drum up support for the forthcoming Tribes: Vengeance, which should be on display at E3 in LA next week.

Having confirmed our original story some time ago, EA has finally taken the wraps completely off its new GoldenEye title for PS2, Xbox and Cube, and not only is it nothing to do with Free Radical Design - a developer consisting of many ex-Rare personnel who worked on the celebrated N64 GoldenEye title - but in narrative terms it is also about as far removed from the N64 original and its cinematic progenitor as you could feasibly get without dispensing with the name completely. Which, given the recognition factor in the name and the publisher's desire not to completely piss off the hardcore with its sacrilegious efforts, was probably the idea all along.

It was obvious that the Knockout Kings series had run its course. EA had to draw a line under the title to totally reinvent it for a determined return to the ring, fighting fit and ready claim the crown back from Rage, which unexpectedly landed a killer blow to the chops with Rocky just before the Britsoft publisher's inevitable demise.

Codemasters has announced this year's range of its Club Football titles, with PS2, Xbox and (for the first time) PC versions set to launch this coming autumn as the 2004/05 footy season gathers pace.

When we first fired up Transformers (formerly Transformers Armada: Prelude to Energon), we had to check our PS2 for false screens, mirrors and secret branches of Pixar. No way in hell was a PS2 doing that, we blurted, as an aircraft carrier we were running around on transformed and started attacking us from about a mile above sea-level. But it was. And we were impressed. And with the game out this May 7th from Atari, we tracked down the game's director and executive producer Andrew Carter at Melbourne House and demanded answers...

IO Interactive scored its first UK All Formats No.1 today with the release of the third Agent 47 title, Hitman Contracts (No.1 PS2, No.2 Xbox, No.3 PC), which prevented EA scoring yet another chart topper, as Fight Night was forced to settle for a No.2 debut (No.2 PS2, No.3 Xbox). Last week's No.1, TOCA Race Driver, slipped to No.3 after one week at the top.

Often, when it comes sports games, the desire for authenticity of statistics, tournaments and players is more than enough in the punter's mind to justify certain shortcomings on the field itself. FIFA Football, for example, outsells the vastly superior Pro Evolution Soccer series on an annual basis, largely thanks to EA's skills in moulding David Beckham, Thierry Henry and the like out of digital clay, as Andy Gray and John Motson's commentary faithfully charts their convincing path through prestigious tournaments we all watch on television year in, year out. As a result, reviewers are just as often left gasping for superlatives in a hopeless attempt to play down the significance of the presentation, and tip a few more people in the direction of the superior product. It doesn't work.

Ubisoft has announced that it will publish Square-Enix's Star Ocean: Till The End of Time on PS2 in Europe this autumn, proving once and for all that we were right to yell things about "dirty old slappers" when we trudged through the developer's chunkily bordered Final Fantasy X a couple of years ago. If there's one thing you can say for Squenix, it doesn't discriminate when it comes to leaping into bed.