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A demo of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst has waltzed silently and elegantly onto the Internet by way of Gigex, 3D Gamers and the like, offering a brief taste of Cyan Worlds' 3D action-adventure title. We're not sure if this demo showcases the unlikely online aspect, but if you're curious enough to investigate then a 109MB download lies ahead of you. The game is due out this Friday according to publisher Ubisoft's most recent schedule.

More upgrades for Tron 2.0 have arrived. This 19MB update brings deathmatch to the world of Tron in the guise of Derez and Team Derez, supporting up to 16 players on three new maps. Strangely, the official update will only install on Windows XP systems, but there is an unsupported update around that will work on all Windows operating systems. Nice work there chaps.

Although all of Electronic Arts' Christmas line-up will roll out without online support on the Xbox this year, the publisher is still in talks with Microsoft about adopting the Xbox Live service and is hopeful of a resolution.

With the next Grand Theft Auto title still a year away and the coast clear on the Getaway expansion pack front, there's a definite gap for a city-based action title this Christmas, and it's hardly surprising to see Activision and Luxoflux stepping up to try and fill the void - someone was bound to. But although comparisons with GTA III and its multi-million-selling sequel are inevitable, True Crime actually does a good job of setting out its own stall, with more of an emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, gun-slinging car chases, a Getaway-style narrative, and almost RPG-like progression as stereotypical LA cop Nick Kang steps off suspension and finds himself fighting to wrestle the City of Angels out of the hands of high-rolling crooks, accumulating new tools, tactics and grapple holds along the way.

The PlayStation 2 bandwagon rolled on relentlessly last week, with Sony's nigh-on three year old machine continuing to outsell its younger, more powerful rivals by a massive margin.

Revolution fans in the vicinity of York might fancy a trip to their local Gamestation store this Saturday (15th), where Charles Cecil, the creator of the Broken Sword series, is showing up in person for a game signing session.

Brian Fargo's Phoenix-from-the-ashes outfit inXile has signed a European publishing deal with Acclaim for its Bard's Tale remake title due out next Autumn.

FIFA 2004 fought off a posse of new releases this week to maintain its headlock on the nation's top slot to make it three straight weeks at No.1 for EA.

Every week we compile a list of the games which we know to be available at retail that Friday, using data collected from oodles of publisher release schedules, online retailers and even down the phone from suspiciously youthful frontline sales folk, and one thing is usually pretty telling - "It's due out today, but we haven't had stock yet."

BioWare has confirmed in a post to its official forum that the PC incarnation of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has gone gold. As assistant producer Derek French puts it, "Let the crazyness begin!"

When you think about it, tennis first appeared as a videogame way back in 1972. Sure, it was a stripped down, basic, practically rule-free version of the game - but the blueprint was there nonetheless. Two white lines and a dot might be a far cry from Virtua Tennis, but the seminal Pong is still playable to this day, a true testament to its brilliance.

We like to think that age doesn't really come into it when we're playing videogames. In the mixed up muddled up shook up world of the gamer, one minute you're burning around the cuddly cartoon landscapes of Mario Kart: Double Dash, the next you're engaged in the stark horrors of World War II, ducking Nazi lead in the retaking of Red Square. So should you really care that Dog's Life is a kid's game? Surely we're all big kids anyway? Move over Rover and let Jake take over. We've got bumholes to sniff.

2D, 3D, CG, sprites, voxels, polygons - games may change, but one great big fat constant is that licensed games always stand a good chance of being rubbish. There's just something about the artificiality of the development process, the forced shoehorning of popular properties into the often borrowed framework of a game, that more often than not spawns disaffecting tripe unworthy and unaware of its heritage.

Sony has announced that Ghosthunter, the latest supernatural outing from Studio Cambridge, is on track for a November 28th release on PS2. Studio Cambridge will be hoping Ghosthunter can help them to bounce back after their last game, the much-hyped Primal, crashed and burned all over the place. Their previous games - C-12: Final Resistance and MediEvil - weren't all that bad, so we're keeping an open mind.

GameSpot reports that Microsoft Japan is expanding its "Xbox World Collection" range for the Pacific region, repackaging another batch of relatively accomplished English language titles with Japanese manuals and letting them go for a song.

Codemasters has released a demo of its game based on the hugely popular Pop Idol TV show, giving you the chance to try and impress the notoriously awkward judging panel with one of four pre-rolled contestants and various matching costumes.

Sony's online military action title, SOCOM II: Navy SEALs, has broken US console online gaming records, clocking up 22,000 simultaneous players within its first 48 hours on sale in the USA.

It's 5pm on November 5th and I'm driving home from the movies. Having taken the afternoon off to watch the disappointing conclusion of an epic movie trilogy, I'm left thinking that this doesn't compare to what came before, that the directors have lost sight of what made the first film so special, and that the subsequent events they've dreamt up are largely superfluous and unfulfilling. I'm disappointed, but I did find the experience vaguely compelling, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

As much as we're looking forward to the next Medal Of Honor, we were convinced that the 'real' deal would be found in Call of Duty, Allied Assault's thinly disguised pseudo-sequel, produced by two dozen former 2015 inmates. After numerous tempting demos, presentations and even an extensive hands-on preview, we just went ahead and bought a copy from the US - such was our salivating requirement to sample what appeared to be the best World War II related FPS yet.

Revered pool-coding smarty man Archer Maclean is set to return to the PC and make a debut on consoles (GBA excluded) with his new pool project, Pool Paradise, developed with the team at Awesome Studios. Sounding like a cross between Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and… well, pool, players travel to an island in the South Pacific to take part in an island pool tournament. Money earned in the tournament can then be spent on game aids and "bizarre items", or be used to unlock sub-games and secret island locations.

TV on the blink? Keep having to swap cables around from your shiny DVD player over to the dusty old watermill powered VCR when the kids want to watch their My Little Pony videos or whatever? Just plain don't like having a whole bunch of kit all over the place with wires dangling out the back, across the floor and up your trouserleg? Well thankfully John Lewis could well have the answer to all these dilemmas and more (cheers otto) with this neat little bundle featuring not only a 21" Toshiba TV/DVD/VCR combination unit, but a free GameCube to boot! For £499! So get arm-twisting and perhaps you could bag yourself a pretty nifty Christmas present deal. For the kids, of course.

It's always gutting for us when we can't bring you reviews on or ahead of release, but due to review code and staff issues in the last week (we broke Rob), we're unable to bring you our verdicts on Top Spin or True Crime: Streets of LA this frosty Friday morning. (Aside: weather conditions are sponsored by your truly getting up at 7:30 to pay £450 for some arse to change his brake pads and windscreen wipers.) However! We do plan to let you know what we think of two of the other big cellophane-wrapped lovelies glistening in the dew, namely Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike and Call of Duty. The former will definitely be featured later, and the latter almost certainly will be - so watch out for that!

Do you like trains? We mean a lot. We don't just mean in a way that makes you think "Yeah I like trains. Pretty useful, I'd say." We mean do you like them? Because if so, then there's a good chance you'd make an excellent Railroad Tycoon, wouldn't you agree? If so, then this story is for you. However, even if you don't really like trains all that much there's no reason you can't try your hand at being one. A Railroad Tycoon, that is. To see if you cut the mustard in the world of railroad management, why not grab a hold of this new 128MB Railroad Tycoon 3 demo, complete with two tutorials, a single scenario and a sandbox map? It certainly seems like the perfect opportunity to us. Choo!

The PC version of Pro Evolution Soccer 3 has slipped a week to November 21st according to the latest information we've received from Konami this week. The PS2 version of the game, released on October 17th, is one of our top games of the year - you can read our review here.

Popular US Army recruitment tool America's Army has reached version 2.0 absolutely stuffed to the gills with new kit, much of which we won't pretend to understand. The lengthy and detailed list of changes is available here.

Monolith has released a single player demo of Contract JACK, its No One Lives Forever spin-off prequel to go alongside the multiplayer demo that was released just last week. The 129MB demo (available from 3D Gamers and Gamer's Hell) features both chapters two and four from the full game.

Activision has announced its financial results for the second quarter of this fiscal year, announcing lower net revenues than the equivalent period last year and a $10.1 million loss, blaming "a significantly smaller release schedule" and pointing to a number of big releases in its third quarter, including Tony Hawk's Underground, True Crime, Call of Duty (those two are out today in Europe) and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. Titles due out after Christmas include Tenchu: Return from Darkness on Xbox, Pitfall and MTX: Mototrax for PS2.

Namco's comic book-based Spawn: Armageddon title has gone gold and will be released on PS2, Xbox and GameCube in the States very soon, and presumably in the near future over here in Europe.

Novelist Robert Crais has dropped his lawsuit against Activision and other parties involved with True Crime: Streets of LA, which is due out today in Europe.

Remember when Nintendo sponsored the London Fashion Week? And we all pointed and, well, laughed? Well apparently the Big N still has aspirations for the catwalk, as they've just unveiled this (well, [points left], that) Game Boy Advance SP carry case, designed by Leather specialist Mulberry in stylish Matt Glove - not a person, apparently, but some sort of look or something.