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Battlefield 1942 is set to get another good patching with the announcement from DiCE and EA that a 1.4 upgrade is in the works. There is no release date set for the patch yet, but some details on what we can expect in the way of changes have been revealed. These will include the fixing of a tank repair exploit meaning tanks can no longer repair in airplane hangars, an improved voting interface, a Linux server and two new guns - the DP 1928 Japanese assault rifle and the Type 99 Russian assault rifle.

InfogramesNotAtari division and Shiny have announced that Enter The Matrix has gone gold! All four versions (that's PS2, Cube, Xbox and PC) will ship on May 15th, the same day that The Matrix Reloaded goes on show in the US (and we all take time off from E3 to go and see it, ha!).

An official expansion for Infogrames' RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 has been officially announced. Wacky Worlds will naturally introduce new rides, scenery and attractions with settings based in all seven continents.

Valve has confirmed that Half-Life 2 will be on display at E3. And that's about it really. There's also talk of the game being due out by the end of the year (to mark the original's five-year anniversary), based on leaks at NVIDIA and elsewhere.

Midway has revealed Roadkill, a new combat driving title currently in development for PS2, Xbox and GameCube. No relation to the tremendous top-down Amiga racer of the same name, Roadkill actually bears more than a passing resemblance to one of our old favourites, Carmageddon.

There have been rumours of SSX3's development pretty much since Tricky first shipped, with tantalising but unsubstantiated nuggets of info appearing in several magazines over the last year - including the Official PS2 Mag here in the UK.

When Capcom told us that it planned to produce five GameCube-exclusive titles under the banner of a new studio… that wasn't what it meant, but the results so far are still unlike anything that's come out of the Japanese firm in ages. Product Number 03 didn't catch our attention like Viewtiful Joe and Killer 7, granted, but the often whitewashed, clinically unblemished environments and acrobatic antics of Vanessa Z Schneider were enough to encourage an import. And we're not sorry we went for it.

Beat 'em ups aren't really my forte, which is one reason why I won't be reviewing this one when it comes to Europe. But like just about everybody else with a pulse I was allured and then briefly transmogrified by Soul Calibur, a game structured around beauty, playability and balance - so much so, in fact, that when I spotted the sequel on the shelves of my local importer a couple of weekends past, I couldn't help myself. It did cost me £60, yes, but it was worth it.

German publisher CDV launched its blitzkrieg against overseas markets in style with the Europe-wide release of chart topping strategy game Sudden Strike back at the tail end of 2000. With a vaguely realistic World War II setting, support for up to a thousand units in a single map and none of the usual resource gathering and base building elements that govern most real-time strategy games, it was a breath of fresh air for the stale genre.

The good news from Sonic Team is that the Cube versions, overseen by Shintaro Hata, have now both entered the beta testing process. As expected, the four-player online mode is the developer's main focus, but Hata-san, speaking to Dengeki magazine in Japan, says that players of the offline mode "won't miss out". It is the online sections though - accessed via either the promised broadband or modem adapters - that will come under closer scrutiny by the gaming press.

Teenage high school student and part-time videogame heroine Miyu has ventured into the cursed Himuro mansion to try to find her brother, who disappeared without trace whilst filming a documentary. The prologue - shot in artsy high contrast black and white - shows roughly the events preceding Miyu's adventure, but obscures the conclusion to leave her brother's fate hanging in the balance. Throughout the game, the story of the brother and sister and the mansion's former occupants is told through the documentary team's scattered research notes and Miyu's supernatural flashbacks.

We may still be enjoying our trips through Rokkotsu Pass in Way of the Samurai, but we lost all sight of that when details of Tenchu 3: Wrath of Heaven emerged from Activision at E3. With fact sheets, screenshots and a list of the game's controls (for some reason) now in our possession, it seems like a good time to talk Tenchu. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll slit your throat.

Soul Calibur II is faster to play, but Namco has been careful not to implement changes at the expense of the carefully protected gameplay balance. Despite the change of pace, veterans of the original should feel right at home with the classic four-button control system of high and low attacks, kick and block, and the new charging moves are equally simple. By clutching all three attack buttons simultaneously, characters are doused in glitzy lighting effects and able to unleash a flurry of brutal moves - almost like the transition between bloke and beast in Bloody Roar - and although there is no actual claret involved, the whole of the game is so fastidiously violent that an adult certification is almost guaranteed.

The Japanese seem to have a strange obsession with big stompy robots [Don't we all - Ed], taking in videogames, comic books, movies and any number of bizarre anime cartoon series, from Sunday morning kids' fare to the excellent Bubblegum Crisis. And while western mechs tend to be slow and clumsy, the oriental mecha is a fast moving and agile mechanised armour suit, while still having enough armaments at hand to level an entire city.

One of our favourite real-time strategy games of recent years is Cossacks, and sales figures from across Europe show that we're not alone. Unfortunately the game didn't fare quite so well in the US though, which is where American Conquest comes in...

While the original Kingdom Under Fire bore a certain resemblance to Warcraft, at first sight the sequel seems to have more in common with Koei's Kessen series. The whole game is rendered in glorious real-time 3D, providing players with a ground level view of the action as up to 450 soldiers fight their way across hills and through forests.

When we first saw The Y-Project at a press event in London way back in January, it was more of a concept and a tech demo than an actual game. Seven months later things have moved on dramatically though, and Westka boss Christoph Kabelitz was on hand to run us through the very latest build as Europe's biggest videogames trade show ECTS kicked off this morning.

It's been a long time coming, but the third installment in the Broken Sword series was finally unveiled at a packed press conference during this year's ECTS. Revolution boss Charles Cecil was on hand to talk about the new game, subtitled The Sleeping Dragon, and to show us a brief trailer featuring some early in-game footage and cinematic sequences.

Forget America, if you want a truly innovative first person action game look no further than Eastern Europe. The former Soviet Bloc has become a hive of game developing activity over the last decade, and is now home to some of the most exciting shooters around. The latest one to catch our attention is Xenus, and we tracked down Ukranian developer Deep Shadows in the Developers Pavilion at ECTS this morning to get a closer look...

If there is one stand at ECTS which is truly buzzing with people this year, it's Ubi Soft's, largely thanks to this year's Game of the Show, Splinter Cell, and its various companions from the Tom Clanciverse. However, lurking amongst the big brash super-realistic military simulations and cel-shaded first person shooters is a more familiar face - that of Rayman - and it was with him that we enjoyed an audience on Thursday afternoon.

When the notoriously bland 3DO first announced Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, we were (to say the least) gobsmacked. Here was an adult game where the "heroes" include a serial killer and a prostitute, a game with gratuitous amounts of gore and occasional nudity. Not only that, but it's a big budget effort with famous actors providing the voices and veterans of comics such as Heavy Metal and 2000AD providing the visual style and character designs.

Of all the games that we saw at ECTS last week, the one which confused us the most was Mistmare. At first sight it's a Morrowind style first person action role-playing game, but lurking behind that attractive 3D facade is an inventive character development system and a truly bizarre setting.

Ever since Westwood's seminal Dune II appeared on the Amiga and PC ten years ago, the real time strategy genre has become one of the most compulsive gaming experiences out there. But the genre's reliance on the mouse and high detail maps has ensured that this is one strand of gaming that won't be whoring itself on console systems any time soon, unlike various PC innovations we could name. This combination of practicality and happy accident means the clutch of developers loyal to the RTS are still refining their craft on the platform and thus it has become one of the most interesting, competitive and lucrative genres on the PC.

Did anybody actually swap their PS2 for a GameCube because Shinji Mikami ran away with Resident Evil? We sincerely doubt it. And despite protesting that the PS2 in your front room is about as durable as a china teapot in a hurricane, Mikami-san obviously still has some time for Sony, because Resident Evil Online is a PS2 game, despite a thriving Xbox network and a cheap as chalk Cube broadband outlet. It doesn't seem like a decision borne out of necessity.

If videogames were a reflection of an average day in the life of the players, then we'd a) be wearing tight-fitting spandex suits, b) sport ill-advised mullets, c) spend a large part of the day sneaking around in the shadows, peering around corners and bopping unsuspecting passers-by on the back on the head.

When he comes to visit, my little brother (at the root end of his teens) seldom does much but play videogames. Imagine being 12 years old with an older brother whose entire house is pretty much given over to computers, consoles and technology, with a flood of new games in the post every other morning. But nothing; not joysticks, not dance mats, not even the gift of his own PS2 for Christmas could light up his expectant little eyes like the sight of a Steel Battalion controller flashing away in the corner. It was a whole half an hour before he even asked what it was for…

Cliché though it is, being a fan of First Person Shooters on the PC is like waiting for a bus. After waiting for what seems like an eternity, you suddenly can't move for the things: Unreal II and Battlefield 1942: Road To Rome hit the nation's shelves last week, and over the next few you'll be indulging in some chin stroking down at your local gaming emporium deciding whether to blow your cash on IGI2: Covert Strike, Vietcong, or, later in March, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Decisions, decisions.

Even the most die hard PS2 owner must have been feeling a little envious when Splinter Cell burst onto the Xbox scene at the tail end of last year. Even though a port of the stealth action title was always on the cards, the feeling among the community was that the chances of replicating the visual quality were extremely slim. After all, those truly impressive lighting and texture effects had pushed the Xbox into new territory - how on Earth could the relatively humble Sony machine ever hope to compete.

When we first heard that Splinter Cell would theoretically let you travel from one end of the game to the other pausing only to kill the final boss, it seemed like the perfect embodiment of the games industry's newfound obsession with stealth. Sure enough, thanks to a mixture of delightful technical abilities and playfully constructed levels, with enough practise it is possible to avoid almost all confrontation.

Last time out, there were no rules. NBA Street was basketball stripped of its glamour, rulebook and realism - a streamlined, arcade title which dragged the game back to tarmac courts, creaky backboards and funky dunky rap stylings. It paid homage to NBA Jam, really, bettering Acclaim's long since ignored franchise in virtually every way. It was so good, in fact, that Acclaim has dusted off Jam for 2004, hoping to cash in on its renewed popularity.