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Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory is the sequel to one of the PlayStation 2's outstanding launch titles. You would have been hard pressed to justify the original as a killer application though, and in Hostile Territory the excitement is only a bit more feverish, the graphics are only a touch improved, and the FMV and storyline elements are fairly uninspired. The improvements made since the original are hardly groundbreaking, and the game is still ostensibly the same. But since last year the PlayStation 2 has found its way into several million homes in Europe alone, and there are better games on the market, including Rockstar's magnum opus Grand Theft Auto III. The sum of the game's parts is thoroughly enjoyable, but it's still not a killer application. Once again players take control of an anonymous smuggler who is learning the ropes from a grizzled veteran, and are employed to collect packages, make drops and elude law enforcement in all sorts of conditions and all over the world. The general narrative is sustained through a collection of average-to-amusing cutscenes deliberately filmed in a grainy B-movie style, and focus on your smuggling band's financial interests and the jobs they take. At the beck and call of your principal, your group has to infuse itself into various situations both civil and military and escape scot-free. Your adventures take you through exotic locations including Vietnam and southern Russia (instead of the previously proposed Afghanistan, for obvious reasons).

Novalogic announced earlier this week that their latest helicopter flight combat game Comanche 4 has gone gold, meaning that the game is complete and final code has been sent off for duplication. We now know that the game will be showing up on shelves in the UK on Friday December 7th, a couple of weeks later than expected but still just in time for the Christmas shopping spree. Described by Novalogic as "a fun game with broad appeal that offers fast and intense action gaming", the game is less of a serious sim and more of an airborne shooter, with a return to the pick-up-and-play gameplay and easy learning curve of earlier games in the million-selling series. We should know soon whether it can live up to its potential, but in the meantime we have a new batch of screenshots from Novalogic showing off some of the impressive graphics players can look forward to. Related Feature - Comanche 4 screenshots

It's less than a year since Serious Sam was released, and already Croatian developers Croteam are putting the finishing touches to a follow-up to the first person shooter. But this is no hurriedly thrown together Tomb Raider style cash-in, as we discovered when we took a beta copy of the game for a spin at publisher Take 2 Interactive's offices in Windsor yesterday.

NVIDIA reported record earnings this week, with revenues for the three months to October 28th coming in at $370m, up a staggering 87% on the same period the previous year. Profits were also up 60% to $45m. This is all the more impressive given that the terrorist attacks on America took place right in the middle of the financial quarter, not to mention the fact that the country's economy is sliding into recession at the moment. "Our third quarter results exemplify our continued technology leadership and the intense focus and relentless execution of our employees", President Jen-Hsun Huang declared, apparently confirming rumours of brutal beheadings at NVIDIA. "With the excellent success of leveraging the GeForce architecture into winning products for desktop PCs, laptops, workstations, Mac and Xbox, we now have multiple growth drivers that will accelerate our already strong momentum." Related Feature - GeForce 3 Titanium review

Ecks vs Sever is perhaps not the most obvious movie to base a game around. For starters, it isn't even in production yet, and isn't likely to arrive in cinemas until late next year or even some time in 2003. Secondly when you ask most people about it, they look at you all puzzled and say "Ecks vs Who"? Which was our own reaction when Bam! and Crawfish first announced they were making a game out of it. So to satisfy our curiosity we spoke to the game's producer Tim Mawson...

Bungie's Matt Soell, who recently spoke out against the wave of Xbox instability reports, has confirmed that Halo will in fact still be released on PC and Mac, just not immediately and perhaps not in the same form. "'Only on Xbox' means 'Not on any other console'", Soell chides on Bungie's Internet forum. "It does not mean 'Never coming to Mac or PC'. Halo will be coming to Mac and PC." Soell says that there are "a lot of questions that must be answered" before Halo can be released on those other formats, though. He then likens to journey towards Mac and PC versions of Halo to "driving across town to a friend's house" with all the detours and changes that the average driver wouldn't be aware of when he set out. Multiplayer and control systems will be the most important roadworks, we'd say. Halo has been hyped to death over the last year or so, and with the game now a week away, interest has peaked. Something tells me that at this point, the game's reception at launch may have more to do with whether or not it's converted than anything else… Related Feature - Halo screenshots

Now is definitely not a good time to be a terrorist, but there's no doubt that Osama and friends' job would be made even trickier with our old pals Rainbow Six on our side. And so with deft timing the great granddaddy of tactical action games has returned to rid the world of AK-47 toting scum once again, in the latest expansion to the ever-present series of games based on the novels of Tom Clancy. Black Thorn is effectively another mission pack for Rainbow Six sequel Rogue Spear, and it's priced accordingly. Confusingly though Red Storm have decided to release it as a stand-alone product, as well as being able to tack it onto the side of Rogue Spear. So is it a mission pack, or simply a straight-to-budget title? Whatever, the game offers more of the same for fans of the series, with additions including ten single player missions, thirteen new weapons, a few new multiplayer maps and a new multiplayer mode to round off the decidedly slim package. The story is based around a terrorist group led by a psychotic ex-member of the Rainbow team, who has taken it upon himself to re-enact famous terrorist activities of the past in order to lure Rainbow to its demise. Cue a cheery jaunt across the world for our stealthy chums to pop a cap in the ass of a few hundred dim-witted foot soldiers, in settings ranging from cruise ships to foreign embassies, and middle eastern villages to suburban train stations.

Often when popular Japanese media is translated for the West, we also end up with a ridiculous dub in our native tongue. In the case of the original Shenmue, we'd really rather they hadn't bothered. With Shenmue 2 though, it appears that for better or worse, they haven't! Whether it's down to the lack of an American version, budget constraints or a design decision, we're far happier now that we know Shenmue 2 will be subtitled, rather than dubbed. Related Feature - Shenmue review

Several major news sites yesterday reported on rumours that Spanish developers Rebel Act Studios were closing down, but having contacted marketing bod Juan Díaz-Bustamante we are happy to report that the company behind Severance : Blade of Darkness has not collapsed. The unconfirmed rumours first came about when a Spanish online magazine called Area66, which is owned by the same company as Rebel Act, closed down. Another Spanish site put two and two together and got five, and thanks to the less than wonderful translation skills of Babelfish the rumours were further garbled by the time the story started to appear on American sites last night. Through all of this nobody seems to have thought to contact Rebel Act to find out what their side of the story was, and when we got in touch with them earlier this afternoon we were glad to hear that the reports of their demise had been somewhat exaggerated. "There is something true, and it is that we are looking for an international partner to invest in the company so that we can keep our growth and our stability for the future", Juan told us. "We are at the moment speaking with some publishers and let's see if we can announce something soon in this sense." So there you have it - Rebel Act is looking for new investment to fund their growth, but they haven't closed down, and work on the forthcoming Xbox version of Severance continues. Hopefully more details will emerge soon...

With Colin McRae Rally 3 due for release late next summer, Codemasters have released the first pictures of the Ford Focus you will be driving in the game. Although these aren't in-game shots, they are of the actual models which will be used in the game, and show the impressive level of detail to which it has been modelled. Somewhere in the region of 13,000 polygons make up the car, compared to a mere 800 in the last game, and the effect is certainly impressive. "We can fully detail the car's interior, its engine bays, and the chassis detail", associate producer Rick Nath beamed. "We're also working on suspension, and a more realistic damage engine with opening and detachable panels, doors, tailgates, bonnets, bumpers, and windows." You will also be able to see Colin McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist bouncing around inside the car as you slide it around the dirt tracks, swaying around in the corners and under braking. If you look closely you may even see McRae operating the foot pedals, steering, handbrake and gear stick in sync with your own driving, while Grist will apparently grab hold of the roll cage to steady himself if you manage to hit something. Which is nice. It's not yet clear which platforms Colin McRae 3 will be appearing on, but we would expect the PlayStation 2 to be at the top of the list, with Xbox, GameCube and PC ports also possible. No doubt all will be revealed soon. Related Feature - Colin McRae returns

In a move which could be either insane or an act of sheer brilliance, Verant have implemented a new patch on Everquest's player vs player combat servers which allows people to take on the role of monsters. Instead of simply entering the game as one of your normal characters, you can now click on a new "monsters" button in the top right of the character select screen, at which point you will be given control over a low-level monster in a randomly selected zone. This could leave you running around the world as a gnoll, orc or rat, which is sure to be a novel experience. Obviously there are limitations. You can't talk to other players (whoever saw a talking rat?) and you can't trade with them or do any of the other things that normal humanoid characters can do. You can't leave your zone, and you can't loot the bodies of any pesky heroes you kill. In fact, pretty much all you can do is run around beating up on other monsters and players, although you can gain experience and improve your skills for as long as you live. Unfortunately once you leave the game or get killed all you can do is re-enter the game as another random monster, so you can't save your monstrous character and come back to it later. Still, it's a novel idea. Maybe one day we will see a true massively multiplayer game where even the monsters are controlled by players, and orcs, trolls and dragons can loot, pillage, trade and level the same as their human counterparts. In the meantime, roll up a rat and get nibbling at those lousy do-gooders...

Fifteen-year old Rainbow Studios is to be acquired by venerable computer and videogame publisher THQ, the company announced yesterday evening. Amongst Rainbow's many releases over the years are games such as the Motocross Madness series and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000, and they are currently known to be working on games for LucasArts, Activision and Infogrames, including the hotly anticipated Splashdown on PlayStation 2. On a related note, THQ have brought forward the release date of WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It! to November 16th.

Electronic Arts' loss-making EA.com online gaming service has been culled this week, with several games being cancelled or closed down in the wake of the massive lay-offs which took place last month. First to go was Battletech 3025, an online action game based on the popular boardgame behind the Mechwarrior series. An announcement on the game's official website stated that, despite apparently attracting thousands of players to the free beta test, the game had been canned by EA. "Our Beta is now coming to a close and plans to release Multiplayer BattleTech : 3025 as a subscription-only game will not move forward as planned. On December 6, 2001, the MPBT servers will be shut down." Also shutting down is the EA Platinum subscription service and several of its games. Updates on the websites in question simply stated that "we regret to inform you that EA.com is discontinuing the EA Platinum Service as of December 7th", followed by a list of the affected titles - Air Warrior, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Web Golf, Triple Play Web Basketball and Silent Death Online. Meanwhile the single player versions of other Platinum service games such as Need For Speed Web Racing, NASCAR Web Racing and Knockout Kings Web Boxing will become free to play, although presumably the online versions are amongst the casualties. While things are certainly looking bleak for EA.com, the company was quick to point out to customers that "we still have loads of great games for you to play online at EA.com and Pogo, and even more in the works". These include Motor City Online, which is reportedly in trouble as well, and a recently announced Ultima Online add-on. The company is apparently also expecting Westwood's massively multiplayer space sim Earth & Beyond to launch some time in the spring, although this may be a little optimistic. Related Feature - EA.com decimated

UbiSoft have released a demo version of Ghost Recon, the tactical shooter from Rainbow Six developers Red Storm which is due for release in Europe on November 23rd. Weighing in at around 76Mb, the demo features an exclusive mission which won't be included in the full retail version of Ghost Recon, and which apparently acts as a prequel to the game's storyline. The mission should also work in multiplayer mode. If you fancy giving it a try, head over to your favourite download outlet -

Herdy Gerdy is an interesting game, with a potentially absorbing albeit childish storyline conveyed through the use of cinematic cut-scenes, and platform and action segments similar to those found in games like Banjo Tooie. That's perhaps fitting, since Herdy Gerdy started life as an N64 game, before Core tried it on with the Dreamcast and eventually settled on the PlayStation 2 as their delivery mechanism. Herdy Gerdy is a big game for Core, and they want it to be remembered. In order for Gerdy to save the island's inhabitants from another five years of Sadorf's rule he has to explore the land, gathering tools and experience in herding before heading to the Colosseum to win the tournament. The game is made up of 35 unique environments with their own distinct graphical styles, and during his preparation Gerdy will hone his skills in each of them with 12 different creature sets to master. Every creature on the island has its own intelligence, thoughts and feelings, so Gerdy's task is less about fencing them in than protecting them from the environment and one another. In essence, Herdy Gerdy has a certain amount in common with Black & White - the idea is to influence the creatures of the island rather than to beat them into submission. If he resorts to violence, he would be no better than Sadorf. In terms of gameplay, Herdy Gerdy is a strange hybrid of other genres and games. It's non-linear puzzle-solving more than anything, with animal behaviours and environmental obstacles between you and your goal. Often several different paths can be taken to the objective, and they can involve playing certain animals off against one another, making use of streams and hills and other factors.

Some resourceful GameCube fans on the IGN message boards have uncovered the secret to the GameCube multiregion switch. Goodness only knows how they found it, but the technique is now documented on the IGN boards and at Lik-Sang.com. As it happens, the mod is incredibly simple. You just need the official Gamebit tool to open up the console, then once you have uncovered the motherboard it's simply a bridge that has to be closed, rather like the L1 bridges on the top of an AMD Athlon. By soldering wires to both points and putting a switch in the middle, you can change the region of your GameCube at will, just like the development units seen at ECTS earlier this year. An open bridge means a Japanese unit, and a closed bridge means an American one. In American mode, the menus even appear in English! This mod does not offer PAL compatibility, and we doubt anybody will at this rate, but it's interesting to see just how flimsy Nintendo's region lockout actually was. Expect to see multi-region GameCubes available very shortly, and modders offering to 'fix' your GameCube too. Moreover, if the change is so simple, it should be very easy for Nintendo to balance stock between Japan and the US when the GameCube launches on November 18. Related Feature - Hip to be Cube!

Take 2 Europe's Nick Boulstridge has confirmed that when Serious Sam : Second Encounter arrives in stores here in the UK it will be at a mid-range £19.99 price point, in keeping with the American release. There was an outcry earlier this year when the original Serious Sam was released in Europe, as journalists had been told that the game would cost £19.99 and reviewed it accordingly, only for Take 2 to change their minds at the last minute and recommend retailers sell it as a full-price title at anything up to £29.99, without bothering to tell anyone until the game was already showing up on store shelves.

No sooner had we posted our review of Codename Outbreak this afternoon than publisher Virgin Interactive released a patch for the game, apparently fixing a few of the annoying bugs we had spotted. Amongst the fixes listed are that soldiers should no longer fall through the floor on levels 2, 5 and 6 (although the only time we saw this happen was in another mission that hasn't been fixed), some of the issues with the AI's handling of ladders have been solved, and you no longer have to skip all three intro movies seperately to get to the main menu every time you fire the game up, which should reduce wear and tear on your escape key... Sadly the patch doesn't fix the godawful voice acting and shoddy translation, which make the game feel like a poorly dubbed Hong Kong movie at times. It also doesn't make any claims about fixing the pathfinding abilities of your AI squad mate, or the majority of the clipping issues that afflict the game. You can download the patch from any of the following sites -

It's a sad fact of life that some people use LAN parties as a way of swapping pirated software, pornography, MP3s and DivX movies rather than just playing games over the network, and a recent event in Denmark has apparently paid the price. Gamers at the Connect #12 event were surprised when an anti-piracy group accompanied by bailiffs descended on the party, gathered evidence and then shut the whole thing down. The exact details are a little confused at this point, but it seems that some or all of the participants could be prosecuted for software piracy, and the event organisers could be taken to court for allowing it to take place over their network. Needless to say this has Danish gamers worried, because few people are likely to be willing to take the risk of arranging a large LAN party if they can be prosecuted for failing to stop software piracy taking place during it.

Having breathed fresh life into the stagnant lungs of the real-time strategy genre with the excellent Cossacks, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World's next Herculean task was to create an innovative first person shooter. And they almost succeeded... Codename Outbreak's plot borrows heavily from the likes of Puppet Masters and Day of the Triffids, with a passing comet showering parasitic aliens over the Earth. As is the way with such creatures, they are soon infecting humans and trying to turn the world's military into pod people. And naturally it's up to you to wipe them out before we all end up like Donald Sutherland. Or rather, it's up to you and your squad of elite special forces types. What sets Outbreak apart from other cliché-ridden shooters is that you have a whole team of heroes at your disposal, and you can take any two of them on a given mission. The orders you can give your squad mate are fairly limited - follow me, stay here, attack, hold fire - but you can switch between the two characters at any point in a mission if one of them gets stuck. Sadly this is one of the game's real weaknesses. While the AI generally does a good job of following you, your squad mate sometimes gets stuck in confined areas, ends up on the wrong side of a fence, or sits sullenly at the bottom of a ladder refusing to follow you up it. Obviously this can be frustrating, especially if you only notice that your friend has got lost when you run into an enemy patrol and there's nobody there to bail you out.

It's taken a bit of time coming, but we've finally gotten our hands on a list of USB modem and Ethernet adapters that should be compatible with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. It seems that Ethernet adapters based on the ADMtek Pegasus AN986 chipset are compatible, which means quite a sizeable list of North American adapters and a few you can pick up in Europe. Enjoy this…

Nintendo has revised its half-year projections to reflect a 29% increase in operating profit. As a result the company's shares went up by more than 4%. According to company spokesmen, this is largely because of a recent drop in the price of semiconductors and liquid crystal displays such as those used in GameBoy Advance. That said, the GBA LCD wasn't worth tuppence in the first place, was it?

3DO Europe has announced that a second Army Men title for the GameBoy Advance is underway. Due for release in February, Operation Green once again sees you beating the stuffing out of the Tan Army in an attempt to destroy yet another secret weapon as they fight for "global-plastic domination". The game will feature fifteen levels spread across five "real war environments", including weather effects and interactive bits to monkey around with. The whole thing is populated by the obligatory tan soldiers, but apparently they have had an IQ boost since the last outing, with new improved artificial intelligence on the cards. It's no great secret that we're not the world's biggest Army Men fans, but their debut GBA effort (imaginatively titled Army Men Advance) was surprisingly good, if a little on the short side. 3DO are hoping to build on that with Operation Green, with a four player link option being added into the mix to give the game some much needed longevity. Whether it turns out to be as entertaining as the last one or just another plastic meltdown for the abortive series remains to be seen, but we have our fingers crossed. Related Feature - Army Men Advance review

What is it about nostalgia that helps us to forget? On a casual pootle through Watford this weekend, my friend and I wandered into Game. We were just about done when I spied out of the corner of my eye a sign hanging from a display which read "Go Retro!" or something along those lines. Without thinking, I dashed towards the display and gasped in delight. Atari Lynx consoles, shrink-wrapped as new for £29.99, and Sega Game Gears with piles of games! And the coup de grace, Atari Jaguar consoles for £19.99 each and stacks of software available for about a tenner. In a whirlwind of flailing credit cards I had purchased a Jaguar along with copies of DOOM and Defender 2000.

Reed Midem are looking for students and independent game developers to demonstrate their work at the Milia 2002 trade show, which will be taking over the French city of Cannes in February. If you are a freelance game designer or work for an independent development team, you could earn yourself one of fifteen free stands in the Game Developer Village section of the show. You can find the full rules and entry form on the Milia website, but the short version is that you must be independently owned and the game or gaming-related technology you are entering must not have been published. Meanwhile the New Talent Competition is looking for students enrolled in new media courses to showcase their course or personal projects to the thousands of industry bods and journalists who attend the Milia event each year. If yours is one of the projects picked out by the panel of judges, up to six members of your team will be provided with travel expenses and hotel rooms and given the chance to showcase the project in the Game Developer Village. This contest covers interactive television, wireless entertainment and related fields as well as gaming - check the entry form and rules for more details. All entries for both competitions must be in by December 7th, and the results will be announced on Boxing Day. Good luck!

AMD have launched their Athlon XP 1900+ part this morning, and already the Internet is buzzing with reviews. The part, which runs at 1.6GHz, makes the Pentium 4 look like a Celeron. The retail price of the part on the American market is about $270, with British retailers like Dabs.com still to announce pricing. The chip was originally expected to launch some time in December, and as such has probably caught Intel napping. With Intel's cheaper i845D DDR-based Pentium 4 platform due out shortly, AMD are presumably feeling pressured to push superior processors out the door. They can expect them to sell too, particularly on (surprisingly cheap) motherboards featuring the new KT266A chipset from VIA, which boasts explosive performance according to our testing with an Epox 8KHA+ (kindly donated by The Overclocking Store). As for the XP1900+... performance figures at leading hardware e-zine AnandTech leave little to the imagination. XP1900+ wins every gaming benchmark hands down. Related Feature - AMD Athlon XP review

Our nation's favourite telecommunications monopoly has announced its plan to introduce broadband to rural parts of Britain. Unfortunately for customers in the highlands of Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the service will be made available later this month, the cost is astronomical, making consumer ADSL costs look like peanuts. If the single-user £69.99 (exclusive of VAT) monthly fee isn't bad enough, and the £139.99 monthly fee for the four-user account still doesn't get you down, how about respective installation fees of £899 and £1,299? The services are apparently geared towards business users. So rural business works can look forward to a year's 512Kbps service with no guarantee of throughput or latency (trust me, I'm an ADSL user) for £2,043.18, or £3,500.18 for the four-user version, including installation and VAT. If anybody buys into the new plan, we'd be interested to hear from you. We have some excellent magic beans for sale.

Matsushita subsidiary Panasonic have confirmed that the Panasonic GameCube/DVD hybrid console will only be released in Japan. The device, which will launch on December 14 for approximately $325 is "simply a Japan device", Panasonic spokesman Kurt Praschak told reporters. "Right now there are absolutely no plans for US marketing."

Usually the cunning idea lying behind a cutesy cartoon arcade racer is the ability to present fun in its rawest form. Every gamer worth their salt knows that the genre has been defined and championed by Mario Kart, and few other games have come close to touching the sheer entertainment offered by it. Apparently Akaei thought they knew just how to inject this kind of hilarity into the PC with Toon Car. Oh how wrong they were... Under no circumstances should a game ever feel like it's a chore to play, yet Toon Car is like doing the washing up, ironing and hoovering, all rolled into one sickly mess. It's apparent from the very start that the proceedings could become extremely irritating extremely quickly, simply from the mannerisms of the grating host character. It's not often that you can form a grudge against a game simply by accessing the preliminary menu screens, but here at least Toon Car succeeds admirably. The game structure itself is exactly as you would expect from the genre, with single race, practice, championship and multiplayer modes on offer. However, in order to access even the first tiers of the championship, you must first earn a licence. To pick this up, you are presented with one of the game's tracks littered with giant traffic cones, all of which you must knock over whilst completing three laps within a time limit. This does little to prove your proficiency within the race environment though, simply because it's a completely different experience.

Jedi Starfighter is inspired by the success of its predecessor, and borrows its name from the Jedi's craft of choice; the Jedi Starfighter. In game terms, it's the same team and the same sort of premise, so I'm looking forward to playing it. The game will run parallel to the events of the new movie, but the game will actually be released several months prior to the film, so it won't give too much away. Fifteen story-based missions will be included for one or two players, borrowing worlds and environments from the film. The ships on offer will be the Jedi Starfighter itself, the Havoc from the original game, and the Zoomer and Freefall. These will skim along the surface of various planets and fight in enormous space battles with more than 40 types of starship and capital-class vessels, including some notable enemy craft from the upcoming Star Wars film. It will be our first taste of Attack of the Clones, so a lot rides on its success. The introduction of Jedi pilots for these ships means that various Force powers will be available, something lacking in the first game. Amongst the pilots' abilities will be Force lighting (which saps the power systems of enemy ships and renders their pilots unconscious), Force shield (which creates an energy-based deflector shield) and Force shockwave (which produces a powerful energy surge that radiates multi-directionally). My personal favourite though is Force reflex, which simulates the exaggerated reflexes and perception of the Jedi Knight pilot by shifting the world into slow motion, although whilst in slow-motion players will retain th normal turning and shooting abilities of their craft.