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With the madness that is ECTS now less than 24 hours away, EuroGamer today takes a look at Europe's biggest computer games trade show and what we can expect from it this year. We have a quick run through some of the games and hardware we are expecting to see over the next few days, as well as taking a look at the equally interesting topic of who isn't going to be at ECTS this year - Activision, Eidos and Infogrames amongst the frontrunners in that category. For the full low down, read our ECTS preview!

When it comes to computer games trade shows, America has the lycra-clad mad-house that is E3, while Europe has ECTS - three days of foot-slogging and sweating in the vast Victorian greenhouse that is the Olypmia, located in the polluted heart of London.

The playable demo for Monolith's kitsch 60s spy game "No One Lives Forever" is now available, featuring sample levels from three different missions from the full game, as well as the first training level to help you get to grips with the game. Inspired by the classic spy TV series and movies of the period, from James Bond to the Avengers, No One Lives Forever sees you taking on the role of secret agent Cate Archer, a member of the anti-terrorist organisation UNITY.

3DO have announced that Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of a little football club that you might have heard of called Manchester United, has put his name behind their forthcoming soccer game "Player Manager 2001". Sir Alex will also be consulting with the developers to help them out with tactics and player data for the game amongst other things. And as well as the new celebrity license, the game will also feature an all-new game engine, motion captured animations, realistic stadiums, and "enhanced post-match statistics" for all you Excel fans. Expect the game to appear on Playstation towards the end of the year, with the PC version due out in April 2001.

Love 'em or hate 'em, those cute little Norns have become a fact of life, starring in three "Creatures" games plus "Creatures Adventures". Developers Creature Labs have now announced that their next entry in the series, a children's game called "Creatures Playground", will be published in Europe by Havas Interactive, while Encore will be handling the north American distribution of the game. Encore will also be publishing "The Creatures Collection", which will include the entire Creatures trilogy for newcomers to the series.

This week's interview here on EuroGamer is with Karl Jeffery, President and CEO of Climax, the BritSoft developer which is currently working on a multiplayer strategy game based on the popular table-top wargame "Warhammer". We spoke to Karl to find out more about how the project got started, and what we can expect from the game (which is due out some time in 2002). For the full skinny on Warhammer Online, read our interview with Climax!

As a teenager I wasted many a weekend stooped over a large sheet of plywood covered in polystyrene hills, match-stick fences, and various bits of assorted shrubbery, moving little hand-painted lead and plastic figures around, measuring out firing ranges and areas of effect.

We've got a special dose of eye candy for you here on EuroGamer today, in the form of eight exclusive new screenshots of Microsoft's stunning "Combat Flight Simulator 2", taken from a beta version of the World War II flight sim. For the best visual quality, all of the shots are at 800x600 in 32 bit colour, using four sample full-scene anti-aliasing on a GeForce 2 graphics card. Feast your eyes - you know you want to!

The latest release schedule from Hasbro just arrived, with some major changes since we last heard from them. One sure-fire hit is the Rollercoaster Tycoon add-on, now named "Loopy Landscape" and due on September 22nd. "Squad Leader" is now due on October 20th, with the real-time strategy game of the movie "Starship Troopers" also set to appear during October. Also noteworthy is the long-awaited flight sim "B-17 : The Mighty Eighth", which has slipped to November 3rd, while we're now expecting a 1999 season update to hit motor racing title "Grand Prix 3" some time in November as well, assuming nobody breaks a leg...

It's Friday so it must be UK release day. New on the shelves today are the role-playing / real-time strategy hybrid "Warlords Battlecry", and EA Sports' imaginatively titled Rugby sim "Rugby 2001". Sadly there is still no sign of THQ's promising looking "X-Tension" add-on for their space sim of last year "X : Beyond The Frontier", although given that an English patch for the game is already available it must be out there somewhere surely... SCi's gore-ridden driving game "Carmageddon TDR 2000" was also expected this week but has apparently failed to materialise.

Sierra last night announced that the fast paced 3D real-time strategy game "Ground Control" has spawned a mission pack, in the form of "Dark Conspiracy". Due out this November, the pack will feature fifteen new single-player missions, as well as new environments, units and multiplayer modes, plus an entirely new third faction to play as. To find out more, read the press release.

One of the (many) features which made Deus Ex stand out from the first person crowd was its use of nanotech augmentations, which the player had to choose between when "upgrading" their body. According to lead designer Harvey Smith, talking in an interview with RPGVault, developing and balancing the augmentation system was one of the big challenges in designing the game.

A new version (1.40) of the funky looking Strike Force mod for Unreal Tournament is now available

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at Leadtek's "WinFast GeForce 2 MX" graphics card, based on the latest budget chip from NVIDIA. With all the features of the GeForce 2 but at a lower clock rate and with cheaper memory, can it live up to the GeForce name, and does it provide good performance for its low price? Read our review to find out!

- LeadtekPrice - £135

Amongst the new features of Wizardry 8, the latest installment in the (very) long running role-playing game series, is a new character class known as the "Gadgeteer". In an interview with RPG Vault, project leader Linda Currie explained that the "Gadgeteers create strange and unusual devices to help their teammates".

Strike Force v1.40 for Unreal Tournament reviewed on Gameplay

Havas will be announcing at ECTS on Sunday that they have signed a three year deal with Universal Interactive Studios to publish the fourth installment in the popular "Spyro The Dragon" series. Due some time in Spring 2002, the fourth Spyro game will be available on PC as well as the usual host of consoles - Playstation 2, Xbox and Gameboy Advance amongst others. The first two Spyro games have already notched up over 5 million sales worldwide on Playstation, with the third game due for release through Sony this November.

Today EuroGamer takes a look at one of the most bizarre titles to be announced in recent weeks, Microsoft's "Train Simulator", which (as the title suggests) will be bringing all the thrills of driving or travelling in a train to a PC near you early next year. It's a strange idea, but it just might work, and as Microsoft were showing it alongside Combat Flight Simulator 2 at a press day in London this week we decided to take a look... Read our preview to find out more about what could be one of the oddest games of 2001.

One of the more .. unusual titles to be announced recently is Microsoft's "Train Simulator", a game which aims to bring all the joys of driving and travelling on trains to a PC near you. To be honest, it sounded like a pretty daft idea when we first heard about it.

Scott Dalton of Legend, currently working on highly anticipated first person shooter "Unreal 2", updated his .plan yesterday to sing the praises of DirectX 8, and in particular the new "DirectCrate" component. According to the announcement, "DirectCrate is the component of the DirectX application programming interface (API) that allows you to directly manipulate storage containers, the hardware crate acceleration, and extended ExplodoCrate support". Given how common crates are in most first person shooters, this is obviously a god-send for lazy developers.

Publisher Sierra sent word that the official website for mythological city building sim "Zeus : Master of Olympus" is now online, featuring information about Zeus, as well as some new screenshots and concept art. For those of you with an aversion to marble, Zeus is the follow-up to the Caesar series and Pharaoh, this time set in classical Greece and once again giving you the chance to build and manage your own great city.

Graphics card manufacturer 3dfx last night announced its financial results for the quarter ending July 31st 2000, which CEO Alex Leupp admitted he was "very disappointed" with. Revenue slumped to just $67m from $105m in the same period last year, mostly thanks to the late arrival of the Voodoo 5 5500, while the company's losses rose from $12m this time last year to over $100m, partly due to their perhaps over-ambitious $60m take-over of Gigapixel.

Ion Storm Austin talk to RPG Vault about the forthcoming Deus Ex SDK

Taking place last weekend, i5 was one of the biggest LAN parties ever held in the UK, featuring three days of fragging and hundreds of participants. Assistant Editor Tom "Mugwum" Bramwell ventured into the mouth of madness to cover the event for EuroGamer, and returned with strange tales of Quake, Counter-Strike, drinking contests, masked gunmen, comfy chairs and pizza. Today we've got his full report on i5, including photographic evidence where appropriate!

This bank holiday weekend in Newbury the latest in the I-series of LAN parties run by Multiplay UK took place, at Newbury Racecourse, a venue not known extensively for its gaming background (although I suppose that depends on your opinion of equestrian pursuits). Gamers from all over the country converged upon the setting looking to meet up with net buddies, play some games and get some skillz.

French publisher UbiSoft has confirmed long-running rumours that they are planning to buy out Red Storm, the American publisher / developer best known for the "Rainbow Six" series. Following the exploits of an elite international anti-terrorist organisation, Rainbow Six and its sequel "Rogue Spear" have gone on to sell three million copies on everything from the PC to the GameBoy.

Following on from yesterday's announcement that NVIDIA are taking 3dfx to court for allegedly infringing five of their patents, today 3dfx launched a counter-attack, saying that they considered the NVIDIA suit to be an attempt to deflect an earlier 3dfx patent infringement suit against NVIDIA. 3dfx claims that NVIDIA infringed their patent on multi-texturing, and took the company to court back in September 1998 over the issue.

Sporting moves that come straight out of Tom and Jerry and story's the likes of which only the Japanese could dream up, Tech Romancer is the latest beat em up with a twist from the Capcom stables. Anyone familiar with the genre will feel instantly at home. There is the disparate group of brawlers, the cute little girls, the buxom wenches and the muscle bound brutes. Each pilots their building sized mech, which in the case of one Polin & Bolon, really is made of several buildings, and a boat, and a bus amongst other things!

The free Internet Service Provider EzeSurf has entered Voluntary Liquidation due to losses, fraudulent staff and broken promises. The open letter discussing the situation and history of the company can be found here. EzeSurf's closure comes only days after AltaVista's disgraceful high publicity withdrawel from the freecall ISP market, and leaves only Red Hot Ant and Freeserve amongst a few others offering 24/7 free Internet. The former is well known for its terrible lack of service, but this writer has been using the latter without incident for several months now. Interestingly, Freeserve are also a Planet Online customer, just as EzeSurf were.