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Amongst the horde of Tomb Raider clones, first person shooters, real-time strategy games and sport sims that weigh down shelves across the nation, every now and then a truly unique game emerges. And Sheep is one of them. Let's face it, how many computer games can you think of which involve herding sheep through 28 levels of ovine-shredding, bale bundling, flossy flattening obstacles of the kind that would make your average sheepdog run off with its tail between its legs?

The dark side has today twinged Lego, the toy that every youngster grew up with, as it joins force in a strategic alliance with Microsoft. The two will team up to create Lego-based products; presumably games for the moment, but we're hoping some sort of remote control Windows app for tinkering with Lego Teknics will follow. The deal is unnecessarily complex going by the text of the press release (which is... mind-numbingly boring), and it's difficult to say just what it actually means for anybody involved, but one thing's for sure, our little Scandinavian friends will never be the same again.

As well as being the name of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's backing band, "Wings" was also the title of a World War One arcade-style flight sim from Cinemaware released back in the late 1980s (That was atrocious -Ed). Now British developer Crawfish have announced that they are teaming up with the recently re-formed Cinemaware to bring the classic game to the GameBoy Advance. Given that there were pictures of a bi-plane flying over fields and hedges amongst the screenshots of the tech demos that Crawfish created for Nintendo's new hand-held gaming system last year, the announcement that they are working on Wings doesn't come as a huge surprise, but we do now know a little more about what they have in store for us...

One of the more bizarre games under development at the moment is "Super Bubble Pop", an arcade-style puzzle game which appears to be a mix of Tetris and Bust A Move, all lovingly rendered in glorious 3D. The catch is that the game is "inspired by 'Candy Raver' dance culture". Candy who? "Candy Ravers are teen to twenty club kids that turn out in neon colored, Anime-inspired, rave wear that often includes candy necklaces, bracelets, and pacifiers. Very J-Pop. Very fun."

While a lot of the attention surrounding Sierra's line-up at the ECTS 2000 trade show was focused on the first person shooters "Tribes 2" and "Gunman Chronicles", one of the most interesting titles in attendance was "Warrior Kings", a brand new 3D fantasy strategy game which made its debut at the show. Developed by Black Cactus, a new developer based in the south of London, it made such an impression on us that we spent the next few months hassling the Sierra PR team trying to get hold of more information and some screenshots...

Who would have thought Monolith could come so far in just a year. After the atrocities of Blood 2 and the rather short-lived Shogo, the Lithtech engine seemed to be marked for mediocrity, but a year on, and No One Lives Forever is one of the best single player first person shooters since Half-Life. Enjoyable on so many levels, and stunningly attractive, it shows just what the technology is really capable of. Although at times rather too linear for its own good, NOLF has a pleasantly paced momentum to it, and the plot, which centres around swinging 60's UNITY agent Cate Archer, is fairly plausible, if a little too Austin Powers-ish. You start out on a fairly routine mission providing protection for the American Ambassador to Morocco, by picking off moustachioed assassins who dash from their trench coat-shrouded holes to try and pick him off. After the mission goes pear-shaped and your fellow agent is lost, you are reassigned on a mission to uncover his murderer, a nasty chap by the name of Volkov, part of an international terrorist organisation called HARM. Your search takes you to the darkened doorways of Berlin, and several infiltration missions later you have more clues. From here on, the game accelerates toward its explosive ending, stopping off in the Caribbean and the Alps en-route for some impressive James Bond-esque action, including sky-diving battles ala the intro to "Moonraker," and some snowmobile rides through the snowy Alps, ala "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

Xbox fansite MSXbox.com has spotted a tantalising snippet on the Lucasarts website in the form of a job ad, which searches for a senior console programmer. The description of said programmer's duties is to "'Provide games programming expertise to develop games for the PlayStation2, Xbox, and/or Gamecube". Conclusive proof that Lucasarts intend to be developing for the Xbox? Looks that way.

As reported by Daily Radar this morning, many people who have bought THQ's latest title, WWF No Mercy, are experiencing problems with save games being wiped for no apparent reason, and to this end the company has issued an official statement. On the subject of the bug, they say that they are "aware of the problem and are currently investigating the cause." "The best course of action at this time is either to take the game back to the place you purchased the game from and ask for a refund, or hold on to the game for now and wait for us to contact you when we know what is causing the problem. In this case, please send an e-mail with the heading "No Mercy Details" to eursupport@thq.com, with your name, address and a contact telephone number. We will be in touch with everyone when we have details on how you should proceed." Hopefully the problem will be resolved soon and anyone unfortunate enough to have experienced the problem will have it remedied. It sounds like THQ are doing a good job of supporting their customers though, and that's always good to see.

On Monday, AMD launched the Duron 850MHz in America, and as usual, the reviews have already started to hit the Net. Dr. Tom at Tom's Hardware has given it his once over, asking some very fetching questions of the little processor, such as whether the Duron can be classed as a success or a failure. For AMD's part, it hasn't sold as well as they would have liked, but as Tom says, purely on a cost/performance ratio, it's faultless. The reason it doesn't sell, one must conclude, is the lack of integrated chipsets, something that PC Chips and others are now rectifying. Another question many have asked is how does the Duron 850 shape up to Intel's recently released 800MHz Celeron. The answer is rather well, as it stomps on the new Celeron in virtually every test anyone has thrown at it. The Duron overclocks better too, with some punters running it at nearly 1.1GHz. Other tests, run by the likes of Sharky Extreme, demonstrate the same trends, with the Duron outpacing the Celeron in 3D benchmarks and to a lesser extent in cache-heavy applications. The only downside to the 850 seems to be that an old, overclockered Duron performs exactly the same, and for less. Although that said, your mileage may vary. Pricewise, the 850 cannot be faulted, falling into line at £82.00 before VAT. The nearest thing is the Celeron 733, which costs £89.00 before VAT. The lowest speed product in the Duron line, the Duron 700, costs £45.00 + VAT. At the time of writing, AMD have yet to get back to us about the Duron's release in the United Kingdom. We expect to have more information on the timing of it shortly. Related Feature - AMD Duron Review

According to sources close to ST Media in Korea/Japan, the company has almost finished a PC port of its incredible RPG title Grandia II, which has been doing monster sales in both the US and Japan. The port is apparently 80% complete, and should go into Beta in Korean and Japanese languages sometime this month. The company is talking to GameArts and UbiSoft about a possible worldwide distribution deal. Grandia II, in case you weren't aware, is a traditional RPG, centring around the plight of bouty hunter Ryudo, and his eagle sidekick Skye. Eons ago the world was terrorized by the war of the Gods, when Granas gave the world holy Light, and his enemy Valmer attempted to destroy it and plunge the world into darkness. The war was eventually won by the Sword of Granas, which shattered Valmer and created a chasm on the planet's surface that came to be known as Granacliff. Soon enough history eroded this into mystical belief and religion. As usual, something starts to happen, and our hero is unwittingly turned into the planet's saviour. Grandia II on the Dreamcast isn't quite out over here yet, but we are told its close. An UbiSoft representative that we spoke to yesterday said the game should be with the press in about two weeks, and available all over Europe shortly afterward.

Skies of Arcadia is, in many ways, something of a landmark title: the first Dreamcast RPG to really shine and show what the next-generation formats are capable of. Whilst titles like Soul Calibur long ago relegated the Playstation to the bin as a beat-em-up platform for discerning players, until very recently the best RPGs were almost exclusively found on Sony's old grey box. Skies of Arcadia is set in a somewhat unique, Laputa-inspired world, in which there is no "solid ground", only islands (some larger than others) which float in the endless sky. This world is, unusually, orbited by no less that five (arguably six) moons, each of which takes the place of an element in the world of Arcadia, conferring certain powers. Two of the three central characters are air pirates, or, more specifically, "Blue Rogues" - the flying equivalent of Robin Hood. These two, Vyse and Aika, are thrown into a struggle to locate five crystals that control giant war machines that could destroy the world by the arrival of the third - Fina, a mysterious girl on a mission to prevent the coming destruction. Both the world and the characters are extremely well-defined, and deep. By keeping the number of playable characters small the game is able to devote a lot of time to their personalities, really bringing them to life. This task is made easier by the graphics, which are extremely detailed, and allow the characters to show a wide range of expressions and emotions during cutscenes. The world is also commendably large, and in a twist facilitated by the setting, remarkably three-dimensional; you must frequently go both over and under obstacles to progress. The skies are not in the least bit empty, either, there are natural hazards such as floating rocks(!) and vortices, as well as a myriad of other ships, including traders, other pirates and suchlike.

It's always nice to get what you want, and what the world wants right now is more of Tony Hawk, on whatever format they can. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 has done startling business on PlayStation, Dreamcast and PC, with no sign of its popularity letting up, so it's no surprise that publishers Activision are eager to seize on a good thing. Ron Doornink, Activision CEO, had this to say. "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x will set the standard for sports gaming on the Xbox with its stunning graphics, smooth animations, and refined gameplay. The online capabilities that we are including in the product will introduce the social aspects of skateboarding to the brand for the first time." The company has apparently been working closely with Microsoft since the console's inception to make sure Tony Hawk was one of the first games out of the door, alongside killer apps like Halo. A Microsoft spokesperson said they it was "incredibly exciting" to be working with Activision on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x.

Major server administrators Wireplay today introduced Punkbuster to their arsenal of anti-cheating tools. Counter-Strike, the ever popular team-based first person shooter from Valve and Barking Dog, has been plagued by cheaters and hackers since its earliest releases, and despite extensive reprogramming, development-lead "Gooseman" has been unable to plug all of the holes. PunkBuster is just one of a vast array of third party tools used to help prevent cheating. Amateur programmers at NextWish have been producing small bug fixes that expose cheaters for some time now, but PB is the first tool that requires the client to run an application outside of Half-Life in order to help prevent cheating. By requiring people to use such a tool, Wireplay hopes it will remove the dishonest contingent from its servers. But just what the heck is "PunkBuster"? According to the developers, "PunkBuster is one-of-a-kind unique. Other Anti-Cheat methods fall into 3 broad categories: Built-in to the game, Third-party server based, and blind luck. When a game has Anti-Cheat code built in to it, it can be very solid until it is cracked; however, game developers have not historically been swift at patching those cracks and by the time a fix is out, there are usually worse cheats or new holes caused by the patch." PunkBuster acts as a form of middleware between Counter-Strike and the server itself. It authenticates the client, then allows them to play. If a client forgets to run PunkBuster and the server requries authentication, they will be informed whilst ingame and asked to do so within a certain amount of time before being removed. Servers can be set up to require authentication, or to make it optional. If optional, other players will be informed who is not using it. A radical move though this is, PunkBuster is expected to marginalise the cheating element on Wireplay's servers, which currently spoils plenty of public games where no administrator is present. Other server operators, such as Jolt and Barry's World, will no doubt be watching carefully to see how this addition is received. More information on PunkBuster can be found at the official website.

Crystal Interactive, a publisher of budget and commercial PC games, has launched its new website, Crystal-Interactive.com, which highlights the release of its new freeware Asteroids-style title, "Galaxy Blasters!" (shown left). The move also helps to emphasize the recent release of its graphically-intensive strategy title, State of War. At the present time there are three freeware titles available; "Galaxy Blasters!", "Santa in Trouble" and "Christmas Games." The former is by far the most entertaining, featuring decent graphics and repetitive though addictive Asteroids-style gameplay. Also included on the new website is lots of information on the company's flagship game, State of War. Plenty of other games are available for as little as $9.95, some $19.95. They are even developing a couple of new titles for the Amiga. The site also features a fair amount of indie developer games and tools for sale. Check it out at http://www.crystal-interactive.com.

A new server update for Quake III Arena was released early this morning to plug some holes and fix some bugs that were still outstanding after the release of 1.27g. The new version, 1.27h helps fix the "handicap exploit," which some unruly tricksters were using to disrupt games last week. Also, a problem with the bot routing (presumably in light of the radical changes in the recent official updates), has been sorted out, and thanks to some creative reprogramming, Id claim users may experience anything up to a 20 frames per second improvement over the old patches. Make that "very creative". Id's Robert Duffy updated his plan on the subject, pointing out that they have "put up 1.27h as a BETA". After some previous confusion, this clarification is welcomed. "It is a .exe only release primarily intended for server administrators but it should be OK for client use as well." The message seems to be "update if you want to, there should be no harm in it," but Id are of course covering their bases. Finally, he urges users to "forward any issues or problems to bugs@idsoftware.com." You can download the patch from the following locations:-

While the quality of the games released for the western launch of Sony's new PlayStation 2 at the end of last year was somewhat less than impressive, the next generation of games for the system looks set to make better use of the console's capabilities. Amongst this second batch of releases will be Volition's third person role-playing game "Summoner", which features sumptuous graphics and an epic fantasy storyline, with around 40 hours worth of gameplay being promised. The game is now set for a March 23rd release on PlayStation 2 in the UK, with a PC version expected to follow later in the year, and to celebrate we got our hands on seven brand new shots of the game. Feast your eyes on these...

Formed last year by core members of the team at Computer Artworks responsible for organic action-strategy game "Evolva", Synaptic Soup announced their impressive looking new "Cipher" technology early on but remained quiet about the games they would be using it for. Now the veil of secrecy has slipped to reveal a peek at "Crazy Car Championship", the first game to use the company's cross-platform engine.

According to a press release that we just received from Havas Interactive UK, the company's Half-Life franchise has now provided the publisher with a massive 300,000 sales within the UK alone. These figures include Valve's "Half-Life" itself in all its various incarnations, as well as the official add-on pack "Opposing Force" and multiplayer version "Counter-Strike". With both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 versions of the game already announced and due for release this year, it seems that the game (now over two years old) still has lot of life in it. Whether they can keep the old warhorse warm long enough to keep us busy until the arrival of "Team Fortress" remains to be seen, but don't be too surprised if you see "Half-Life : Diamond Edition" and an enhanced Xbox version of the game appearing over the next year or two...

1995: As the increasingly lucrative console market gears up for the next generation of hardware, a new pretender to the throne arises. Already a massive, powerful corporation in their own right, the entrance of this new competitor radically changes the face of the market, shaking the very foundations of the old guard.

Microsoft has topped off a week they would probably rather forget about with the public unveiling of the Xbox. Earlier in the week, someone associated with Ziff Davis' publication EGM leaked scans of several pages from the coming issue which contained images and other information on the console. Despite this breach of security, and the company's attempts to get offending sites to remove the materials, they are still available from a plethora of different sources. It is no accident that the unveiling of the Xbox to the public coincides with the CES trade show this weekend, and as if to prove this, much of the "official unveiling" documented on the Microsoft Xbox website is actually streaming video footage of the console from the event. Also available is a new Flash movie on the Xbox website with relatively detailed close-ups of the machine's moulded casing and controller. If you can handle the streaming data, then we recommend you opt for that however.

The hard working smurfs at the Online Gamers Association have braved two days without very much sleep at all and they won't hit the hay until all the demos from today's astonishing UK vs. France matches are online. You can get them over at the OGA UK Team files page.

Relief for the UK contingent at LAN Arena, Paris as the UK team manage to stave off a two-game winning streak by the French, taking the final game 98-89. Despite an initially shaky start, they dominated the proceedings from around six minutes in. There was a real scare around 14 minutes with French pulling back to 56-58 and another heart in your mouth dump in your pants moment at 16 minutes with a score line of 66-67. UK rallied however and kept their nerve under intense pressure from the French. The final score- 3-2 to UK! Good game all!

Exciting stuff! The score line sits at two games all in the UK vs. France exhibition match at LAN Arena, Paris ... tantalisingly close to both victory and the prospect of a warm bed for both teams. We've posted the third match report up on our coverage page here and we'll try and stay alive long enough to bring you demos afterwards.

Despite the players having to prop their eyelids open with matchsticks to stay awake, the five game series of the UK vs France exhibition match at LAN Arena 5, Paris has just begun. The first game was a victory to the UK but the final result is yet to be decided. Go over to our event coverage to get the gory details including match demos when we get our hands on them.

After a seemingly never-ending series of delays here at the LAN Arena 5 event in Paris, it now looks as though the UK vs France international Quake 3 match may be about to start. Originally scheduled for last night, we are now just waiting for one French player to return from dinner before we begin the night's fragging. Selected by the OGA and a panel of experts from the British Quake community and sponsored by AMD, the UK Quake 3 team includes some of the country's top players. Back in late 1999 our UK Quake 2 team defeated the French by five games to nil, and the home team are looking for revenge this time round. Will they manage to overcome the odds and teach the Brits a lesson, or will it be another Waterloo for them? EuroGamer are providing full coverage of the clash throughout the weekend, so stay tuned to find out what happens next!

Thanks to UK Team sponsors AMD and our hosts at the LAN Arena event.

Quite how long the realm of reality can be plundered and stuffed into the first-person shooter genre in various guises is something critics have been pondering over for a while now. The idea of experiencing a game from the eyes of a pre-determined character with a gun strapped to their chin is growing all the more stale, and the quest for originality has been significantly dampened throughout the course of only a couple of years. Of course, there are a few innovators every so often that tend the break the mould and set landmarks for all developers to aspire to; Half-Life, Thief and Deus Ex are just a few such titles. So then, it would come as quite a great surprise to find that one of the newest innovators of the genre happens to be a Norwegian outfit called Innerloop, previously recognised for an acclaimed flight-sim released three years ago called Joint Strike Fighter. On first impressions, you'd be forgiven for mistaking IGI for yet another bandwagon-jumping realism-fest, in the same vain as Rogue Spear or Delta Force, yet Project IGI's success lies in its subtleties. Project IGI's plot (IGI stands rather cheesily for "I'm Going In", by the way) is set in the former Soviet Union where the game's protagonist, David Jones - an ex-SAS soldier turned freelance Allied governments operative - is tracking down Jach Priboi, the man responsible for the theft of a nuclear device. As Jones finally manages to hunt down Priboi, he learns of the buyer of the weapon and what their plans are for it. Although the game takes a fairly linear mission-by-mission approach, the unfolding storyline lends the game a narrative credibility not usually associated with this kind of structuring.

There has been a lot of talk recently about DDR memory and how it will revolutionize our gaming systems. Coupled with the latest Athlon processors, it's been touted as the next big thing. Companies like VIA and Intel, big motherboard chipset manufacturers in their own right, are even making plans to build chipsets with support the Pentium 4. But one of the biggest problems for the potential buyer is understanding just what to buy. With all these new names and standards fogging previous conceptions, it can be mightily easy to get lost in the how and the why, and judging by the emails we have received lately, one of the biggest concerns is buying the correct sort of DDR memory. Normal SDRAM, which is what ships with practically every PC on the market these days, comes in three standards; PC66, PC100 and PC133. The number denotes the actual clock rate the memory is capable, so in this case, PC133 = 133MHz. That's the maximum front side bus the memory is rated to support. Any faster and you run the risk of instabilities and crashes. Most PCs come with PC100 SDRAM. DDR memory is different, because the standards refer not to the clock rate, which is of course the same as the SDRAM doubled by the motherboard, but the peak memory bandwidth. The two choices at the moment are PC1600 and PC2100. The 1600 in PC1600 denotes that the memory is capable of shifting 1.6Gb per second at its peak. 2100 indicates 2.1Gb/s. These are theoretical peaks, and in general use are rarely achieved. The clock rate in each case is fairly standard, 100MHz in PC1600's case, and 133MHz for PC2100. So if you intend to buy a DDR Athlon setup and the dealer tells you that it includes 128Mb of memory running at 266MHz, you know already know that the memory is PC2100 (running at 133MHz doubled by the motherboard), and that if you want any more, you should enquire as to where one can buy PC2100 DDR memory. If the dealer offers you an Athlon machine with 128Mb of 200MHz memory, because the motherboards support both speeds, you can say to him "look here, I'd like to run a 266MHz bus," and he will do the honours, no doubt passing comment about how well-informed you are on such matters. At which point you pass us a fiver and disappear into the sunset.

"The RoQ video compiler is now in the tools directory on our ftp server," said Graeme Devine at about 4am our time. "I've included several sample param files from id's games to get you all going. If you have specific problems getting it to work, email me and I'll try to help." RoQ is the type of video footage compiled for the cutscenes in Quake III, so if you are a modder, you might do well to take notice. Graeme goes on to talk about the nature of the RoQ system and which areas of the game use which sort of filetype. The different dimensions for the images are included too. If you are interested in this information, you can have a butchers at the rest of his .plan here.

Fans of the seminal Delta Force series of games in this country were in jubilant mood today at the announcement of the game's release on February 2nd, a month from now. The game no longer relies fully on the power-hungry voxel engine and shifts some of the burden over to the user's graphics card, the main side effect of which is that it looks prettier than previous incarnations whilst retaining the long draw distances. The single player campaign will purvey the startling difficulty of war when the weapons really do kill with one shot. If you like a challenge and weren't all that perplexed by the impressive Project IGI, then this could be the ticket. Furthermore, the developers managed to include proper multiplay this time, via NovaWorld 2. Several multiplayer game-types will be backed up by the now popular world ranking system (similar to, say, ngWorldStats that featured with Unreal Tournament). Built-in voice communication is also a first, according to the press release. Look for a review on these pages closer to the game's release.