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In a terrible move for on-line gaming ASUSTeK Computer the other day announced its new secret weapon. The AGP-V7700 and AGP-V7100 series graphics cards - the 3D SeeThrough TM technologies. "ASUS always provides the best value for our customers." said Jonathan Tsang, vice president of marketing and sales division of ASUSTeK Computer Inc. "The ASUS 3D SeeThrough TM technologies are developed for users to be a constant winner in the adventure or action 3D games. There are three special weapons for ASUS VGA cards' users - Transparent View, Wireframe View, and Extra Light. If you do not have an ASUS VGA card - be careful! Never compete in the 3D games with anyone who has an ASUS VGA card. Because the only result is to loose"

There seems to be a never ending stream of role playing games these days. One thing that is amazing is the quality of most of them is very good indeed. Its rare we see a full price 'turkey', a bad game or a piece or rubbish. The latest in the line of games that seem to be very good indeed is Throne of Darkness, to be published by Sierra. Lets get it straight here, I'm no fan of RPG's. It is rare that I would play one. I generally find the plot lines either boring or just plain funny "Rescue the magic sword of snargle, and then kill the hob goblin with the magic wand that you have to steal off the witch before the house falls on her" and that kind of thing. I plain don't like it, but I have to say that this game seems different.

Doom is still THE game. QuakeWorld players, and indeed hardcore fans of every game will tell you they, and the game they play is the best. But Doom was the first, first person shooter to break into big markets. It is the game that made iD software what it is today, and without it, we would never have seen a Quake series. Doom was the first game with real, playable network code. I actually was playing doom 2 at a lan a few weeks ago, and it was more fun that most games that gets thrown at shelves these days.

In another big move today, CNET Networks has agreed to acquire Ziff-Davis (CNET) for $1.6 billion in stock, The Wall Street Journal reported in Wednesday's electronic edition. Under terms of the deal, CNET will exchange 0.59 of a share for each of Ziff-Davis' 85 million shares, the newspaper reported.

Swedish developer Daydream Software have announced that they have now released Clusterball, "an online sport, designed to invoke the same adrenaline rush as Quake and Unreal, but replacing the spatter and gore with pure gameplay". The rather fetching looking 3D accelerated game sees you racing against other players to grab balls and drag them back to a goal ring.

LittleWhiteDog reviews the SWAT mod for Unreal Tournament

The analogue modem might seem like ancient history with the advent of ADSL and cable modems, but Elsa has announced that it will be releasing a new range of v.92 ready modems as early as this autumn. Owners of older Elsa modems will apparently be able to trade in for one of the new models. Full details can be found in the press release.

German publisher Blue Byte has announced that they have signed a contract for their first flight sim, "IL-2 Sturmovik". The game will let you fly seventeen different planes, including the Soviet IL-2 of the title, and features six historical campaigns set during the war on the eastern front from 1941 to 1945. This is certainly the first World War Two flight sim that I can remember which focuses on Soviet planes, and it should certainly give an interesting new spin on the conflict. Check the press release for the full story.

In earth-shatteringly surprising news (ahem), Sierra has revealed that the eagerly awaited hack 'n' slash RPG "Diablo II" by Blizzard has broken all previous records by shifting a staggering one million copies worldwide in its first two weeks of release, including 350,000 just here in Europe! The game looks like being one of the biggest hits of the year on the PC, and there is even a Macintosh version due for release in August. For the full story, read the press release from Sierra.

Rebellion, the company behind Aliens vs Predator and now the owner of 2000 AD comics, has dropped a bomb shell with the announcement that their latest game, Gunlok, has undergone a rather drastic overhaul since it was shown at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at "Open Tennis 2000" from Cryo. With Wimbledon just over, could this be the tennis fix you're looking for? Can the gameplay match the sumptious graphics? Can the AI opponents stand up to the punishment, or will it be "game, set and match" before they know what's happening? Read our review to find out...

With Wimbledon now over you may find yourself hankering after a little bit more tennis action. Whether it's pure coincidence or not, the PC games market has been hit by a couple of big hitting tennis titles recently. Roland Garros French Open 2000, to give it's full title, is one of these games.

I got this mail and wondered where to put it in the site. We get mails like this all the time and normally don't even cover them. But it so happened that I have been spending all my games playing time over the last while replaying old games that I loved, from the original Command and Conquer to Sensible Soccer. I am stuck in Command and Conquer for ages, and cannot finish a level no matter what I do. Low and behold this iste lands in my mailbox, and I blew up that pesky church at about 2 am this morning!

A lot of people like me use Linux a lot during the day, and see that the more you know about it the more you can earn, just based on being a sandal wearing geek! A lot of those same people have thought about using Linux at home, as their gaming platform. I know UT runs sweet as pie on Linux, and iD have ported their stuff for ages. The problem is that apart from a few exceptions like the above you seem to be stuck with games like GL Minesweeper and second rate tetris clones. There is of course a few other issues, like the way Linux is a pain to look after, with its steep learning curve.

Technical stuff like overclocking normally resides in the tech news here in Eurogamer, but given the popularity of this subject I thought the masses would be interested. These days it appears that gamers judge processors on a number of factors, how good it is at crunching numbers and all the normal things of course. It seems though the most important thing is the how easy the processor will be to overclock. If you have a Intel P3 600, chances are that by various ways and means you can get that to run like a P3 700, or faster. It's proven to work across the world, proven by hundreds of thousands of people and gamers. The process is called Over Clocking.

As anticipated by MCV, Empire has announced its floatation on the Stock Exchange, achieving a capitalisation of £35.1m. The issue of some 8,333,333 ordinary shares at a price of 60p raised £5m, with trading in the firm¹s stock due to commence trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on July 25th. Cash from the listing will enable the firm to increase its licence portfolio which already includes England cricket captain Nasser Hussain and cult 70s cop pairing Starsky and Hutch.

Hot off the presses today is a full report on our EuroLAN party, which took place in Brighton last weekend. The event featured about 30 hours of hardcore gaming action, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 competitions, a projector screen showing DVD action movies all weekend, half-price pizzas and free caffeine fixes, and prizes including AMD athlons, motherboards, and even a pair of 3D glasses! For the full scoop, including photographic evidence where necessary, read our EuroLAN report!

As one of the first big time British game developers the Bitmap Brothers have had their hits and misses. Games like Z, The Chaos Engine and the mighty Speedball to name a few are to the forefront of any conversation about classic games. For the last while we have not seen or herd a shocking amount about them though, that was until we herd that they had been working on sequels to both Speedball and Z.

I don't know about the rest of you but I like to change my computer as often as my outgoings allow me too. I change it as often as twice a year. For a long time I just bought Dell or Gateway, these days though I'm into buying the bits myself and doing a bit of over clocking. I always wonder what mega machine must the likes of John Carmack or Peter Molyneux use to make their masterpieces. Do they have the Quad Zeon action, or would they just have 4 of 5 computers of all different specs lying about the office.

It seems to me that almost every first person shooter player claims to have played Doom since the initial demo. Every single one of them played the Quake test. They are a strange breed indeed. The need to be the best, to hang around on IRC with the right crowd. For many people the games they obsess over are as strange as the people that play them. The best in modern day first person shooters either come from Epic Games, with its Unreal game or iD Software with the mighty Doom and these days Quake.

Today's visual treat from the EuroGamer eye candy store is the third and final batch of eight exclusive new screenshots of "KISS : Psycho Circus", taken from a review version of the game provided by publishers Take 2 Interactive. If you missed any of the earlier shots, check them out now!

The steady stream of roomers surrounding the Eidos acquisition continues. According to trade site CTW, Eidos has said it is not interested in selling out to any competitor. The people at CTW were told that the game publisher was forced to issue a statement to the London Exchange because of the extreme change in their share price. A spokesman for Eidos said, "Approaches to Eidos are common, and the latest does not indicate a sale is imminent". If an offer was made to Eidos, it would need to be presented to the shareholders for consent, CTW was told. The Financial Times has reported that Infogrames is pressing ahead with plans to acquire the UK-based computer games group and that discussions could be completed this month. Eidos announced on June 20 that it was in discussions that could lead to its sale following a series of profit warnings that indicate problems adapting to the next generation of gaming platforms.

ION Storm gets a lot of column inches across the net. For a long time they could do nothing right, every single step they took was the wrong one, Daikatana was late, then it was not and it was just a plain and simple not a good game at all. Then we all see the demo of Deus Ex and are stunned it was by the same company. The key factor is that the legendry John Romero, co-founder of ION was in charge of the first one, and not a single bit to do with the second one. Now credit where credit is due, mister Romero is credited as being the inventor of Deathmatch as we know it when he was back in his iD software days. But that was a long time ago, and these days his investors must wonder if their millions are wasted.

Just about everything I have been given pertaining to 4x4 Evolution highlights the fact that it is still in Alpha and is not finished. The packaging of the game is quite specific about this, the installer reiterates it, and the opening screen of the game explains in clear detail what the minimum specifications are, how they are not finalised, and how the heads-up-display, user interface, and entire game in general is not finished.

It is clear to everyone that Microsoft are serious about the XBox. It is also clear that they have aimed it squarely at the PC user, and indeed they want PC Game developers to develop for it, just buying them if necessary. John Carmack of iD Software has put a post up on Slashdot talking about how Microsoft are trying to get into his and his companies good books. It is also clear that Microsoft are trying to get Tim Sweeney and Epic onside, JC says, "At last years CGDC, Tim Sweeny and I had a meeting with Bill Gates about the X-Box. It was not handled well."

Its amazing how successful online role playing games (RPG's) are. The two market leaders EverQuest and Asherons Call ask you to buy full priced software and then pay a monthly fee to play the game. I know of people who have lost actual marriages due to the sheer amount of time playing. You take on the role of a character, and you basically live that character's life. There is now a rush to copy the 2 main games, and various developers are copying the idea in every way they can. The latest in the line of on-line RPG's is Siege of Avalon. Siege of Avalon is more of a serial RPG/novel than a traditional game.

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at Metal Fatigue, a real time strategy game from Take 2 with the focus on customisable "combots", giant robots which you can build from spare parts and then stomp through your enemy's defences on land, underground, and in space. Can it live up to the promise of the concept? To find out, read our review.

Giant robots. Big, huge, humanoid mecha, stomping about the place, making the ground shake, blowing things up, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

For new people and those not in the know a lot of this talk in gaming these days must be a bit hard to follow. People like me speak of clock cycles and polygons and how great the NV15 is and the jargon continues. A lot of people playing games online are on the home computer, and would not be experts for all that is past, present and future in the world of games, computer and the bits that make up the computer. Daily Radar have spotted this, and done a very good guide to sound and video cards.

Today's treat from the eye candy store is the third and final batch of eight new shots of X-Tension, the massive add-on pack for last year's free-form space trading and combat game "X : Beyond The Frontier". As before, the shots come from a preview version of the game which we snagged from publisher THQ. If you missed the earlier shots, check here.