This And That: Wednesday News Roundup

While Xbox owners are celebrating the promise of a new Rainbow Six title this August, GameCube owners can take some consolation from the fact that Rainbow Six 3 will be appearing on their console this June. Cobbled together by Ubisoft's Shanghai studio, the Cube version will feature a split-screen two-player mode to make up for the lack of online play, as well as just about everything that made the Xbox and PS2 versions so enjoyable. You can see how it's shaping up thanks to these five screenshots.

Although we don't know anything about Backbone Entertainment's PSP title Death Jr. that we didn't know following the game's recent unveiling during Sony America's Game Developers Conference presentation, an update on the game's official website today links through to an MP3 of Robert Baffy's theme music, which accompanied the GDC demo in San Jose the other week. More information on the game, including concept art and pages from the Death Jr. comic book, will be made available on the website in the next few days. We'll be sure to keep you abreast of developments.

While we're still busily trying to decide whether we care about it or not, TRON 2.0 developer Monolith has popped up this week with some footage of its ambitious Matrix Online MMORPG. The trailer kicks off with an excerpt from the ending of The Matrix Revolutions (which, um, is obviously a bit of a spoiler for the movie), then goes on to show off some action sequences for around a minute and a half. Burly.

Also available to download today is a playable demo of SOLDNER - Secret Wars from Wings Simulations, giving you the opportunity to drive around a pair of maps in Conquest, Hostage Rescue and Team Deathmatch modes. We haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but we do know that Conquest is a Capture The Flag variant, just to clear that up. The demo weighs in at 214MB.

Finally today there's an opportunity to take another look at brilliantly named developer People Can Fly's first person shooter Painkiller, in which you take control of some poor bloke who dies and then finds himself seconded to purgatory as Heaven's hitman. The new, 228MB single-player demo reportedly consists of three levels. The game itself is due out in Europe from Dreamcatcher Games next Friday, April 16th.