This And That: Wednesday News Roundup

CDV is planning to release the Combat Mission Anthology on August 6th "at 0900 hours" amusingly, and priced just £19.99. It's a set that comprises all three Combat Mission titles, covering the action on the Western front of World War II, the Russian campaign, and of course the desert campaigns detailed in the most recent instalment of the historically sensitive strategy series, Afrika Korps.

And if three CDV-published lashings of World War II aren't enough for you, you can also look forward to tactical tank tussle Codename: Panzers, which will now be released on September 3rd according to the publisher. CDV also announces that the second single-player demo of the game will be available from July 10th onwards, and uses the Utah Beach mission from the Allied campaign of the full game. We'll be sure to mention that when it rolls over our faces.

Moving away from real conflicts and into the realms of fiction, Massive Entertainment has released a small utility for Ground Control 2: Operation Exodus fans that allows them to recover lost save game files that may or may not have been botched by the recent 1.0.0.7 patch. Massive also apologises for any inconvenience the issue may have caused, although the developer has yet to apologise for calling the tool the "SaveFixxer", an flagrant disregard for spelling convention which is bound to warp the minds of children in their formative years.

Moving on. Having delayed it briefly due to an 11th hour technical glitch, Square Enix has now confirmed that its Final Fantasy I & II GBA compilation will be released in Japan on July 29th, rather than July 15th as previously planned. The publisher still hasn't said what the problem was, but we don't really care anyway so we're prepared to let it go.

Something that we do care about however is the news that Microsoft Dungeon Siege II seems to have been quietly delayed from autumn 2004 until spring 2005, at least judging by a recent update to the game's official website, which now carries the new date. There's no obvious discussion of the delay on the page, but we're guessing it's down to the fiery machinations of Satan's minions in derailing the game's all-important donkey physics.

Finally this afternoon there's news that Ubisoft's PC submarine sim Silent Hunter III won't be surfacing this year after all, having been set back to Q1 2005, presumably by some sort of giant squid or underwater werewolf episode. (There was a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea involving werewolves, right? We're not just imagining it?) Anyway, er, the real reason for the delay, at least according to the developer, is that the team wanted to include more dynamic campaigns to satisfy the community that's been eagerly following its progress.